Hi everyone, Snowbengal here and I'm still alive...I'm not sure if anyone still remembers me since I've been inactive for so long. I'm not dead, I haven't been dead, and I still enjoy being a nerd about all of my fandoms to the horror of those around me. I took a long break from Fanfiction after feeling burned out and discouraged about the quality of my own writing. For any very old lurkers who still remember me, I went to school for an English degree, got massive writer's block but managed to work through it. I picked up video games and they helped revitalize me, especially the Soulsborne series and they sparked my creativity.

This story was written with the cooperation of fellow writer Slendahmon, a very talented player and even more talented modder and an amazing human being. Hopefully you all can enjoy the fruits of our labor and have fun with our story!

On the Outskirts of Raya Lucaria

The sky was a stormy gray that even the Erdtree could not illuminate with its shafts of brilliant light. The dark clouds, swollen with rain, crowded around the gold as greedily as miserly dragons. Two mages braced themselves against the wind for their robes flapped in the wind fiercely enough for them to take flight.

"Why do we have to do this every blasted day? No one is coming in a storm." One of them complained, her voice echoing inside her Twinsage Glintstone Crown.

"It's by Queen Rennala's decree that we keep the Terra Magica fields lit for dire circumstances." The second mage replied. Unlike his companion, he wore the pale blue Lazuli robe and his tone was sharp enough to break through the muffling constraints of his own crown.

"Tell me Guidon, do you truly believe Rennala will hold onto her position? She is an outsider who banned study of the Primeval Current and poisoned our Academy with foolish spells and notions about the moon. You know as well as me that the truth lies in the stars, from the amber starlight that granted us this magic." She said and to a casual observer, the two mages seemed to be having an amicable conversation. But the Raya Lucarian mages had become experts at reading body language when they gazed upon unmoving stone crowns day by day. There was a palpable tension between the two and each of them could sense it.

"Queen Rennala united the House of the Moon with the Golden Order. We would've been overrun by those faith-crazed heretics without her diplomacy. Watch what you say, Lilly." Guidon said, the tip of his staff gleaming a faint turquoise.

"We would have been able to prevail against Radagon and his forces without her intervention. Now that he lurks in our halls, spilling his Golden Order rhetoric to blot out the stars. If you think that I will allow the Erdtree to-'' The increasingly heated debate was suddenly caught off by a vicious slap of icy rain.

Night had come along with a storm and the two mages hurried to find shelter, their argument forgotten in the face of the unpredictable elements. The clouds spit out lightning like the dragons they resembled and more rain sliced down like silver arrows, stinging everything in their path. The fierce wind shook the trees and golden Erdtree leaves swung through the air, hampering vision even further. The two mages were about to renew the Terra Magica spells around the perimeter when Lilly stopped. "I sense something. There it is again, someone is using spells." She turned towards the cliffs where the sea raged against the stone like jagged glass. "Down there."

Below the cliffs, the waves seethed and frothed against a pebbled beach, fighting the land that constrained it. The storm whipped the ocean into a frenzy and the water bubbled with white crests that could have rivaled the giants of old. With a mighty roar, a wave crashed upon the dark sand and when it reluctantly drew away, the pitiful figure of a castaway had been unceremoniously thrown onto the sand. Blue sparks kept wavering to life around her, taking the form of small daggers before the waves shattered them into the ground. A blinding bolt of lightning shone an unearthly light upon the strange scene and the ensuing whip-like crack of thunder seemed to revive the outcast.

She coughed and retched out the seawater that had been burning its way through her lungs. Another wave crashed down upon her and her cry of pain was cut short by the knifing fall of water. A pale hand emerged from the foam and grasped at the slimy rocks, desperately scrabbling for purchase as the ocean tried to suck back what it had thrown out. But bit by bit, the young woman dragged herself through the tangles of seaweed and broken shells littering the beach. A pained grunt escaped her lips when a sharp rock scraped across her stomach and red flowed out, staining the sand in rivers of blood.

She kept going until the ocean was far enough away to do nothing but snarl at their loss. Exhausted, she painfully turned onto her back and clear blue eyes squinted up at the rain lashing down upon her. Her blood-red kimono had been torn into shreds, the crest obliterated, and her dark hair was plastered in a blinding haze across her face. But the young woman was blind to the pain and her eyes were empty, straining to see something that was no longer there.

"Identify yourself!" A voice called out and the young woman started to see Lilly looking upon her. The mage's staff was held aloft with Starlight illuminating the beach with a flat turquoise glare. The unnatural light sparkled off the blood and tumbled sand and Guidon approached the woman, setting his staff on the ground to show his hands were empty.

"We are mages of Raya Lucaria. Do you need help? What happened?" He spoke kindly but the woman scrambled backwards on all fours like an animal.

"Hanarete kudasai! Watatshi kara nigeru!" She shouted fiercely. More sparks of blue began appearing around her, taking on tremulous shapes that shivered against the pounding rain. "Anata o koroshimasu!"

"She's a mage!" Lilly shouted. "Get away Guidon, she must have infiltrated as an enemy spy!" The mage prepared to cast a spell but Guidon slapped her staff away.

"Use your eyes, you stupid Blunstone! She's not. Look at the way she's clothed and listen to her speech. She's not from the Lands Between and she clearly can't control her magic." He shouted. He picked his own staff back up to cast the Starlight spell once more and the rekindled illumination revealed freshly-bleeding slashes across the woman's face. Those had been made by a sword for the temperamental ocean wasn't capable of such purposeful lines. "Tell me-" He began again but the woman swayed before collapsing backwards in a dead faint.

Bjorn, Morne Castle

The ground shook as a golem came crashing to the ground. Bjorn showed little emotion on his face as the massive corpse faded into nothing before him. He kept his Greatsword resting upon his shoulder as he looked around to see if there were any others around but he saw nothing but a few trees and grass.

Normally he'd not even bother giving these large stone soldiers the time of day but today, he had a reason to come down to Castle Morne. He's been trying to find an old friend of his for some time now and wished to speak to the castle's warden to see if he had any information regarding his whereabouts. However, any hope for normal conversation was waning with each step into the castle as it appeared to have been besieged by its Misbegotten servants. He always knew it would be a ridiculous idea to try and civilize them, so something like this was an inevitability. He didn't think much of dispatching each one as they attempted to surround and attack him when he made his way into the courtyard.

He continued until he came upon a medley of Misbegotten and soldiers fighting each other on one of the rooftops. He didn't bother trying to communicate with the soldiers, as they had long since lost their bearings sometime after the Shattering, simply finding it easier to slaughter them and the Misbegotten all the same. In but a moment, all that remained was himself and a bloody mess of corpses littering the roof.

Bjorn continued until he found some wooden stairs that wrapped around another portion of the rooftop. He walked up them to find the castle's warden, Edgar, sitting on a bench and staring at the floor in silence. He looked up lazily at the large warrior standing before him. "Oh. Someone sane. Well, I'm Edgar, ward of this castle as appointed by Lord Godrick himself." The commander said with defeat in his voice.

"I'm aware." Björn replied in a disinterested tone. He only wished to speak about his friend, anything else being a waste of his time.

"Well as you can see by the state of thi-" Edgar began to say before being interrupted abruptly.

"Yeah that's unfortunate, but I'm not here to discuss your failure in leadership. I'm looking for someone and I'd hoped I may find some information leading to his discovery here. Have you seen a man around my size, black hair and eyes of a gray color?" Bjorn asked.

With a deep sigh, Edgar replied "Nobody's been to this castle in months. Only these former servants of mine have been to and fro when obtaining various odds and ends from outside. The soldiers I sent for are the only other people that have been here for a while, and they don't seem to have been able to restore order as I'd hoped. I'm sorry, but whatever it is you have come here to do or find, there's nothing here of value."

Björn, now mildly irritated at having wasted his time coming here, tightened his grip on the handle of his Greatsword ready to relieve the man before him of his head. Instead, he turned and began to walk away. "Wait, before you go…" Edgar said. Björn looked over his shoulder in Edgar's direction. "Some time ago, about a year perhaps, there was a young fellow that came here to rest but briefly. He sounds similar to the man you'd described. Big man with a similar golden armor to your own. He'd only stayed about a day before heading for Leyndell through Liurnia." Björn nodded, saying a quick "Thank you" before making his way out of the fallen castle.

Raya Lucaria

The halls of Raya Lucaria were dark save for the faint shimmer of astrological instruments and crates of purple crystals. The young woman's bare feet were quiet upon the cool flagstones and her long hair was inkier than the night that she walked through. Anyone may have thought she was up for a stroll after a troubled night's sleep but there was a sharp purpose in her eyes. Her eyes gleamed uncannily bright, like blue Glintstones when she walked through alternating shafts of moonlight and darkness.

She looked around once or twice before ducking into a hallway lined with bookshelves that whispered and fluttered like caged birds. The young woman trailed a finger along several of the books and the seemingly solid walls melted into a dusty tunnel lined with cobwebs. Snapping her fingers, a tiny blue Starlight spell materialized over her finger and she entered a labyrinthine world of secrets and shadows.

It was a far cry from the soaring elegance of Raya Lucaria's scholarly halls filled with enchanted bird cages and flurries of Glintstone sparks that mimicked the night sky. There was a sense of ancient power that thrummed through the very air of magical school but that wasn't the only power the young woman was interested in. No, the true power lay here in these forgotten tunnels that wormed behind Raya Lucaria's crystalline beauty. It lay in the clandestine meetings in empty classrooms, secrets whispered behind hands and left on scrolls. It's how the young woman had quietly risen through the ranks of mages far more powerful than her.

"...Rennala is head-over-heels, she's lost her mind." A male voice filtered through the cracks of blue light filtering the walls. The young woman recognized the unearthly color of a Glintstone lamp and she stopped to listen out of habit. "Radagon has tamed her into his little bitch. From the way she talks about the Golden Order, you'd think she eats, pisses and shits Erdtree leaves all day."

"Perhaps it does, who knows what Radagon has hammered into her." Another male voice said and there were quiet chuckles at the crude joke. "She's not the queen I thought she once was. We only let her into the Academy because we thought she would unravel new secrets from the sky with her moon sorceries."

The young woman soundlessly passed on, the voices fading into obscurity behind her. She had heard these whispers a thousand times already. Growing discontent over Rennala's union with Radagon with more mages abandoning the Lazuli robes that had once signified undying loyalty to the House of Caria. These conversations, once hushed, grew ever louder and bolder now that Rennala no longer ruled them with the caution she had once exercised.

With her Starlight illuminating the tunnels with a wash of eerie blue, she continued through the narrow passageways until she finally reached her destination. She extinguished her spell and trailed her fingers against the books once more and the wall melted away to reveal a dilapidated room. Most of the space was dominated by a towering portrait of Rennala but the rest of the walls were overgrown with spikes of purple crystals that had pushed the books off their shelves.

She barely had time to look up at the spiral of purple stones when she blocked a knife with one of her hidden arm bracers. The tip bounced harmlessly off the bracer but it left a gash in her sleeve. The young woman grabbed her attacker's arm and twisted it behind their back and then pushed the assailant face-first into the wall.

"You stupid Bluntstone, you can't recognize it's me?" She hissed, her words slightly accented.

"It's not my fault you didn't knock before you entered." Her attacker retorted, a woman with auburn hair and brown eyes.

"Oh and if you had killed a senior mage, how would you have hidden it? Maybe if it was one of the newer students, you could have gotten away with it. I know you're also new but you better adapt fast, Ari." The young woman pushed Ari into the wall once as a warning and then let her go. "Now tell me what you learned."

"Not until you give me the staff you promised." Ari fired back, rubbing her face resentfully where the crystals on the walls had dug in.

The young woman pulled out a staff topped by a purple stone and handed it over. Ari grabbed it, her face lighting up like a child's. "Is this stone from Radahn's meteors? I heard that he used to study at this Academy before he left to study with the Alabaster Lord. If I could master a tenth of the gravity spells he could-"

"That staff is not for the faint-hearted." The young woman interrupted impassively. "One misstep and your body will implode from the force you seek to master."

"Don't be so negative, I was skilled in my hometown with magic." Ari said, twirling the staff between her hands.

"Now tell me what you found."

"I found a passageway that leads right behind Rennala's bedchambers. You wouldn't believe the things I've heard." Ari said and angled her smile suggestively but the other woman retained her cool expression. "Damn, you are no fun. But one day when Radagon was with her, I thought I saw something strange for a moment."

"Then let's go." The young woman said without further preamble and gestured for Ari to lead the way.

"I don't know if it's going to happen again. Come on, it's late, can't we do this another night?" Ari complained but the young woman simply stared at her.

Muttering curses to herself, Ari led the way through the dizzying swirl of passageways, up steep flights of stairs that creaked under their feet. In the back of her mind, the young woman wondered who had built these secret tunnels that honeycombed through the entire school. Was it meant as a means of escape or as a means of gathering information like she did? When the dusty shafts of gold light shifted into silver moonlight, she knew that they were there.

The two of them peered through the cracks and even through the limited view, they could see the opulence of the Queen's bedchambers. Thick rugs in lapis lazuli hues covered the stone floors, colorful tapestries and golden ornaments glittered on the walls and there were hanging strings of silver jewels that trembled in a phantom breeze. A giant moon floated in the middle of the room, casting off a pearly luminescence that illuminated the lavish wealth.

They didn't have further time to study the finery for Rennala had entered the room and her hair, normally tucked under her curved crown, flowed down in silken waves of midnight black. Her pale face, once so stern and queenly, had melted into a flushed countenance of adoration. They could see why for behind the mage, there was the Champion himself, Radagon, in all his glory. In contrast to Rennala's fine robes, he wore a simple dark green cloth tied around his waist but he needed nothing else to accentuate his sculpted figure. Everything about him seemed traced in light, his fiery red plaited hair, the muscles of his torso and with the brightest glow coming from his sultry golden eyes.

His face was chiseled with perfect angles and planes and even the young woman felt an internal flash of heat when his eyes swept over the place they were staring in from. But instead of being seduced by Radagon's beauty, she thought there was something inhumane about its perfection. It wasn't human, it looked like the face of a deity. Rennala began talking to her lover in her quiet voice and while it was hard to hear their conversation, they could hear bits of it. It sounded like a deep debate over the tenants of the Golden Order and the Carian House with Rennala asking about the concept of Grace. Radagon's voice was too deep to understand from a distance and the young woman was settling down for a boring night when Radagon suddenly kissed Rennala.

"Is this what you wanted to show me?" The young woman asked Ari in acid tones. "I'm not interested in watching others mate."

"Wait, this is when it happened last time." Ari whispered back. The young woman turned back to watch the proceedings below with a barely-concealed expression of disgust. The couple had moved backwards onto the bed and Rennala had her pale arms wrapped around Radagon's back and was enthusiastically vocalizing her passion. The young woman was about to look away when she saw it. A flash of gold amidst the red hair that hung down over Radagon's shoulders. Her senses now on high alert, the young woman stared down intently. It hadn't been a trick of her eyes, she could see color spreading through the red like molten gold forged by fire.

She looked closer, narrowing her eyes and let out a gasp when Radagon's whole body seemed to blur into the contours of a feminine body. He must've heard something for he suddenly stilled with supernatural speed, his head cocked towards the side. Without warning, Radagon suddenly threw his hand out, three lightning-fast shards of light ricocheting towards them.

The beams of gold sizzled towards them and just before she threw herself to the side, she caught a glimpse of Radagon's face and it was not the one she was expecting. The features were similar but it was as if they had been softened through a wash of watercolor with rounder cheeks and a gentler chin. She had seen that face before, more times than she could count since coming here. It was-

The floor underneath them creaked ominously and she belatedly realized the holy shards had ripped through support beams. The floor caved in and the two women went tumbling through darkness. They bounced down the splintering staircases and came to an abrupt halt when a wall stopped their fall. They lay there in a complete daze for a moment before the pain abruptly slammed into them as if it had caught up to them in their mad flight.

The young woman coughed from the cloud of dust and immediately regretted it when her ribs ached in protest. Her limbs were on fire and it was with great difficulty that she pushed herself into a sitting position. She touched her face and when her hand came away, her fingers were covered in blood. Hallucinations twitched at the corners of her blurry vision and the scars on her face started burning. The dull shine of a broken katana in bandaged hands. A hut at the edge of the beach with seagulls crying their loneliness to the wind. Reeds swaying in water that was thick with blood. Fires in a fine hall with the tapestries crumbling into embers upon tatami mats. A figure in a blood-red kimono with blood-red eyes raising a dripping sword, her voice rising in a sing-song chant.

"Ya!" The young woman screamed. "Anata wa honmono janai!" A large piece of wood smashed down perilously close to her head and she flinched. But the sound brought her back and she used the wall to pull herself up. She didn't even need to look at her body to know it was covered with abrasions and bruises and one of her ribs may have broken.

"Help me…" The voice was choked and she turned around to see Ari sitting with her back against the wall. She was in even worse shape with blood sheeting from a deep cut on her arm and her leg was bent the wrong way. It wasn't the exposed bone that caught her attention but the glowing golden shard that was embedded in Ari's thigh. The dark blue cloth of Ari's robe was pinned to the flesh and it was darkening from a growing stain of blood. Ari tried to pull the shard out but she howled with pain when the light flared up, sizzling her skin.

"He's marked you." The young woman said. "Even if I get you out of here, I can tell that's not going to disappear. Tomorrow, when they track down this bolt, they'll know it was you spying on them and if they question you, you will not keep the secret."

"Me? You were also there!" Ari said incredulously. "Please, can't you do something? Kira, please…you can't leave me like this. Please!" Her eyes were wide and tears brimmed over, cutting through the gore drying on her face.

"Even if you survive the trip back, you won't be in any condition to run from Raya Lucaria." Kira said. She pulled out a knife and bowed deeply to Ari from the waist. "I will make it quick."

"No! No, pleas-!" Ari's voice was cut off when Kira slashed her knife across her throat in one deadly motion and blood spurted out in a dark wave. Kira knelt down, staring into Ari's dying eyes and feeling the blood splatter against her face until the other woman stopped moving. She spun the knife into a strange gesture like that of a salute before kneeling down to pull the Meteorite staff from Ari's limp fingers.

Lifting her own staff, she looked down upon Ari's body and at the holy shard still glowing with dangerous intent. If Radagon tracked it to a dead body, he'd know someone had seen his secret. So she cast Comet in quick succession and the blindingly blue bolts roared through the area and obliterated the body. Kira had once been hit by a stray Comet spell in practice and she remembered the feeling of ice flooding through her veins. That same ice now hardened her blue eyes and froze her face into a chilling expression of calm. She stopped when there was nothing left of the body, not even a bloodstain. Now, the shard of light was embedded into the wood where Ari had once lain and Kira leaned down to examine the floor and noticed a strange stone.

It was jagged and blue, deeper than the turquoise hue of Glintstones and when Kira picked it up, she almost dropped it. For it was still warm, seemingly unaffected by the Comets she had cast, and pulsed with what looked like blood vessels. Kira thrust it deep into the pockets of her robe, she couldn't afford to leave any evidence behind. But she could still feel the sensation of that pulsing stone as she made her arduous way back to the main corridors. She almost passed out on the way back and only made it by using the staffs as walking sticks before she was back in the blessedly fresh air of the upper floors.

After the cramped, cobwebbed corridors of the secret tunnels, the spacious beauty of Raya Lucaria's lofty walls steadied her. The birds in the cages hanging from the ceiling were asleep but their rustling feathers and soft coos formed a nighttime song that eased some of the pain in her aching ribs. Making sure that no one was around, Kira made her unsteady way to the bathing rooms that were paneled with luxuriously smooth stones of creamy white. There were plenty of sconces on the wall filled with Glintstones but she only lit one so that the room was filled with a dim blue glow. She emptied a basin of cold water over her head and the immaculate floor was soon stained with rivulets of red. Kira made sure to clean her wounds well and to wash away any traces of red before the morning bathers came in. She'd have to bandage and smear the cuts with salve before they got infected.

The water splashing against the floor echoed hollowly around the room and the sound was rather lonely. Kira dried herself off gingerly, trying to avoid dripping any further blood on the towels and basins. She watched the last of Ari's blood swirling down the drains and was lost deep in thought until her dark hair had almost completely dried. Extinguishing the Glintstone sconce, she took one last look around the bathing room to make sure nothing was out of place. Satisfied, Kira left the bathing area and hurried to her rooms to snatch a few precious hours of sleep before her morning classes started.