A/N: This should be obvious, but Spoiler Warning! If you haven't by now, go play the game!
A Song for the Tarnished and the Maiden
~XxX~
Prologue: We Burned Together
"Are you ready to commit...a cardinal sin?"
No, no he was not.
He wasn't ready to watch her burn. His teeth gnashed in his mouth and he bit his tongue to keep from shouting at his Maiden.
His head fell and his shoulders sagged, which Melina seemed to take to be his sign of acceptance.
"Very well." She said, her voice as soothing and calm as ever, even here, moments before she would give her all just to see him ascend to a broken throne. "Then let my hand rest upon you...for one last time."
He knelt to her, like so many times before, and slowly extended his hand. Why? Why was he doing this? Why did she want this? What was there to gain from this?
She took his hand into her own, and even through his thick steel gauntlets he felt her warmth seep into his body. Turning his remaining runes into strength and then adding some of her own as well, and he knew it to be her last gift to him.
Slowly she rose to her feet, standing above him, and so he raised his head to look at her for one last time.
She was beautiful. More radiant now than he'd ever seen her before. Her hair, appearing almost afire in the light of the Erdtree, framed her face perfectly, like a halo. Her face, flawless and smooth, and her one golden eye was filled with countless emotions as she peered solemnly towards him.
Why must he allow this?
His Maiden turned away to look down into the giant kiln, into the Giant's Forge, and as soon as she did, the Forge roared to life.
Melina held out her hands to the flames roaring below, and they heeded her call. Ascending from down below to softly caress her scarred hands, and she didn't burn, not yet. Her skin did not blister, did not cook, no, instead it seemed that the giants flame embraced her like a long lost lover. Sweetly surrounding her skin and resting within the palms of her hands as if the fire was her mere pet.
She brought her hands to her chest and the flame went with them.
"O Erdtree, you shall burn." The spread out her arms as fire enveloped her form. He was mesmerized and horrified all at once as he beheld her burning form. Even as fire appeared along the distant branches of the Golden Tree that dwarfed all in the distance. "Burn for the sake of our new Lord."
He felt moisture gather along his eyes. Was he crying? Was that what it felt like to cry? How long had it been since he last felt such a thing? How long had it been since he last felt such sadness beneath the ever present nihilism that was his very being made manifest.
And he realized it then, as he beheld her burn for him, why Vyke gave himself to the Three Fingers. Why Bernahl gave himself to the Recustants.
And he knew that he could so easily follow their paths.
Melina turned away from the Erdtree aflame to look down at him, and by Queen Marika, she was beautiful in that moment. Shrouded by flame and golden light, she appeared to be ethereal, divine, it broke what little there was left of his heart beating within his chest.
All he wanted was a challenge. All he sought when he followed the call of grace was to follow in the footsteps of Godfrey First Elden Lord, and lay low the Demigods to prove himself. All that he wanted was to fight...not this.
Not this madness.
He should have listened to Shabriri. Why had he not listened? Why had he allowed Melina to convince him otherwise? He was never the kind to let others decide and choose the course of his life, so why had he allowed her do just that?
No, he knew why.
"Thank you." He heard her say in that soft voice of hers. "For guiding me here."
Teeth gnashing within his mouth and hands balling tight enough to warp and bend the metal of his gauntlets, the Tarnished could do naught but watch as his one true companion, his one true friend, burned before his very eyes, and all hope and joy he still had left within burned with her.
The Lands Between were ruined. Mired in torment and despair. Was there really anything left that was worth fighting for? Was there anything left worth preserving? Was there anyone worth saving? Was there anything left sane?
No, there were only oceans of anger, and hatred, and despair. And he wanted to have no more part in any of that. Not truly, not anymore, not after failing to set things right for so many times.
"The one who walks alongside flame…" A pillar of fire rose to surround his Maidens form in all. "Shall one day meet the road of Destined Death."
"So be it…" He rose from his knees after those whispered words left his lips and then he stepped towards his kindling maiden. "Then let this Destined Death come, for you and me, both."
He embraced the fiery form of the girl standing before him, and unlike her, his flesh was not spared the searing heat of the flames. But he didn't relent and he didn't let go; he only pulled her in tighter.
She did not fight him…
"Would you truly see my sacrifice be meaningless?" The girl shrouded in flames asked and yet she did not push him away or attempt to escape from his arms. "Would you deny me my purpose?"
"I would." He said and then pulled her tighter still, ignoring the sizzling of his flesh and the searing pain as he burned and cooked alive. "I was a fool indeed to allow you to convince me that this madness was a necessity in the first place."
"'Twas a choice that I made for myself." Melina whispered, "one that I was proud to make, to see you ascend to the throne of Elden Lord, one that I will not allow even you to speak ill off."
"Then let this be a choice that I made for myself." He gritted his teeth and ignored the pains of his body burning. "Even if I shall return again after the burning…I just wished that I had taken the Frenzied Flame unto myself. I'd rather you hate me and live than burn and leave me with a broken throne."
It was then as he found himself shedding his heart to her that he felt her burning arms encircle his frame.
"Do not fret over me." She said. "However ruined this world has become, however mired in torment and despair...Life endures. Births continue. There is beauty in that, is there not? If my sacrifice is needed to pave way for a future better, brighter than the now, I'll gladly make that choice."
"Just promise me one thing, brave Tarnished." She continued and he felt her grip him tighter. "Let not my sacrifice be in vain. Let not your sorrow still your blade. Ascend the throne, become the Elden Lord. Promise me this."
"I…" He attempted to say something, but in truth he didn't want too. He didn't want to promise anything, and unlike the girl within his arms, he cared rather little for the fate of the lands between, for Queen Marika, or for the Elden Ring.
"I would have it said, my Tarnished." She urged him, "before it is too late."
He sighed. There was not much time left, not for him, not for her, and the least he could do was to send her off with a smile on her lips.
"I promise."
"Good." And smile she did, he actually had to take a step back to behold her and commit her face to memory. It was the truest expression of joy that he had ever gotten from her. "Then let us burn. Together."
And so they burned. Embracing one another as a pillar of flames reached into the havens above, burning the Erdtree and announcing the beginning of the Age of Mending…
Only neither the Maiden nor her Tarnished would ever witness the miracle unfold. The kindling maiden and her champion had paved the way, and now it was left to another Tarnished of no renown to finish what they had started.
~XxX~
When next she woke, Melina found herself confounded. She...did not expect to wake again, burned and body-less as she was. And yet she did. She felt light of head and bleary of mind, and Goddess Eternal, she felt pain.
How long had it been, she wondered absentmindedly, since last she felt as such? Centuries? Or Millennia? It must have been before she became the Kindling Maiden, when her flesh had burned and she became body-less.
How quaint it was, to be able to feel again.
Whatever it was she rested on top off, was hard, unyielding and cold. All things she did not appreciate given the soreness of her form, as such the made to sit up yet failed to do as such. Something held her down with a tight grip around her waist.
She opened her one unsealed eye to look at whatever it was that was holding her form in place, and when she did, once her eye had adjusted to the light gleaming off the silver visor, she saw that it was her Tarnished.
Still holding her, cradling her protectively within his arms. Her Foolish Tarnished. He hadn't let go of her, regardless of the excruciating pain he must have felt as she had burned him alive.
And no sooner than she realized where she was, and whom was the cause of her minor discomforts, she no longer wished to rise, even if his gleaming armor was cold and hard against her tender flesh.
Flesh…
She lifted one of her arms and brought her finger up to her face, allowed the tips to ghost along her cheek. She felt it, warm and soft against the tip of her fingers. She could feel her skin, her flesh. With a growing sense of joy building in her chest, she ghosted her fingers down her cheeks, along her jaw and then here throat, where she pressed two digits deeper into her skin.
Ba-Dum
Ba-Dum
Ba-Dum
She felt it, heard it even pounding in her ears, a heartbeat. Her heartbeat. This form of hers possessed a heartbeat.
Melina did not know what to think. She had opted to be the kindling her Tarnished needed to reach the throne, she had done so knowing full well that it would be the end of her tale, that she would be hardly more than a footnote in the story of her chosen Lord.
And yet here she lived. Was this a reward, she pondered, for fulfilling her purpose. Or might this be a curse, a punishment for spitting in the face of the Golden Order?
The Maiden sighed and shook her head. It mattered little, did it not? She remained alive, as did her brave Tarnished warrior. She'd do well to use this opportunity, unforeseen though it may be, and perhaps her Tarnished would allow her to travel with him still.
And perhaps she would get to witness the new age arrive once her brave warrior took his rightful throne.
Yet for now she allowed her head to drop back down and let her cheek rest on the cool and hard breastplate of her Tarnished's armor, luxuriating in the feeling of possessing a body of flesh and blood once more.
She did not know how this could be, how any of this was possible, but she could not find it within her to care at this moment.
She fulfilled the purpose given to her by her mother so long ago, and she yet lived to continue to give her Tarnished aid.
If nothing else, she was pleased with this.
Just as she had closed her eyes to enjoy the feeling of weightlessness that came with being free of her duty, her given purpose, she felt her brave Tarnished stir beneath. She rose her head to look at the helmet her Tarnished always wore and imagined the handsome face beneath. She heard him groan and felt him wiggle about beneath, and she imagined that his eyes fluttered as he slowly came to wake from his slumber.
She felt his hands around her waist tighten and there was a bit of pain as the metal clad fingers dug into her tender flesh, yet she did not mind the feeling.
Again she heard him groan out his discomfort, which made a small smile bloom on her lips. The elation she felt from being unbound from duty made her more expressive it seemed. She watched him shake his head back and forth, and then the grim face of the silver helmet stopped when it faced her.
It was quite unnerving all things told, to be stared at by this silver face crying tears of blood, the ancestral helmet of House Hoslow that her Tarnished had taken for himself after laying low Lord Juno, the Knight of Blood.
She would need to convince her Tarnished to stop wearing that grim helmet in her presence at the very least.
"Melina?" She heard him mutter under his breath. "You are...alive?"
Her smile became just a tad brighter still upon hearing the baffled voice of her brave strong warrior, who had carried her upon his back ever since their accord had been struck back then at the Gatefront ruins.
"I am." She said, "I do not know why, or how, but I am alive, and no longer body-less."
Silence was left in the wake of her words, and the silver mask she slowly came to loathe did not err from staring at her, black bloody pits meeting her sole golden orb. Then the head of her Tarnished fell and hit the ground beneath with a soft yet audible exhale of his breath.
"I'm glad." His hands on her waist gripped her tighter still, then she heard him laugh softly to himself.
And Melina was glad as well. Dare she say happy, even. She had enjoyed traveling with him, with her Tarnished, her chosen champion, the one she had deemed to pin all of her hopes upon. And he had proven to her, time and again, that she was right to place her faith in him.
All that time ago, when she first beheld him leave the Chapel of Anticipation, clad in nothing but the robes of a prophet, spear in hand and a rickety old shield in the other. And despite the way he may have started his journey, Melina found her Tarnished to be a man possessed by ambition.
She knew well that he was not after the Throne of Elden Lord, he never had been, but that was alright. She supposed that her Tarnished was akin to Lord Godfrey, a warrior first and foremost, and a monarch after.
He was a strange one as well. Countless times had she watched him go into battle, against all manner of foes, and countless times had she watched him fall. Yet he was never deterred, and never accepted aid in any battle.
Not once had she seen him call upon the many spirits she knew to be at his disposal, not once had she heard him call for the aid of those she knew would grant it.
She had observed plenty of Tarnished, touched their strength and skills and traced the paths of their principals and ambitions. She had beheld specialized fighters who all were powerful in their own ways, be it with sword, sorcery, or even incantations, yet they had all failed, they had all fallen, and they all lost their ambitions in the face of Margits opposition.
But not her Tarnished.
Her Tarnished was stubborn to the last, unyielding, unrelenting and stuck in his ways, self-destructive though they may be.
She had witnessed him fail again and again, she had watched him die over and over, and then she had the pleasure to watch him grow by turning his runes into strength, and she felt truly proud when her brave champion had felled the Shardbearers one after the other.
Margit the Fell Omen. Godrick the Grafted. Renalla of the Full Moon. Starscourge Radahn. Praetor Rykard. Morgott the Omen King. Malenia Blade of Miquella. And the Great Fire Giant.
All of them had fallen at the hands of the Tarnished that SHE had chosen, that SHE had sent on his way, and whose runes SHE had turned into strength.
Perhaps she shouldn't take her own pride and pleasure from her Tarnished's many accomplishments but she did. Because Melina knew that she had been the one and only person that her Tarnished had relied on. She was the only one allowed to aid him.
Melina knew that she was not his Maiden, and yet he had accepted her as such, despite her many warnings to not do that.
And inadvertently that very acceptance has made her care for her Tarnished as well, even though she had told herself many a time that she was a fool for allowing herself that one leisure.
Yet it mattered little now, didn't it? She had fulfilled her purpose and was allowed to continue her existence, fleeting as it was.
Now, perhaps she would be allowed to see the fruits of her labor. Perhaps she would be allowed to see her Tarnished ascend the throne. And perhaps she would be able to see her mother once more…
~XxX~
A/N: Hello and welcome to another story of yours truly.
This story idea was really just born from my last play-through of Elden Ring and watching one of, if not the most heartbreaking scenes in the game.
Might be a one-shot, we'll see.