Lands of Gray ( A Dark Souls Story ) – Chapter 2

    “ No path..light, dark..answer..”, Knight Merloch lay quivering by the ashen bonfire at Cardinal Tower, apparently enchanted by a rather peculiar dream, “ Lord..of dark, our world.”. He seemed to be distressed, and the ornate hag staring intently at him from afar felt no need to rid him of his ailment. However, Merloch was struggling with something far more potent than a dream; his visions had started growing steadily more erratic ever since his ‘ demise ’ at the hands of the armored brute, and each time his fatigue would get the better of him these visions would resurface, as if vivid recollections off someone else’s eyes. “ Child, your eyes are yet to open still.. ”, Merloch awoke sweating, as those words gnawed through the darkness of his subconscious . He’d seen nothing he could place, but his mind had more questions than he could ever find answers to.

     He stared around him, the dancing flames of the bonfire casting deep shadows on the shattered walls of Cardinal Tower. “ What evil compels me to kill? Why do I not remember my past? “, his disdain echoed through the empty halls now littered with reanimated corpses, and the sheer silence right after chilled Merloch to the bone. There was nobody to answer him, such was the desolation choking the world around him, and who in their bright minds would spare an answer to an undead ? Merloch still refused to believe his own sight, but the truth is seldom swayed by petty disbelief. He had died atop Cardinal Fort, and his corpse had been denied rest, bound to live on by the curse of the Mark. Merloch shed an indignant look at the hag now hiding from his gaze, he needed more answers.

     Melentia, the decrepit old hag, had told him naught he hadn’t surmised as such. However, she had given him clues as to the origins of the Giant corpses taken root across his paths. “ They say these trees grew from the remains of the Giants. ”, she’d said, “ From each carcass sprouted new life, growing into what ye see now. ” . However, Merloch wouldn’t trust her yet, for she was no mere mortal being. She’d bargained more than what our ill-fated Knight could offer, and he’d felt dishonored by her pestilent cry of ridicule. So much so that he unsheathed his crackling longsword and drew it to her throat, Knight Merloch would not take insult so lightly. She did not cower, nor did she betray any signs of fear. Far from it, she had laughed at his tomfoolery, and bade him sit by the bonfire. As he had, albeit reluctantly, he felt a tad light-headed, and noticed that he’d been bleeding from the gash on his chest. “ Ah deary, don’t look so ghastly. It’s all meant to be for the likes of ye. ”, had giggled the hag, “ Ye’ll die more than ye can ever dream of, but y’can’t really stay dead now can ye ? The blessed dream won’t let ye go.”

      Merloch had sat there as still as the dead, ironically, letting the echoing laughter settle down before asking Melentia the very question his Herald had turned away from. “ Why me ? ”, the Knight had choked as he struggled to hold back tears. He was a knight solely in name, and a name that he had no recollection of at that. For all he knew, he was nothing but a redundant existence doomed by the very world he’d been tasked to rule. Bloodied tears ran across his face, scalding his flesh, but Merloch had felt no pain. Melentia’s unfazed laughter kept ringing in Merloch’s ears even now as he walked down the long path back to the golden seaside, back to his Herald. She gave him a bewildering sense of comfort, but he feared this emerald cloaked beauty. She was far too generous with her words, far too affectionate to one as devoid of faith as himself. And, he could tell, she withheld a great many secrets from him. She had promised him Monarchy over this land, she’d sworn herself to him, but she betrayed a smidgen of doubt over Merloch’s intentions. He’d confront her, Merloch thought, and strode off through the darkened tunnel past the ‘ Forest of A Hundred Peasants ’, as he’d lovingly named it. “ Soldiers that wield mere sword hilts are no soldiers at all, but peasants fit only to scrape the dirt off their own carcasses. ”, he’d said of the undead that had stood in his way to Cardinal Tower. They wore armor befitting foot-soldiers, yet their movements were strangely animalistic. Now, an undead himself, Merloch regarded these findings with a calm curiosity.

     As he approached the cliff-side, he spotted another creature he had not given any notice to before, a bulky undead sitting down at the gates to a shabby little hut of sorts. This undead wore garments far too different from the regular mobs Merloch had relentlessly cut down, this required more than a little agility to take down. He approached the hut stealthily, taking care to duck behind the large boulders on the way to the Herald’s bonfire. Close to the undead, Merloch searched his torn satchel for anything he could use to get its attention, “ Glow pebble, glow rock,  Estus jar, wood bomb, arrows…not much to make use of from this distance. ”. He decided on throwing a glow pebble at the undead, for these he had found in abundance from the armor of the undead he’d slain. True, these glow rocks and pebbles seemed to break easily and the dust had a similar rejuvenating effect as the sweetened water he’d found earlier, but losing a pebble or two wouldn’t cost him as much as underestimating this hulking undead certainly would.

     Merloch tossed a glow pebble from behind a boulder, and listened for any groan that would indicate a course of action. None came, odd enough, and he peaked out to the undead’s refuge. It had the glow pebble in it’s hand, and was shining the darn thing with what seemed to be the hem of an apron. All but assured safety, Merloch came out of hiding and took slow strides towards this strange undead. It did not move even as it stared him in the eye, neither having any discernible eyes to even bother discussing over jolly supper. Instead, the undead simply lowered its gaze and continued to shine the glow pebble, as if reliving old interest from a life steadily forsaken. Merloch drew his longsword yet again, hoping to find something worth this trouble , and the sound of steel seemed to catch his companion’s ear. The undead stared at him rather sadly, and let out a baritone that caught Merloch quite by surprise, “ Who are you ? ”.

      The Knight lay silent, rather confused at this sudden turn of events. Before he could answer, this curious undead spoke again, “ Oh, it doesn’t matter, just help me open this door. I packed my tools in here, seeing it was vacant… ” . There was a touch of dismay in its voice now, “ ..but now somebody’s gone and locked the door. ”. Merloch realized that this was a harmless blacksmith, and it made him laugh at his own caution earlier. He meant to strike a conversation with the smith, maybe he’d indeed get more answers than Melentia had to offer, but something struck him as being too odd. Was this still a dream, or had he actually awoken after his supposed ‘ demise ’ ? He’d slaughtered undead by the dozen, and yet none of them had appeared as the smith was now. Merloch was caught in a daze yet again, and he wondered what exactly was the curse of the Mark he bore on his back, and the burden that he’d yet to carry. He looked to the Herald, twirling her feet by the bonfire, and there was silence between the three beings, even as the waves broke through the light on the horizon. The dream bore fruit still.