• Published 3rd Jun 2015
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To Keep the Fire Burning - DannyJ



Dark Souls crossover. A young stallion's journey to rescue a friend from a decaying asylum leads to an adventure through the ancient, ruined kingdom of Equestria.

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Prologue: This Hopeful Flame

I remember the first time I died. It was a cold, numbing sensation, like my life and warmth was being drained out of me. At the time, I had no idea I was going to come back, so I had been certain that I would never feel such a terrible pain again, let alone anything worse. I was naive to believe that. Life isn't that easy. I had not yet experienced its full, unrelenting cruelty. There were times in the days ahead that I would've yearned for a death as simple as my first.

But that was not where it began. No, if I am to truly tell my tale, then I suppose I ought to go back to the day I lost my best friend.


Prologue:
This Hopeful Flame


The sun shone weakly through a grey cover of clouds as the two of us pulled our carts across the sloping hills. The mild autumn wind carried with it a scent of wet leaves. The gravel of the road crunched beneath our hooves. And I stared up at the sky in silence as I plodded along beside my friend.

Despite my quietness, I was not pondering any deep or meaningful subject. In truth, I was thinking about a mare back in my village, wondering what to say to her if I ever worked up the courage to say hello. Not the most weighty of topics, I know, but I was immersed in this thought, and thus was caught off-guard when my companion chose to break the silence with a question.

"What do you know about how life began?"

The weight of the apple cart on my back came into focus again. I gave a grunt, frustrated that I had only just managed to forget about it before being dragged back into the real world again. The thing rattled and bumped over the gravel, and I took a breath and looked sideways at my friend.

"Sorry, what was that?"

He tilted his head, staring at me through his blue compound eyes. I only just noticed at that moment that he'd polished his carapace; through a break in the clouds, the rising day sunlight shined off him.

"I said, what do you know about the beginning of life?" he repeated.

"Oh." I kept pulling my cart, but turned my gaze skyward again to contemplate the question. "Well, just what my grandpa told me, I guess. First there were the stars, then there was magic, from magic came life, from life came disparity, yadda, yadda, yadda, and then we had souls."

He gave a disappointed sigh, and his head drooped.

"Why do you ask, Notch?" I said.

He didn't look at me. Instead, he took an interest in a wooden sign by the side of the pathway, which noted that the village of Woods' End was ahead of us. I could already see it in the distance, a ramshackle collection of wooden huts with thatched roofs, positioned right at the edge of a very foreboding-looking forest.

"I was just thinking," said Notch. "What do you think we were all like before we had souls? Do you think the world used to be like... well... like how it is now?"

"I think that if it was, it doesn't bear thinking about. Losing your soul and becoming undead is already horrific enough if you just assume it's a curse. I really do not want to imagine a world where it's our default state."

Notch went quiet.

Soon we crested a small hill, and followed the path as it sloped gently downwards the rest of the way towards Woods' End. A blacksmith's forge was the first thing we saw coming in, where two mares in long blue uniforms, a pegasus and a unicorn, were speaking with a bearded earth stallion as he hammered away at a halberd. The smith looked like he was trying to ignore them, or at least was only listening as much as he absolutely had to. The forge was positioned in such a way that we couldn't avoid passing it, but Notch and I tried our best to steer clear of them and go unnoticed, despite hauling a pair of heavy apple carts behind us.

Sadly, though perhaps unsurprisingly, we failed to avoid their attention. While the unicorn mare kept trying to talk to the smith, the pegasus looked over her shoulder and locked eyes with us, twisting her head almost a hundred and eighty degrees to follow us with her glare. I had to avert my gaze and look back to the road, which oddly had given way from gravel to mud.

A few other ponies milled about the street, going in and out of shop doors or just standing around talking to each other. It wasn't a big village, but this looked like one of the busier parts of it. There were foals running about up ahead, an old mare rocking back and forth in a chair in front of one of the homes, and a young colt helping an elderly stallion unload firewood from a wagon. At one point, a chicken even ran across our path.

I felt that mare's eyes leave the back of my head, and dared look back to check. The two were still having their one-sided conversation with the blacksmith at the end of the road, but the pegasus was ignoring us now. I shivered slightly.

We stopped outside of a stone building with a straw roof. Above the doorway was a place where a sign was obviously meant to hang, but it was broken. Instead, the closest window had a large piece of card in front of the curtain, with the words "GENERAL STORE" scrawled on in red ink. I unhitched myself from my apple cart, and Notch did the same.

"Did you see those two?" I asked.

Notch gave me a look. "See them? I could feel them. Those two were radiating pure malevolence. If a changeling tried to feed on them, they would poison themselves."

He was joking. Probably. I doubted changelings could actually be poisoned by bad emotions.

I looked up the street again, in the direction of the blacksmith. The pegasus mare turned our way again and stared directly at me. The hairs pricked on the back of my neck, and I ushered Notch into the store.

"Come on," I muttered to him. "This place is giving me the creeps."

The inside of the store was dark and dreary. There were lanterns hanging from the ceiling and from the support beams, but none of them were lit, in spite of the weather. The windows were all open, except for the one with the sign in it, and the draft which they let in wasn't helping. Still, the store was warmer than outside. I could appreciate that much after the walk.

I trailed down the rows of shelves. This was less a general store and more a grocer's if the sheer quantity of fruit and vegetables was anything to go by. There was a small section on the other side of the store where the other goods were on display, mostly tools, but it still wasn't very general. Notch didn't seem to care as much as I did, and just walked up to the counter and rang the bell. I shuffled over as well and leaned next to him until a portly earth pony mare emerged from a back room.

"You 'ere with the apples?"

She spoke with the voice of an old wrinkled crone many times her age. She looked well on her way to becoming one, too; her face was screwed up in some combination of a sneer and a grin that made her look much older than I'm sure she was. I immediately decided that I did not like her.

"Yes, ma'am," Notch dutifully answered. "Two carts full of our ripest."

The shopkeeper trotted around the counter and shoved past us to get outside. Notch and I stood in the doorway as she inspected the apples. She took a bite out of one of them, and then gave me a smile that was almost predatory. I had to catch the half-eaten apple with my magic when she tossed it at me.

"Looks good. Load it up around back."

We complied, moving the carts around the side of the store and parking them at the back, where we then unloaded our apple crates and picked up several of her empty ones. Notch took the filled crates inside to place them in the storeroom for her, while I passed them to him between stacking the empties. The shopkeeper stayed outside with me all the while, leaning against the doorframe and keeping her gaze on me.

When my work was done and Notch disappeared inside with the last crate, the mare reached into a saddlebag on the floor by her hooves and removed a purse. To my surprise, she gave me an old silver coin bearing the stern face of King Leopold II of Griffonstone.

"O-Oh, ma'am, that's unnecessary. We already received your payment."

She smiled at me. "I know. Just a tip for yer services, since you've been such a good boy."

I flushed as I reluctantly took the coin from her. Perhaps I'd misjudged her. Creepy or no, an act of generosity was always appreciated in these hard times.

"Well, thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. You'll need every bit you can get when your friend drains you dry and you go hollow!"

The mare gave a dry laugh that was almost a cackle. I decided that I was right about her the first time, and put the coin into my own saddlebags. As her laughter subsided, Notch returned.

"If we're all done here, I think it's time to go," he said.

"No objections from me," I responded.

Notch turned to the shopkeeper. "Ma'am, is there anywhere we can leave these carts for an hour?"

"Y'can leave them back 'ere if you want. Nopony's gonna want 'em if they got nuffink in 'em."

"Thank you. And might you be able to direct us to the nearest bonfire?"

The old mare's lips curled up.

"Straight across town, in the square by the old well."

Notch gave her a respectful bow. I did the same, and the two of us soon trotted back out onto the main street.

"Is everypony in this place a creeper?" I whispered.

"I hope not," said Notch. "But let's not stay long, either way. Something feels wrong about this place."

Glancing up the street, I noticed that the blacksmith was now alone.

We cut between some buildings and followed one of the narrower roads. Once or twice, we nearly bumped into other ponies. With each we passed, I kept noticing the looks that they were giving Notch. I kept as close to him as possible.

"Notch, do you sense any other changelings in town? Are the locals just taking pony form?"

"No. I think I'm the only one."

I quickly looked behind me, and could almost swear I saw that blue-uniformed pegasus disappearing behind a building.

"You don't think Woods' End shipped off its changeling population to the Asylum, do you?" I asked.

"That is exactly what I think."

"Let's just hit the bonfire quickly and go."

We emerged into the square. Just like the hag told us, a light pink fire burned softly in the middle of town, surrounded by a circle of stone benches. Its flame flickered and sputtered with fading life, like a campfire in the rain. It burned atop a large heap of ashes, filled with warped bits of glowing red metal and small stones, no wood to be seen. There was a sword embedded in the ground there, its blade disappearing into the top of the ash pile, marking it as one of the true bonfires, despite its forlorn appearance. The pink flames clung to the sword, barely tall enough to reach the mouth-grip.

And sitting by it on one of the benches, another old mare in red robes glanced at us as we approached.

"This fire is weak," she said with severity. "It will not sustain you anymore, changeling. None of the bonfires can."

While Notch stood back, I approached the mare and bowed, lighting my horn and removing a necklace with a wooden pendant from my bags.

"We bring offerings, Fire-Keeper," I said. "A token of friendship."

She lowered her hood, revealing a horn of her own, and lifted the necklace with her magic to inspect it. I waited patiently for her verdict as she turned it over in the air, frowning.

"It is sufficient," she finally said.

The Fire-Keeper tossed the necklace into the pink flames, and the bonfire roared to life, rising up for only a second before dying down again.

"The changeling may feed."

Notch took a seat on another of the stone benches, closed his eyes, and held out his hooves to the bonfire as if he were warming himself. But this fire was so weak, I didn't feel its heat at all. On a day like this, that was a real tragedy. I took a seat next to the Fire-Keeper.

"The bonfires are dying," I said.

She looked to me and nodded.

"The Fire-Keeper in my hometown says that it'll mean the end of us all. Is that what you think?"

The Fire-Keeper closed her eyes and breathed deeply. "Many disasters could come of such a thing. Undoubtedly, the changelings will starve. Those that don't will feed on us. We will lose our souls. All of us. And then we'll go hollow."

Grim.

"Do you have any idea what's causing it? Everypony seems to have a different opinion nowadays, but my mother always said only the Fire-Keepers really know what they're talking about. So what do you think would save us from this curse?"

The Fire-Keeper stared into the bonfire.

"There is a saying." She drew herself up. "'Life began in Equestria, and so too did all of life's problems.'"

I raised an eyebrow.

"Equestria?" I repeated.

"Indeed. The land of the ancient lords. The home of all ponies in ages past. Now it brims with hollows and feral changelings, but I have no doubt in my heart. That is where the answers lie."

"Why Equestria?"

"Equestria was the original home of the Fire of Friendship, the flame from which all the bonfires draw their power. It is said that it was created there, fuelled by the six founders and given life by Clover the Clever. The song we now sing to the Fire was once Equestria's anthem. If the Fire is dying, then one must conclude that something is happening at its source. Where else might the source be?"

I sat back, pondering the old mare's words. I had asked several other Fire-Keepers in my travels about our eventual fate, but in every remote pit of a village that I had been to, none of them had ever given such a direct and thoughtful answer. I'd of course heard of Equestria in legends and old stories, but this was the first I'd heard of any link between it and the bonfires. Was that really it? Surely that must mean that others had gone to Equestria in search of the truth before now?

But the bonfires were still dying. If ever any hero before now had ventured out to Equestria in hopes of saving the world... they hadn't succeeded yet.

"Firelink."

I'd been staring into the bonfire with the Fire-Keeper, but Notch's voice snapped me out of it.

"Hmm?"

"Firelink, come on," he said. "It's time to go."

I nodded and stood up, bidding the Fire-Keeper farewell. As Notch and I started to walk back the way we came, however, the pegasus in the blue uniform emerged from a side alley with her partner.

"Halt," she said, sharply.

We both froze in place, mid-step, in my case. Notch's eyes widened, and so did mine. My heart raced. Somehow, I knew exactly what was about to happen.

"You, changeling, what's your name?" the pegasus demanded.

To his credit, Notch kept his nerve much better than I. Though he remained poised and tense, he answered with a confidence that I could never have summoned were I in his place.

"Notched Arrowhead of Brittlesworth, son of Silver Quiver."

The unicorn mare withdrew a notepad from her pockets and began scrawling on it.

"Brittlesworth?" said the pegasus. "That's the other side of the border, isn't it? Woods' End is of his majesty's lands. What are you doing this far west?"

"We are employees of Golden Orchards, delivering apples to Woods' End," Notch answered immediately. "We were not made aware of any law against our crossing the border. Our employer assured us that he had sent deliveries here without issue many ti—"

"It is not an issue that the border was crossed; it is an issue that you chose to cross it," the pegasus said, curtly.

Notch didn't say anything. The mare glared at him for a moment, clearly expecting him to protest or offer a counter-argument, but when none came, she continued.

"Perhaps you haven't heard, but by the king's decree, your kind are no longer allowed to wander freely here. It's a waste of time to round up and lock away all our hollows or even all our undead so long as you people keep making more of them. So I'm afraid that all changelings are expected to surrender themselves to the custody of the Inquisition now."

Now Notch spoke up.

"That's preposterous! I have never turned a pony undead, much less hollow, in my entire life! I feed from the bonfires, like all responsible changelings do!"

The pegasus spread her wings and took a step forward. For the first time, Notch's bravado dried up, and he tried to back away from her.

"The bonfires are dying, little changeling." She sneered. "Keep up your pretence of nobility all you want, but we both know that if it came down to you either starving or feeding from ponies, you would tear out and devour our souls in an instant, like the ravenous locust you are."

Notch growled at her, but before he could do anything, the inquisitor reared up and smashed her forehooves down on his head. Notch crumpled to the ground, and I recoiled.

The pegasus turned to share a look with the other inquisitor, who had already put away her notepad and drawn a small metal ring. She stepped aside to allow the unicorn to walk over and affix it to Notch's horn. Then she reached into her own pocket and withdrew some odd metal wires, which she began to tie his wings with.

"Bu-But..." For the first time since the encounter began, I tried to speak, but it just came out as a stutter. "But you can't take him! H-He's not a citizen of your country!"

"He crossed the border, so we can do whatever we want," the unicorn said to me.

I thought I heard a slight groan from Notch, but I couldn't tell if he was still conscious or not as the unicorn mare lifted him with her magic. She trotted past me with him, heading across the square. I didn't know where she was going. I turned to the pegasus, who was standing there looking at me with a stone-faced expression.

"Where are you taking him?" I asked her.

"To the Changeling Asylum in the north. He and the rest of his fellows can fester in their own little hive up there, far away from all the rest of us."

"You can't do that!" I shouted, a note of desperation entering my voice.

"Yes we can."

And that's all she said, as she then turned away and tried to follow after her partner. For an awkwardly long amount of time, I just stood there with my jaw hanging open and watched her walking away from me. But then I felt my anger building. I took a deep breath and marched across the square to catch up with her.

"Hey!"

As I came near, I reached out with a hoof and tried to grab her shoulder. And that was my mistake. The moment I touched her, she whirled around and punched me in the face. I fell on my back, and then she slammed her forehooves on my chest, winding me. I cried out in pain, but she leaned down and pinned a hoof against my neck.

"Assaulting a member of the Inquisition. You may not be going to the Asylum, but you've certainly earned a cage of your own."

She put a restraining ring around my horn like her partner had done to Notch, and then the hoofcuffs came. All I could do was thrash impotently and scream the whole way through.


The circumstances of my imprisonment, release, and what happened after that is not a terribly interesting tale. Needless to say, the mare arrested me to make a point, not because she had any intention of actually trying to punish me to fullest extent of the law. I was let go and allowed to go back home, but I didn't get to see or speak to Notch again, and I was told that he had already been loaded onto the ships and sent off to the Asylum by the time I was out.

Back in my village, I fell into a routine for several more weeks, numbly carrying out my job of delivering the apples to other settlements, now without my best friend. But over time, I did not find my sorrows becoming any easier to bear. In truth, I thought back on that fateful day more and more. I thought of Notch, starving in some decaying asylum, the chill of the cold northern nights slowly killing him. It was thoughts like those that kept me awake at night.

One afternoon, while in this haze, I returned to my village after a long day's work, and went to sit down by the bonfire. The Brittlesworth fire was well-kindled, unlike the measly thing from Woods' End, but it was still fairly small. The flame burned taller, but it did not spread outwards very much, though the ash heap beneath it did.

On a nearby stone bench, the Fire-Keeper of my village noticed my approach. I sat down next to her, and she looked sideways at me and gave a weak smile. Her wrinkled face looked all the more gaunt for the effort, half cast in shadow by her hood and the gloomy, cloud-filled sky. Still, she leaned over and placed a hoof on my shoulder. I leaned into my grandma's embrace, saying nothing to her.

We sat in silence for a minute or two, just staring into the flames together, but we weren't alone for long. The bonfire was a changeling feeding point, so sooner or later it was inevitable that Mr. Silver Quiver would show up. I almost hadn't been able to face him these past few weeks, but that afternoon, I didn't have a choice. He gave a grim smile to Gran and I as he approached.

"Ahem," he said, his voice dry and scratchy, "I, uh... Hello again, Firelink, Mrs. Flame."

He sat down on the bench opposite us and held out his hooves to the fire. That wasn't necessary for feeding. Notch and his father both just did that by habit, even when it wasn't actually cold out. A slight smile tugged at the corner of my mouth for only a second before it died again. Mr. Quiver tried to keep his eyes on the flames, but they kept wandering back to me.

"I'm, uh..." I instinctively tried to apologise again, but it died in my throat. "Ho-How are you holding up, Mr. Quiver?"

He gave a long sigh.

"I've been better."

There wasn't much I could say to that, so I said nothing, and the three of us remained in silence for several more minutes while Mr. Quiver fed. It was sad to think that this broken old changeling was the same one that I'd known for all my years, the same one whose house I always used to go to after school. He had never exactly been a jolly or outgoing type, but when I was a colt and Notch was a larva, I remember a warmness to Mr. Quiver that just wasn't there anymore. It had already started to go away when he lost his wife. Now it had left him completely.

Eventually, he got up and left, bidding the both of us goodbye and returning to his shack on the other side of town. I worried what might become of him in his despair.

"...Gran?"

"Yes, dear?" Gran said, softly.

"How did you keep going? After grandpa?"

Gran let go of me and leaned forward. She crossed her hooves and kept looking into the fire rather than at me.

"You just do, after a while. Your grandfather lived a long life, and I took some comfort in that... We had our time, and it ended. But more than anything, you just get used to it. In the old stories, there were tales of goddesses that would watch everyone they knew die, and they'd weep and weep and curse their immortality for making them witness so much death."

She looked my way and gave a cocky grin.

"But I never liked those stories. They make the goddesses out to be crybabies. I've seen my share of death, Firelink. I didn't need to be immortal for that. And take it from me, death gets easier in time, not worse. The undead would tell you the same. 'If you fall down seven times, stand up eight.'"

I looked across the village in the direction of Notch's old family home.

"Do you think Mr. Quiver will ever get over it?"

"Maybe. What about you? Do you think that you will?"

I wasn't sure how to answer that, exactly.

"I... I don't know. He's probably not even dead yet, Gran. How can I mourn him when I can't stop thinking about what he must be going through right now? ...I've had nightmares about it."

Gran nodded. "I will pray to Luna for you."

I rolled my eyes. "Like she ever listens."

"Have faith and it will pay dividends, Firelink."

"So if I pray, will the goddesses return Notch to us from whatever wretched place he's rotting in right now?"

Gran just gave me a sympathetic look, and returned her attention to the fire.

"You'll never make a Fire-Keeper without faith, Firelink."

I sighed.

"What would even be the point? The bonfires are dying anyway. Another few years, maybe a few decades if we're lucky, then it'll all be as you said... We'll all be drowning in hollows..."

"And that's why it's so important to have faith. We live in a cold world, Firelink. Draw comfort from wherever you can."

Gran's horn lit up, and she began prodding at the edge of the bonfire with her magic. Under her breath, she muttered an old hymn, and as she sung, the flames inched just a little higher.

"The Fire of Friendship lives in our hearts... As long as it burns, we will not drift apart..."

My grandma's hymn was an old anthem of friendship. To ponies, friendship is one of the most important things. I've heard it described as the one thing that separates us from animals. I thought of the Inquisition. They let their fear become more important than friendship, and they turned on their own citizens, abducting the changelings and the undead in some desperate hope that it might let them survive the Fire dying out. But they had become monsters for it.

In my country, at least in Brittlesworth, we hadn't made that choice. We had collectively decided that our friendships were too important to throw away, even for our own survival. There was something I found tragically beautiful in that. I recognised then that in the absence of faith, that was what I had always valued and found comfort in. Friendship. Family. Loyalty. In a sense, maybe I did have faith. Just faith in others, rather than faith in the goddesses.

And that's when I knew that I couldn't leave Notch to his fate. The revelation hit me just like that. I couldn't let him rot, because that's not what a good friend would do. And he was the same as me. He also had faith in friendship. I was his only hope.

I stood up suddenly. Gran seemed amused.

"I know that look," she said. "That's the look your father always gave when he'd made up his mind about something."

"I need to reach the Changeling Asylum."


"But soon, the flames will fade, and only Dark will remain..."


Author's Note:

This story is a part of the Borderworld.

Editing here was originally done by Chris, with additional pre-reading by Mr. Spiffy and Someother Pony. The cover art was commissioned from Arylett-Charnoa.

On the advice of several commenters, I've decided to split the original first chapter. The new prologue that you're currently reading handles everything in Woods' End and Brittlesworth, while the first chapter now contains just the adventure stuff in the Asylum, as well as all the comments and author's notes from the original version. I also took the opportunity to do some minor revisions. Mostly it was just improving the prose, although I did fix a minor plot hole in the first chapter. Old readers, see if you can spot it.

Otherwise, if you're new to TKTFB, welcome! It only gets worse from here.

Despair ahead.