章 2: Chapter 2: Dreary Beginnings
"The fallen leaves tell a story. The great Elden Ring was shattered."
I know not where I am, or how I got here.
"In our home, across the fog, The Lands Between."
Everything is dark, not a flicker of light in sight.
"Now, Queen Marika the Eternal is nowhere to be found, and in the Night of the Black Knives, Godwyn the Golden was the first to perish."
It's not just sight, all my sensations are absent.
"Soon, Marika's offspring, demigods all, claimed shards of the Elden Ring. The mad taint of their newfound power triggered the shattering."
It's as if I were in a void, in an endless blackness; from which no thought or action can form.
"A war from which no lord arose. A war leading to abandonment by the Greater Will."
My memories are fuzzy, my mind is nothing more than flashes of red and white light. It's surreal and seems to last for eternity. Yet, sometime during that eternity, my consciousness awakens. It comes from golden light, shining over my ethereal self like a morning sun's welcoming rays. I spin in the void, looking for the source of that light. It's as if my mind hungers, it seeks out the light as a form of stimulus. In an eternity of darkness, change is seldom, and thus I seek it out devoid of fear or skepticism.
My eyes land upon it, and it feels like time itself starts to move once again. It's an aura, a small flicker of luminous flame. Particles like thousands of stars draw to it, swirling about it in elliptical planes, like unfinished rings circulating distant planets. It's beautiful.
"Arise now, ye Tarnished! Ye dead, who yet live."
I move toward the aura, reaching out to touch it, yearning to simply graze my fingers across its illuminated surface.
"The call of long-lost grace speaks to us all."
As I draw near, my hand crosses into those elliptical planes, becoming unobscured from the fingertips down. With it comes sensation. Feeling of ice-cold fire runs through my fingers, traveling up my arm and running down my spine. It's a rolling wave of life, perceptions of existence come to me yet again.
"Horah Loux, chieftan of the badlands." Slowly, I start to feel, feel a cool and damp sensation that hugs almost my entirety.
"The ever-brilliant Goldmask." I start to hear, hear a sullen howl, one of wind and cobwebs and stone.
"Fia, the Deathbed Companion." I can smell, smell an earthy scent of mold and iron.
"The loathsome Dung Eater!" I can taste, taste the flavor of mud and blood that coats my tongue to a sickening degree.
"And Sir Gideon Ofnir, the All-knowing!"
My fingers graze the golden aura, so much so that I can feel its warmth. With it my eyes open, and I can see; really, truly see. With my vision comes my balance, and I'm weighted to the floor, lying prone in a dark and treacherous room. My hand, which once stroked that aura, now lays extended ahead of me, fingertips partly submerged in water and mud.
"And one other. Who grace would again bless. Cross the fog, to the Lands Between. To stand before the Elden Ring."
A voice speaks to me, nothing more than a whisper, and I hardly paid attention to it. But now, with my senses returned, the voice speaks as if directly into my ear.
"And become, Elden Lord."
With that, I slip back out of consciousness, and my world darkens to nothing yet again.
I don't know how long I stayed unconscious. For me, it lasted a mere split second, a blip in my memory. But when my eyes open again, my body feels like it hasn't moved in a millennium. I blink a few times, struggling to move in the slightest.
"Ugh." I grimace, working my muscles to get myself up.
Noises of splashing water sounds out near my hands and face, chilling liquid drips down from my matted hair. My elbows pop, joints all along my body crack with my movements. Nothing hurts, but everything feels sore. I work my way up to a sitting position; my senses feel blurry. Whether it's a bodily reaction, or a genuine concern for my situation, I open my mouth, quickly realizing there's mud smeared across my face.
"Hello?" I croak, wiping my face on my sleeve.
Most of my clothes are caked, the rest is soaked. It makes me shiver from a slight breeze in this room. As to where this room is, or what it is, I haven't the slightest clue. It's not just my senses, my mind is fuzzy too. Memories are nothing more than a slideshow of images, none of which stand out or coincide with where I am now. That is, until my eyes adjust, and I surge to my feet, letting out a vocal shout of surprise.
"!"
It's dark in here, dark and dreary. Barely enough light to distinguish rocks from mud.
But it doesn't take much to distinguish a human skull.
"The hell?" I utter, backing away.
Chilled water at the level of my ankles, crimson stained mud squelches under my bare feet, and the calcified remains of human corpses surround me. Femurs, ribs, a pelvis, and skulls stick out of the mud and lay submerged in the water, dislodged teeth dot the stone floor like stars in the night sky. It's a harrowing sight, and it worsens as my eyes adjust. I'm in a room of the dead, one that's naturally formed as if it were a cave. Stalagmites populate the ceiling; moss ravaged coffins line the walls. I try to get away from it, my eyes never leaving this one skull, which stares right back at me with cavernous sockets. I step on something which cracks under my weight, a shiver runs down my spine. I don't look down; I can already tell what it was. I feel a strange sense of growing panic, one that makes my breath quicken. There's not a single thing that would intend me harm in sight, yet danger signals are flashing in my head.
I'm in a bad place.
I go to clutch my chest, simply as a bodily reaction to a raging heartbeat. It feels like it's about to jump out of my chest. My hand lands on smooth skin, grazing past torn cloth and loose strands. I slowly look down; there's a gaping hole in my shirt. I can see right to my pale white skin, which has been sullied by dirt and grime. That surely shouldn't be there. Not just that, but a matching hole is on my back, both just where the sternum and the spine are. I stare for a long moment, losing sight of the graveyard around me. Something tingles at the back of my mind, some piece I'm missing. Falling, hitting something large and soft. Something loud and large, leaping down from above. A flurry of arms, a big shield and two swords. One sword in my chest, its bloodied tip sticking out of my back. Just flashes of images, too much missing to tell. But I can tell.
I was impaled.
By what, I can't tell. But those swords and shield looked familiar. I don't understand it, I'm not in the dark ages. My current surroundings are challenging that statement, but my memories don't. I live in an age of engines, an age of pharmaceuticals and technology. I'd more likely get shot before someone decides to stab me, so what's the deal? Furthermore, how could someone hold three things at once, was I ambushed by a gang of Larpers? That idea sounds ridiculous, if I wasn't freaked out, I might have even snorted a laugh. It doesn't even solve the biggest question: How am I alive? How did I get here? And why the heck am I laying amongst a bunch of corpses? A thought crosses my mind, but I don't think I'm a zombie. At least, I'm pretty sure. Not a ghost either, the putrid and damp stench combined with the waterlogged chill attests that I still have a body.
I'm getting nowhere, my mind is just going around and around, reaching no conclusions within the realm of reason. What's more, this smell…
I pinch my nose, working to breathe through my mouth. I need to leave. I don't know where, but I just want to go. This place is gross, it's unnerving, and it's probably disease ridden. I wade forward, causing water to splash against mandibles and spinal columns as I work my way out of here. I spend time riding along the walls, doing my best to circumnavigate any skeleton or coffin in my path.
After a rather sudden flight of stairs and passing through what looked to be a mess hall, I find myself in a room that looks vaguely familiar. Fairly large, it's a cave tunnel that slightly inclines, where it transforms from natural stone to brick steps and a large door on the opposite side of me. Rocky outcroppings jut out of the smooth walls, the ground has become more damp dirt than mud. Many tombstones jut out on the edges of the beaten trail, and a bright golden tree sapling rests near the middle of it all. My eyes widen, and this illuminated plant arrests my attention almost immediately.
It looks familiar, so much so that I nearly blurt something out. The words get caught on the tip of my tongue, refusing to draw themselves any farther forward. I'm left stumped, and I'm walking toward the tree before I realize it.
Such a quiet glow, yet it lights up the whole cave like a raging campfire. It's a small thing, barely taller than I am, with thin limbs and no leaves. Small plants grow around its base, as if its glow was a substitute for sunlight. I reach out to touch a limb, finding the texture to be incredibly smooth; it's as if it were polished marble. It's warm, vibrant, and welcoming. But something still shouts at the back of my mind, begging me to remember. It knows what this tree is, but I don't. I continue up toward the stone brick stairs, leaving the tree behind. I debated trying to knock a branch off, see if I could carry it around. But something tells me the glow wouldn't remain on a twig.
It takes me a moment to figure out how to open the door, it doesn't swing open like conventional ones. It begins to give when I pry from the bottom, so I work with that. I heave this rather strange door up and away, finding it to be surprisingly light. The next room is even more bizarre, albeit much darker. I move quickly through it. Strange noises come from the room, on one of the walls that looks more like a solid cloud than an actual wall. Screams, howls, and a noise of gears grinding against stone. It sounds eerie, that silent voice leads me away from it.
I come to a dead end, a circular room with a high ceiling and architectural pillars surrounding an ornate platform. No other entrances connect here, and my entire path thus far has been straightforward. Nowhere else to go, except… I stare at the platform at the center of the room, that silent voice nags at me unendingly. Step on it. It seems to say, though no voice sounds. Go on that and leave this place. I inch forward, feeling an arising sense of suspicion. Should I be listening to voices in my head? Things are still fuzzy, but I feel that it's a foolish decision to oblige. At the same time, what is a platform going to do?
Before I know it, I'm on the platform. I brace, regretting my decision for a mere moment, and when the ground below me gives, I nearly jump back. But the platform shudders, and with a force that nearly drops me to a knee, it fires up, rising like a piston in a car engine. It ceases to go back down, continuing unendingly up, making my ears pop.
When it slows, I must have climbed hundreds of feet in seconds. I step off and find myself in front of yet another door. I sigh. Just how many doors am I going to open? I stick my fingers at its base, relieved this one is light as well. I go to heave it up, but I'm almost immediately blinded when I make so much as a crack.
"Gah!"
I drop the door, clutching my eyes. It lands with a loud slam, making me question whether it's actually light, or if a contraption in the frame is helping me. I blink to try and remove the purple spots I see, but I grin through the pain. Daylight. I think gleefully. I'm nearly out of this tomb. I shuffle my fingers under the door again, this time squeezing my eyes shut. I heave it open, and a calm warmth hugs me. Sunlight threatens to burn my retinas, I prop a hand on my forehead for shade. It takes me a while longer than a moment for my vision to adjust. It finally does, and I-…
Woah.
A scene out of a fairy tale, that's the best way to describe the overall view. Bright blue sky, emerald green earth. Sprawling forests cover the landscape, with interspersed plains and trails between them. An endless ocean on my left, layers of hills and valleys to my right. Ruins of long-lost times populate the place, with a large and commanding castle resting atop a sheer cliff face. Animals run through the woods, berry yielding plants and gorgeous flowers dot the area. But nothing demands attention more, than what rests directly ahead; far enough away that the atmosphere gives it an opaque hue, but large enough to arrest the sky like a large hand.
It's a tree, a colossal tree. One that dwarfs mountains, it's furthest branches nearly reaching overhead. A size so great, one could not comprehend it through text on paper, nor through an image on a screen. What's more, it glows. Not only that, it gleams. As if it were made of gold, with a fire in its core. Beautiful. I nearly fall over as I try to take it all in, trudging forward more on reflex than desire.
"Yes yes, come closer."
My eyes stay locked onto the tree, finding joy in how it messes with my perception. It's a familiar shape, far away yet large enough that it's tricking my mind into thinking it's right in front of me.
"Right this way, right this way… Are you listening to me?"
I tilt my head left and right, still unable to grasp it.
"Tarnished, what might you be doing? Halt."
I wonder, I wonder if I could-
"HEY!"
An angry shout knocks me out of my trance, and I nearly jump out of my clothes.
"Yeah!?" I shout on reflex.
Mom has called for me many times with that same voice, I learned it's best to answer immediately. My eyes tear away from the massive tree, trying to search for the source of the-
There's a dead face inches from mine.
"Gaaah! What the!"
I nearly struck the face as hard as I would have managed, I flee instead. I jump back, nearly tripping over myself. Much to my horror, the face moves, and I can see living eyes moving in the sockets.
"Are you deranged? Did you not hear me?"
A voice emits from the dead face, takes me a moment to realize it's just a mask. More than that, the mask is connected to a body, which crosses his arms disapprovingly. I don't know who this man is. He stands alone, it looks like he's been camping here. His mask is much too real, and he's wrapped up in thick cloth otherwise, not giving a single inch of skin to reveal. I can see what looks to be a dagger handle jutting out from his belt, barely out of sight. He looks dangerous, I would never trust someone dressed like this if I met him in a city or neighborhood. Much too secretive, it arouses suspicions. That silent voice grows more and more apparent in my head, so much so that it says something.
Varre.
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