'Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree': The True Horror of the Abyssal Woods

Don't look! For there is madness...

There are various places in Elden Ring, both the base game and the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion, where the game takes a diversion from fantasy and pivots into horror.

Hard.

The Abyssal Woods is a weird little place that you have to really want to find.

It’s only accessible after completing the Darklight Catacombs and beating Jori, the Elder Inquisitor.

That alone, actually, should tell you how forbidden this place is. There are multiple waves from a singular faction who do not want you finding the Woods…

But why?

The moment you walk out into the Woods, it feels creepy. You see something ambling in the distance, glowing gold. Giant gold-eyed rats scurry around you and suddenly Torrent refuses to appear.

All you get is a message: The spectral steed is frightened and cannot be summoned.

He’s never done that before…

Then you meet your first nightmare: an Aging Untouchable.

It ambles in front of you, walking with a cane and has an over-sized glowing head filled with eyes. It doesn’t seem to be much of a threat, until you accidentally knock a flower which has a head like a bell and the chime feel much louder than it should ne.

If you played Bloodborne, you might recognise this creature. It looks a lot like the Winter Lanterns from the Nightmare Frontier and near Mergo’s Loft. These creatures, which shared aspects of the Doll’s clothing, sent the hunter into a Frenzy which quickly killed them.

The Ageing Untouchable does something similar but it’s all the more horrifying. It’s sound-oriented, for starters, so if it hears you it will teleport to your location and your madness bar will rise until you die.

Oh and you can’t kill this thing, or even damage it, unless you sneak up and do a parry…

But this isn’t the only horrifying part about the Abyssal Woods.

Eventually, you come across Midra’s Manse, a rundown house right at end of the woods, Inside, the place is worn, old and delapidated. There are paintings and shelves, mysteries upon mysteries.

But it’s not empty.

Horror can be in your face and terrifying but it’s what you don’t see, what your mind’s eye imagines. Elden Ring has it’s fair share of horrific encounters where bosses, and even random roaming Sentinal Knights, one shot you. But this aren’t horrific

For that, you need the later game or its expansion.

When you wander in Balurat Gaol and realise the true nature of the Jars. When we visit the Bonny Village and then, in the back of the Shadow Keep, discover the hidden Shaman Village and realise just why it’s empty…

But the Abyssal Woods is one specific area of the game which is designed to really unsettle. It begins with obvious horror in the form of the Ageing Untouchables but it is only when we confront Midra and discover the remains of Nanaya and what the Frenzied Flame truly means, that the game graduates to true horror.

The Frenzied Flame is something we discover in the base game, if the player is willing to go down deep below Leyndell, Royal Capital, through an invisible door where the Great Caravan has been hidden away. Mounds of bodies and the unknown story of Kalé’s people, the simple merchant we met five minutes into the game at the Church of Elleh.

Down there—assuming we’ve done her quest—we meet Hyetta, the blind Fingermaiden, and pass naked, into a closed-off area where the Three Fingers await. This is how we unlock the last ending, the most Dark Souls ending, and set the world ablaze.

But Midra did this and then he was locked away in his house deep within the woods. There he waits, Nanaya dead upstairs. Her torch, found on her skeleton, says:

“In a distant land, in an age long past, was born a man who failed to become the Lord of Frenzied Flame. All that remains of him is cradled gently by Nanaya.”

Midra is close by, impaled by a mystical sword. We fight his human form first and then, he collapses, only to rise as a Lord of Frenzied Flame.

He is terrifying and will smite you too, brutally and without mercy. Midra is, after all, the bright light of chaos, the fire of destruction. But is he Melania hard? Or Radahan Pre-nerf hard? It’s hard to tell (especially as I play a mage-build from VERY far away…)

Yet, like every boss before him, Midra will eventually fall. Now his manse is emptier, never actually silent thanks to wandering mobs, but the whole area still has this taint of insanity about it.

You take that with in, I think, not just because you survived the wise Sage, Mida, but because you carry a part of him with you even now in the form of his Rememberance, which can be exchanged for either the Greatsword of Damnation (the same sword which bound Midra) or Midra's Flame of Frenzy incantation.

“Remembrance of Midra, Lord of Frenzied Flame, hewn into the Scadutree

The power of its namesake can be unlocked by the Finger Reader.
Alternatively, it can be used to gain a great bounty of runes.

As the golden barbs inflicted eternal agony upon him, Midra held fast to Nanaya's entreaty:

"Endure."

The word was a curse.”

Real horror, after all, that stays longer, sinking into your gut and holding onto your ankles, trying to get you to linger in the place of realisation when all you want to do is run.

You can, after all, still walk the same path as Midra, still burn the world down for madness. Given the chance, would you? Could you?

Because if you do, the Three Fingers are calling to you every time you use that sword or cast Midra’s incantation…

Fire never dies after all, and it only takes a few embers to be rekindled.