So here is this chapter... again, it had to be re uploaded due to technical difficulties which resulted in a utterly wtfed version of this chapter to get posted, as was so kindly pointed out by a certain Asian tsundere reader of mine.

so once more i disclaim all ownership of the mass effect and darksouls they belong to their respective owners.

Shepard staggered through the silent ship and into his quarters before plopping down tiredly onto his bed. It had been a horrendously long day for the marine and it showed; he had rings under his eyes and could barely keep them open as he lay on his bed, which normally seemed carved out of stone, but now felt like the softest most inviting bed ever made.

Shepard closed his eyes and silently reflected on what had made his day so utterly horrid. For starters, any day when he and his team were out in the field dodging bullets was not a good day in his book, but that hadn't been the only thing he had to deal with; in fact, it had been far from it. For starters, one of his crew had gotten injured, namely Lilith one of the new arrivals. You might say that it wasn't anything serious according to Chakwas after she had examined the marine. There were no particularly damaging injuries; in fact there was nothing except for some rather nasty bruising from when she had hit a wall, which was something Shepard could count himself lucky for, he knew how hard a biotic—especially a desperate biotic—could hit.

All in all he had counted the mission as a success, the Geth were destroyed, the VIP was extracted and had given up any Intel that she had, which honestly wasn't a damn thing. However, there was one tiny little smudge on the mission, but it just so happened that this smudge was a couple million credit tank.

Yup, Shepard's team had not been able to recover the Mako namely because they were too busy trying to get out of the exploding volcano that Shepard will forever deny was his fault.

The end result however could be worse, Shepard would much rather have lost the tank then lose a team member to the molten lava, and besides that Shepard had called Anderson to ask him to pull a few favors and get the Normandy a new Mako as fast as possible. Anderson had agreed, but Shepard suspected that the next time they met the admiral would have some choice words for him, not to mention that drinks would be on Shepard till the end of his days.

Shepard felt the idle thoughts drifting away as the bed pulled him deeper into its grasp. He closed his eyes and began to drift into blissful slumber, assuring himself that the paperwork could be put off till tomorrow.

o.0.O.O.0.o

pov change

At the same time Lilith crept like a thief in the night about the cargo bay. She had made rounds over the entire oppressively dark room checking that she was indeed alone. Not that she had expected anyone to actually be in the bay, seeing as it was essentially midnight on the ship, but it never hurt to be too careful, especially considering what she was planning to do.

When Lilith's examination was complete, she made her way to her personal locker. Each person on the Normandy was assigned a locker, small footlockers for miscellaneous personal items and larger secured lockers for combat personnel. Lilith's locker was of the later kind. The larger lockers had two compartments, one for weapons and armor, and another for whatever else a solider may need. Most lockers where filed with trinkets, mementos, and other such items, but Lilith had chosen to put something else in her locker. When her locker opened, she knelt down to the lowest compartment and pulled out a nondescript wooden box that was about a foot tall and two long.

Anyone who saw the simple looking box would think that it was a container for trinkets or some kind of memento box, but this particular box was much more complex than that. After all, this box was the mysterious bottomless box purchased from a certain merchant in Lordran. True to its name, Lilith had never managed to actually fill the box, no matter what manner of nonsense she stuffed into it. From giant swords and hammers to the occasional trophy taken from an enemy's corpse, there wasn't a thing that Lilith could carry that she hadn't stuffed into the box at one time or another.

So naturally anything and everything that she found of any interest around Lordran would sooner or later be shoved into the box. From a pile of humanity that she had managed to amass in her travels to the odd weapon or gauntlet along with her store of arrows. No matter what anyone said she only carried as many arrows as she needed, and a few hundred spares… just in case.

Yes Lilith was quite aware that she was a pack rat, and no she didn't care.

She laid the box down on the Normandy's deck and pressed a hidden switch on its side that released the latch on the lid, which she promptly opened to reveal all of her treasures within it.

Lilith feeling a tingle of warning creep up her spine, she looked up from the nondescript box, glanced over her shoulder, and scanned her eyes over the cargo bay again only to see nothing moving.

She frowned as she turned back to her box, her instincts must be slipping after spending so much time around people who were not attempting to kill her, it was not unexpected, but that didn't make it any less disturbing, after all those same instincts had saved her from taking a sword in the back more times then she cared to remember.

She looked back at the box and began to peer down into it, trying to see past the piles of possessions for what she was currently looking for. Not sighting her quarry, she began to shuffle though the sheathed weapons and bundles of arrows, but Lilith still did not find the small pouch that she was seeking. She leaned forward, digging deeper into the box. Soon her arms were fully submerged into the box that by all accounts was too small to accommodate her arms in such a manner.

A few minutes later, Lilith was still digging and now silently cursing herself for her unfortunate habit of picking up anything and everything that looked remotely useful, or odd, or just lying around period. By now she was searching by feel and also in danger of bodily falling into the box, with her head torso and arms completely within the box when she finally found her quarry. Out of her piles of weapons, armor, and random junk, Lilith pulled out a small non-descript pouch.

The undead extracted herself from her box of shenanigans with her prize in hand. She stood up and stretched before closing the bottomless box and placing it back into her locker from whence it came. With the box once more within the locker she pulled out her sheathed knife.

She took one last look around the cargo bay running her eyes over the shadows once more. She saw nothing, thus assured she returned her attention to the task at hand. Lilith plopped herself cross legged on the floor, wincing as she jostled her still bruised side and removed the dragon born blade from its sheath. The blade had seen better days, it was splotched from being sheathed without having the fluid from the slain Geth wiped from it, as well as several dings and dents along the blade from becoming intimately familiar with before mentioned Geth.

Lilith slowly ran her hands along the blade, exploring it as one might do with a lover; the comparison might be quite true seeing what she and her weapons had been through; she may not use every blade within the vast arsenal she had squirreled away in her nonsensical box, but the ones that she did use she knew. Every curve, every stain, every dent she knew them by heart she knew where that had come from, mostly because she usually had a scar to accompany each dent, crack, and stain.

Lilith sighed at the condition of her blade and murmured quietly to it, "I'm sorry I put you through that, I will take better care of you from now on." With that promise in mind the undead opened the pouch she had taken from her bottomless box. She dipped two fingers into the pouch and withdrew them, coated in a glittering gold powder.

Lilith drew her fingers in front of her face examining them closely making sure that enough of the repair powder had stuck to her fingers, back in lordran when she could easily purchase more powder she would simply dump out the entire pouch on her blade. However, she truly had no idea of how the powder was made or where it came from, and that was one of the reasons that she had to strictly ration it, when she ran out she had no way to make more.

She proceeded to gently rub the powder into the dragon born blade; the blade began to shine with a soft golden sheen as the powder did its work. Within moments, the glow faded leaving the blade rejuvenated.

Lilith ran her hand over the repaired blade, it was as sharp, and beautiful as the day she had received it. Lilith smiled at the rejuvenated blade before she stood up and proceeded to scurry about hiding the evidence of the repair; the pouch was resealed and placed within her fanciful box, which was subsequently shoved back into her locker along with her sheathed knife.

Lilith sealed her locker, and stretched working the cricks out of her back while walking toward the elevator. She punched the button for the crew deck, 'I think I'll grab some shut eye,' she thought as the elevator carried her to the crew deck. 'It's not like I have anything better to do.'

o.0 O.O 0.o

POV Change

(A few minutes earlier)

Kaiden wandered out of the engine room quietly cursing the blasted console that had become the bane of his existence. The console in question normally was ignored but the damn thing was simply bothering him, he couldn't even be near it without his teeth going on edge and a uncomfortable tingle wandering among his implants.

Initially he simply thought a quick session of maintenance would have the problem taken care of, but instead he found the aggravation had increased after he fixed everything that could be conceivably wrong with the consoleand now it was simply a challenge. It was as if the console was mocking him as it ignored his every effort to repair it.

He had come down to the engineering deck to see if Adams had any clue what was wrong with it, but just his luck in its true form, Adams did not share his insomniac pursuits and was fast asleep in a sleeping pod, and the night shift engineer whose name always escaped Kaiden didn't have the slightest clue what was wrong but did say that he would leave a message for Adams.

In the end Kaiden was once more left with the prospect of not having a night of sleep and dealing with the console simply sitting there mocking him for another day. The prospect caused him to quietly murmur a litany of curses at the console as he walked into the darkened cargo bay only to be stopped in his tracks by the sight in front of him.

In front of him, illuminated by the dim lights of the cargo bay, were the shapely hindquarters of a woman sticking into the air. This however was not what shocked Kaiden, what shocked him was where the rest of her was, namely the fact that the woman was from the waist up inside of a box which, by whatever logical analysis was too small to accommodate her height.

Kaiden blinked a few times and continued to stare, 'I know,' he thought reassuringly to himself. 'I must have a migraine, and its making me hallucinate,' of course that was negating the fact that he didn't feel like he had a headache and that a migraine had never made him hallucinate before, but if he tried hard enough he could convince himself.

His delusions were cut short when he heard a smothered sound that sounded vaguely like a cry of victory reached his ears. He returned his eyes back to the woman and her box to see her pulling herself from the before mentioned box. He saw the woman who he could now identify as Lilith, the newest human member of the Normandy's crew.

Kaiden's mind, which was still attempting to overcome the combination of a lack of sleep and frustration, coupled with trying to process the shenanigan that was Lilith's bottomless box. His mind had frozen when she extracted herself from the box. He really should have made himself known rather than simply skulk in the shadows like he was, but his mind was still processing the shenanigans of her mystical box, so in the end he stood staring like a slack jawed idiot as she pulled herself from the box and began to look about almost like she could feel his stare on her.

He couldn't help but stiffen as her eerie red eyes came upon him; he couldn't help but notice that with their vivid shade of red that they seemed to glow, Kaiden honestly admitted he had not paid much attention to the newest human member of the crew. Though he really couldn't really be blamed for it, after all the Normandy had been a bundle of excitement recently, after all. In the span of a week it had gained four new crew members that were a great deal more exotic then the human N7. Kaiden looked her over and thought about a great deal of things at once. He had read over her profile and seen the records of her exploits, but he knew next to nothing about her aside from that. Although he would have to admit, she looked a great deal less imposing then her file would suggest, after all the nickname 'butcher of Tofran' conjured images of a blood thirsty six foot tall Amazon with a body like a tree trunk. Lilith did not even come close to that image. To begin with, the woman was probably five foot three if she stood on her toes with an athletic body. Her face did little to add to her ability to intimidate; her facial features were too far on the delicate side to accomplish that. She would never be a model that much was certain, her jaw was a bit too strong, her nose a bit too wide, and her lips a bit too thin; all culminating into a set of features that, while doubtlessly far from ugly, fell short of the kind of perfection that would be considered the ideal woman.

Kaiden shook his head, 'the hell am I thinking,' he mused, 'the lack of sleep must be getting to me.' After all, he was certainly someone who had more common sense then to be lurking in the shadows, eyeing a woman who likely could kill him with a butter knife, biotics or not.

Kaiden was shaken free of his thoughts when she moved, going from quietly sitting cross-legged on the floor, doing who knows what, to quickly and efficiently putting away the items she had arranged around her. First to disappear was a small pouch whose nature hecouldn't discern, was placed into the box that he had seen Lilith half buried in when he first entered the bay, which itself was quickly sealed and returned to her locker followed by her knife, then her locker itself was closed.

Then she got up, and without another glance around she strutted toward the direction of the elevator.

Kaiden watched her go, then stopped and thought, 'did I really just skulk in the shadows staring at her like I've never seen a woman before?' He put a hand against his head and once more cursed the panel that was the bane of his existence and made his own way to the elevator. He was going to sleep; when he woke up he would deal with the panel, preferably by shooting it out the airlock.

o.0 O.O 0.o

POV Change

(AGAIN shocking isn't it)

"Just breathe," she told herself trying to calm her screaming nerves and stampeding heart, "just breathe," she quietly repeated clinging to the mantra as if it would save her from her fears. She let out a long breath and opened her eyes to the darkness that permeated the interior of the sleeping pod she inhabited.

Some rational part of her mind calmly informed her that she was safe inside the Normandy; she would even be comfortable inside the padded pod if her skin would stop trying to get up and run away. However, another part of her was screaming at top of its lung for her to escape to get out of this tight space where she couldn't move. She ignored both of them and instead just stared into the gloom, it wasn't really the darkness that bothered her, or the immobility. The undead knew that with just one push of a button, the pod would pop open and she would be free to move about, but some part of her still cringed at just the sight of the pods. There was something about them. Maybe it was the way she fit inside of it or maybe the way it looked disturbingly similar to a coffin.

Whatever the reason, whenever she was within one of the pods, she couldn't help but feel buried memories crawl up her spine; memories of fear, pain, madness, and impenetrable darkness.

Memories from the Tomb of the Giants.

X Flash Back X

When Lilith descended into the darkness of Nitos' realm, she was a bloodied warrior having struck down Executioner Smough, and Dragon Slayer Orenstein, and became an even mightier pyromancer than she already was under the tutelage of Queelana, and she had been declared the chosen undead and was bequeathed the lord vessel. Striding into the ancient tombs she believed that she would be ready for whatever lied in the dark, she was wrong.

She found herself tested, driven to the edge of her limits in the darkness. The creak of an ancient bone or the wheeze of a blade sailing at her head would be her only warning of the skeletons that struck from the dark. Never the less she persevered, her shield and her body gaining a few more scars, but she survived and continued to press forward even as the darkness crept closer. But, the darkness didn't truly take hold of her; neither did it truly engulf her. Not until she met Patches.

Lilith didn't like Patches at all. Even when she had first laid eyes on him, the man reminded her of some kind of scavenger as he raked his eyes over her from head to toe, not that her wanderer's armor allowed much to be seen, but he did it never the less.

"Why hello there," he said with a crooked smile, after he had finished burning her form into his eyes.

Lilith for her part simply glowered at the man from underneath her hood, 'this man reminds me far too much of Lautrec,'' she thought before immediately banishing that name and the emotions the swelled alongside it with it. Lautrec was the last person she wished to think about, those wounds where still too fresh for her to prod at them.

She kept her mouth pressed into a thin line, her sword in its sheath, and her shield on her back as she tried to bore a hole in Patches head with her eyes. Just because she got a bad feeling about the man didn't mean she was going to attack him without a half decent reason.

Patches was not the least bit put off by her standoffish stance and just kept talking. "What are you doing in the catacombs, are you a cleric or something?" his smile never faded even when he all but spat the word cleric.

The woman seeing no reason to lie shook her head no. She was many things, but a cleric wasn't one of them.

"Ah, good," drawled Patches. "I don't like those holier than thou clerics, then again who does?!" He let out a rumbling laugh before leaning toward her as if to whisper a secret to her and said, "I'll share a secret with you. There is a batch of treasure down this hole don't we share it?" He finished, flashing Lilith a scoundrel's smile, which he no doubt thought was charming. It did nothing other than set Lilith more on edge. She had seen that smile before on the knight of Carims' face and on the man who had committed a betrayal most foul against her.

Nevertheless the undead couldn't just pass up a chance to get her hands on some goodies, after all things she had found on her journey had saved her life many times. Lilith walked forward keeping an eye on Patches out of the corner of her eye and walked to the edge of the cliff.

She peered down into the darkness, and looked around for the treasure, but only saw what may have been a couple of objects lying scattered on a landing below her. She didn't look for long, but a couple of seconds after she reached the edge of the cliff. Patches made his move. She saw him move in her peripheral vision but it was already too late. She tried to turn, yanking at her sword as she did. Her effort earned her nothing but the wooden butt of a spear smashing against the side of her head. Lilith saw sparks explode in front of her eyes as the blow landed.

Patches did not allow her to recover. While she was still reeling from the blow to the head, he planted his boot into her gut and kicked her off the cliff.

However, he made a bit of a miscalculation as he kicked her. He had put too much force into the kick which, coupled with the fact that her attempt to turn on him had resulted in him getting the angle wrong. Instead of kicking her onto the nice clearing where he could strip her corpse of its loot, he had kicked her out over the clearing and deeper into the pit. However, true to his reputation of a hyena, he felt nothing more than momentary pang of sadness at the loss of whatever goodies the woman may have been carrying before returning to his post at the cliff face. Some other sucker would come along sooner or later and he would be more careful then.

X Scene Change X

Deep within the endless darkness a figure lay, broken. Its limbs where twisted at wretched angles and blood leaked out of numerous injuries incurred during its fall and subsequent landing. Yet, it still lived. Down in the pit, the wretched figure opened its blood red eyes and screamed, not a scream of anger or hatred, but a wretched animal shriek of pain and fear. Soon the figure fell into silence and simply lie still, and so, in the endless darkness of the tomb of the giants lays the chosen undead. Broken and forgotten, her red eyes wide and darting, searching for something, anything she could do to save herself. Her eyes met only impenetrable darkness, so she lay in the darkness with nothing but pain, and her thoughts to keep her company.

X Scene Changed X

Time passed meaninglessly within the endless dark that was the Tomb of the Giants. Red eyes once bright now lay dull and staring at the endless gloom.

She had searched in the brief moments her mind was aflame with pain for a way to escape, but to no avail. Her equipment was scattered, her sword was still faithfully on her hip, but her flask was nowhere to be found.

She could feel it; in darkened corners of her mind it festered and grew. Her mind once whole and sharp had turned on itself in the darkness. Slowly ever so slowly, pieces of her mind where drifting away lost to the madness that grew there, but the undead didn't least now the voices of the dead kept her company.

Time passed.

The chosen undead lay in the place she had fallen, her body still broken but her mind now changed. Darkness had taken root and grown like some demented weed, within, the woman who called herself Lilith had shrunk and hid herself, running from the pain and the solitude of the darkness and in her place something else rose up.

This new thing was not as fragile as Lilith was; it did not feel fear as Lilith did, it was a creature of anger and hunger. While Lilith was a warrior, this new thing was nothing of the sort. It was a rabid beast, hungering for the death of its enemies, to breathe a moment longer,and nothing more.

The beast opened its red eyes and scanned the platform; it forced its broken limbs to move. It thought nothing of the pain which had paralyzed Lilith, instead taking an impartial observation of its surroundings. It could not stay on the ledge, there were no enemy's to rend, nothing for it to hunt. No reason for the beast to exist on the ledge, so it would leave.

The beast's mind moved with a patience which, only the mad and the dead should possess, as it considered its options. Its Estus flask was lost perhaps further over the ledge; perhaps it had fallen further into the darkness. To its mind it was a simple choice, its broken limbs could not climb higher and there was a chance that the flask was below. With a push from a single, almost whole arm, the beast sent its body tumbling over the ledge into the blackness.

Pain shot through the beast's limbs as it slid down the angled slope but it paid no mind, instead it waited with inhuman patience for her body's journey to come to an end. It did not have to wait long. Soon the beast's body rolled onto a flat ledge much larger than the one it previously laid on.

The beast lay still for a moment, taking stock of the new state of its body. Before its insane journey, the beast's legs had been broken, one arm had been mangled beyond recognition, and the other had suffered a fracture, but still had some manner of usefulness. Now her body was in even worse shape, but not by much. One of its legs was now completely turned around, her toes pointing in the wrong direction, and the beast suspected that it had broken whatever ribs that had survived the first fall. It was good enough.

The beast moved, looking about itself and ignoring the pain screaming through its body. It didn't take long for the beast's red eye to find its prize, the dull green sheen of an Estus flask. A toothy smile spread on its face as it dragged itself to the flask, broken limbs, and all. It would survive yet.

X Scene Change X

Patches was annoyed to say the least. He shouldn't have kicked that woman straight off the cliff after all. She had been the last person that he had seen for a while and he still didn't have enough loot to risk fighting his way out of the tomb.

He was sitting in his usual spot leaning against his spear, and he couldn't help but notice that he had stood there long enough to leave permanent impressions in the stone. Patches let his mind drift as he listened for his next victim; he would always hear them before he saw them, or at least he heard the skeletons trying to kill whoever was stupid enough to be wandering around the tomb. Luckily for Patches though, they were usually quite well-equipped fools, or even better… clerics.

Patches mind wandered so much that he almost didn't hear the sound of something scrapping against rock behind him. He whirled around, grabbing his spear and pulling up his shield to block any incoming blows.

But before Patches was nothing but the silent cliff face, never the less he didn't let his guard down. He had learned the hard way that the skeletons in this place were able to move in the impenetrable darkness and not make a single sound. Patches kept his shield and spear ready; he kept his ears perked for any noise.

Patches eyes darted back and forth, searching for the telltale glow of giant skeletons eyes, and thus he sealed his fate. As Patches turned his back on the cliff face in search of imaginary skeletons, he failed to notice a red-eyed form hauling itself up from its handholds just out of sight.

His only warning was the quiet whistle of a blade diving at his back, and by then it was far too late. Pain exploded through the hyena as a curved blade exploded through his stomach. Patches tried to scream, but his lungs failed him as the blade twisted and tore at his vision began to fade as he lost consciousness.

Before his mind faded he felt warm breath tickle his ear as a woman's voice whispered into his ear. "Don't worry I won't let you die, I haven't had my fun yet," if Patches body hadn't been busy being impaled he would have shivered at the dark promise that voice held. With that his mind faded to black; however, he would soon find what true horror was at the hands of the chosen undead.

X Back to the present X

Lilith pulled herself out of her memories like a swimmer reaching the surface, panting for breath and clinging desperately to anything she could reach.

Her breath left her in quick rasps as her eyes darted back and forth inside the darkened sleeping pod. She kept her eyes open, stood up,and slammed her head against the metal wall of the pod. The pain calmed her; she didn't want to remember what happened in the deep of the tomb. Never the less, she couldn't help but see that very scene which would forever be emblazoned in her mind. Even now she could still smell the seared flesh and the wretched cries of the man called the Patches the Hyena as he begged. Not to be spared but rather for it to end, he begged loud and long for her to kill him.

She closed her eyes and smashed her head again against the metal of the pod trying to drive her memories away; even just thinking about it caused the beast to stir.

Deep within her mind chains rattled.

Within the dark recesses of her mind, bound by great chains and, nails driven through its limbs, and impaled with countless swords, the beast smiled at the memories. It paid no mind to the chains or nails or swords, they were nothing but desperate attempts of the woman from which it was born to control it. Sooner or later the woman would lower her guard, and then it would be free. Be but until then it would wait, with the endless patience of a predator. Sooner or later it would free itself and satiate its thirst for blood.

Authors note: as i mentioned in the first upload of this chapter i am once more on a semi coherent writing scheduled and there should not be any other long absences.

thank you very much for reading

REVIEW... please *puppy dog eyes*

P.S. if another long absence does occur it will probably be that the tsundere reader i mentioned at the beginning of this chapter has murdered me for pointing out she is a tsundere.