Dark Souls Altera IV

**Dark Souls Altera IV** is a Story Arc of the Exteria Multiverse. It takes place in Londor and follows the perspective of Voidhearted Hope.

## Main Arc

### Into a Hostile World

A young nameless girl awakens near a dark shore, under an eclipsed sky. Despite being newborn, she can already, if barely, walk, talk and fight. Drawn to a small chapel, she fights several enemies in order to reach it. In the chapel, she encounters **Simon** the Blacksmith, **Echidna** the old merchant, the Nurse of Shades, who claims to be her surrogate mother and calls her "Voidhearted", converting her experience into strength, as well as the mocking and mysterious soul-transposing Deirdre of Ludmar.

Told she must seek an audience with the King, Aodhan, the pale girl wanders inside the gigantic city of Londor, navigating its labyrinthine walls, visiting its nearby forest, and finding a mire that has been devastated by a strange, cold flame. She also encounters another nameless Voidhearted in search of her own identity, drawn to the extinct power of dragons. She also notices humans slowly dying to an invisible affliction, one that tears at their soul and turns them into mindless **Hollows**.

### Secrets of the Throne

As the girl keeps wandering, obtaining keys to progress towards the center of Londor's palace, visiting its mausoleum and basilica, she learns an absurd truth: King Aodhan is long dead, slain by a conspiracy of four Traitors, including one of his very spouses, **Moria** of the Three Queens of Londor. With another queen, **Shani**, having left the kingdom of Londor, only **Juri** remains and rules the world with an iron fist, using the very illness of the world to command mankind and torturing any dissenters.

The girl ends up nevertheless reaching the depths of Londor's palace, destroying the wards Juri put into place to prevent her advance. There, she retrieves a chalice imbued with the blood of King Aodhan, allowing her to cross the dark fog that permeates some regions of Londor. On her way, she also encounters Cassian, a Voidhearted with a name, something unusual. Cassian's hope and desire to be set free inspires the girl to search for meaning, using the Chalice to unlock a hidden passage next to the ocean where she was born.

### Revelations from the Deep

This passage leads her to a dark ocean, where the girl encounters Shani. The exiled queen, standing atop a mountain of clones resembling the young girl's pale form, explains. A long time ago, Aodhan made a pact with Londor to save the First Flame, a dwindling light that was the source of Light in the world. However, Londor's queens tricked him, using his Humanity to spoil and taint the Flame, resulting in the slow degradation of mankind and the death of the Gods of light that oversaw them.

Desperate, Aodhan asked the help of four people - Moria, the genius mage **Callaghan**, pyromancer exile Inessa (incidentally responsible for torching half the kingdom) and Padraig, the last surviving God - in order to prepare for his own death and slow down the flame (now dubbed **Palefyre**)'s corruption. Then, to further slow it, Aodhan turned to the Deep, an infinte source of Dark untainted by Fire or Light. Using his and his companions' expertise, he crafted shells, mixing his own blood with shards of the Deep, to create the Voidhearted.

Thus, the young girl learns of her initial goal - to be sacrificed in order to slow down the Flame's corruption, by keeping it imprisoned within herself until she breaks, and is replaced by the following Voidhearted. Refusing this goal, but still embracing the desire to save all, she decides to take on the name Hope and challenge mankind, not by being an outsider to it, but by embracing it. With Moria and Deirdre's help, reinforcing the Dark within her, she sets forth to retrive Aodhan's soul, fractured into four fragments kept by Moria, Callaghan, Inessa and Padraig.

### Piecing back the Soul

Hope challenges Padraig to a battle of magic and will and emerges victorious, seizing his part of the Soul. She then rescues Inessa from demons born of the very Flame she created, earning her respect and fragment of the Soul. She defeats the maddened Callaghan, prompting Juri, afraid that Hope would actually succeed, to set the eclipse ablaze with Palefyre and challenge Hope to a duel. Hope, however, slowly embracing and absorbing Aodhan's Soul, refuses to fight his past life wife, challenging her through pure conviction.

To save Moria, who has been overtaken by her own dark arts, Hope delves into the Deep and breaks the limit of her own shell, using the full power of the Deep to rescue Moria, earning the last piece of Aodhan's Soul and, according to rituals past, earning her way to the Kiln of the First Flame where Aodhan's body, still suffused with Palefyre, waits. However, Hope does not yet go there; she wishes for a new, pure flame of Light, untouched by Dark, to replace the tainted one. However, the only flame that exists, Inessa's Frostflame, is neither devoid of Dark, neither filled with Light.

### Mending the Broken

To help against this, Hope enlists the help of her two siblings. By going to a distant past through contact with a dragon's corpse, she follows her dragon-sibling, who has found the name Eindis, into the Archdrake Colosseum. There, Eindis hopes to destroy the Flame once and for all and unleash an era without Light or Dark. Hope manages to convince her to give mankind a last chance. The pair teams up to take on **Sloh Tyr**, the First Murderer amongst Dragons, bringing back his venom to purify the Frostflame of its darkness.

To fill it with light, Hope journeys to a distant land, Phenika, where Cassian has been drawn. Cassian has dreamt of strange beings known as Angels, who have bestowed upon him infinite light; Hope discovers that this light, however, comes from sacrifices killed through blind devotion to the white Prince. Hope challenges Cassian, who refuses to back down, and fights her to the death. Cassian is defeated, and Hope seizes the angels' light, bringing it back to Inessa and Shani, who imbue the Flame with Light.

Using this flame, Hope penetrates the Kiln and challenges the flesh of her old body, destroying it, then facing the Palefyre avatar it conjures. After defeating it, she absorbs the remains inside her, shattering her own shell and using the strength of the infinite Deep to contain it. Despite this, she suffers grievous injuries and is found in a half-dead state, barely conscious, by the Nurse of Shades; a fair price for a world finally freed from the Palefyre's influence, Aodhan's crimes redeemed at last.

## Characters

* Hope, Voidhearted
* The Nurse of Shades
* Deirdre of Ludmar
* Eindis, Dragon-child
* Cassian, the White Prince
* Inessa, Mother of the Frostflame
* King Aodhan
* The Three Queens of Londor
* Other Dark Souls Characters

## Trivia

* As the Altera title implies, it is an alternate follow-up to the Dark Souls trilogy.
* Despite being tied to Dark Souls, it has no connections to Dark Souls Liminality and does not take place in Hotel Liminal.