Dark Souls II: Earth Mover

Tales from Dark Souls - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Balor (erm I mean the old iron king), is a ridiculously simple fight with easily readable moves yet he still manages to 1HKO Manhunter O'Harrah and knock me into the instadeath lava lake half a dozen times. I finally win but am frustrated that it took me so many attempts. Using the bonfire just past him scares the bejeezus out of me though since it explodes as a shrubbery appears to tell me "I'm interesting" then goes away. WTF? Ok to be fair, he also speaks a little bit about King Vendrick, who "almost" claimed the throne. Whatever that means.

Hello Mr. Jump Scare!

There's also another shrine teleporter here which leads to more locked doors so I return to Majula where I find a new, stout fella named Gillian sitting by the pit. He claims to be a laddersmith so I pay him a fair bit of souls for his longest ladder. This pays off in that it leads to a key! Not to the locked doors in the lava lake but to the locked doors beyond the lair of the Rotten!

I sure hope he decides to land.

Following the path down I find myself in a huge cavern which houses the ancient Sanctum City. The Mayan temple in the distance is a nice touch. This place is guarded by giant, poisonous skeleton warriors, corrosive bugs, and more poison shooting statues - these ones actually move since they ride little turtles! Even cooler is that the city landscape changes upon hitting switches (which I accidentally discovered during combat). Whole buildings move to form or reveal new paths. Best of all, there's a great white dragon down here. I suspect I'll be fighting him eventually!

Sacred: Temple of Hell

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

Past those gates were even more powerful green demon brutes along with everyone's favourite shadow demon paralyzers. There were still actually side quests in this region but I opted to neglect them this time around as there were no resupply vendors anywhere close by. Pushing through the demon army was slow going but eventually I found the blacksmith of hell with his mighty big hammer who would have given me the Gem of Light for the Eternal Flame. Too bad for him I don't bargain with demons.

He was pretty tough and proficient with that hammer though, and cost me at least half my stock of potions before he died. To gain the item needed to beat his boss seemed worth it though, so with the gem of light in my possession I began the final run to Anducar's temple where pretty much every sort of demon was waiting for me, including many pairs of Sakkara / Balor types.

Thankfully they weren't paired with the shadow demons so I could just elude them using combat jumps, including one that served as a shortcut to the floating temple itself. Those grounds were still patrolled by Mohkva and shadow demon scum again though but with perseverance I managed to reach the "throne" room of the temple (temples have throne rooms) where lady Vilya stood mute and unmoving. No sign of Anducar though.