I originally intended for this just to be a one-shot, but I loved making it so much that I decided to continue it. Hope I can take it in a direction you all will enjoy!
The sound of footsteps on wet soil pricked Malenia's ears. The heavy yet sure-footed cadence was all too familiar to her at this point. Tilting her head to the right, she straightened her back.
"You return," she observed. She knew he would. It was abundantly clear from their… last interaction that her and the Tarnished's time together was far from finished. Even so, she could not keep the disbelief out of her voice.
The footsteps stopped, still a fair distance away. Another sound fell upon the empty chamber, another one Malenia had come to know all too well: The shuffling of armor, followed by the mechanical click of the Tarnished unsheathing his sword.
"I return," he echoed back to her.
The swordswoman stood up. It was then that she realized her prosthesis lay limply on the floor beneath her; she quickly moved to pick it up, but found herself hesitating before her fingers could graze the golden limb. After only half a moment, however, she grasped the cold metal in her remaining flesh-and-blood hand and brought the lining of the socket to her shoulder. It shifted into place with a smooth, practiced click.
"You seek another rematch?" Malenia reached. She had no doubt in her mind that such was absolutely not the case, given how their last bout had gone. Even so, the confused demigoddess could not possibly comprehend why else the Tarnished would return to her place of rest. What business could this one unassuming warrior have with the Blade of Miquella?
The Tarnished did not reply for a long, long moment. Malenia wrapped her prosthetic fingers around the long, slender blade affixed to the limb; her grip felt less sure than it ever had before. Though the golden arm was inorganic and nerveless, she swore she could feel the blade digging into her fingers as she squeezed it.
A heavy thud sounded from the Tarnished's direction as he let his hulking blade fall to the earth.
"No," he answered. "It is not a rematch with you I seek. Merely an audience."
Malenia stopped at that. Her eyes squinted from behind the scabbing that hid them from the world. Confusion bubbled up in her chest. Almost absentmindedly, she reached for the needle buried beneath her breast and ran her fingers over it, fidgeting uncomfortably with the small device.
"An audience?" she repeated. "That has been your end goal this whole time?"
"Not this whole time," the Tarnished denied. "For the first… several dozen or so of our duels, I was simply another hotheaded warrior galavanting about in the search of thrill. But as the days stretched… I learned things. About you. About this so-called Haligtree."
He paused. "About Miquella."
Malenia bristled at the ominous tone in his voice as her brother's name left his lips. "What do you want with him?" she challenged.
She heard the Tarnished step back. "Nothing!" he assured, hastily. "If I had come for your brother, I would not have spared his Blade."
Malenia allowed herself to relax some. He had a point. He had every opportunity some days ago to get her out of the picture and—
No. She wouldn't allow herself to think about that. Malenia's jaw briefly clenched before relenting her grasp on her sword. There was a sound of steel sliding on steel as she retracted the blade partially into her prosthesis, still keeping a small shortsword portion at the ready.
"You fought me uncountably many times," Malenia stated. "Over, and over, and over. And you said not a word. Did not stay your blade for a second. And you mean to tell me you seek parlay?"
"If I couldn't command your respect, I'd have naught of your attention," the Tarnished replied, matter-of-factly. "To whom would Malenia the Severed be more keen to bend her ear: A knight capable of besting her, or a madman who wormed his way down to the roots of the Haligtree only to request her counsel?"
… Against that, Malenia could not argue. For a simple Tarnished she had never met, he was almost unnervingly astute.
"Very well," she conceded after a thick silence. "If it is an audience with me you seek, then an audience you shall have."
She unbuckled her prosthesis, this time catching it before it could fall to the floor.
"Leave your weapon where it lay," she commanded, then adding in a dark tone. "And try nothing."
"Of course, Empyrean," the Tarnished replied with earnest. Slowly, he stepped towards her, three paces closer, and stopped, still several meters in front of her. The sound of him taking a knee made her tilt her head.
"Why do you keep your distance?" she inquired, not really knowing why such a question needed to be asked.
"I would not encroach on the Blade of Miquella's rest," replied the Tarnished.
Malenia stood up from her old, dry throne, leaving her prosthesis laying on the armrest. In two strides, she was standing a few feet away from her former adversary. Quietly, she sat down, planting herself in the cold, wet flowerbed beneath her. Her legs crossed as she reached for the helm that still covered her face with her one remaining hand.
"You have my respect," Malenia declared. "You have my attention. And, for the time being, you have my trust. Sit, fair Tarnished."
Wordlessly, he did as he was told. Malenia set her helm down in her lap; he removed his and did the same. From the series of soft impacts against his armor as his head emerged free, Malenia took his hair to be long, and oily.
"The scarring," the Tarnished remarked. "Can you see despite it?"
"I cannot."
"You fight as if you have eyes in the back of your head."
"I learned from the best."
"The Blue Dancer?"
"You know of him?"
"Only legends."
"It was he who taught me to fight," Malenia affirmed. "He was blind, himself."
"So I've heard. They say he fought like—well, like a dancer."
"It's true. When first we met, my eyes could see past this calcified mask. I saw the way he flowed like water in battle. It was… magnificent."
"He taught you well."
"That he did."
Malenia shifted in her flowery seat. Her fingers rapped against the top of her helm.
"What is it you seek, fair Tarnished?" she asked. "For what purpose could you want an audience with me?"
The Tarnished fidgeted where he sat.
"Goddess Malenia, there is no palatable way to put this," he began. He inhaled long and slow, letting it out as a tense huff. "I need your help. I need you to… leave your post."
The valkyrie stiffened. Quickly, she shook her head.
"I cannot," she declared hastily. "If I leave here—if I abandon my brother, I-"
"Your brother is not here, Malenia," the Tarnished cut her off with a tense tone. "He is gone."
Her voice stopped in her throat. Her stomach dropped to the depths of Nokron.
"What?" she asked.
"Miquella: he is gone. He was stolen from you. From this very Haligtree."
Malenia had spent centuries feeling as if her flesh was on fire from the rot that festered within. But with this golden needle buried inside of her, it was not the rot that had her throat feeling as dry as a desert.
"N-No," Malenia protested. "That can't be. I-I've kept my vigil ceaselessly! For centuries!"
"You have kept vigil over empty bedchambers, Malenia," the Tarnished said. "Miquella is—"
"No!" Malenia repeated again. She was shouting this time. Dropping her helm, she ascended to her feet, glaring down at the Tarnished.
"You lie!" she declared. The anger and vindication in her voice had the Tarnished scrambling to his feet as well. "What would you know of my brother's slumber? I have watched over him scores longer than you have been on this earth! I have not let him out of my watch for a moment in centuries—"
"You must have!" the Tarnished insisted. "What of your battle against Radahn? Where were you then, if not at war?"
He took a step towards her. "Miquella is gone, Malenia," he repeated, emphatically. "Your brother is not here. The Haligtree is—"
"ENOUGH!" Malenia roared. "I will not bear this insolence from a lowly Tarnished any longer!"
With righteous fury, her hand moved to the golden needle below her breast.
"Stop!" A heavy weight crashed headlong into Malenia's stomach. The breath was knocked from her lungs, and she was sent sprawling onto her back. The Tarnished fell with her, greaved arms wrapped firmly around her torso all the way to the earth. When she landed with a grunt, her assailant was quick to bring a knee into her stomach, squeezing any last breath she had left out of her chest. The Tarnished's hands released their hold on her, only for one to reach for her arm while the other pressed the cold steel of its armored forearm down on her neck, pinning her head in place. Malenia kicked and thrashed, bringing her hardened unalloyed knee up into the small of the Tarnished's back, but though he cried out in pain, he did not budge as he slammed her writhing, empty hand into the mud.
"Don't do this, Malenia!" the Tarnished implored. His voice wobbled as she bucked and thrashed underneath his armor, but he held firm. "Listen to me! You think I jest? Have you stepped one foot outside of this chamber in the past hundred years? Have you seen the sorry state your brother's Haligtree is in? The tree is rotted to the roots! Its citizens have been reduced to half-dead walking corpses bursting with disease! Elphael's waterways flow with scarlet sludge! The whole tree is in ruins, down to the very brace!"
"Get off of me," Malenia growled through gritted teeth.
"Miquella needs you! The Haligtree needs you!"
"Get. Off of me."
The Tarnished squeezed her captive wrist with his hand. "Give me a reason to."
Malenia stiffened. Her one remaining hand clenched into a fist. Her nails dug into the palm of her hand. Her jaw worked to form words that would not come, and her heart pounded in her chest.
Who did this fool Tarnished think he was? Intruding on her vigil, forcing her to bloom, fighting her over and over and OVER again, only to toy with her? Tell her that the one thing she had left was gone? That she had failed her one and only mission? No. It was impossible, and this bastard Tarnished would—
"Even if you rise up and rend me once more," the knight suddenly said, "I will come back. I will fight and fight and fight, until you submit. Until you deign to hear my words still. I will NOT relent. I will make your blind eyes see. I will make your deaf ears listen. The Haligtree is not well, Malenia, and it needs your help."
The Tarnished leaned forwards, making Malenia grunt as his knee dug into her gut.
"Will you listen now?" he asked. "Or will you listen when I have struck you down a second time?"
"... Fine," Malenia spat. Her hand relaxed in the Tarnished's grasp. She went limp underneath his form. "I will listen."
"Good." In one fell motion, the Tarnished released her, allowing her to breathe and move again as he stood back up. Shoving her hand into the earth, Malenia quickly found her feet and rose to meet him. Backpedaling, Malenia reached out for her prosthesis and moved to set it back in place. The Tarnished did not move to brandish his weapon in kind.
"So, tell me, Tarnished," Malenia sneered contemptuously. "How would you know that my brother lies absent from the Haligtree?"
There was a long silence. As the Tarnished remained quiet, Malenia almost felt an urge to laugh. She knew it. He was bluffing. The fool knight didn't know a damn thing about—
"Perhaps it would be best that I show you, rather than tell you," the Tarnished said. "Would you care to follow me?"
"... Fine," she bit. "So be it. Show me what catastrophe has you mithering so."
She followed the Tarnished out beyond the chamber of roots, to the cold, quiet foyer beyond. Even despite her righteous indignation, Malenia gave a start at the feeling of her feet walking upon cold, carved stone. For as much a bluffing trickster as this Tarnished was, he was right about one thing: When was the last time since she'd stepped foot past her resting place? Since the fight with the Starscourge General? Gods above, that was centuries ago… centuries since she'd felt anything other than mud and water and petals beneath her prosthetic feet. Of course, she didn't feel it, per se, but her body felt it when she didn't sink into damp peat, but rather the solid, smooth ground held her weight surely. It was unnerving for such a thing to be foreign to her.
They stepped into the elevator, and at once, Malenia knew something was wrong. From the floor far above, a creaking, clicking sound barely met her ears. Her hackles raised, and as the elevator began its climb upwards, her stomach did not follow her descent, instead dropping down into her golden feet.
That sound… no. It couldn't be. It… It couldn't.
As the elevator neared its destination, the sounds grew louder. More frequent. Clearer. And each time that eerie croaking sounded in her ears, Malenia's heart thudded in her chest. It grew louder still. It sounded like there were dozens of them, lurking in wait beyond the elevator shaft, guarding something.
Guarding… guarding her.
The platform slowed to a halt. The Tarnished, silent and stony, stepped off. Malenia followed with steps that shook. At once, she felt sick.
She could feel their presence. Whole droves of them, in this room, around this mausoleum, in the graveyards of her dear soldiers, at the water's edge… everywhere. Their presence hung heavy in the air. Even blind, she could see them in her mind's eye: Gripping their decayed glaives, grabbing at their victims with hundreds of malformed hands, clicking in their infernal tongue at each other.
It was them. Her followers. Her so-called children. The Kindred of Rot.
Their chattering was all around her now. Their backs were turned to her, but as the elevator arrived behind them, they fell silent… and turned around. And then, a unified cry of voices assaulted Malenia's ears.
"Mother!"
The Kindred did not speak—not with normal human voices. No, Malenia could hear them, feel them, inside her head. The needle in her flesh trembled with the force of dozens, hundreds of hissing voices of elation all sounding off simultaneously.
"Mother has returned to us! To her unwanted children! O, scarlet goddess, has the time come to bloom?"
Malenia's head throbbed with the sound of the voices. Even as a living vessel of the Scarlet Rot, even as a living embodiment of disease and decay… she had never felt this ill in her life. Her head spun and pounded. She wanted to vomit, to drop to her knees and rid her body of a meal she'd never eaten. It was… repulsive.
Her blade unsheathed.
"Get out!" Malenia screeched. "Leave! You are not welcome here!"
She surged forwards.
"You are wretched! Vermin! Demons!" she cried. In seconds, the Kindred that populated the room were dead. But the voices did not stop.
"O mother, why do you reject us so?" they lamented, like sad children. "O scarlet mother, would you bloom for your children?"
Outside. They were outside. In the graveyard. Defiling her men's corpses.
"I am not your mother!" she screamed. She sprinted outside and down the way. She felt them before she heard them. In the blink of an eye, a whirlwind of death filled the graveyard, sending leaves and petals and limbs alike flying dozens of feet into the air.
"Die!" Malenia roared. "Die! Die! Die!"
She didn't know how many she cut down. All she knew was that it wasn't enough. She could still hear them, skittering about inside of her, filling her mind with their greedy wails.
"Bloom for us, o scarlet mother! Lay your roots of rot into the earth!"
"No!" Malenia whooped. "Get away! Get OUT! LEAVE MY HALIGTREE!"
She slashed and slashed and slashed. Her senses seemed to blur as she carved her swathe, only able to feel the keening of the children, seemingly oblivious to her blade slicing through their brethren. They chanted and cheered her arrival, louder than even the blood roaring in her ears, rattling her skull like an earthquake…
… Until, suddenly, it stopped.
They were all dead. Every last wretched Kindred that infested these grounds were fallen, cut in twain by Malenia's katana. But she could still hear them, distant whispers lurking somewhere above the roots of the Haligtree. They were all around her, crawling through the streets of Elphael. They were everywhere.
But at least, for the time being, they weren't right here.
Malenia's breath came in ragged, panted heaves. Her whole body was trembling. Her heart felt as if it were in her throat. She felt sick, sick to her stomach.
They… they were here. The children of the rot. They were…
The unmistakable sound of the Tarnished's footsteps came running up to her. At once, she spun around.
"Why are they here?" she demanded. "Why—"
Her voice hitched in her throat. She stopped, swallowing her heart back down into her chest.
"Wh-Why are they here?" she asked again.
"They will be back," was all he said, before gagging. "Gods, that smell…"
Wait. What smell? Malenia dared to open her nostrils… and the noisome odor that assailed her made her heart sink.
The smell of rot. The putrid stench of decay. It was all around her, more plentiful than even the Kindred. It dampened the air, weighed it down, pressing it thickly into the red locks of her hair, clogging the seams of her armor, assaulting her senses. For a second, her mind flew back to those first few hours after her victory against Radahn. At the stench of rot and sound of death that lay over all of Caelid. Feeling the grass liquefy and mutate below her feet. A wasteland of her own make.
And now, all these centuries later, it had followed her. It had followed her all the way back to the one place she thought safe.
Malenia sank, fell, onto one knee. Gasping, she plunged her katana into the earth to hold herself upright. For perhaps the first time in her life, a sense of dread crept up her breast. It squeezed her stomach with deathrune claws, wormed its cold tendrils up her throat and choked her. She felt hollow. Her whole body, even her prosthesis, quaked like an ill stray.
The Scarlet Rot—it is here.
The Tarnished walked somberly up to her and took a knee.
"All of this…" he said, "was lurking just over your head the whole time. Whole colonies of Kindred, once warring with the soldiers of the Haligtree, now kin with the rot that has overtaken them."
Malenia's head snapped up. "What?" she gasped. "The… the soldiers have fallen, too?"
"Not fallen," he corrected. "Succumbed."
She wanted to wail right then and there.
"... No," she whispered. Her voice trembled. "Oh, no, no, no no no no…"
With purpose, she rose and dashed past the Tarnished, to the other side of the courtyard. She could feel them, too, though their presence was much weaker: her soldiers, her dear loyal knights. She could feel the rot pulsing through their veins. It pounded in her own blood to the rhythm of her hammering heart.
She flew to the knight who sat alone at the edge of the clearing. "Valle!" she cried. "Valle, it's me! Rise!"
Her hands fell upon his spauldered shoulders. Slowly, barely faster than a statue, the knight turned to look up at her.
"Lady Malenia?" he rasped. His voice… oh, it was so weak. It didn't sound like him anymore. Malenia nodded.
"It's me, Valle," she assured him. Reaching up, she pulled his helmet off, running her fingers through his hot, sweaty hair. "I am here."
"Milady…" he keened. "What… What has happened?"
"I-I don't know," she admitted. "Something… something is terribly wrong."
"... My flesh," he moaned. At once, Malenia's heart ripped in two. The sound of his voice… she could almost taste every last drop of scarlet agony bleeding his throat. Her brave, loyal knight seemed so broken, so confused, so… so lost. Like a frightened child. She gripped his shoulders tighter so she wouldn't topple over onto him.
"It writhes, milady," he whimpered. "My flesh writhes like worms. I-It hurts. It hurts s-so much."
"I'm sorry." The demigoddess's voice came out as barely more than a whisper. "I'm so sorry, my brave knight."
Hearing the sound of footsteps coming up behind her, Malenia gave a start… and so did Valle.
"Intruder!" he rasped, fury in his voice. "Intruder upon Elphael!"
The broken, rotted knight drew his sword. His voice roused the rest of the soldiers loitering amidst the clearing, filling the air with the sounds of blades leaving their scabbards. At once, Malenia reached her hand out.
"Cease fire, Valle!" she commanded. Looking around at the other Haligtree soldiers who had risen up, she held her flesh-and-blood hand aloft as an open palm. "All of you cease fire! This Tarnished is a friend!"
They all slowed to a halt, their sword arms hanging limply by their sides. It was Valle who answered her call.
"As you wish, milady," he replied in his broken voice. And that was that. Slowly, despondently, the soldiers returned to their rest.
The horror and revulsion that crept up Malenia's gullet like bile was matched only by her grief over the abhorrent state her loyal soldiers were in. Their minds were thoroughly done in by the pain and sickness of the scarlet rot. The fires in their hearts were but smoldering cinders, stoked only by the call of battle that had likely lain dormant for decades upon decades until this lone Tarnished had come along.
They were rotted. This whole place was rotted. And it was all her fault.
Her mouth hung agape as she lay there, still kneeling over Valle's broken body. Unable to stand up, she hunched over, placing her hands in the soil to keep herself from falling face-first into it. She let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding; it came out as a hoarse, ragged whine.
"What have I done?" she whimpered. "What have I done?"
The Tarnished was right. The Tarnished was so painfully right. She had rotted this place to the very core. It was, well and truly, ruined. Miquella's work was demolished, all because of—
Wait. Miquella. Miquella! The realization hit her with the force of a roaring dragon. Her brother… there was no way his precious tree could have deteriorated to this tragic state under his watchful eye. The only way her rot could have spread so was if he had somehow given up on the endeavor, or if…
Or if… or if he was absent.
He was gone. He was gone! Miquella was missing! Miquella, her dear brother…
"Oh, no," she mewled. "Oh, please no…"
"I'm sorry, Malenia." The Tarnished's somber voice coming from behind her jolted her back to the waking world. At once, she spun around to face him.
"Where is he?" she pleaded. "Where is my brother? Where is Miquella?"
The Tarnished did not reply for a second. Then,
"A wretched place. Far, far from here. A palace, hidden deep underground. The palace of blood."