I woke up with a headache.

  This wasn’t the annoying sort of light throbbing you get from dehydration- no, this felt like a pulsing fire in the forefront of my brain, a mass of pain that just wouldn’t go away. I’d never had a migraine or a hangover, but I imagined this must have been what it felt like. The sort of pulsing, pounding pain that just wouldn’t leave you alone, clung to the inside of your skull like superglue, made your head feel like it was just going to explode- if the pain wasn’t it being in the process of doing so anyway.

  I groaned, pulling myself into a tight ball and trying to push the pain away, compact it, ignore it- do something with it as long as I didn’t have to experience it anymore, but the stupid thing didn’t want to GO. It clung stubbornly, with every mental trick I tried, and nothing worked, not even imagining putting the stupid thing in a box. Not that I’d had much hope of that working in the first place, but I was barely coherent as it was.

  Gingerly, trying not to jostle myself too much and bring down the wrath of yet further pain, I raised my hands to my head and whined.

  Actually whined.

  I had just enough mental presence to realize something to the tune of ‘I don’t think that’s how I’m supposed to sound’, and I tried to latch onto that thought as best I could, anything to ignore the headsplitting agony that would otherwise occupy the whole of my existence. I tried to search my memory, figure out what had happened, but through the fog of pain everything slipped away from me again and again. Maybe I’d been in some sort of accident? I didn’t know.

  I let myself lay there, feeling miserable for several minutes, until the thought occurred to me that I might not be supposed to feel like this. If I’d been in some sort of accident and was hurt somehow, maybe I was supposed to be on painkillers, and they’d just run out somehow? God, I didn’t know, and I was desperate for even the slightest chance of pain relief at this point. This meant, of course, that I’d have to actually press the call button and inform a nurse that I was in a frankly pretty appalling amount of pain and could use about a thousand CC’s of happy time drug right about now.

  It took a summoning of effort of monumental proportions, and an amount of time I couldn’t begin to guess at, but eventually, I managed to pull together the mountainous store of energy that it took for the herculean task of… I was being dramatic. It helped cope, but I didn’t need it right now. Still… I managed the one thing I set out to do: opening a single eye.

  I was immediately greeted with green. A lot of green. Tinged with silver, as well as… grey lines? All of it blurred almost beyond recognition, and immediately, just this one thing felt like a railroad spike plunged into my frontal lobe. My eye shut again and I whined, curiosity at what I’d just seen shattered by pain.

  I rolled, making a keening noise, pressing my hands to my forehead and generally just trying to get the godawful pain to go inside a box and go away, anything to just reduce whatever was happening to manageable levels.

  Time didn’t exist. I practically didn’t exist. I didn’t even have the presence of mind to compare the pain to every other pain I’d felt in my life, that’s how much it worsened. I don’t know how long I lay there, wherever I was, writhing and making what sounds I could squeeze through my throat. But it couldn’t last forever.

  Eventually, finally, it died down. Slow, gradual, the pain plateaued, then began to shrink. I started piecing my thoughts back together, trying to get some semblance of self that I could work out of, trying to function- and eventually, piece by piece, I managed it. Time, more time, but in the end it was me laying there, the pain no more than a fading throb in the back of my mind as I panted. And slowly, ever so slowly, even my breath slowed.

  Which left me… somewhere. Somewhere green, silver, with lines of grey- a blurry picture of which I’d only caught a moment before a frag grenade went off in my brain. Now, that had faded almost entirely- or as close to as makes no difference. And despite the fact that looking had caused said frag in the first place, I didn’t have much of a choice other than taking a look unless I just wanted to sit here. So, hesitantly, I inched one of my eyelids open.

  First thing that I saw was the same thing I’d caught a glimpse of before: green environment, tinged with silver light, with grey lines scattered chaotically throughout my view. I shut my eye tight, blinking hard, trying to clear whatever was blurring my vision and very thankful that it hadn’t caused the same reaction as before. Next time, I tried both eyes at once, lifting my head away from the slightly springy surface I’d been resting on.

  To my utter and complete bewilderment, what greeted me wasn’t what I’d thought I’d see- a hospital room, perhaps, with a very strange theme, or maybe some sort of hotel room or the view out of a window. Instead, when I looked, head raised, it was… I wasn’t in a hospital room. I… wasn’t in a room of any sort.

  Green grass covered the ground, extending outwards, forming a glade of sorts surrounded by short, earthen walls that came up in mounds topped with trees. The forest was dense and misty beyond the first layer of wood, the plant life appearing to shift and change before my eyes as the mist thickened and thinned on its own, following no pattern I could detect. As I turned my head this way and that, I realized that the grey lines I’d seen, so chaotic in their layout, was actually a thicket of what appeared to be blades of all shapes and sizes. Huge greatswords stuck out of the ground side by side with tiny rusted swords with snapped blades, some laying on the ground and others standing point first in the thick grass under me.

  Strangely, no matter how hard I blinked, one thing about the view never changed: a grey, blurred thing in the center of my vision. I closed one eye, then the other, but the blur stayed consistent- always in the center between my eyes, always there. I blinked, then did something I hadn’t done in so long I’d almost forgotten how to do it: I went cross-eyed.

  And promptly had a headache of a new kind to deal with, this one caused by the straining of eye muscles and… the fact that I now appeared to have a muzzle.

  This was… I didn’t even know how to approach this one. The thing was big, furred, stuck out of my face where I was pretty sure I remembered my nose and mouth being, and was tipped with a nose that I certainly didn’t recognize as mine. I… didn’t think it was human. And when I tried to put my hand to my face, that… that wasn’t a hand. A paw covered in grey fur pressed against my muzzle. My muzzle. My paw? It certainly felt like it.

  I’m not too proud to say that what followed was a series of panicked swears and even more panicked discoveries. For all intents and purposes, it appeared that my PERFECTLY FUNCTIONAL human body was now replaced with the body of a freaking WOLF, of all things. And not just a wolf, but a frankly huge wolf, assuming that the little toothpick like swords were normal sized.

  More than that… the grave in the center of the clearing, the sword placed before it and the ring that I… I supposed “sensed” is the best way to put it, gave me a dreadful suspicion of exactly where I was and what I was. The gravestone I woke up next to was covered in writing, worn enough that I wouldn’t be able to read it without long work and effort, but I didn’t need to read it to know what it said. Well, more or less. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the grave was that of Artorias the Abysswalker.

  And here I was, in the clearing, grey fur, four paws and a tail. Process of elimination left me only with the conclusion that I was, well, the only thing that I could be: Sif, the Great Grey Wolf. Artorias’ companion, guardian of his grave and his ring, the Covenant of Artorias, the legendary artifact that allowed one to survive physically entering the Abyss itself. And, lucky me, the plot-vital item any Chosen Undead needed to progress to the Four Kings fight in the ruins of New Londo.

  Ffffffffantastic. I really was looking forward to being hunted by any jerkwad with a sword and board for an item. Not only that, but I wasn’t sure how the game’s mechanics extended to… this. Would I respawn if I died? Would I be shunted to another world with its own Chosen Undead, who would then also murder me for the ring, and so on and so forth until some poor sob initiated the next Age of Fire? Or, worst of all, was there only one version of Sif in each and every world, and only this world had me? I didn’t particularly feel like ending up as a sword or a shield, or worse, having my soul consumed to add to the power of some chump who would most likely just end up one of the endless pile of corpses the final “lucky” Undead climbed to reach the First Flame.

  Only… I could just straight up GIVE the ring to an Undead. Not like there was anything or anyone stopping me. Except that that didn’t guarantee that said Undead wouldn’t just turn around and stick a sword or a spell in me anyway for the souls, or for the sword, or, hell, just for kicks. Plus, giving the ring to an undead would most likely just buy me exactly as long as it took the next Undead to waltz through the forest, ignore the Forest Hunters and make a beeline for the huge gravesite of one of the most legendary warriors in history guarded by some very big and very obvious stone doors. So just handing the ring off to appease the first Undead who showed up looking for the Hornet Ring and a wolfpelt was out.

  The other option, of course, was to simply decide that the only way to win the game was to not play at all- which is kind of a theme in the crapsack world of Dark Souls, but I digress. I could get out of here, leave Darkroot, and pretty easily at that; besides the black knight guarding the path to the Valley of Drakes, the Moonlight Butterfly and potentially the Titanite Demon, there wasn’t anything that’d really be a threat to me here. Ignoring the Undead, of course. Only… that was a pretty terrible idea for other reasons.

  Even if I made it out of the area where the game occurred and into the outside world, that wouldn’t change the fact that the First Flame was fading. The gods were weak or entirely absent save for Velka, Undead stalked the land, kingdoms collapsing as the Curse sunk its teeth into them… put simply, the world was dying. If I wasn’t hunted down by the knights of one of the surviving kingdoms for sport or because I was a potential threat, then I’d give it even odds that I was hunted down by an Undead or by some Way of White bastard. And that was if the Age of Dark didn’t happen and bring about Oolacile 2: It’s the Whole World This Time.

  I wasn’t even going to dignify the idea of letting events take their course as a proper option. Not only did I like living, thank you very much, I was rather reluctant to figure out where poor humans-turned-wuffs went when they died in the Dark Souls universe. If they even went anywhere at all, which, given the fact that the souls of powerful creatures are the standard drop from them, is pretty likely. As I’d said, I didn’t particularly feel a desire to become a sword or a shield, especially not if I kept my awareness. That’d just be insanity by slow torture.

  So… what did that leave? I could sit here and defend Artorias’ grave. I was pretty sure I could do a better job than Sif in the games, but all it took was a skilled enough Undead and I’d go down as hard as wolfy in canon. Besides, while Sif might have been so unbelievably steadfast in their loyalty to Artorias that they stuck by his grave until long after Anor Londo collapsed, but I barely knew the guy by reputation and lore. I certainly wasn’t going to stake my life on the defense of the grave of someone that I didn’t even know.

  I made a frustrated growl and swatted a rusted claymore with a paw, causing the weathered steel to shriek and bend. I stared at it for a moment, then huffed and continued pacing back and forth across the width of the clearing like a caged tiger. Or, well, a caged wolf.

  I couldn’t leave. Doing Sif’s job in the way that Sif did it was flat out suicide, and adding my own flair was just delaying the inevitable. I only had one ring, which prevented me from giving them out like candy, and even if I could do that, there was nothing stopping an Undead from either not getting the hint or ignoring it and trying to slay me anyway. What options did I have left? I mean, I couldn’t exactly ask anyone’s opinion-

  I halted, tilting my head. Or… could I? I turned towards the stone door guarding the only entrance and exit, tail swishing back and forth slowly in the air.

  There was one relatively sane, perfectly talkable and very knowledgeable individual within Darkroot Garden. Well, two if one counted Princess Dusk, but I personally didn’t: poor girl never knew what hit her. Still, Alvina of the Darkroot Wood was out there, most likely sitting atop her wall and coordinating the Undead that hunted intruders seeking Artorias’ grave or to explore the depths of Darkroot Garden. She’d known Sif for their entire life, given that she led the Chosen Undead to where Sif was trapped in Oolacile. Not just that, but cats in Dark Souls were always implied to know much more than would appear, and THAT wasn’t even mentioning the fact that Alvina had apparently not only forged a magical ring, but an apparently infinite number of copies. And, on top of all that, there was nothing more than a bunch of mushrooms and some cats between here and there, and I was almost certain I could avoid the latter. The former was too slow to even bother with.

  So… it was a gamble. But, as it stood, it was the best gamble I had available with the highest odds of paying off and the lowest risks. And even on the outside chance that Alvina couldn’t- or wouldn’t- help me, I could still coordinate with the Forest Hunters, and make surviving a whole lot easier for both them and myself.

  I padded over to the wall, still a little wobbly on my paws, and tried to put them on top of it. And immediately found myself on my side. Apparently, I wasn’t even nimble enough to climb the walls, which was just… embarrassing. I needed more practice with this new body of mine: otherwise, regardless of how fast, strong or powerful I was, I was going to die a chump’s death. Alvina would have to wait, I had practice to do.

  ****************?

  I don’t think anyone remembers their first attempts at walking, but I think there are a few at least who remember their second first attempts- if that makes sense.

  Figuring out how to walk in a new bipedal body with a similar bone structure to a human would have been easy. A wolf the size of a house, though? You couldn’t get much more difference between that and a human form, unless it was something like an octopus or whatever Aldrich turned into. Four paws and a tail, five limbs in all, was an entirely different muscle structure, bone arrangement and center of gravity than what I was used to, and it showed. Really, it’d been a miracle that I could get up and slowly pace. Running was a fair bit beyond me, let alone jumping.

  So I tried to make circles around the grave of Artorias, grass shifting under my paws as the ever-present moonlight shone down on the glade. As far as I could tell, time didn’t pass here, which made sense with the rest of the world and all: the moon didn’t budge the entire time I moved around, slowly increasing my top speed by inches and bits. Managing a more heavy jog wasn’t quite defeating the Nameless King, but I felt accomplished, so that was at least worth something.

  And then I made the mistake of picking up Sif’s blade.

  Dear Gwyn, I didn’t know how the wuff managed it. The thing was heavy as hell, forged from what I was pretty sure was near pure Titanite, and it absolutely killed my balance even holding it. Besides that, I felt like an idiot with the thing in my mouth, like I was a middle schooler trying to mimic Roronoa Zoro. I was almost entirely certain that Sif wielded the completely cumbersome thing out of respect for their master and in honor of his legacy, not to mention their having trained with whatever sword-in-muzzle style was called since they were very young given their appearance in Oolacile. I, on the other hand, barely knew Artorias, hadn’t ever been stupid enough to put a sword hilt in my mouth before and thought that Sif’s claws and teeth were perfectly functional weaponry, thank you very much. So, with a flicker of guilt for the misuse of such a magnificent blade whether I could wield it or no, I stuck it into the ground and used it to bar the entrance to Artorias’ grave shut.

  I mean, I still slipped the two rings onto one of my claws, where they both magically stretched to fit, but just because I was taking all the loot from the place didn’t mean I was going to leave it open to vandalism by any idiot that came strolling along. I might not have personally known Artorias like the real Sif did, but that didn’t mean I was going to take any chances with his grave site. Given the ghosts in the New Londo ruins, I didn’t want Artorias to come back all fire and fury because somebody defaced his gravestone. I don’t think I’d have very much fun fighting a ghost with non-magical claws and teeth, especially not the vengeance-fueled ghost of one of the greatest knights to ever live. Brrr.

  I made a once-over around the perimeter of the clearing, then, satisfied that I’d done what I could for the place, I hunkered down and eyed the wall closing off one side.

  The thing was taller than me by a fair margin in some parts, but I was certain that I could easily put my paws on top of it like I’d tried to do earlier if I really wanted to, and that I could pretty easily leap the whole thing with a little bit of a running start. As I didn’t want to leave the door open, for reasons I already mentioned, this was the best way to exit that wasn’t going into the spooky shifting fog-filled forest, which just screamed “bad news, stay away” no matter what universe you were in. In fact, eyeing the shorter collapsed bit to one side, I was pretty sure what constituted an impassable obstacle to a Chosen Undead would basically be like clearing a stone wall that came up to my waist for me. Not… that that was even an apt measurement for me anymore, given my entirely different anatomy, but… hrn.

  I padded up, poking the rotted stonework with a nose. The last ruins of the arena where Artorias had fought his last battle crumbled a bit from my touch, but I was going to chalk that primarily up to the sheer strength I had in this body. I lifted a paw, glancing about, then set it gingerly down in a relatively flat section. I tested my weight, then, satisfied that it would hold me without dropping the leg into some sort of pit or collapsing the whole thing into the ravine, I searched for a place to put my next paw. One foot in front of the other, I advanced through the crumbling brick and barely standing wall, until I was overlooking the wide gap and the river below.

  Here, the wall dissolved into nothing but shambles, bricks laid about at random in a huge pile. If I had to guess, I’d say that what I’d just climbed over had been one of the supports that I vaguely remember from Artorias’ boss fight, and that it’d collapsed outward somewhere during the age between then and now. When it had fallen, it’d gone right over the edge, scattering a bunch of itself up here and the rest across the riverbed, though I didn’t know how much of the thing was down there now.

  I cast a wary eye over the rickety stone bridge that connected Sif’s arena with the rest of Darkroot Garden. The thing was wide enough for two to three people standing shoulder to shoulder, and could easily hold a Chosen Undead with the heaviest weapons and armour, but I was a lot bigger and heavier than a lone armed Undead. A single paw barely fit between the short stone walls that made up either side of the bridge, and when I put the first paw down on the thing, the stones ground very faintly under the weight. I eyed the river under the bridge, but I couldn’t tell how deep it was, and I… wasn’t sure how to swim in this body. If there was easy access to the water, I might have tested to see if it was shallow enough for me to simply walk across, but as it was…

  I had to go carefully, slowly. My already iffy balance was tested multiple times by the narrow stone walkway, tilting this way or that as I tightrope walked across a surface that any normal human would have found wider than they needed to be comfortable. For the first time, I appreciated how large I’d really gotten: the swords had been good for an initial comparison, sure, but trekking across something like this… really put it into perspective. I’d put my size as about that of a house, but it really hadn’t clicked with me exactly how big that was until now.

  Still, with only a few scares (and a chunk of the stone railing being introduced to the riverbed) I made it across to the opposite shore. The cliff here, which was enough to cause falling damage to an Undead, came up to about my shoulders, and I was easily able to hop to the top of the thing… though it did come with the embarrassment of letting out a yelp when my paws slid right out from under me and I faceplanted into the loam. I growled and stood again, getting my paws securely under me, peering into the trees and trying to figure out if the gaps were wide enough for me to pass through.

  It was now of course, that it occurred to me that there was another issue that I hadn’t thought of. Communication. Another frustrated growl escaped my throat, and I flopped down on my haunches, staring into the trees and considering the problem.

  The first hurdle would be one of language, but I was really crossing my fingers (paws?) there and hoping that, much like in the games, everyone spoke English for some inscrutable reason. But with a wolf’s anatomy, even the anatomy of Sif, that still didn’t mean I could communicate- unless people magically spoke wolf, which I wasn’t going to be betting on. The only translation ring in the game only worked on denizens of Izalith, and I was sure that there weren’t any of Sif’s kind in the city. Though, the idea of a demonic Sif was… rather horrifying, now that I thought of it.

  I stretched my jaw muscles and swallowed. Experimentally, I pressed my lower jaw against my upper and tried to breath out, blinking in surprise when the sides of my mouth ballooned outward slightly, then letting my breath go with a light ‘pop’. Well, then. From what I remembered, canines were incapable of making a seal with their mouths, but apparently Sif could? Perhaps because whatever species they were was different enough from other canines to have such a feature, or perhaps Sif in particular had been changed magically somehow… wouldn’t put it past any part of this world to be like that.

  Still, though, that made me wonder. If this one part of Sif’s anatomy was similar to a human’s, what others were? Sif could howl, bark, growl- all the usual sounds of a canine, and though I hadn’t made the first, I’d demonstrated the last repeatedly and the second at least once when I thought the stupid bridge was going to fall out from underneath me. More accurately, I had no real clue what sounds I could make with Sif’s muzzle and vocal cords. If I was very lucky, I might even be able to mimic language well enough to be understood in basic terms.

  I tilted my head. Now that I thought about it, Alvina communicated with Undead just fine, despite being a cat. There wasn’t any telepathy bull there, either, given the fact that you could pretty clearly see her mouth moving to actually form the words. It was a pretty consistent staple of the Dark Souls universe that magical animals could speak, which made me wonder about the cats scattered around the area… well, whatever. I ran my tongue over my lips and tried to form a word.

  “Thpffppfhghph.” I winced. That wasn’t dignified in the slightest. Pretty sure I coated a tree in wolf slobber, utterly drenched the bark, poor thing.

  The way that everything moved and worked in my muzzle and throat was so completely alien to the mechanical parts I’d had as a human that I didn’t even know what I was doing wrong. I could try to form the word, but there wasn’t muscles to actually move various bits in the way that I wanted, and thus it ended up mangled at absolute best. Much like walking, the muscle and bone structures were so vastly different that I was going to need quite a bit of practice to actually figure the stupid thing out. Fantastic. Exactly how I wanted to spend my time.

  Thankfully, there wasn’t actually anything in this portion of the woods that could constitute anything like a threat to me, as long as an Undead did happen upon me in the meantime. Not to mention… it was actually rather peaceful, here. Moonlight flickered over the lazily flowing river, painting my surroundings a dully shining silver. The forest was nearly silent but for the occasional quiet rustle of leaves as breezes moved through the trees and grass. Deeper in the forest, there was an occasional thump or patter of footsteps, but they were too light to be made by a human- either the mushroom children or animals, I’d guess.

  And a couple of things occurred to me in rapid succession.

  First, I could actually see green. Sure, it was layered over with moonlight, but I could easily make out that the grass was green, that the trees were brown- wasn’t canine eyesight supposed to be more grayscale, or colourblind at the least? As far as I could tell, I just had something like normal human vision. However, in this case, I was willing to shrug it off as more magical animal bull and move on. I was thankful for the ability to see in more or less the same colour range as a human, but it wasn’t worth that much remark.

  What was, though, was my sense of smell. I hadn’t noticed it, with Artorias’ gravesite deserted of anything but some rusted swords and a bunch of grass, but here? Animals still roamed the woods, mushroom people wandered, Undead and cats passed through… and I could smell EVERYTHING. It was like suddenly stapling on a whole new sense over an existing one, and for the first time, I could truly appreciate how utterly pathetic the human sense of smell was. I sniffed the grass, and I could actually smell the stale and fading scent of what I thought was an Undead, clothed in rusted armour, but I could also smell something… chemical about it? I sniffed again, confused, then did the quadrupedal version of a shrug. It was just incredible how much I could smell in general. I didn’t know how handy it was going to be going forward, but in the moment at least, it was an utterly surreal experience.

  I leaned back into a sitting position, which was just as weird as everything else had been so far, and let out a breath. Like walking, talking would just take practice to get a hang of. I just hoped that it didn’t take too much practice, or I’d end up fighting something much earlier than I wanted. Basic sounds first, of course.

  “Mmmm.” M was an easy sound. Just closing my mouth and making a humming noise, not too dissimilar to growling, just… lower? It was hard to express meaningfully. “Mmm. Mmmaaaaaaahhh.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  A was pretty similar, the same humming noise but with my mouth open. But I needed to try something a little harder than that, something that actually required tongue motion to manipulate the noise. Perhaps a T?

  “Thpfffff.”

  Alright, yeah, that wasn’t happening. I growled, trying to curl my tongue against the roof of my mouth and try again.

  “Thhhpffff. Thhhffff. Thffoof.” I bared my teeth in frustration.

  It was a good thing time didn’t seem to really pass here. This was going to take a while.

  ****************?

  “Dah… t-the quick brown foxsh- fosh- ffffff… frick.” I took a deep breath. “Ffff… ef-oh-exsh. E-sh. Hrnng.”

  The past… couple of hours, maybe, had been a truly grueling exercise in patience. I was trying to pronounce the relatively easy phrase primarily for the reason that it contained every letter in English, and was thus a good test of my current level of mastery. I’d gotten basic swears down pretty quickly, of course, but the rest? That wasn’t coming as easily. Especially X, S, V, th, and Z. Those sounds in particular were ones that I struggled to pronounce, trying to position my tongue, teeth and lower jaw just so.

  Pronouncing the noises properly wasn’t difficult, per say, and I managed it on occasion. Mostly, it was just that my muscle memory, because that had made it into this body as well, kept dictating that I do something entirely different with my mouth than what I needed to do to make the sound. You don’t easily unlearn over two decades of English pronunciation practice in the course of a few hours. Still, that didn’t mean that I wasn’t making progress- I’d at least figured out the easier sounds, and while my speaking was slow, I could do decently well with pronouncing most words that didn’t include my problem letters and sounds. Speed would come with time and practice, things that I was planning to have plenty of- all I needed to do was sound stuff out, figure out how to pronounce most basic words well enough to communicate with Alvina. Once I was over that initial hurdle, and the cat was made aware of what had suddenly changed, then I could move from there… though I wasn’t quite sure what my eventual plan was.

  Eh, I’d sort it out when I actually crossed the language anatomy barrier and had the foundations of a potential mutually beneficial arrangement with Alvina. Once I could begin trying to figure out what I should do with the practical Dark Souls Cheshire cat, it would give me a good jumping off point to… well, the rest of this crapsack world.

  The First Flame was dying down, that was painfully obvious. I couldn’t be lucky enough to be dumped into the actual Age of Fire itself, I had to be dropped straight into the midst of Dark Souls as a non-optional boss. The primary question was, what am I going to do about it? And, really, being honest with myself, I didn’t have enough information to make a decision in any direction, not as I was. But Alvina? Alvina was centuries, if not millenia old, and most likely knew things and people that wouldn’t be remembered outside of obscure records. If anyone could guide me through the slowly dimming final days of this Age of Flame, it was Alvina.

  “Okay, one more time… d… THE quick brown fosh- fo… FOX,” I grinned, though it wouldn’t look like that to anyone that saw it, “jumped over t-tha lazshy- laZY, lazy dog!”

  I nodded triumphantly. I’d still stumbled over pronunciations, and my speed still needed work, but I had the basics. Anything else would come with the practice of frequent use. I stood from where I’d been sitting, muttering the words to myself, and made a sweep of the surrounding area. That… is when I sighted the figure in armour.

  Unlike most of the undead filling the lands around Anor Londo, this one appeared to have kept up the maintenance on his armour and weapons, though partially that might have been because they appeared to have managed to loot the Elite Knight set from the corpse elsewhere in Darkroot. They held what looked like the Crest shield in their left hand, a normal longsword in their right, but both were slack in their grip as they looked at me. The wind shifted, a breeze blowing from behind them, and I scented them on the wind- the same sort of chemical scent that I’d picked up from the other Undead, the scent of iron and of flesh, and a sharp scent that I wasn’t sure of. Instincts, buried deep within the wolf I’d become, supplied the answer for me: fear.

  They turned their head, glancing in the direction of the arena I’d come from, then jerked their gaze back to me. They turned back and forth a few times, then slowly sheathed their sword, placing their shield on their back… then bolted full-tilt into the trees.

  “HEY!” I yelled after them, leaping to my paws and bounding after the fleeing armoured form.

  I growled in irritation as the trees I’d been planning to pick my way through barred the way, no doubt what the Undead was hoping for, but it was mostly just an aggravation as I dodged inbetween them. Even with the density of the forest slowing me down, I was certainly faster than them, something they clearly realized when they glanced backwards and realized I was still after them.

  “HEY! STOP!”

  Instead of stopping, they made what sounded like a squeak of fear and juked right, running straight through… ah crap. The large mushroom people turned to follow their fleeing form, but the armoured Undead was moving too quickly for them to react. They heard me coming, turning in my direction, only to be scattered like bowling pins as I plowed straight through the group of them, being thrown bodily hither and thither amongst the trees. I slowed for the barest fraction of a second in surprise- wow, I was even stronger than I’d thought- before leaping forwards again as I saw them running towards the stairs that led to Alvina and the exit to this area.

  They made the mistake of looking back as they reached the clear area around the steps. They let out a shout as I barreled out of the woods, right on their heels, and then went immediately rear over teakettle as their armoured boot caught in a root and sent them tumbling to the ground, rolling a few steps before they came to a stop. Before they could recover, I was right on top of them, lifting a paw and pressing it down on their chest. They tried to struggle, get to their sword or their shield, but the couldn’t reach the former because it was beneath my paw, and the latter wouldn’t budge, pinned as it was under them.They struggled for a few moments, trying to do anything to get a shot at their weapon or get out from under my paw, but when I simply shifted to stop each of their attempts in their tracks, they eventually just went limp, obviously waiting for the inevitable.

  I had no idea what I was going to do to them. They’d been Undead, and I’d been interested, but thinking back… I’d chased them not because I’d really wanted to, but because they’d run. Some instinct, combined with the scent of fear that I’d smelled from them, had driven me to chase them down and capture them, an instinct that had faded to nothing now. So, I was left with an Undead I hadn’t intended to capture, in the middle of a bunch of woods, with only my paw preventing them from making a run for it or taking a shot at me here. My lips twitched, revealing a flash of teeth, and the Undead flinched. I examined them as I mulled over my options, before finally leaning closer and sniffing them in more detail.

  The first thing that occurred to me was that their scent was… familiar. Now that I was right in it, it rang a bell somewhere in my mind… my head twitched upwards. Ah, of course, the trail of the Undead that had passed through the woods in the direction of Artorias’ grave! They smelled precisely like that, but this time I recognized the vaguely chemical scent as the same one that wafted out of their sword’s sheath. Oil, maybe? Not only that, but the scent of rust that had traced through their footsteps was gone, perhaps because they’d dumped whatever set of armour they had or cobbled together in favour of the Elite Knight set, which was in much better condition, no doubt.

  “How many timesh have you fought me?” My mouth twitched in annoyance at the slurring of the ‘s’, but nothing to be done about it now.

  “A-ah, um…” To my mild surprise, it was a woman’s voice that came from behind the closed visor, unsteady and ringing with surprise, echoing slightly in the metal helmet. “I-I dunno, five times? Six?”

  “Hrn.” I raised my head towards the staircase, but Alvina wasn’t available from this perspective… if she was there. The Chosen Undead could attack her and make her vanish permanently… “Did you attack Alvina of the Darkroot Wood?”

  At the edge of my vision, I saw the Undead trace the direction of my gaze before snapping their head back to me.

  “Uh, n-no, no I didn’t?” I heard the unasked question in their words. They’d relaxed a little, looking closer at me from where they were pinned, but I still smelled an edge of fear about them.

  “Hm. Good.” I paused for a moment, considering what I should do with this Undead.

  They’d fled from me primarily because they were surprised and terrified to see me outside of Sif’s usual arena- bosses didn’t go beyond their fog walls, after all, so to see one do so must have scared the pants off the poor Undead. I wasn’t entirely unsympathetic, it wasn’t like they’d had a choice in fighting me if they were following the canon plotline for Dark Souls, which I’d guess they were given that they had the Crest shield. Still, that didn’t mean I wasn’t perfectly aware that they’d tried about five separate times to kill me- even if I remembered none of those times, given that they’d happened to the actual Sif and not, strictly speaking, me. I weighed my options for a moment, then decided that they’d be best where I could keep an eye on them. I turned my head back down to regard them, noting the uptick in fear-scent that I was smelling from them, and spoke again.

  “I will release you. You will follow, or I will catch you again. Undersh… un-der-stand?” they nodded rapidly. Made sense: just because they’d come back when they died didn’t mean that they’d willingly die at any time. I pressed down on them a little harder, just to drive the point home, then raised my paw. “Good.”

  I watched as they hesitantly stood, brushing the twigs and loam off their armour and keeping a wary eye on me. As soon as I was sure they were ready to move, I walked forwards, paws leaving deep impressions in the soft forest ground as I approached the half-ruined stairwell.

  The remaining shard of some Oolacile building stuck out of the ground next to a ravine that I could just see from here. Through the archway at the top, I knew that another bridge spanned the gap, then led through another archway into the square room with no roof where Alvina lounged on a windowsill. The stairs themselves were thankfully wide enough for me to place my paws on and bring my head level with the archway, which I knew from a glance was far too narrow for something my size. Simply put, it had been built for humans and, at most, the more minor, smaller gods like Ornstein or Artorias. There was no possible way I was getting through there, even if I really squeezed.

  With a dismissive snort that was mostly for appearance in front of the Undead, I swatted the stone archway with a paw. To my pleased surprise, the stone shattered and gave relatively easy before my paw, blocks sent spinning into the abyss as a cloud of stone dust hung in the air. I huffed, blowing most of the cloud away, and examined the bridge, nodding when I found it satisfactory for my needs. It wasn’t much wider than the bridge leading to Artorias’ grave, but I’d crossed that one alright… for a given value of “alright”, anyway. I turned my head to regard the Undead, who I found standing off to one side, their left hand laying on the sword at their side with what looked like a white-knuckled grip.

  “Come.” I said simply.

  With that, I turned back to the archway, easily climbing over the stairwell with my rear paws and stepping out onto the bridge itself. Just like the previous bridge, one paw after the other advanced me down the narrow stone beneath me. Internally, I wished I was capable of the size-changing trick that those with a large amount of souls were capable of, that would have made this a lot easier. Still, I made it alright to the other side.

  I twitched as I felt something moving over the bridge beneath me, but a glance revealed that it was just the Undead, who seemed to be regarding me with more and more wariness every time we looked at one another. I shifted a paw, and she hesitantly nodded in thanks before passing through the archway and into the structure that sat at the other end of the bridge.

  “Ah, back so soon, hm? Something on thine mind or on thine heels?” I heard the smile in the cat’s voice. “A crash of that degree means pursuit, but while I see what must be the chased, I see not the chaser.”

  I measured the second archway for a moment. I could knock it down easily as I had the last, but I wasn’t really willing to risk a stray brick striking the Undead that I’d formed a shaky truce with or to drive away Alvina. I had control, but not that much- hard to have much finesse with paws the size of tractor tires, and all. I hummed quietly to myself as I examined how wide the archway ways and did some quick guestimation. It was most definitely far too small for my body to fit through, but I didn’t have to fit all of me through, now did I?

  It was actually rather difficult on the narrow stone bridge, but I managed to hunker down as close to the ground as I could get and crawl forwards on my paws. After a bit of difficulty, I managed to poke my head through the gateway, which thankfully did nothing more than let out a series of ominous creaks and cracks. I blinked, then glanced about Alvina’s small “room”.

  The Undead was pressed against the far wall, body language uncertain. From the way that one of her boots pointed at the exit and the way her body was angled, I’d say that she had been seriously considering booking it- or at least she had been, before I stuck my head through. Alvina, on the other hand, merely looked surprised, and not particularly so either. The only outward physical signs she showed were a thrashing tail and slightly widened eyes, and when I smelled the scent in the room, I just simply smelled the scents of Undead and a spicy sort of animalistic scent that I instinctively knew was Alvina herself.

  “Oh, truly, this art quite the shock! Yonder sentinel and neighbor mine come to visit, after so many years- and here is me, without anything to greet thee with!” She laughed, an unnerving sound that I couldn’t quite bit words to, even knowing what its purpose was. “What possesseth thee, that thee leaves thine vigil on a day no different than the last- and without thine sword, even?” her eyes flicked downward to the paw that poked through the doorway under my head, tail whipping as she gazed at the bands of metal laying there. “And… carrying such things as those, as well.”

  I made a non-committal growling noise. The Undead flinched, pressing herself a little tighter to the wall, but Alvina failed to react outside of her gaze finding my eyes again.

  I had to do this right, say this right. Alvina was perceptive and quite possibly one of the three or so most intelligent characters in Dark Souls- the top one and two slots most likely taken by Seath the Scaleless and Big Hat Logan, respectively. Not only that, but she’d known Sif for who knows how long, though I wasn’t sure what sort of relationship the two shared outside of the scope of the game. Alvina obviously respected Artorias and had at least had some measure of loyalty regarding him, given how she led someone to save Sif and then spent the next few centuries to millennia forming the first line of defense against those who sought the grave of Artorias and Sif. Still, though, what she’d said implied that she and Sif were not on speaking terms, if they’d ever been, and I was inclined to believe that her guard duty was out of regard for Artorias, not loyalty or comradeship with Sif.

  The problem was that I didn’t actually know precisely what I wanted to say. I needed information, but I didn’t want to tip off Alvina that I might not be the Sif that she knew, and thus couldn’t ask for it outright. I needed guidance on what paths I might have open to me, what I could actually do in this fading land, but that wasn’t something that I could directly pose to Alvina either.

  “Hesitant, are thee? Unsure of what thou came to say?”

  The growl I made this time was annoyed, but it only elicited an amused noise from the cat. I was starting to get the feeling that the relationship between Sif and Alvina had been one of siblings instead of comrades.

  “... I grew restless.” That was safe enough, I thought, not something that would be terribly out of character for Sif… well, I hoped, anyway.

  Alvina made a ‘chuff’ that was somewhere between a scoff and a sound of amusement. “Truly? Thee, the unrelentingly loyal guardian, grown tired of thine self-chosen business? Truly this is the most dire of times, that thee should leave thine copse and sword to seek out mine own place!” the tone of voice she took was almost teasing, which just lent more credence to the idea of a sibling-like relationship.

  “Artorias… has been gone… a long time.” I felt a flicker of surprise as Alvina sat up a little, a touch of her own surprise mixed with something that looked rather like concern. My lips twitched a little, and regardless, I carried on. “And I look around now, and I realize that we’ve spent our lives guarding the place he fell. This was known as Oolacile when I last roamed the world by his side, and all I can think of is what I’ve accomplished since.” I growled, scraping claws against the stone floor and leaving deep rents in the stone. “Can you truly look at us as we are, Alvina, and say that he would have been proud? Once, I would have said that my vigil at the very least had a point, a purpose, but now?” I pointed my nose at the Undead pressing herself against the wall, who shrunk a little farther into the corner in response. “This one ALONE has fought me five times, perhaps six, if her own recount is accurate- I could not say, they blur together, and the Undead simply come and come and COME. There is no end to their tide. I am tired, Alvina, and I fear what will happen to Artorias’ legacy once I fall.” I closed my eyes. I had to drive it home. “Who even remembers his name? If I went above with his sword, who would recognize me, his weapon? Are there even any left above? Are the god’s halls still filled with those giants with souls ablaze, or are they empty?”

  Alvina shifted uncomfortably. “I cannot say I know. My concerns, as thine, were with guarding and ensuring Artorias’ eternal rest.” The cat turned to her right, in the direction that I knew Anor Londo was in. “I have not left in time and time again, and last I stalked the gold streets of gods, they still walked in numbers among the buildings… but even I can feel the warmth fade, the fog refusing to vanish with sunlight, as if the very fire of the sun itself loses its potency.”

  I shifted in disquiet myself. Had Alvina actually noticed that the sun that hung above Anor Londo was an illusion? I wonder if she knew Gwyndolin, knew that the princess in the castle was of a somewhat different persuasion, or that he’d been maintaining the illusion of the god’s continued power in the structures rising high above the Undead Parish. It made me wonder what else she knew that she wasn’t supposed to, and whether or not her presence guarding Artorias’ grave, surrounded by Undead who chose to serve her cause, was out of choice… or necessity. Close enough to the capitol to be within watching distance of those within, but far enough and out of the way enough that she wouldn’t be considered an active player or a substantial threat.

  The Undead, on the other hand, simply glanced back and forth between the two of us with something like bewilderment. Which was… fair enough, really, the sorts of things Alvina and I were discussing were pretty far beyond the ken of your average Undead.

  … ‘Beyond the ken’? When had I ever spoken like that? This place was getting to me. With a light start, I realized I hadn’t slurred or stuttered once during my monologue. I felt more and more unsettled as I considered what I’d said, how I’d said it… it hadn’t sounded like me, to be sure. Not only that, but every pronunciation had been perfect, and I’d somehow managed to choose what words I thought Alvina needed to hear without actually knowing WHAT she’d wanted to hear in the first place. But before I could consider further, Alvina spoke again, interrupting my thoughts.

  “And here thou art, wearing thine lord’s ring and the ring of his friend, speaking of dissatisfaction and frustration. Thou hath not expressed such feelings to mineself before, nor those fellow knights of the lord when they still visited his resting place. Truthful, I had thought that thou were satisfied with thy lot in life.”

  I huffed, my mouth and tongue suddenly feeling just as awkward as they’d felt when I’d made a few stilted sentences towards the Undead. I chose my words carefully and shaped them even more so. Whatever happened with my monologue before, I couldn’t just simply rely on it happening again, not when I still wasn’t sure what had happened the first time.

  “I-” I paused. Partially for effect, appearing to reconsider my words, and partially because I’d been about to slur an S, and that wouldn’t do at all. Different combination of words, perhaps. “I think… that I’m sick of standing by, of watching the world move ahead without me. I think I’d liked to do something about it, even if I do not know what that thing is.” Alvina glanced to the side, muzzle doing something that I interpreted as a grimace. “I think you-” hell, I hadn’t practiced this word. Time to wing it. “Chaaafe-” Nailed it. “As well, under our duty.”

  “That… I shall not deny. Watching from afar hath never been mine habit, and doing so for such time has been naught but rubbing raw scars.” For the first time, Alvina looked at me, and her gaze was openly wary. “But neither of us should forget why we are here. Those holder of souls sat atop their golden thrones do naught more than tolerate we two, and only for the legacy from your lord keeps it that way.”

  I let out a growl that surprised even me, baring my teeth. I remembered what I’d thought of the gods before: cowards fleeing a sinking ship, abandoning one of their own in Anor Londo to maintain the illusion of their power while they run from the fading of the Flame. Gwyndolyn’s own sister slipping away first chance she had. The only gods left in all the game were Nito, Gwyndolyn and perhaps Seath- if one stretched the definition a bit- and they were respectively the Grim Reaper, a complete asocial who’d been shut away all his life, and a mad scientist in dragon form. Not only were they cowards, they were cruel cowards, ensuring that this entire place was a gigantic death trap designed to siphon every Undead within its clutches of every drop of humanity and Soul, chuck their corpse onto the mountainous pile, then hock the final ‘lucky’ Chosen Undead into the First Flame as firewood. No, I had no love for the gods, but they’d made themselves irrelevant to the equation that was Lordran. And I got the feeling that, after the fall of their lord and master, Sif hadn’t been particularly keen on them either.

  “And who saysh that they are effen here!? Craven cowardsh, fled at the firsht sign of the fading Flame-” I bit down on the next words, shaking my head and calming myself, surprised at the rage that had welled up within me. I’d been slurring words, I knew I had been, but the Undead was too far gone shaking in their boots to notice and Alvina seemed… unsurprised.

  “Thine accent hath slipped again, methinks… how long since thou hath spoken to another living creature? Decades? Centuries?”

  I glanced away, though the limited mobility of my head prevented too dramatic of a movement. “I do not remember.” That, at least, was the complete and honest truth.

  Alvina sat for a while, tail swishing back and forth, looking thoughtful. Slowly, the Undead calmed her shaking and settled into the corner she’d been in. As I watched her, and she watched me, she carefully drew her sword from her sheath and began a process of cleaning and polishing it. In the process, she used some sort of oil on the blade, which I recognized as the chemical scent that I’d picked up in her trail and coming out of her sword’s sheath. Given her lackluster sense of smell, I had no doubt that she had no idea of the potency of the stuff- considering, that might be why some creatures in Lordran found the Chosen Undead so easily.

  “... This is a fool’s venture.” Alvina said, eventually, drawing my attention back to her. She paused for a few minutes more, then sighed and closed her eyes. “And I suppose that I must play the part of a fool.” she straightened, looking me full in the eye. “I shall consult with mine covenant- call members longer in experience, from worlds across and beyond. We shall see what they know of Lordran… and we shall decide from there.”

  My lips twitched, but, mindful of the Undead who’s attention had temporarily switched to Alvina while she spoke, I did not smile. Baring teeth the size of swords did not do much to endear one to someone, especially not when I’d apparently killed them several times outside my memory. I went to nod, then thought of the fragile stone around my neck and thought better of it, answering verbally instead.

  “Thank you.” Iet out a puff of air through my nose. “It feels good to be doing something.”

  Alvina’s needle-filled grin was part wistful, part glee, and all catlike. “Now there, I must agree.” she waved a paw. “I shalt send one of my hunters along with news, when I have it. They shall know where to find thee.”

  I huffed an affirmative, then gently began extracting myself from the stone arch. I stood up straight on the stone bridge for the first time in quite a while, turning my neck this way and that and producing a series of echoing cracks as my joints popped. One of my ears twitched at the slightest sound, and, glancing to the side, I made eye contact with Shiva, who was standing near the edge of the ravine and watching in what appeared to be carefully restrained awe. Glancing behind him, over his shoulder, I caught a glimpse of his ever-present bodyguard, as well as a number of the other Forest Hunters. My eyes passed over the archer, and I paused for a moment.

  Wielder of a legendary weapon, with the hat of an old hero. She dropped twin Humanities as well, when she was killed in the game… and, most notably, she didn’t respawn. Curious, and I’d have to ask questions about and to her, if I ever got the chance. I huffed, walking backwards along the bridge until I reached the stairwell, carefully turning and climbing down from there. It wouldn’t do for me to trip, not now.

  I paused at the edge of the forest, turning my head back towards where I knew Alvina was sitting right now, contemplating things, perhaps even considering what members to call back- if that was what she intended to do. I supposed that I could only wait, for the moment. I let another breath out, then turned back towards the forest and walked back towards the lonely grave of Artorias the Abysswalker.