One afternoon, near the farms on the outskirts of the town of Raven's Nest, a bunch of farmers with little to do but wait for the crops to grow and make sure the piglets don't go bad and start killing people watch as a house came down the road, standing on top of a heap of dirt that seemed to glide on roadway and leave it more even and hardpacked. Atop the earth with the house was a carriage and two horses. Their lady, standing next to the carriage, nodded genially at them, and they awkwardly bowed back. The man sitting at the house's stone stoop waved awkwardly, looking constipated.
They watched until the house was out of sight.
"Well there's something you don't see every day," one of the farmers said. "While sober, anyway."
The others nodded. The new lady was much nicer than the old one. More interesting too. And she didn't kidnap people in the dead of night to do who knew what to them, which was nice.
With a final shudder, the house was finally settled in place. Maria checked the level she had fashioned, then turned it ninety degrees to check that particular axis and pronounced herself satisfied.
"It's level," she pronounced, and Keith sighed in relief.
"Well… that was an experience," Keith said, wiping his brow, then frowning at the lack of sweat. He seemed to feel there should be sweat after all his effort.
"And no loss of control whatsoever," Maria said.
"Yeah, rub it in," Keith said, but he smiled weakly as he said it. "Anything else you need done while I'm here? New dorms, maybe?"
"Ah, Sophia told me you did those," Maria said. "As it happens, I realized the dormitories need showers. And my steward says we need a new well."
Keith gave a sigh that was a bit too loud to be anything but for dramatic effect. "I was being sarcastic, but fine," he said.
"I'll make you a cake to take home," Maria said. "You and your father can share it." Instead of some poor maid.
"Hmm… well, he hasn't had one of your cakes yet…" Keith mused. "Fine, a well and walls for a bath for a cake. You have a deal. Where do you want them?"
"Ghirardeli," she called, and her steward stepped forward from the crowd of servants, children and wards who'd come out to see the house being settled in at the far end of the former courtyard garden. Maria ahd done her best to orient it in the same direction it had previously been so the sun would shin through the windows in the same way. "Could you please show Lord Keith to where the new well could best be situated while I sketch out where the secondary bath should go?"
In the end, the walls and stone foundation– with holes for drainage– was put near the dormitories for the smiths and the knights who would be protecting the manufactory. They'd put in the roof and water fittings later. The smiths might even be able to put it in themselves.
So Maria went down to her manor's kitchen for the first time and baked a cake.
The cook and kitchen maids looked scandalized at having their lady working there, but Maria was used to stares. In addition to the cake, she also made several cookies, which she eventually put a kitchen maid in charge of forming the batter into cookies and taking them in and out of the oven. This maid got an extra-large cookie as recompense for being asked to perform outside her assigned duties.
Keith accepted the cake and cookies gladly. Just because most of Maria's baking went to feed Katarina didn't mean all of it did. Maria watched with the satisfaction of an artisan seeing their work enjoyed as Keith bit into a cookie with obvious pleasure.
"Oh, that's so good," he sighed. "I don't miss much from being in the student council, but these I missed."
"Perhaps you should visit more often, then," Maria said.
"Are you obliquely comparing asking to use my magic with cookies?" Keith said.
"Depends. How much do you like the cookies?"
"Hmm… all right, you have a point," he said. "Though…"
"Yes?" Maria said.
"Shouldn't I get three cakes?"
Maria chuckled. "Finish that one and you can come back for the rest."
"A pleasure doing business with you, Lady Campbell," Keith said cheerfully.
Maria gave him a ride back to the Claes Manor in her carriage.
As the children, servants, armsmen, wards and workshop workers enjoyed the cookies, Maria and Miss Shelley took Maria's sleeping mother down to the house, to her old room, and put her in her familiar bed. As she slept, they cleaned what things had been shaken in the move, and raised the furniture that that ben laid out on the floor. The new glass that had been put in to replace the damaged panes seemed too bright and clear to Maria's eyes, but there was no helping that.
Then then the two of them sat by her mother's side and waited.
Finally, she woke up. She blinked and looked around the room in a daze.
"Welcome home mother," Maria said gently.
For a moment, a spark of life seemed to glimmer in her mother's eyes. And then she looked out the window and saw not familiar fields but the gardens and lands and woods of Maria's estate. The glimmer started to fade.
Maria bowed her head in failure Miss Shelley began coaxing her mother to eat.
That afternoon, Maria returned to the town she'd been raised.
Eventually, she'd have to meet with either the town's lord– who was actually a decent sort from what Maria remembered, and who always stayed out of the gossip about her family– and make arrangements for the land her mother still owned.
For now, however, she had a duty.
She found herself standing before a house near the town's limits, an area her mother had told her to avoid. The door opened and a young woman around her age she recognized from her last visit here stared at her.
"Nyneve Almera," Maria said solemnly, "I need to speak to the head of the household. May I come in?"
"Y-you!" the young woman sputtered.
"Who is it, Ninny?" someone asked from inside.
Ah, Maria remembered this girl now. The one with the unfortunate nickname, who always brought up Maria's bastardry to distract from it. Why tease the ninny when you could sneer at the bastard?
"It's no one, father!" the girl said, trying to close the door in Maria's face.
Maria's hand met the closing door and shoved.
The girl stumbled back, her meager strength overpowered by Maria's as she stepped inside to find the aforementioned father. "Are you the head of the household?" she asked.
"What's it to you?" he asked, glaring at her as he reached over to help his daughter up. Then he seemed to realize how finely she was dressed, and amended his tone. "Er, my lady?"
The aforementioned Ninny blinked, stared at Maria, then looked utterly mortified.
"I come bearing news about Estella Almera, who disappeared some weeks ago," Maria said.
The man's gaze snapped up, staring at Maria in the face. "Stella? There's been news of her?"
Maria nodded. "I shall be brief. Estella Almera was found dead some days ago, her head severed from her body. Witnesses were able to positively identify her despite this. You have our condolences for your loss."
It was an empty, meaningless phrase that tasted of swamp on her lips, but these people did not deserve her anger at that woman directed at them.
She watched as the man, possibly a brother or some other relation, suddenly seem to lose the light in his eyes at her words, stumbling back to lean on the wall. "W-what?"
"Fortunately, we were able to rescue the woman she kidnapped and tortured," Maria said. The man paled. "I'm sorry, but due to the condition of her body, it will not be possible to return it to you intact. However, the ashes of whatever parts could be recovered will be forwarded to you… eventually. Again, I am sorry for your loss."
The man started making distressed sounds.
Maria turned to leave.
"W-wait!" the young woman with the unfortunate name said. "Y-you can't just leave it at that! what happened to her? For that matter, who are you? Are you even really a lady?"
Maria stopped and turned. Then she took off her hat and untied her hair, looking the young woman straight in the eyes the whole time.
It was her turn to pale in realization.
"I am Lady Maria Campbell," Maria said. "A noble of Sorcier. Surely you already knew that? You brought it up enough times at school."
Then she turned away and left behind everything.
By the light of the stars and Gwyndolin's celestial corpse in the sky, Maria regarded the tree in front of her. It was older, taller and gnarled, but it was recognizably the same one.
Hefting the shovel over her shoulder, she rounded it and began to dig.
She hadn't dug very deeply before silver light began to rise up under her feet, and she darted back, shovel held in both hands. Before her eyes, a figure was rising from the earth from the center of a silver burning circle. It rose as if from a crouch, back rising into the air as they lifted their head.
Clad in a silver glow, Maria stared into the face of her father.
The shovel from suddenly nerveless hands as she stared at the man who had tucked her into bed, who had lifted her up to the kitchen counter so she could cut cookie shapes, who had held her in her lap a she'd eaten the cookies she and her mother had baked and proclaimed her the greatest assistant baker in all Sorcier…
"Daddy…?" she managed to choke out.
With a smile, the silver phantom raised a hand and waved at her. Then her spread out his arms wide in welcome.
He was cold and warm and so, so bright, but Maria didn't care as she held her father for the first time in a long, long time. She could feel the tears streaming from her eyes, but they didn't matter, none of it mattered, her father was here.
Through her tears, she could see her father's mouth moving, but no sound emerged. Still, she could almost read his lips… You're so big…
"She's dead…" Maria said, hoping he could hear her, hoping he'd understand. "She hurt mother, but I made her pay. The woman who did this, I made her pay."
Her father closed his eyes and seemed to sigh. Then he raised his both fists decisively over his head, and gave Maria a grateful nod.
"I miss you, father," Maria said. "We both do. Her soul's been hurt, but if she sees you… Will you come with me to see mother? Will you… last?"
Her father shook her head. He pointed at the shovel, then pointed down, where he had been buried.
"I understand, father," she said. "I'll bring you home."
He shook his head, but fondly, the way he had when she'd misunderstood something.
And then Maria was alone, lit only by the stars and the celestial corpse of the dead god Gwyndolin, alone but for a shovel.
She fell to her knees and cried. She cried the tears she had never been able to cry when she was young, for she had been tormented by a month of nightmarish memories. She cried for her father, the only father she had ever known, the only one who mattered, regardless of her blood. And she cried for the joy and sadness of being able to see him one last time.
Finally, she began to dig.
It was early morning when Maria's carriage returned to her estate, her father's remains laid reverently on a cloth on the bench opposite her's. Solemnly, making sure each bone was still there and complete, she walked around her manor, towards the back, were her mother's house faced. She opened the familiar door with her old, worn key and carefully locked it behind her. She climbed the old, familairs stairs, knowing their every creak as she turned and entered her old room, and lay her father's remains on her bed.
Then she headed for her mother's room.
Miss Shelley lay asleep, fully clothed, on the bed next to her mother. At first she thought her mother was asleep as well, but as she got closer, she saw her mother's eyes were open and tracking her. There was an unearthly, disturbing hunger in her eyes, and for a moment, Maria was vividly reminded of a beast. Such was the mindless desire in her eyes.
Yet at the same time, her eyes were dull and listless. It was a hunger that couldn't be sated.
"Mother," Maria said, sitting on the bed at her mother's side. Gently, she took her mother's hand. "I have something for you," she said as she reached into the pocket of her coat and placed the one bit of her father's remains she had separated into her mother's hand.
Writhing like a flame of black, with a shining white corona to its edges, it seemed to burn just above her mother's hand.
Almost by instinct, the hand closed upon it as if crushing it in its grip.
Her mother drew a rattling breath, as if she hadn't breathed in a long time.
Maria stared into her eyes, hoping, praying to any who could hear. The old gods of Anor Londo, the Chosen Lord, the Great Ones…
Finally, her mother blinked, and looked around as if seeing the room she was in for the first time. "M-maria…?"
"I'm here, mother," Maria said, feeling tears in her eyes once more. "I'm here."
"I thought… I must have been dreaming. I thought I felt your father near…" her mother said quietly.
"He was," Maria said. "Mother, do you feel… well? Do you remember the past few days?"
Her mother frowned, then blinked as she seemed to see Miss Shelley lying next to her for the first time. "Oh, Chosen Lord… Maria, did I get drunk? I that why everything is so hazy?"
Maria managed a chuckle. "No, you didn't get drunk mother… It's… it's a long story…"
Dark Soul of a Loving Husband and Father
Soul of a loving husband and father who never doubted and never lost heart.
Use to acquire a large amount of souls.
The soul is the source of all life, and even in undeath, or hollowing, the mind seeks souls.