Fool's Adventures: A Demon's Souls/Buffy the Vampire Slayer Quest

The wind shivers around you as you turn to leave the cemetery. As a graceful shadow hinting at a humanoid form you leap over the fence and touch silently upon the ground. The pace you set is neither quick nor haried, your feet gently caressing the stone path beneath you as you move.

Your course takes you west as you travel and your mind takes the time to consider more long term plans.

You are reaching closer to your original heights of power now. Three of your six abilities returned to you. A useful servant. A world with a variety of paths to power and items of magical importance. Direct experience that there are ways to leave this dimension or be pulled out of it. Your task here was always to recover so that you could go back.

Back to the Tower. Back to your purpose for existence.

For now you have no certain means to direct your travels if you stepped outside the bounds of this dimension. So your mind shifts to consider the steps and tasks which spin out behind your future.

You know of one way to get to another dimension. The Ritual of the Pit. The bones of your enemies and the blood of traitors mixed under the moon while an incantation to the Old One Tol'Ur is recited. A simple ritual, though you are sure it is a bit more involved than the book actually says. You even have a lead on where to find the blood of a proclaimed traitor.

But as a means to get to your home plane it is not very useful. It is only a method of reaching the Pit. However, it can give you information on how dimensional travel works beyond the methods of the Archstones of which you are more familiar. By examining and traversing the portal you can gain a form of perspective.

It is somewhat unfortunate that remaking an Archstone is beyond you, or any Fog Demon. The Monumentals, those greatest of Soul Arts practitioners, destroyed it within their Souls before they fed the Fog. And simply forcing your way, like you did to return, is beyond you from within the borders of this world without some kind of ritual guidance.

With nowhere for the path of that thought to go as you know what you must do there, for now, your mind treads backward along your list. To the ways you can gain power here. And your useful servant. The beggar woman. Annie. She is yours now and where you go, she will follow. The Lying Prisoner no longer has a use for you as the beggar woman is far superior, if the creature is even still extant within the Tower.

It would not be the first Prisoner you have replaced.

You have had further ideas, however, when it comes to Annie. More, to make her something she was not. And your first step has already been taken by turning her Soul into a Cup. The path which you expect to be the best is with the items you already have and that you have sensed before and could find again. Further study of those devices could give you a means to make her far, far more useful to you as a tool than the Liars ever were.

Her sight as well, is another facet of her nature as a tool, and while the most mysterious you expect that it will be the most useful when you take her to the Pit with you. The question of why she dreams of the Tower still hangs in the air after all, though you have certain expectations as to why that would be.

The air shifts, smelling of iron and ivy, disturbed dirt and frightened spirits. You are near the Restfield cemetery now. Setting aside the considerations of your future plans you also gracefully leap over this fence. You land in a crouch, but do no rise. You take a moment to smell the air around yourself. There is a vampire scent here. A man.

It tastes of the second disturbance you remember. This would be Marius then.

He smells of pine and blood soaked linen.

The scent permeates the air of the cemetery now. It has been thoroughly made his territory in your absence. The spirits in the air are writhing, pitiful things which twitch away from your gaze. You will have a use for them later. You do not yet smell any indications of Marius's harem. You rise.

Carefully you arrange your Remington and purse thing on your shoulders to stay out of your way. To a mortal you would probably look faintly ridiculous, but that has no impact on you. The ground is soft and yielding under your feet, the grasses brushing over them gently. Your senses are carefully taking in everything about your environment.

So you soon catch the faint hints of four different females. Hmm… how odd. More than there should be. You muse to yourself.

The first smell is a scent of peaches and brown bloody dirt freshly turned over. There is a faint trace of fur and fabric which lingers beneath it, from her clothing you presume.

Then the usual sequence of dozens upon dozens of scents which lingers on anything that exists in the physical world.

The second scent is… somewhat similar. The same brown and bloody dirt, with a hint of dewy grass. Nothing else of interest. Both smell quite heavily of Marius as well. They have probably been with him the longest.

The third smells of rusted iron, bluebells and bloody amaranthe. Her blood scent is fresh, perhaps she fed recently. The third smells less of Marius, a newer member then. And then the fourth smells like bloody daisies and green leaves. She smells very little of Marius at all. Perhaps a recent member, or someone being cultivated?

You do not need to know.

You prowl through the headstones and monuments, ignoring the memorials to mortals long long dead. The ivy grows thicker and the grass longer as you walk, concealed in shadows. Mausoleums and crypts emerge out of the darkness around you as you go. All of them are old and weathered, their stone stained with the passing of years, and the taint of vampires becomes thicker and thicker the deeper and deeper in you go.

You come upon a path of sorts trod through the cemetery, made by five sets of feet flattening the grass as they pass. The smell of the female vampires thickens. Your senses are far reaching, and note nothing deeply amiss beyond the faint impression of Marius's essence. As you had already gathered you sense powerful vampires better when they are moving.

The lights this far in are dead and the graves look to have been untouched for decades. The whimpering shades of this place are totally silent now, lingering far away from this conflict amongst greater beings. You come upon a tall and grand building of gray stone. A crypt the size of a small cottage with the roof surmounted by three statues of angels. Unlike the others no ivy crawls its walls and the trees are well cared for. The iron bars protecting the wooden door are clean of rust.

Carved upon the archway above the door is a name. Von Ghastrogen.

He is below. The thought trickles through the channels of your inhuman mind. You look downward. You cannot properly sense the tunnels which likely extend below you, but you can feel the lieutenant vampire through the dirt and stone. Looking back up, at the door, you consider your approach.

Simple way to do it. You think to yourself as you call up four of your mirror images. All of you wear the same seeming and the images get illusions of the Remington and your purse. Looking through five perspectives you note no traps or dangers. A somewhat odd laxity amongst the vampires you have seen so far.

The door comes off easily under your combined efforts. Though in this case you are quieter, and work the lock open with strength and magic. It will be better for the interrogation if you slip in unnoticed. Come upon them all suddenly when they think they are safe, with no warning and let surprise show their flaws.

When the door opens you see a gray stone room. In the center is a stele or short spire upon which are carved names, all ending in Von Ghastrogen. Except for at the very top where "Marius" is very crudely carved into it. Your bodies filter around the room examining it as you approach the gate in the left wall which leads to a small room and a stairway down into the stone. Your images see nothing of importance, cobwebs and dusty corners, but they do faintly smell flame.

Taking the gate carefully in hand with three of your bodies, you use your original body and an image to burn through the hinges, melting them with the carefully held energy of your Soul Arrows. The hinges glow bright red before melting and then you slowly pull the gate away from the wall, the hinges stretching and then separating into gooey strands which rapidly cool.

Maneuvering it carefully your images place it against the stele with only a tiny clank of sound. That took several minutes, but the vampires below are seemingly undisturbed. You flutter into the small room revealed to you and descend down the stairs which drop to your right. They are a straight descent to a smooth tunnel with an arched ceiling and brown brick walls.

Ahead you can see a turn to the right and a torch in the corner. The source of the flame scent. It has been some time since you saw such a means of illumination. Your images go first, two by two down the tunnel. The light is dim and flickering, but that is of very little importance to you. The scent of the vampires is thick and obscuring down here.

The tunnel around the corner you find to be one with three branches in its right wall. They extend below the surface building and you can see there may be another tunnel which runs parallel to this one beyond them.

You send the first three of your images down the right hand tunnels, while the number 4 and your original body examine the rest of the tunnel for hidden passages. What you see in the right hand tunnels is lines of sealed resting places in the walls, stacked three high. Some are empty near the ceiling.

The main tunnel shows you nothing, so you send your original body and number 4 down the furthest right hand tunnel. The tunnels down here are not too large or labyrinthine so it takes you only a moment to find the archway leading down on the far side of the graves. It is in the middle of the wall and you can hear two female voices echoing up from the deeps. Hmm, this complicates matters.

You descend, two by two and your original body in the rear. There are occasional torches as this stairway winds downward in a spiral. Before you are halfway down the stairs your lead images, number 1 and number 2 can hear that the two voices are coming from the level you are heading towards.

"...Like, I don't get it! ...Wait." You hear a scratchy voiced woman say, as the smell of the second and third girl waft up to you.

It is apparent they are not all in one place as you had planned for.

No matter.

You adjust, and send your images careening down the stairs at the current limit of your inhuman speed.

"The hell!?" Another voice, a softly lilting accent. You see the two vampires through images 1 and 2, sitting at a finely carved wooden table set in a room similar to the one a level up. The table itself is set up in a clear space which seems to have been made by knocking out of some of the graves, disturbing them, though no bodies are in evidence.

The vampire on the left is the third member of the harem. Tall and brown haired, she is clothed in a very frilly and full skirted pink and white dress which goes down to her knees. Her skin is darker than you've seen on vampires before and her green eyes are narrowed at your images.

The vampire on the right is the second member of the harem. Shorter than the third she would stand up to your chin. Blonde haired and wearing jeans and a fancy blouse. She is pale like all other vampires you have seen before and her eyes are blue and wide with interest.

You see all of this as your images race down the steps and the vampires scream, rise and rush forward to meet them.

"More coming down Amanda!" The shorter vampire cries to the other as your spells start firing at them. You distantly feel Marius and the others moving.

"Girls!?" A masculine voice shouts from the floor below, his voice echoing up from the depths, a thick accent touching his S's.

The two vampires dodge your first shots from images 1 and 2 with inhuman speed. Not simple or weak creatures like most vampires have been. Images 3 and 4 and your original body all fire at "Amanda" as the vampires dodge around image 1 and 2. The shorter female is suddenly quite close to your first pair and before you can react her kick slams into the side of the right hand image, image number 2.

As "Amanda" successfully dodges all but the last shot you fired at her, which clips her in the side but doesn't put her down, your number 2 image flies into number 1 and they both go tumbling in a tangle of limbs behind Amanda. You can hear thundering footsteps on the stairs now.

This is rapidly escalating, but you have it under control.

"Amanda" does not successfully dodge the third image, which latches onto her and sends them both tumbling. She is screeching profanities quite loudly now. The second short blonde harem vampire is leaping upon the images she dispatched, but these are not entirely helpless. They turn and catch her. She lets out a roar of surprise as she is grappled.

In the very brief moment you have before the images are dispersed you channel Soul Arrows through them and strike the two female vampires. The bolts hit true with a sizzle of flesh and a muffled boom while three of your images fade.

"AAaaa ow ow ow." The shorter and more powerful vampire, who you presume is "Jeanne", cries out in pain at your spells. She got two arrows to the stomach.

"Owwww..." "Amanda" is also wounded in the stomach, though you only used one arrow for her.

Both vampires do not get up.

You ignore the two harem members and turn your remaining two bodies to face the stairwell you can distantly see. The thundering steps reach a crescendo and out dashes Marius, followed by the other two harem members.

Marius himself is a powerful specimen of vampirism. An open white shirt and silken black pants covering pale golden skin, the man is slightly taller than you in your seeming even without his leather boots. His hair is a deep black, rustling in the wind of his passage, his lips are red and his eyes a very dark brown. His aura of disturbance is thick around him in your mystical sight and gives weight and power to everything he does.

He is nearly upon you when your next two spells force him to dodge away to the left, revealing the vampires of his harem behind him.

The one in front is wearing an elegant sleek beige pants and blouse set, and a large gray long coat with a thick fur lining which hangs open. Her skin is a pale porcelain white, her hair a bright blonde above piercing blue eyes. She smells like the first harem member. The second vampire is the new harem girl, and her clothing is a simple white shirt and blue jeans, though they seem worn. Her hair is brown and her eyes hazel.

Elegantly dodging out of the way of the lead harem vampire as she blurs towards you, you hear the stone wall shatter behind you.

You hurry to make space, sacrificing the last image you had by throwing it in front of the fourth harem girl. She pounces on it in a rage and tears it apart. Space having been made you reach out with both hands and gesture forth your six mirror images in an arc before you, facing the vampires. You see the fur coat vampiress removing her hand from the wall where it destroyed the fragile facade over it, dust and stone chips pattering to the ground.

As the vampires recover from their various moves, you fire a volley of seven arrows in quick succession. Pulling heavily on your store of energy, filling the air with magic for them to attempt to dodge.

Marius and the two of his harem who remain standing frantically try to get out of the way. Marius succeeds, his aura of disturbance flaring as he blurs through the blasts. But his "wives" are less fortunate. The newest one catches a Soul Arrow in the gut and the leg, which send her tumbling into and over the table, tipping it over.

The other one in the fur coat gets her arm burned badly as she tries and fails to dodge. Marius himself, roaring in rage reaches the image you created on the far left and smashes her into the wall behind you where she pops in a puff of energy. He doesn't stop there and turns to charge your main body.

He slams into you with a punch to the gut as three shots burn his legs beyond recognition, while a fourth to the stomach topples him over into a groaning heap. You back away, essentially uninjured, using levitation to lighten yourself and slide back under the force.

All fades to silence except for the groans and moans of your defeated enemies.

You have questions now…

What do you focus on?

[] The Anointing and the Order of Aurelius.

[] Where Darla sleeps and who the traitor is.

[] The items of power and the strange features of the sewers.


The purpose of this vote is what question do you want me to focus on the most, since I felt this might actually be important for me to know before I continue the rest of this night. What is your priority. But don't worry too much about the other stuff, it'll be there, but it simply won't be as prominent.

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*Loooooooong sigh*

Finally the monster is slain! As said previously the previous voting cycle experiment can go away.

Vote lock will be at 6:00 pm UTC, June 3rd.

I'm going to try it so that its an update every other day, see how that works, since its the time of day which my writing is sensitive to and I do want people to have time to vote.