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Disclaimer Me Do: I own nothing you recognize. And most of what you don't recognize, I still don't own.
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The Cathedral of the Deep was a foul, blighted place and Alchemist didn't feel bad about avoiding it the first time around. It was filled with worm-infested hollows, mad priests, thieves, evangelists with their massive spiked clubs and grave wardens with their wicked cutting blades.
Still, he had business here and putting it off could be problematic.
Diana and Kary had been sent back to the remains of Anor Londo where they'd fought Aldrich and given general directions to find Gwyndolin's 'sister' on a hidden tower at the end of an invisible bridge.
Alchemist was fairly sure that Diana would be able to see it... But if not, the woman could fly.
"Oh, child-" One of the Evangelists, bloated women wearing bronze masks, started to chant.
They were one of very few enemies that spoke at all without being a boss and even then it was just the chant to a spell. One that lit her on fire as she opened her arms wide and tried to close in on Alchemist.
"-Come to me!" She lunged towards Alchemist...
Who shot her in the face.
"No." And then stepped over her corpse as he made his way across the rooftops on the outside of the Cathedral.
The journey was more tedious than anything else, one of him was on top of the building and hunting down a few things, books and rings mostly while another one of him was inside the Cathedral itself and working through grabbing everything Diana and Kary had missed.
He was trying to grab every ring, at every level of strength that he could remember. He'd actually had to make a brief detour to help Sirris of the Sunless realms with one of her own tasks so he could get her Silver Cat Ring.
It negated falling damage... And he fell down. A lot.
He didn't think Batman's insurance policy would cover getting Life-alert for him.
As the Alchemist inside the Cathedral was dealing with a mimic, the Alchemist up top kicked his way through a stained glass window and began walking across the ceiling beams, working his way through holy-knights to a very specific destination.
A specific destination that was crawling with disgusting half-man, half-grub creatures that all carried staves and tried to cast spells at him.
An interesting thing Alchemist noted as they missed him, their spells had a small effect that looked like feathers coming from the point of origin.
As he began to inflict on them brief and very precise violence, he did wonder if there was meant to be some connection to the Winged Knights in Lothric or the cage with a corpse in it that was filled with feathers and one lone miracle hidden in the Grand Archives...
Well, if there was some connection, it's not like Fromsoft would've bothered actually letting anyone know.
After dealing with them, Alchemist pushed his way through the door along this hidden path. Into the chamber of the Goddess of Rebirth. Rosaria.
He found more than he'd been expecting within.
"Well." A man, wearing a long coat and a silver mask said once Alchemist entered the room. "This is a bit embarrassing."
Alchemist looked from the man to the still, dead form of the goddess.
"Yes, well. One does so tire of serving, I'm sure you can understand." The man in the mask said before he tried to sidle around Alchemist to leave.
"Have we met?" The masked man was familiar, but Alchemist couldn't really remember his name. He knew that he'd seen him at the Firelink Shrine but he didn't remember talking to him.
"Wow. Rude much?" The masked man slowly placed his hands to his sides, obviously reaching for the weapon there. "We met at the Shrine? I told you about the darkwraith in Lothric?"
Alchemist continued to stare at the man in clear incomprehension.
"Incredible. Astounding, really. Are you Hollow under that armor or just a bit dim?" The godkiller touched the clasp on his weapon, a shotel of some kind, but didn't pull it loose. "Leonhard. My name is Leonhard, the Ringfinger?"
"You..." The murderer's body language perked up when Alchemist began to speak. "Must have been incredibly unimportant because I don't remember your name. At all."
It probably didn't help that Alchemist didn't bother with PvP back when he'd been alive.
"Are you serious? I'm hurt- No, I am insulted. Downright insulted, actually. This is- Sir, you have offended me. Personally. I cannot let this stand!" The man pulled his shotel loose and held it out in front of him, pointing it directly at Alchemist. "I demand a duel, right here and now!"
"Oh." Alchemist lined Leonhard up in the sights of his Gravity Laser. "Alright then."
"Very good then! On the mark of three, we'll begin. One, two-" Alchemist pulled the trigger.
Ringfinger Leonhard, hunter of the weak and murderer of the feeble dropped to the ground like an unstrung puppet.
~~ Hunter Slain ~~
~~ Ringfinger Leonhard X1 ~~
~~ Experience: 1250 ~~
~~ GP: 2500 ~~
~~ Obtained Items: Silver Mask X2, Crescent Moon Sword X2 ~~
~~ Obtained Key Item: Soul of Rosaria ~~
"Well..." Alchemist pulled the soul out of his inventory and found it was a glowing red wisp, twining around his fingers in an almost serpentine fashion. "Let's get you fixed up and out of here. Gwyndolin is waiting to see you again."
He didn't know if he was talking to the soul, or the corpse he was about to return it to.
In the end, it didn't really matter either way.
-----
Waking up was an ordeal. Painful and slow, it felt like trying to crawl his way out of some deep and wicked abyss.
He remembered... Waking up, briefly, several times.
Or perhaps he dreamed of these things instead?
To see his darling niece Rosaria sitting nearby, happily humming some long forgotten tune? After that foul little man, Sulyvahn, had cut out her tongue?
Or hearing Yorshka's voice intruding on his frenzied nightmares? Begging that he be well?
For Priscilla's daughter to still live, hale and whole? It could be aught else.
He had to have finally succumbed to the monster's appetite. Aldrich must have finished killing him, and he was allowed, somehow, to go to some afterlife away from the searing heat of flame.
His final memory. Of some great and wicked dragon carving him away from Aldrich using a sword that burned with dragonflame and carried the profaned taint of dark... It must have been a dream, too. His sins and his hopes manifested together in some mockery of his lost brother, Artur.
His eldest brother wouldn't have succumbed to the foul god-eater...
"~If I should leave, this lonely world behind..." He heard a distant voice singing. One so different from Rosaria or Yorshka that he couldn't just ignore it.
With great difficulty, Gwyndolin forced his eyes to open.
He found himself in a small, rustic little home. He'd been laid out upon a couch made up of some material he couldn't easily recognize and covered in some commoner's quilt!
Looking under the blanket, he felt his face burn aflame when he discovered his own nudity!
The audacity?! Who would dare to besmirch a gods honor in such a... Way...
He could feel the serpents that made up his legs. He could -see- the serpents that made up his legs!
He had to be dead, there was no other explanation for this. Even the greatest of miracles would fail to restore something so thoroughly lost!
"~Melodies of life... Come circle round and grow deep in our hearts!" Gwyndolin stood, shakily, on legs that hadn't supported his weight for ages. He supported himself against the wall as he crawled out of the room.
Slowly. Painfully.
But under his own power, by his own will!
The god nearly fell over when he tried to reach for the next stretch of wall and found only the air instead! He barely managed to catch himself against a bar instead, with a bunch of stools placed underneath of it.
"Whoa! Whoa, hey!" The voice, that had been singing so, so terribly cried out in surprise at seeing the god in his disheveled state! "Geeze, scared me there!"
A man stood across from the bar in some small workspace. He was dressed in odd garments, heavy blue trousers and a red shirt that left his forearms bare. He had short, curly brown hair and his eyes glowed an eerie yellow.
Some strange denizen of this ghostly realm, perhaps?
"Gwyndolin?" The man spoke to him slowly, approaching with caution. "I'm glad to see that you're up. How do you feel?"
"...Weak." The god eventually settled on. "I feel weak, tired. Filthy."
Gwyndolin looked down to his hands, at the fingernails he knows hadn't been cut in ages.
There had been no servants left, inside the castle. And Aldrich cared little for the comfort of his meal.
So he was unsure who had groomed him.
"Alright." The man walked over to a door next to a ladder and opened it. "I've got a bathing room right here. You can take a shower, get cleaned up. Take as long as you want, I'll be right nearby if you need something."
The man waved towards the door. "Come on, I'll show you how to work things and dig up a robe for when you're done."
Gwyndolin followed slowly, his legs barely able to support him yet.
The man showed him how to induce water from the spouts, how to control the temperature using these round knobs. Taught him the functions of the sink and shower and toilet.
A... Disgusting contraption, and not one that would even be used were his host one of the starving Undead.
Gwyndolin spent several long minutes adjusting the heat of the shower then wedged himself into the cramped box it was set in.
The heat... Aldrich had hated the heat, and Gwyndolin set the temperature as high as he could stand.
The water, the heat, the freedom...
Gwyndolin didn't care that his countless legs fell out from under him.
He didn't care when the tears started to pour free of his eyes, or the wracking sobs that ripped from his breast.
The nightmare was over! He was free!
Finally... Free...
-----
Alchemist lingered in the kitchen, pretending he couldn't hear the broken man sobbing in the next room over.
Sometimes, just the presumption of dignity is the only thing that's left to hold on to.
Even when it's a lie.
Especially when it's a lie.
Diana and Kary were out, clearing the way through another area. They'd already dealt with the giant in the Profaned Capital. Fought the Dancer, one of Rosaria's children that had been driven so utterly mad there wasn't anything left they could do to try and pull her loose of it.
Hers hadn't been a madness born of going hollow. It had been a twisted choice, the best of the terrible options Pontiff Sulyvahn had forced on the divine child.
Alchemist wasn't sure if they should try and do something about the Storm King, the nameless hollow god that was presumably Gwynn's firstborn son.
He had the tools to reverse the hollowing, yes... But subduing the god and then transporting him to the location where the curse could be reversed would be an ordeal.
And Alchemist still had other concerns on his plate.
Well... First off being dinner.
He didn't know if Gwyndolin would be able to eat solid foods yet, but he'd been in the middle of preparing a meal for the two goddesses lingering outside of the cabin, and making food enough for Diana and Kary, too, when they returned.
He was in the process of making pizza.
It was a large meal, simple and nutritionally diverse... So long as actual vegetables were added to it.
This... Was an odd turn of events, really. Not one Alchemist was going to complain about, however. He really did prefer playing at being a medic rather than off fighting against crazy, soul-starved monstrosities.
Well... Sometimes, at any rate.
Alchemist got back to slicing vegetables and put the matter out of his mind, for the moment. Besides, once Gwyndolin was feeling a bit better, he had a surprise waiting for him!
-----
Diana returned to the demi-plane tired, exhausted but overall satisfied.
The enemies that yet lingered were knights, one and all, and doing battle against them was glorious!
Unlike many of the others, they still retained some measure of their former selves. They had skill and poise in their attacks rather than the wild flailing so many of the others had succumbed to using!
They'd returned to the High Wall of Lothric and traversed a path unlocked through their defeat of the other three Lords of Cinder. A warped and distended mockery of a woman made herself known and tried to stop them, only to fall short to Diana's unchecked might and speed.
The woman, this Dancer... Offended Diana's sensibilities deeply. She'd allowed herself to be driven from her home and then warped and twisted by the Pontiff's magics rather than fighting back.
And unless Diana was vastly off her mark, the Dancer had certainly been stronger than the wretch Sulyvahn had been.
From her they'd pushed upwards and onward, into the castle itself. They'd fought another sage in these grand archives whilst climbing ever higher, not stopping until they'd pushed past an animated suit of Dragonslayer's Armor and broken through, at last, to a heavily fortified bridge.
That was where Alchemist had requested they stop.
He'd said the last of the Lords was waiting behind it, and he had some specific business with them.
Kary had wanted to push through regardless. She lived and loved battle and seeing the countless numbers arrayed before them had gotten her excited.
Very excited.
Diana had ended up physically dragging the demoness away and she'd been pouting the entire way back to the Firelink Shrine.
"What's going on here?" Diana asked upon entering Alchemist's demi-plane.
Alchemist was standing in front of the residential cabin with a great lump of stone placed in front of him.
Situated around him was Gwyndolin, wearing a loose bathrobe and leaning against said cabin.
The little dragon-girl they'd pulled from atop a tower, Yorshka, was seated on the step and watching Alchemist with stark incomprehension.
The poor girl was painfully ignorant and naive, almost as bad as the clones had been. Worse, in many ways, because she had so few who could interact with her and answer her questions.
Seated next to her was Rosaria, a goddess of rebirth. The woman had been mute when Alchemist had retrieved her, hidden away in the temple that she and Kary had once traversed to put to rest a group of foul, corrupted deacons.
Apparently her tongue had been cut out in ages past, to silence the goddess and deprive her of the many healing miracles she once knew. Her own gifts, the ability to reforge the flesh of man, did not extend to herself and so the wound had never healed.
Until Alchemist had cast his Regeneration spell on her.
Rosaria was holding one of Yorshka's hands and humming, some distant and nameless melody. Even having her voice restored to her, the goddess only very rarely spoke.
"I picked this up at the end of my little trip a while back." Alchemist waved at the worn lump of stone in front of him. "I'm pretty sure I got the timing for it right, but we won't know just yet."
Alchemist snapped his fingers and the stone... Slowly started to reshape itself?
Very, very slowly.
"Mending, on a statue?" Kary stepped around Diana, now the size of a dwarf again. "Something smells like trickery!"
"Maybe." Alchemist agreed with her. "Or you're smelling the pizza. It's on the bar inside, go help yourselves. This'll probably take a minute or ten."
Diana looked at the statue as a pebble slowly fitted itself into place on it and smoothed in, then shook her head and went inside.
She could witness Alchemist and his trickery on a full stomach and she was eager to get at his cooking.
So far, he'd yet to disappoint!
-----
Gwyndolin didn't know what to make of this. Any of this.
Rosaria and Yorshka being with him in this tiny, moonless realm? The only one missing was Gwynevere.
She always did have a way of worming her way out of things.
"Why are you repairing this object, healer?" The man had told Gwyndolin his name, yes... But the god may not have been in any condition to remember it at the time.
This wasn't some realm of the dead. Yorshka and Rosaria were both alive. He was... Having a hard time putting everything together in a nice, neat little bundle that made sense.
"Well, I went to the Ringed City and might have, maybe, fought my way through everything. Then finished up my trip by waking up your little sister." Waking up his little sister?
"What does that mean?" Yorshka asked for him, so innocent and curious.
"Ah, right." The healer took his eyes off the slowly repairing statue and looked to the girl, a soft smile on his lips. "The pygmies never really accepted Gwyn's rule, so they pulled off a few tricks. One of the things they did, they sort of hid their city in time and used Filianore to sustain the spell."
The man waved his hand vaguely at the slowly reforming statue.
"I broke the spell, but it was set to take its toll on Filianore. I only had enough time to cast one spell of my own, and I had to pick from a small list of things that I thought might offset the backlash. My own time magics are all very limited, the only one that might have worked would have left her incredibly vulnerable." The man smiled, softly, and pointed at the statue again. "But I've seen instances where people were returned from stone centuries, even millennia later. The biggest issue has always been in the condition of the statue, not the reversal of the spell."
Gwyndolin slowly slunk over, away from the wall supporting him to look closer at the stone that was beginning to take shape.
At the face he couldn't even remember.
"This is Filianore?" He was having a hard time accepting it to be true.
Of course, with everything else...
Perhaps it would be best to just accept things as they were? He could puzzle the various pieces together later, on his own time.
"Yes." The healer let his smile fade as he looked at the chips and cracks that were slowly filling themselves in.
"...Why? Why have you done this, stranger? What will you gain by aiding us?" Gwyndolin wanted to reach out, to touch the face of his darling sister but dared not do so. He knew not the limitations of the spells workings, he feared he might ruin it if he tried.
"Very little." The healer admitted, quietly sighing afterwards. "I still need to go and deal with your eldest brother, see if I can actually pull him out of the hollow madness he's succumbed to."
"...Your words are most troubling, but I notice you did not answer me. Why are you doing this? What are your intentions for me, for my siblings?" None knew what happened to Artur, what had become of him after leaving Anor Londo.
How did this mortal know things that Gwyndolin did not?
"...I'll be ending the Age of Fire, permanently. Putting down the First Flame so something new can finally be born. I was hoping to offer you, Yorshka, Rosaria, your brother if he's sane and all of the denizens of the Firelink Shrine sanctuary in here. Offer you a chance to come to a new world. A dangerous one, incredibly so, but it's not one bound to a cycle of flames." Gwyndolin gaped at the mortal's blatant statement.
He didn't even sound like it was a question of whether or not he could do it, just that it was a matter of when he chose to do it!
...Gwyndolin watched the statue slowly reassemble itself while he thought.
"Is your world like the painting?" Yorshka ended up asking the mortal after several long moments of silence. "It was terribly cold, there. And so very dark."
"Some places, yeah." The healer admitted to the innocent girl. "The magic is hidden and the gods are, too. There are demons trying to push their way in and take control, and foreign gods from beyond the sky that are trying to subvert the mortal world and divide it so they can subsume it in violence and war. But there's no grand cycle, no oversoul that's trying to eat the world to keep burning."
The man sighed quietly, his eyes growing distant. "There are other species throughout the world, but they're hidden too. We have a group of immortal warrior women that have sequestered themselves on an island in perpetual service to their gods, or a land of hidden lizard creatures called 'Dinosaurs' from ages long gone and forgotten. But the mortal world, the mundane world, has advanced far beyond what you might expect. They've tamed lightning and use it to empower great machines. Created buildings of steel and glass that would scrape the heavens. Found more and more ways to control flame in a manner that's convenient to heat their homes and their food. One of the most important inventions was finding a way to keep the inside of a box cold to preserve food so it doesn't spoil."
"It sounds... Fantastical." Gwyndolin finally gave in to his curiosity and reached out to touch the cheek of the statue, now that it had nearly finished repairing itself. "As though every man is a mage in this world you would take us to."
"They could be, if they chose to be." The man didn't stop Gwyndolin, simply watching cautiously. "But most aren't. It's mostly a matter of discovering how and why the world works, then creating devices that manipulate those principles. As the understanding of these forces expand, the complexity of these machines and their purposes expand as well. In time, there may be no difference between magic and technology."
Technology. It was not a foreign word to Gwyndolin... Indeed, it was one he was well acquainted with.
The gods were living nexuses of Divine power. Their very existence could create miracles that would surpass the works of any man!
But... Gwyndolin hadn't survived through countless ages by luck or power alone. And his once death had only come through base betrayal. He'd seen the development of glass and poured stone, the same technologies that went in to creating the grand city of Anor Londo.
He'd funded the development of aquifers and was the patron of countless clever artificers throughout the ages.
His domain was the Moon, and through it the many Moonlight Sorceries. Miracles professed through knowledge rather than faith.
"...I think." It hurt him to say this, to admit this. "That I would like to come to your world, Healer."
"Uncle?" Rosaria stopped humming, her gaze upon him showed her confusion clearly. "What of this world?"
"This world has died." And it hurt him, so much to admit that. "Over and over again. Nothing has truly changed since the first Age of Fire. The same patterns have repeated themselves endlessly, like a wheel spinning in place. Our only future here is death, like as not a painful one."
How wretched it was, then, that he had to admit as much? After countless eons spent watching over the world his father left behind?
However many centuries he'd maintained the illusion that his sister, Gwynevere, still resided in Anor Londo? That he'd kept a false sun in the sky?
How long since given up on both? Back when they thought the 'Chosen Undead' would link the Flame and all would be well... Until it guttered and died out once more.
Gwyndolin was pulled from the dark spiral of his thoughts when he heard the door of the tiny, cramped cabin close and he could see the woman from earlier, the unknown and unnamed goddess standing just behind Yorshka alongside the little demon.
The statue, once just a deformed hunk of rock, now looked like Filianore.
"Is she whole, now?" Gwyndolin asked the healer.
"She is. Give me one second and I'll cure her condition." The man lifted one hand and snapped his fingers.
The change was instant.
Where before the flesh had been gray, it became pale white instead. Her hair, every strand once made of delicate stone, turned black. Hey eyes were no longer made of blank slate but rather were terribly confused.
Gwyndolin reached forward and held her in his arms. Held his lost sister for the first time since before the loss of Gwynn.
"Good morning, dear Filianore." He couldn't say anything else, the words were caught in his chest.
His tears, however, flowed freely.
-----
Alchemist stepped out of the demi-plane as the divine siblings were re-acquainted. They deserved a bit of privacy and he had to get a few things taken care of before the opportunities were lost.
"Hey, Ludleth?" Alchemist spoke gently on seeing the first stop he'd need to take care of. Little Ludleth, a banished Pygmy from a land called Courland. A practitioner of the forbidden arts of 'Soul Transposition'. And, regardless of his stature, a Lord of Cinder.
The only one that had remained willing to once more sacrifice himself for the cyclic future of this world.
"Oh?" The small, burnt corpse woke up from its half-daze. "Oh! Alchemist! Come to share another fascinating story, have you?"
"Not at the moment, but I might be able to remember a good one for you. I need to convert a few souls back into their items of power." Most of the boss souls that had been dropped were of zero interest for him.
Most.
"Of course, of course. Very well, you remember how to use the cauldron, yes?" Ludleth didn't get up from his throne, simply waving at the cauldron he kept nearby. "Then lets get to it!"
Soul Transposition was... Odd. That's a good word for it.
It let Alchemist materialize something that was deeply connected to an especially strong soul. Typically, these were weapons.
Those he had no use for.
Alchemist felt the soul of Aldrich twitch and shift, then removed a bow from the cauldron.
A weapon he had no use for... But this was Gwyndolin's bow, the original having either been lost or broken.
"A curious weapon... An arcane weapon. Touched by... Moonlight, yes." The pygmy muttered from his seat as he watched Alchemist.
The man in question raised an eyebrow and gave the Lord a considering look before nodding.
"Spot on. It's Gwyndolin's bow, at least as Aldrich remembered it." Alchemist set it aside then pulled out the second copy he had of Aldrich's soul.
This time, he removed a spell scroll instead of a weapon from the cauldron. That one he immediately placed in his inventory, heedless of the curious eyes set upon him.
He was reviewing the other possible options when he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned around to find Kary looming over him.
He had to crane his neck to look up, meeting her eye to tit.
"Alchemist." She had her hands placed on her hips. And had her arms crossed over her belly. And had her arms crossed under her breasts. "I find myself unsatisfied after Diana felt it necessary to drag me away from battle."
"Okay?" The woman continued to loom over him for several long seconds after he acknowledged her. "Do you... Want me to do something about it?"
She leaned down, a smile on her lips that was somewhere between hungry and predatory.
"Alright, fine." He had some place he needed to go, anyway. "We'll have to travel either through teleportation or flight, which would you prefer?"
Kary got down on one knee and placed a pair of her hands on Alchemist's shoulders.
"I want that dragonride, Alchemist."
-----
She got that dragonride.
He'd taken her to the foul, nasty prisons under the Irithyll city and they'd carved their way through the monsters there until they found an exposed ledge with a mountain visible in the distance. Seated at the edge of the ledge (Hah!) had been a long-limbed humanoid corpse with the head of a dragon.
That had apparently been important but it was something neither she nor Diana had paid any attention to at the time.
There were other experiments here. That were trying to kill them. The women had dealt with those instead.
Upon finding that little landmark, Alchemist had pointed at a distant mountain.
It was distant. And a mountain.
Until he gave her a set of binoculars and she shrunk down to use them properly.
The distant mountain was the corpse of an absolutely massive dragon, draped over a mountain.
One of the Arch-Dragons, perhaps? Creatures from the primordial ages of this decaying world that were so intrinsically immortal that, even beheaded, they would continue to live and act as though they were unharmed?
What could have fully killed such a thing, she had no idea.
Regardless of whether it was an arch-dragon or one of their more mortal descendants, that was apparently their destination.
"Alright." Alchemist grumbled towards her while he paced the ledge for a second before transforming into a dragon. "Get on."
"Are you sure?" He wasn't one of the spiny kinds of dragons, and he only had one set of horns on his head flaring backwards. Underneath of his armor, he was actually very sleek. "I understand it usually takes a few tries before a dragon can give a proper ride. And harnesses are often involved."
"...I swear, I swear you're doing this on purpose." The dragon probably turned an unimpressed glare her way. She couldn't see through the visor, unfortunately. "Either get on or I'm teleporting us instead."
"But this body is so much softer than my real one!" Kary whined as she walked up to the armored dragon's side. "It'll get so sore with how dragons fly!"
"Alright." Alchemist turned to her. "That's it."
Kary shrieked when he wrapped his claws around her, then began laughing when he pulled her against his breastplate and launched himself over the side of the cliff!
"You are doing this on purpose." The dragon grumbled once he got set into a solid rhythm. "Aren't you?"
"Maybe!" She laughed and grinned at his disgruntled grunt.
"It's almost as fun as fighting!"
-----
Their approach towards Archdragon Peak was interrupted as they neared their destination.
A great wyvern, its scales the same gray as the massive dead dragon around the mountain, attempted to intercept them!
Alchemist pulled his wings in to his sides and rolled to the side when he felt a great shadow try to overtake him, barely avoiding the massive jaws, filled with fire and fang.
His wings flared back out as he descended at speed, pulling him out of a dive. He had to twist and turn his long neck to try and see around him, catching a glimpse of not one, but two massive, ancient Wyverns trying to rip him from their sky.
"Hahah!" Kary squealed in his grip. "This is so exciting!"
"For you." He growled down at her as one of the wyverns closed in, great gouts of fire pouring from its mouth.
It fell back when Flare exploded in its already open mouth, a shriek of fury and pain filling the air.
It wasn't dead, though.
Alchemist didn't flap his wings to rise higher, no. He teleported instead. Reappearing several hundred meters higher above his former position and well above the wyvern that was trying to eat him!
He growled audibly as he tried to think, trying to figure out how he was supposed to handle his first aerieal dogfight against things that were bigger and meaner than him.
All while Kary was giggling and squirming in his grip like some kind of demented child.
Force. That's all these animals understood, he could respond in kind.
The wyvern below was nearly knocked from the air when it was engulfed in a series of sixteen explosions of black light, falling drastically before it managed to right itself.
The second series of explosions proved far too much for it.
~~ Enemy Defeated: Ancient Wyvern~~
~~ Experience + 87500~~
~~ GP + 175000 ~~
~~ Obtained Items: Titanite Chunk X12, Titanite Scale X6, Twinkling Titanite X6~~
~~ Congratulations! You have reached- ~~
The window automatically closed as he was consumed in the flames from the other Wyvern.
~~ HP+ 774! ~~
~~ Perk Activated: Kar'Yashlan's Compassion - Fire Resistance + 50%, All stats + 10% ~~
He teleported higher into the air again, ignoring the smell of Kary's smouldering toga.
He could repair that later.
The world turned red and the very air screamed!
Kary's laughter came to a sudden and very surprising stop...
As he cast Ultima on the great, stone like beast below.
~~ Enemy Defeated: Ancient Wyvern~~
~~ Experience + 87500~~
~~ GP + 175000 ~~
~~ Obtained Items: Titanite Chunk X12, Titanite Scale X6, Twinkling Titanite X6~~
"That spell..." Kary mumbled against his arm, staring wide-eyed at the falling remains of the beast.
Most of it had just been... Deleted, from reality.
"You really are just full of surprises, aren't you?" Kary stopped squirming in his grip, letting out a long, relaxed groan in his arms.
He didn't have an answer for her. Honestly, he hadn't even been intending on letting her see that spell at all.
The flames... Hadn't harmed him at all, but they'd surprised him.
The wyverns, even if he'd been intending on fighting them, he'd been planning on doing it in a specific arena and in the shape of a human. But it seemed that acting beyond the boundaries of the game came with risks beyond the game as well.
The rest of the flight towards Archdragon Peak, towards the Nameless King, was thankfully very silent.
AN/ Until we get back to DC, I'll be updating this a little more quickly
You can all expect another chapter come Wednesday/Thursday.
