To Remain Human

"Ugh, great, where am I now," Serath muttered as he stepped off the ladder he had climbed down.

A small rumbling sound was heard off in the distance and he instinctively raised his Grass Crest shield which was made of some form of metal with symmetrical paintings of a vine on each half of the medium sized shield, one black with a yellow background and the other silver with a brown background. He took two steps forward, the combined weight of his Gold-Hemmed Black robes set and the Black Knight greatsword he was wielding causing him to progress slower than most of the olden heroes. He decided to pause his progress and pulled out his White Summon Stone, writing his own Summon Sigil on the ground in case any other heroes decided to come by and needed help. He continued down the hallway, occasionally grumbling about the darkness and the cobwebs, stopping immediately as he heard the sound of something coming together ahead. Then the sound began to multiply, soon becoming a roaring cascade of pieces coming together, and then all was silent.

The next moment began with a single arrow that Serath caught with his shield, the flint head throwing up sparks and causing him to realize his mistake a moment too late. Hundreds of arrows flew down the hallway at the same moment that he felt himself being summoned and he raised his shield in a futile attempt to hold off for the summon to pull him away but the first volley of arrows knocked his shield away, the remaining ones pulverizing his body, a fine mist of blood spraying up as each one slammed into his body. They stopped almost immediately and he dropped to his knees, holding out the hand that had held his sword. It began to disintegrate and he watched as the ashes from his body swirled into a white vortex above his head, until his eyes too were gone.

It took a second for Serath to open his eyes, the warrior mistaking the flaring light on his closed lids the light from the bonfire. When he opened his eyes, he was greeted with the sight of the sun hanging overhead, not a cloud in sight to disturb the rays.

"Praise the sun," he whispered in remembrance of Solaire, his eyes skirting around where the sun was.

He simply lay there, basking in the sun he hadn't seen in a while, not since he'd died and gotten thrown in with the rest of the hollowed. He never did get over that, being tossed in with all those who had begun to lose their grip on reality. Although he had to admit he looked the part, then again most of the undead looked as if they were already hollow. His thoughts of appearance made Serath to get up, pulling off his hood and peering into his shield to get a grasp of how terrible he looked. His normally luscious brown hair was brittle to the touch and was hanging onto his head in patches, revealing the wrinkled and dead looking skin underneath. His eyes were shriveled up in their sockets, the green iris instead fading into a deep black colour, only a little lighter than the centre of his eye.

He shrugged and fit the hood back on his head, picking up his shield and...His sword. He got up quickly, looking around him for signs of the missing iron blade, but it was nowhere to be found. He reached into his bag to pull out his Demon Catalyst but felt nothing in it except space. He pulled the bag off his back and looked inside it, rooting around inside the leather satchel but finding absolutely nothing, not even an Estus Flask.

"Oh shit," he muttered to himself, slipping the bag back onto his back and tightening his grip on the shield. He looked at the forest around him, the sunlight petering out almost instantly as the foliage stopped it from reaching the ground. "Bloody wonderful."

He gave a sigh and looked one last time at the sun before stepping into the darkness. The change was immediate and his eyes quickly grew used to the darkness after being in the same type of environment for so long. The first hint he had that something wasn't right was the amount of living creatures he could spot running around on the forest floor. The first one he found scaring him and causing him to nearly scream while slamming his shield down towards it, only realizing afterwards that it was a rabbit, laughing at his stupidity as he watched the creature hop away. It wasn't long after that before he began to feel as though he was being watched, casting furtive glances into the dark forest only to spot nothing.

That changed within the span of an hour, a pair of glowing eyes appearing in the corner of his vision. He pretended to ignore it and continued onwards, more and more of the eyes appearing, eventually creating a path through the forest that led to a clearing. He stepped into the clearing and heard the scrape of branches behind him and he turned to see that the eyes had covered up the way he'd entered. He turned to face the way he'd been led to see a bundle of twigs step into the area. At least he thought it was a bundle of twigs, realizing his mistake a moment later before realizing that it was a wolf made of twigs. He paused for a moment, pausing to question just what he was seeing. The wolf seemed to get into a defensive position and growled, as if offering a challenge.

Serath didn't leave it waiting and raised his shield in defence as he and the wolf strafed around the outer perimeter of the circle, both of them slowly closing in on each other. Serath was the first to make a move, slamming his shield into the wolf in an attempt to stun it for a moment. His plan went wrong almost instantly as the wolf leapt over the shield and forced Serath to the ground, the creature pinning him and the shield down. He was just managing to hold it off, it's twisted fangs only inches away from his face, even going so far as to occasionally brush against his nose as it lunged for him in a last ditch effort to maim him and weaken his defense. The creature managed to throw itself off balance, it's claws managing to slip off the shield and giving him room to shove the wolf off, rolling and leaping up to his feet just in time to see the wolf leaping toward him, it's fangs wide open and dripping sap as it awaited the crunch of bones in its jaw.

Serath managed to raise his shield and deflect the wolf off to the left, the creature turning instantly and attacking, each time it's muzzle being slammed against the shield and cracking a little bit. Serath dodged a few of its attacks by stepping back as he waited for his stamina to return, his breathing a bit laboured and sweat already collecting on his brow. The wolf leapt at him and instead of simply blocking the attack he lifted the shield a little and allowed the muzzle of the wolf to pass before slamming the bottom of the shield, accompanied by the muzzle of the wolf, into the ground. The creature gave a yelp and backed up a few steps as a dark looking substance leaked out of the cracked area on both the top of the creature's muzzle and the bottom.

It looked at Serath and gave a threatening growl before backing off into the woods, each of the remaining pairs of eyes disappearing shortly after that. Serath sat down and leaned against one of the larger trees on the edge of the clearing, closing his eyes for a moment to allow himself to recuperate, but surprising himself when he opened his eyes to find the sky dark, with only the moon to light the surrounding area. His head was throbbing for some reason and his vision was slightly blurry, making him partially frightened at the prospect of facing the wolves in this state. He started to get up but froze as he heard a flurry of activity to his right, a light appearing and disappearing just fast enough to leave a pinprick of white in his blurred vision. He instantly concluded that it wasn't good and turned to the other direction, running with his shield in hand and rebounding off the trees and rushing through the thick foliage. Then came the moment when the ground under his feet disappeared and he was rolling down a steep hill, tumbling head over heels.

The last thing he remembered of that night was catching sight of a brown blur ahead of him as his head hit the ground before he tumbled over one more time, everything going dark a moment later.

"So...What is he," a voice asked, stirring Serath from the darkness.

"To be true, I have nary a clue," another, almost whimsical, voice replied.

Serath managed to open his eyes, his left one able to see perfectly fine while his right one was only able to see blurs and outlines of things. He let his eyes roam over the area he could see, coming to absolutely no conclusions before a voice broke his train of thought.

"What do we do then," the first voice asked, causing him to sit up and turn to examine the source.

His left eye became blurry again and he groaned, lifting a hand up to his head as a headache formed almost instantly. After a few seconds of silence the blurriness disappeared from his vision and he lifted his head, stopping and freezing as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing.  He was currently facing a zebra and a purple horse, who seemed to have a horn and a tramp stamp, along with some pink and purple highlights. As if that wasn't bad enough, he was sure that he was naked.

"Uhh, hi," he said, wondering just what exactly was happening.

Both the zebra and the horse were staring at him and his hands quickly moved to cover his crotch, suddenly feeling extremely self conscious. His eyes moved around what he took to be a small hut as he looked for his robes.

"H-hello," the purple horse replied.

He paused in his search and met eyes with the creature and asked, "Do you happen to know where my robes are?"

"Before we do give you them, I have a couple questions," she mumbled.

"Alright," he muttered, not entirely wanting to anger anything for fear of being attacked.

"What are you," the creature asked.

"A human. What are you?"

"A unicorn. Do all humans look so..."

"No, no, no no no no, not at all. I just...I'm dead, it's a long story."

"I'm willing to listen."

"Well where I come from there are specially marked people in the land who can't entirely die, they are then taken to another place in Lordran, one that's dangerous enough to give cause to need to fight to survive. Needless to say, many die over and over again and each time they do they lose a piece of their sanity. Each time they die it also makes them look worse, this is what it looks like when I die for my first time."

"You mean that you've died your first time before?"

"We can become human for a while again if we use an item called a humanity. It makes us come back to our original form until we die. I suppose that's about it for this stuff."

"Well I do have a few more questions but I suppose they can wait for a while."

Her horn lit up and Serath's robes were levitated over to him, dropping into his lap as his mouth dropped open, almost comically.

"What was that," he asked.

"Umm, my magic," she replied.

"Dearest Twilight, I do not believe humans have that highlight," the zebra said to the unicorn.

Twilight gave him a scrutinizing stare as he put on his robes, leaving the hood off.

"Yeah, we don't have magic like that, although we do have magic. There's also pyromancies and sorceries."

"So, do you know any magic or sorceries, I would ask you to demonstrate the pyromancies but I don't want to burn down Zecora's hit."

"I actually do know quite a few sorceries, most of them are attacks but there are a few such as Magic Weapon and Magic Shield which give my weapon and shield magic stat boosts."

"I see, well are there any you co-"

"No, I can't, sorry. I need a Catalyst, but mine, along with all of my old items are gone."

"Oh."

"I'm sorry, wish I could show you."

"It's fine," Twilight said with a smile.

"So where am I?"

"This place is called Equestria, you're currently inside the Everfree Forest, although you have to be careful because there are a lot of dangerous creatures."

"What about wolves made of twigs?"

"You saw a Timberwolf?"

"I fought one!"

"With what?!"

"This," he muttered, picking up the shield.

"There's no way."

"I swear to you," he said, looking at the bottom of the shield, "look, there's still sap on the bottom of it."

"You don't look any worse for wear."

I raised an eyebrow at her and grinned as she blushed a little.

"It's fine, I understand what you mean. But I promise you that I fought a Timberwolf."

"If you say so."

"So what now, I mean where do I go from here?"

"I don't know honestly, I doubt that you could come into Ponyville without causing a commotion."

He opened his mouth to reply to her but there was a loud crackling sound outside the hut a moment before the door flew off its hinges.