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Naruto jumped to the sky.
"Ninja Art: Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
The sky above the cemetery filled with white smoke as hundreds of Narutos dropped down from above with greatswords in their hands.
The cemetery became chaos.
The skeleton horde was thinning yet the clones started popping. One swing each, sometimes two, and then they were gone.
[Bleed Status Effect: 100%]
Blood erupted from every pore simultaneously. A full body expulsion that soaked through his underclothes and ran down his skin in hot sheets. A quarter of Naruto's health vanished in the same instant.
Covered in his own blood, the pieces seemingly clicked into place.
The skeleton blood was why the clones had been popping after a single swing each. They were getting damaged by the bleed status effect as the clones had less resistance to it.
Through Knight's sight Naruto looked down at himself standing in the middle of a graveyard soaked black with skeleton blood, his own blood cooling against his skin and hundreds of skeletons clattering toward him from every direction.
This place has a way of humbling you, he thought as a smoke bomb left his hand.
Black smoke rolled outward across the cemetery in a thick wall. Naruto ran out taking the cliffside path down at full speed.
The skeletons came after him.
"Cannot catch me because you are a bunch of stupid skeletons!" he shouted over his shoulder, legs pumping. "You all have ugly bones. Dattebayo!"
That was a clone.
The real Naruto was using the Cloak of Invisibility Technique, pressing himself flat against a remaining gravestone near the upper edge of the cemetery.
The cemetery settled into relative quiet.
Naruto's eyes moved across the ground.
Soul drops. A shield half buried in the earth near the far wall. A spear lying across two grave markers. He looked at the placement of them and at the angles from which the skeletons had risen.
The items were bait while the skeletons were the trap.
Who. What. Why.
The ground beside him shook him out of his thought.
Nope. Naruto used body flicker up the stairs toward the church.
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"This must be the first path," Naruto muttered, stepping into a hallway that had seen better centuries. Water covered the floor in a shallow sheet, broken pillars that held no roof. The only thing of note was a statue at the far end, a woman seated on a throne of twisted branches. A child held against her chest, her stone expression looking at something that was not there anymore.
Weird, Naruto thought, and walked back to the bonfire. He practically fell down the last few steps as he almost kissed the bonfire out of happiness.
"Looks like you went through quite a lot out there." Alexander's voice came from his usual spot, carrying its customary absence of sympathy. "Hah."
"You can thank the graveyard skeletons for that." Naruto unequipped his armor piece by piece and sat down heavily beside the fire. He pulled a water bottle and a cloth from his inventory and began the slow process of removing the blood from his skin.
"How did you end up in the graveyard?"
"There's an opening in the elevator shaft. Leads to the back of the church and you can drop down from there." Naruto paused, cloth halfway down his forearm. "Wait. That was not where you were pointing me, was it."
"I wanted you to jump from the second floor landing down to the bonfire," Alexander said. "It is a very short drop."
The two of them sat in awkward silence.
"Anyways," Naruto said, wringing the cloth out. "Thanks for pulling me away from Petrus back there."
"It is never wise to involve yourself with the Way of White." Alexander's voice lost what little lightness it occasionally carried. "I have seen too many people, good people, die at the hands of their Undead hunts. They dress it in the language of devotion and the effect is the same. Hah. Martyrs and victims look very similar from a distance."
"Good thing I helped myself to his stockpile then." Naruto spread the contents of the back room across the stone beside the bonfire alongside tales of the treasure chests.
Alexander looked at the collection for a long moment. Then something moved in his expression that was almost a smile. "Good going, brat. That bastard deserves getting robbed blind. Hah."
Naruto nodded, beginning to clean the gauntlets. "I can't get my head around it. Oscar and Petrus both walk the same path. The Way of White produced both of them somehow."
"Good people exist inside bad institutions." Alexander leaned back against the stone. "That is not a new problem. But did Oscar ever use a miracle in your time with him?"
"No."
"There is your answer." Alexander settled back. "Your master was a knight of Astora. Not a cleric knight or paladin. Based on my hazy memories of Astora, the church and the crown do not share a leash. A knight sworn to his house follows his house first." He paused. "Although I will say this. Many knights across the seven kingdoms hold to the same ideals as the Way of White without belonging to it. The devotion and the institution are not always the same thing. Your master may have believed in everything Petrus claims to believe in and still had nothing to do with the man. That is not a contradiction. That is just how it works out here."
Naruto nodded, letting that new information become part of his world.
"Well." He reached into his inventory and pulled out the Zweihander, setting it upright beside him. The blade caught the firelight along its fuller. "At least I got something useful out of the whole mess."
Alexander looked at Naruto's arms, which were visibly shaking about the process of holding it upright. "You are going to need considerably more strength before that thing becomes anything other than a liability. It will send foes flying when used properly. Right now it would send you flying."
Naruto pulled up the system tabs.
[Item: Zweihander]
[Weapon Type: Ultra Greatsword]
[Strength Requirement: 24]
[Dexterity Requirement: 10]
[Physical Attack: 130]
He flipped to the next tab.
[Miracle: Force]
[Uses: 21]
[Description: Creates a shockwave. Inflicts no damage but propels foes back and defends against arrows. Cleric knights use this miracle when charging into enemy mobs.]
[Faith Required: 12]
Naruto frowned at the no damage line. Great, looks like I wasted a bunch of my souls on a lame spell. He closed the tabs and looked up.
"Where is the Firekeeper? I went through the entire church and the graveyard and half a hallway full of water and I never found her."
Alexander pointed. Beside the great tree was a staircase that led downward.
"I must have missed that," Naruto said, and waited for the warrior to come down with him.
Alexander had not moved.
Why should he? He had made a decision a long time ago about how much of himself he was willing to spend on a world that was rotting at its foundations, and that decision had served him well enough. Other people's problems were other people's problems. That was just how it was. He had only protected the boy's soul drop because a strong hollow wandering through Firelink Shrine would have been an inconvenience. He could have absorbed the souls himself. And he had not because he had not wanted to.
That was all it was.
The words from the church hallway came to his mind.
"Alexander is my friend."
Alexander looked at the boy standing at the top of the staircase, just waiting for a person they assumed was coming. The simple fact of it made him move before he had fully decided to.
They went down into a lower area and Naruto stopped moving.
A cage, built into the stone with the permanence of something that had never been meant to open again.
Inside it, a woman sat with her hands folded together on the surface in front of her. Her hair was a pale yellow green, gathered up and bound at the top of her head. A weathered grey cloak draped over her shoulders, its hem ragged with fringe, a chain across the front catching what little light reached in there, small ornate pendants hanging from it. Beneath the cloak, dark sleeves with intricate embroidered cuffs.
Naruto looked at her mutilated legs and his chest tightened at the sight.
"This is the Firekeeper?"
"Sad, really." Alexander's voice had lost its usual edge. "She's stuck keeping that bonfire lit. Mute and bound to this place. They cut her tongue so she'd never speak a god's name in vain." He paused. "How these souls endure it I genuinely cannot say. I'd peter out in an instant. Hah." The laugh was short and without much in it. "Go on. Approach her. She'll do the rest."
The woman's eyes came up as Naruto reached the bars.
The boy gave her a small smile. "Hey."
She looked at him for a moment, then held out her hand.
What followed was not something that happened in the world so much as within.
Everything external receded.
His body and senses were gone until only the soul remained. The Darksign at his neck burned white. The souls moved into the dark soul like water finding a drain, consumed and converted by the Firekeeper's power.
Naruto decided where he needed to grow.
[Strength: 12 → 16]
[Dexterity: 9 → 10]
[Faith: 8 → 12]
The faith came first.
It was difficult to describe because faith was not supposed to be something you felt in your body. But it felt like the connection between his soul and the flesh had been reinforced from the inside.
The strength followed, and that one was easier to understand. The power that moved through his muscles was almost intoxicating. He could feel the difference in his own strength as the Elite Knight armor now felt lighter.
And then his hands.
He opened and closed his right hand slowly. He pulled a kunai from his pouch without looking and felt exactly where the weight sat. He ran a quick sequence of hand seals and he was faster than Sasuke at hand sign speed.
"Thank you," he said quietly.
The Firekeeper's eyes widened.
"Let's go back to the bonfire." Alexander was already moving toward the stairs.
Naruto did not follow immediately. He reached into his inventory and pulled out the bento box he had packed this morning.
"I know it's not much," he said, and bowed his head slightly. "But thank you for helping me get stronger."
The Firekeeper took it with both hands, slowly, as if afraid it might not be real.
She began to cry without making any sound at the first bite, with her shoulders moving, tears running down her pale face as she took another bite and another. She looked up at him between bites, her expression saying everything her missing tongue could not.
Naruto stood at the bars and let her finish.
"I'll see you soon. Maybe next time I level up I'll bring you something sweet."
The Firekeeper nodded, and something in her expression suggested that the visit itself meant more than anything he might bring.
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Author's Note:
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Q: Are Estus Flasks made by the Firekeeper?
Yes.
In Game Description of Estus Flasks: The Undead treasure these dull green flasks. Fill with Estus at bonfire. Fills HP. The Estus Flasks are linked to the Fire Keepers.
The Dark Tales also make reference:
An emerald flask, from the Keeper's soul.
She lives to protect the flame,
And dies to protect it further.
My headcanon is that the flasks are made of Waldglas, which is a real historical type of forest glass produced in heavily wooded regions. The process worked because abundant wood ash acted as a flux, and iron impurities in the sand naturally tinted the glass those characteristic shades of green.
The Firekeeper uses the wood ash and sand already present near the bonfire, with the heat of the flame itself as the kiln, to produce the glass flasks.
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Q: Are Firekeepers the reason the player character can level up?
This is a question some of you might already know the answer to, or at least think you do, but I wanted to take the time to break it down. It is one of those little details in Dark Souls that is both ambiguous in canon and fascinating in lore.
In Dark Souls II and Dark Souls III, the games make it very clear that the Firekeeper, like the Emerald Herald or the Firekeeper in DS3, is the reason the player can level up. Likewise, in Demon's Souls, the Maiden in Black serves this purpose as the "level up lady."
But in Dark Souls I, things are a little different. Anastacia of Astora does not act as the level up NPC. The player can level up at any bonfire. Honestly, I always found this a little disappointing, because it feels like a missed opportunity. Imagine how horrifying and impactful it would have been if Lautrec killed Anastacia and suddenly you could not level up until you reached Anor Londo. That would have made her death not only emotionally devastating, but mechanically crippling in a way that reinforces the story.
So, how does Anastacia, or any Firekeeper, actually tie into leveling up in lore?
The truth is... we do not know for sure. The game never directly tells us. But, like always, I have my own speculation backed with some evidence, so let's get into it.
The Lords and the Dark Soul
Consider the four Lords of Dark Souls: Gwyn, the Witch of Izalith, Nito, and the Furtive Pygmy.
Gwyn took the Light Soul, granting him dominion over lightning and holy flame.
Izalith took the Life Soul, which gave her power over life and creation.
Nito claimed the Death Soul, ruling over decay and the domain of the dead.
The Furtive Pygmy took the Dark Soul, which split into fragments known as humanity.
So what did the Dark Soul actually give the Pygmy?
The answer: the power to absorb souls and grow stronger. That is what separates humanity and Undead from the gods.
And here is the evidence: only humans, and those tied to the Dark, like the primordial serpents, are shown to be able to truly use souls for growth and power.
Now, let's bring in this item description:
Soul of a long lost Fire Keeper
Description: Each Fire Keeper is a corporeal manifestation of her bonfire, and a draw for the humanity which is offered to her. Her soul is gnawed by infinite humanity, and can boost the power of the precious Estus Flasks. It can be used to gain Humanity and restore HP at the cost of losing the Fire Keeper soul to reinforce the Estus Flasks.
Focus on this line: Her soul is gnawed by infinite humanity.
Humanity is literally fragments of the Dark Soul. An "infinite humanity" is essentially as close to the original Dark Soul as anything could get.
So yes, the reason Firekeepers can help people level up is because their souls are constantly being gnawed at by the Dark Soul. That connection lets them channel that power and basically turn regular souls into stat boosts.
Which means, in this story, all of Naruto's current strength is thanks to Anastacia. Every time he sits at a bonfire, he is unknowingly linking himself to her soul, and that is what actually lets him grow stronger.
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That's It… For Now.
I want to thank you all for taking the time to read, comment, and follow along with this story. Your feedback means more than you know, and it helps push me to make each chapter bigger, sharper, and more true to the worlds of Naruto and Dark Souls.
Until next time,
Praise the Sun.
\-Adam-/