Dedicated to the Butterfly.

I quite like Darkroot Garden.

No, that's a lie. I hate Darkroot Garden, like everywhere else in Dark Souls. Everywhere in the game is horrible, and I understand that that's the point. But Darkroot Garden feels like a squirming, living place that's oppressive in a way that leafy, green places haven't been since fairy tales, and that's kind of cool. After the enemies hidden round corners and dead ends of the Undead Burg, spending time in a place where enemies can appear literally from underneath your feet is quite exciting.

I'll probably write a post about it sometime soon.

Anyway. I spent a little bit of time in Darkroot Garden today. hat did I get up to? Well, I engaged in a number of pitched battle with the local flora and fauna, thanks for asking. I fought trees, bushes and giant red frog-hovercraft things, and I got absolutely annihilated by a few giant stone suits of armour.

The last bit kind of sucked.



But yeah! It turns out that some trees in Dark souls move about, and can be attacked, and will die and drop souls and things like normal enemies. That's quite weird, but finding this out means that I now have two unexplored routes in the Darkroot garden: The one that takes you to Darkroot Basin, and the one with the Stone Knight at the top of it.

Ooh, also, I found a bonfire! Turns out there's one hidden behind a wall just to the left of the glowing door of what-the-fuck-is-that in the middle of the Garden - pretty handy as a base for fighting the Midnight Butterfly.

The Midnight Butterfly is a very strange fight indeed, and not one that I would have expected in Dark Souls. First off, this is the music that plays during the battle:



Now, Dark Souls is a game that uses music to good effect - normally its boss battles are accompanied by huge, crashing string sections that thump and stomp over the action - but watching the Butterfly flying around its domain, backed by that music, was quite... eerie. That music is incredible. Haunting and cold, it suits the slow, silent grace of the fight with the Butterfly perfectly, and if it weren't for the fact that every boss fight in Dark Souls gives me fucking palpitations, I wouldn't have wanted the fight (and the music) to finish.

The Butterfly itself is a bit of a pushover: Dodge out of the way of its projectiles, lamp it when it gets close; So far, so Bayonetta. It drops a special soul (which I'm a little clueless as to what to do with), and gives you a lovely ten thousand souls - quite a lot for what I think is one of the simplest bosses I've fought yet.

It also allows you to grab a Divine Ember (which Andre was very interested in), and the key to a watchtower basement in Undead Burg. I'll be honest, I didn't remember a door, but I decided to go and have a shufty anyway - what could go wrong, eh?

Ha.

If you're interested, the door is just underneath where you fight the Taurus Demon, and it opens to reveal a very long spiral staircase.

Now.

If you're cleverer than me, before using the key you would have read the item description, which says that rumours tell of a Hollow locked in that basement by his friend - for his own good. Of course, it stands to reason that if you'd read this, you'd be expecting the lightning fast, hard as nails chap who lives at the bottom of that staircase to be there.

I wasn't.

I audibly yelped as I ran away from him, after two hits flattened my stamina and nearly killed me. He's a fucking dick. Don't get what his problem is.

...Other than being undead, and insane, and all that.

That was a lovely example of the minimalist, quiet storytelling Dark Souls does: That whole story was told with an item description a place, and a single enemy, and it makes perfect sense. No note or audio log to be found, no cutscene drilling the point home; just a simple rumour, and that's it. Whether the fact that the blacksmith at the top of the tower seemed to have been turned to stone and the mental at the bottom of the tower also seemed to be made of something similar are related or not I'm not yet sure, but I'm sure I'll find a hat or a clog or something later on that will explain that.

But anyway - after that near miss, I felt like I needed to bully somebody bigger than me. Someone that had been a roadblock before, but would likely fall under my blade in short order now that I was quicker, cleverer and stronger - so I plodded over to speak to the Black Knight who lives in Undead Burg.

After noticing the sheer drop that can only have been put there to catch out players running out of their minds in fear from the Black Knight, I stepped to him.

Boom, Dark Knight down, motherfucker. Cheers for the ring. I'm heading back to Firelink Shrine.

When I got back to Firelink, It turned out that someone new had arrived; a chap in Gold armour. He sits outside the Firekeeper's cell, looking morose and telling me to go away. I'm not sure what to make of him yet, but he finishes all of his speeches with a laugh, so at least he's as bananas as everyone else in the game.

Then I decided to have a nose in The Depths.

Turns out, there's a man with some bloody great big knives down there. If you see a bloodstain near him, it's probably mine.

I'm done for the night.