I make my way across the bridge and down its staircase to find myself on yet another bridge. I am getting quite sick of these, so when I see another path I take it. It is, unfortunately just a balcony, but I find company there. He is a little rotund, but surprisingly happy and I cannot help but find myself smiling in his presence. I don’t understand most of what he says, but he promises to help me and asks for my help in return. He is clearly insane, but he give me a soap-stone of the kind that I can vaguely remember from when I was taught to write on slate as a child.

This encounter aside, I make my way reluctantly to the bridge now extremely wary of them. There are soldiers far down it, but more concerning are the burnt corpses and singed stone. As I slowly walk across I find the sound of massive beating wings in my ears, and run as quickly as I am able back to the doorway I had come from, ducking inside just in time for the dragon’s fire to miss me. I feel the heat on my face as it passes. Glancing out the door I can see it perched there, the colour of dried blood and covered in spikes. But it’s the only way forward, and I know that I have to go forward. Lifting my shield I sprint directly at it, noting in the corner of my eye a staircase and run down that way instead of toward the statue the dragon seems to be guarding. Down the stairs I find a ladder leading back to the fire I last rested at. The comfort filling me once again.

With a bit of exploration I find another way forward, beneath the dragon and its fire. But, I hear something in the back of my heart, the beating of massive, feathered wings and the statue of a sobbing woman. Forsaken. The word fills my mind, I have to see the statue beneath the beast.

The creature is hardly as intelligent as the Ancient Dragons from the tales given by the Way of White, and flies away as soon as I reach the alcove beneath it. There is another fire here, which I rest at before looking back to what items strewn over the bridge survived the dragon’s fire. Nothing there appeals to me… except. On the body of some fallen knight I find a Claymore. It is a simple weapon, strong and familiar. I know that this is not my weapon of choice, not by memory but by feel. But it feels much better than anything else I’ve held thus-far, even the great sword of that Black Knight.

I return to explore the shrine beneath the dragon. There is a statue, a matronly woman holding a child almost desperately in her arms. The child holds a sword and I cannot whether it be male or female. Outside are many passive, sobbing hollows. I pass them by for a statue rent asunder in a ray of sun. A sword-spear is held in the remaining hand. I know this, not the statue, I have never seen anything like it. But the feeling, the knowledge that whoever this was a statue of had been utterly Forsaken, abandoned and left to fend for themselves. That beating of great feathered wings, a statue of a sobbing woman and I move on.

Stairs leading upward find me face-to-face with a Hollowed soldier, this new, heavier weapon destroys it easily, crashing through its defences and sending it to pieces on the brick and mortar ground. Looking past where it stood, I can see little. Undead guarding a pathway upward to an open portcullis, backed by what looks to be a massive metal-clad boar. But I smell something from the tower to my left.

A familiar, charred metal scent clogs my nostrils and I take a deep breath, feeling how it brings back memories which heighten my already aggravated arousal. Without thinking I turn and make my way up the tower. The scent grows stronger and stronger the higher I go until I see the familiar, armoured back. This one has their back to me as well, but is wielding a much, much larger weapon.

The top of this tower is small, far too small I realise too late as the helmet turns at the sound of my footsteps and the sword immediately swings in a horizontal arch at my waist. My raised can only do so much in its sorry, battered state and I brace as I’m pushed back, my left heel skidding over open air above the staircase I just stepped out of. Ducking quickly under the follow up swing this burnt knight is put off of balance enough for me to side-step and ram my sword into its back before it can recover.

I shudder as I feel my blade scraping through it and the large Claymore’s tip pushing out of the knight’s belly to the sound of a feminine cry. Not mine, I realise a moment later as I shove this knight off of my blade. I can feel the grin creeping over my face as I ready myself, the knight rights herself and I hear another cry, almost frustrated this time as the sword comes around at me. I’m almost tempted to feel it, just to know how something heavy would feel cleaving through me. But I lift my shield and leap over the blade as I deflect it into the brick of the parapet floor, leaving her off balance again. I step forward and let her see my smile as my weapon plunges into her chest. I can almost imagine that I hear a bit of the same arousal on her voice as I’ve felt in my own in this situation.

My distraction however earns me the massive blade in my own gut, nearly pushing through me, but too broad in the end and I am simply sent flying off the top of the tower. I hear myself screaming and can see my insides spilling from my opened belly as I fall to the bricks bellow. I hear a crash but feel nothing as the world goes black.

I jolt awake and am halfway up toward that hollow on guard before I know it, still panting heavily and feeling the grin across my face. The hollow is dispatched without a though, only guarding my back as I turn back to the tower, taking in slower this time. Perhaps I might be able to get that first strike in.

But I am barely up the staircase before I see the blade coming my way, almost managing to roll to the side but I’m clipped and feel my shield arm shatter. I cry out, my heart pounding as I look down to see it nearly hanging from my shoulder, covered in blood and the bone visible. I manage to dodge and weave around her attacks for a few more moments, but eventually she pins me beneath her shield against the wall of the tower. I can feel her breath coming hard against my face, it’s dry and as burnt as her armour. I feel the grin spreading across my face before her blade comes down at it. The world goes black.

So, sneaking up on this one will be more difficult than the last. I’ll have to out-fight her. But that little area on top of the tower greatly favours her massive weapon. I sensed her frustration in that last bout, perhaps I’ll be able to taunt her down to the area with the smashed statue?

It takes time, she is smarter and more careful than most of these Undead, keeping her shield up and walking slowly down the tight spiral of the tower’s staircase, but eventually she makes her way down and charges me. I may be imagining it, but there seems to be an excitement in her step, perhaps not the same as my own, but something. We dance for a while, her trying to cut me to pieces, me trying to fins a moment to take her down. I get a few blows in edge-wise, but in the end that massive blade always finds my body one way or another.

We do this dance again and again. I can feel myself getting more and more excited with each blow that ends, either pushing through her, or through me. She is as well, I can see it. I swear I heard her moan the last time my blade drove through her chest, and she held herself back long enough my claymore to touch her again before ramming that thing through my spine.

Then, finally, it happens. I can feel it from the first blow she fails to land. This is the one, I can see her shoulders already heaving as though she’s been fighting long before I returned to her and when my blade severs her arm she falls to the ground with her sword, laying in her back and I pace above her, I see her shield arm twitch and dance back, avoiding a final, desperate attack before pinning this one to the ground, relishing her scream as I feel my blade grind through bone and plate.

Now disarms and I take a swift step forward and slam my booted foot in to the side of her head, sending her helmet spinning across the bricks. She is burned horribly, like her armour. The entire right side of her face is all but melted away, the left side is scarred but still intact. She looks up at me with a familiar expression. One I’ve felt on my own face. Desperate, afraid, eager, hungry. I kneel on her chest, she is much, much larger than me. “This has been exhilarating.” I whisper down to her. I can see that she agrees, but she says nothing,

And so, I smile and lift my shield over her head, smashing it down into her face. Once, twice, three times, hearing myself cry out in the pleasure that shoots through me with each blow. Looking down at her now, with her burned eye hanging from its socket, jaw crushed and blood covering her scarred face, I feel closer to release than I have since my first death. Still she stared up at me with her one good eye while I bring the shield down on her throat with enough force that her head is severed from her body, rolling for a moment before coming to a stop, facing the burning coiled sword and dissolving away with the rest of her body.

I kneel there on the bricks, panting heavily and still holding my shield in both hands. I still haven’t found release, but now I think I can. I just need to find the right opponents, those who will take as much pleasure in their deaths as I do in mine, use me until I best them in the end. And I will best them, all of them. I stand then, and make my way up toward the chapel that holds Oscar’s bell.


The courtyard ahead is one of the more gruelling fights I’ve had, requiring a lot more attention and patience than it would have if the hollows within hadn’t been positioned so well. I have to lure many opponents out, away from the armoured boar and out of range of the crossbow wielding soldiers. Those two hollows prove teh most trouble, on a small bridge and guarded by a spear wielding soldier they fire across at my as the spear wielding hunkers behind his shield, landing several shots on me before I dispatch them.

I manage to dispatch the boar without dying, though not without sustaining several wounds, it’s tusks had been plated over with steel spikes and it gores me on them in its first charge, lifting me into the air and shaking me about as I desperately go for the eyes, finally driving my blade into one of them and sending the thing toppling down, nearly landing on top of my before it dissolves to ash and blows away. I humour my desires and feel inside of my wounds for a time, almost feeling like I am masturbating except that my fingers come away bloody rather than slick with other fluids.

Finally, I take two hearty drinks of Oscar’s flask and feel my wounds stitching together. Unfortunately, during the fight one clever hollow ran behind the portcullis and shut it, now standing there leering at me through the slats in the gate. I’ll have to find another way forward.

A small staircase down leads to less equipped, more emaciated hollows. These try to trick me into an ambush but are easy enough to dispatch, the most dangerous thing I do here is reaching a heavily armoured corpse that hangs from the rafters, also earning me sight on a key in the hand of a body bellow. I have no idea what it might go to, but keys are always helpful eventually.

Once I find my way up and out of this little detour I find myself facing the back of a soldier wearing the same armour as the corpse I’d just looted. It is facing away from me, looking out over the forests in the distance and the body of some person more fortunate than us. I’ve learned to take every advantage I can and pray to the crows that this is not some innocent simply waiting away their days as I move silently behind them and drive my claymore into their back.

On the bodies after dispatching this knight I find a pair of oddly scant greaves and a shield. Much higher quality than my own, and in much better condition. But it is too heavy for me to wield just now. Perhaps I can work on that. Regardless I seem to be moving in the right direction but Oscar’s flask has nearly run dry.

Several more soldiers, another knight, this one much less vacant than the last, and my last drink from Oscar’s flask later and I find myself faced with a decision. Going into this parish with my wounds and no way to heal them, or taking this long, narrow bridge into some building I can hardly see through the trees. Given my history with bridges I head into the chapel. A moment later I catch sight of a towering figure wearing armour of black steel and a shield twice as high as me.

The Bridge it is then.