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Furnace 1 - ??? IThump. <br><br><br>Thing.<br><br><br>New noise.<br><br><br>Hadn’t been a new noise for a while.<br>How long a while was tricky.<br>Should’ve known.<br>Didn’t.<br><br><br>Didn’t know a lot of things you should.<br>You? <br>The concept of You sounded right, must be another thing you stopped knowing.<br><br><br>Movement under you is startling.<br>Tensing, it takes a moment to understand that the movement was you as well.<br>Your legs moved because they want to bring you to where the thump happened, because you want to go there, you think.<br>Thinking is interesting, you want to keep doing that.<br>Vaguely, you’re aware of hands that want to help you move too.<br>You listen to your legs because they listen to you. But even with your hands too, moving is tricky.<br>It being tricky wants to make you hit something because you know you could do it better before.<br>Before. Before......Before before before before before before before .<br>There was something before this moment with the thump and the moving what was it what was it what was it what was—<br>There’s suddenly a sound in the back of your throat. You didn’t know sounds could be there, and it’s startling. Felt weird too.<br>You pause, staring at the rocks and stones, and decide to keep moving. That’s better, because thinking about the non-movement things makes your heart hurt and you don’t like it. The different hurts from moving are easier.<br>There’s a thing in front of you in the same spot as where the thump came from. What made the noise, probably. You supposed that made sense, things making noises. Makes a lot more sense than noises being touch-things too. Now that you’re thinking about noises, maybe the noise from your throat that you didn’t like when you tried thinking about before was made by it.<br>Your thinking about noises is interrupted by another noise above.<br>Above is funny too. You didn’t even consider that’s where things could come from. But the big thing did maybe, that’s why it made the thump, from coming from above and not being there anymore, and now there’s a new noise from above too. You’re proud of yourself for noticing it.<br>You decide you’re doing a good job as you listen and look to the new noise.<br>The noise is sharp, different to the thump before, and you see a thing, moving like you, going away. You want the moving thing to stay, to make you know more things again, because if it gave you the thumpy thing like you’re thinking maybe, it’s been doing a really great job! But how to get it to not go away is something you don’t know.<br>You keep looking, because maybe if you keep looking it will come back. It doesn’t. That makes your eyes feel weird. You don’t like that feeling. You want to go above, because then maybe you can see the other moving thing again and the feeling in your eyes will stop.<br> <br>You try to go above for a while, until you’re barely shaky even only using legs but then they get shaky again from too much, and your arms don’t feel like anything instead of hurting, but it’s too far away. With that weird feeling in your eyes again, you go back to looking down instead of above. You’re reminded of the thing that made the thump before. If the other moving thing put it down for you, maybe you should look at it closer? Maybe that will bring the other moving thing back. The thing that made the thump has hands and legs like you but it doesn’t move like you or the thing that gave you it. It’s strange, that it’s so close and far to you. There’s an interesting shiny thing on it too, but only the one shiny thing and not like the other moving thing, which had a bunch more shiny things on it. Maybe your hands know what to do with it better than you do. Figuring out these things seems like something hands are meant for. You do your best to not think a lot like you’ve been doing so far, and just try to let your hands do it for you instead. The shiny thing makes a jangling noise as you investigate it. Your thinking is going back to the fallen thing’s hands as yours figure it out. Maybe it used to be a moving thing too, and that’s why it seems shaped like you? You don’t know why it stopped, but you don’t know why you started either. Your gaze moves to the half-there wall. They’re shiny too, and you wonder if that means they’re connected to the shiny thing attached to the thing that fell. You’re upset a bit that you can’t also check that with the other moving thing too. Fingers ghost across the jangling thing, but it’s hard for your hands to grip it. You fumble trying to get it apart from the thumpy-fallen thing, but your hands aren’t good again at small things like that. The thought of giving up feels bad— not as bad as some of the before-thoughts, but still bad— so you keep on trying, and eventually they make it into your shaky-numb grasp. Your hands’ instinct is to go to the shiny wall, so you follow their direction. You palm at them, trying to feel where the jangling thing is meant to go if you’re right. There’s a block thingy there— all the way across— and upon further investigation by sticking fingers through to feel around the other side, there’s a spot that goes in that you think it might go to? It's tricky— the shiny half-wall doesn’t like your hand going fully past it— but moving was tricky too and now you’re doing that mostly good! With a lot more struggle and almost dropping the jangly thing— made your chest feel cold and bad — you slot it in, and with a bit more trickiness, manage to turn it. The door pops open with a click and you decide shiny things are good things because they mean things like thinking more thoughts and there being more places to go. You start making your way down the hall, proud of how little you stumble but still using the wall to help, but then you see something interesting you didn’t see before and stop. It looks a lot like the thing that made the thumping noise, but it’s moving a bit— and standing upright like you. You're bigger than it— you need to move how you're looking to see it all good when you get close— and prodding at it doesn’t do anything. You try a bit more, but it still doesn’t move. Now you think you maybe understand why the other moving thing went away. Maybe you took too long to move. So, you try to be extra patient, just in case. You stand there until your legs start feeling funny again. But still nothing. The sound from earlier returns to your throat as you turn away and move on. There’s another one further along, and it goes the same, and you feel sad about that. The floor starts to go above just a few steps ahead, and you stand there hesitantly, looking back at the standing things. You wait for them to move just a bit longer, and you’re pretty sure all the waiting you’ve done has been way longer than how long the thing that helped you think did, but they don’t move. Not even stuck in one spot like you were but they didn’t even want to move. You want to keep moving though, so you will. Wet seeps against your skin as you trudge onwards, making your steps harder. You can’t tell much about it other than that it’s wet, and that feels far away despite you being able to see how close the wet is. For some reason you feel like there should be more to the feeling. You shake your head, turning your attention to your other surroundings. The first thing you notice is that the walls round out ahead, and that makes you pause. There’s… something shinier than the wall, which goes above wayyy further too. It’s interesting! You want to figure out how it works because then you can go really far above too. Your hands are good at figuring things out, and with your legs too they eventually figure out the shiny thing and you start to go further above and it makes you very happy! It’s… loud, but there’s a pattern to it that your arms and legs wind up very good at, and then you finally get to where it stops. Your hands and legs aren’t as good as that, but it doesn’t hurt much more than regular moving to drag yourself onto the ground at the top. Bringing yourself back onto just your legs, you notice light like from where you started to the right, but you can’t quite see where it’s coming from fully, so you decide to investigate. You walk into an openness, and the sight before you is new and comforting. In the middle of the openness there’s something sticking out of the below, surrounded by interesting-shaped things and colours like was on some of the things on the walls. Warm like those things on the walls too, you find out closer, and the warmth feels just… right … none of the feeling of weirdness that most things make you feel. You like that. There’s so much blue in the above too, much more than where you started knowing again. The sound your legs make, as you move to give them rest, is different to earlier, there’s not as much of it when it’s dirt below instead of stone. Sitting before the warmth, you feel an itchy feeling on your front, a bit to the side. It feels like how the warmth in front of you smells somehow, but different also, and it’s like it’s reaching and you don’t know why and that’s annoying. You’ve been so good at finding out the why with everything else. You prod at the spot. You hiss. Hurts. Sharp. You reach out to the warmth instead. That feels a lot better you decide, as it flickers along your fingers. You sit there for a while, basking in the warmth, but even that eventually gets boring, and, not sure of what else to do, you stand back up, wanting to investigate what else there is.Furnace 3 - ??? IIIThe shiny moving thing holds onto you as it gets up, and you decide you like the contact very much. You like the contact even more when it leans on you, even if it’s making your shoulder hurt more, and can’t help but feel disappointed when it pulls away. “It was rude of me not to introduce myself earlier. My name is Oscar of Astora.” The only sounds after that are its heaving breaths as it struggles to stay standing without your help. It bats your hand away as you try to reach out your hand to steady it. “I can— I can manage on my own.” It takes another sip of the Estus Flask. You remain unconvinced. You know you would have appreciated help when you were first figuring out your limbs. Finally, it seems satisfied at taming the shake of its legs. “Say, kind undead, what is your name?” Your name…? “I don— I do no— I dun— Gah—” Sounds are getting easier, but your tongue still keeps disagreeing and it’s frustrating. “Iiiiii… dunno.” You finally sound out. It makes a sound that you’re pretty sure means it's disappointed. “I suppose we should give you one, then. Though, I certainly wouldn’t consider names to be a strong suit of mine… So let’s save that for later, shall we? For now, we should deal with that arrow in your shoulder.” “Okay!” You respond. It turns out removing the arrow hurts very very much, wayyy more than it getting there in the first place. Oscar gave you the Estus Flask after though, and that made things better. Very interesting too, the feeling of the estus and stuff. After that, there was something about you being “not ready to fight” but you’re not sure what that means, yet. “Yet” is the important part, because you want to understand since you’re pretty sure that will make Oscar feel better. Oscar wanted to do something with your hair, too, so maybe letting it do that will help it too. Oscar instructs you to sit down, and you listen, curious about what exactly it's going to do. You see it take something small from its waist, and flinch on instinct before Oscar steadies you. It looks a lot like the pointy bit of the arrow Oscar took out. “This is a dagger.” Oscar sounds out. “I’m not going to hurt you with it. I am going to use it to cut your hair. Do you understand?” You think so? Mostly? You nervously nod. “…Okay.” “You’re getting better with words.” Oscar comments as it settles down behind you, beginning to inspect your hair. You can’t see what Oscar does afterwards, but there’s a faint sound and feeling to it, and then after that Oscar is back to inspecting your hair. You make a questioning noise, and Oscar hands you a hunk of blue before returning to its work. You fiddle with the hunk in your hands, trying to understand what it is. Blue and stringy, but also stuck all together and Oscar gave it to y— Oh! You guess it's your hair then! Weird. The hair turns out to be fun to fiddle with as you wait patiently for Oscar to finish. You look at the rest of the hair on the ground curiously, and reach up your hand to feel where it used to be. It’s a lot easier to move your fingers through than it was before, and now that the feeling is gone, you realize all the stuck hair was feeling bad to be there, so now you feel better because it’s not. All this hair stuff is interesting, you decide, as you fiddle with the cut-off chunk still in your hands. You should thank Oscar, you decide, but get stuck on the words. Instead, you opt to lean back against it, trying to express your thanks through the closeness. Oscar tenses, and you realize that might’ve been the wrong choice. Oscar pushes you back into the position you were sitting in, and you turn to look at it, confused. “There’s still more to do.” Oscar quickly states, getting away from your leaning as it hurriedly moves to sitting in front of you. Oscar begins to trim the hair on your face, and it's hard to stay still when you can see the dagger so close to your face, even when Oscar said it wouldn’t hurt you with it. You can feel its gaze burning into you. Eventually, Oscar is satisfied, putting the dagger away and helping pull you back to your feet. “Next is armour.” Oscar states. “Do you know where you’re from?” It asks, as it removes pieces of cloth from the moving thing it stopped. You turn your gaze from how its removing the cloth, and look at it funny. You guess you had a place to be from, if it wants to know, like with your name, but you have no idea what it was. “I-I-I dunno.” You respond. It gives you a funny look back, as it stands back up. “I suppose that’s not surprising, if you can’t remember your name, either.” It says as it ties the fabric around your shoulders. “Was worth a try, though.” Once the fabric is secure around your shoulders, Oscar takes a step back, the tilt of its helmet showing it to be looking over you. Next, Oscar returns to the no longer moving thing, and bends down to pick something up. The no longer moving thing had used the sword— Oscar gave you the word for it— to try and attack you with it, so you wonder why Oscar is— It takes one of your hands and places the handle of the sword with it, before adjusting your hand around it. Huh. Oscar does have a sword, so you guess it’s making sure you have one too? “I’ll show you how to swing it.” It states. You think the sword-learning goes pretty well. Oscar says it goes good-enough, at least. Oscar shows you different positions and movements, and you have no idea how it remembers them all. But! If you can remember them all too, you think Oscar would be very happy with you, and then you’d be happy too because of that. You keep that thought pinned in place as you follow Oscar through a corridor and— A sudden jolt goes through your hand with a flash of hurt. The sound of the sword clattering to the ground alerts you to the fact you dropped it before feeling comes back to your hand. Oscar turns around to look at you. “Hand stopped.” You whine, pointing at the jolted hand with your other one. “What do you mean your hand— By the flame— I’ll come and look.” Oscar takes hold of your hand, inspecting the infrequent shakes. It makes a faint clicking noise. “Sit down. That will make things easier.” You comply, and Oscar walks out of your sight, returning later with fabric bunched in one of its hands. Oscar places the sword in your now-calmed hand, carefully adjusting your grip to the way it showed you earlier. It takes the fabric, unbunching it into a strip, and winds it around your hand until you can barely move your fingers, the sword now locked to your hand after it ties the strip. As it gives you room to get a feel for the swish of the sword again, you can feel it silently looking at you, more intense than when it was first teaching you. Eventually, it gives a nod. “This way.” Oscar says. Oscar moves you into a crouching position, and points towards the leftward doorway. “The asylum’s demon is there, down below. Once we’re at the ledge, on my signal, we will drop down to attack from above, then improvise with what I’ve shown you once we’re on the ground. Is that understood?” You nod, but your legs stop cooperating when you see the thing Oscar wants to fight. It’s the big moving thing from earlier. You miss Oscar’s signal, not that you’d be able to follow it. Oscar drops down, plunging its sword into the big moving thing’s head. It thrashes around, trying to get rid of Oscar, but your companion manages to hold on until it gets its sword back out, a spray of dark liquid coming out with it as Oscar drops onto the ground. You shut your eyes tight. You’re scared the fight will change, and Oscar will get hurt. You can still hear the noises, though, so you also cover your ears. You wait— —and wait— —for what feels like forever and no time at all— —and then the noises stop. You look. The big moving thing— well it’s not moving anymore, so you guess it’s no longer a big moving thing. But just calling it a big thing wouldn’t make sense because there’s a lot of big, non -moving things here, so it’s easier to just keep calling it a big moving thing and— Your thinking is stopped by a mounting feeling of bad bad bad rising in your stomach as you feel Oscar glare at you from down below, from where it stands next to the no longer moving thing. It runs a hand over its helmet, before shaking his head. Adjusting how it's standing, it cups a hand in front of its helmet and calls up to you. “Stay there! I’ll find you.” And Oscar does. When it gets there, it crouches down and reaches for your upper arm, stroking its thumb across it until the okay feeling is enough for you to stop shaking. It guides you back up to your feet and then leads you to the warming thing from right before the giant moving thing and makes you sit down. “You need to get braver.” It says. Your eyes feel funny. The two of you sit there for a while, before Oscar tells you it’s time to continue. The large key opens the large doors out into a new and intriguing view. There’s no walls as far as you can see, though maybe those rocky gray things in the distance are walls too? Though they’re a lot more jagged, and you can’t see the smaller bits they’re made of like you can with the walls, so you’re not sure. Speaking of the wall bits… “What’re th-those?” You ask, pointing at the walls that are now behind the two of you. “I-I know tho— th-they’re walls but what’re th’ stuff walls are made of? I like th-th-the shapes.” “Bricks?” Oscar responds. You nod, and remember its earlier words, from before it helped with the arrow. “I— like th’t sound. Can th-they be my name? Here a long time like me, right?” Oscar pauses. “That’s what you want your name to be?” You nod. “Well then.” It reaches out to grab your hand and bring it to its other one, clasping them together. It shakes them, before speaking again. “Nice to know you, Brick.”Furnace 2 - ??? IIThe doors give way to your efforts achingly slowly, and your body hurts again by the time there’s enough room to wiggle through. The room is like the one you just came from, sort of, but different because instead of a warming thing in the middle, there’s tall… things around the edges. They don’t look like anything else you’ve seen. There’s another set of big doors ahead, so you start to walk towards th— Something large and imposing and towering suddenly slams into the tiles before you, between you and the next set of doors. You didn’t know things could feel bad to look at, but this thing does. It’s a lot bigger than any other moving thing you’ve seen. You also didn’t know there were moving things bigger than— well the doors were moving, but that was because of you, but you didn’t know there were moving-on-its-own things bigger than you. You stand frozen, until it starts to swing the thing its holding at you and then you see a way out and then you run run run, barreling past the door and stumbling down the stairs as the thud of the thing’s weapon and the shattering noise of other things sounds out behind you. You barely avoid tripping, and by the time you stop at the bottom of the stairs, your legs are hurting worse than they’ve felt before, and they’re so shaky that you worry that they’ll stop working again. You stand bent over, with your hands on your legs as your chest burns and shudders, and it feels like there’s something in it trying to get out out out . Once you can tell what’s around you again, you notice a light to your right, and after turning your head to see another of those nice warming things, you stumble towards it, sinking into the comforting warmth. You curl up next to the warmth, and stay there long after you feel better. The only thing that gets you moving again is wanting to be more away from that big moving thing. This time, it’s a bit frustrating how long it takes you to get to your feet, your legs stopping listening to you multiple times and making you start over. There’s a point of opening-light that caught your interest, and you want to go there. Using your hand to help, you slowly make it to where the patch of openness starts and— Oh! There’s another moving thing! Holding something interesting too. But before you can approach it that much, the other moving thing does something with the thing it’s holding, and you hear a thunk as a sudden pain comes from your shoulder. You stagger back, hand catching on a wall, and then you realize there’s an opening right to your left and that’s easier to go into than back to the room with the warmth. You don’t even need to look down to notice the thing sticking out of your shoulder, and poking at it makes your shoulder hurt more, so you try really really hard not to touch it again even though you really want to. The other thing you notice in the room is something interesting-shaped on the ground. Picking it up, ignoring the shoulder-hurting, on one side it’s got nice and pretty colours, and on the other side it has dangly thingies, and after poking around at them you figure out that the dangly things go nicely over your hand, so you decide to take the pretty-and-interesting thing with you. Walking out of the room, you remember suddenly why you went in there in the first place, but it’s too late and you can hear another swishy noise and a thunk as you tense but… no hurt?. Opening your eyes, you see another thing like what’s in your shoulder, but instead of in you, it's in the pretty thing. It looks like you’ve got the pretty thing between you and the hurt now? So that’s better, and you can continue going farther away from the really big and scary thing. When you get closer, the hurting moving thing starts going away. You’re proud of yourself for picking up the pretty-and-interesting thing, because now you know it's also pretty-and-useful. There’s a corner to turn and then steps to go upwards, and the hurting moving thing continues to go away, until it's not, and it’s shoving at you, though that’s not doing much but frustrate you. You grab it, and move to shove it back the way you just went up, just wanting to get it away from you. You succeed, because now the hurty moving thing is going down what you just went up, and the noise that happens when it's at the bottom and stops is startling and bad and you don’t like it very much. You stare at the moving thing that hurt you and it doesn’t move from where it fell. You wonder if something similar happened to the thing the shiny-moving thing gave you, because both came from somewhere more up, and then weren’t moving at the bottom. Casting a final, wary look at it, you continue forwards. The first thing you see when you walk out into the next openness is a half-there door, like the first one you opened, and past it is… the moving thing? You’re pretty sure it is, at least. It’s not moving much, which you don’t like. You approach the half-there door. There aren’t any jingly shiny things around like what the moving thing gave you, and you’re upset you didn’t take them the whole way like you did with the pretty-and-helpful thing. Trying to have your hands investigate like with the first one makes a loud and bad noise happen, but now the half-there door’s placed in a different way, so you cautiously try again. The half-there door moves in a way you don’t expect, and then your hands get jittery and bad and you drop it, stepping back as it falls over and makes a really really bad noise. It makes your chest feel all jittery and bad, and there’s some new and unpleasant feeling in your throat. You look around for another warming thing, because that helped make things better last time, but you can’t see any. What you see instead does manage to help a bit too though. The shiny moving thing finally moved again when you were paying attention to the door, its head turned towards you now, and that makes some of the badness go away, enough for you to try to get your legs to bring you over to it. As you start, suddenly it starts making noises towards you and you think the noises have a meaning that you think you understand? “Oh, you. You’re no hollow, hm? Thank goodness. I’m done for, I’m afraid.” You don’t like the shakiness of the noises. Everything else about it is so solid, and your thoughts about those different things aren’t agreeing. “My insides are damaged. I’ll die soon, then… lose my sanity. I can feel it coming.” It pauses, as you let your legs stop and fold once you’re close enough, and lean towards it, full of concern. “I wish to ask something of you. You are a godsend, to come at this moment.” It makes a funny sound. That sound is a lot better than all the other sounds it’s been making, you decide. “You and I, we’re both undead. Hear me out, will you?” You’re not entirely sure if it’s the right sound, but you try anyways, tripping over your mouth until you manage “O-Oh-kay.” It looks at you weird for that noise, but you don’t know if it’s because you did the wrong noise or spent so long trying to make it. Either way, it continues making noises of its own. “Thank you. Regrettably, I have failed in my mission, but perhaps you can keep the torch lit. There is an old saying in my family. “Thou who art Undead, art chosen… In thine exodus from the Undead Asylum, maketh pilgrimage to the land of Ancient Lords… When thou ringeth the Bell of Awakening, the fate of the Undead thou shalt know.” Well, now you know… And I can die with hope in my heart…” It stops for a moment, before seeming to remember something. “…Oh, and one more thing… Here, take this. It’s an Estus Flask, an Undead favourite. Has healing properties.” It takes an interesting looking thing from its side and holds it out towards you. It reminds you of the warming things from earlier. “Though, maybe you should take the arrow out of your shoulder before drinking.” You’re not sure what an arrow is, but if its in your shoulder… you poke at the long thing that hurt you earlier, and scrunch up your face when more pain comes. “Yes, that is an arrow… are… you that near hollowing?” You don’t know what this “hollowing” thing is. You’re not sure how to respond because of that, so instead you try to make another purposeful noise like you managed earlier, but all you manage to make is a “ih.” It tilts its head at you. Scrunching your face, you try again. “Ihh….Lh..” Still not it. The shiny moving thing makes noises seem easy. You try yet again. “Hail.” The noise is clipped and half-mumbled, but the moving thing finally responds, so you did well enough at making it. “Hail fellow.” The moving thing sounds out. “I told you, I’m done for, but perhaps you are too, in the long run.” You whine at that. “Nooo.” You insist, noise a bit easier this time, trying to tug on its arm as you half-stand. It gives a strained grunt, before tugging its arm back, stopping you. “My insides are damaged. It’s too late for me.” If the liquid can help you, why can’t it help the shiny moving thing? You don’t know the right noises, but you try to make your point by pushing the Estus Flask back towards it. “That is an Estus Flask. It will heal you. I must really bid farewell now… I would hate to harm you after death… So, go now…” That’s not what you meant! You push the flask towards it again. The thing stares at you. It seems to finally understand what you’re actually trying to do. After a while, it makes a sound again, almost too too quiet for you to hear. “……Why?” You’re frustrated again at not knowing how to sound out the whys, so you just shake the flask at it again. “I…” It starts, and you think maybe the shiny moving thing’s going to make more noise, but then instead it takes the shiny part over its head off, putting it down next to itself with barely any noise. You wonder how close your heads look to each other. From your nose, and the hair that's in front of your face the colours are different though, you’re pretty sure. It takes the flask back. The shiny moving thing stares at the stuff inside weirdly, before bringing it up to its lips.