#18 – The Capra Demon

As I went up the tower looking for Solaire, I saw again the bridge where the hellkite dragon would hunt. It was empty, but the dragon was probably still watching over it from afar somewhere. I saw also the door just in ahead of me that I had earlier tried to open with my master key. I remembered about the ring I had found near the entrance of the Undead Church and tried it. It worked. I took a peak and it led down, seemingly to the lower area of the Burg. Before trying out that area, I went to have a chat with Solaire.

He gave him a brief on what I had been through and he congratulated me on my victories. He also said I had been through the worst in the Church, apart from the twin guards over the ceiling before the bell. I would find his sign there to help me however, and that made me happy. He couldn’t help me against the sorcerer however, but I felt more confident about it now. What he did say was that I needed a shield specially crafted against magic and I remembered a strange green shield I found in the cemetery that had magic markings over it. I made a mental note to go back there and get it. My current shield had a the drawing of a hellkite dragon, but I had judged it for its physical make-up only. Perhaps that would mean the shield had been crafted to defend from fire, but I couldn’t be sure for now.

I headed back to the door and went down the stairs. I was quite calm at this point, any common hollow enemy I found there would be a pathetic foe after facing that huge knight with a sorcerer throwing spells over me. After arriving on a midsection, I saw stairs leading up to the bar door I had seem much earlier. It was easy to open it from this side, so now I had a direct shortcut from the bonfire to that area. So I went back down again.

I saw a few mad undead dogs from the distance and equipped the spear I found in the cemetery. Killing them with my guard up was a pleasant sensation. There were some slaves turned hollow on the backside that I killed easily with my guard up and keeping distance with the spear. It was quite interesting to see that their burning weapons would lose their fire upon touching my shield, a confirmation of my earlier hunch about the shield being enchanted against fire. This should certainly prove useful later.

As I walked back to the main street of the area, I heard a voice coming from one of the houses. The man inside claimed he was locked in his own house after surviving the invasion of the burg by two demons. Well that caught my attention so I tried to open the door with my thievery keys but was unable. He shouted from inside that the lock was probably improved to defend from a gang of thieves that had taken over the Burg in the early days of the curse. He said there was a merchant living in the upper Burg who might be able to sell a matching key. “Yeah”, I said, “I remember him”. I didn’t really have the patience to walk all the way up there so I hacked the door to pieces with the zweihander. It took some time, but it was doable.

He was relieved and, to my surprise, completely human. There was an awful smell of death in the air inside. I asked him how did he survive for so much time without killing, but then I saw a corpse inside a barrel on the corner. I hacked it open and from inside the corpse fell and I could see he wore a magician’s clothes, similar to his own, but lighter. “You killed your friend didn’t you, you wizard scum?”. He just kept silent and promised to help me later, he said he was headed to the firelink bonfire. I figured he was probably lying, but couldn’t care less. It passed my mind the idea of asking for his help to explore the rest of the Burg, but I didn’t really want the help of a magician trickster. What I did want to know more about was how the invasion played out and where the second demon was located.

He said the town was invaded by two huge demon beasts, a “Taurus Demon”, the one I had slain, and a “Capra Demon”, indicating the animals they were the sick image of. They murdered most of the people on their pass, but spared the hollows. He didn’t see much, but he did say the demons were probably conjured by a black magic sorcerer who lived on the end of the street, where he had a black temple for his demon gods. Perhaps, he said, the demon would be located there. The capra demon, he claimed, was the most dangerous of the two. His opinion about it was worthless for me, I’d rather take advice from a dog.

I went down and fought off the gang of thieves the magician had mentioned. Thieves, in my opinion, should keep to stealing from defenseless families’ houses protected by the dark of night, because I easily cut most them in half with my zweihander by the light of day. At the end of the street, I saw a strange magic barrier, like a thick fog, guarding off a door. I poked it with my sword and it went through easily. That was the capra demon’s lair, I was sure. As I got closer I saw maybe five or six soapstone markings on the floor just in front of it. Now that was a reliable sign that the demon was a specially difficult foe.

I pondered for a moment what whould my actions be. Mostly I tried to picture the fight against the Taurus demon without the lucky shot jumping down the ledge. Would I have won them? Probably not. Would I win now? Probably not. Would I win if I had five phantoms on my side? I guess so. I figured that was good enough reasoning to just risk and go fight the demon.

So I started touching the markings on the floor, first one of the golden ones. From it arose a fellow wearing rags, holding a spiked mace and a wooden shield similar to the one I had found earlier in the Burg. He didn’t seem like a sharp warrior. Bad luck. So I touched another one. Immediately all other markings disappeared. Bad time to find out that I could only summon two phantoms. From it appeared a fellow on a soldier’s uniform branding a huge sword, very similar to the one held by the Black Knight I had seen in the Burg. Nice, I thought, perhaps he killed that knight, that’s a good sign. I figured I should go there some time and kill him as well, I should be ready at this point.

I was concerned but what could I do now? I didn’t even know how to get rid of the two phantoms, so I just passed through the fog. It was a vision from hell.

The area was small like a matchbox and the demon had huge reach, by standing in the middle area he could probably hit me wherever stood. I dodged his first jumping attack, but his strike shook the ground like a mild earthquake. As I jumped, I landed almost directly over a mad dog, who bit me in the left arm and locked his jaws. I swung my arm around to try and get rid of it before the demon could land a blow on me for good, hitting it on the head with the hilt of my sword, but it wouldn’t let go. Right at this moment the room exploded with fire. The fellow on rags who I didn’t care much about was apparently a pyromancer. The smell of the demon’s burnt fur and meat filled the air as the soldier impaled the mad dog with his sword and threw it away with another swing, but a moment later another dog attacked him. I took a second to check how the pyromancer was doing. He was dead. A second later, the demon hit the soldier with both his weapons, turning both him and the dog into mush. Now he was dead as well.

I wanted to run and hide, offer allegiance to the beast, whatever it was I could do to get myself out of that situation. He was blocking the passage to the fog door, however, so I just ran in the opposite direction, towards some stairs leading up to a very short ledge where I would be an easy target for the demon. Sure enough he came charging in my direction and just as he hit hard on the ledge, I dodged jumping down. The ledge was gone.

Now, this could seen like my darkest hour, but the fact is it wasn’t actually the case. The beast was fast in attacking, but slow in setting up to attack, and it was facing the wall, away from me. I also had not been hurt at this point and moved very easily on my full armor because of the ring I had snatched from the stone knight. Meanwhile, the best was still smoking from the pyromancer’s efforts. So I took a moment to prepare for my strongest zweihander double handed attack, had my perfect stance as Siegmeyer had showed me, and jumped forward from the distance to help gain momentum for the blow. The blade went right through my an arm’s lenght inside the meat until it scratched some hard bone. At this point the beast went berserk with pain and rage, swinging its weapons around, but I had the time to pull out the blade and jump back. As the beast took a moment to stop swinging madly and actually find me in the small room, I charged with a strike to its face and it was dead.

I sat down on the floor and laid down on my back, looking at the unchanging sky, not believing how lucky I was.