Chapter 17: Dream Realm V-Trek towards the City
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Another dawn bled its hazy light over the Crimson Labyrinth, but my mind was still trapped
in the revelations of the night before. The idea wouldn't let me go. I was the Visionary
Uniqueness brought to life. It was the only thing that made a twisted kind of sense.
I'd asked the Curator for the Lord of the Mysteries power system. I'd wanted the pathways,
the sequences, the whole deal. But he hadn't just grafted the system onto this world's rules.
He'd gone to the source. In that cosmology, the Uniqueness was the pathway. It was the
concentrated authority, the divine spark. The potions and characteristics were just lesser
applications. Safety measures for mortals to handle a fraction of that power without going
instantly, catastrophically insane.
Madness is the origin of everything, insanity is the only constant. The thought was cold and
clear in my mind. The powers themselves were a byproduct of touching that madness. Since
we weren't advancing by drinking potions made from other beings, we had to be drawing
power directly from the source. We were sipping from the divine tap, and our Aspects were
the safety doors that kept us from being obliterated. It explained our bizarre Flaws that felt
more like fundamental natures than drawbacks,
My musings were interrupted by a slight wince from Sasrir. He was tending the fire, but he
was moving gingerly, using his left hand to adjust the skewer of meat. His right hand was
wrapped in a neat bandage made from torn strips of shadow-cloth.
The sight of it was a punch to the gut. "Your hand," I said, my voice rough with guilt.
He glanced down at it as if he'd forgotten it was there. "A minor inconvenience. It seems the
full extent of my Flaw is… precise."
The memory of the fight with the Golem rushed back—the desperate, brutal move of
stabbing the Unshadowed Crucifix through my own palm to fuel the Purification Halo.
"It happened when I did that," I stated, the pieces clicking together. "When I impaled my
hand."
He gave a short, confirming nod. "A direct, intentional physical wound. The Flaw interpreted
it as 'harm' and manifested a sympathetic injury. The pain was… quite sharp."
But then another realization dawned on me, a crucial distinction. "But the bloodletting before
that… when I was just feeding it drops of blood for the sequences… you didn't feel that, did
you?"
"No," he confirmed, his dark eyes meeting mine. We were both thinking the same thing,
dissecting the mechanics of our cursed bond with cold, analytical precision. "The Flaw,'Scapegoat', appears to have a specific trigger. It doesn't share states of being, like simple
blood loss or Essence depletion. It only activates upon the detection of direct, inflicted harm.
A cut. A burn. A psychic shock. The Memory consumed the blood directly from your body;
the process itself couldn't be replicated onto me. The impalement, however, was a clear and
distinct act of damage."
It was a small, grim piece of knowledge, but in a place like this, it was everything. We were
learning the intricacies of our Flaws. Mine was the slow erosion of my humanity by divinity,
which had yet to really make itself apparent. His was to physically share my suffering
though, to never forget the pain of mortality. We were a perfect, messed-up set.
"I'm sorry," I said, the words feeling inadequate.
"Don't be," he replied, his tone matter-of-fact. He flexed his bandaged hand slightly. "It was
a necessary action. And now we understand the mechanism better. Knowledge is survival.
Next time, if you need to mutilate yourself for power, perhaps give a warning. I'd prefer to
brace myself."
There was no malice in it, just a dry, form of self-deprecation that was somehow worse than
anger. He'd taken a part of my injury without complaint because that was his function. His
purpose. The Hanged Man's nature, already asserting itself.
I looked from his bandaged hand to the bleak, coral-strewn horizon. We had discussed some
more about the Forgotten Shore, and the lone Mind Island I had discovered. It was either a
resident that had gone too far and gotten lost, or another new Sleeper like us, summoned here
in the solstice. Either way, we had no way of finding them, and whether we would meet while
on the way to the City comes down to pure luck. Speaking of, we had also started talking
about our plans for the City, and the Lord of Bright Castle.
"The Dark City," I began, breaking the quiet. "It will be the start for us to change everything."
Sasrir nodded, his bandaged hand resting on his knee. "The Lord of the Dead is a Fallen
Tyrant. A serious step up from a Fallen Monster."
"But we have the ultimate counter," I countered, a flicker of grim excitement cutting through
my lingering fatigue. "The Unshadowed Crucifix. Its purifying light is kryptonite to anything
death-attribute or shadow-based. That Golem was tough, but it was just metal. The Lord of
the Dead is a walking manifestation of the very thing my Memory is designed to annihilate.
We have a much greater shot than anyone else ever could."
"The objective, then, is not just survival," Sasrir stated, his voice taking on that cold,
analytical tone that meant he was planning. "It is acquisition. We kill the Lord of the Dead
and claim its Shard. But that is only one."
"Right," I said, the plan unfolding like a map in my mind. "The Builder's Statue. The Sunlight
Shard is there. We get that, too. I can't remember exactly how Seishan gets her hands on it in
the story, but if we're there first, it doesn't matter. We take it.""Three out of the seven Shards," Sasrir calculated. "Almost a majority. Even if we cannot
secure the Zenith Shard from Effie, that would be enough. We would control the narrative
when Nephis, Sunless, and the Witch arrive. We wouldn't just be survivors; we would be the
reigning power on the Forgotten Shore."
The thought was intoxicating. We wouldn't be reacting to their story. They would be stepping
into ours.
"Escaping without Nephis is off the table anyways," I said, and Sasrir gave a curt nod of
agreement. "We cannot best the Crimson Terror without her. But that doesn't mean we just let
her trample through and burn everything down around us. We control the board. We decide
the terms."
"And there are… personal benefits," I added, a harder edge entering my voice. "The Lord of
the Dead drops the key to access Weaver's Mask. A Divine Memory for obfuscation and fate-
weaving. Essential for anyone who knows how this story is supposed to go and wants to
change it. And the Black Knight in the Dark City Cathedral… its Ruby Core. If we can kill it,
that core could be the key to evolving Saint. We wouldn't just be powerful ourselves; we'd
have the tools to build something lasting."
Sasrir was silent for a moment, processing the sheer scale of the ambition. It was audacious.
Reckless. But for the first time, it felt possible. We weren't just two Sleepers trying to scrape
by. We were something else, something more, with the tools and the knowledge to carve our
own destiny out of this nightmare.
"A ambitious plan," he finally conceded, a slow, sharp smile touching his lips. It wasn't a nice
smile. It was the smile of a predator looking at a full grazing field. "But the logic is sound.
Control the Shards, control the Shore. Let the destined heroes play their part on the stage we
set."
He looked out towards the labyrinth, towards where we now knew the Dark City waited.
"Then we should not keep the Lord of the Dead waiting."
****************************************
Once again, we used the Azure Blade to point the way. Now that we knew the rough direction
of the Dark City, al I had to do was ask the Blade to find the best route south-west repeatedly,
slowly making our way through the Crimson Labyrinth. It was after using the Enchantment
[Wishing Star] for possibly the tenth time that I was suddenly struck by an oddity. "Wait a
minute, weren't Memories supposed to be intuitive, and not have their abilities plainly spelt
out?" Beside me, Sasrir also stiffened.
"You're right..." he said slowly. "Sunny could only do so because of Blood Weave changing
his eyes, attuning them towards Fate. But you could do it from the start, with the
Unshadowed Crucifix."
I pondered over the reason before asking tentatively, "Could it be our high level of Divinity
allowed us to directly connect with Fate? Or is it a separate gift from the Curator?""Who knows?" he shrugged. "I doubt we'll find out anything soon, maybe if you devour
Blood Weave you will be able to spot any differences. Anyways, that would explain why we
never learned the capabilities of the Azure Blade in the novel...if they haven't been altered as
well."
"Nah, the Curator wouldn't make such a grassroot change. Sunny was probably just unlucky."
The journey was a brutal, two-day slog through a gauntlet of the Labyrinth's horrors. The
Wishing Star didn't guide us along safe paths; it pointed the most direct route, which often
meant straight through the territories of things that very much wanted to eat us.
The first day, we were set upon by a pack of Scavenger Demons—larger, smarter variants of
the ones we'd faced before. These weren't just mindless rushers. They used pack tactics, with
smaller, faster ones harrying us while a larger, brutish alpha tried to flank. Their claws
seemed to drip with a numbing venom that made parrying a risky proposition. Sasrir's
shadow-whips and my light-infused slashes from the Azure Blade eventually whittled them
down, but it was a messy, exhausting fight that left us both with new scratches and a deep
respect for the local wildlife.
That afternoon, we had to skirt a vast, stagnant sinkhole where giant, pulsating leeches—
Dormant Beasts the Spell identified as 'Soul Sappers' after Sasrir sniped one of them—lurked
just beneath a film of oily water. They didn't attack directly, but they emitted a low-frequency
psychic drone that made concentration difficult and threatened to lure us closer to the water's
edge. We moved quickly and quietly, Sasrir's own mental defences straining against the
invasive hum, his powers as a Listener working against him here.
As dusk approached on the first day, the shrieking started. A flock of winged demons
—'Gloom Shrikes'—spotted us from above. They were Awakened Demons, each the size of a
large dog, with leathery wings and beaks that could punch through coral. Their true weapon,
however, was their cry: a piercing shriek that disoriented prey and left them vulnerable to
diving attacks. We were forced to take cover under a coral overhang, fending them off with
bursts of light from the Crucifix and precise strikes from Sasrir's shadow arrows until they
lost interest.
We camped that night in a high, narrow crevice, cold and in utter darkness. Lighting a fire
was out of the question; the glow would be a dinner bell for every abomination within miles,
especially the unspeakable things we could sometimes hear moving in the deeper, flooded
parts of the chasm below us. We took turns on watch, listening to the distant, haunting sounds
of the nightmare realm. We each got enough rest anyways, though our nerves were a bit spent
by the sunrise.
The second day brought an even greater challenge. The path led us through a narrow canyon,
and blocking it was a nightmare made flesh: a 'Coral Crawler' I would find out later-a Fallen
Devil. It was a monstrous, multi-segmented thing with sixteen barbed legs that allowed it to
skitter across the vertical walls with horrifying speed. Its main body was a bloated sac, and
from its front, a proboscis-like mouth lined with rotating teeth extended and retracted,
dripping a corrosive slime that sizzled on the coral floor.A direct fight would have been suicide. Its armour was too thick, and its mobility was insane.
Instead, we used the environment. While I used the Azure Blade to draw its attention, Sasrir
flowed into the shadows on the canyon wall, manifesting spikes of solidified darkness to
impale its legs and slow it down. It wasn't about killing it; it was about creating an opening.
We scrambled and dodged, finally squeezing past it through a crack it was too large to follow,
leaving the enraged creature shrieking behind us.
We fought and avoided a dozen other minor threats, but by the end of the second day, we had
nothing to show for it but fatigue and depleted Essence. No new Memories, no helpful
Echoes. Just the grim satisfaction of survival and the unwavering pull of the Azure Blade,
leading us ever deeper into the heart of the nightmare. The Dark City was close. We could
feel it—it had to be.
I had managed to use my four new Memories I had gotten previously as well, from the Living
Weapons. They were a short sword, spear, hammer and katana, all with the same
Enchantments and descriptions, making them not particularly useful to me, but Sasrir seemed
to enjoy using them, perhaps to preserve Essence and not having to make his own weapons
every time.
[Memory Name: Steel Memento]
[Memory Rank: Awakened.]
[Tier: I]
[Memory Type: Weapon.]
[Memory Description: The Slayer preferred to work alone, but she had many admirers
regardless. They followed her path in life, just as they did in death.]
{Enchantments: Slaying Blow]
[Slaying Blow Description: The closer a target is to death, the stronger the blows from this
weapon.]
It wasn't too bad an Enchantment, and it meant your attacks would only grow stronger over
time during a battle, but for someone with limited DPS like me, it just wasn't very valuable.
Sasrir was a much better fighter, so I gave three of them to him and kept the short sword for
myself since it was the lightest and simplest to use.***********************************************
The third day dawned not with light, but with the sound of scraping bone and guttural snarls.
We'd been cornered in a dead-end canyon by a horde of nightmares I mentally dubbed
'Bone-Breakers'. They were massive, hairless things, all bunched muscle packed onto a
canine frame, but with no eyes—just smooth, scarred skin where eyes should be. Their heads
were crowned with a single, hammer-like plate of thick, bony armor, and they used it like a
battering ram, charging in a blind, terrifying frenzy.
"Left flank!" Sasrir's voice was a sharp crack over the noise. He was a blur of shadow, his
form dissolving to avoid a charge that would have pulverized stone, then solidifying to drive
a shadowy dagger into a creature's leg. It screeched, more in fury than pain, the dagger doing
little more than annoying it.
"They're too armored!" I shouted, parrying a lunge with the Azure Blade. The impact jarred
my arm to the shoulder. The Wishing Star enchantment had turned of, instead the blade
glowed with the power of the Milky Blade, boosted by the Artificial Sun in the sky directly
above us. We had tried to escape, but this horde was blocking the only exit. "We can't fight
them all!"
"Then we don't!" Sasrir snarled. He pointed a shadowy tendril upward. "The wall! It's our
only way!"
The canyon wall was jagged and steep, but climbable. It was also swarming with more of the
shark-dogs, scrambling up with a terrifying, blind agility. Despite their heavy and brutish
appearance, they climbed with the skill and agility of mountain goats.
It was a desperate, vertical race. We climbed faster than I thought possible, fueled by pure
adrenaline. Claws scraped just inches below our boots. The creatures would launch
themselves from the wall, their hammer-heads smashing into the coral where our hands had
been a second before, sending shards of razor-sharp debris raining down. I had cut myslf
easily a dozen times, and each sting was accompanied by a muted grunt from Sasrir as he
suffered my mistakes as well.
"Go, go, go!" I yelled, hauling myself over a ledge. Sasrir flowed over the edge a second
later, and we didn't stop. We ran, the enraged snarls and the sound of crumbling coral
echoing behind us. We didn't stop until the sounds faded into the general hum of the
Labyrinth, our lungs burning, our muscles screaming.
I collapsed against a coral pillar, sucking in great, ragged gulps of air. Sasrir leaned beside
me, his form flickering slightly with the effort of maintaining solidity.
"By the Spell…" I panted, wiping sweat and grime from my face. "What the hell were those
things?"
"Evolution's mistake," Sasrir rasped, his voice strained. "Perfectly designed to be a pain in
the ass."I let out a weak, breathless laugh. It was either that or scream. We were battered, drained, and
from what I could see, no closer to our goal.
It was then that Sasrir, ever the vigilant one, straightened up. He was facing in the opposite
direction to me, back to back and so he saw what I didn't.
"Adam," he said, his voice low and steady. "Look."
I pushed myself up, following his gaze. And there it was.
Rising above the jagged, crimson skyline of the labyrinth was a colossal statue. It was a
woman, her features worn smooth by time and the elements, but her posture was one of
serene grace, one hand extended as if in blessing or offering. Even from this distance, the
sheer scale of it was humbling.
"The Saintess," I breathed, the words barely a whisper.
Sasrir nodded, a sharp, satisfied gesture. "The novels described her statue standing as a silent
guardian near the city's edge. We're here."
The two-day nightmare of a journey, the constant fights, the close calls—it all condensed into
that single moment. The Wishing Star had delivered. The tension of the frantic flight melted
away, replaced by a new, colder kind of pressure. The weight of what came next.
"The Dark City," I said, the name feeling heavy on my tongue.
"And more importantly," Sasrir added, his dark eyes fixed on the distant, serene stone face,
"what sleeps beneath it. The Lord of the Dead is close. I can almost taste the decay on the
air."
We stood there for a long moment, side-by-side, catching our breath not just from the run, but
from the sheer magnitude of our arrival. We'd made it.
The colossal statue of the Saintess loomed in the distance, a silent sentinel marking the edge
of our goal. The adrenaline from our narrow escape was fading, leaving behind the grim
reality of our next move.
"We're here," I stated, the words hanging in the air between us. "The question is, what now?
Do we try to enter the City first, or do we go straight for the Lord of the Dead and the
Starlight Shard?"
I looked at Sasrir. In most things, especially tactical decisions, I deferred to him. Despite the
Visionary Pathway being orientated around the mind, Sasrir's tougher and more gritty mental
view helped him think further ahead based on risk and reward. And this time, he desired the
Starlight Shard.
"Arriving early doesn't get you an award, and our foundation is still lacking a bit. You need
some proper armour to survive here, and we don't have the dexterity to make anything proper
from the carcasses of the monsters we've slain. So getting that Cloak will be the priority for
now. Rest up a bit, then we'll go kill ourselves a Fallen Tyrant."Chapter End Notes
And here the main story really starts. Also, there will be a time skip after a couple of
chapters, since my brain isn't big enough to head canon two whole years of the
Forgotten Shore, but we'll get the first two or three months straight up.Chapter 18: Challenging a Dark Souls Boss
Despite his bold words, Sasrir planned out our assault with extreme meticulousness. In the
novel, the Bone Tyrant was slain thanks to Nephis' overwhelming fire power, which we can
substitute for the Unshadowed Crucifix, but it still required Kido's poison grinding it down
for several weeks first. Sasrir's shadow weapons would be useless against the bone
projectiles, and they lacked the strength to break them, but distracting and stiffening it for
several seconds at a time should be possible. Since I would probably have to tap into the
Priest of Light powers, or maybe even Unshadowed, I spent four whole days hunting for the
meatiest Nightmare Creatures I could find and gorging myself, attempting to get my body as
ready as possible for the strain to come.
The Soul Cores were also a welcome bonus, though the effect was still so miniscule. It took
Nephis three, four months to become a Demon so it would probably take me just as long to
become a Devil. On the other hand, Sasrir felt like he was about a fifth of the way to
becoming a Monster, so that was good.
My body felt like one giant bruise. Every muscle ached from the frantic climb and flight from
the Bone-Breakers. My mind kept circling back to the fight with the Golem, to the terrifying
dizziness of sudden, massive blood loss. I needed a reservoir. Every bite was a potential drop
of lifeblood I could afford to lose later. I made a small pile of the cooked meat, wrapping it in
more strips of shadow-cloth Sasrir provided—a grim emergency ration for after the fight.
Then, I turned my attention to the Unshadowed Crucifix. I held it in my hands, feeling its
familiar, comforting weight. But this time, I was trying to understand the valve. I focused on
the slightest trickle of intent, causing a single drop of blood to well up through broken skin
and being absorbed. The spikes remained dormant. I pushed a little more, visualising the
Sequence 8 prayer. A faint, almost imperceptible warmth spread from the Memory into my
hands, but no spike pierced my skin. It was a minuscule draw, a sip of Essence, not the
lifeblood price.
It was frustrating, imprecise work. The Memory wasn't a machine with a calibrated gauge; it
was a relic that responded to need and sacrifice. I couldn't find a perfect "off" switch or a
precise "drip" setting. The best I could manage was a slightly better sense of the threshold—
the exact moment a request shifted from a simple Essence expenditure to requiring a blood
price. It was like learning the tension point on a hair trigger. It wasn't much, but in a life-or-
death moment, that sliver of forewarning might be the difference between survival and
bleeding out.
My progress on the Pathway front was non-existent. I'd cycle through the Spectator and
Telepathist abilities, feeling the enhanced clarity, but the feeling of progression, of
"digesting" the potion, was utterly absent. The Acting Method required interaction,
understanding, and manipulation of others. Out here, there was no one to read, no one to
listen to, no social currents to navigate. Sasrir didn't count. His mind was a mirror of my own,
a closed loop. Trying to practice telepathy on him was like trying to hear an echo of my ownshout. It told me nothing new. True progress, I realized, was locked behind the gates of the
Dark City and its inhabitants.
Sasrir's predicament was equally perplexing. The Hanged Man Pathway's Sequence 7 was
'Shadow Ascetic'. We'd assumed the 'Ascetic' part was the key. But what did that mean out
here? He was already living in utter deprivation. He slept on stone, ate only for fuel, and was
surrounded by constant danger and discomfort. He endured the psychic whispers of the
Labyrinth without complaint. How much more ascetic could one get? Did it require
meditation? A vow of silence? The 'Shadow' part of the title was straightforward—he could
manipulate darkness with ease. It was the philosophical core of 'Ascetic' that eluded us. Was
it merely endurance? Or was it the embrace of suffering itself? The latter thought was deeply
unsettling.
He spent the day in quiet contemplation, his form often dissolving into a pool of shadow that
seemed to drink the light around it. Occasionally, he'd solidify, a new, slightly more refined
shadow weapon appearing in his hand for a moment before dissipating. He was honing his
control, but the fundamental understanding of his role remained just out of reach.
As the artificial sun began to dip, casting long, distorted shadows across the coral, a sense of
grim finality settled over us. We were as ready as we could be. We were rested, fed, and had a
slightly better grasp of our tools. The gaps in our understanding—how to advance, the true
nature of our Flaws, the exact price of power—were still gaping chasms, but we couldn't wait
for answers to fall into our laps.
Sasrir looked at me, his expression unreadable in the fading light. "Ready to face the Lord of
the Dead?."
I nodded, sheathing the Azure Blade. The Wishing Star enchantment wasn't needed now. We
knew where we were going. "Then let's not keep it waiting."
We shouldered our meagre supplies—my packet of meat, the Crucifix, our Memories—and
began the final approach. The Saintess' statue grew larger with every step, marking the spot
where we might die, or become one step closer to seizing our own Fates. One of the good
things about this fight, we had reasoned, was that we could deal some damage and then
retreat. The Bone Tyrant could heal itself by drawing upon the millions of skeletons in the
catacombs, but the Unshadowed Crucifix would burn away its' soul, not just the body. If we
could deal a certain amount of damage, retreat, and then come back after recovering, we
could wear it down and then finish it off.
We weren't looking for a single confrontation like we had against the Steel Golem: that had
been cocky foolishness. Take the easy route, the simplest route, the least painful
route...Without an audience, we didn't need to be heroes or put on a show.
*****************************************
The journey to the Saintess's statue took longer than we'd hoped. About six hours. The most
direct path was completely blocked by a massive coral shelf that had given up and collapsed.
Typical. We had to backtrack and find a way around, which felt like adding insult to injury.We did run into a trio of Scavenger Demons lurking in a side tunnel. They never stood a
chance. Before they even knew we were there, Sasrir just… melted into the shadows around
them. One second they were sniffing the air, the next, three shadowy blades erupted from
their own darkness, and they just dropped. Clean, quiet, and efficient. No fuss.
"Show-off," I muttered as he reformed beside me, not even breathing hard.
"Efficiency is its own reward," he replied, his mental voice dry. "And it saves us the trouble
of listening to them screech."
By the time we finally reached the base of the Saintess's statue, the artificial sun was already
halfway down the sky. The long, deep shadows of the labyrinth were stretching out, making
everything look even more sinister.
"Well, this is cheery," I said, looking up at the colossal stone woman. Her artisticaly carved
body was now cloaked in darkness, making her look mournful instead of peaceful. "Feels like
we're being watched."
"We are," Sasrir said matter-of-factly. "By everything. But the shadows are deep here. That
works in our favour."
We were both still feeling pretty full of energy—well, as full as you can feel in this place. No
point waiting. The deeper shadows would only help Sasrir.
"Alright, hitch a ride," I said.
He didn't need to be told twice. His form dissolved into a living darkness that flowed up my
legs and torso, settling across my back and shoulders like a second skin. It was a seriously
weird feeling. Cold, but not unpleasant. Just… there.
"Listener powers are active," his voice hummed directly in my skull. "The whispers here
are… old. Full of grief. Be ready."
Finding a way in was the next headache. The base of the statue was a mess of collapsed coral,
jagged rock, and what looked like sealed-up entrances. We spent a good twenty minutes
circling it, poking at cracks, trying to find an opening that wasn't just a death trap.
"Could really go for a 'X Marks the Spot' right about now," I grumbled, shoving a loose piece
of rubble with my boot.
"Perhaps ask your sword for a map next time," Sasrir quipped back. "It seems amenable
to requests."
Finally, we found a narrow crack, half-hidden behind a fallen coral column. It was just wide
enough to squeeze through if I turned sideways. Not exactly inviting.
"Ladies first," I said.
"After you," he shot back. "I'm already comfortable."Grinning despite myself, I squeezed into the crack. It opened up after a few meters into a
proper tunnel. And that's when the atmosphere changed completely.
We were in the catacombs.
The air was instantly different. Thick. Stale. It smelled of dry dust and something else…
something ancient and cold. Like old bones left in a desert sun. Which, I guess, was exactly
what it was.
The walls weren't coral anymore. They were rough-hewn stone, dark and damp. And the
ground… the ground wasn't solid. It was a carpet of bones. Ankle-deep in some places. They
crunched and shifted with every step I took. It was impossible to be quiet. The sound echoed
faintly in the cramped space.
Skulls stared out from the walls, set into niches. Femurs and ribs were piled like firewood. It
was endless.
"Cosy," I whispered, my voice sounding way too loud. "They really went for a theme, didn't
they?"
"A theme of death," Sasrir observed, his tone clinically interested. "It is… thorough, if
nothing else. This should be where the original denizens buried all the sacrifices for the
a Crimson Sun, yes? They must have slaughtered tens of thousand over the years."
We walked. The tunnels wound and twisted, branching off into darkness. There were no
markers, no signs. Just more bones, more dust, more silence. It felt like we'd been walking
for an eternity, going in circles. My boots kicked up little clouds of bone dust with every step.
The only light came from the faint glow of the Azure Blade, which made the shadows dance
in a seriously creepy way.
After about ten minutes of this, my patience was gone. This was ridiculous.
"I'm done," I announced, stopping in the middle of a junction where four identical tunnels
met. "We could be down here for days. We're wasting time."
"The essence cost is not insignificant," Sasrir warned, knowing exactly what I was
thinking.
"It's a cost I'm willing to pay to get out of this bone-filled nightmare," I said, pulling the
Azure Blade from its sheath. I focused my will, pouring my intent into it. *The Lord of the
Dead. The shortest, safest path. Take us there.*
The Wishing Star enchantment flared to life. The milky light within the blade swirled
violently before coalescing along the edge, pointing decisively down the left-hand tunnel. A
noticeable pull of Essence flowed from me into the blade. Not a huge amount, but a constant,
moderate drain. Worth it.
"Lead the way," I sighed, following the pointed tip.The blade didn't steer us wrong. Within minutes, the character of the tunnels changed. The
piles of bones got deeper. Thigh-deep in places. We had to wade through them. The skulls in
the walls seemed to be watching us more intently.
Then we saw it. An archway up ahead, larger than the others. It wasn't made of rough stone.
It was carved from something dark and polished, like obsidian. The bones here weren't
scattered; they were arranged. Stacked into grim pillars flanking the entrance.
The Azure Blade's light died down, its job done. The pull on my Essence stopped.
We stood at the threshold. The air coming from the archway was freezing cold. It carried a
silence so profound it felt like a physical pressure.
"This is it," Sasrir's voice was a whisper in my mind, all traces of wry humour gone. "Its'
lair."
I reached out and placed my free hand against the cold stone of the archway. We'd touched
the Saintess's statue outside. We'd survived the journey. We'd navigated the catacombs.
Now, it was time to reap what we'd come for.
"Alright," I breathed, my grip tightening on the Unshadowed Crucifix hidden within my soul.
"Let's go say hello."
Stepping into the chamber, I saw the hole in the roof where the Saintess' hand had fallen
through, into the circular chamber with columns of bones engraved in the walls and faded
murals depicting their owners. And in the very middle was the fearsome Tyrant, the Fallen
Shard Lord, the Lord of the Dead. With only one step, I was already beginning to regret my
decision. Sunny had described the fight as one or two moves away from total death, and that
was with Nephis, Kai, Effie and Seishan, not to mention ten of the best Hunters in the
Forgotten Shore and Kido's poison. But then I reminded myself-we weren't here to kill it in
one go. We had multiple attempts, so long as I avoided being hit myself.
Bit like Dark Souls, really.
No more talk. No more planning. It was time.
The moment we crossed the threshold into the vast, bone-filled chamber, I moved. My mind
clicked into a cold, focused state. I called upon the Unshadowed Crucifix, and the familiar
weight settled into my hands.
"Sequence 9: Bard," I whispered. A clear, resonant tone vibrated from the cross, a single pure
note that echoed through the cavern. The mountains of bones around us rustled and shifted in
response, disturbed by the holy sound.
"Sequence 8: Light Supplicant." A soft, golden glow settled over me like a mantle. Next to
me, I felt Sasrir's presence solidify slightly as the blessing dampened the oppressive, deathly
aura around us."Sequence 6: Notary," I declared, my voice ringing with authority I didn't truly feel. "God
says light is stronger here! God says shadow is sharper here! God says bone is brittle and
weak!"
The effect was immediate. The air itself seemed to sharpen. The golden light around me
brightened. Across the chamber, the massive pile of bones that was the Lord of the Dead
shuddered. A deep, grinding rumble echoed from within it.
That was our cue.
Sasrir detached from my shadow in a silent, liquid motion. He didn't make a sound as he
flowed across the floor, a patch of living darkness slinking through the deeper shadows cast
by the piles of bones. He was going for its own shadow, a vast, distorted blot on the far wall.
The Tyrant took notice. Not of Sasrir, but of me. The light from the Crucifix was a beacon in
its dark domain. An insult. A challenge. The central mound of bones heaved upwards,
forming a crude, gigantic torso. Skulls clicked into place for eyes. Arms of fused femurs and
spines formed, slamming down on the ground with a sound like cracking stone.
It was focused entirely on me. Perfect.
I saw Sasrir reach its shadow. His darkness began to merge with it, seeking to seize control,
to lock the abomination in place.
That's when it noticed.
A psychic roar of pure fury blasted through the chamber. It wasn't a sound; it was a pressure
in the brain. The Tyrant hadn't seen Sasrir—it had *felt* him. Violating its space. Tainting its
essence.
It forgot about me for a second. One of its massive bone arms swung not at me, but at its own
shadow on the wall. At Sasrir.
Thirty jagged bone spears tore free from its form and shot downward, impaling the spot
where the shadow lay. They hit the stone floor with devastating force, shattering on impact
and sending shards of razor-sharp bone flying everywhere.
But they hit nothing. Sasrir, as a pure shadow, was untouchable by physical attacks. The
spears might as well have been attacking a drawing.
My opening.
I raised the Crucifix high. "Light of Holiness!"
A concentrated beam of pure, searing sunlight lanced from the relic and struck the center of
the bone mass. The effect was instantaneous and vicious.
The Lord of the Dead didn't scream. It *screeched*. A soul-shivering sound of absolute,
agonizing pain that felt like it was flaying my mind. The holy light wasn't just burning it; it
was erasing it.Where the beam struck, the bones didn't burn or blacken. They simply… dissolved. Turned to
fine, white ash that drifted away on an unseen wind. A huge chunk of its chest and part of
one arm just vanished.
But the cost hit me a second later. A cold, draining sensation shot up the arm holding the
Crucifix. It tingled violently, then went completely numb, like I'd slept on it wrong. I glanced
down. The skin was pale, almost grey, the color drained from it. I'd paid a price for that shot.
Still, it was better than last time. I was still standing. I was still conscious.
The Tyrant's pain-fueled retaliation was swift. A dozen tentacles of woven ribs and vertebrae
shot out from its body, whipping through the air toward me, trying to crush me into paste.
I threw myself backward, hitting the gritty floor and rolling behind a mound of skulls. The
tentacles smashed into the pile, sending bones and dust exploding into the air.
"Okay, new plan! Chip damage!" I yelled to no one in particular.
I scrambled back, putting more distance between us. I focused on smaller, controlled bursts. I
didn't need another mega-blast. I just needed to keep it distracted, keep it burning. I sent out
fist-sized projectiles of fiery light, aiming for its "face," for the joints of its limbs. Each one
sizzled as it hit, burning small holes and cracks in the bone armor. It was like trying to melt a
glacier with a lighter, but it was something. It was keeping it focused on me.
Meanwhile, Sasrir was forced to disengage. Trying to hold a creature of such pure death in its
shadow form was risking his own corruption. He flowed back, solidifying a dozen feet away
from the thrashing monster.
He didn't waste a second. His hands moved in a blur, weaving shadows from the air around
him. A bundle of small, viciously sharp daggers formed in the air before him. They weren't
meant to break bone. They were needles. Soul-needles.
With a sharp gesture, he flung them forward. They flew silently, unerringly, and sank into the
Tyrant's form not with a physical impact, but by simply phasing into the spaces between its
bones.
The result was different. The monster didn't screech in pain. It… *stuttered*. Its frantic
movements seized up for a full two seconds. A full-body tremor wracked its frame. The soul
damage wasn't massive, but it was a profound shock to its system. A stunning, neural
overload.
The bone tentacles trying to dig me out of my cover went slack.
It was a tiny window. But in a fight like this, a window was everything.
I popped up from behind the skulls, the Crucifix already aimed. "Keep it busy, Sassy!" I
shouted, pouring more Essence into another, smaller blast of purifying light.
The fight had begun. And for the first minute, at least, we were still in it.In order to win, I needed to keep hitting the same spot over and over again, until I had melted
straight to its' core. And so, I kept dodging, only taking pot shots when I felt I could afford
them. My preparatory feasting had done its job, and the feeling of weakness was less than
before, but my "ammo" was still limited. Sasrir was lucky in this fight: compared to the
Golem, the Lord of the Dead had no real way of dealing damage to him so long as he
remained a shadow. Once he felt he had recovered enough, he dove right back in and started
wrestling with its' shadow again.
Once he did, I dropped another pillar of light on the same spot as least time, or rather, slightly
to the left. This time, a portion of the bones that made up its body directly collapsed and
disjointed, causing me to further focus my attacks. A mistake.
The bones that had fallen off, the ones I had dismissed, vibrated and shot at me before I could
react. It was my instinct that saved me, causing me to drop down, but one still pierced
through me shoulder and another clipped my side, breaking a rib. The one in my shoulder
damn near pinned me to the wall however, and I heard a painful grunt from Sasrir, the only
acknowledgement of the pain he suffered. Seeing my precious blood running down the white
bones, I grit my teeth and raised the Crucifix higher. The loose blood flowed towards it, and I
acted through the pain even as it threatened to make me black out.
"Purification Halo!"
A less concentrated but wider spread of holy sunlight erupted, smashing against the separated
bones and destroying all of them. It singed the Lord of the Dead all over too, but by now it
had recalled enough material to start repairing itself. Seeing this, Sasrir decisively fled back,
picking the wounded me up and slinging me over his shoulder. Just before fleeing through the
door, he glanced back and threw a shadow spear he'd condensed. It struck the Tyrant in the
same area as mine had, causing another painful groan and more spasms. One last "fuck you"
to the bag of bones, probably.
This time, I didn't lose consciousness, though a part of me wished I had. The good thing
about the bone spears was that they were almost too sharp for their own good, making the
wound a clean hole and not dragging on any flesh. The Crucifix would stop any infection, but
Sasrir made sure to wrap me up nice and tight, and fed me some of the preserved Scavenger
meat. It took over two hours for feeling in my arm to return, though there was still a lag in
movement from my thoughts.
"Not bad for a first attempt," I said with a small grin.
"At least we have gathered some more combat data. Perhaps, I can stay back with you and
throw spears or daggers from afar to chip away at its' soul, and also protect you at the same
time. I don't believe the skeletons lying around can be used to repair anything other than its'
body, so doing this three of four times more shoulder be enough to kill it."
"Heh, just like how we finished off Gravelord Nito, right?"
"Except that took you two hours and three different loadouts before you remembered that
Undead are weak to Divine and just bashed him with a Heavy Fire weapon.""hey!" I protested. "That wasn't my fault, it was like three in the morning and I was sleep
deprived!"
"Sure thing, you were just tired, and not at all struggling against one of the easiest bosses in
the game.