Everyone’s Dead in Dark Souls

Last time on Decently Drifting Dark Souls, we stabbed a skeleton in the dick!  Yeah, yeah, I know, progress through the game, getting ever closer to saving the world, all that stuff that’s kind of important too, but I don’t know that there’s anything else we got that’s ever going to beat stabbing a skeleton in the dick.  If you ever have the chance to try that, I would highly recommend it.

Anyways, we kicked some bony butt, flipped some switches, ran across a bridge, then passed through a fog gate.  That’s where we left off last time.

The gate opens us into a big ol’ dark catacomb.  Aside from the candles keeping the wall corpses warm, I can’t see very far ahead of me.  I hug the wall to my right, then start walking along.

Before long, I spot an opening in the wall.  An arrow flies out of it and strikes me in the shoulder, to make sure I noticed.  Now, the fact that there’s something in there that needs killing would normally be motivation enough, but the developers of the game saw fit to sweeten the deal by highlighting that there’s treasure inside.  There’s a path leading out from here, so this is definitely a side trip, but I think I’ve earned myself a brief detour.

I head in the door, than take a brief drop.  Immediately, I’m set upon by a few skeletons, one right behind me already swinging his sword, two more dropping arrows at me.  I block the blade, but take two arrows in the back. Obviously this isn’t a situation that can continue, so I roll out of the way.  The swordsman follows me, as does another arrow, both of which I block.  I pierce through the skeleton before me twice, taking another arrow as I do, then I book it for the staircase on the other side of the room.

The staircase ends up in a long, wide, dark hallway with a statue of some sort at the end of it.  He’s hidden in the darkness at first, but partway through is a large skeleton.  I don’t even stop as he strides forth, piercing him in the ankle before leaping away from his counter attack.

I’m unsure as to how damaging he might be, and don’t particularly want to test his power out.  He’s not strong enough to pose any threat of getting past my guard, however.  At the same time, I counterjab into him several times and barely chip away at his life.  He’s got some strong defenses, at the very least.  We might be in for a drawn-out fight.

I don’t have the patience for that right now.  I hit him in the face with a fireball.  He topples into a pile of bones.

There’s a casket set before a statue of a mother with her child.  Inside the casket is a corpse with the Darkmoon Séance Ring, which lets me equip more spells.  The ring’s description claims that it’s worn by followers of the deity Gwyndolin, who is the last remaining deity in Anor Londo.  Yet, I had met Gwynevere in Anor Londo earlier.  That doesn’t match up…

In any case, I head back, and find the ladder at the end of the room.  I dodge arrows the whole way, yet when I stop and aim back, I find I can’t draw a bead on them where they can’t reach me.  Fighting a battle by bow and arrow when they’ve already got their aim on me is not going to work well in my favor.  Urgh.  This is going to hurt.

Sure enough, I’m a pincushion by the time I reach the top of the ladder.  I look back at where the skeletons are firing from, and consider trying to bring the fight to them, but they’re both in places it does not seem it’d be easy or safe to reach.  It doesn’t seem worth the effort to me, but since I can’t reach them easily, they won’t have a simple time chasing after me either.  I simply leave.  Once I pass through the opening in the wall, they’re stuck without a target.

I head out of the cave, and find myself in the sunlight again, thank Geezer Zeus.  I’m not a fan of being underground, have I mentioned that?

Sure, there’s exploding screaming heads out here, but I’ll take that over the endless walls of brown and grey rock any day.  I block the explosion, then continue around the cliff until I’m underground again.  Great.

I walk down a path for a bit, a long straight hallway.  It opens up a bit, but I keep going straight.  There’s something shining through the darkness in there.  Looks like… titanite.  A lot of titanite.

A lot of living titanite.

I’m going to need to cut some out of him.  I take the opportunity to get reunited with an old friend.  Oh, Black Knight Sword, you know there’s no other blade for me than you.

I charge.  The Titanite Demon leaps.  I eat it.   The grand reunion is pretty inglorious.

I back off a bit, recharge my estus, then join the melee again.  This is reminding me a lot of the Titanite Demon I fought back in the Demon Ruins.  One of these guys blocking off a corridor, leaving so little room to fight.  If you recall, that didn’t work out well for me.

It doesn’t here, either.  I manage to score a few hits. Cut off a few chunks of his stony flesh.  Avoid the counter-strikes from his rod.  I’ve got a little more room to work with than I did in the Demon Ruins, and I make full use of it.  The demon maneuvers a lot better than I do, however, and ends up pinning me against the wall.  I fight back, block a few hits, but I can’t take much, and not being able to move away from that onslaught spells the end for me.

I didn’t feel like changing my sword out for my spear, so I just head towards the demon without it.  There are a few skeletons in my way.  I cut them down.  They get back up.  They follow me.

I end up leading a train of them behind me.  There’s the one front and center, and about four others coming around the corner.  I find myself in a predicament.  The skeletons don’t do much damage, but with that many of them, they’d still kill me in the time it takes to pull my spear out of my pocket.  Can’t kill them with my super sexy Black Knight Blade.  I think I might be in trouble here.

But where there’s a wit, there’s a way.

With my trail cleared, I head back towards the Titanite Demon.

Last time, I screwed up because I tried to take advantage of the space to the side of the demon, and got caught.  So my strategy should be to not do that again, right?  Yeah, screw that.  Instead, how about we do what we sucked at, and just not suck?  Man, I am a tactical genius.

I take a few hits getting there, but I manage to set up shop behind him, just inside the range of his thrashing tail.  He turns, but too slowly.  He leaps away, but I’m getting his moves down again, so I’m able to slip behind him once more.  He doesn’t really have any options at this point.  So down he goes.

My reward for killing him is a corpse with a bunch of Eyes of Death on it.  Lets me lure phantoms from other worlds.  Not quite sure why I would want that, but okay.

I head back, then explore a bit.  Checking out where the hallway opens up leads me to a break in the wall.  The break leads to a ladder.  The ladder leads to a casket.

The casket has a weak floor in front of it.  I step on it and plummet down.  There’s some company in the room I land in.

A Black Knight.  The first one of these I fought, it took my like two or three hours to finally overcome.  Now, my only worry in facing them is that it might not drop that sweet axe it’s carrying.  I have really grown much since I first entered Lordran.

It never scores a single hit on me.  My new shield and my defensive technique is much too powerful for him, and his axe can’t break through my shield.  At the same time, it’s all too easy for me to counterstrike and punish him for any hit he makes on me.  This is not a fight that’s even realistic for him to win.  I keep striking his gut for every impact he makes on my shield.  It does not take him long to fall.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t leave any cool gear behind.

There’s a broken wall in the room the Black Knight was in.  It opens up to this giant cavern, full of bones.  There’s something moving down there.  I really don’t want to drop down into the massive bone death pit.

But I do it anyways.  Immediately, I’m set upon by a bunch of skeletons spinning in these large, spiked wheels.  I block the first two pretty cleanly, leaving them skittering against my shield.  I get smacked in the side by the third, and trying to adjust to it opens my guard to the other two.  They grind against me for a second, but I roll out of the way before I’m completely overwhelmed.

All three of them crash against the same spot in the wall behind me.  I take advantage of the tangle, and pierce the three of them at once.  All three die in a single blow.

A few more ahead of me, too.  They don’t notice me at first, but they all start thundering towards me after I step forward.  I catch them on my shield one by one, then get nailed a few times as I release them to go smack against the wall far behind me.  It takes them a little while to get themselves reoriented.  I take advantage of that, and catch two at once with my first thrust, then the third with my second.

Someone bricked up the path here.  This is obviously intended to be a way to go.  Not only is it obviously well-trodden, compared to the rest of this place, but I can hear the clear sounds of a blacksmith at work behind it.  It doesn’t break or fade when I give it a good smack, however.  I’ll need to find another way back there.  I press on.

I pass through the rest of the cavern and a fog gate, then find myself here in what seems to be a massive, opened casket.  This is a boss fight if I ever saw one.  I switch my weapon to this sword that’s been carrying me as much as I’ve been carrying it all game, and drop down in there.

I land in a shallow pool.

There’s a figure at the end of the room, with what seems to be a very unique hobby.  He obviously heard me enter, but is still focused on what he’s doing.

Sure, all those books, the ritual way he’s treating these bodies, he looks to be a creepy evil magic scientist doing some sort of obscene ritual, but what do we know?  Maybe he’s just an artist, with a really specific medium.

Could still do with cleaning his room up a bit.

Finally, he finishes up and turns towards me.

His masks chatter to each other, rapid-fire, then lock their eyes my way.

Something tells me my interruption was less than welcome.

And the battle is joined.

Pinwheel, who wins the award for the lamest-named boss I’ve fought all weak, starts by splitting into three different figures.

I hit the two nearest me before they can do anything.  They pop like balloons.  I’m a little worried that I might not have brought enough estus for this fight.  I only had two swigs going in, and that drop into the arena started me off with a good amount of damage on me.

After I clear the space around me, I take the opportunity to heal up.  Pinwheel takes the opportunity to do nothing.

He fires a bolt of magic at me, which I immediately sidestep and swing into him once.  He floats away after that, then splits into three again.  Two of the three fire more bolts, but again, I easily dodge and cut them down.  I’m on the third in a second, and nail him with two more strikes before he slips away.

Once more, he splits into three.  I get hit by one magic bolt this time, which barely even hurts.  Then, again, I rush up and cut into all three of them.

It strikes me now that all the screenshots of this fight are kind of lame.

The battle didn’t last long enough to give me any good material.  Like, what even was that?  I didn’t even notice he was almost dead until he was already fading away.  That took like six hits, tops.

Well, we can add that to just one more person who couldn’t hang with the Best Chosen One.

I earn the Rite of Kindling out of his death, which lets me pump up bonfires for even more Estus, and pick up one of his masks.  The Mask of the Father, increases my equipment load slightly.

I guess I’ll have that ready for the next time I want to look like a total goober.  I climb up the pile of books just for fun, find a ladder to the side of the room, and leave this giant coffin.

Next time: A shot in the dark.