Another Tail with a tale to tell...

After resting at the bonfire Reima bids farewell to "Keeper" before leaving, he looks at the two paths ahead and decides to loot the building on the left first before heading to the palace that holds the painting. He walks down the tiled path and enters the room that has another statue guarding by two Giant knights... He follows the same procedure as last time, blasting the first in the face with a Crystal Souls spear and getting ready for the counter attack by it's surviving friend. He dodging the downward chop of the halberd before deciding to see how strong his Armament Haki actually is... He channels Haki into his arm which covers it in a black substance before leaping at the giant and punching it's large shield.

DANG!

An almost bell-like sound rings out across the surroundings as the Giant Knight is sent skidding back before colliding with Gwyn's statue behind it. The statue crumbles slightly under the weight of the Giant Knight who picks itself out of it, it's arm that was holding the shield seems slightly... Bent? After it pulls itself out it's shield drops to the floor as it's arm lifelessly droops to it's side. This is a lot better than what Reima was expecting from his blocked blow. The Knight doesn't seem deterred by it's crippling injury and slowly sweeps it's Halberd horizontally, Reima ducks while using Windfall causing it's recovery of it's weapon to be tremendously slow Reima jumps up again and gives anotehr Haki infused punch which collides to it's face... Needless to say, it dissipates into white dust after flipping a couple times and completely crushing the statue of Gwyn? No looking closer at the remains it seems to be a statue of Smough, the executioner and if his lore is correct, a cannibal.

Reima looks greedily at the two chests beside the debris and starts opening them... One contains some twinkling titanite, the other contains a-AHHHHH! The chest comes alive and starts biting into his torso with large segmented bone-like teeth, piercing his armour and inflicting horrific wounds to his torso.

Reima casts a large combustion pyromancy into it's insides which burns both of them, the mimic screeches and promptly dies from the fire while Reima is slightly burned... He managed to avoid most of his flames damage due to his Flame StonePlate ring that he'd previously equipped. He downs half of his Estus Flask to heal the still bleeding puncture wounds that that bloody mimic had created. He grumbles as the wounds slowly close, he picks up the dropped Crystal Halberd and stores it away into his Folded space, brushing himself off he leaves the room still mumbling about Mimics.

He walks to the small tower-like structure that overlooks the rest of the city and steps in the middle of it, he hears grinding as the platform he's standing on starts descending like an elevator. It stops and Reima continues down the nearby steps, he exits the building and comes face to face with a gargoyle, it looks like it's in better condition than the ones that guarded the church bell... It charges at him on all fours, it's axe-like tail swinging wildly. It jumps up intending to crush him but Reima casts a strong Aard at it which stops it short, he ducks until it's claw strike before jabbing Arcell into it's armpit, it doesn't seem to notice as it spin while using it's tail to try and chop at him. As it comes closer Reima steps into it's body so he isn't in the path of the axe head, he chops down with Arcell and successfully severs yet another tail... He stores it away into his Folded space as the Gargoyle writhes around in pain at the loss of it's tail.

Reima sees a golden opportunity and football kicks it's downed face with Armament Haki causing it's entire body to go sliding across the long walk way. The stone that comprises it's face seems to crumble and fracture as it tries to stand and look at him, an additional Fireball finishes the suffering creature off. It drops a helmet and it's halberd which both get stored in his Folded space for safe keeping.

Reima looks around and remembers that the path ahead is through the window to the palace on his left. In-front of him is the large turning walkway that's apparently raised for now. While he could just teleport up there and skip the whole roof situation Reima would rather get rid of some of the Painting Guardians first... He'd rather not get hoarded by however many are actually in there.

He drops onto the lower part of the walkway and collects the demon titanite hidden in the nearby chest, he cautiously places a foot on the thin tiled walkway? He doesn't know what this is supposed to be called but it definitely wasn't intended to be stepped on. He gets to the end and drops onto the balcony which has a shattered window that Reima quickly enters through.

He steps up and looks over the banister, the room is giant, less like a palace and more like a great hall, on one end of the room is a huge black and white painting depicting a snowy land with a long rickety bridge. He admires it for a moment but is interrupted as a figure drops from the roof while trying to stab him, his Observation Haki comes to his aid as he spins and viciously kicks the white figure out of the air and onto the floor far below.. Apparently alerting all the other Painting guardians.. Fuck!