#soushiyo | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fume-knight-of-shovelry · 4 years

Text

Memory

Lucatiel remembers, and Lucatiel forgets

(LINK VERY NSFW) Art by Soushiyo on Twitter.

----------------------------------

Her first memory was of a long, thin shadow cast across a doorway.

It was a skeletal thing, a spire sticking out across the light in the room beyond, swaying with what could have been the breeze were it a branch. But the knobby spherical shape at the base told her otherwise...if she had been old enough to understand what it meant. But as a baby, all she recognized was something spindled and black, and she gurgled unknowingly.

Her mother stepped across the threshold, weathered sword in hand and extended in front of her, and smiled.

----------------------------------

Drangleic was even more ruined than she’d been led to expect.

Anything resembling coherent order was gone. Those old Firekeepers hadn’t been encouraging, but the degradation still took her breath away. The few ruins she’d encountered around the ruined town by the cliff were so worn away that their original significance or function couldn’t possibly be determined from the scattered stones and rotten doors that she found.

The town, Majula, was deceptively quaint, terribly empty, and eerily silent. A bustling community had found solace here, and vanished in their own time. Now it was sparsely populated with scavengers, befuddled travelers, the hopeless, and the curiously inhuman.

And, perhaps, a woman that might be a valuable ally. The emerald-hooded figure spoke on about souls and a certain King Vendrick, but Lucatiel did not grasp much meaning in what she was told. Perhaps it would serve her well later, but for now it was confusingly distracting. Better to focus on the small joys of this place, before venturing into the unknown. The sun cast soft colors across the bonfire and cliffside, caressing the back of her neck with delicate warmth when she faced away from the sea, and the salt-borne breeze refreshed her senses and left Lucatiel primed for whatever she might yet face.

But it wasn’t long before she was able to recognize just how much devastation had been wrought in this land.

First there was the fort, reclaimed by land and time, a resting place for Giants. The stonework had been dislodged from their original form by erosion and weakened with water and moss, their original color painted over with a brush of greenery born from neglect and abandonment. More than a few walls were held together unsteadily by the petrified trees, stretching towards the sky, sprawling and spidering their roots through the mortar. The trunks encroached at the foundation of the structures that enclosed them, simultaneously unmaking the fort while giving it a new skeleton of plant matter.

Perhaps the old woman was right. That the Giants, as they fell, had become the trees that now populated this forest, inflicting their own kind of post-mortem vengeance on the fastness that had repelled them for so long by both destroying it and making themselves its only hope of survival. Lucatiel didn’t know the whole story, but if the Giants had lost, they seemed to have found the last laugh: in death, in true death, they’d found a peace that had eluded those that still slaved away at their old duties. Old patrols, old battles, old routines and old units, kept stagnant in the grip of the Curse, fossilized for eternity.

And still deadly, too. Those old, rusted shell-wearing soldiers left Lucatiel reeling even when they missed, such was the force behind their blows, and their heavy plating meant that her sword had little effect. She only managed to kill them clumsily by stabbing them between the gaps in their overlapping armor...but her blade pierced no flesh. Instead, it met a fierce, writhing heat that shattered and dissipated into a mass of souls and hissed out from their helmet's eyeholes, leaving the armor to crumple lifelessly to the ground.

That was when she had the chance to battle them one by one. Many times, her Hollowed foes gave her no such opportunity, and she had to weave strikes between deflecting with her shield to both guard herself and leaving her opponents that much more open. The worst were those still intelligent enough to lob pitch bombs at her from range or fire arrows at her from battlements that she couldn't reach when she was being swarmed by endlessly patrolling soldiers. The fort was a dangerous and taxing place, replete with more history than she'd likely ever understand.

In a way, there was a beauty to the forest, to the root-torn stone and crumbling foundations promising new life once the soil was reclaimed from human ambition. Seeing towers brought low, walls breached, and cellars collapsed was disconcerting. If such a sturdy construction could be brought low, then how enduring would her accomplishments be?

And yet, she found cause to hope. The shattered walls would allow creatures passed into the soil that had long been blocked off from them. The spires would give birds new opportunities to nest in the shelter of the vines and crumpled roofs. And the cellars would nurture fungi in their damp shadows, sprouting up from the refuse of the rest. Maybe, the woods would nurture a new ecology on the graves of two dead armies, and something more beautiful could emerge from the devastation.

But it was hard to imagine that kind of future when the past lingered on like a blot, stubborn and foreign to the picture she tried to paint of a world beyond this eternal moment.

She left the fort behind as soon as she could, the sputtered torches lining its walls leaving no light in her wake. There was nothing left for her there.

The wooden play sword had no bite, no hard edges or real thrusting power. It was even shaved carefully to minimize the risk of splinters, so dearly did her father take precautions.

She’d seen it as a challenge, then, to find a way to hurt herself with a poor family’s toy sword. The rebellious streak that ran through all children found fertile ground in her growing spirit, and she’d succeeded beyond her wildest hopes.

“Mama!” She remembered crying, stumbling through the street and clutching her cheek. Now that it was blossoming red, soon to be purple, the novelty of finding out how to get harmed by a child-proofed blade was quickly wearing off. “Brother hit me!”

“Not fair! You told me to!” Grubby, dirt-stained shoes carried him across the ground behind her, bearing the boy voicing his protest. “Mama, Papa, I didn’t mean to!”

The parents looked across at each other, and then at their children, sallow-faced but still wild with energy, the exuberance of childhood unmitigated by their family’s poverty and peasantry. They weren’t sure whether to be impressed, proud, or terrified by the early age at which their progeny had started fighting.

“Lucatiel,” Her mother started, cradling the girl in her lap, rubbing the dirty blonde hair that was already growing wild, “let me see.”

Her father softened his gaze, reaching a hand out to her brother. “Aslatiel, don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. Let’s talk about this.”

Lucatiel felt her mother move her hand and winced when a thumb was brushed against the bruise. Fresh tears sprang from her eyes, mucus dribbling from her nostrils all over her mother’s thigh. She shot a look at her brother, who stared back blankly, his eyes more confused than defensive.

Her mother’s voice met her ears.

“If you’re going to fight, you should learn how to do it properly.”

----------------------------------

Another castle. This one didn’t even have the decency to meld nature with the man-made even in its ruins. All its crumbling was the result of disuse and neglect, the end product of overcrowding turned to abandonment and dereliction of maintenance. The slow progress of erosion was going to bring this entire complex into the sea, eventually, but she intended to be long gone by that point.

Lucatiel had quickly come to understand that it was a prison, a jail intended to sequester the afflicted out of sight, out of mind. A way for the rest of the world to ignore the problem on its doorstep, or thrust it upon the shoulders of a select few. Time had worn away any difference between captors and captives, and rust had granted liberty to most who had once been chained or confined. The empty cells and oppressive blackness gave the place the air of a tomb, awaiting fresh occupants now that the previous tenants had seen fit to wander the halls freely.

The rich accoutrements of some of the soldiers and the cloying bandages on the lumbering, hulkish pyromancers were the only things she could use to tell apart those who might have once held the power in this place from those who had been on the bottom rung. Now they were the same as the chain-rattling, single-mindedly self-destructive corpses that threw themselves upon her and demanded a precise sword to the chest lest they engulf her in choking mist or charring flame. They were all lost to the Curse.

Lucatiel wanted to say that she’d seen nothing worth treasuring here. Being reminded of the desperate straits so many would go through to shut away others was disconcerting on its own, but to be reminded that the suicidal, mummified revenants that leapt at her used to be people like herself was almost too much to bear. Once, they’d been in her position, so suddenly afflicted and so suddenly abandoned. Would the same fate have befallen her, too, if she’d stayed?

Her uncertainty didn’t comfort her, and neither did the strange, squishy, lumpy homunculus that she’d found and taken, spiderwebbed with black brambles and eerily warm to the touch. She had no idea what it was, but she pocketed it anyway, oddly disturbed by her treasure.

But two things gave her comfort. For one, the Bastille, whatever monstrosities it represented, was a grand testament to human ingenuity and architecture, and worth admiring on those grounds if no other. The forbidding battlements and proud walls were enough to convince her that this place had fallen into chaos from the inside, and never been conquered by a foreign foe. The wind-worn guard towers cast the corners of the Bastille in darkness, but the steeples and belfries jutted out towards the moon, its pale light cold and welcome as it shined down towards the sheltered courtyards and peered through the barred windows. Once, some of them might have been stained glass, but any had long since shattered, the jagged panes cutting shadows across the floors where the lunar body’s light could reach. The stories they might have spelled out on their sheets were little more than shards of crystal on the stones, just as lost and eerily tranquil as the rest of the prison.

The other thing that gave Lucatiel comfort was the individual she’d found wandering the Bastille, who did grant her some peace of mind. Her voice felt sore from lack of use, but it had been good to speak with and fight alongside someone else once again, and they had helped give her some hope in this wretched place. Together, they’d conquered their foes, and found solace in their shared power. It was a good start.

----------------------------------

Lucatiel felt the wood come to rest against her ankle with a clank, and then it swept and scooped her off her feet and she was falling, suspended in her descent with her hand on her weapon until the ground knocked the wind from her lungs. She lifted her head to keep her neck from slamming the dirt too strongly and grit her teeth, more out of disappointment than discomfort.

“Hah! You fell for it again, baby sister! When are you going to learn that feinting’s an option?” Aslatiel’s taunts would have wounded her if he didn’t seem so overjoyed at his success, if his smile wasn’t as genuinely bright as it appeared to be, spreading wide across his sweat-stained cheeks. His golden hair was matted with perspiration and he was breathing heavily, but he was standing and she wasn’t. He’d won, no matter how tired he was.

He bowed, exaggerating the motion with a flourish in his wrist as she righted herself and stood up. “I’ll get you someday, brother.” She tried to sulk, but couldn’t bring herself to stay upset. She couldn’t blame her loss on her youth anymore: they were both adolescents now and coming into their own, even if they still had lots of growing to do.

“Is that a dare, Lucatiel?” Aslatiel’s eyes flashed with glee at the idea of being able to win one more over on her. She stuck her tongue out instead. Juvenile, perhaps, but fitting.

“It’s a promise.”

----------------------------------

Darkness did more than obscure sight. It made shapes dance in the gloom, bringing terrors to life only to fade away with each step, but never so much that one could feel safe. It didn’t help when there were some very real dangers lurking around every shaded corner.

The raider’s secret cove was a vertical maze of old taverns, docks and fisheries, crawling with the castoffs of the ships that had come to rest in this harbor one last time, never to set out again. The walkways had collapsed into the sea, forcing her to trudge in waist-deep water that chilled her to the bone and left her feeling like she was walking through thick, heavy cotton. The ceiling of the cove seemed to press down upon her, threatening to shrink and wobble the longer she focused on how tall it was, no matter how much she reminded herself that there was no risk of it collapsing beneath the weight of the waves above the rock.

Everything that wasn’t flooded was sodden with salt from the tides and the dripping roof of the cave, leaving the wood cracked and bulging as it expanded with the suffusion of liquid and the stones sopping and slowly eaten away by the salinity of the spray. What didn’t splash onto the buildings built up in scraggly, bulbous spikes of mud and stone, tapering down from above in perilous points or sprouting up from the ground where the water fell in a steady drip.

Lucatiel could manage the vagabonds and their plagued dogs easily enough, weaving and dodging and counter-attacking no matter how many times they tried to set her alight with boiling oil or hound her across the rotted planks. But it was more difficult to look at the dwellers in the dimness, with their contorted, elongated limbs and eyeless faces. Life without light bred strange creatures, but these jerked and twitched across the stone recesses of the wharf in ways no human could match.

Unless, of course, they shared more in common with the Hollows than they seemed. If they were once human, too, now repulsed by the glare of the sun that never penetrated their caves...that boded ill for this land, that such monstrosities could find an origin in men.

At least they died just as the pirates did. However uncanny their movement, a sword put paid to their danger well enough...and waving a lit torch in their faces, an instrument consisting of an oiled rag on a stick, shocked and terrified them long enough for Lucatiel to stab them in the forehead, chest, or stomach, leaving a trail of long-armed corpses in her wake.

But in this dilapidated dockyard, the same ray of hope found her again. Her friend was still the same impenetrable cipher as before, but they were also perfectly willing to make conversation with a lone swordswoman. Or at least listen to her ramble on.

She’d made a gift to them of the strange effigy she’d found, giving it to her ally in lieu of keeping it in the hopes of uncovering its purpose. Their acceptance, quiet and sincere, drove her to move too quickly, to let the terrible truth of her purpose here escape and be known. Her mask was cast off and she felt cool air on her skin in the presence of another for the first time since she’d arrived. But the cracked, crumpled flesh around her left eye felt nothing. No comforting breeze, no flickering warmth from the fire by her shoulder, no rush of heat from the flow of blood to her face as her friend scrutinized her features. It was staid, unreactive, even if she could still move and see using the yellowing eye contained within.

Lucatiel almost wished that her friend had cast her aside, storming away in horror or revulsion or betrayal. Then she might’ve had the comfort of finding someone to blame and rage at in her own quiet, solemn way.

But their only response was to turn and bare their shoulder, and the swirl of blackness on their skin told her all she needed to know. The Curse had touched them, too.

----------------------------------

The blunted steel swung towards her shin, and she stamped down onto the blade. It didn’t shatter, but the point was well secured beneath her foot. Now all she had to do was keep it there and stab, and then…

“Almost, sister.”

Before she could react, the body at the other end of the blade hurtled forward, bowling into her shoulder-first while her focus was still on the sword in the ground. Her leg buckled in spite of her attempt to brace herself, and she fell backwards.

She was proud to say that she didn’t drop her blade. Unfortunately, she still ended up on her back, her foot off of her brother’s practice sword, giving him the space needed to grab and redirect its point to her chest. Another lost duel.

“Well done, brother.” Lucatiel extended her hand upwards and felt Aslatiel grip her wrist, hoisting her up in one go. Where once he might’ve struggled to lift her, now he could pull her from a prone position with as little difficulty as swinging a sword. She knew she could pick him up, too, and she had the muscles to prove it. But until she beat him, she’d never get the chance to show that off.

She’d just have to settle for defeating everyone else.

“You too, Lucatiel. And hey, chin up. You’ll beat me one of these days.”

She tried not to chortle. “Is that a challenge?”

Aslatiel shook his head, sheathing his sword. “That’s a promise.”

----------------------------------

The longer Lucatiel was here, the more madness she discovered.

What hideous geography was at work? Sometimes, her trekking felt pointless in the face of the locales she encountered, and sometimes, she could understand how she ended up from one place to the next.

She did not want to dwell on one of the possibilities that had crossed her mind as to why the layout of this place appeared to elude reason. That her memory was fading, bleeding away from her like a slit in her skin trickling blood, oozing and leaking from her mind without coagulating or letting her choose what she kept. If the path from one place to another did not conform to the logic she knew, then there was a very real possibility that she was forgetting the time in between points of interest. That the Curse was doing its work upon her so insidiously as to rob her of experiences as she lived them, reducing her life from one set of dangers to another.

She tried to comfort herself by focusing on the fact that the world did not always conform to linear models of reality as she knew them. That time and space were difficult, melding together from ages past and future, places near and far. And for all of its confusions, there was much that could fit neatly into how she preconceived the order of things to work.

For one, the way that the cliffs of Majula lined ancient aqueducts that fed to the ruined land of Heide, which led to the sheltered cove of the pirates that she'd explored, fit together well in the puzzle she was making of Drangleic’s map. The resplendent cathedrals, crumbled roofs and sparking lighthouse were once the towering peaks of the land that had come before, but now were sunk so low into the sea that only their very tops had escaped flooding. She supposed that it wasn’t unusual that those at the top would be the last to suffer: the multitudes of people who once had lived in the lower reaches of the city had to have drowned and perished first, before fate attacked the clerics and nobles who called these magnificent palaces home.

Was it a gradual rise of the tides that brought about the collapse of this land, now absorbed into Drangleic? Or a sudden catastrophe? Had the Curse manifested here, too? How many monsters like what she could become had been the root of Heide’s fall?

When those thoughts entered her mind, Lucatiel struggled to shake them off. No matter how much she told herself off for her speculation, though, she couldn’t dodge the discomfort within her chest at the idea that her kind, that the Cursed, bore some sort of guilt for yet another land’s downfall. Perhaps it had been for the best that she’d fled, lest she bring the same cataclysm to Mirrah.

No, no, she couldn’t let herself fall into that thinking. She’d left...she’d left for responsibility, yes, but not to Mirrah. It had to have been for herself, for fear of shame and dishonor and a desire to…

...To…

For a horrible moment, Lucatiel forgot why she came to Drangleic. For a terrible second, the route of entry, the people she had met, and the fiends she had already slain left her memory. She’d already forgotten so much: the exact moment when her mother had first shown her a sword; the way her father’s face creased when he was worried; the details of the first time she’d lost a duel to Aslatiel. And even more had slipped from the reserves of her mind as she added new experiences to an already draining reservoir of memory. Something larger blocked her mind when she tried to recall the specifics of the things she’d forgotten, and besides knowing that they had happened, the nuances escaped her. How long, too, before she would not even remember that these had occurred, even worse than muddying the details? And when would she forget even more?

Cold panic gripped her, and she loosened her focus on her surroundings, stumbling and clutching the stone railing of the bridge she’d lowered across the chasm in a forlorn, Hollow-riddled wood. In the distance, pine trees stabbed the smokey clouds, cruelly piercing upwards and swaying with the wind that whistled through the chasm, the greenness of their needles almost invisible in the gloom. They seemed to accentuate the sharpness of the bonfire of corpses, the butchery of the torturers, and the confines of the oubliettes in the forest. She tried not to focus on the black birds above her, circling, waiting for something to bring about her end so they could feast. She didn’t consider that they wouldn’t get the satisfaction, that if she died she’d rise again and rob them of the easy meal they longed for.

Her resolve steeled when a sound like wooden blocks falling to the floor came to her attention ahead of her. She looked up and tightened her hold on the hilt of her sword as a skeleton danced into her view, joints creaking, ribs rattling while wind whistled through its empty eye sockets. It fixed her with a vacuous grin, permanently stamped on its lipless skull, and charged, clutching a rusty, blunted blade in one set of thin fingers and a splintered buckler in the other.

Lucatiel stepped forward, lowering her shield. The lessons came back to her while the fear in her mind melted away. The skeleton bulled in her direction without tact or feint, and attempted a clumsy swipe at her arm. Even in such poor condition, her adversary’s weapon could be crippling: if she’d been slower or less prepared, she’d have taken a cut to her left forearm. Instead, she dipped to the right, stopping her breath as the metal whirred by her left wrist. She moved with the momentum by spinning and slamming down on the skeleton’s shoulder with the flat of her blade, loosening her arm to let the shockwave of her strike ripple through to her chest without resistance. The skeleton’s shoulder cracked and its right arm popped out of its torso under the force of her blow, leaving it reeling and wobbling with a missing limb.

She’d long since learned that striking skeletons with the point or edge of her weapon was worthless: it would simply wear at her sword and get it stuck in the bone. Raw, blunt force was her preferred solution. The best way to kill them was to simply shatter them to pieces.

If the skeleton had eyes, it would have stared at her. If it had lungs, it would have gaped and sputtered at being so literally disarmed. Instead, it swung its other arm towards her, spinning on its pelvis to throw more weight behind the blow.

Lucatiel was ready, her shield already raised to take the strike, feeling the scrabbling fingers slide fruitlessly against the barrier.

She smiled beneath her mask. Yes, this was still there. This was still the same. A quick bracing of her left foot on the ground, knee slightly bent, and then she bashed forward with the flat face of her shield, crunching the skeleton’s remaining arm between the steel and its own ribcage. It never knew what hit it: one moment, its fingers were gripping the rim of her shield and struggling to pull it away, and the next that same bulwark was barreling towards it, shattering its hand and shoulder and sending its skull flying from its neck with a pop.

It stood there listlessly, minus its arms and head, then toppled over into a heap, scattering onto the ground. Lucatiel wasn’t even breathing heavily, and she kept her sword out, still tense and ready: Drangleic rarely presented her with only a single foe to confront at a time. But even in the face of further danger, she couldn’t help but feel reinvigorated. Fighting brought her back to happier times, to the one who was the reason for her journey in the first place.

She remembered why she came. She remembered her own curse, and she remembered Aslatiel. So long as she could keep fighting, she would hold on to that much, at least.

----------------------------------

The day they joined Mirrah’s official Order of knights was the happiest day of Lucatiel’s life.

All of the hardship, all of the sweat and blood and tears and bruising and training had built up to this moment, to the time when she and Aslatiel could cast off the chains of peasantry and bring their family up to the most respected caste in society. The day when they could stand alongside their fellow graduates and trainees, in the presence of their mentors and leaders, and call themselves proud Mirrah Knights, swearing themselves in defense of their country against the enemies that constantly assailed it. The day that their family could, at last, reap the rich benefits of rising in the ranks and serving their homeland, and escape the destitution that had trapped them for so long.

She would swear forever after that a tear did not roll down her cheek during the ceremony. She did not cry, no matter what her brother said to tease her.

----------------------------------

Lucatiel respected her enemies when she could. Not doing so quickly led to disdain, which led to overconfidence and underestimation, and that was the path to defeat and death. But she could not respect pure, unadulterated, insidious poison.

An enemy that used poison to overcome deficiencies in stamina or strength or to otherwise gain equal or even greater footing could still be worthy of honor. Every situation called for a different weapon, a different tool.

But there was nothing honorable about a blighted land, so steeped in toxic gas and deadly fumes that all who ventured in were choked and brought low by an unkillable, unformed foe. The chained hollows, monstrous laborers, and diminutive overseers painted a picture of a place of forced laboring, where slaves and prisoners were exploited to death working mines in conditions that permitted no survivors. The ragged windmills in the distance spun and twirled, but surely no grain cold survive in this blighted dirt. What, then, were they pumping? There was no hidden life waiting to reclaim this tortured land, no forgotten beauty biding its time to rejuvenate the locale. This valley had worked its laborers to death, and now it too merely longed to pass on. For its ashen, staid soil and empty rock to rest forevermore, untilled and unmined, awaiting the day when it was simply left alone.

But until then, it would take everything she had to survive here. Lucatiel’s lungs had their work cut out for them as she sprinted through the noxious mines without inhaling. Even skin contact left her feeling burning and woozy, eyes unfocused and mind swimming with an assault upon her senses: dripping tears, pounding ears, itching skin, nostril-curling acrid stenches and bitterness on her tongue. Her vision was wet and blurry: she was bawling nearly as badly as when she’d finally graduated into full knighthood.

It didn’t help that a terrifying ensemble of adversaries arrayed this part of her journey through this overexploited, barren valley. She could bash apart skeletons with ease, provided they didn’t swarm her, but she was far more concerned with the sorceresses that had turned their attention to her, tiring of the Hollow laborers that continued their mindless worship of their mistresses.

Once, Lucatiel might have been distracted by the pyromancer's smooth, exposed stomachs, thigh-high boots, gloves that extended past their elbows and intriguingly disguised faces...to say nothing of their chest-pieces, which were little more than underclothes. She still had tattered scraps of memories of such experiences during her time in Mirrah. Names and faces now eluded her, though if she struggled she could very faintly recall attraction to, men, women, or people who evaded such dichotomies.

Now, however, such thoughts were far from her mind, especially when the women started giggling fiendishly and casting flame in her direction. An arc of three trailing orbs of fire charred the gray rock in front of her, sprinkling soot onto her shield and ash onto her boots. Lucatiel fell back into her old habits, the instincts of how to defeat one who employed magic rising back up to fill the void where other memories had lain fallow. Shield up and angled straight to avoid a stray conflagration into her face; head lowered to reduce the target available to her opposition; swerving, zigzagging motions to present a less consistent opening. If she’d been less distracted by the poison, Lucatiel could have dashed up to the woman and cut her down right then and there, but her muscles protested too loudly and her lungs heaved too deeply for her to run at top speed.

The pyromancer put one set of gloved fingers to her lips and blew a kiss towards Lucatiel. She swore she could see a smile beneath the shadow of their hood before sparks coalesced before the woman’s face where her hands had touched, collecting into a sphere too bright to look upon, emanating heat that distorted the air around it into a ball before rocketing towards Lucatiel. She knew she couldn’t block such a spell: whatever it was would be too much for her shield to handle. If it wasn’t melted outright, it’d heat the metal to the point where it burned her hand, and she couldn’t risk that.

So, instead of blocking, Lucatiel exhaled and ducked, tucking her shield hand in and holding her sword point away from her body. The momentum of her motion sent her rolling forward, bearing her weight on her shoulders for a heartbeat with her legs in the air, the boiling heat above her feet letting her know that she’d dodged underneath the path of the ignited globe. When her weight carried her back forward again, she was on her feet and leaping, bringing her sword back in front of her to zip forward in a stab.

Thunk!

Lucatiel looked up at the sorceress, who stared back at the knight dumbly. The mirror her adversary had been carrying fell from her grasp, and she clutched feebly at the blade now buried point-first in her sternum, fingers slipping uselessly against the steel.

The pyromancer let out a croaking sound, shoulders slumping and head lolling as Lucatiel withdrew her weapon with a wet shlick. The tip and the half of her sword that had been buried in her foe was stained a deeper scarlet than the sorceress’s robes, the slit in the woman’s chest oozing blood with the blade’s exit. She raised her hand, then fell to her knees and forward, bleeding onto the stone as her body began to relax in the sleep of death.

Lucatiel didn’t have time to enjoy her victory: the Hollow slaves that had been attending to the pyromancer rose from their bowed positions, their attention affixed on the killer of their object of worship. And another woman awaited her at the top of the ladder across the gorge.

She readied her blade and shield as the other sorceress scattered a volley of fire towards her and the Hollows approached. Lucatiel would not die today.

----------------------------------

Lucatiel’s first true kill wasn’t pretty.

One of the many conflicts that Mirrah was constantly mired in had erupted into battle near their eastern border, on an open valley ringed by hills that afforded a great deal of space for warriors to clash in combat lines that flowed and fell back like the river that divided the two sides.

Attacking across a river against an enemy that had a hill to fall back upon was stupid. Suicidal, even. But the Knights of Mirrah were expected to attempt it anyway: such was their duty, and such was their pedigree that they’d be expected to win. The rest of their country needed them to take that hill, to secure this valley to better hold back the next attack or to make room for an advance.

When the battle lines met, confusion reigned. She’d been taught to expect any situation, but training was little substitute for the real thing. Not even the lessons she’d absorbed from the practice mêlées she’d participated in were quite right here. In theory, she knew what to do when fighting in water—go for the lowest point of contact above the water to unbalance her opponent, usually a knee, to try to get them battling both the liquid and her own blows—but her foes refused to be contained. It was chaos; blunt weapons smashed shields to splinters or were redirected for counterattacks on the part of the defender; épées thrust into openings in armor, seeking purchase in soft flesh beneath plates or in between chainmail links; shrieks and shouts assailed her ears, with distant bugle-calls merely adding to the din.

This was the raw, unbridled chaos of an infantry line being met with shock troops. The aggression of the Mirrah Knights was all that stood between them and a muddy grave.

Lucatiel couldn’t hear her orders, but she kept her head enough to not freeze and continued advancing towards the first free opponent she saw. They were more heavily equipped than her, shelled in thick armor that must’ve weighed more than Lucatiel’s whole body, their helmet blocking their features, but the colors emblazoned on their plate told her that they were an enemy. Her boots slammed into the river loud enough to draw their attention, and they hefted their axe and waited for her to approach.

Smart. She’d have to spend more energy to get to them than they would standing still, and they had the superior reach. One strike with that weapon looked like it could split Lucatiel in two. If she wasn’t at risk of losing it in the confusion, Lucatiel would have discarded her shield in favor of speed. She had no chance at blocking that monster head-on, but it was too late now.

She stepped forward with her right foot, keeping her weight on her left, trying to gauge the reach of the axe from its length. If she’d eyeballed it right, then she should be—

Right on cue, her challenger leaned forward and swung from right to left far faster than she’d been expecting, the air whistling in the wake of their blade. Lucatiel leaned back, stepping onto her left foot with her shield held in front of her on reflex. The axe missed the polished surface by a whisker, but she wasn’t in a good position to strike back. If she stepped forward now, she’d get hit on their return swing, and sure enough, her enemy did as she expected, the blade of their weapon dinging the tip of her shield on the reverse motion.

Now was her chance—they were just the slightest bit off-balance from the force of their swing. Why had they put all their weight behind it? Did they not know how vulnerable two-handed weapons left their wielders after such a blow? No matter: it was to Lucatiel’s advantage. Hers was not a thrusting sword, but in a pinch, it could work as one, and her opponent’s unsteadiness left a tiny slit visible between the armor covering their body and their neck-guard, exposing the smallest sliver of skin. Forcing herself forward against the water, Lucatiel slammed the edge of her shield against her enemy’s face, knocking them to their knees and widening their weak point, and jabbed her sword down between the plates separating their neck-guard from the armor of their torso.

It took Lucatiel a moment to realize that the meaty thunk that she heard was, in fact, the sound of a blade sinking into vulnerable flesh, sliding past skin and fat and muscle to open up the insides beneath. Her enemy dropped their axe, clawing weakly at Lucatiel’s blade, red blood trickled up from the puncture point to diffuse into the water. Their grunts sounded...oddly soft for such a large individual, and as she withdrew her blade their helmet came off with the steel.

She beheld a young man’s face, his chin barely stubbled, olive skin pockmarked with the scars of acne and sunburn, close-cut hair flattened from the helmet he’d so recently been wearing. The line of his jaw and the broadness of his shoulders suggested he possessed no shortage of strength, but he couldn’t have been older than nineteen, maybe twenty. He wasn’t gritting his teeth and spitting blood at her, raging in the face of death, determined to see this through.

He was terrified.

His eyes widened, welling up red, tears streaming down his face to mix with the drool and mucus oozing from his lips and nostrils, pooling onto the hollow of his armor. His neck wound, no longer plugged by her sword, began to run, sanguine fluid streaming down to the water. He raised a hand to his neck, weakly, and his fingers slacked as he began to sob and fall forward.

When his face slipped beneath the water, a crimson halo forming around his head, he did not get up.

Lucatiel wanted to vomit, to scream, to rage at the circumstances that had forced this. She’d killed a boy a year younger than her. There was nothing laudable in stabbing a frightened young man, someone who had his own family, his own fears, his own belief in the cause of his homeland. No great pride swelled up in her at the slaying of this threat to Mirrah as his dreams slipped out of his body in the blood that stained the river. A part of her wanted to toss aside her weapon, to quit the field, whatever shame that might entail. That fraction of her had no desire to be a party to this butchering.

Then the yelling and shrieking rolled back over her in a wave. She heard other sounds, too—her fellow knights, struggling and straining and calling out in their drive to seize this hill. Her commanders, behind and beside her, urging unity and direction and targeted pushes. She could not let them down. She could not let her country down, her order down, her family down. Her brother was here somewhere, brawling in the river, and she could not leave Aslatiel to die.

And so Lucatiel stood up, readied her shield, and charged at the closest enemy she could.

----------------------------------

She thought that she’d seen the last of the poison when she entered the windmill at the far end of the valley. She’d been horribly mistaken.

Sure, Lucatiel wasn’t constantly having to hold her breath to avoid choking on gas, but being surrounded by pottery filled to the brim with contaminants and having to fight marionnettes with envenomed weapons, backlit by the noxious pool of sickly-green slime, wasn’t much better. The windmill was stifling, trapping the fumes within its walls that had, when she was outside, found avenues other than her lungs to flee to. Fortunately, the poison was mostly constrained to the muck at the bottom of the tower, but it still stank terribly, and made it difficult for her to properly appreciate how cluttered this building was with mechanical contraptions, walkways, and grinding gears.

She had to catch herself multiple times, lest a stray strike shatter a vase and leave her coated in acid that, as far as she knew, would eat through her armor and skin until she was as much a skeleton as those she bashed to pieces. Or maybe it would seep into her skin, travel up her veins, and stop her heart or shrivel her lungs or deaden her brain. Either one would’ve been horrible, and she had no desire to find out.

The marionettes, by some perversion of magic, operated without heads or faces. No voices hissed from the empty sockets of their necks, and their bodies did not heave with breath or exertion when she clashed with them. They clung to the ceiling and hung beneath ledges and railings, waiting to leap up and strike at her with thrown knives or arrows, to slash at her with sharpened claws and deadly blades, all coated in a poison that sapped her strength, ached her limbs, burned her skin and left her dizzy and unbalanced while they pressed their attack.

Fighting someone who had no need to guard a head or neck was unusual: instead of operating with a single point to guard from harm at all costs, these deadly puppets lunged and danced through her swings when she aimed for the face and expected them to duck, flinch, or guard. Suppressing her habits took work, but even in her befuddled, strained state, Lucatiel could adapt. If she didn’t, she’d be finished.

Fortunately, whatever magic animated them was fragile, as were they, and when she sliced them in twain they did not bleed, merely crumpling into loose, empty clothing, folded on the ground. Their danger lay in their numbers, their poison, and their ambushes: when she had them cornered, they were finished. The toll their toxins took on her body was harder to recuperate from, leaving her mind swimming and muscles protesting a little more each time, but Lucatiel refused to be felled by creatures that were little more than highwaymen, however trussed up and unusual they were.

The gray-skinned warriors were more durable and more straightforwardly dangerous. Their spears never touched her, but when she deflected a blow she could feel an unnatural chill seep through the metal, up her arm, worming its way to her cheeks and tickling her mind with thoughts of terrifying, cold stillness. Lucatiel got glimpses of blanketing quietude, of suffocating drowsiness, and it was only after she’d pulled these wardens off her sword that she felt able to clear her head. Their breath misted through the veils over their faces as they emptied their black blood onto the ground, the fluid oozing out with a stagnation that suggested it had never really been pumping through their veins.

Lucatiel could not endure too much more of this place. She could suffer poison and survive a little chill and take the flames that the sorceresses hurled at her, but altogether it was proving to be too much. She had to ascend to the peak of this windmill, and fast, lest she…

Lest she…

No, she couldn’t. She mustn’t entertain that possibility. She would not perish in this wretched place, and she would not lose herself, sieged as she was by toxins and dark cold and doubt. She was Lucatiel of Mirrah, a Knight, and she would hold herself through this.

Her thoughts turned to her friend. How had she let them slip her mind? She’d seen them so recently, too, when she’d first entered the windmill. How could she have forgotten the encouragement their presence afforded, the security that their shared struggles and journeys passed to her? They were Cursed, just as she, and however disparate their travels, she was not wholly alone.

She’d...she’d discussed him, yes. Aslatiel. Her brother, the reason she was here, to...to cure him, was that it? To seek a cure for him, to find him, to know what they both were and could become?

Yes, that was the one. She had to cling tightly to that, to maintain herself through this haze of fading thought and frittering distraction. All else might fade, and her recollections might distort and warp like burned glass, clouding the details of her past, but she had to hold on to this. The memory brought Lucatiel back to the present, back to her duty and trials, returning her to the knowledge that elucidation awaited. Understanding awaited. This could not be for naught. She would not allow it.

----------------------------------

Lucatiel knew that she should not think of them as people.

Mirrah had staved off whatever calamity brought upon the Curse of the Undead, but the same could not be said of their neighbors. Those that they’d fought against to secure resources and define borders with now came at them with newfound and terrifying purpose.

The soldiers still wore plate, and still gripped weapons in their hands. But their skin was shriveled and pruned, clinging to bones and divets in various shades of green, pink, and sickly yellow. Their movements were sloppy, uncoordinated, their arms hanging low, posture hunched and steps unsteady.

Somehow, a Hollowed foe was even more terrifying in spite of this. The numbers and apparent inability to die were concerning on their own, but behind every jaundiced, empty-eyed gaze was a shell that still clung to some remnant of the self, manifested in barely-discriminate violence and rote repetition of habit. For a Hollowed soldier, that meant fighting, and the little flashes of intelligence they manifested in their coordination were just enough to remind her that they’d once been human.

For all she knew, they still were. Maybe the croaks that emanated from their parched throats were attempts to talk, to plead, but their bodies refused to act out the whims of their minds, leaving them trapped in their fleshy, deathless forms. Even if they weren’t, something of a memory persisted there in the bungled attempts to reflect the roles the Hollows had played in life. And every one of them had once called someone else their family or friend.

Lucatiel tried not to dwell on such things, and it was easier to separate herself from Hollows as she slayed them compared to when she cut down humans...and she’d long since gotten used to killing. But the image wouldn’t leave...and though she was fortunate enough to not recognize anyone, she didn’t want to confront what she might have done if she had. Could she kill a comrade that turned, if the Curse ever came to Mirrah? Could she kill her lord, her fellows, her family, if they were in that position?

She didn’t know. But as she stood with her fellow knights and cut down the Hollows that pressed forward, she couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bud of something ill begin to flower within her. It may have been dread, or doubt, or primal, reflexive fear. But whatever it was, it took root in her heart, and Lucatiel couldn’t shake the sensation that there was something deeply, intrinsically wrong about all this.

----------------------------------

At least it wasn’t poison.

To be fair, flames weren’t much better. The heat was sweltering, the perspiration running down her forehead and over her eyelids faster than she could take off her mask to wipe it off. She could have removed her hat to make it easier on her skin, but the idea was absurd. Lucatiel would never risk losing her headgear.

But this monument to iron and pride was sorely tempting her. Past the mountain of the windmill lay the volcanic caldera that encircled this castle, but she could not even be certain of that. The elevator had gone upwards, but how could a pool of molten magma rest above a tower? It made no sense. Had her memory erased the transitional journey further towards the mountain, or had the rules of this land proved malleable once again? Neither possibility was comforting.

Still, this keep was intimidating and radiated nearly as much power as it did heat. Whoever had erected it had an eye for the brutal and macabre, with sharp towers, heavy chains for support, and hideous representations of animals, all encased in iron-wrought beams and charred stonework. The place was built with bulk, and if it had not sunk into a lake of fire, perhaps it might have already proven impregnable. The architect of this edifice, or at least their master, also enjoyed bulls far too much: everywhere Lucatiel looked, ugly caricatures of the horned creatures met her gaze. Some spouted fire, while others formed the basis of the pottery, and others simply stood by and watched her with empty eye sockets. Lucatiel tried not to shudder as she passed them.

Similarly terrifying was the legion of warriors that awaited her in this lava-flooded place. The automatons wrapped in shell armor from the forest were here too, in more pristine condition, but the true terrors were the knights with unusual blades and fire-casted armor.

They fought so similarly. Too similarly. Their swordsmanship was in sync to the point of uniformity, their patterns too sharp to have been born of anything but a single trainer. Such a monolithic adherence to style from them all, rather than just a select few, might have suggested that they were automatons, crafted with soul and steel like the behemoths from before. But their armor, and whatever bodies might be beneath, crumpled into ash and soot faster than she could inspect them, and they seemed to leave something resembling blood on her blade.

Whatever they were, they had been engendered or trained by a single artist of the sword, and they fought with a flow and grace unlike any she had ever beheld, jabbing and slicing faster than her eye could follow. Adapting to the intricacies of their blows, to the tells in their posture and the balance of their footing, brought her surety, but never familiarity. She was glad that their creator or teacher seemed absent, at least: that one had to be a true master with a blade.

Of course, those that did not confront her with a blade bombarded her from a distance with arrows as long as she was tall. But whether the knights tried to swarm, ambush, or confront her openly, she was ready. When they feinted, she tried not to smirk as she let them believe she took the bait before attacking from the opposite side, sending them off-balance with a bash from her shield and ending them with a blow from her sword. Lucatiel had never fallen for a feint before, and would not start now.

Especially not when her friend called on her. They...were a friend, she knew. Yes, she had helped them before, or at least spoken to them...had it been twice now? Or was this the first, and they’d simply made an excellent initial impression, such that she was convinced she’d known them? No, they wouldn’t take advantage of her like that. But if she couldn’t recall, how could she say for certain? She would have to trust her instincts, and they told her that she could count this individual as an ally, similarly afflicted.

It mattered little, in any event. The golem of fire and iron that awaited them did not care if her memory was playing tricks on her: its blade, thick and blunt, a slab of raw metal spidered with lava useful more for bashing and crushing rather than slicing or stabbing, still struck at her all the same. No matter how Lucatiel’s mind wandered, it still boiled the air around it with the convection of the flames that burned in its belly. No matter how difficult it might be for her to recall herself, to remember the elements that made up her past, the demon that she faced alongside her companion still set its sword aflame and charred the air and floor with its swings, demanding her full attention lest her bones be squashed beneath its might, her flesh melting into her armor. It would be a horrible way to die.

She was in the flow of combat, of dodging and striking and advancing, and in her flurry of activity she could almost forget the fate that hung so heavily over her. But she knew that the absences would continue to dog her, inevitable in their promise of oblivion, and that any pretense of not being aware of her condition would fade as quickly as it arrived. So much had already been irreparably lost to the fog of her cursed mind: if killing would slow the degradation, she would never sheathe her sword, and fight to the last.

----------------------------------

“What’s troubling you, Aslatiel?”

Her brother sat across from her in the banquet hall of the Order, finger tapping unevenly against his wine goblet. He did not respond, and did not meet her eyes. He’d been like this too much lately.

“Brother? Is something the matter?” Lucatiel put her fork down, frowning with concern. It was not like him to brood, or sulk, or do...whatever it was he was doing. He always had a light, easy energy about him. Certainly, in the thick of battle he was as serious and determined as any proper knight, but when it was over he did his best to grin, laugh, and enjoy the bounty he had. It was his way of dealing with the mounting weight that came with the loss of his fellow knights, the threats to his home, and the pressures of his station. Being the shining paragon of Mirrah brought him myriad advantages...and also terrifying scrutiny.

Lucatiel confronted her grief, exhaustion, and frustration with sword practice, the love of her family, and quiet contemplation. And, when she saw a need to indulge herself, drinking, feasting, and carousing. She was careful to ration her celebrations, lest they distract her from her duties or bring dishonor to her Order. Aslatiel knew how to limit himself, and had yet to exceed his boundaries. But he rarely was sullen, and never quieter than she was.

Until recently, Aslatiel had given no indication that anything was wrong. Certainly, life was hard, and being a Knight of Mirrah’s stately Order was no simple task. But in spite of the gnawing sadness that he’d been communicating to her, she was certain that his conviction had not wavered, that his faith had not shaken, and that his will had not shattered. The repeated battles against foes, whether they be domestic or foreign, living or Undead, had not seemed to weaken his exuberance or blunt his hope for her and their shared country.

But now, he was morose, and Lucatiel was worried.

“I cannot help you if you won’t allow me to, Aslatiel.”

“Sister,” he began, resting his chin in his palm and digging his elbow into the table, “have I ever...have you ever found cause to doubt me?”

“Never.” She spoke with clear confidence, leaning forward to get his attention. “Aslatiel, you are the most decorated knight in all of Mirrah. You are the pride and joy of our country and our order. More than that, you are my brother, and you could never disappoint me.”

She stretched her hand forward, and he moved to lock his fingers with hers. A distracted smile crossed his face, and he squeezed her grip.

“Lucatiel.” He swallowed and tried to smile again, but the gesture looked terribly careworn. “If anything happens to me, please. Please protect Mirrah, and Mother and Father. I know you’re always comparing yourself against me...but you’ve a strength and a spirit that I could never muster. Treasure it.”

“What’s gotten into you, brother?”

“Promise me, Lucatiel.”

“I...I promise, Aslatiel.”

“Thank you.” He leaned across to press his forehead to hers. “I love you, sister.”

“I love you too, brother.” She squeezed his shoulder as they moved away. “What brought this on? Why make plans so suddenly? You’re the best among us. No enemy could strike you down. And we have no battles awaiting us tomorrow. You’re not going to die.”

“No.” Aslatiel agreed, raising his goblet to his lips and waiting for her to lift her own, the siblings clinking the glasses together. “I’m not.”

----------------------------------

Poison. Why did it have to be poison?

Deep down, at the very bottom of the world, nameless things crawled and contorted in the darkness. Far worse than the misshapen humanoids of the cove, here, there was truly no sunlight, and in the shadows malformed monsters made their homes beneath the weight of the world above. Lucatiel thought things had been bad when she was struggling through a shantytown of filth and refuse, but even further below, the only light to be found was sickly green, blossoming up from the stone and toxic statues like a cancer.

Beneath layers of oily muck, circular rows of teeth waited to suck the flesh from her bones, reaching out to her with greedy, grasping mandibles that formed part of their leathery, faceless bodies, a tail extending from the back giving them a shape akin to an inky hand and forearm. When the first one had leapt at her, mouthparts tensing and stretching to try to take ahold of her while its appendages strained to touch her, she knew she could not plunge her blade straight down its maw if she wanted to keep her hand. Nor could she attack it with her shield, lest its grip prove the stronger and it wrench it from her hand, using her unbalance to go in for the kill.

Lucatiel swung her blade in a half-circle from her right shoulder towards her left. A pair of meaty, satisfying thunks met her ears, her weapon carving through the hide of the monster to sever one of its bottom two limbs, the twitching mass falling to the floor separated from its owner, leaving brown-green blood pumping from the stump. Her sword caught in the other, the edge stuck in the cartilage or bone, and even in its injured state it tried to reach for her with its upper trio of fingers.

She grit her teeth and pulled back, dragging the creature with her by the hold her blade had on its body. The motion forced a sawing motion across the flesh holding her sword, and at last it slipped free, leaving the remaining bottom appendage hanging uselessly by a hinge of flesh, unresponsive and swinging.

The abomination shot forward in a dive, trying to knock her over, and rather than stand her ground she sidestepped and stabbed downward onto the back of its hand-like “head”, pinning it to the stone beneath through the hurricane of teeth it called a mouth. She could stab again, to make sure she hit something vital...but she wanted to be safe. Instead of withdrawing her weapon to slice and stab again, she released the grip she had on the hilt, trusting her blade to keep the creature secured while she stepped onto its ridged “back.” Her shield fell onto it, another weight holding it down, and she used both hands to take hold of the monster’s middle appendage, dig her foot into the skin near the base, and pull backwards.

Did it understand what she was doing? Perhaps not. She certainly hoped that such an affront to the world had no consciousness. But it still struggled, trapped beneath her feet and impaled on her sword, the limb in her hand writhing to free itself while the other two wriggled and tried to push off the stone.

Lucatiel would not be deterred. Beneath her hat and mask, her jaw was tensed, brow furrowed and dripping with sweat as she put all of her strength into this motion. Her arms strained from the effort, biceps bulging beneath her armor while her thighs kept her steady and lent her leverage by distributing the weight of her body into the beast she was currently grappling with.

Then, at last, she heard it. It started as a popping, then a louder crack, and then the tension against her hands started to slack as the creature’s body gave way.

With a long, terrible rip, Lucatiel tore one of the monster’s limbs clean off, falling onto her back atop the beast while its appendage, ripped free from its body, thrashed and struggled until she was forced to release it and watch it roll off the ledge into the darkness. The creature heaved and jerked, trapped beneath her weapon, shield, and body, deprived of three of its once-five limbs. Its motions left it dragging against the sword holding it fast to the ground, but its motions weakened as its vital fluids emptied out from the four holes she’d made in its body: three from amputation, and a fourth from the blade still in its back. Before long, it lay still, and Lucatiel had the space to let collect herself.

A sob tore from her throat, and she had no idea if it was from rage, desperation, horror or mere exhaustion at the ordeals she’d had to endure. Why was she here, where no human was meant to venture, slicing, impaling, and ripping nightmarish monsters apart? There was no hope of refuge, no hope of rescue down here. She couldn’t even remember what had driven her to this land in the first place.

Lucatiel knew she had to preserve her memory. To preserve herself. It was a fragile thing, to have her being tied to something as transitory as her memories, but when that was all she had to hold on to, she had no choice but to cling to them, lest despair take hold of the tattered scraps of her soul. She did not want to die, and more than that, she wanted to exist. No, to live, with the fullness of her self, of herself, as a woman, as a human, as an individual and a person.

For a brilliant moment, a fraction came back to her. She was Lucatiel of Mirrah, second in standing among its Order beside her brother, Aslatiel of Mirrah. She had come to Drangleic to...was she searching for a cure? For him, for herself? Why did he...No, no, she’d held it in her mind again, she’d been so close, and now where did it go…?

She’d conjured up the memories in her mind for the briefest moment, grasping them like tendrils of steam rising from a hot spring, and they had slipped through the fingers of her thoughts.

She wanted to cry, to lash out at the indignity of it all. To push back at the implication that had lurked over her shoulder since she’d slain her first Hollow: that there was precious little preventing her from joining their vacant, shriveled ranks. That the community of rejected souls she had rampaged through on her way through—the demeaned, nearly naked and utterly bereft shamblers she had torn through while they weakly and mindlessly tried to defend their squalid homes—had not just once been fellow humans, but a vision of her own future.

And so Lucatiel made her way to a safe little tunnel in the caverns, apart from the beasts and the bile, and wept. She cried, feeling her memories slip away with her tears, and mourned the uncertainty and cruelty that condemned her and everyone like her to suffer this crisis of identity. She bawled like she never had before, for her stunted recollections told her that she had truly never found cause to weep. Breaking down for the first time in this evil place should have brought her shame, but the freedom to sob openly was too good to pass up.

The arrival of her friend, bearing a torch, barely registered until she was prodded and brought to notice their presence. She did not have the focus to properly communicate her torments...but perhaps her friend shared her burden. They could certainly understand her fears, if nothing else, though they might have seemed impenetrably stoic. And if they were bearing their burden so strongly, she owed it to them, and to...whatever else had prompted her travels to see it through.

Lucatiel had to take after their example, as long as she could. Her fate might yet be unavoidable, but if she did not face it as a knight properly should, then her defeat would be all the more absolute. Following them into the fiery cavern at the heart of this cavern, to destroy the wretched amalgamation within, a writhing, coagulated horde of melting Hollows, provided a fleeting sense of power. And then it was gone, lost without a trace, and she felt as empty, weak, and yearning as before.

----------------------------------

He was gone the next morning. At the height of his status and glory, he had vanished.

The appropriate searches and inquiries were carried out, but for all intents and purposes, the most celebrated Knight in Mirrah—the man who, alongside his sister, had personified the equalizing power of its armed forces by rising from poor peasantry to glorious knighthood—was gone.

The worst was the indignity of the rumors. That Aslatiel had finally fallen, brought low from the heights of his victories by some hubris or another. Or, worse, that he had deserted his order and comrades in their hour of need. Lucatiel had fought such scurrilous denigrations, and her allies had stood by her as she defended her brother’s integrity. But the toll it had taken on her left her more exhausted than any war, and more vigilant to the darkness that encroached upon Mirrah from all corners...including from within.

----------------------------------

There was something horribly comforting about the dark.

It was not the same dark that had seemed oppressive before, and that had harbored monster no human was meant to behold. The murk of the Undead Crypt was stifling, but the pressure bearing down on her was reassuring. Like the weight that rested on her eyes before sleep, or the molasses that worked its way into her limbs when she’d finished a satisfying round of swordplay.

It told Lucatiel that she’d done well, and that it was time to rest. She almost let herself be convinced that it was the right decision. It would be peaceful here, wouldn’t it? To simply...walk into the darkness, to find her tomb, and find her reward. To find a truer sleep, a truer peace, than she’d ever get to know. Would she Hollow, in such serenity? Or remain in a kind of suspended animation, always faded and fading but never vanishing completely? Would her memories fade? Did she even have any to lose? She couldn’t recall why she’d come here anymore, or who she might’ve met, and what paths she might have traveled, or where she’d come from. It was all one mixed, uncomfortably confusing moment.

She sensed no malice in the promise of sleep, and yet she could not accept it. She had to hold on to her purpose, to push forward no matter what. Even if it destroyed her—even if the effort to go forward was more than she could bear—the stumbling attempt to continue was all she had left. If she stopped trying, she was done for certain, and so even if the exertion would too bring about her end, venturing forth was superior to stagnation and wasting away.

Lucatiel knew that she had passed through an empty castle and a flooded shrine to get here. She knew that she’d faced all manner of adversaries. But she could recall none of them. She could not remember how they conducted themselves in combat, or what they were armed with, or how she had prevailed. She could not even remember what they looked like. She only knew that she had clashed with them, and presumably survived.

Though it was all so distant, and so clouded, that perhaps she had not. For all she could assert, she had perished, and this muddled experience was a half-existence between being living and being dead. The memories of fighting in those places felt...naggingly distant. Had it been hours? Days? Weeks, since it had happened? Lucatiel had no way of knowing. And by the time the thought was done, the recollection of something from before was gone. If she tried to put a description to the places she had been before, her mind summoned forth blank images that she could not attach any significant, identifying details to. She could not even confidently maintain that there had been anything before the immediacy of this moment. The present was all that held sway in her mind, and even that security was tenuous.

She’d battled pyromancers, witches, and guardians in this mausoleum, but the clashes against them were already fading too. She’d found knights and conquered them, but the motions seemed rote, automatic, and by the time she doubled back the way she came, golden ring in hand, she’d been left baffled to find that, no, the soldiers were already dead. Perhaps someone else had come here. But who? There was...no one else she was traveling with. Wasn't there?

Lucatiel’s fleeting perusal of the King, her kin in degeneration, had been swept from her mind before she had even left the catacombs. The mindless shuffling and dragging of his titanic form was occluded from her thoughts with the same obfuscating brush that cloaked any recognition of the significance of the crown on his head.

As was her contact with that lovely, emerald-cloaked woman, her features blurred beyond recognition, who’d looked on Lucatiel so sadly, held her hand, and whispered something comforting that the knight had forgotten before the mysterious woman had even finished speaking.

----------------------------------

Lucatiel of Mirrah had become the greatest knight in the land upon her brother’s disappearance, but her ascent brought her no joy. If she could not share her happiness with him, then it was not worth having, and the melancholy that settled over her distressed her parents in turn. Though weak with age in spite of the comforts the knighthood of their children had granted them, they still held fast to life, sustained by the love for each other, and for their children...and, now, for their only child.

She tried to shake the stupor. To break free from the shackles of her misery, and bring light back into the lives of her mother and father. The peasants who were the parents of the two most celebrated knights in the country. But her torpor would not fade, and the cloud of her sorrow did not scatter. Never had a loss affected her this dearly, not even when her closest allies found their fates on the field of battle.

None would have been surprised by the malaise that afflicted her, given her closeness to her sibling. But Lucatiel’s inability to rouse herself left her frustratingly confused.

Until the day she saw herself in the reflection of her blade, and beheld the darkness coalescing around her left eye.

Perhaps she should have been panicked. Distraught. Terrified and enraged at what was going to happen to her, now that she had been marked by the sign that touched those counted among the Cursed.

But instead, something solemn rang throughout Lucatiel’s mind. Two epiphanies, alike in certainty, and both terrible and comforting.

One, that she could not stay. Her family, her comrades, and her country had to be protected from what she could become. She had time, and discretion, two resources that many in her position lacked. She could mitigate the damage.

Two, that Aslatiel had to have been similarly afflicted. The morose fugue that had settled into her mind was the mirror of what had come over him. And so, too, must the decision that he had to have made.

There would be no time or opportunity to say goodbye. Leaving destroyed her, but the alternative would be worse. It always was.

----------------------------------

Lucatiel was alone.

Everything that she’d done up to this point was swirling together, lost in the vortex of her mind in jumbled, stretched images that never formed clear pictures for her to focus on. She had scatterings of impressions of snow and sand and the sea, but they lingered like a half-remembered dream, rather than a true memory of any place she might have visited. Even existing in this moment felt stifled and muted. She could walk, and swing her sword, and ache and hurt, but everything felt distant and weightless. There was no heft to her motions, no weight to her feet, and when she tried to center her attention on herself she could not cross the hurdle of that disconnection from her body. She was an observer in her own body, left to watch the dissonance of repetitive motions that she couldn’t attach value to now that they were out of her power.

She’d...she’d found something that had helped her go...here? That had helped her come here, where she could vaguely make out hunched, skittering forms hiding in the shadows of a vacant mansion. Had she gone inside? She must have: she knew that beyond the doorway was an entryway flanked by two pools of water, and beyond, a figure in red. Anything identifying about their features, clothing, or bearing was utterly swept away by the exhaustion leaching faculties from her mind, but something about facing them had felt disconcertingly familiar. Had she beaten them, or fled? Or was the entire thing a poison of her imagination? Maybe she hadn’t stepped through the entrance at all, and this was all hopeless muttering while she wasted away by the bonfire, trapped in her own speculations.

The thought of entering, or re-entering, gripped her chest with cold, encroaching fear, bearing down on her from all sides until her teeth chattered, her shoulders shook, and she heard a noise like a distant, weak whine. It only occurred to her after the fact that she had made it herself. There was something deeply wrong about moving forward, but how could she know, unless she’d gone down it already? And if so, how could she have already forgotten?

Were the disturbances in the grass from the steps her footprints, or those of someone else? She stood where the trail ended...but she couldn’t recall stepping there. She couldn’t remember if she’d doubled back, or if this was her first time on this path. When had she used her sword, such that it was now stained with blood?

The weapon felt...heavy, and ill-fitting, rather than an extension of herself. Her shield was awkward in her grasp. Had Lucatiel’s armaments—and she had to hope that they were hers, and that the faint familiarity of their shape and grip was not a figment of her addled imagination—ever felt so alien?

She would rest. Yes, that was what she needed. That was what Lucatiel had to do. To kneel by this bonfire, by the bleached bones and coiled sword that radiated warmth, and rest.

Someone approached. She tilted her head upwards to glance at them, knowing well that if they attacked, she was already in poor position to defend herself. Had she discarded her mask without realizing it?

“Who are you…” She mumbled, her voice an unsteady croak, the words foreign on her tongue and lips. Something about the arrangement of their shape, of their posture and bearing, was vaguely familiar.

Yes. She remembered them. A...a friend, someone like herself but still themselves. She’d met them before. Many times.

“Oh...No, forgive me...I know you...Yes, of course.” What had they shared? What was their purpose? If they’d communicated it to her, the empty library of her mind did not retain it.

“How goes your journey?” She rasped hoarsely, throat constricting against her speech. But she wasn’t thirsty, or hungry, or even in pain. Merely...still.

“I know not what you seek in this far-away land...but I pray for your safety.”

To whom? If she had any gods, anyone to dedicate her pleas to, she could not remember. But perhaps that was less important than the effort. Less meaningful than the knowledge for her friend that someone like herself had them in their thoughts, however fleeting.

“Take these. Consider this thanks, for keeping me sane.” Even as she spoke, she did not believe her own words, and they felt disconnected and apart from what she had tried to vocalize with her own mouth. Whatever was settling over her, urging her to rest, relax, and let go, it was not sanity, and not certainty. She slackened her grip on her sword hilt, shield and blade leaning towards her companion. The hat on her head was askew, slipping forwards, and the armor on her body felt slacker and looser. She could not recognize her own hands, undoing buttons and straps, working with more focus and purpose than she had yet been able to muster.

The shiver that had suffused her kindled a spark, and her voice rang out clear and desperate.

“My name is Lucatiel. I beg of you, remember my name.” She tried to plead, to beg, but if she was able to muster the energy, she could not say. Her own words fell deaf on her ears, and she did not hear what she said, merely hoping that the movements of her lips had translated the sounds that rung out in her mind.

“For I may not myself…”

If her friend responded, it was lost in the haze that enveloped Lucatiel’s senses. Her eyes were clouding, her vision making out little but the other person’s shape, her hearing dull and deaf to their words. The fingers that fell to the ground registered no sensation, and when she looked up, even the other was gone.

The mist that had lurked in the corners of her eyes rolled in, filling her view and mind with the thunder of crashing clouds. Something tanged on her tongue, and when she blinked, she thought she saw something in the distance, buried in the chaos, a speck of constancy. Impossibly small, but it was there. She was certain.

When she reached, she did not see a hand stretch out, and when she walked, nothing seemed to bear weight against the ground. She had no body, no being, only the promise of looking ahead, of pushing forward into the deepness that awaited her.

She peered into the fog, in search of answers. What could possibly await her? Nothing, perhaps, beyond her own urge to move onwards. But even if the future only had the meaning she assigned to it, she would still seek it. If emptiness awaited, it would be the emptiness she seized and sought herself. Such was her fate.

#lucatiel of mirrah #dark souls #fanfic #from software #angst #my work #my fanfic

2 notes · View notes