Malenia had long ago learned to live with her blindness. Most of her life had been spent living with the condition by now, and as time went on, it had ceased to be the hindrance it once was. As long as there was solid ground under her feet and any discernible sounds grazing her ears, she could exist perfectly comfortably.
Between the din of whirling tempests and the shattered state of the infrastructure, Farum Azula offered neither of these.
The sheer level of delicate handholding Ash had to offer Malenia—oftentimes literal—as they scaled the crumbling ruins was embarrassing. Months of rigorous training and hundreds of years of attunement to remain noble and formidable despite her occluded sight, and now here she was, barely able to walk forwards without her hand laid flat and abjectly upon the Tarnished's arm. She tiptoed up inclines and slid gingerly off ledges, shying away from the roaring of the infinite storms that surrounded her on all sides.
It was incredibly unbecoming of her. But it was nothing to bemoan in the face of what hopefully awaited them.
The typhoons around her grew louder and louder as she and Ash descended, filling her ears with an increasingly unanimous cacophony of wind and debris, until it dawned upon her that it had suddenly coalesced into one great whorl: One that towered in front of her with the looming glower of the Erdtree itself. The whipping winds that careened into her from all sides now only barreled down from her right, pushing at her with such ruthlessness that she found herself digging her heels into the dusty stone beneath her, bracing against the current to stay upright.
"'Tis a monsoon in this place!" she shouted, struggling to make herself heard over the tornado. "How did you scale these treacherous heights alone?"
"The winds are less vicious down here!" came Ash's voice for all of a half second before the storm whipped his words away.
Down here? Malenia blinked and angled her gaze towards the earth, befuddled by Ash's comment before she remembered just how tiny the Tarnished was compared to her. With the crest of his helm barely reaching her waist, perhaps he truly was that much less top-heavy in this balancing act of a city.
Bested in battle by a man who would need to scale her like a ladder to slap her across the face. Had she not tasted his warrior spirit a million times over, such a notion would be enough to send her into voluntary exile.
Behind her scarring, Malenia rolled her eyes.
"Hilarious!" she retorted. "Now what all are we doing standing in this vortex?"
"Well, we ought to be lying in it!"
"What?!"
"Just trust me!" Ash implored. "We must lie in wait for the Dragonlord's chambers to take us!"
Internally, Malenia shook her head. Far from his most absurd proposal, but even so... With all the trepidation in the world so as to not topple off some ledge she had no chance of sensing, Malenia buckled her knee, inching her body towards the tenuous, uneven stone beneath her until that same knee kissed it. Then, from a kneeling position, she leaned forwards and brought her one planted foot inwards until she could let herself fall onto her back. The ground was bumpy beneath her, and the maille she wore beneath her dress couldn't stop the discomfort of loose pebbles digging into her from below. Letting her face drift towards the sky, she could still feel the wind whipping at her face, filtering through the slits in her helm and threatening to tug it off her scalp, while strands of hair thrashing in the chaos lashed irritably against her cheek. Despite the continued relentlessness of the storm, however, the winds did die down a tad as she brought herself to the ground.
The fingers on her flesh-and-blood hand curled around a divot in the stone. She shuffled closer to it, waving her hand around to perhaps gain a feel for the size of it, but winced when something sharp pricked a fingertip, snatching her hand away and bringing it atop her chest. To her left, Ash proclaimed, "Are you alright?"
How did you…? Malenia thought for half a moment, before it dawned on her what metal thorns must have felt like. Reaching out again, she laid a careful hand on what had pricked her, and found her palm resting unpleasantlyon Ash's armored shoulder.
"Yes!" she affirmed. "How long must we wait?"
"I don't rightly know!" Ash replied. "I fell asleep the last time this place overtook me!"
"You fell asleep?! In this cacophony?"
"I was tired!"
Pulling her hand away before it could start bleeding, Malenia shook her head. How had she placed her faith so unwaveringly in this madman? Lacing her fingers over her chest, she did her best to block out the noise of the ripping winds and waited.
As she lay there, she allowed her mind to wander to something other than the tempest lashing at her senses. The first thing she thought of was what exactly awaited them beyond the eye of the storm; such a thought made her stomach hard and heavy. In the chaos of navigating these crumbling lands, she had almost forgotten why they were here to begin with: A cure for her lifelong, godforsaken illness. A way to finally rid her of the fetid rot that had defined her, her people, and her home for centuries upon centuries.
On the precipice of deliverance, the notion seemed at its most impossible.
Malenia swallowed a lump in her throat as she lay there, reminiscing. Memories of rot, hundreds of years of festering like a bloated corpse, so deeply entrenched in her veins that it seemed more a part of her than her very flesh. The rot had taken so much from her since the beginning; first her beauty, then her strength, and then at last her limbs. But it didn't stop there, no—it took her family from her as well. The rift that her disease drove between Miquella and Radagon as the Golden Order's ineffable and fruitless treatments only deepened her suffering defined her last memories amongst the ever-forlorn Order. As Malenia's sight first began to fade, so too did her closeness to Radagon, Marika, Radahn, Godwyn, the Carians—all leaving her life as Miquella pulled her further and further into the Haligtree's embrace, promising her and her wretched rot refuge in a just kingdom, one with a kind of warmth the Golden Order could not bestow—indiscriminate love.
And even after that, it just kept taking. Her sight went before long, but not before she could watch with despair as her own knights contracted her plague. And then, it took her brother, driving him into his cocoon, forced to slumber so he could devote every ounce of strength and focus to growing the tree with a seed of rot roaming its roots. And she was left alone, abandoned by Miquella and afraid to defile more soldiers with her touch, even as they willingly cast herself into her necrosis, if only to reach out and wrench their reclusive general from her shameful isolation—if only to ease her pain just a little.
And now, in the wake of her war against Radahn, it had taken what little she had left.
The more she lost, the harder it became to clutch the scraps. If it were up to her, she would have cast herself into the center of Mount Gelmir and rid the Lands Between of the scarlet scourge ages ago. Lying here, reflecting on what her reluctant insistence to survive would eventually do to everyone around her, made Malenia want to roll her head over the crumbling ledge of these ruins and vomit. Her stomach churned and her throat was tight, with a foul taste on the back of her tongue. She wanted nothing more than to claw for the tiny semblances of dignity she had left to her name, but she couldn't. She hated herself far too much—and more, she hated the Scarlet Rot. The despicable demon-god that had injected its seed into her veins and cursed her and everyone around her with her branding as its bastard child vassal. The predator that sensed prey in her malformed birth.
Yes, to think that some Tarnished had somehow found a cure for her astral affliction seemed more and more a hopeless racket the more she gave it thought. But she was too far past the point of no return now. She would ultimately see for herself once this hellacious tornado calmed down and let them into the operating room.
Only, she realized with a start, it had calmed down. In the din of her own head, Malenia had failed to notice the roaring winds fading into a low rumbling akin to distant thunder; furthermore, the riptide of wind that threatened to blow her off the edge had abated, leaving her maille cold and limp against her skin.
"Ash!" she called out. "Is it done?"
"Yes," he affirmed, "so you can rest your voice."
Malenia felt warm at the giggle in his comment. Shaking her head, she sat up and placed her true hand on her knee.
"So it would seem," she muttered. As she rose to her feet, the reality of the situation set back in, and she wet her lips.
"This is it, then?" she ventured. Now her voice was properly subdued. "The Dragonlord's throne?"
"Indeed."
Malenia tuned her ears, listening carefully, but aside from the distant rumbling of thunder, she could hear very little in the environment around her. If this were the Dragonlord's chambers, where was the Dragonlord? Was he away? Located deeper within some ruin she couldn't see? She echoed these questions to Ash, and he chuckled.
"He slumbers for now," he clarified. "If you could see him, hanging low in the sky as if suspended… no, we certainly are not alone here. We ought to make haste."
Make haste… the words sent a thrill down Malenia's stomach in tandem with that of the knowledge of a looming ancient dragon being injected into her thoughts. She swallowed the hard lump of disbelief that clogged her throat and brought a hand to the needle in her chest. Upon touching it, her racing mind turned towards confusion.
"Yes, well—what exactly do we do?" she asked.
Ash's silence had her feet shuffling. She recalled, briefly, their first proper conversation, when he had beckoned her from her post, and she had challenged him to show just how her vigil had been in vain. His silence then had been hesitant, letting her distrust and disbelief harden—just as it was doing now. But Ash had banished her apprehension then; she had to trust that he would do so again.
The silence was broken by Ash's footsteps approaching her. He stopped in front of her and reached out to graze the wrist of her prosthesis.
"I admit, I am playing this all by ear," he said. "But I may have an idea—a perilous one."
Such words uttered with that tone—low and ginger, brusque with caution—made Malenia purse her lips. Her stomach tightened, and the gold under Ash's fingertips twitched uneasily.
"What is it?" she prodded. Another silence, once that crackled with the lightning in the air this time, before Ash's fingers drifted from her arm to her solar plexus.
"I think, if we can break the time that shackles this device, it will not be… how it is now."
"What do you mean?"
"We need to bring the needle beyond the boundaries of time. We are outside time at this very moment, but we are not ourselves timeless. If the needle lay within you, it lay within time."
Malenia nodded, but inside, her heart sank. That was precisely what she feared he was getting at.
"Should the bloom resurface…" she began. Ash's hand fell away from her chest.
"I trust you," she exhaled.
"The Scarlet Rot shall not take you," Ash promised. Malenia nodded.
"Thank you, Ash," she mumbled. Were it not for the groan of distant thunder, her pounding heart would have been the loudest thing there. When Ash's gauntlet returned to her chest and felt for her needle, she was sure he could feel it beating beneath his palm and her stomach doing somersaults in her chest. Even if it had been some time since the needle had recovered from the ordeal in Caelid, she was unsure if the short few days that had passed since then were enough to subdue the last—she prayed, the ultimate—bloom that had erupted from her skin.
Ash gripped the needle.
"Wait!"
Ash's hand jerked back. Malenia felt for the needle with twitching fingers. It hadn't moved an inch—unlike her chest, which rose and fell with rapid, unsteady breaths. Putting her hand to her hammering heart, Malenia wet her lips.
"… If I cannot control the Scarlet Rot," she began. Her breathing began to slow. She relinquished the needle and brought her unsteady hand to her prosthesis. The sound of metal unlatching from metal filled the empty throne room around them.
"I cannot let it overtake you, too," Malenia declared. Pulling her prosthesis from her shoulder, she held it out to Ash. As soon as he took it, she lowered herself to the ground and sat, propped up on her one remaining arm with her legs unbent.
"Remove them," she instructed, trying to keep her voice firm.
Ash was silent for a moment. The sound of him placing her arm on the floor was heard before he said, "Your… legs?"
Malenia nodded. "My legs. Unbuckle them. Separate the Scarlet Rot from the power it craves."
"As you wish."
Ash started with her right leg. Malenia didn't quite feel his hands on the cold metal, but she did feel when he lifted it up and brought what remained of her thigh with it.
"Pull," he instructed her. Malenia nodded and brought her knee back while Ash tugged contra by her ankle. There was a click, and then the force pulling on her leg vanished, leaving her rotted knee pointed up in the air. Malenia lowered her leg, sitting up half-crossed as if to press the sole of her now-detached foot into the side of her other calf. Ash dutifully moved over to her left leg, where the rot had taken the whole limb. Ash placed both hands on either side of her thigh, right at the precipice where it connected to her torso, so close to her skin that her hip could feel the pressure. Then, with a gasp that whistled through his helm, he jerked his hands back.
In spite of herself, Malenia almost snickered.
"'Tis fine, Tarnished," she assured him. "Do what you must."
"Right," he exhaled. He made noticeable haste in detaching the prosthesis, leaving Malenia with nothing but one hand holding her up. She collapsed her arm and brought herself to her back until she was flat on the floor and staring straight upwards.
She couldn't remember the last time she had forsaken her legs. Even as she slumbered, for all those centuries, they remained firmly affixed to her body. Now, as she lay there, feeling strangely light and yet near-immobile, with her attire draping over nothing but a lonely stump, she reflected with a sense of irony why that was the case.
"Are you ready?" Ash's call broke her out of her thoughts. Taking in a shaky breath, she nodded at the sky.
"As I shall ever be," she affirmed.
"Very well." Ash took a knee beside her and placed one hand on her shoulder while the other pinched the needle. Simply feeling him grasp it made Malenia's heart skip a beat.
"On three," Ash declared. "One… two…"
Malenia held her breath.
"Three."
The needle slid from its spot in her flesh. And in its place, an eruption surged.
Pain filled her chest. Before she could even breathe, it spread like wildfire, blazing through what remained of her rotted body. Her hand shot to the spot where the needle once was and clutched her chest as she gasped.
At once, her head began to pound. Within half a moment, the rot had exploded forth from the point of Miquella's needle and filled every last drop of blood in her veins with its vile essence. She felt as she had in Caelid, lightheaded and crippled by the agony of scarlet corruption—and it was getting worse by the second.
She was blooming. She could feel it. The darkness of her mask began to recede as the familiar, foreboding glow of tendrils crept into the edges of her vision. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the glow bled through her lids that twitched as if the inflamed tendrils were prying them open. Her hand slid under her helm and pressed against her throbbing head; her palm felt clammy against her hot skin. Sweat was already pooling in the roots of her ruby hair, wetting her fingertips and the underside of her helmet.
A voice whispered in her ear. In the silence of the throne room, it was deafening.
There is little time! the Scarlet Rot hissed. Give in! Give in now!
The malignant presence had evidently lost its patience as it lay imprisoned in that needle. The vile Outer God did not even bother to lull her with its usual honeyed words of queenship and oneness. It felt like screeching, eliciting a low moan from Malenia as the pain in her head doubled over. And yet, in the whispering din of anger, beneath the veil of false quietude, Malenia picked up a note that gave her pause.
A note that, in any other context, would've been hideous. But in a voice that grated with discordance, such a foul tone was almost liquid in its harmony, a pedal to measure the infernal chaos. Quiet as a mouse, yet clear as day.
Fear.
Not once, in all her years of life, had she ever heard the Scarlet Rot afraid. It seemed almost inconceivable even as she heard it, twisted and wrong… but at the same time, so right. In that one dose of dread, Malenia's own stood still.
The Scarlet Rot was afraid. It was afraid that this was the end. That Ash was right all along.
Malenia's hand slipped out from under her helm. It dropped to the floor where, with stifled breath, Malenia rolled onto it, propping herself up on her elbow. The stony ground made her scabbed arm sting as she dragged herself forwards, but it was nothing compared to the rot that surged through her veins—and it was worth it, to push back against the vile god.
"Your hold on me ends now," she growled.
Silence! The word pierced Malenia's skull like a hot needle. She peeled her lips back into a snarl as her head throbbed with a new wave of agony, but clenched her teeth and held firm, refusing to bring her hand up to her head and surrender her one remaining limb to the influence of the rot.
The scarlet kingdom will not be perished! it screeched. Cease this foolishness! Insubordinate nullity!
Malenia's arm slid forwards, only to be stopped by a rocky pillar. Hissing through clenched teeth, she slid her arm around as much of the rock as it could go and squeezed. For as much as it burned, it was little effort to pull her half-body against the stalwart body of stone; with a final heave that took the wind from her lungs, Malenia rolled so that her back pressed against the wall, leaving her lying upright in a position that might have been considered sitting up had she any legs upon which to sit. Still, though, she slouched limply as soon as her arm fell away, leaving her upper half slumped against her brace like some mangled corpse thrown aside by a beast, the rapid rise and fall of her chest the only indication of otherwise.
"I am not nullity," she gasped. "I-I… no."
Her hand reached up to feel the place in her bosom where the needle used to be. It was the size of a grain of sand, smaller than even the needlepoint itself. In the few days it had been nestled into her body and spirit, she had grown used to the comforting texture of its butt end disrupting the smoothness of her skin. Now that it was gone, the infinitesimal puncture mark it left in her flesh was just another way for her to feel its absence—and the horror that supplanted it.
Just a little longer.
You are powerless! You are nothing! The voice grated in Malenia's ears like metal on metal. You are a vassal! A conduit of higher will! You are the Scarlet Queen!
"NO."
The blood roared in Malenia's ears.
"I am not your pawn," she declared. Her voice shook, and it rasped, and it wheezed, but even so, it grew louder. "I was never your pawn! The nightmare ends here!"
She pressed her hand into the ground, pushing herself against the solid stone. Then, with a slowness like the Scarlet Rot was fighting to restrain her, she raised it into the sky and clenched it into a fist.
"I am waking up!" she cried, hoarse though it was. "I am moving on! I am Malenia! Blade of Miquella!"
"Yes you are."
Malenia's stomach clenched. She knew that voice. That voice, which she thought she was rid of—then again, she thought that last time, too.
But this time, she knew better.
"Bludgeon me with my past how you wish, demon." She spat the final word out like blood. "You have lost."
"Quite the opposite, Malenia." Radahn's voice rumbled with such depth that she felt it in the ground beneath her. Her taut-faced snarl of pain crumpled into a grimace for a moment. The Scarlet Rot had deigned to grace her with her name for once. How very quaint.
She shook her head and groaned.
"You're not real," she insisted, even as the sound of the steed's unsteady hooves grew closer—even as Radahn placed a firm, oversized hand on her shoulder. She flinched at the sensation, but refused to acquiesce.
"You're not real!" she snapped again. She jerked her shoulder, thrashing in Radahn's grasp, but he only squeezed tighter. His putrid nails dug into her like thorns.
"Be still!" he ordered.
"No!" she brayed. "I will not give in to your—"
"Malenia!" Radahn's voice rang with an air of urgency that silenced her. What gave her true pause, however, was the realization that…
It didn't sound like Radahn at all. It sounded like—
"A-Ash?" she breathed. "Are you there…? Rrrrgh!"
Her veins surged with pain. The voice in her ears howled.
No one is there for you! it screamed. No one has ever been there for you! All have succumbed! All WILL succumb!
Shut up, Malenia thought. Reaching her hand out, she placed her fingertips on Radahn's arm. It was cold to the touch, smooth yet bumpy in texture: a uniform unevenness—like maille.
Radahn's bracers were plate.
She slid her hand along his arm. Hard, metal thorns pricked at her scabbed palm.
"Ash…" she breathed again.
"It is finished." The Tarnished's rough, aged voice sounded like birdsong to her. Her heart lifted, and she clutched at his arm with renewed purpose.
"Bring this to an end," she implored. Her voice held hard and steady as a mountain as she pulled him in for all but a moment. Then, her hand fell away, and she sank against the wall, panting.
"May your golden flesh never be sullied again," Ash declared. His barbed hand braced against her shoulder, while the other lifted to slide between her dress.
Something sharp pierced her flesh.
No! The Scarlet Rot screamed. Centuries of frustration and seconds of fresh terror blazed in wrathful unison in her head, threatening to boil her brain from the inside. No! Don't—!
The voice went silent before it could finish its pleas. Malenia was yanked with impossible force towards the center of the needle, then came to an instant stop with neck-breaking force.
It was as if everything had been ripped out of her. Her breath. Her blood. Her very soul. In a heart-pounding flash, the whole of her was excised from beneath her skin. The needle pulled every last drop of all that dwelled in her body and sucked it into its tiny endlessness. At once, she felt empty, like a hollow shell whose life had broken it to pieces and come tumbling out.
For a moment, at least. Then her senses came trickling back in. As fast as she had been emptied, she realized that all of her was still there—yet, something was missing.
Her breath was there. But when she gasped, the air was cold and flowed like water.
Her blood flowed through her veins. But she could feel how effortlessly it slid up and down her limbs. Her heart pounded not just with emotion, but with force.
Her soul remained tethered to her body. Yet, in its ethereal state, it still somehow felt lighter.
Everything felt lighter. Brighter. Stronger.
Cleaner.
The sensations were obvious. It was Malenia's body being given back to her. The Scarlet Rot was gone. Only she remained, the original and rightful owner of her flesh. The realization did not set in as easily as the feelings did. Malenia sat there, gasping and wide-eyed, as bewilderment and fear churned in her stomach. The husk-like emptiness that chilled her body froze her muscles, binding her body to the stone. Her uneven breaths and pounding heart were the only life that made itself known to an observer.
Indeed, the sensations of it all rushed into her effortlessly while the reality of it bashed against the walls of her instincts—it was prevailing, slowly but surely, and as Malenia's mind reached out to lay trembling fingers on the thought, it put a hitch in her breath. She lay there silently, throat dry and growing drier as the dawn crested her horizon.
The emptiness beneath her skin—the weightlessness, the cold and colorless void—it was an absence that she felt. The absence of rot. Her flesh, so hot and swollen from years of harboring two hosts, had been relinquished from its burden and soared to greet the cool air. The unnerving silence in her head was the eviction of invasion and the return of control—the return of self.
It was gone. The Scarlet Rot was gone.
Malenia's heart hammered in her chest. Her whole body, once rigid, now began to tremble.
"A-Ash?" she called.
"'Tis over, Empyrean," came his voice. She could hear the smile in those words. "The rot in your body is no more."
Malenia struggled to sit straighter up. Her one arm pushed and scrabbled with a mind of its own, with vigor that came to her too easily.
"M-M… My…"
Her words shivered in her chest like a cold puppy. Her mind whirled, and her heart hammered against her ribcage.
"My limbs," she finally finished.
There was a shuffling of metal. Then, a long, curved blade was laid against Malenia's chest. She felt along the flat of it until she found the hand gripping it; clutching her prosthesis, she jammed it into her shoulder with feverish haste. Ash was quick to pass along her legs, and she was even quicker to slot them in.
She stood up too fast. Her hand pressed against the pillar and held her steady as her bearings returned. Even now, she felt too light on her feet. Her mouth hung half-open, gawking at Ash as she brought her flesh hand to her chest. In an anxious fidget, her thumb and forefinger rubbed against one another.
Something hard flaked off her fingertips.
Malenia grimaced. She pressed her fingers together again, harder this time—almost scraping her digits together. More of the stuff fell away, enough for her to really feel what was underneath… and it made her go stiff.
It was skin. Healthy skin. Smooth, warm, and supple, untouched by lifetimes of clashing swords and raging wars. As the thought crossed her mind, more of the scabs that covered her hand began to fall away—and didn't stop. Like a snake molting its old scales, the scarring that marred Malenia's hand was dissolving, leaving something untainted in its wake.
Even as she observed this, the carapace that covered her arm was already dissipating. It broke silently off her skin and crumbled into dust while she stood dumbstruck, dissolving into miniscule particles and vanishing into thin air. In its wake clenched a bold, unblemished fist, as fair and clean as Marika's herself.
The Scarlet Rot was fading away, and with it, the marks it left on her.
It dissolved faster and faster, accelerating at an impossible pace. Before long, the whole of her arm held itself before her, completely and utterly unfettered. She could feel the scarring on the rest of her body fade away, as well: her shoulder, her breast, her legs, her pelvis—all of it was just… disappearing. As if it were never there.
In spite of her newfound weightlessness, Malenia felt suddenly too weak to stand. Her hand found its way to her face and squeezed the bridge of her nose as she desperately scrabbled to still her hurtling thoughts and tame her cacophonous emotions.
Any success she might've had was dashed when the scabs on her nose dissolved at her touch.
"Wh—" Malenia's hand jerked away at once. Her heart leapt into her throat, threatening to steal her newly-purified breath from her. Either way, she dared not breathe as the dissolution crept along her nose, expanding more and more right on top of her face.
The mask. The calcified scarring that hid her gaze from the world, and the world from her gaze. The mark upon her flesh that had taken her sight away bit by precious bit. The very same one crumbling atop her skin right this very moment.
A line of color pierced the darkness.
"O-Oh…!" Malenia's hand moved to cover her mouth. Even as a strained whimper choked out of her throat, the single pinprick of… of… of something in the nothing grew before her eyes, before her very eyes. It expanded and brightened, trickling rays into a world that had been dark for so impossibly long. Within heartbeats, that trickle became a flood. In the blink of an eye, the dark was washed away in a riptide of light.
Malenia's eyes squeezed shut in the sudden flash. For a moment, she was enwreathed again in darkness, and for that moment, it was almost comforting—familiar in the confusion of an incomprehensible metamorphosis. But even despite the lifetimes upon lifetimes of uselessness under which her eyes had despaired, simple brightness could not subdue a demigoddess. Her eyes adjusted faster still than she did, and flew wide open within mere seconds. What she saw—what she saw… was the smooth inside of her helm, illuminated halfway by slits in a visor that stretched all the way to her nose; a visor never meant to allow vision. Instinct took over, and in a flash, Malenia pulled the helm from her hair and threw it to the side to gaze out upon an incredible scene. Dark, roiling thunderclouds loomed high overhead, their gloomy underside serving as the only ceiling to a dozen pillars that fanned out and stretched towards the storm. Malenia stared at the sky with wild yet enraptured eyes. Even the smooth, dark clouds teemed with overwhelming detail that held Malenia transfixed. Impossible curves and infinitely rolling edges. The glow of a hidden sun that smothered into a miles-long gradient of gold and grey. Dim flickers of lightning that sent the great mural into a whorl.
It was impossible. It was indisputable. It was incredible.
"What do you see?"
Malenia's frantic gaze snapped towards the earth. In front of her stood a lone knight draped in maille and scales—common soldier's garb, if not for the thickets of cherry red bramble that snaked haphazardly around every inch of it. For every chain link in the maille, a metallic thorn jutted outwards. Only the cape and helm seemed free of such marring; the cape draped over the lurid wrappings while the helm—the helm was one she recognized. She had seen it but once long ago, when the Shattering had just begun and her sight still remained. The helm of the Night's Cavalry, rogue knights who had sworn fealty to the mysterious Omen Margit. Its angry black visor was the last thing Malenia saw in the snow before she and Miquella retreated to the Haligtree forever. For a moment, seeing it in front of her now sent a wave of queasy unease through her.
"What?" she exhaled.
"What do you see, Empyrean?" the knight repeated.
"I-I…" Malenia could barely form words. Her hand raised to reach forth; the sight of smooth, flush skin entering her vision stole Malenia's attention for a moment. She stared mouth agape at her own quaking hand, watching its fingers twitch to life and then ball up into a tight fist. Her wrist spun with almost fearful slowness, allowing her eyes to comb over every last inch of it. Then her gaze flicked back up, then back down at her hand, then up at the knight again.
She unclenched her fist. Her hand reached towards the black helm.
"I see—"
Her voice hitched in her throat. Her fingers rested gingerly upon the rugged plate.
"I see you, Ash."
The words trickled from her lips. A crack in her dumbfoundment. A crack that, as she steadied herself against the Tarnished standing before her, split and widened down the length of her stomach.
"I see you," she repeated. "A-And… and I see the sky."
She looked straight overhead.
"I see the rays breaking through the clouds, and the distant glare of lightning. I see grand pillars stretching into nowhere, ringing a colosseum beyond time. I-I see everything. I see it all, Ash! I see…"
She looked back down at him. She saw her hand caressing his hidden face. Her eyes traced along the length of her arm until her dress filled her view. The shimmering golden lace caked with cool dirt and loose gravel. The trailing bands of maille that shielded her and her soul. It all bent and ruffled and swayed with her movements. Such small shifts, yet so full of motion. She saw her own golden toes, itself their own armor, planted with utter tenuity upon the ground.
She saw…
"Me," she whispered.
Her. Only her. One body, one mind, one soul. No rot in sight. Just her.
Her eyes remained fixed on the ground. Both hands brought themselves up to her face. The glint of her katana stabbed her eyes, but she paid it no mind. All she could focus on was her hands. Her clean, bright hands. Right in front of her face. Completely silent and unmoving, yet she could sense them plain as day.
"I-I…" she stammered.
"How do you feel?"
She wrenched her head up. Ash stood there the same as before, but she found her head craning up to look at him. She realized in the back of her mind that she had sunk to her knees. She held his veiled gaze for a long, taut moment, silent save for her shuddering breaths.
Her lower lip began to twitch.
"Malenia—?"
Ash didn't get another word out before the demigoddess in question careened straight into his chest.
Her arms were around him in an instant. She clenched him in her grasp, holding him tighter than she'd ever held anything before. Still on her knees, unable to will her feet to hold firm, her head fell straight into the crook of his neck. Hundreds of tiny iron thorns pierced her dress and dug into her skin as she pulled him fervidly into her embrace, but it was not the pain of such bracken that pulled tears from her eyes. No, far from it.
"Thank you," she whimpered. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."
Ash said nothing, merely lifted his arms and gingerly returned Malenia's embrace. He held her up as she devolved into lachrymose gasping, and as her body began to convulse with sobs, his hold on her tightened, ensuring she stayed upright as she poured droves of tears onto his shoulder.
She had cried before, oh yes. But now her tears flowed freely. Freely. She was free. She was finally free.
Neither of them were quite certain of how long she knelt there, muffling her keening into his armor. When she finally felt ready to speak again, she lifted her head up and gave a wretched sneer to his own expressionless visor.
"'Tis over," she wept. Her flesh hand, bleeding in several places where the thorns had pricked her, lifted from Ash's shoulder and wiped the tears from her face. "Verily, 'tis… 'tis truly over."
Ash brought a hand to her face and wiped away a stray smear of blood from her cheek. His armor was cold, but his touch was delicate.
"'Tis over," he echoed back to her. Malenia shook her head—not at him, but at all of it.
"Every last deed you have done," she began. She had to stop for a minute as another sob clawed at her chest; she swallowed it down and grunted before continuing. "Each one, more preposterous, more inconceivable than the last. Each one, believed I more and more, to be the last. F-For how could you possibly boast even more feats to perform, and see any higher apex to which you could ascend?"
In spite of everything, the hint of a smile played across Malenia's lips.
"And now here you stand before me, resolute and firm, as I tremble in awe at what you have done for me today. Y-You've… You've done the impossible, Ash. You have freed me from my shackles and put an end to an infinity of rot. You…"
She broke off into another sob. Having relinquished her desperate hold on Ash, she doubled over and fell onto her hands. She hadn't the wherewithal to continue her rambling, and opted to simply lay there bawling for a moment.
"This land shattered with the Elden Ring," Ash said over Malenia's mewling. "I will stop at nothing to put every wrong I can to right."
"When the Haligtree returns to life…"
Malenia made a fist and pressed it into the earth.
"My men will sing your legend for generations," she declared. With a grunt, she forced herself onto one knee.
"Never will I be able to erase the debt I owe to you," she went on, "but as long as that debt endures, so too will my gratitude."
"Malenia, I—"
Ash was caught abruptly off when a sudden rumble shook the stone beneath him. Malenia felt it as well, falling back onto a hand as Ash held out his arms to stay upright.
"What was that?" Malenia demanded. Ash did not reply as the tremor began to fade. Instead, he looked up at the sky, sighed, and bent down to pick up his sword.
"I had hoped we would bide a beat's more time," he muttered. Malenia followed his gaze, and what she saw made her balk. In the stupendous return of her sight, she had been far too stunned and dazed to see the massive two-headed dragon hanging silently in the sky. Now though, as he descended towards the earth and unfurled his limbs, Malenia could see him as clear as day—and hear him. And feel him, too, his great wings blowing a forceful wind through the still colosseum.
As soon as the ground had stilled, Malenia scrambled to her feet. Her wide eyes stared transfixed at Placidusax as he gave them a single glare before throwing both heads back and unleashing a beastly roar that filled Malenia's ears. She grimaced at the sound, but Ash's voice coming from in front of her still grabbed her attention.
"As it were, I can think of a way to repay your debt," he commented. She could hear the mirth that bounced off the walls of his helm, and in spite of herself—in spite of everything—she found the tiniest of smirks turning the corners of her lips after just a few moments of stunned gawking.
"Such was the plan," she remarked. Her katana sparked as it clicked into place. Ash heaved his hulking greatsword onto his shoulder, then turned to give Malenia a last glance.
"For Roderika?" he asked. Malenia bent down to retrieve her discarded helm. Placing it upon her hand, she stood tall and nodded.
"For Roderika," she affirmed.
Placidusax roared again. Red lightning coalesced from the clouds and churned menacingly overhead. Malenia's heart pounded in her chest, her stomach did somersaults, and the tears on her face had yet to dry. A few more dripped from her eyes; she blinked them away and fixed her gaze firmly on the dragon.
It was all so much. But she had a job to do, and it was a job she did well.
Ash broke into a run. Malenia followed suit, overtaking the smaller warrior with ease.
"Let us dance, and gaze upon our victory, together."