The Tarnished dies quite a lot on the path leading into Stormveil Castle. They die quite a lot everywhere, so Melina thinks little of it until, finally, they traipse to the mouth of the tunnel, gesture rudely at someone on the bridge, turn around with the intent of returning to the grace, and topple over as a pair of golden swords thud into their back. The force sends the body sliding a few feet before it dissolves into light.
Certainly Torrent must have chosen well.
They go on to spend most of two days throwing themselves at a runebear in a cave in the Mistwood. Melina doesn't comment. She's in no great rush, and she's asking much of them.
They do get to Stormveil again. Past whatever foe vexed them on the bridge, through the portcullis and its many, many mounted crossbows, and eventually to a Great Rune. At the grace in a sunlit graveyard, Melina finds them singed and battered but alive. A woman in similar condition is leaving through the throne room across the yard.
The Tarnished speaks to a man, a castle servant who's having a gleeful time stomping on... that must be Godrick. She can't see his face, but the hair looks familiar. It's styled after Godfrey's.
When the Tarnished has moved on and Gostoc has finally left, Melina manifests, crouches by the corpse, and turns it onto its back. Godrick's features are ashen and sallow, nothing much like her father's and less like Godwyn's, but if she imagines the wrinkles less deep, the cheeks filled out...
She doesn't remember fathering a son. She doesn't remember marrying. But Limgrave sits far from the Erdtree's base. The memories might still find her.
Or they might not. It'd be no loss. Perhaps Godwyn could have felt pride for his offspring no matter what Godrick became, but Melina does not. Her grip tightens on the corpse's shoulder before she lets it go. What a waste.
Boc cries on occasion. He does it quietly into his arm, even though he thinks no one is around. She would frighten him by going to him, but there nonetheless seems something perverse about watching without acting.
So she tells the Tarnished, who listens, nods, and goes wildly out of their way to do something about it. Wildly out of their way – rather than telling Boc what he would like to hear, they hunt down in an isolated village upon Mount Gelmir a fetish housing a record of a demihuman mother saying it to her child.
Melina hasn't the words.
They've developed considerably since she and Torrent found them. They're not the sharpest blade in the armory and have a tendency to go along with whatever they've been told by people they met thirty seconds previous. (Or to not go along if the instructions involve avoiding danger.) But they appear to have acquired a goal of their own at some point, their own image of what the world should become. When they push open the gates of Leyndell, they do so with intent.
They've grown more than Melina has.
Make of thyselves that which ye desire. Be it a lord. Be it a god.
Godwyn could have become both. Godwyn... might be in the process of becoming both. Melina is so disconnected from her body that she can't tell its state, and returning to examine it accomplishes as much as judging the progression of a cancer by looking at a person from the outside.
But should ye fail to become aught at all, ye will be forsaken.
Was that what happened? Did her other self not hold enough ambition? Certainly he was content with what he possessed, but was that unjustified for the prince of a golden empire?
Is that why her mother sent her father away? To unsettle her into action?
No, Marika was not... cruel. Godwyn would have known.
He would have known, and he would have overlooked it, for his mother was the sun about which the world revolved. But Melina was born in the shadows at the foot of her own corpse. The love she holds for Marika comes secondhand.
She bids the Tarnished farewell and paves her own way into Leyndell. This near to her goal, anticipation claws at her and ushers her on. She hasn't the patience for the Tarnished's detours.
Although she does take one of her own to check the sewer passages. A path into them has survived, an air hole in the ashen grave that buries the lower portions of the capital. She verifies it can access the underground road of the shunning-grounds, then moves on. It's not important. But no one chooses to be born cursed, and nothing should die trapped alone in the dark. There should exist a way out even if it isn't meant for use.
Up Gransax's wing and the Erdtree's roots, towards her parents' – towards her mother and Radagon's bedchamber. Of course, she doesn't expect to step into the Erdtree Sanctuary and have her father appear in a shimmer of gold. She backpedals, aware of her eye widening and her breath catching – surprise isn't an emotion, only a physical reaction.
This isn't her father, but an echo. Who would dare entreat of grace to sully the memory of the first Elden Lord? She sprints out of the room, shimmies up the wall, and climbs around the building instead to reach the bridge to her mother's chamber.
An assassin sits on the steps to the Elden Throne. Melina watches from the doorway, brow furrowed, but the woman doesn't appear to be paying attention.
Revenge would be pointless. Rather, Melina would know what the Black Knife intends in this place. But since she can't simply ask, she's left without expedient options, and she does not imagine there is any reason so important that she cannot delay finding it out for a while. She loosens her grasp on her form and walks up the stairs invisible; the assassin maintains her watch undisturbed.
The courtyard now. Ghosts linger at the corner of her eye: her father on the Elden Throne, her mother praying inside of the tree. A trail of gold beckons her on. She barely notices breaking into a run.
Though she certainly notices stopping.
Half of the courtyard still remains between her and the throne, but someone has stepped out of the passage from the tree.
