"Now, you can open the door... and may the Lord of Light watch over us in the dark night and protect us from the horrors of the night. Let his light banish all creatures of the darkness and burn them to the ashes."
The priestess of the Red Temple recited the prayer as both Valkorion and Gotrik then walked up to the rusted metal doors, which seemed to weigh a few tons, judging by the thickness of the steel used to make them.
"On three."
Valkorion said as they started counting to three, and once they finished the countdown, both of them struck the door with their weapon and full force.
Surprisingly or not, their weapons penetrated the thick steel like nothing, and on the Gotrik's end, parts of the steel door started even melting away, as they literally chopped their way through.
The ceremonial room of Izalith was vast and circular, its walls carved with scenes of long-forgotten rituals involving fire and flame, chaos and destruction, and the creed of the Chaos Flame Covenant.
Massive stone pillars, each adorned with intricate glyphs that seem to writhe when looked at too closely, support a ceiling of dark granite shot through with veins of phosphorescent minerals.
These glowing veins cast a sickly green light and illumined the room in an unnatural, pulsing glow.
The centerpiece of the chamber was a raised dais, upon which sat an altar carved from a single block of deep black stone. It was etched with symbols that seemed to drink in the light, giving off an unsettling, malevolent aura.
Everything that was once of the Flame and Fire was long ago corrupted by the Scourge of Undeath, turned into the abomination of the face of the Sacred Flame of Izaltih. The fires of Izalith, once a symbol of purification and holiness, were transformed into a symbol of death and decay, defiling the glorious legacy of the Pyromancers of old.
Surrounding the altar were scattered remnants of ceremonial relics of the Izalith and the Firelink Shrine, as well as several tarnished silver chalices and statues of the symbols of the Chaosflame Covenant.
Stained with the crus of millennia-old blood from the powerful Beyonders that were once killed in this place, as if their very own resentment refused to leave this place even after their death.
Obviously, all three of them noticed the Undead.
Their presence was presence chillingly palpable.
Countless Skeletal Warriors clad in corroded bronze armor stood vigil, their empty eye sockets smoldering with pinpricks of malevolent light. Between them, ghoulish figures in tattered ceremonial robes shuffled aimlessly, whispering prayers in a forgotten language.
The scent of decay and mold permeates the air, mingled with a faint, metallic tang that spoke of ancient bloodshed.
In the far corners of the chamber, the shadows seem to move of their own accord. Spectral figures glide silently, their translucent forms barely distinguishable from the gloom. They hover as if bound by an unseen force, their ghostly faces twisted in expressions of eternal anguish.
The sound of chains dragging along the stone floor echoes softly as a wraith, bound by ethereal manacles, floats past with eyes that radiate a baleful, ghostly glow.
At the edge of the dais, a skeletal high priest stands eternally poised, arms outstretched as if frozen in mid-chant. The dark magic that binds this place emanates from it, throbbing with an ancient, vengeful energy. In this ruin, time holds no power; here, death is merely a gateway to a restless, shadowy existence.
"We came late..."
Valkorion heard Mellisandre's whisper and was filled with dread because it seemed that something didn't go according to plan.
And unfortunately, she was right.
"What is happening?"
Even though Valkorion didn't know that much about the Undead, he noticed that something was indeed wrong about this place.
The Undead in this place seemed to be... organized?
Organized was the right word.
That was the word in the mind of all three of them when they noticed the Undead in this place behaving too organized and like they were in the middle of some kind of ritual or so.
And that only meant one sole dreaded and catastrophic truth.
They were being controlled.
Most of the Undead were too stupid, and in fact, the Lesser Undead didn't even have any intelligence on their own and acted solely on their instincts of hatred towards everything living.
"Cult of the Damned."
This was the first time he heard the name, but for the dwarven Slayer, it wasn't.
"Fuck."
That was the only word that came out of the Gotrik's mouth as they banded together and prepared for the fight because they were almost immediately noticed by the Undead as they entered the room.
"And what the hell is the Cult of the Damned for both of you looked so seriously?"
Aside from knowing that the Cult of the Damned was most probably a very bad piece of news, this was the first time Valkorion heard that name. It was evident that it was some kind of powerful Secret Organization that dealt with Necromancy as its primary business.
"The Cult of Damned is a Secret Organization of mostly living beings who serve the Great Other and some other unsavory entities related to the Undead. Even among the other Orthodox and Secret Organizations, they are considered threats because they are the main creators and propagators of the Undeath Scourge, and they worship the concept of death and the undead in the most abominable way."
Now, this was the problem, and he understood their threat to the greater world. While the worship of death wasn't anything new, even to the Orthodox Churches such as the Church of the Seven or Parthenon, these madmen wanted to spread the Undeath Curse through the entire world.
"Most often, they are bent on turning the entire world into their image, filled with nothing more than just Undeath Scourge, because for them, being Undead is the highest honor one could achieve. They are hunted down actively, practically by every single Orthodox Church and even by many Secret Organizations of Good and Neutral Alignment; there are even some Evil Secret Cults that are hunting down the Cult of the Damned because they want to essentially destroy the world."
The more he heard about the Cult of the Damned, the more impressed he became with the Secret Organization because it wasn't every day that other Evil Secret Organizations would be collectively hunting down another Evil Secret Organization with the goal of preserving the world.
No matter how weird that may have sounded.
But yeah.
It was weird.
"So... we fight through?"
He asked rather uncertainly as the red priestess looked at him like he was an idiot.
"Of course... the Cult cannot be allowed to succeed in whatever they are doing here. This is just not a matter of the Red Temple anymore, but also a thing of preserving the world itself."
She almost deadpanned hearing that question as she read for the fight against the long-time enemy of the Red Temple. The grudges between the Red Temple and the Cult of the Damned ran too deep to be just ignored, but that was true for other factions, like the House of Black and White or the Church of the Seven.
They would stop at nothing to destroy the Cult of the Damned, but that was much easier said than done.