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Priscilla     Hopefully, this can be the last return to this godforsaken forest for a while. It seems that getting rid of Alvina didn't do much to improve it. Unlike a convenent BBEG, the grey cat's disappearance hadn't been followed by thousands of years of old and evil growth disappearing and sunshine returning through the canopy where all the monsters have gone home. Now there's just nobody to direct them, which is a double edged sword, all things considered.

    That, and probably a lack of human assassins. At what stage of the chase the others must have been waiting, is hard to say, and probably irrelevant. Everything else here is an ecosystem --entrenched in its cycle of life badness by now-- where as anyone with their wits about them has the option to leave the eternally dark, strange, and oddly cold 'Garden' and never come back. Those would be smart guys.

    There's still one guy who has a reason to go past the edge of the trees though, at least for one day. The guy who the whole deal had been struck with. Delete cat, acquire dog, and people can go on without knowing. This time, it's almost a formality, as Artorias is twice everyone's size, wearing several times their weight in armour, has an embossed shield like the front side of a tank, and a divine sword as the comparable gun barrel, but for some reason known only to her, Priscilla had insisted somebody be around to spot.

    Another reason the Darkroot Garden is rarely troubled becomes, retroactively, extremely obvious the second he has to clank into the tree line. The vegetation is such incredible garbage that only a human would really be able to navigate around as well as they did last time. Thus begins the initially patient game of trying to stoop under branches, duck vines, and squeeze around trees, and the associated betting of how long the gigantic knight takes to get sick of it and Gilgasmash through.
Guest Psyber     Psyber is actually, legitimately, not fucking around today.

    The half-angel is here with a World War 2 flamethrower strapped to his back. This equates to a giant backpack filled with semi-gelatinous, highly flammable fluid with a hose leading to a nozzle with a flame at the front.

    Fortunately for most present, he's not just indiscriminately firing into the vegetation yet. But he definitely looks pretty prepared to start some pyromancies of his own.
Zero Kiryu "I hate this place." Zero complains Darkroot Garden is in many ways the worst place he has ever been, which /includes/ the godforsaken viper pit that he considers Kuran Manor to be. It has the same sort of terrible scent to it, and the creatures that live within it are no less predatory than the human-like wraiths who stalk Kuran Manor. One supposes that he might as well have complained about this whole /world/, which is an absolute cesspit of predatory entities in and of itself. At least, that's the impression he's gotten from his extremely limited exposure.

For the time being, he doesn't have any weapons out, though Bloody Rose is ever close at hand. He lingers on one side of the colossal Artorias, keeping an eye on his mental radar. Navigating this place at normal size was reasonable. Doing it with Bloody Rose's vine-wolf would've been nearly impossible except in specific locations.

On the whole, this...

Is just remarkably inconvenient.

What's worse is that Zero is still suffering some of the effects of being in a suicide bomb's radius the last time he was here. In the span of time he's been here, his consumption of pills has increased by a factor of about three.

He is, in fact, picking at a packet of pills right now. That's what fills his hands instead of Bloody Rose.

"Is your companion as large as you are?" He asks Artorias.
Tomoe Hopoefully nothing will go wrong, hopefully this will be the last time that she has to come to this godforsaken forest, well for a while she'll never get away fromt his fully and she knows it. One way or anothere she's tied her self to this land and what goes on here for good or ill. She moves along keeping her gear ready s she goes and keeping tabs with her comrades and notices that Pysber is not fucking around today and she's not going to either. She's praying the Garbage cat is no longer a problem, maybe the other things in the forest got the message about it's behaviour which was be a shit and get hit. There's not much more that could be said about that she thought and she moved on still ready for further trouble from the forest or other things that might be lurking in here.
Yuuki Kuran     All of that talk, of posturing and shoving and verbal fisticuffs. All that effort, to show... Nothing. The forest wasn't cleaned, merely let off its leash.

    It reminded her of her brother, and the Council.

    And so she became more like those parts of Kaname that she least loved, those parts that scared her, because it served as a mirror to reflect those parts deep within herself that she feared.

    But, now, they had another task - to escort the Knight Artorias.

    She didn't have to LIKE being here, though. "I believe they said Sif was... rather large? But we'll have to find the grove, first. Does anyone know the way? Do you, Sir Artorias?"
Priscilla     "Sif is-" a bonk of a dark silver helmet on a tree branch cuts Artorias off, where he then has to twist and scrape past a set of young trees that had grown enmeshed together at chest level, snagging on his blue cloak. "-well, he was, at least, a strong and clever companion. I know not what sort of dogs you are used to, but he is a grey wolf of the mountains, none of which are small or weak. I imagine he must have grown some, if the old boy extended his lifespan so." Artorias finishes proudly, but without definite answer.

    At least, all his bashing, crunching, and snapping of small plants in some bid to be weirdly and inappropriately respectful of this dank hellhole, seems to be keeping most of the critters away. Ambulatory trees waddle off in the far distance, and what had appeared to be a low ridge slides sideways for fifteen solid seconds before revealing a tail tip and disappearing. Something green and with too many flopping limbs wiggles down a hole in the ground like a glitchy ragdoll.

    It doesn't seem to stop all of them though. Artorias steps on one of the frog rays Tomoe had before, and promptly crunches the life out of it with his weight. The sting reaction is all but automatic, but it snaps in half on his preposterous greatshield, which had somehow shifted into the way without obvious effort. He continues conversationally. "Do I know the way to my own grave? I'm afraid not! Inconvenient as it may be, I appreciate its metaphorical significance. Nevertheless, one would assume it would be the deepest, most easily defended path." A little soul wisp rises off the forest floor. Someone might have forgotten that Priscilla isn't unique in doing that, and be forgiven.

    He pays more attention to Psyber than the critter he'd just heel crushed, watching the fuel tank bobble, if only obvious by the direction the dark slit in his cowl points, and the crunch of an old branch against his distracted shoulder. "If I may ask, what is that for?"
Guest Psyber     Psyber mostly strolls along and listens to Artorias as he talks. He's been relatively content to just chill tonight, bringing his big flamethrower. He even lit a cigarette with the pilot light and puffed it as they walked. It's when Artorias actually directly asks him about it that he explains.

    "In my world, most people don't have the ability to learn Sorceries, Miracles, or even Pyromancies." He explains to the knight, "So they invent alternatives. Things that can do similar functions, but work for anyone. This is sort of like..." Psyber pauses to think of how to explain it.

    "Well it's like a portable way for the average person to use Pyromancies. Watch." Psyber brings up the hose-gun and fires it into the jungle ahead of them, using the stream of fire to burn and scorch a hole in the forest so that Artorias has a bit more clearance as he watches.

    "See? Humans invent things to account for a lack of magic."
Zero Kiryu "If he's proportionately the size of a large dog relative to him," Zero jerks his head towards Artorias, "then there aren't that many paths he could use through here that easily. Not without knocking things over along the way." He'd think that such a path would be beyond obvious, but it's really not. He never noticed a path that looked as if it would accommodate a great monstrous ... dog? Wolf? He can't recall, and it isn't a matter he feels the need to question in greater detail.

A glance is cast towards Psyber, and the flamethrower he's carrying.

Really, he'd just assumed it was another of his usual shenanigans. Just more tailored to a situation where everything in a forest is liable to kill you, and "everything" happens to include beastly animals and animate trees. Both reasonably addressed with fire.

Zero pockets his pack of pills, frowning a little. He moves over alongside Yuuki, his mental radar turning pointedly in her direction. She can probably /feel/ it happening. He's trying to figure out what the hell is going on with her right now.

"Do we just want to start clearing a path outright?" He asks Psyber, nodding towards the trail left by the flamethrower.
Tomoe Tomoe is hoping nothing will go wrong with this escort mission. She is happy she's got osme very reliable people with her today, and it's not thatbut she also takes a moment to try and call out a warning. It's not needed as Artorias cuts the things down without missing a beat.

"IT might take a bit and it's a funny way to think about it that way but we'll get your there and I think we're about to make your friend's day with you shoing up."

She's n a buit better spirits now from their companion's humour about the situation.

"Nice flamer, by the way Pysber looks old though but you clearly taken good care of it."
Priscilla     "The good man has a point." says Artorias. It's a mildly odd choice of words, considering he doesn't actually sound much (physically) older than Zero, just way bigger and more echoey. "If we see any, we'll certainly know where. Or else, might that other old beast still be around? I hope not, even were I to feel pride for it." Without explaining himself, he settles for pushing great boughs over his head with his shield, which becomes an umbrella against an ensuing shower of hissing poison flakes.

    Psyber mostly gets the feeling the Abysswalker is watching him through the (still kind of creepy) feeling of his gaze on his back, and the occasional clicking of his mail. "Magic, one could do without, but it's a sad thing to hear of humans so separate from the deeds of their gods. Faith is a fragile thing, and easily crushed or turned bitter. Though, I enjoy seeing how the old legends have changed over all these years, and how they've stayed the same after scattering to so many lands and coming back together once again. It's a great thing you've done here, that any can see the truth of the Lords with their own eyes."

    When Psyber fires off the flamethrower, the amount of plant matter that is torched into acrid, searing hot flame is almost slightly less than the amount of everything else that escapes the site. Burning away a swath of the choking green is part charring it to coal, and part scaring away the green that can move on its own, the degree of which lies right in plain sight being disconcerting.

    Oddly, Artorias reacts with a reflexively outreached gauntlet, as if to grab Psyber by the shoulder and yank him back. The knight's hand pauses, and his fingers twist into a fist, as he lowers it back down and grips his shield properly. "Pray, just . . . be careful with that. However unpleasant this forest is, if anything is still left beneath it, I fear it is immeasurably worse. If no beasts flee the fire, it would be best to steer away from whence it is cast. If anything is left of the Royal Garden, it is best not disturbed."
Yuuki Kuran     Artorias is like a walking testament to this world's 'state'. Effortless power, strength, larger than life. And...

    Archaic to a T. Well, it was something she found comfortingly familiar, as the Kuran Princess tried to keep from being beaned by branches over and over. Psyber neatly solves THAT problem, though, with the application of CIVILIZATION.

    "Technology is amazing. But, at the same time, I would hesitate to try and bring this whole forest to heel with it - there has already been so much blood shed over the changes wrought by the hands of outsiders. I would rather Priscilla and the people of Lordran make decisions for themselves?"

    To Zero, Yuuki gives a pensive look. "Perhaps we can find Sif through a process of elimination - there's so many monsters around here, perhaps if we went towards a clearing, we would find the grave? Sif would keep that place empty of the... incidental creatures? That could be a good way to look."
Guest Psyber     "No, I agree with you guys. I'm not here to try to fight the whole forest with it," Psyber concedes to the group as he rests the flame nuzzle over one shoulder, pilot light hanging above his head as he goes, "I just brought it along to deal with things that got directly in our way."

    He has no intent to try to take the Darkroot Garden. Nor any real desire. He, as he said, mostly has the motivation to just make life easier and make them less appealing to attack by virtue of having a big backpack full of pyromancy on his back.

    "Hopefully just that much is enough to encourage some cooperation for as long as we're here. I don't really want to use it much more than necessary." He comments in reply to Zero.
Zero Kiryu "Other old beast?" Zero wonders aloud. He presumes that Artorias is speaking of Alvina, but why would he be? In the absence of a corpse though, he's inclined to believe the nasty old cat survived. He was too preoccupied with dealing with the assassin to really be involved in her apparent death, but her particular power seemed well-disposed to just cutting and running if she needed to.

"Royal Garden... The assassin I killed spoke of something similar. What happened here?"

The hunter nods towards Psyber in reply to the subject of clearcutting the place, and pauses in answer to Yuuki's suggestion. They might have to find it the hard way, but he supposes it's not a /bad/ idea. The focus that his radar seemed to have on Yuuki swings around to sweep the surroundings, seeking patches in the thick presence of predators that lingers in this place like a fine layer of dust.
Tomoe Tomoe doesn't talk much for a moment as she keeps up with the Abysswalker, and is thinking about the nature of magic here and her self and her world's utter lack of it. It was an odd thing as she thinks about it Psyber fires the flamethrowner and she watches the plaqnts go up she feels nosense of lose she has little love for the things in this forest which have trie to kill her. She then understands.

"It could be holding worse things back? I see."

She keeps moving looing to Pysber, Zero and Yuuki along witht he odd glance to Artorias and carruies on.

"Humm I don't know much of the history of this place myself and I'm finding myself curious as well."
Priscilla     Artorias reacts to Zero as if he'd only just noticed himself talking. "Ah. A guardian of the old sanctuary. It was an effort of all four of us, to prevent the unsavoury from entering once the Gardens were threatened, and then from leaving when the township fell. It is most likely long since gone by now, if all this has grown so." he remarks, tugging aside a soda can's width of vines, one of which sprouts many legs and escapes.

    "Few beasts are friends with fire. It is primal fear, for fire burns them, and they cannot keep it at bay by any means, as their fangs and claws avail them nothing. It only us, who consider ourselves so brilliant, that forget to fear Flame, once we mistakenly believe we have mastered it." The implied capital letter sneaks in there almost unnoticed.

    Eventually, trudging through the blackened trail left by the weaponized fuel leads to a razor sharp cliff edge, staring across from another, where the ground looks like it was carved away by a ten mile long chisel, leading into pure, vertical blackness that is totally unnatural for a forest of any description. The ground is almost solid rock, and scuffing the moss reveals old, corroded seams. "And it is They who forget to fear it, for their desire of it is so strong that it borders hatred, and would partake of it even if it is the death of us both."

    Artorias trails off as he stops to stare at the deep, dark chasm below, balancing his truck-like weight on an alarmingly fragile outcropping of rock, at an angle like an eagle preparing to dive down from a branch. He stops. And he stares. And he stares. The rumble of the waterfall in the distance, as the only real landmark, seems to dull down to a whisper, as a cold, echoing wind passes unseasonably through the trees, and silences the hissing and burbling within them. Artorias reaches for something at his neck, and then clasps empty air, before finally he turns away, shaking his head as if to clear a reverberating noise. "It's louder than I remember." he adds.

    A little episode like that might be why Priscilla wanted people to chaperone him. He continues easily enough from where he left off, however. "Though they call it the Darkroot now, many centuries ago, these were the royal gardens of Oolacile. They were the first humans to truly settle Lordran, and build a nation of their own, and I am afraid those that have come after have been pale imitations. They possessed . . . a unique understanding of sorcery. Far diverged from its roots in Seath's revelations, which sorcerers liberally copy from today. It was . . . gentle. They. Were gentle. They kept to themselves, tended gardens and orchards, tamed their creatures and built their golems. They befriended the giants and the things of the woods, and lived in peace."

    "They didn't deserve this." he then /wildly/ sways off tone again. "As far as I can tell, they are all but forgotten today. I believe I may have been the last to ever see that township, far gone as it was. I miss seeing it, as a work of green at the foot of mighty Anor Londo, but I would rather see this dark tangle than what became of it. Growing on these stones, the forest has a right to hate. The cat had her right to think little of us. To think little of me. After I failed them."

    It's a bit of a jump-worthy moment when the knight finally lifts his sword, and sharply sends the twelve foot length through a cleaming arc that cleaves through a small house of knotted trees in the way. Apparently, he got sick of the vegetation. Might also still be a little crazy.
Guest Psyber     "If this used to be somewhere else, somewhere more peaceful, it explains how Sif got here in the first place," Psyber ponders to himself as he walks along with Artorias. He somewhat waxes melancholy as they stroll along.

    "It wasn't that he came here, it was that he never left. Your grave was in this Oolacile and Sif has simply been here the entire time." Psyber comes to such a conclusion, scratching the underside of his chin, "Your grave was the one place the Garden could not encroach upon, for fear of your guardian."

    He flinches a bit and raises an arm defensively as Artorias cuts his path through the vegetation, not expecting the moment when he finally snapped and got sick of all the vegetation.
Zero Kiryu When Artorias approaches the edge of the cliff and peers down below, Zero Kiryu conspiciously stays way the hell away from it. Relatively speaking, he's close enough that he could probably use Bloody Rose to drag the titanic knight back but-- but he doesn't /want/ to be over there. Doesn't want to hear the things that Artorias is hearing. The gnawing demand for the lives of other creatures is already strong enough in his own mind. He spends every waking moment fighting it, and many other aspects of his current biology. It makes him cranky enough without adding to it with external gnawings.

"Everything dies," He answers, "even if it doesn't deserve to."

It's a thin answer, but summarizes Zero's feelings on the subject. But he doesn't really understand what happened here, or why Artorias considers it all so tragic or galling. He wasn't there, and it wasn't his failure. There are things he could use as a prop to relate with it, but...

Really, he's not thinking about it much just now.

Zero makes a noise of acknowledgement in answer to Psyber's suggestion. He says, "That seems likely. I can feel no particular gap in the predators here. Either we are not near our destination, or the destination itself is not as clear as we expect it to be."

He pauses as the titanic blade cleaves through the growth at their fore.

"Was she always a cat?" He asks. It's the first time he's referred to Alvina as a "person" and not an "it" since their first encounter.
Yuuki Kuran     Yuuki is not interested in the BLACK ENDLESS ABYSS OF AWFUL YAWNING EMPTINESS THAT LEADS DOWN INTO THE ENDLESS DARK.

    "A place of flowers, a peaceful garden... Became this?"

    Yuuki looks crestfallen at that. Someplace quiet and peaceful and beautiful got trashed and then sat upon by Garbage Catte and became /this/ shitted up with monsters? It was so depressing!

    And Yuuki was just fine being depressed a few dozen paces shy of the cliff edge even as Artorias leeeeeaned over.

    Don'tjumpdon'tjumpdon'tjumppppp-phew

    Yuuki looks downright relieved when Artorias just Buster Slashes the foliage through. "Do you know the way then, now?"
Tomoe Tomoe says "I see so you were the guards and gate keepers of this place then back in that time? It really has gone to seed in a way I'd not have once thought possible.

"There's a saying back home play with fire and you get burned. I can see where your coming from it. The moment you stop respecting it and what it can do is the moment you end up failing and getting burned."

She listens to Atroias in more depth as they move deeper into the place and soon she more of this plce and leanrs more of the history.

"It...whas not the sort of situation I'm used to dealing with I must be honest I'll be fine and that's what I was wondering too. Was she something else before?
Priscilla     "It is entirely possible." Artorias says with a strenuously pained tone. "Even if we are so close now, I wish to think of it as little as possible." At Zero, his plated shoulders click, in something that might be like a shrug, but fast enough that it might be a single beat of silent, subdued laughter. "Is that not close to the credo our queen has championed now? That death visits us all, regardless of our past actions, and that all we can do is to defeat it as it comes? It is a philosophy that appeals to all those forsaken by the lands of humans, beyond Lodran, 'pilgrims' even though they are called. I never imagined that, one day, someone would find the answer that death lies in cause and effect, a satisfactory one."

    Artorias pauses after mowing down another trailer house sized growrth of greenery, where the blue, luminous arc of his sword stops, and looks over at Zero as if the question were more interesting than the preceding. "Yes. More than she was now. The queen's pet, I believe. All creatures grow great and powerful and long lived as they claim souls, but Alvina was something different. Cats are rare animals, and rarer still that they grow old. It is said that when one lives beyond a certain age, it is reborn as something new."

    He then shakes his head forlorly at Yuuki. "Flowers die quickly when untended. When the soil becomes fear and the air becomes envy, it is only to be expected that beauty and gentility is forgotten, just as it is natural that everything which survives here is brutal, insidious and patient."

    "The men and women of the Great Swamp have some saying similar." Artorias then says to Tomoe, turning his back and forging ahead once more. "Passed down from a Witch of Izalith, I've heard. If you wish to master Flame, you must always fear it, for when you cease to fear it, it will consume you. The idiom is perhaps universal, but of special preciousness to practitioners of pyromancy, who wield powers so utterly unsuited to humans."

    The procession continues. Artorias is a great big fat tank of a guy, and the flamethrower keeps everything at a great distance, for long enough stretches between firing that it can only be assumed that the forest critters have memorized it, or communicated it somehow. The vines of Bloody Rose have only a few places to prod, which are quickly emptied. The mental radar, finally starts to clear, as a colossal gateway appears distantly ahead, no longer a part of any true building, but with walls enough to keep the casual explorer out.

    That is to say, it clears of tangible threats. Zero eventually starts to get the aggravating sense of something else being there, but finds nothing for no trick of stealth, illusion or deception. Around the cliffs, the chasms, and the lower reaches, where the sun fails to penetrate at all, it's like something gathers all around the sheer stone, like a mob of bodies all clambering over one another in a bid to scrabble over an impossible wall, however clearly nothing actually exists, which he can confirm with his own eyes, ears and nose.
Guest Psyber     Psyber now has the nozzle of the flamethrowing hanging from the pack. It's safely stored, but easily accessed if a threat arises. He instead keeps both his hands in his pockets as they go. It's partly out of respect for Priscilla's wishes and the somber mood of the journey that he's not doing any of his usual disarmingly clown-like shenanigans.

    He looks over towards Zero, "This place is basically universally hostile," Psyber confirms with him, eyes glowing a faint red color as he moves, "I really hate it here, to be honest. I'd like to get Sif, leave, and then never come back." He admits to the general party present.

    The half-angel looks to Artorias and asks, "I don't think I ever heard the story of how you two were separated in the first place. You and Sif, I mean. I know it happened on your last trip into the Abyss, but beyond that I don't think I've heard the specifics." He then seems to consider, "And where did you find Sif, anyway? I've never seen another wolf here quite like it."

    This is discounting Dark Souls 3 and the wolves with the ability to use Reppukens.
Zero Kiryu "I don't know." Zero admits with a faint shrug of his own. He is less familiar with Priscilla's demeanor than he probably /should/ be. He knows of her, and finds little enough about her to be offended about. But regarding the philosophy of life and death, he can recall dealing with her very little. Perhaps, he decides, that should be amended. But there is a different reason for his own disposition towards life, and death, and when it inevitably comes. He fishes in his pockets.

What might have been a sigh escapes the hunter at Artorias's explanation of Alvina's origins. He inclines his head slightly, and says, "I can't say that I like the idea of hunting down someone's pet cat, but I've never seen a pet cat become a politicking schemer living in a monster's nest before now."

"She might have been better off if she had never grown strong, but the same might be said of me."

"The predators are thinning. I think we can assume we've arrived... there's something else here, but I'm not sure it's corporeal." He advises, flatly.

Zero takes Bloody Rose properly to hand, holding it loosely to one side. He nods towards Psyber, "This place feels like a monster den no matter where I go. It's an awfully bleak place."

A question passes through Zero's mind as he advances towards the front of the group, investigating the 'empty' spot. If Alvina changed from housecat to something... /else/, to what she /was/, what would have become of Artorias's companion? And what would he want done about it if the creature was just another monster?
Tomoe Tomoe says "It's a thing to keep in mind when dealing with fire or other things like it. The moment it's a toy with it not respecting or fearing it and thenyou end up paying for it."

She is paying a good dela of attention as they move on and she'll add the odd flame spell of her own to Pysber's flamethrower. Yet not some much that she slows them down with her own casting the procession contiunes on. She's not going to think she's safe until the job's finished and she's left this world for the moment ot at least the forest she does look about for amoment.

"I'm hoping once we reach Sif soon myself."

She looks to Zero for a moment then back to Artorias.

"Not alone could it be Sif?"
Yuuki Kuran     Yuuki didn't know Priscilla herself that well, and that learning process was a project she had wanted to continue - the reason she had taken on more of the jobs within Lordran than before. The reason she had brought Zero was beause on some level she very much respected the world in its horrors and beauty. He was her token placed forward, her champion, a show of strength and arms to match the world in its own way.

    The allegory of fire is utterly lost on Yuuki, becuase she was more like a moth - or butterfly - to flame herself, and trucked more in oblique references to time, blood, darkness, and predatory natures. Fire, to her, was something comforting, like the crackle of woodfire and roasting marshmallows in winter.

    "Do you think so, Ser Artorias?"

    Her look is distant, her defenses low as she just sort of stares off into the middle distance. "That time and... souls, change a person? Cause a metamorphosis into something else?"
Priscilla     "It is a long one." Artorias replies to Psyber; tersely, but without malice. "You know it was the duty I took upon myself as a Knight of Gwyn, to walk that nowhere, though it be the anathema of the gods. I forged my Covenant, with Them, and for it I was awarded my title, and the dark silver that would aid me, for no other of the Age of Fire could walk where I walked. You know that dear Sif was my companion in those times, and that we waged war upon the Dark, and those that allied themselves to it."

    "With thus known, you should, likewise, know my intent when I say that the last I saw of him is when we met the Father of Man. You've met him too, haven't you? Though you may be only half yourself, even you must have felt that thing's nature. I cannot possibly describe its hunger, its . . . want, otherwise. The simple fact is that I was mistaken. The task would perhaps be barely possible by itself, but I took along Sif, still young and learning the paths of the Abyss."

    "Despite my oaths, my idiocy compelled me to save him, at the cost of my divine protection, and though he fled free, I did not. I know not how long I wandered that blackness, in endless circles over the skeleton of the world. I clung to the hope that he may have somehow escaped on his own, where I was trapped, only able to evade Them, but I don't think I truly believed it until I was told of this. I know not who rescued him from the Abyss, but I owe them much."

    The sweet, sweet, crushingly tragic irony slides on by.

    As the group arrives at the gateway, Artorias presses his hand to the gigantic stone doors, seemingly transplanted out of a decrepit and weathered cliff, instead of nicely carved, save for a very worn crest. "Growing strong is the inevitable fate of those who survive. I am certain that she did her part, though whether it was bitterness of the fate of her masters, or compassion for the angry ghosts that remain, that eventually lead her to hunt men for sport, I do not know. Strength is not what corrupts, as much as growing used to it with time."

    He starts putting his back into pushing the gates. Even for someone as swole as he, several storeys of stone, embedded in feet of muck, are something that needs a little elbow grease. They grind open with all the eager readiness of a corpse's tightly curled fist. "People change, because they need to, or because they want to. I believe that no one, human, witch, giant, or god, changes only because they have lived. I have seen much, and I have yet to see time alter anyone beyond what they were always capable of, for good or ill. The few things in this world that can do such are to be reviled, and defeated wherever they appear."
Priscilla     This is certainly the right place. When the gates finally wedge themselves open, a vast, clear space is beyond, hemmed in by more natural walls than artificial ones, grown over with trees that abruptly stop in a near perfect circle around the area, through which a very quiet stream runs. Little more than thick grass and tiny white flowers exists in the wide band of space surrounding the natural center, where a hillock terminates in a truly prodigious grave marker, of what was once probably ancient Gothic design, but now is mostly a truck-sized slab of stone, covered in runes.

    All around the grave area are swords; scores, if not hundreds of them, point down in the earth as warrior's impromptu gravestones. A veritable sea of blades surrounds the grave, where one amongst them towers impossibly high, and this time, it is abundantly clear it's a silver copy of Artorias' own black blade. Anyone's logical question as to 'why is there a giant sword here' is answered swiftly when . . . well, no beating about it, Sif saunters out from behind the marker.

    What else is anyone going to mistake it for? It's a great grey wolf that is actually large/r/ than Artorias, having grown to the size of an elephant at the least. The thing is covered in criss-crossing scars, mostly around its legs and lower abdomen, from many, many sword blows, but it still manages to walk as if someone scaled a regular wolf up in total disregard of square motion law. Sif, as it can really be no other wolf, clamps his teeth around the hilt of the sword, and adroitly flips it into a /mouth grip/, apparently intending to fight with the titanic blade like that.

    He leaps at the door, achieving far too much air, and comes crashing down like an elephantine tiger. This would be more terrifying, if the animal didn't drop the sword halfway through, and divert course to land face first in Artorias, headbutting him with a snout the size of his also giant forearm. When all the loud clattering and clanking of Artorias wrestling with the giant dog subsides, the knight's laughter can be heard underneath it, as well as a kind of growling from the wolf that is both ferocious, and yet somehow almost purr-like.

    Artorias eventually manages to get his arm around the wolf's neck, and wrestles it into a sitting posture, then sits against it such as one resting against an old companion of a horse. "Would you believe me if I told you . . ."

    "Ariamis' last painting?"
Zero Kiryu Sometimes things that don't have anything to do with you, which are so far removed that you simply can't relate to them, still come to have a powerful meaning in the end. Zero Kiryu hasn't visited this world that many times all told, and his personal feelings on all of it have been blunt and brutal as the place itself. There was a monstrous cat that tripped his 'this is an actual real monster that needs to die even though it talks like a person' flags, although that creature had turned out to be little more than some long-dead human's pet cat. That was sad, in its own way.

He replaces Bloody Rose in his shoulder holster and moves over to stand next to Yuuki, one hand rising to rest at the back of her head and encourage her to watch what's happening. It's not necessary. In times gone by he would've done something similar to emphasize the importance of something going on, that she hadn't really bothered to pay any mind to.

Or maybe he'd have just called her useless, and pointed it out. The meaning behind the action is identical though-- a little forceful, a little friendly, and perhaps a little more abusive-seeming from the outside than it actually was. The way they'd always communicated, back at Cross Academy.

"Yuuki. You are a lot of things but between the wolf and the cat, any idiot can see which you are, and which you aren't."

"... Any idiot, that is, except maybe yourself." Zero withdraws his hand, and turns away. He's not in the mood to have Yuuki seeing him smiling, even a little. But it's hard not to. In this world and its endless brutality, teeming from one end to the other with monsters descended from men and animal alike, this one man and his companion emerged from what sounds like many trials as Themselves.

Themselves, and no one and nothing else. To the temperamental hunter, it is powerfully hopeful. Naturally he can't stand actually letting anybody realize it.
Guest Psyber     Psyber listens solemnly to Artorias as they move along, the half-angel nodding his head carefully. He seems to take in the words carefully, "I am familiar with Manus, yes. At one point, in the quest to save this world, I was forced to fight him alongside many others and tear the Dark Soul from him." Psyber admits to Artorias.

    "It was then that I first considered the possibility that you could be allowed to retire if someone else was able to walk the Darkness," He admits to her, hands kept in his pockets as he goes. He seems lost in his own frame of thought, considering the many choices before that one that had convinced him. Veridian Sunrise being the start of it all, forcing him on the endless quest to steem himself in darkness to try to innoculate himself to the poison of his scar.

    He gives Artorias no comment about who rescued Sif from the Abyss. It would merely complicate matters and confuse the situation.

    Eventually, he watches the wolf and the man. It brings memories of when Laine was more present and active back to him, and the particular bond those two share. The half-angel smiles a bit and looks at the two. Laine had only ever been quite that large once before, at the end of the world, but still! Fond memories.

    "Ariamis last painting? I think, some time, I might need more information about that."
Tomoe Tomoe tends to be quiet when she's in this world but she's often listening and learning. She thinks about everything that's said and isnt' sure /what/ to say. She has no real way to have experianced something on tht level even with her trip into the void previously. She walks on keeping an eye out for further trouble but there seems ot be one as Artorias and the party seem to near the end of their trip into the forest.

"I know how that is, I wouldn't think I'd be anything like I am now a few years ago. I'd have said back then you'd be insane to think I'd ever do something like that."

She walks along going quiet once more as they move and then she sees it sword graveyard. She looks from one to another nd then to the wlf , it seems they have found whom they seel at last.

"It's good we made it but what do you mean? Ariamis last painting?"