Elden Ring Journal - Day 12

Today I got my first hand job! In fact, I got like 5 of them. Not at all what I expected.

First since I updated my map to show all the delicious loot, I was going for something to try to make this Flask of Wondrousness a little less mostly useless. I thought I was fighting some very large spiders, but it turned out to be huge severed hands! Not at all normal human hand sized, these things were as large as dogs are... outside of that awful place with nightmare dogs I found the other day.

Anyway, I offed them easily with one hit each from a greater crystal shard and happily strode towards my prize. Before I picked it up, however, I was flung back several feet onto my back. And IT arose. Not the clown, a hand so giant it made the other ones look like fucking tadpoles!

I was taken completely off guard, and only managed to get off two more greater shards before I was smashed to a pulp. One had killed the now-small hands, but two only made this thing giggle. Giggle! I have no idea what strange physical mutation could allow a hand to giggle, but I swear it happened.

As always I awoke to the alarm in my hotel room blaring "I Got You Babe." I still don't know why that keeps happening. I hopped onto my horse to retrieve my soul, and... died again. And then again. But then I finally managed to kill that damned huge hand. If it was ever alive? How could a severed hand be actually alive? I should have never eaten all those mushrooms.

High on my success, and the mushrooms, I carried on to the city on the hill. I guess they call it a manor, but it looks far larger than the few tiny clusters of buildings I've seen so far. As I approached it started raining down blue bolts of lightning, or magic, or something. I assumed getting hit by those would be unhealthy, but whatever caused them they were super easy to avoid by just not mindlessly riding in a straight line. Such a lame trap, I knew I was going to loot this place dry.

I touched grass at the gate and headed in only to have another of those fucking massive hands drop on me from the fucking sky and smash me to paste.

Once more I awoke to the sound of that damn song. This time I noticed I could summon one my undead slaves, or ghost pokemon, or whatever the fuck they are. I decided to summon that archer lady I met. Not entirely sure on that one. I get the ability to summon these things once I collect the ashes of their cremated bodies. But... I actually met this lady. She was laying on a big wolf. That seemed dead, but she seemed far more alive than most things I've met since this all started. She said she'd come along with me and I was instantly so excited to not be going through this insanity all alone... but the next thing I know she was gone and I had her fucking ashes. I swear I didn't do it. I did not kill that woman. I know I keep blacking out or dying and waking up back in my room, and I must be insane seeing all this shit, but I wouldn't just kill some random innocent woman. Oh God, please tell me I didn't.

... errr... carrying on. With the help of my friend... my only friend... I managed to kill this bastard hand too, but after only a few more feet two more of them appeared. Not the now seemingly tiny ones, those don't matter at all. A flock of gargantuan fucking hands. Turned out they were everywhere. I was in a manor full of living severed hands bigger than boulders. And they hate me! Probably for having a complete person body? I wonder if they think I'm taunting them by having so many limbs, and feet, and a head.

I ran. I'm not proud of it, but since my coward horse wouldn't even appear I just ran screaming until I found a doorway to hide inside. There was a ghost there. A real one. If they are real? Not like my archer friend. She had been alive. I didn't kill her.

I walked up some stairs and, exhausted from all those times I'd died in the last few hours I noticed another glowing gold stalk of grass and decided to touch it and take a rest.