There was a moment where everything hung in the balance. We faced forwards, the four of us together as one, half phantom and half flesh and blood. Against us stood the one gargoyle, powerful and dangerous, tail like a halberd, skin like stone, glowering at us with tiny, beady black eyes. The moment hung by a string, fragile and just barely there. And then, Seigmeyer’s armoured boot shifted slightly against the tile, and the spell was broken.

The creature zeroed in on me in an instant, perhaps picking out which of the four of us it thought the weakest, and darted forwards with a flap of its grey wings. It swung its tail like a weapon, spinning in the air to give it deadly momentum. I darted around the strike, the stony axe-like blade sparking against the tiles as the gargoyle bellowed in fury. Its attention was quickly taken away, however, as Ceilia struck against its stony hide, her blade carving a cut with a horrendous rasping noise that dripped fluid that was such a dark red it was nearly black. It swept its gigantic wings at her, but she rolled away, Elite Knight armour clattering against the tiles.

“The tail! Slice it off, deprive it of its weapon!” I shouted, darting in and slamming my shoulder into its gut.

To my relief, I appeared to have kept my strength, as it was sent skipping across the roof, shattering tiles in its wake and causing the chips to rattle. It screeched, clawing for a grip and barely stopping itself from falling off the side of the roof. I wondered if it could truly fly, or if it just glided, then dismissed the thought. Something demanded I growl in return, and, to my surprise, the force of the sound rattled the roofing around me, as if I’d still been my true size. Some little part of the power in my avatar flowed out, and the three others shifted, tightening their grips around their weapons.

“Aye, milady!”

Seigmeyer yelled in return, his voice jubilant and excited, charging forwards with his zweihander on his shoulder, only to stop himself hard and throw the weight of his armour into a roll to one side as the gargoyle swept at him with stone claws. I winced as they bounced off part of his armour, but the faithful Catarina steel held. It turned to track him with a frustrated growl, raising the halberd for a sweep, only to catch a bolt of lightning to the side of its head. It let out a high-pitched screech of pain, just in time for another bolt to blast bits of stone off of its shoulder. Solaire readied a third, his shield ready.

“Now, knight Seigmeyer! I will keep the beast’s attention!”

“My thanks!”

Seigmeyer hefted his sword, edging out of the beast’s line of sight. It began to turn, following the motion, but snapped its attention back as Solaire struck it with another bolt. It held up the weapon in its claw, preparing to charge the Sunlight knight, but before it could, Seigmeyer darted forwards with speed that belied the bulk of his armour and the weight of his sword, bringing the long blade down in a thunderous blow. The weapon sheared straight through the gargoyle’s tail with a shower of sparks, and the thing roared and thrashed, sending Seigmeyer stumbling back in its flailing with a backhanded blow from its halberd. In a moment, Celia was by his side, steadying him.

“Ah! My thanks! I would have been quite annoyed to miss the rest of this particular slaying, haha!”

Celia nodded to him in return, seemed about to say something, but both looked back as the gargoyle focused on them, rage and hatred radiating from it. The knight and the warrior Undead dodged in different directions as the monster brought its weapon down on the surface, sending more tile shards exploding every which way. Seeing my chance, I ran forwards, leaping onto the thing’s back and sinking my teeth into its neck. The skin was abrasive and uncomfortable, but the scream it made was one of pain, so I had to be doing something right. Despite its stony toughness, my teeth sank through it, drawing forth a gout of blood that tasted of dust and stone. It attempted to shake me off, but I held firm, even as it threw itself this way and that.

From the corners of my eyes, I noted Solaire preparing another lightning spear, angling himself for a good shot once I was out of danger. Seigmeyer circled the beast as we tangled ourselves together, adjusting his grip and watching carefully for an opening. Celia, whose weapon was the most fine and accurate of the three, ran in from the side, slipping her shield over her back with practiced ease and placing her gloved left hand on the pommel of her blade. Her armoured boots rattled the pottery roofing of the chapel, and the gargoyle attempted to turn its helmeted head towards the noise, but I simply sunk my teeth deeper and wrenched its head to the side, getting another keening wail for my trouble.

Celia struck with all her might, swinging her sword down on the arm that held the long pole the gargoyle used for sweeping and smashing. The blade hacked at the limb, nearly parting it entirely from the shoulder, and calling forth a gout of the dark red blood and another scream of pain. She made a frustrated grunt, just loud enough to be heard over the beast, and struck again. This time, the sword sliced through what remained, leaving the stony-skinned arm to slam into the roof, halberd still in hand. The gargoyle screamed and made to throw itself onto its back: at the last moment, I leapt from my perch, tearing a chunk from the thing’s neck in the process. Pawsteps took me away from the creature, which cratered the roof as it threw itself into a roll, a move that would’ve smashed me between it and the tiles had I clung to its neck. I spat out the foul-tasting chunk of neck flesh and growled again, moving to Celia’s side.

The creature turned again, focused on me, its legs bunching to push it forwards- only to be stopped once again by a bolt from Solaire, leaving a glowing crater in the center of its chest. Seigmeyer charged forwards, attempting to impale it with his zweihander, much as he’d done one of the hydra’s heads, but it flapped its wings and moved itself away. Seigmeyer brought himself to a halt, then stepped backwards quickly, dodging another swipe of its claws. We readied another assault, but before we could do anything, it scurried farther down the roof.

As we watched, taking up something like our original positions, it raised its helmeted head towards the belltower and howled. The others made to move forwards, but-

“Hold!” I barked. “The creature is summoning another of its kind, be ready!”

The other three didn’t even glance at me. Seigmeyer and Solaire kept their gaze carefully on the gargoyle, making distance from the rest of us, the Sunlight warrior still gripping his talisman. It appeared that he’d decided to make himself ranged with miracles, compensating for the close-range fighters he’d found himself fighting besides. I felt a flash of appreciation for the considerable experience that the veteran knight must have, to make such a flash judgement of capabilities: he rounded out our little group of swords and claws quite nicely. My attention was pulled away, however, with the shifting of stone against stone.

The second animate gargoyle at the top of the tower shifted in place, turning to glare down at us and its wounded brother. With a flap, it was in the air, and we dove out of the way as it sought to crush us with its stony form, slamming itself into where we’d been.

“Celia, with me! Knight Seigmeyer, Lady Sif, remove the foul creature’s head!” Solaire shouted above the racket, sounding clear even through the slight reverberation of his helmet.

I nodded to Celia, and she hesitantly nodded back, before running to join the Sunlight knight towards the tower, where he was harrying the damaged gargoyle with bolts and attempting to pin it in place. I turned to the new threat just in time to see it winding up a strike. I jumped to one side, huffing in aggravation as the monster’s weapon sent up a cloud of fired clay dust. It made to leap at me, but was interrupted by Seigmeyer’s zweihander, which it just managed to deflect with its wing, leaving a long rent in the stone as it retreated. Siegmeyer let out a bellowing laugh, easily shouldering his blade again and stepping to my side.

“We find ourselves side by side again, Lady Sif. Truly, we must stop meeting this way!”

I huffed. “Oh, please, knight Seigmeyer, as if you’d have it any other way.” He laughed his agreement, and we circled the gargoyle in different directions.

Unlike the first time, we didn’t have the luxury of Solaire’s bolts to keep it distracted from Siegmeyers’ blade. The creature angled itself, attempting to keep both of us within its field of vision, but obviously focusing on Siegmeyer. I could wound the things, knock them off-balance or bully them about with my strength, tear chunks out of them, but I lacked the ability to remove their limbs or kill them quickly without the advantage of sheer size. Perhaps, I reflected, Sif had been on to something, even despite how ridiculous wielding a sword in your mouth seemed to me.

Still, the thing was not a patient fighter. Not content to simply sit there and wait for us to make a move, it made the same mistake its fellow did: assuming that I was the weaker, and easier to remove, target. Its tail swept at me in a horizontal stroke, which I easily cleared with a jump, running forwards and slamming my front paws right between its wings as it struggled to recover from its tail missing. It screeched as stone skin shattered under the force of the blow, and I pushed myself off with a growl as it swung its halberd through the space I had just occupied, deflecting the stone weapon off its own wings in a shower of sparks as it did. Seigmeyer was out of position for a swing at the tail, but swung at the thing anyhow, scoring a deep wound in one shoulder as it quickly shuffled back. It threw itself backwards, causing me to curse and dart out of the way. Instead of going back watching us, however, it immediately threw itself into the air, then brought itself down, all its weight and strength focused behind the shaft of its halberd as it attempted to spear Siegmeyer.

I opened my muzzle to call out and warn him, but I didn’t need to. As I watched, Siegmeyer actually PARRIED the halberd, drawing a screech of surprise from the creature as it deflected to one side, the tip embedding itself into the baked clay and the stone beneath. Before it could recover, Seigmeyer brought down his blade, severing one of its wings in a single stroke. Sensing an opening, I ran up and slammed myself into the arm holding its halberd, causing it to screech again as the arm shattered against my charge, leaving its weapon embedded into the roof as it stumbled back a few steps, clutching its mangled arm. I headbutted its chest before it could recover, sending it stumbling back again- which was just enough time for Siegmeyer to make his move.

With a roar that nearly matched the creature’s own, he brought his giant sword down with all his strength. The steel split the gargoyle’s helm in two, bisected down the middle, but even that was not enough to stop the sheer force behind the blade. Indeed, it didn’t stop until it was at the bottom of the creature’s neck, where Seigmeyer grunted, drawing it out with a gout of the deep red blood that splashed itself across the tiles. The body twitched and thrashed in its death throes, growing weaker by the moment, and as one, both I and the knight turned our attention towards the belltower.

Fortunate we did: just in time, we looked to see Celia let out a cry of victory, plunging her sword through the first gargoyle’s chest. Immediately, she braced an armoured boot against the thing’s stony hide, yanking the blade out of its chest cavity with a similar fountain of blood, before bringing it up and then down again in a decapitating strike. The sword nearly severed the head, leaving it to flop and gurgle against the rooftop as she drew back for another blow, bringing it down from on high with something like a warcry.

“Ah, but they do grow up so fast, don’t they?” I could hear the obvious pride in the old knight’s voice, and I couldn’t help but agree. I had been worried about her, but now… I didn’t think I needed to be.

The four of us watched as the bodies dissolved into mist that divided itself between us, settling the power of souls within ourselves. Solaire turned to us, and despite his helm, I could feel the beaming smile behind the faceplate just from the warmth it radiated.

“An excellent showing! What jolly cooperation! I have to say, that was quite exhilarating, haha!” He glanced at his hand, and I noted that it was turning more transparent, the power of the summon sign that had called him fading away as he was returned to whence he came. I could feel myself being pulled away as well, my paws becoming clear. “Ah, but unfortunately, it seems my time is up. Ah, well- long may the Sun shine!” He raised his arms in the iconic pose, and Celia reciprocated, Seigmeyer settling for a marshal salute.

“Before I fade, I must tell you one more thing.” The two turned their attention to me, Solaire entirely gone. While I was fading, I could dam the flow of power, keep myself here for a few moments longer to relay a message- a warning. “I sense the power of gods about- not directly, but the power of a representative… of Velka. Perhaps a Pardoner. Be cordial, for the representative of a god is a powerful one indeed, but step carefully, and do not trust them. I know not what such an underling of Velka could want, and it is best that we let well enough alone, for now.”

Celia seemed confused, but Seigmeyer nodded gravely.

“Aye, milady. Velka’s followers are a thing to be wary of. Justice is never our enemy, but sin is something else entirely.” he turned his helmeted head towards the tower. “After all, who knows if a follower of Velka’s definition of a sin will fall in line with ours?”

I felt a stirring of surprise. Was Velka known to be a fickle goddess, in the world outside of Lordran? Implied to be a rogue goddess she might be, but I didn’t know that the reputation was so entrenched as to be widely known… though, then again, this was Siegmeyer saying this. If anything, I should be more surprised that he hadn’t met a Pardoner already. Then again, given his obvious distrust, maybe he had.

“Good luck, then. Hopefully, I shall see you soon.” I nodded one last time, then allowed myself to fade.

I inhaled slightly as I came back to myself, lying in the grass at the entrance to the Titanite Demon’s hall, and back to what was now my normal size. I inhaled the scent of damp plantlife and mist, pushing myself to my paws and stretching, letting out a huge yawn. As I stood, I considered the ways that I might interfere with Lordran at large.

Access to Anor Londo was going to be very difficult without the ‘in’ that defeating Sen’s Fortress would give our little party- and besides, there was somebody else that I wanted to talk to before we headed upstairs. I narrowed my eyes and made a wolfy frown. Nito was inaccessible at this time, being that his little boss arena and the cult that worshipped him sat behind a barrier that only came down after the Chosen Undead applied Lordvessel to bonfire. Most of the big players that I might be able to make overtures towards were upstairs, in the throne of the gods. Though… I turned myself around in the tiny clearing, barely big enough for my to move around, and started walking down the path. Wracking my brain for any alternatives, I could think of three big ticket items that were currently accessible to me.

The first was Oolicile, which was a huge can of worms that I both did and didn’t want to open. If I wanted to fix the First Flame’s fuel consumption issues, then the Dark-infested city, home to what was left of the Furtive Pygmy, would be vital towards that goal. This, of course, was also ignoring the fact that the place no doubt had a plethora of lost magics and lore that I could dig out. Of course, this came with some pretty huge caveats, that being ‘time travel’ and the fact that Sif being there in the past was something of a plot point. I had absolutely no idea how a younger Sif would react to me, and I really didn’t want to know how such an interaction could influence the events of my past and her future.

The second was Quelana. The pyromancer was most likely the easiest to both access and deal with, given that she was simply sitting out in the open, and would gladly talk to anybody with enough pyromancy to see her, while she whiled the time away outside of her sister’s fortress and prison. There… was also the fact that I felt no little amount of empathy for the Fair Lady, who was in the position she was in because she’d done something incredibly selfless and brave. Incredibly stupid, but brave. The point being that she didn’t really deserve to sit there behind an illusionary wall, wasting away, slowly fading. Should we have access to Oolicile, and the limitless stores of Humanity there… it might be something that we could alleviate, even, potentially, fix entirely. Should I at least lighten the Fair Lady’s burden, the surviving children of the Witch of Izalith would most likely feel indebted to me, which was no small thing. Pyromancy was the foundation of much of sorcery, being a more primal version of it, and chaos magic was undeniably powerful if used correctly.

The third was, admittedly, a two-parter. There were two Black Knights in the Undead Burg: the one guarding the chest just before the stairs up to the bridge, and the second the one standing atop the tower just before the Chapel. If they were as amenable as the one I’d already met, then they would be perfectly willing to hear me out should I either approach them myself, or have their comrade do it for me. Which… was most likely a better plan than doing it myself. Size aside, the Black Knight I’d spoken with would make a much better case to those she actually already knew, rather than me having to fumble my way through two more conversations with things that could kill me.

But, these were relatively short term goals.

I clicked my neck, then walked down the path deeper into Darkroot. In the short term, I needed to gather as many allies to myself as possible, on the assumption that once they caught wind of what I was up to, the other gods might come rushing back to contest my claim to the seat of power in Lordran. Because I was most definitely going to levy a claim for it; Gwyndolin, loyal though he was, was perhaps too much, sticking to his father’s plans to the letter and not actually reaching for some other way out of their predicament. So, I was going to make a claim, and I needed as much power behind me as I could manage in order to make that claim stick.

In the longer term, all of this was in service to one goal and one goal alone: prevent the First Flame from needing sacrifices for stoking. Each time the Flame was kindled once again, it came back a little weaker, not to mention that more and more of the world was burned away. As I’d seen, this had gotten to the point that, in Dark Souls 2, the very cyclical narrative that was Gwyn and his allies had collapsed in on itself and had no longer functioned as it should, though that might partially have been from the interference of the four queens. Irregardless, I didn’t want that, and I didn’t want to live in a doomed world so long as I thought I could do something about it.

The First Flame itself was an issue. A near insurmountable one, to be sure, but it was still a problem, and it might have a solution. The studies of those in Dranglaic were far too late to produce meaningful results, but here? Before the second kindling of the First Flame? Everything was powerful, strong, primal, not so set in the ways of slow but steady decay. The Flame was perhaps slightly dimmer than it had been when Gwyn had first found it, deep underground, but it was still brighter than it was in later, faded ages. If there was a time to discover another path, another way, this was it. But in order to do that… I needed the most powerful swords, the most brilliant minds, and I needed them gathered to my banner as soon as I could get them. As the Flame wound down, it appeared that time itself acted strangely in Lordran, and I suspected that we were experiencing everything in more or less a frozen moment. Time itself both passed and didn’t pass, the entirety of causality from when the Flame began needing a second kindling to however it ended, essentially a large ball of time, where it was possible to move between the parts freely.

I suspected that this might be why multiple different Undead encountered the same enemies, and why enemies that really shouldn’t be restoring themselves did. We were disconnected, somewhat, drifting in time and anchored only by the fading Flame. If this theory was true, this explained why Oolicile was accessible, and why Undead from across the timeline could speak and interact as if they were sharing the same space, and how even those that had already fallen could be called forth as allies in battle.

Iron Tarkus definitely goes on the list. If I can encourage Beatrice to change her intended path, and thereby her destiny, then I can potentially convince Tarkus to camp out somewhere between Sen’s and Anor Londo. Given how famed of a warrior Tarkus was, I had no doubt that he would be a vital addition to our rag-tag little gang.

I reached the clearing before the bonfire alcove and laid down with a huff.

The stone dragon, potentially the last of the truly immortal dragons, was one thing where I would have to be wary about my approach. They truly seemed not to care for anything or anyone, not even bothering with the Chosen Undead when they sliced off its tail for the weapon contained within, most likely because it would grow back anyway. The incredible being, older than time itself, was completely and totally immortal, untouched by the passage of time and the fading of the Flame. Should my attempts to reignite the Flame in a permanent sense fail, there were two alternatives that I could think of: a painting made with the blood of the Dark Soul, not even bothering with the existent painting, and the attempts at the Dragon Monastery to take humans and transform them into true dragons. Sure, a return to a world of fog and trees and a lack of change, a lack of dichotomy entirely, would very much be the final option, but it was a better option than a world burned to ash… or, if what occurred in Oolacile held true, an Age of Dark. And besides, just because people became true dragons didn’t mean that the world had to return to that which it was before the First Flame. Irregardless, the dragon would be a powerful ally, or at the very least an incredibly useful guide for implementing draconic evolution in humans, without producing the same twisted souls that the Dragon Monastery did.

I stared into the flame, then twitched with a start. Griggs of Vinheim! Not even mentioning his master, the genius Logan himself, Griggs was an interesting case. If the implications of his armour set held true, then he was a part of a secret society within Vinheim, sorcerers experimenting with sound. The guess that I remember was that he’d been sent to keep tabs on Logan, but now I wonder if he hadn’t been sent to have a crack at the Duke’s Archives to see if Seath hadn’t tried to develop something along the same lines as their little group. Eventually, like many, he ended up hollow and the player character has to put him down. Well, if I can prevent the deaths of Tarkus and Beatrice, then I don’t see why I can’t do the same for Griggs: for one, he’s a capable sorcerer and researcher in his own right, and for another, his discipline sounds both interesting and different. Irregardless, he served as an escort for Logan, though not a very good one if a bunch of thieves ended up locking him away in a room with… another dead sorcerer. Hm.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Still, though, his group had most likely had a hand in a number of sound-based spellwork, such as the Hush sorcery or the Slumbering Dragoncrest ring. That sort of work… I didn’t know what it would be useful for, couldn’t think of anything specifically, but it denoted some real mastery of spellwork and enchanting. Griggs would be handy in an all hands on deck manner, in the end.

There was one last individual within the Undead Parish, however, the bastard. The follower of Fina, knight Lautrec. Now, the only question in that case was when he should be killed, before his murder or after. I could hardly accuse the man of being a decent enough person to not murder; if the amount of Humanity he drops when he’s killed is any indication of his prior actions, he had definitely murdered before, perhaps repeatedly. And he doesn’t seem the sort of man to be shy about murdering again, considering his most famous (and only directly known) crime. I mean, there might be some implication that he did something to Petrus, but considering said party, I can’t really bring myself to feel sorry for him.

That… is assuming that he’s even there. If what Ceilia said was at least somewhat accurate, Oscar hasn’t fallen to despair and Hollowed, and doesn’t seem likely to in any quick order. Siegmeyer was here, to be sure, but I can’t help wonder if we’re where I think we are on the timeline. Or… perhaps we have a situation where there aren’t just Undead arranged up and down the timeline, but parallel as well? Is time so malleable here at the waning of the Second Age of Fire that it allowed the world to branch out into a multitude of different parallels with different Undead heading the events? I wasn’t sure what was so different between the ‘canon’ of the game, where Oscar Hollows and Sif isn’t, well… me, and this series of events.

Ugh. My efforts to permanently put the brakes on the Cycle are going to be complicated enough without my meta-knowledge being questionable. At least I knew for certain that Fina was not one of the gods that I wanted to be involved with, in any sense.

I narrowed my eyes at the bonfire, gently warding off the tiny golden thread that attempted to draw my… me, into the time dilation effect.

I had a theory. In the game proper, the Chosen Undead doesn’t have access to bonfire teleportation until they reach Gwynevere and receive the Lordvessel from them. At that point, Dark Souls stops becoming a press forwards through various bosses and opens up, with the following bosses at the ends of various areas.

However, this wasn’t the game. The Lordvessel was not a piece of game design, but an actual magical artefact. The question, of course, was thus: did the Lordvessel, in and of itself, create the teleportation between certain bonfires? Or was that network active the entire time, and the Lordvessel essentially allowed the Chosen Undead to fake the soulstuff to let them into the system?

From my earlier observations, I’d quickly realized that every existent bonfire was, in essence, an ember of the First Flame that had been called and pinned in a physical location. Not an incredible revelation, though one that definitely confirmed my suspicions. This, of course, mattered for a very good reason: as it was still a piece of the larger First Flame, it had never lost that connection. The network of bonfires was there, in the background, constantly active- the Lordvessel just allowed the Chosen Undead to access the network.

There was nothing like that restriction for me, or if there was, I’d never noticed. Perhaps it was just a matter of permissions, but I suspected that it was a difference between my somewhat-divine soulstuff and the more mortal makeup of your typical Undead. I wouldn’t know for certain until I got my hands (paws?) on the Lordvessel, but if my theory was correct, the Lordvessel essentially allowed the Chosen Undead to mimic a divine soul and thus allow them access.

Reaching past the bonfire itself, I could feel… a link. The link that tied those in the radius of a bonfire to its inherent magics was thin and tenuous, but this was thicker, a red-gold line of heat that extended outwards towards… something that felt like the sun. Hot, bright, the fire of a world.

It was… it was like standing at the base of a skyscraper, and having to lean back to take it all in. It was huge and complex, powerful and preeminently just there in every sense of the word. I could… feel a little of it, tying the world together, lines of varying thickness from the slimmest thread to thick cables. Some of the beings felt… strong. Stronger than me, perhaps. I can recall something about the gods having directly plugged themselves into the Age of Flame, and being reliant on its continuation to survive, and I think this is what it meant. They were intrinsically linked to the First Flame, their power as much an extension of the Flame itself as it was their own.

Strangely, I could feel no such connection to myself.

I withdrew from the mass of light and heat, pondering that. I was linked closely to Artorias, and through him the divinity of Anor Londo, simply by existing as I was. Thus, if I was divine, as my theories guessed, then I should be linked into the Flame as the rest of them are, should I not? And yet, as far as I could tell, as far as I could feel, no such link existed. My power and my soulstuff was my own, and there wasn’t a lick of the Flame’s warmth about my internal makeup- Sif’s internal makeup.

Let’s… attack that from another angle. The effect of Hollowing is essentially a curse by the gods, to ensure the creation of a mortal champion, who, being anchored to this world, can die again and again in their quest for strength. The reason for this being, of course, that the person reaches a pinnacle of strength, and is subsequently fed into the First Flame to begin the next Age of Flame- slightly weaker and slightly dimmer than the ages that came before it. But Hollowing wasn’t just a curse that affected humans: those animals most closely caught up with humanity, with links to the human species that were engrained in their beings as a species, were pulled into the curse as well. Dogs and rats, most notably.

Dogs co-evolved with humans, at least in my world, and even if it didn’t quite happen that way here, the two still exist in a symbiotic relationship. So closely tied that they were essentially one and the same to the curse of Hollowing. Rats were vermin who spread with humanity, skulking about the edges of civilization, thriving in the castoff and refuse of human cities, being transported by their vehicles, fed by their food. So they, too, had a deep link to humans as a species, and thus the Hollowing spreads to them.

But… Sif isn’t. Perhaps because… Sif is a wolf, though one of divine proportions. The links between wolves and humanity are nonexistent: wolves cannot thrive in human living areas, and they exist entirely independent. Wild. Humans avoid wolves, shove them away both mentally and societally as uncontrollable predators. Did this mean that, while dogs Hollow, wolves cannot? It might very well be that humanity kept the wolves safe by complete accident, shoving them away metaphysically until there was no connection, no way for the First Flame to plug them in, no method for Hollowing to spread.

If… this was so, this meant that… all else failing, so long as I wasn’t killed, I could- potentially- survive the fading of the Age of Flame relatively intact. I might even be able to survive an Age of Dark, though I didn’t want to bet my odds on the Age of Deep Waters. Wolves, after all, are not amazing swimmers. Aheh. Great news for me, not so good for the rest of the world or its inhabitants.

There were some hints that an Age of Dark might not be so bad. The Furtive Pygmy put the Dark into motion, by spreading the Dark Soul across humanity and allowing the power to multiply as the human population grew, but I suspected that the First Flame had been reliant on the presence of the Dark Soul to keep itself going. Without its primary source of fuel, the Flame would slowly die, and the Age of Flame would one day come to an end, one way or another. Still, if I was recalling events correctly, there was some implication that the one occurrence of the Dark essentially rising up and pushing the Flame out of a section of humanity entirely, Oolacile, was caused by the Dark reacting violently to the presence of the First Flame. In the presence of the brightest light, the shadows deepen and dance. Just as the Flame rises to consume the Dark, the Dark rises to smother the Flame. Which was most likely the ying-yang balance that sustained both, before those that received Lordsouls at the beginning of the first Age of Flame unknowingly destroyed the balance by harnessing the First Flame and removing the Dark Soul from the equation.

So, okay, the Age of Dark might not be horrible… for humanity, and those species linked to them. Anything divine, however, will die with the First Flame, and the balance that sustains the world as it is will be permanently broken. Unless, of course, someone figures out how to spark the First Flame anew, in which case they’re either back where they started, or they return the Dark Soul to the First Flame, and we’re back in the Age of Ancients. The First Flame and the Dark give shape and form and life to the world, where everything existed in an eternal state of unformed stasis before. Until someone repeats the process, takes the Lordsouls from the First Flame again, and separates the First Flame and the Dark Soul, starting the Age of Flame all over again.

I flopped into a lying position, letting an exasperated breath out through my nose. There really wasn’t a good ending for this, if I just let events go as they will. Even in the case of the Age of Dark, I would have to assist the Dark Lord, whoever they were, in fending off every petty Undead that tried to relight the First Flame. As well as, most probably, every divine being on the planet.

So… what were my long term options?

The Age of Dark was… perhaps doable. It would be exceedingly difficult, given the forces that I would have to contend with. This is also assuming that my lack of connection to the First Flame would protect me: my lack of connection to humanity means that I’m incapable of Hollowing, but it might also mean that the Dark wouldn’t be kind to someone without a connection to it. A large scale gamble, with the world at stake. A last resort.

I could allow the continuation of the Age of Flame, the beginning of the third Age. This just lead to the problems of the series proper, with the world burning to ash. Though this did open up the option of one day, millenia from now, selecting a powerful Undead to usurp the First Flame, once it was weak enough to do so. Not… quite as much of a risk, owing to me knowing how it went right up to the end, but essentially futile and an incomprehensible waste of time and potential. Potentially tens of thousands of years of humanity trapped in an eternal cycle, stuck in the Middle Ages. I shuddered at the thought.

I could… find a way to extend the second Age of Flame indefinitely. Perhaps feeding Manus’ soul to the First Flame, with as much Humanity as I could gather in one place… that might be enough to kickstart the balance the First Flame existed in during the Age of Ancients, without actually sticking the world back in said Age.

There was one final way that I was sure of, that could be a method of escaping entirely, without resorting to becoming the dragons of a new Age of Ancients, allowing the Age of Fire to wind down, or jumpstarting the Age of Dark.

In Dark Souls 2, by gathering the crowns, one could escape the Cycle permanently. My memories of the process were somewhat hazy, given that I’d played through two less than one or three, but I think… Aldia. Shattering the yoke of fate. Something beyond the Flame, beyond the Dark, something… else. Other. But I didn’t even know if the conditions for such an outcome where met: for all I knew, the ability to shatter the yoke was something that was only allowed by the weakening of the First Flame and the Cycle, the loss of strength that meant that their Age of Flame’s Gwynn failed to fell Chaos.

Ah… I rather think Chaos was off the list. The thing was essentially impossible to control, as far as I knew, and its creations were mad beasts. Maybe I could feed the Chaos Flame to the First Flame, as Yhorm intended to do with the Profaned Flame? Actually, come to think of it, there wasn’t any indicator that the Profaned Flame didn’t exist. Something to watch out for, I think.

Whatever I did, I needed to talk to Patches. The man had… somehow transcended the Cycle, detaching himself from the Age of Flame and surviving the passage of millenia essentially untouched. If Demon Souls was part of the same timeline as Dark Souls, with one of its endings being the beginning of the Age of Ancients, then Patches was the last remnant of primordial humanity, something before the Dark Soul had shaped the species into what they were today. If… humans today were even the same thing as humans before the Age of Ancients, given that modern humans were essentially pygmies changed by the introduction of the Dark Soul.

Mentally, I moved Patches up the priority list. Even if he didn’t have any particularly useful information or insights, I still wanted him where I could see him. If he did have information, though, I suspected that it could shake this world to its core. For the moment, however, I pushed all that aside, and focused on the bonfire.

With no training and no way to really recognize what I was feeling outside of instinct, I was essentially blindly fumbling with the workings of one of the most powerful forces in the world. Which… rather made me nervous, now that I thought about it. Regardless, I could trace the threads and ropes, though I carefully avoided the latter. Attracting the attention of something powerful enough to deserve a cable connecting it to the Flame was something that I didn’t want to attract the attention of.

I could… feel the differences between people and bonfires. The gods drew upon the First Flame through thick connections. Humans, however, where the opposite: a little bit flowed through them to the bonfires, a mix of light and capital-d Dark, flecks of Humanity and soul being fed to the flames through their connection. Bonfires were…

The First Flame was a mass like the sun. But there were smaller entities, such as the one that I was gazing into, that almost felt as if the sun itself was being orbited by dwarf stars, dim reflections of its power. Some of these orbiting dwarves had threads strung between them, forming a network, while others were slightly faded and lacked them. That was the difference between bonfires you could teleport to and bonfires you couldn’t, perhaps: while one might be able to ride the bonfire’s connection to the First Flame and out into the wider network, there wasn’t a way to come back. Some, however, felt dimmed entirely, their connection to the First Flame so weak as to nearly not be there. Perhaps those were the bonfires that hadn’t been lit?

I… supposed, in any case. I was quite uncomfortable with how much of what I was supposing was based on educated guesses, based more on how the magical superstructure felt.

Still, if my guess was correct, could I ride the network to get from place to place? Now, of course, it was a terrible idea to jump to any bonfire contained in a room too small for my full form, but there were plenty connected to the network that weren’t. I could feel how the magical energy flowed back and forth between them, bouncing and fading in ebbs and flows that somewhat matched how the bonfires flickered. I remembered how I’d pushed some of myself through the white sign soapstone and allowed myself to be summoned in a reduced form. What if I tried that again? Maybe, if I had an anchor on the other side, I could pull the rest of me through, like using a handhold to pull myself up.

There was no doubt in my mind, however, that such a thing came with risks. If I was to characterize my relationship with the power within me, Sif’s power, it would be to compare it to a small boat floating atop a huge sea. I could easily, and had multiple times, take cupfulls of that ocean and pour them into whatever I had been doing, but I hadn’t forgotten that it wasn’t really my power that I was drawing on. If Sif slumbered beneath that ocean, with my mind somehow having usurped her by complete accident, drawing more power or attempting to actually move the body wholesale might wake her. If the power flowed more freely through me and somehow recognized that I was not its true master, it might burn me right out of Sif’s soul structure.

I paused, tilting my head. Of course, this was only a potential possibility when I considered trying to move all of Sif’s being through the bonfires. And I was unsure what particular advantages Sif’s larger form had, when constrained by structures not built with demigods in mind. With my experiments with the white soapstone, I knew that I could tease some small part of me out, then have it act independent of the larger mass of soulstuff, with mine being the guiding mind behind it. So, what if, instead of sending all of Sif through, I simply tried to project myself, using the bonfire network as a sort of control proxy? If everything worked as I felt it did, then I should be able to form… an avatar body, essentially, and then pilot it with my mind. It had all of the advantages, with the only real drawback being that I couldn’t bring Sif’s full tank-sized mass to bear on a target. Which, in and of itself, was no great overall loss, given that lacking the size meant that I’d be able to walk through human-sized doors.

And besides, the only real targets for such mass were the more powerful entities anyway, and we wouldn’t be facing such things at the drop of a hat.

I breathed in, then out. I felt the flow of magic around me, and how the divine nature of Sif’s soulstuff interfaced with it. In a way, me affecting physical things was an extension of that magical nature, being that I was near as much Soul as I was flesh. There really wasn’t a distinction between the two, when it came down to it, which might make this… easier.

Reaching outwards, I could feel bits of Soul around me. The Soul of the inhuman creatures that inhabited Darkroot were small and somewhat twisted, stunted in a way that hinted that they went no deeper than their initial appearance. The ent-like creatures and the stone soldiers were not so dissimilar, though the fomer held more depth than the latter. I suspected that it was rather like two different types of golem, one formed naturally in a magically active location and potentially descending from the golems of Oolacile, and the other specifically carved and created as a guardian. In fact… teasing at their sparks like this, I could feel how they were linked to the woods around them.

It suddenly struck me that, with the amount of magical saturation and Soul that inhabited Darkroot, it was entirely possible that the place had actually formed a stable soul. If this was true… then we were all standing within something that was potentially a genius loci, if a slumbering one. Indeed, tracing those little links, I could feel how the ents were both independent little entities, and extensions of the very woods that they protected.

There was a flash of amusement as I felt a Soul that was… silver, and smooth. Alvina, if I had to guess. She felt greater and larger than she appeared, stretching lazily across the forest her Covenant guarded, and I could feel just a touch of how she reached through those who were pledged to her and extended her sphere of influence through them. In a very real metaphysical sense, the Hunters were her fingers and eyes, nudging the world where she could not physically be. Fascinating.

I drew back, focusing inwards on the ocean within. A cup was all I dared take from the mass of Soul inside me. Now, of course, came the tricky part.

I thought of the feeling of the souls of the ents, how the Gargoyles had felt, and even what I’d felt from Alvina’s descendants in the moments I’d had contact with them. Living and not, natural and artificial, crafted from magic and flesh. The way that their internal energies wove in and around themselves, how they affected the world around them in tiny ways just by their soulstuff interacting with it. I needed something with the connection Alvina’s descendants had to their progenitor, but without the independence. The ability to hold Soul of the Gargoyles, and bend it to their physical form’s strength. The independence of form and dependence of Soul of the ents.

When I had done this through the white soapstones, I had slapdashed it, I was not embarrassed to say. The effort had been one of moments, and even then, what I had been attempting was not overly complicated. I had simply placed down a tiny anchor in the exact format that the soapstone had been designed to make, and upon it interacting with an Undead and fuelled by that Undead’s Humanity, it had pulled some small measure of me through and allowed me to fight side by side with Celia. This case, however, was very different.

The physical form that I was creating needed to endure, completely separate from any crutch that would sustain it, such as the soapstone. I needed to be the one controlling it, and it couldn’t just be a copy of me, as I was unsure how that might play out. Completely cutting out a tiny little piece of Sif’s Soul might have dire consequences, and I wasn’t willing to risk it. No, I had to be there in the form that I was crafting as if it was my own- or, ah, at least the body that I’d hijacked. Finally, it needed to hold enough power that it wasn’t useless in a fight.

I plucked at the bonfire contemplatively, then shook my head and metaphysically stepped away from it. Forming the avatar would be difficult enough without having to do it remotely, through a connection that constantly shifted in specific strength and makeup. Instead, I reached out to the grass that covered the ground.

The stuff was everywhere, thick as all get out and practically immune to damage. As if that wasn’t enough, it was absolutely packed with magic, practically humming with the energy that it had marinated in its entire life. Which, of course, made it a perfect starting point. I gradually forced a little of my soulstuff into the magical networks that infused a section of grass, shouldering past the token resistance to being changed that it put up as I did so. As the energy mixed, I began coaxing the plantlife to grow, to shape itself just so.

I started with the skeletal structure and ligaments. Brown roots slowly bleached themselves bone white as the natural magic mixed with my own, replacing its connection to Darkroot at large with a connection to me. The roots slowly transmuted themselves into bones, even as thinner plant matter shifted and changed until they formed the flesh holding them together. It was a slow and agonizing process, helped only by the fact that I was simply copying my own structure in miniature, and all the while, Darkroot’s own magic attempted to force me out, to stop using its mass and energy to form my avatar.

I barely waited for the structure to be done before I started on the next layer of things. I didn’t know if I really needed internal organs, largely due to the fact that I was at least somewhat certain that the only reason I needed to breath was to produce sounds, but I formed them anyway. Another guess in the dark, really, but perhaps the avatar being physically as close as possible to my actual form would make for a better connection.

As the internal organs coalesced out of plant matter slowly changing into meat, muscles started to weave their way up the legs from the ground. These I paid special attention to, binding them and braiding them tight and dense, making them far heavier and stronger than the muscles of a normal wolf. And as the muscles covered skeleton, I started on the fur, several layers of tight hair that was strong as it was thick, my only suit of armour against the wider world.

I lost myself in it, the weaving and teasing, the guiding of the plant-turned-flesh lanced with fading Darkroot and growing me. I used that which was Darkroot to form the structure, and I could feel where the magic and life of the place grew eager, trying to buck my tight control that forced it into shapes and grow wild and free. Like an argumentative mount or a quirky vehicle, I had to make constant corrections, leading it again and again back to the routes that I wished for it to take. It was plant, and it wished to grow like a plant, but I was forcing it to become its anathema of a sort- to take the shape of the systems and gears of a creature of meat.

My own soulstuff followed the Darkroot magic in a wave. I felt the plant matter fight me even harder as I forced it to match the nature of my physical container, not so much transmuting flesh as imposing my own flesh-organic physical form upon the magic and brute forcing it into matching the structure, form and function of my current body. I could feel it rearranging internally as my existence imposed itself, driving out the natural magic that formed the framework and forcing it to become more like me, even as it became part of me. I could almost flex the toes, twitch the legs, swallow with the throat… as the body stopped being plant and started being me, I could feel it more and more as it became me in every way that actually mattered. I very much doubted that I could have done anything like this, were my body anything less than at least semi-divine, and I could feel how the activity was rapidly depleting the power that I had set aside for it, even as I scooped more out of Sif’s Soul and poured it in.

And then the mass of plant matter in the skull converted to flesh.

Quite suddenly, and to my complete surprise, I had the very strange experience of seeing from two different directions, hearing from four different ears, having the scent of two noses. My sensations were doubled as the avatar ceased being plant and entirely became flesh- flesh that was completely identical to my own in every way, because it was me, as much as my leg or my tongue. And I could… I was thinking about how weird it was to be so small again, after so long being large, and I was looking down at the little avatar and thinking about how odd it was to look at something identical to myself but for its size.

I was… both. I was neither? I could feel them, but they- I? I was thinking. I was holding two entirely separate lines of thought simultaneously, one side wondering how it was happening even as the other stepped back and tried to go over what I’d done to get here.

Oh, one of me/all of me/both of me thought. I have two brains now.

Who knows where consciousness came from back where I’d come from. As far as I could tell here, however, consciousness appeared to come from a creature’s metaphysical footprint in the world. There was a difference between what I was referring to as ‘soulstuff’, the metaphysical element to me that actually made me a reality in the world, and Soul, which was… it was difficult to explain. I suppose that, if soulstuff was the resting magical presence which allowed an individual to exist, then Soul was the actual expression of this existence interacting with the physical world and forcing it aside. (did this mean that the Lordsouls were the expression of the First Flame? Did this make the gods something like avatars of the First Flame itself? I filed that away.)

In this case, my soulstuff felt… stretched, between Sif’s body and the avatar. I was connected at both ends, and for all intents and purposes it was the same me in both bodies, but it was a me thinking with two brains, seeing with two sets of eyes, hearing with two sets of ears. And because there were two different brains to process it, there wasn’t any confusion, and I could perfectly operate both bodies and sustain two different lines of thought while being aware of both.

It was jolly weird, is what it was.

Still, this had… potential. If every avatar I made was like this, it meant that they were something of a force multiplier, allowing me to literally be in several places at once. Though, feeling things out… it came with drawbacks.

Obviously, my freshly-made avatar was much weaker than my true self. The size of the body meant that it was saturated with power at a much lower level than my true body was. Less power meant that it had to work harder to impose its will on the universe around it, and it burned that power more rapidly to achieve the same goals. I reached out through the metaphysical existence of both bodies and tweaked the air just so, producing heatwave-like ripples, and felt my smaller body drain at a much higher rate to achieve a lesser effect. That just made sense, I supposed.

The other issue was that producing the avatar had taken a truly horrifying amount of energy. I’d had to dip far deeper and longer than I had wanted to, and I’d severely under budgeted for its creation. What I’d planned to have been a cupful of power had turned into several buckets bailed out of Sif’s soulstuff and into the forming avatar, and even then, I’d burned a lot less than I would have if I’d tried to make the avatar from scratch. Darkroot itself had shouldered roughly half the magical cost of the act, and the toll it’d taken on me was… severe. Severe enough to make me nervous, and as I poked at the magic of Darkroot, I felt how it resisted me even more effectively. I didn’t think that I could pull off what I’d just done again. I could feel the slow turning of Darkroot quicken nearly imperceptibly, and I had a very anxious moment as I realized that if the place truly had a mind, I most likely nearly woke it… right in the middle of stealing from it.

No, a repeat performance was not something I was ready for. A shame.

Still, I had what I’d set out to get. I sat, tail swishing behind me, the smaller avatar barely clearing my paw. As I leaned my head down, getting a better look at the little thing, simultaneously angling my second body for better looks, I noticed things about it. Different patches of fur, slightly different colourations, tiny scars and nicks in visible flesh. My actual body had mirrored itself, bit for bit, in the avatar I’d created. A perfect replica in every way I could see, my existence asserted on another part of the universe.

It was… fascinating. Rather beautiful, really. The swirling soulstuff that I could feel flowing between me and the avatar, my presence in two places. I could see both of myself at once. That was very odd.

I lay down my larger body, looking to rest as my soulstuff recovered. My avatar looked at the bonfire, frowning in a wolfish sort of way at how the flames bent and crackled. Should I…? I shook my head. I had no idea what traveling through the bonfires would do to something like me, with my sort of makeup. For all I knew, it would sever my tentative connection to Sif, causing whatever was left of me to rubberband into the avatar with its much lower power. And then, most likely, I would be hunted by a very pissed off Sif, with Alvina and her Hunters not far behind. That… was not how I wanted this to end.

I turned away from the bonfire, from my larger body, and towards the exit of Darkroot. With this sort of power in my paws… there was a Black Knight that I needed to see.