#character journal

I do not remember anything, truly, from before I awoke in that hovel. I have these sensations. My swords feel right in my hands; the sign of a practiced warrior, according to one of the Fire Keepers. I hear sounds — the waterfall outside the hovel, the crackling of fire, the aroma of a hearty soup, the crash of waves below Majula — and I feel like I’ve heard them before. Perhaps I have. None seem too unique. 

With names, too. Drangleic. I feel this cold burning in my chest, and I feel the need to… hide away. Shalquoir named it for me (beautiful and strange creature she is, she said she smelt it on me.) — shame. Something about being in this place, in Drangleic, it. Hm. I can’t describe it. Lenigrast scolded me for keeping my hood up when talking to him, but… I don’t want to be seen. By who or what is what I don’t understand.

Majula, too, was a name I felt a connection to. Faint, but a spark is there. Maybe I had heard it before. Oddly, I have only encountered that feeling when I approached the not-Fire Keeper for the first time. She was the first I saw when I arrived, and.

When she turned, I swore there was that same vague spark of recognition. And maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me, but I thought I saw something cross her face, too. An expression. Did mine in turn? I do not know.

Saulden says she isn’t a Fire Keeper. She simply guides poor souls like us to a shared goal. I sat with him for a while, and he told me of what I should do. I’ve taken to calling her ‘the herald’. I was workshopping some variation of ‘shepherd’, but Lenigrast said none of them were quite as good as ‘herald’. 

The blacksmith needs me to find a key for him. He seems. abrasive, but I feel like he means well. Saulden agrees, though he told me to keep an eye on the other two residents in Majula. Shalquoir, the adorable talking cat, and Maughlin. The herald called her a ‘thing’. Maybe she’s simply never seen a cat before? 

I must have. I was entranced by her elegant aura at once. Maybe I had a cat at some point, because I moved immediately to hold her a specific way. She said it was nice, but insisted I put her down. 

Maughlin, however. he seems timid. Unsure; on the edge of forgetting something. Everything, maybe. Shalquoir said he was an Undead like me. Yet, he spoke of a home and a past. I cannot recall either. Perhaps he is at a less advanced stage?

More to the point, he was selling wares. Lenigrast huffed when I told him that; apparently his are stuck in the smithy. Among the weapons that felt odd in my hands and shields much too heavy for me, I found he had a surplus of armors that felt… familiar.

I held the padded wool coat (a gambeson, Lenigrast told me with his usual huff) up to the light and felt… a strange sensation. In my very Soul, I felt as though I needed it to be whole again. I told him I would be back for it when I could afford it. Something about it felt… right.

Tomorrow I begin the journey laid before me by the Fire Keepers, the herald, and Saulden. The herald and the Way of Blue advocate spoke of a forest of giants, where a fort once stood. It… felt right. It also heightened that feeling Shalquoir had dubbed ‘shame’. He recommended I start there, though he doesn’t know what I will find.

I know not either. Yet I will start there. I have no desire for anything else; my Soul pulls me that way.

All I have, I have stored in a small tent near the sea side. For now, it will be enough to keep me protected. Inevitably, I cannot drag my feet on confronting whatever is repelling me from the old fort. I will need souls, seemingly for everything. 

Majula… a place where life is ‘almost normal’. Maughlin had called it ‘small’. I find it… familiar. Comfortable. 

I am Pyralis. Tomorrow, I go to the forest of giants, to take my first steps on the road to breaking this curse.

Journal of an Immolated Wolf is an epistolary fanfic based on my experiences replaying Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin in the Year of Our Lord. Feel free to check (the masterpost here)