"Whoa… that's a pretty terrifying scream."
It tore through the pitch-black darkness and echoed off the stone walls.
Anyone who heard something like that would instinctively slow down.
"But why does it sound like a person screaming?"
Not sound like.
It absolutely was a person screaming.
Accompanied by:
"Don't come near me!"
Tami pieced it together quickly. Another adventurer — somewhere up ahead. Whether they were from Bedford City or the capital, he had no idea.
Still, now that he'd heard it, walking past without at least looking would feel wrong. Even if he wasn't planning to help, he could at least take stock of the situation first.
Although — if it turned out to be someone from the Light Eagle Corps, that would be a problem. It would mean their exploration progress wasn't as far behind as he hoped, which made the Skyrim Group's advantage harder to maintain.
He moved quietly toward the source of the screams, dealing with monsters along the way. Before long, he heard hurried footsteps — coming toward him, fast, with the irregular rhythm of someone in full panic.
A figure emerged from the dark.
A woman.
Wearing Light Eagle Corps equipment.
Tami's interest in helping evaporated on the spot.
A brief war broke out between the angel and devil on his shoulders.
The angel won, narrowly.
He lunged forward, shoved the female mercenary into the crevice he had been using as cover, and spun to face the darkness behind her with his sword drawn.
"Don't worry! I've got you!"
The mercenary understood immediately and pressed herself into the crevice without making a sound.
Then —
Heavy footsteps rolled out of the darkness. Deep, deliberate, each one landing like a small tremor. Whatever was coming weighed several hundred pounds at minimum.
Tami glanced at his one-handed sword.
Nerves crept in.
What if he couldn't actually beat it?
He had been so busy playing the hero that he had skipped right over the part where he checked whether he was capable of backing it up —
The footsteps were getting closer.
The gigantic monster was about to show itself.
"Come on then! I'm not afraid of you!"
He shouted it out loud, as much for himself as anything else.
"You are…?"
A young woman's voice drifted out of the darkness, sounding genuinely puzzled.
Tami went very still.
Then the figure stepped into the light, and he got a clear look at her face.
"Ah!"
"Y-You're… Gut?"
He recognized her immediately — the girl who had once saved him by swinging a greatsword twice her size.
"You're… um… what was your name again?"
Elsa, for her part, had completely forgotten it.
To be fair, he was fairly sure he had never actually told her.
"What's going on? Why was your companion running away?"
"Waaah! The monster caught up!"
Before he could ask anything further, the female mercenary screamed from inside the crevice and bolted without so much as glancing back. Every word and movement radiated pure, unfiltered terror.
Elsa's expression dimmed slightly.
Then she turned and started walking back into the darkness.
"Wait—"
Tami still didn't fully understand what was happening, but something told him he needed to. After a moment's hesitation, he reached out and caught her by the wrist.
She had saved him once. If she was in trouble now, he owed her.
"Don't touch me!"
Elsa pulled her arm away.
The force sent Tami stumbling several steps backward.
Her wrist had looked slender enough to snap in a strong breeze.
The arm attached to it had nearly taken him off his feet.
"Ah — sorry."
Elsa looked momentarily flustered. She pressed her lips together, then finally explained:
"I've been cursed. Don't come near me…"
Cursed.
Grimacing, Tami quietly took a sip from his Estus Flask.
That casual shrug had shattered bones in his arm. Without the Flask, he would have been dealing with that for a while.
He hadn't even owned it for half an hour, and he was already deeply in love with it.
"After the torches ran out, everyone started treating me like a monster."
Elsa's voice was flat, but something subdued sat beneath it.
"Everyone ran. It must be because of the curse."
Tami glanced past her. The darkness behind her was thick and absolute — the kind that pressed back against a light source rather than yielding to it. Without a torch, that kind of darkness could do serious things to a person's mind.
"But what makes you think you're cursed?"
"A monster cast a spell on me." Her voice dropped a little. "After that, everyone got scared."
She studied him with open curiosity.
"Why weren't you scared?"
"Uh…"
How was he supposed to answer that? In his eyes, Elsa looked exactly the same as she always had. Who would be frightened of a perfectly ordinary — and rather pretty — girl?
"I suppose my willpower is stronger than most people's."
It was the only answer he could come up with.
Elsa nodded as though that settled the matter.
Then turned around and started walking away again.
Just like that. Two sentences exchanged and she was leaving.
Tami scratched the back of his neck.
Then one of Luluwo's great life philosophies surfaced in his memory, clear as a bell:
"More friends means more paths. If you meet someone who needs help, try to help them."
"Of course, help people without getting yourself hurt, and don't help bad people. The judgment is yours."
"She doesn't seem like a bad person…"
And then something Roger — the Skyrim Group's magical advisor — had once told him:
"A man can't just ignore a sad, beautiful girl!"
Tami had his suspicions about the motivations buried in that particular piece of wisdom. But Elsa's retreating back genuinely looked lonely. And she had helped him before.
So —
"Hey! What are you planning to do now? I've been separated from my companions too. Let's team up again!"
He jogged after her.
Elsa turned and stared at him for a long, assessing moment.
Whatever she was looking for, she apparently found it.
"I'm going to find my companions," she said at last. "I can't leave them in here."
"Then you don't need to worry about the one who just ran off. The path back there is safe."
"Mm."
A small nod. Then, quietly:
"Thank you."
If this were an RPG, a notification would have appeared:
[Character "Gut" has temporarily joined the party!]
Tami had always found Elsa difficult to read.
Her personality had an airheaded quality to it — she did things nobody could predict, and trying to follow her logic using normal reasoning was a losing proposition. Yet at the same time, small details revealed she wasn't oblivious to social interaction. She simply skipped all the intermediate steps, moving from point to point in ways that bypassed everything most people considered necessary.
Most people would probably find spending extended time with her exhausting.
Tami felt fine. His captain Luluwo was also a massive headache, so in some ways he was well-trained for this.
"Do you remember which way your companions went?"
Elsa shook her head.
"I can feel them, though."
"Then I'll follow you."
For some reason that answer made her look briefly troubled.
Through their conversation, Tami pieced together that Elsa and several mercenaries had entered the dungeon somewhat on impulse. She didn't elaborate on the reason. Their route had also been entirely different from his — the Light Eagle Corps had found an alternative path that avoided the areas most adventurers were currently exploring.
Which meant they hadn't discovered the Pinwheel or the bonfires yet.
Tami desperately wanted to complain about that.
By any reasonable measure, an undiscovered route should have been one of the Light Eagle Corps' most closely guarded secrets.
And Elsa had just handed it over without a second thought.
Did she trust people far too easily? Looking at her behavior, the answer seemed to be yes — genuinely and completely yes. Someone like her was going to get kidnapped one day.
"I feel a little dizzy…"
Tami frowned.
He knew a handful of basic spells, including the Light spell currently illuminating their immediate surroundings. But magical light was proving far less effective here than a torch would have been. It increased visibility without addressing the area's underlying mechanic.
The lower levels of the Catacombs of Carthus were steeped in darkness — not merely physical darkness, but something with a distinct effect. The longer a person remained inside it, the more negative emotions accumulated. Left unchecked, those emotions would eventually produce strange thoughts, irrational behavior, and bizarre fixations that felt entirely reasonable from the inside.
The same mechanic existed in Darkest Dungeon.
The only thing capable of holding it back was a torch. An actual flame on an actual handle. Not conjured fire. Not the Light spell. A proper torch.
Tami recognized the mechanic immediately — a side path in the Catacombs used something similar on a smaller scale. This was just a larger, more complete version of the same idea.
He had searched earlier for materials to fashion a torch and come up empty. So he had pressed forward anyway, planning to sprint out at full speed if anything went wrong.
Yet here he was, nearly thirty minutes deep in the darkness, and he was only just beginning to feel the edges of it.
Could the mental enhancement from Kindling be holding it back?
The thought eased his worry considerably.
He turned his head —
And found Elsa watching him with an expression that looked distinctly nervous.
Before he could figure out why —
Elsa's appearance warped.
For a single, lurching instant she transformed into the thing Tami feared most.
"AAAH!"
He screamed.
The next blink, she was back to normal.
Elsa flinched at the sudden outburst. She looked at him with that same anxious expression she had worn with the others — the quiet fear of someone waiting to be abandoned again.
"Are you okay?"
"Fine. I'm fine. Really."
Tami wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
He had already guessed what was happening. The curse Elsa had mentioned — it was a mental-type spell that caused the victim to appear as the observer's deepest fear. People with sufficient mental resilience could push through it. The Kindling enhancement had been keeping him above that threshold.
But the darkness was steadily eroding that resilience. Given enough time, the distortions would become more frequent, more convincing, harder to shake.
Right now it was a brief flicker.
Later it might not be so brief.
Tami raised both hands and slapped himself across both cheeks.
Snap.
Sharp, decisive, effective.
So what if she changes appearance? She's not going to hurt me. There's no reason to be afraid.
He had followed her specifically to be a steadying presence. If he bolted now, that would just add his name to the list of people who had looked at her and run — repaying her original kindness with the exact same treatment as everyone else.
He wasn't going to do that.
Elsa noticed something shift in him.
Without a word, she quietly widened the gap between them.
Tami closed it again immediately.
She tried again.
He followed like he was attached to her by a string.
However many times she attempted to create distance, he erased it. Persistent, patient, unmovable — like chewing gum that had found its favorite shoe.
Don't underestimate me.
I'm not afraid.
Elsa pressed her lips together.
But when she spoke to him after that, she was noticeably more relaxed.
Monsters came at them out of the darkness in irregular bursts. Without torches, every encounter carried more risk than it should have. But the Hero's greatsword inspired a very specific kind of confidence — watching Elsa work was enough to make most problems feel temporary.
Tami used his experience to read ambushes before they landed and call out traps before anyone stepped in them. Elsa followed every instruction without question, without complaint, without hesitation.
Whatever he said, she did.
Perfectly. Immediately. Like a doll awaiting direction.
The more Tami noticed this pattern, the more it nagged at him.
Though perhaps he was imagining it — as their partnership deepened, as their rapport quietly grew, Elsa's greatsword seemed to become sharper and more powerful. Like something was waking up in response to something else.
He filed that observation away.
But it did make him wonder: the Hero was supposed to carry a divine artifact. What exactly was Elsa's?
"We've reached a fork."
Two paths split apart in the darkness ahead.
Tami looked at Elsa.
Elsa was already looking at him.
The meaning in her expression was self-evident.
"You want me to decide?"
He pointed at himself.
She nodded.
The unspoken addendum might as well have been voiced out loud:
I'm only here to hit things.
There it was again. The complete absence of initiative. When she had been traveling with the mercenaries, it had probably been exactly the same — Sali making every call, smoothing every path, shielding her from having to exercise any judgment of her own. Tami couldn't help feeling that Sali had, however well-intentioned, thoroughly overprotected her.
He made a decision.
He deliberately put some firmness into his voice.
"No. This time, you choose."
Elsa blinked.
Then shook her head with considerable conviction.
"If you don't choose, I'm leaving."
Tami deployed his ultimate technique.
Critical hit. Super effective against Elsa.
"…"
The conflict playing out on her face was visible and genuine. But under the sustained pressure of threat and persuasion working in tandem, she finally surrendered — pointing at one of the paths with the resigned air of someone making an enormous personal sacrifice.
A bright, uncomplicated smile spread across Tami's face.
"Perfect!"
His voice came out warm and easy.
"Then we go that way!"
They were fairly lucky.
The path held plenty of monsters, but it also yielded a pyromancy — [Carthus Beacon].
One of the most closely guarded pyromancies of Carthus, the Kingdom of Sand. The longer continuous attacks are sustained, the greater the attack power becomes.
The invasions of Carthus spread like wildfire, and since ancient times, that flame has served as a beacon of war.
As the one who found it, Tami immediately pressed the page into Elsa's hands without discussion.
Unable to refuse, she accepted it with the resigned expression of someone receiving a responsibility they hadn't asked for — an expression that somehow also managed to say, completely sincerely: I will treasure this for the rest of my life.
It's not like I can tell her I don't want something from Carthus, Tami grumbled internally.
Either way, Elsa's choice had paid off.
So when the next fork appeared, Tami let her decide again. And again after that. At first she moved through the decisions stiffly, with visible reluctance, but gradually she settled into it. She began stopping at forks to actually think before pointing one way or the other.
Then she picked a dead end.
"A dead end…"
Tami stared at the blocked passage.
Beside him, Elsa looked quietly mortified.
She didn't say a word on the way back. When the next fork came and Tami looked to her, she refused — firmly, repeatedly, no matter how much he pushed.
He switched tactics.
"What, one failure and you're done? Pathetic. If your mental resilience is this fragile, why become a mercenary at all? You might as well just—"
The barrage of teasing went on for some time.
Elsa's face darkened steadily.
But she made a choice.
And after that, without waiting for any further prompting, she charged ahead through the Catacombs in a barely contained huff.
Which led, unfortunately, to a series of disasters.
"Wait — not that way! That's a tentacle monster swamp!"
"The poison swamp from Farron Keep?! Why is there one here?!"
"Is that rain? No — that's Acid Slime! It's a trap!"
The consequences of charging forward without looking included, but were not limited to: getting bitten on the head by a Mimic that dropped from the ceiling; falling into sensory-deprivation pits; nearly losing consciousness after walking through a cloud of hypnotic gas; and an assortment of other catastrophes that defied easy categorization.
Having overwhelming strength meant Elsa could brute-force most of what would have been fatal for an ordinary person into mere inconveniences. But even she couldn't help feeling discouraged after the fifth or sixth disaster.
Yet under Tami's relentless mockery, frustration became fuel.
She kept making decisions. Kept making mistakes. Kept learning.
Gradually, without seeming to notice it herself, she had become accustomed to voicing her opinions — talking more, expressing herself more, engaging with the world rather than waiting to be pointed at it.
Operation: Correct Elsa's Personality — complete success.
Tami felt it was absolutely worth it, even though his lips had gone half-numb from talking and his entire body ached. Besides, the conversation itself helped — it kept his spirits up and gave the darkness less room to work.
But time was taking its toll regardless.
His mind was being eroded, slowly and steadily. Strange shapes moved in the peripheral dark. Elsa's figure flickered and warped in his vision before snapping back, each distortion landing like a cold shock to the chest. Even so, he didn't scream again.
He wasn't going to put more weight on her shoulders while she was quietly becoming a different person.
After helping Tami dispatch a monster that had attempted an ambush from above, Elsa went quiet for a moment.
Then:
"Are we friends now?"
"Friends?"
Tami's tone shifted.
Elsa immediately tensed.
It was written all over her — she had an unusually deep attachment to that word. Something closer to an obsession. She had been working herself up to ask for a while, and his reaction sent her heart straight into her throat.
"Weren't we already friends the first time we met?"
Tami smiled.
"You've saved me so many times today. Honestly, at this point I'd say we're practically family. Not even actual family members are necessarily this close."
Fa — family…?
There was not a single romantic thought behind those words.
But hearing a term even more intimate than friend caused the Hero's brain to quietly stop functioning for several seconds.
"H-Hey! Snap out of it! More monsters coming!"
Their exploration pressed on.
They found no missing mercenaries along the way. Most had probably already died to the monsters and revived back at the bonfire.
Nearly two hours later, they finally reached the edge of the darkness.
The moment they stepped clear of it, a wave of biting cold hit Tami hard enough to make him shudder.
An enormous chamber opened up ahead. Monsters radiating freezing air moved through it in slow, deliberate patterns.
Without question — the second elite monster of the Catacombs of Carthus.
Its aesthetic was entirely unlike anything else in the cemetery. It looked like it had arrived from somewhere else entirely, dropped into this place without apology.
[Outrider Knight]
For the first time, a presence from Irithyll stood before the adventurers.
At its feet, a mercenary lay on the ground screaming.
Elsa's eyes went red.
She moved before the thought finished forming.
The Outrider Knight let out a beast-like roar and launched itself at her —
And was swatted sideways by a single swing of her greatsword.
Tami watched Elsa drop to her knees beside the injured mercenary. Then he looked in the direction the Knight had landed.
He gritted his teeth.
And ran after it himself.
"Rut! Wake up!"
For one of the rare times in her life, Elsa's voice carried genuine, unguarded anxiety.
She upended her last healing potion over the mercenary.
"Elsa…? Is that you?"
His eyes opened slowly.
Then he saw her clearly —
And screamed.
"Monster! Get away from me!"
He slapped the potion away and scrambled backward on hands and knees, pressing himself into the corner. His entire body shook. The look on his face was revulsion and terror in equal measure.
Elsa went still.
Both hands trembled.
Before she could process any of it, Tami's scream rang out from somewhere behind her.
She turned.
He was already on the ground, the Outrider Knight's weapon driven through his chest.
"Sorry for being so weak…"
He managed a helpless smile.
It genuinely wasn't his fault. The Outrider Knight had been buffed to a C+ threat level — well beyond anything he could reasonably handle alone.
"Tami!"
For the first time, Elsa said his name.
Something cracked open inside her.
In the space of a single blink, the Outrider Knight was obliterated by a force that hadn't been there a moment before.
"I'm fine — just kill it!"
Tami held up his Estus Flask in a weak wave. As long as he had one sip left, he wasn't dying.
Elsa charged.
And flames erupted across her body without warning.
Carthus Beacon.
No casting animation. No catalyst. The Beacon simply ignited, as though responding to something that had nothing to do with technique.
Her greatsword moved differently now — heavier, sharper, more alive. Stronger than it had been during the confrontation with the rampaging Sein back in Bedford City.
The Outrider Knight couldn't touch her.
"Heh. She's really something."
Tami took another sip. The wound in his chest sealed itself. His mental energy climbed back toward something workable.
But the darkness had left marks that a Flask couldn't fully wash away. The corruption didn't clear just because the reserves refilled. Between the Knight's hit and the prolonged exposure to the dark, he had been pushed past the point where the Kindling enhancement could hold.
Elsa's figure changed completely in his eyes.
Becoming exactly what he feared most.
"Crap—"
With a deep, resonant boom, the Outrider Knight's body crumbled to ash. A purple item drop landed on the stone floor.
Nobody moved to pick it up.
The moment she won, Elsa spun and ran toward Tami.
She made it two steps before she stopped.
Because she could see him trembling.
And she could see, with perfect clarity, that the source of that trembling was her.
In that instant, she understood everything.
The strength went out of her body. Her greatsword slipped from her fingers and rang against the floor.
Tami shook from head to toe.
Now he understood — truly understood — why the mercenaries had run screaming. This was nothing like he had imagined it would be. Elsa had become the physical shape of his deepest fear, and the curse wasn't merely visual. It reached into the mind and grabbed hold of something real.
His heart pounded against his ribs.
He wanted to run.
More than that — he was already starting to. His feet were moving on their own, carrying him slowly backward, one small step at a time.
Then Elsa moved.
She turned away.
She didn't pick up her greatsword.
She just began walking — not toward him, not toward Rut, but away. Her back was hunched in a way it hadn't been before, as though she were bracing against something invisible.
Maybe she couldn't face watching it happen again. Another friend, another monster.
A hand came down firmly on her shoulder.
Not grabbing. Not restraining. Just — there.
She could have broken free without effort.
She didn't move.
"Where are you going?"
Tami's voice. The same easy, sunny voice he'd been using all day, as though nothing had changed.
"We just beat an elite monster. We should be celebrating."
"Tami, you…"
Elsa turned around.
Then her hand flew to her mouth.
His smile was exactly the same as always. His body was drenched in sweat, every muscle held rigid against something that was clearly tearing at him from the inside — and he was smiling anyway, warm and steady, like it was the easiest thing in the world.
"Look."
He held up a purple-quality item.
"This is what you got for the kill. It's called the Pontiff's Right Eye — a purple drop. I'm genuinely jealous."
As he spoke, he slid the ring onto her finger.
Then he took her wrist and started walking.
Toward Rut.
Elsa's mind went completely blank.
She followed.
"M-Monster…"
Rut pressed himself into the corner, staring at both of them. In his current state, Tami — cheerfully holding the "monster's" hand — had apparently also become something inhuman.
The closer they came, the harder he shook.
Then Tami grabbed him by the collar.
He was nearly a hundred pounds lighter than Rut. He hauled him upright anyway.
And then he shouted.
"Look at her properly!"
"This is the person who just risked her life to save you!"
"She's not a monster!"
"You've fought on battlefields together, haven't you?! You've trusted each other with your lives!"
"You know her better than I do — I met her half a day ago! I'm a complete stranger and I can see through it!"
"If I can push past a cheap illusion, why can't you?!"
Rut went silent.
For a moment, the only sound was his breathing.
Then he pulled out a dagger and drove it at Tami.
Tami barely got his guard up in time.
Using the opening, Rut bolted into the darkness without looking back, screaming as he ran:
"Captain Gut! Where are you?! Save me!"
"Gut, save me like you always do!"
"If you didn't have that power, who'd put up with a freak like you?! Just save me!"
If negative emotions could take on physical form, Elsa could have drowned all of Carthus in them.
Then an arm settled around her shoulders.
Tami's arm.
His smile hadn't changed at all.
"Come on."
"You were looking for your companions, right?"
"We haven't found a single one yet."
"Let's keep going."
He didn't wait for an answer. He just started walking, pulling her along, laughing lightly as though the last five minutes had been perfectly ordinary. As though none of it had happened at all.
Elsa bit her lip hard.
Something glistened in her eyes.
Then she nodded — once, firm and decisive.
"Mm!"
Inside the Lord's Chamber.
Wade watched the whole thing through his crystal ball, a wide grin spreading across his face.
"What a classic heroic story arc."
"I never expected running a dungeon would give me a front-row seat to something like this."
He had recognized Elsa as the Hero of Bedford City immediately.
And an idea was already taking shape.
He needed to find a way to keep a customer of this quality coming back. To turn her into a devoted Sein Dungeon regular — the same way Sword Saint Gapar had become one before her.