• Published 28th Oct 2017
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Dark Souls 2: Rarity's Trials - Blackdrag-rose



Rarity's curiosity gets the better of her and she steps through the crystal mirror. Now she's in an unfamiliar world, with an unfamiliar body, and she's cursed with being undead as well... and has to complete an insane quest to go home.

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Aldia's Keep

Rarity and Edric returned to Majula and found that the Emerald Herald had already returned, or more like she hadn't left considering that she was standing in the same location that she was always in, to which Edric walked over to her to infuse his body with even greater strength. Rarity, on the other hand, already felt too powerful for all of the enemies that they had fought so far and simply decided to hold onto the souls that she had gathered so far, until she found a way to simply hand them over to her companion. While Edric knelt in front of the Emerald Herald, and spent his souls, Rarity walked over to the familiar shop that she generally visited when she had something on her mind, where Shalquoir sat up and smiled at her as she entered the building.

"Greetings Rarity," Shalquoir said, knowing that there was a specific reason that Rarity came to her shop, a question that only she could answer since the others that had talked to the Equestrian didn't give her anything solid, "I see that you and Edric managed to find King Vendrick."

"And his ring as well," Rarity stated, though she was sure that there was something special about the ring, since she had felt something from it when she and Edric found it, "but we're not entirely sure where to use the ring to move on."

"Then it's a good thing you came to me," Shalquoir replied, where she had to resist the urge to chuckle, as she knew that the Emerald Herald didn't give them a specific destination when she spoke to them earlier, "Do you remember seeing a black gate with golden symbols etched into it? The one located in the Shaded Woods?"

Rarity thought about what the cat was telling her, recalling the three paths that they had found back when they first entered that area and how two of them had brought them to new locations, as the path on the right had gone to the ruins where the scorpioness was located and the left brought them to the shine that let them access the castle. The one in the middle, however, definitely ended in a gate that neither of them could open, which had to be the one that Shalquoir was referring to, causing her to nod.

"That's a King's Gate," Shalquoir explained, knowing that Rarity would like this information, since it would help her and Edric in the immediate future, while also thinking of what else she was going to reveal, "they can only be opened by someone that's wearing the King's Ring, though there are only three of them resting around Drangleic. The gate I just mentioned will take you to Aldia's Keep, which will eventually bring you to a place you likely never thought about. The second one, as you no doubt know, rests beneath the castle itself, near where you encountered Darkdiver Grandahl for the third time, while the third gate is located in the Forest of Fallen Giants, or more accurately inside the ruins. Oh, and that other artifact you were feeling in the Shrine of Amana, the area passed the Looking Glass Knight, is where King Vendrick hid the true crown that he wore, as the one where you found him was a fake."

"Really?" Rarity said, as she was surprised to hear that the king would have done such a thing, but since he had been in the process of turning into a hollow she guessed he had placed it there for some specific reason.

"Yes, though the only way to open the door to it involves killing the hollowed King," Shalquoir replied, though at the same time she licked her paw for a moment, knowing that while it sounded like a terrible thing to say it was the only way for Rarity and Edric to claim the crown, "Once you have obtained King Vendrick's crown, however, the keys I gave you will reveal the way to the other three, though it will be up to you and Edric to decide if they're worth going after."

Rarity had the feeling that since Shalquoir gave her the keys to Shulva, Brume Tower, and Frozen Eleum Loyce, where the other three crowns were resting, and gave her the information on how to get Vendrick's crown, the cat likely wanted them to recover the missing artifacts, but for what purpose she did not know. Instead of saying anything she bowed her head to Shalquoir and walked out of the shop, where she joined up with Edric, who was still waiting by the bonfire and immediately turned towards her as she approached. He was somewhat surprised when Rarity informed him that the way forward was back in the Shaded Woods, where they went to access the shrine earlier, but he trusted Shalquoir's wisdom, since she hadn't lied to them yet. With the information in hand they gathered around the bonfire and recalled the bonfire that rested between three paths, to which they felt the magic wrap around them before they were whisked away to their nest destination.

When they arrived at their destination the duo started walking up the stairs with their weapons drawn, though when they reached the top of the stairs they walked through the middle path and followed it passed the small pool of water they had walked by earlier... before finally coming to the locked gate that Shalquoir had called a King's Gate.

"Let's see if this works," Edric commented, to which he held his right hand out towards the gate, though they waited for a few moments to see if the ring had any effect on the metallic gate.

After a few more seconds passed the circular part of the King's Gate, the head sized circular disk that was in the middle of the gate, started to spin for a moment before it stopped in it's tracks, which was followed by the gate opening before their eyes. Once the gate stopped moving, and the way was open, the duo carefully held their weapons in their hands before they walked into the new area that they had discovered, Aldia's Keep as Shalquoir called the area, though the large building that the road went up to was definitely a keep. For a moment Rarity wondered who this Aldia was and why his keep needed to have such an important gate blocking him off from the rest of the world, but instead of spending too much time thinking about it she and Edric followed the path in front of them. The first enemies they encountered were a trio of hounds that reminded the duo of the fearful creatures they spotted outside the Fire Keepers house, but these ones were much braver than their earlier counterparts.

Despite the fact that the trio of hounds came after them at the same time the duo was more than ready for them, as Edric simply cut down the ones that came at him while Rarity blasted her target backwards with her magic and then finished the poor thing off... though as they entered the shack that the hounds were guarding, however, they encountered someone familiar; Lucatiel.

"Who are you…" Lucatiel asked, staring at them as Edric approached the bonfire and ignited it, though at the same time Rarity knew that she must be succumbing to the Curse if she had forgotten who they were, "Oh…No, forgive me… I know you… Yes, of course. How goes your journey?"

"Great actually," Edric replied, not knowing what else to say to someone who was going to forget them soon enough, but at least they had one more chance to talk with Lucatiel before her mind was gone and she became a hollow.

"I know not what the two of you seek in this far-away land… But I pray for your safety." Lucatiel said, to which she smiled at the duo for a moment, which they returned immediately, before she sighed and stared at them again, "My name is Lucatiel. I beg of you, remember my name. For I may not myself…"

"Don't worry, we'll remember your name." Rarity said, though at the same time it was hard to remain calm when she knew that the Curse would eventually cause her and Edric to lose their memories, bit by bit, until they suffered the same fate as Lucatiel and King Vendrick, unless they stopped the Curse in it's tracks.

As Lucatiel nodded, rather sadly as Rarity noted, Edric walked out of the shack and Rarity followed, to which they walked up the stairs that were in front of them and headed straight towards the entrance of the large keep, though as they did so Rarity noticed that the front door was missing. As the duo entered the actual building they kept their guards up, as there was no way of telling what sort of creatures were waiting for them this time around, though one thing they quickly found out was that there was a carriage resting in the main hallway. When they approached the carriage two things happened within seconds of each other; the first being that the carriage shook, indicating that something was trapped inside it, while the second was that a red spirit materialized in front of them.

What surprised the duo, however, was that the invader was dressed up in the same attire that Lucatiel was wearing, meaning that this was either her brother, or it was someone else that had come from Mirrah, though at the moment neither of them cared as they avoided the first attack that came their way. Edric, of course, insisted on fighting the specter in single combat, leaving Rarity to watch as Edric and the specter danced around the area in front of her, their swords either colliding together or one sword hitting the shield of the other. Despite the fact that Edric desperately needed to find some new armor, as the Drangleic gear that he had been using from the start was starting to get old, he kept pace with the specter and dealt several powerful attacks to his opponent, before finally banishing him back to whatever world he had come from.

With that taken care of the duo approached the iron doors in front of them and pushed them up, only to discover that the room in front of them had a large dragon skeleton resting in the room, though it was also blocking parts of the stairs that they might be able to get around.

"There's the second dead dragon I've seen since I got to this world," Rarity commented, as the first had been tied up in the nest of the Duke's Dear Freja, though this one was completely devoid of flesh and scales, indicating that someone had picked the corpse clean before hanging it.

"Let's hope that we don't actually have to fight a dragon at some point in time," Edric replied, as that was the last thing he wanted to worry about at the moment, as he had heard that dragons were incredibly tough to kill and didn't want to see if the stories were true.

As they approached the large skeleton, however, it appeared that Edric might have spoken too soon, as the head of the skeleton, as well as other parts of the body, started to move all of a sudden, to which Rarity pushed them to the wall on the left side of the room and threw up a shield around them. The duo then watched as the head lifted itself into the air and stared at where they had been standing moments ago, before finally trying to bite the area, causing the head and neck part of the skeleton to collapse on itself. When they were sure that the skeleton had stopped moving, and Rarity could tell if the other pieces were still moving, Rarity lowered the barrier and they started moving again, because the sooner they got through this place the sooner they could see whatever horrors waited them in the next area they had to travel through before they finished their quest.

What they did was walked up the stairs that the skeleton had been blocking and noticed a lifelike statue of an ogre blocking the way, though Edric simply sighed as he pulled out one the Fragrant Branches of Yore that they had picked up during their travels, freeing the unfortunate ogre in the process. Instead of fighting the creature directly, and risking being crushed in the process, Edric moved out of the way as Rarity hurled a Great Fireball at the ogre and knocked it backwards, allowing the two of them to advance forward before it started getting back onto it's feet. That pleased Rarity, because something that died in one blow was annoying and she enjoyed having a creature survive the first strike, to which she and Edric dodged the next attack before she launched another Great Fireball into it's chest... though this time around it dropped dead, just like everything else they encountered.

With the creature dead the duo walked up the stairs to their right and found a large cage, with another one of those large lizard creatures, waiting before a door, though since the creature was caged and wasn't going anywhere the duo simply moved around the cage and headed towards the door behind it... where they found a metallic statue of a dragon that had a chain attached to it's mouth, which Edric pulled and opened the path forward.

The duo walked into the corridor that was in front of them and noticed that it was much darker than the first part of the keep, to which Rarity let some fire surround her hand for a few seconds as she ignited the torch that Edric pulled out, revealing portraits and additional cages with monsters trapped in them. That was, however, before a second ogre burst through the area ahead of them and started breaking the cages and carriages that had been in front of them, releasing a bunch of the creatures that there in front of the duo. Edric pulled back as Rarity started hurling Great Fireballs and several other powerful spells into the enemies that were in front of her, blasting them backwards as she advanced forward, allowing Edric to see what was behind the doors as they moved.

One of the doors that Edric checked contained a wizard type enemy that literally ran towards Rarity in an attempt to silence her, only for Rarity to silence the acolyte in the process... though as she investigated the room, however, she spotted a pit that contained a key in the ill colored pit, where she levitated the key up to them and pocketed it.

"Right, you can levitate items around at will," Edric commented, because with all of the magical feats that Rarity pulled off made him forget about her basic skills, the same skills that she had come to the world with before strengthening her magic to this level.

"Levitation comes in handy every now and then," Rarity replied, though at the same time she spun her staff around as she walked out of the room and smacked another acolyte that was coming at her, before impaling the magic user with the bottom of her staff, "Come along, there has to be an exit around here somewhere."

As the end of the corridor they found another door that they could open and discovered a small room that apparently had a wooden door in front of them, though Rarity had Edric waited as she channeled a Great Chaos Fireball, a deeper red colored version of the Great Fireball, and waited... where she loosed it when the ogre that had been waiting for them tore down the wall in front of them, to which the painful fireball struck the creature down. With the ogre dead the duo moved forward and headed towards the fog door that was in front of them, to which they wondered what sort of creature was waiting for them this time around. When they reached their destination the two of them walked through the fog door and entered what apparently looked like a massive cage of some kind, though on the other side they found a large red dragon sleeping in the middle of the area.

"Edric, darling, what was it that you said at the beginning of this area?" Rarity asked, though she didn't bother to keep her voice low, as the moment they entered the area the dragon starting moving, indicating that it knew they were there and was waking up from it's slumber.

"That I hoped we wouldn't have to fight one of these things." Edric replied, though at the same time he drew his sword and shield, because this was going to be a terrible fight for them this time around, regardless of what abilities Rarity had access to.

"Well, let's not say something like that again," Rarity said, to which she stepped forward and her magic formed around her, as she knew that fighting a dragon was no laughing matter, even if this one was waking up from it's slumber.

The first thing that the wyvern type dragon did, as Rarity realized what they were facing when she noticed that the beast only had two legs instead of four and a pair of wings, was fly into the air and latched onto the wall of the cage, where it breathed a gout of flames at them. Instead of being burned alive Rarity summoned a barrier and protected the two of them from being hurt, though as the wyvern landed Edric charged forward and cut into it's right leg with his sword, where Rarity noticed that the beast was in a small amount of pain. As Edric focused on fighting the wyvern's legs, however, Rarity moved around the area and channeled the most basic form of each element she had, as she wanted to see what sort of weakness the creature possessed. When the Dark Orb hit the wyvern's chest, however, the beast tumbled out of the air and hit the floor of the cage, where Edric ran up to it and cut into it before it could get up, making sure that he didn't waste the chance that had been given to him.

Rarity, on the other hand, was surprised that a simple spell like that could do that much damage to such a powerful creature, to which she simply sighed as she ceased trying out the other elements and focused solely on the dark type spells she had learned so far. After discovering the wyvern's weakness, however, Rarity purposely stopped attacking until Edric asked her to aid him, because he wanted to challenge himself without taking full advantage of the knowledge they had been given. Fortunately it appeared that Rarity might not actually need to worry herself with using the weakness to their advantage, as Edric's slashes seemed to be doing more than enough damage, up until the wyvern knocked Edric back into the wall, causing him to call for Rarity to aid him.

That was followed by Rarity loosing a powerful Dark Hail at the already weakened dragon, blasting the beast out of the air and forced it to land on the floor of the cage again, though she followed that up by loosing a blast of Dark Magic at the beast's chest, slaying the beast while causing it's body to collapse entirely.

"Let us rest for a few minutes," Rarity said, letting the Dark Magic fade from her eyes as she cast a healing spell to restore part of Edric's health, though they both knew it was necessary.

They had no idea what sort of area was passed the keep, though now that they were facing tougher creatures again, as Edric had nearly been killed in that single attack, they knew that they had to be on their guard in the future... otherwise they were going to be on their way to becoming hollows in a short amount of time.

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