Memories of blood and torment. Where was poor Miquella? And where was Malenia?
Fruit of the Haligtree (Elden Ring/Dresden Files)
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Chapter 1
Pridakarbiter
Unseelie
- Location
- Arctis Tor
Chapter 1:
Miquella is mine and mine alone, a deep resonating voice that Miquella did not know growled. Miquella, himself, drifted out of time and memory, sleep pulling his mind away to walk in the land where nightmares barely tread.
A mother, her head of pure gold, cradled him to her bosom, hushing him as she rocked.
A father, strong of form, shared golden light and incantation, making him laugh joyously.
A sister, head of fairest red, held him in her arms as he cried for her.
A tree of promise, of a promise unfulfilled.
Then a formless mother reached her bloodsoaked tendrils out and caught Miquella as he hung crucified like his mother, helpless, caught in the moment of apotheosis, and that mother, formless as it was, saw a vessel.
And thus, Miquella, the youngest Empyrean screamed with none to hear but the one that took delight in his torment.
Miquella's existence was pain. A deep, slithering feeling in his marrow, twisting like his blood was a sinuous creature of its own mind. Miquella heaved, bile laden with blood dribbling from his mouth. Cursed blood spilled down his throat as much as he heaved, until the blessed sleep of St. Trina caught him and pulled him down into purple mist.
Memories played over his mind, blending in time with the ebb and flow of the nausea that clawed at his guts with gnarled teeth. His guts seemed to squirm within his viscera like maggots and bloodflies. Miquella felt stretched, drawn-out, quartered, and he could feel the tears form at the edge of his vision despite his lack of sight.
Dearest Miquella. You must abide alone a while. A voice crooned softly, and Miquella shuddered, curling in on himself, holding himself close.
Bit by bit, lucid thought crept into his drifting mind. Where was Malenia? Miquella wanted to shout, to scream. Such utterances were strangled within his childish throat before they were even given form. Instead, Miquella choked on blood, and gasped in heaving breaths of feeble air.
A pale hand settled on stony tile, flesh parting beneath his hands like butter. Miquella crawled out into the world, the blood on the tile staining his tiny hands crimson and black.
Where was Malenia?
"Malenia?" Miquella whispered hoarsely into the darkness. He wasn't a true child, but now more than ever, he wished he had the stalwart strength of an adult form, or the figure of his sister at his side. He swept his blonde braids from the side of his head, bringing them behind his ears. He made to call for Malenia again, but something inside of him, maybe the childlike part, screamed at him that it was a bad idea and the noise strangled itself in his throat before he even had the time to fully utter it.
Slowly, Miquella shifted in place, shivering at the touch of the cold tile and putrid blood between his fingers, and with a feeble strength, he stumbled to his feet. Where was he, where was Malenia? The thought came unbidden yet again, yet it was all that Miquella could think, all that he permitted himself to think.
It hadn't worked? What was this, was this what he received from trying to go against the Golden Order? Pain and blood? Miquella stumbled back to his knees, splayed fingers catching and splashing in the blood.
Why was there so much blood? Miquella whimpered despite himself. Where was Malenia?
The stars seemed to whirl overhead in patterns that they were not supposed to make, over and over again. Around and around. Miquella heaved, blood and bile spilling forth from between his pale lips to cover the ground again.
Where was he? Shakily he raised his head, some reason intruding on his fear. Carven stone… and the Haligtree's womb, twisted and rent, plucked from its mooring, structure and all. It was profane, it felt profane, in a way that Miquella the Unalloyed Gold had never felt before. It felt cursed.
No, Miquella thought, and horror danced with madness within his mind, someone had moved him from the Haligtree. He raised up his hands, staring at bloody fingers as the rotten blood ran between his digits. No. No. No!
He was still a child!
Why? Why would anybody do this? What did they have to gain?
He would have seen the Erdtree's order restored as it should've been, bolstered to keep the gods from the world. The primal crucible restored to the world. A world free of prejudice. A perfect world with Malenia forever. No!
Miquella felt the pinpricks of tears, and this time, he did not deny them, instead, he let them flow, twin rivulets making their way down his face, droplets in time with every breath. He balled his fingers into fists, only refraining from pushing them into his eye sockets due to the bloody mess he would make. He wasn't a child. He wasn't.
Amongst the blood and tears, Miquella wept, weeping for a world that would never be, weeping for a loss of perfection and sibling both. He could feel it, now that he was looking, he could feel the eternal bond that held him to his sibling, but there was no sibling but Rot. So much rot. Miquella's tears fell, mixing with the blood in slow sorrow.
"Malenia," Miquella whispered again, and before it had been full of hope that she would take him from this place, but now it was dotted with regret and pain. Saturated, drowning in pain, so much pain Miquella's little heart could barely stand to feel it.
Miquella struggled to his feet once more, the feeling of pins and needles spreading across his toes, like worms burrowing into his flesh. He moaned in pain, struggling forward unto the dais on which his grey and rotted cocoon sat. A creature sat within, grey and pallid, nails long and black, and upon its dead face, Miquella recognized his own face. Strands of blonde hair, matted and stringy hung around the sunken cheeks like a crown. Yet, the figure was female and very dead, a hole torn through its abdomen.
A failed apotheosis. Miquella bit back another sob that struggled and failed to burst free from his lips. Blood stained the thing's grey lips, and without even knowing for sure, Miquella knew it was cursed blood. A horrid miasma, that lay over this place, saturating it with formless malice. Miquella shuddered again, stepping away.
Miquella pulled the white sleeves of his garment close around him, even though there was no chill.
Slowly he stepped forward, into the gloom, only to stop in place with a startled squeak, muffled err it broke his lips at the sight of some thing before him. A creature shaped like a bat, lay in the blood, stomach gorged and distended. A pale tongue, bespittled with green saliva lay hanging from a squashed face, slowly lapping at the cursed blood.
Miquella shuddered, taking but a moment to note the superficial similarities to the monstrous bats of Limgrave and lower Lirunia before he shuddered again. What was this thing? It bore none of the redeeming Crucibilic echoes that even the Misbegotten had. Carefully, Miquella stretched out his focus, probing at the thing, but it only faintly returned the feeling of cursed blood. Cursed blood and more. Sex. And something else. Miquella felt sick all over again.
With a grimace pulling back his childish cheeks Miquella stepped away, bare feet drifting over the fetid blood, watching how it rippled. Then there was another, beady black eyes locked in ecstasy. It drank with abandon, pale tongue dabbing into the blood, again and again, drawing the crimson and black liquid back to hooked teeth. Its grey throat bobbed as it swallowed.
It was clothed, the feathers of some large creature arranged around its throat as a necklace, the teeth of some great animal joining the feathers. Gold jewelry hung from the creature, mixing with the blood in a way that seemed to make the gold lose its luster.
"The blood is good," it murmured to itself, tongue flicking to and fro, "such blood, such blood! Oh, what a Lord I shall make!"
Miquella froze, hardly daring to breathe in the still silence. This thing could speak? Should he speak to it? Indecision warred with fear for a long moment before Miquella steeled himself. Was he not of Marika and Radagon's get, was he not a demigod in his own right? Who was he to Malenia if he could not even muster up the will to speak?
"Hello?" Miquella fairly whispered, but his voice carried all the same. A moment later he cursed himself, despite his earlier will, he should have waited a moment, spared a second to think, what would Malenia do? Actually, that was probably a bad idea, what would Godwyn do?
Miquella was spared this indecision when the creature's eyes snapped to his, and it blinked once, then twice, before it shifted its forelimbs under it, climbing to four feet. Its flesh was dotted with stringy brown hair and its tongue darted over its teeth, cleaning them of all but a few droplets of crimson.
"A child?" It said, leaning forward, moving closer, claws dipping into the blood.
"Not entirely," Miquella answered quietly, stepping back as it advanced. Its eyes lowered to Miquella's blood covered lips and then lower still, its eyes drifted over him, lingering on his bloody hands, before rising back to his neck and lingering there for a long moment, "Can you tell me where I am?"
The creature stopped its advance and seemed to chortle, an evil sound deep in its throat, its black eyes fixed on him, "Why not, girl? You will be dead soon either way, do you not recognize the Nevernever, the world beyond?"
Miquella didn't bother to correct the misconception at all, just another mask to wear. He allowed his eyes to dart away, breaking eye contact. The Nevernever? The world beyond? Was that beyond the Lands Between? It had to be, didn't it? With a very deep sinking feeling Miquella realized he already knew the answer and it sent an icy chill up his spine in a way that the cold air had not, despite his flimsy bloody-white ceremonial robe.
"I find it within myself, in my magnanimity to spare one such as yourself," the creature said, rocking back on its haunches. It licked its lips, "You would make a fine addition to the Red Court."
Miquella could feel it as his throat bobbed as he swallowed. There was just something that was slightly off about the thing in front of him. Something that set the fine hair along his body standing on end.
"I am… spoken for," Miquella chose to say after a moment.
"Oh?" said the creature, a member of the Red Court, if it was to be believed. It slowly rose to its feet, flesh slipping back over its body, grey slipping between tan skin, until a human crouched before him, feathers and teeth garments and all. She was almost naked but rose to her feet, lips still bloody.
"And how did you come here, child? I can smell the blood on you, in you," she said, licking her lips again with a pale tongue but somehow not cleaning them of the blood.
Miquella stepped back again, silently wishing that he had not spoken at all.
"I do not know, for else, why would I ask one such as you?" Miquella answered. Stepping to the side, the creature turned her body to follow him, not caring for proper propriety.
"And if I could inquire of your name?" the creature asked, still in the voice of a woman. She smiled, which may have been kind if it wasn't for the hunger that danced there.
"M- my name is Saint Trina," Miquella responded, shifting as he more firmly adopted his guise, as easily as the creature in front of him had adopted the guise of the human after discarding the form of the bat. The lethargy of sleep lulled softly at his mind, but he pushed it away, as one would an errant fledgling.
"Saint? Saint Trina?" The woman said, and for the first time, she looked doubtful, where before there had been only hunger lurking beneath her merciless black eyes.
"Aye," Miquella responded, "What are you, if you mind me asking? You are not one of the Misbegotten, if am not mistaken."
The woman frowned, shifting on her feet, she leaned back down, long pale tongue darting out to lap again at the blood, pulling more its cursed essence into her body. It was worse, Miquella thought when she wore the guise of a woman. The tongue looked even more out of place and horrifying.
"You do not recognize my kind, Saint?" The woman crooned.
"Nay," Miquella responded, stopping in a place away from her.
"I hail from the Red Court," she responded after a moment, the picture of fever as she returned to lapping at the blood like an animal possessed.
The errant splash of a foot was all the warning Miquella received. The other creature, the one he has disregarded earlier, stark naked as it was, darted toward him, even as he turned. Miquella almost shrieked and ducked below the questing talons. It snarled, turning in the blood on a dime.
"Little Saint," it hissed, its eye pitch black, "I shall feast upon your sublime blood. I can hear it sing to me, drink, it says."
Miquella stood straight where he was, feeling like he had to respond, "My blood does not say that."
The creature shrieked, and Miquella flinched going to cover his ears when he saw the creature's talons sliding toward his face. Focus surged down his fingers, catching on his tiny finger seal, and the golden triangle of a Fundamentalist Incantation sprung to life, the sigil appearing in the air before him. Miquella thrust one hand into the air and a golden disc burst into being, slicing forward.
Black eyes, dark as pitch widened in surprise; and then it screamed, a shrill cry, as its body fell one way, and its legs the other. The disc rebounded, and its choked scream cut off as its head joined the body. The cuts on its flesh hissed, smoldering, almost burning.
The woman raised her head from the blood, watching him with newly-fascinated eyes.
"What holy light," she said, a trickle of blood running from her lips, "but I wonder-"
Miquella raised his hands again, a disc of gold spinning free toward her. Her eyes widened for just an instant and then she ducked.
"Silly child," she laughed, ducking the return of the disc as well, "The blessing of blood grants many things, such childish spells are but child's play."
She looked entirely too satisfied and Miqeulla frowned, the expression marring his beatific visage.
A blessing of blood?
The woman continued to slink forward, step by step, barely disturbing the blood under her. It rippled, but the ripples were wrong, and Miquella could say without a doubt that they did not betray reality.
He thrust his hands out to the side, mimicking the iconic pose of his mother, and the creature stilled, pausing for an instant. Then Miquella poured focus into the gold, and golden coils burst into being below his feet, golden order sigil in front of him, and Miquella enforced the Law of Regression.
All that was would seek to return to how it was. All things yearning to converge. The creature was caught within its light. Miquella snapped one arm up, and the other down and the golden light surged outward.
Something inside Miquella broke, but something broke inside the creature in front of him as well, perhaps of more dire importance.
The creature stiffened, mouth opening in a soundless scream. Then she began to convulse, falling to her knees, black bile spilling from her lips, from her eyes. From her ears and nose.
She fell to her hands and knees, coughing and spitting.
"What have you done, child," she hissed in agony, "How?"
Miquella did not answer, could only watch with horror, as pieces of the thing in front of him fell away, leaving tan skin, hair and pallid flesh pushed outward and falling away. Barely a moment had passed before the woman stilled, falling fully into the blood. She did not move.
Miquella carefully stepped away, he needed to get out of this place.
Needed to find wherever Malenia had gone. Needed to find where here was.
AN: I wanted to take a break from writing completely, but this idea wouldn't leave me until I put it down.
Miquella is mine and mine alone, a deep resonating voice that Miquella did not know growled. Miquella, himself, drifted out of time and memory, sleep pulling his mind away to walk in the land where nightmares barely tread.
A mother, her head of pure gold, cradled him to her bosom, hushing him as she rocked.
A father, strong of form, shared golden light and incantation, making him laugh joyously.
A sister, head of fairest red, held him in her arms as he cried for her.
A tree of promise, of a promise unfulfilled.
Then a formless mother reached her bloodsoaked tendrils out and caught Miquella as he hung crucified like his mother, helpless, caught in the moment of apotheosis, and that mother, formless as it was, saw a vessel.
And thus, Miquella, the youngest Empyrean screamed with none to hear but the one that took delight in his torment.
Miquella's existence was pain. A deep, slithering feeling in his marrow, twisting like his blood was a sinuous creature of its own mind. Miquella heaved, bile laden with blood dribbling from his mouth. Cursed blood spilled down his throat as much as he heaved, until the blessed sleep of St. Trina caught him and pulled him down into purple mist.
Memories played over his mind, blending in time with the ebb and flow of the nausea that clawed at his guts with gnarled teeth. His guts seemed to squirm within his viscera like maggots and bloodflies. Miquella felt stretched, drawn-out, quartered, and he could feel the tears form at the edge of his vision despite his lack of sight.
Dearest Miquella. You must abide alone a while. A voice crooned softly, and Miquella shuddered, curling in on himself, holding himself close.
Bit by bit, lucid thought crept into his drifting mind. Where was Malenia? Miquella wanted to shout, to scream. Such utterances were strangled within his childish throat before they were even given form. Instead, Miquella choked on blood, and gasped in heaving breaths of feeble air.
A pale hand settled on stony tile, flesh parting beneath his hands like butter. Miquella crawled out into the world, the blood on the tile staining his tiny hands crimson and black.
Where was Malenia?
"Malenia?" Miquella whispered hoarsely into the darkness. He wasn't a true child, but now more than ever, he wished he had the stalwart strength of an adult form, or the figure of his sister at his side. He swept his blonde braids from the side of his head, bringing them behind his ears. He made to call for Malenia again, but something inside of him, maybe the childlike part, screamed at him that it was a bad idea and the noise strangled itself in his throat before he even had the time to fully utter it.
Slowly, Miquella shifted in place, shivering at the touch of the cold tile and putrid blood between his fingers, and with a feeble strength, he stumbled to his feet. Where was he, where was Malenia? The thought came unbidden yet again, yet it was all that Miquella could think, all that he permitted himself to think.
It hadn't worked? What was this, was this what he received from trying to go against the Golden Order? Pain and blood? Miquella stumbled back to his knees, splayed fingers catching and splashing in the blood.
Why was there so much blood? Miquella whimpered despite himself. Where was Malenia?
The stars seemed to whirl overhead in patterns that they were not supposed to make, over and over again. Around and around. Miquella heaved, blood and bile spilling forth from between his pale lips to cover the ground again.
Where was he? Shakily he raised his head, some reason intruding on his fear. Carven stone… and the Haligtree's womb, twisted and rent, plucked from its mooring, structure and all. It was profane, it felt profane, in a way that Miquella the Unalloyed Gold had never felt before. It felt cursed.
No, Miquella thought, and horror danced with madness within his mind, someone had moved him from the Haligtree. He raised up his hands, staring at bloody fingers as the rotten blood ran between his digits. No. No. No!
He was still a child!
Why? Why would anybody do this? What did they have to gain?
He would have seen the Erdtree's order restored as it should've been, bolstered to keep the gods from the world. The primal crucible restored to the world. A world free of prejudice. A perfect world with Malenia forever. No!
Miquella felt the pinpricks of tears, and this time, he did not deny them, instead, he let them flow, twin rivulets making their way down his face, droplets in time with every breath. He balled his fingers into fists, only refraining from pushing them into his eye sockets due to the bloody mess he would make. He wasn't a child. He wasn't.
Amongst the blood and tears, Miquella wept, weeping for a world that would never be, weeping for a loss of perfection and sibling both. He could feel it, now that he was looking, he could feel the eternal bond that held him to his sibling, but there was no sibling but Rot. So much rot. Miquella's tears fell, mixing with the blood in slow sorrow.
"Malenia," Miquella whispered again, and before it had been full of hope that she would take him from this place, but now it was dotted with regret and pain. Saturated, drowning in pain, so much pain Miquella's little heart could barely stand to feel it.
Miquella struggled to his feet once more, the feeling of pins and needles spreading across his toes, like worms burrowing into his flesh. He moaned in pain, struggling forward unto the dais on which his grey and rotted cocoon sat. A creature sat within, grey and pallid, nails long and black, and upon its dead face, Miquella recognized his own face. Strands of blonde hair, matted and stringy hung around the sunken cheeks like a crown. Yet, the figure was female and very dead, a hole torn through its abdomen.
A failed apotheosis. Miquella bit back another sob that struggled and failed to burst free from his lips. Blood stained the thing's grey lips, and without even knowing for sure, Miquella knew it was cursed blood. A horrid miasma, that lay over this place, saturating it with formless malice. Miquella shuddered again, stepping away.
Miquella pulled the white sleeves of his garment close around him, even though there was no chill.
Slowly he stepped forward, into the gloom, only to stop in place with a startled squeak, muffled err it broke his lips at the sight of some thing before him. A creature shaped like a bat, lay in the blood, stomach gorged and distended. A pale tongue, bespittled with green saliva lay hanging from a squashed face, slowly lapping at the cursed blood.
Miquella shuddered, taking but a moment to note the superficial similarities to the monstrous bats of Limgrave and lower Lirunia before he shuddered again. What was this thing? It bore none of the redeeming Crucibilic echoes that even the Misbegotten had. Carefully, Miquella stretched out his focus, probing at the thing, but it only faintly returned the feeling of cursed blood. Cursed blood and more. Sex. And something else. Miquella felt sick all over again.
With a grimace pulling back his childish cheeks Miquella stepped away, bare feet drifting over the fetid blood, watching how it rippled. Then there was another, beady black eyes locked in ecstasy. It drank with abandon, pale tongue dabbing into the blood, again and again, drawing the crimson and black liquid back to hooked teeth. Its grey throat bobbed as it swallowed.
It was clothed, the feathers of some large creature arranged around its throat as a necklace, the teeth of some great animal joining the feathers. Gold jewelry hung from the creature, mixing with the blood in a way that seemed to make the gold lose its luster.
"The blood is good," it murmured to itself, tongue flicking to and fro, "such blood, such blood! Oh, what a Lord I shall make!"
Miquella froze, hardly daring to breathe in the still silence. This thing could speak? Should he speak to it? Indecision warred with fear for a long moment before Miquella steeled himself. Was he not of Marika and Radagon's get, was he not a demigod in his own right? Who was he to Malenia if he could not even muster up the will to speak?
"Hello?" Miquella fairly whispered, but his voice carried all the same. A moment later he cursed himself, despite his earlier will, he should have waited a moment, spared a second to think, what would Malenia do? Actually, that was probably a bad idea, what would Godwyn do?
Miquella was spared this indecision when the creature's eyes snapped to his, and it blinked once, then twice, before it shifted its forelimbs under it, climbing to four feet. Its flesh was dotted with stringy brown hair and its tongue darted over its teeth, cleaning them of all but a few droplets of crimson.
"A child?" It said, leaning forward, moving closer, claws dipping into the blood.
"Not entirely," Miquella answered quietly, stepping back as it advanced. Its eyes lowered to Miquella's blood covered lips and then lower still, its eyes drifted over him, lingering on his bloody hands, before rising back to his neck and lingering there for a long moment, "Can you tell me where I am?"
The creature stopped its advance and seemed to chortle, an evil sound deep in its throat, its black eyes fixed on him, "Why not, girl? You will be dead soon either way, do you not recognize the Nevernever, the world beyond?"
Miquella didn't bother to correct the misconception at all, just another mask to wear. He allowed his eyes to dart away, breaking eye contact. The Nevernever? The world beyond? Was that beyond the Lands Between? It had to be, didn't it? With a very deep sinking feeling Miquella realized he already knew the answer and it sent an icy chill up his spine in a way that the cold air had not, despite his flimsy bloody-white ceremonial robe.
"I find it within myself, in my magnanimity to spare one such as yourself," the creature said, rocking back on its haunches. It licked its lips, "You would make a fine addition to the Red Court."
Miquella could feel it as his throat bobbed as he swallowed. There was just something that was slightly off about the thing in front of him. Something that set the fine hair along his body standing on end.
"I am… spoken for," Miquella chose to say after a moment.
"Oh?" said the creature, a member of the Red Court, if it was to be believed. It slowly rose to its feet, flesh slipping back over its body, grey slipping between tan skin, until a human crouched before him, feathers and teeth garments and all. She was almost naked but rose to her feet, lips still bloody.
"And how did you come here, child? I can smell the blood on you, in you," she said, licking her lips again with a pale tongue but somehow not cleaning them of the blood.
Miquella stepped back again, silently wishing that he had not spoken at all.
"I do not know, for else, why would I ask one such as you?" Miquella answered. Stepping to the side, the creature turned her body to follow him, not caring for proper propriety.
"And if I could inquire of your name?" the creature asked, still in the voice of a woman. She smiled, which may have been kind if it wasn't for the hunger that danced there.
"M- my name is Saint Trina," Miquella responded, shifting as he more firmly adopted his guise, as easily as the creature in front of him had adopted the guise of the human after discarding the form of the bat. The lethargy of sleep lulled softly at his mind, but he pushed it away, as one would an errant fledgling.
"Saint? Saint Trina?" The woman said, and for the first time, she looked doubtful, where before there had been only hunger lurking beneath her merciless black eyes.
"Aye," Miquella responded, "What are you, if you mind me asking? You are not one of the Misbegotten, if am not mistaken."
The woman frowned, shifting on her feet, she leaned back down, long pale tongue darting out to lap again at the blood, pulling more its cursed essence into her body. It was worse, Miquella thought when she wore the guise of a woman. The tongue looked even more out of place and horrifying.
"You do not recognize my kind, Saint?" The woman crooned.
"Nay," Miquella responded, stopping in a place away from her.
"I hail from the Red Court," she responded after a moment, the picture of fever as she returned to lapping at the blood like an animal possessed.
The errant splash of a foot was all the warning Miquella received. The other creature, the one he has disregarded earlier, stark naked as it was, darted toward him, even as he turned. Miquella almost shrieked and ducked below the questing talons. It snarled, turning in the blood on a dime.
"Little Saint," it hissed, its eye pitch black, "I shall feast upon your sublime blood. I can hear it sing to me, drink, it says."
Miquella stood straight where he was, feeling like he had to respond, "My blood does not say that."
The creature shrieked, and Miquella flinched going to cover his ears when he saw the creature's talons sliding toward his face. Focus surged down his fingers, catching on his tiny finger seal, and the golden triangle of a Fundamentalist Incantation sprung to life, the sigil appearing in the air before him. Miquella thrust one hand into the air and a golden disc burst into being, slicing forward.
Black eyes, dark as pitch widened in surprise; and then it screamed, a shrill cry, as its body fell one way, and its legs the other. The disc rebounded, and its choked scream cut off as its head joined the body. The cuts on its flesh hissed, smoldering, almost burning.
The woman raised her head from the blood, watching him with newly-fascinated eyes.
"What holy light," she said, a trickle of blood running from her lips, "but I wonder-"
Miquella raised his hands again, a disc of gold spinning free toward her. Her eyes widened for just an instant and then she ducked.
"Silly child," she laughed, ducking the return of the disc as well, "The blessing of blood grants many things, such childish spells are but child's play."
She looked entirely too satisfied and Miqeulla frowned, the expression marring his beatific visage.
A blessing of blood?
The woman continued to slink forward, step by step, barely disturbing the blood under her. It rippled, but the ripples were wrong, and Miquella could say without a doubt that they did not betray reality.
He thrust his hands out to the side, mimicking the iconic pose of his mother, and the creature stilled, pausing for an instant. Then Miquella poured focus into the gold, and golden coils burst into being below his feet, golden order sigil in front of him, and Miquella enforced the Law of Regression.
All that was would seek to return to how it was. All things yearning to converge. The creature was caught within its light. Miquella snapped one arm up, and the other down and the golden light surged outward.
Something inside Miquella broke, but something broke inside the creature in front of him as well, perhaps of more dire importance.
The creature stiffened, mouth opening in a soundless scream. Then she began to convulse, falling to her knees, black bile spilling from her lips, from her eyes. From her ears and nose.
She fell to her hands and knees, coughing and spitting.
"What have you done, child," she hissed in agony, "How?"
Miquella did not answer, could only watch with horror, as pieces of the thing in front of him fell away, leaving tan skin, hair and pallid flesh pushed outward and falling away. Barely a moment had passed before the woman stilled, falling fully into the blood. She did not move.
Miquella carefully stepped away, he needed to get out of this place.
Needed to find wherever Malenia had gone. Needed to find where here was.
AN: I wanted to take a break from writing completely, but this idea wouldn't leave me until I put it down.
Last edited:
Takareer
Words and feathers
- Location
- Ontario, Canada
Well, your idea is as glorious as ever! Should you make another chapter, I'll be promptly there to read it!
Hyacinthium
Writing about sad cannibals as we speak.
- Location
- Bedroom
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't know anything about Dresden Files. Buuut, I've been hoping something focused on Miquella would show up. Definitely happy to see this. A comfortable pace for the writer is a comfortable pace for the reader, btw. Saying as someone who has been both.
Chapter 2:
Pridakarbiter
Unseelie
- Location
- Arctis Tor
Chapter 2: Blood-soaked Recrimination
His bleeding-heart nature was going to kill him, something that Malenia had chided him for many times before. This time, Miquella was inclined to agree with his red-headed sister.
He was back in front of the bat creature that had become a woman. For all that she had been a monster wearing human flesh, she also still hadn't attacked him until the other one had, and Miquella was kind of responsible for the agony she'd experienced, at least partially.
He stretched out a bare foot, cursed blood covering it, and nudged the woman's bare shoulder. She was still alive he could see plainly from the way the blood shifted under her breath, it was lucky the blood wasn't deep enough to drown in. The woman didn't move, just lay there.
Miquella got closer, reaching out with both hands and with a heave, rolling her onto her back. Her forefront was drenched in a covering of cursed blood, which most likely wasn't very sanitary on multiple levels. Both spiritual, for Miquella could see a taint there already, spreading through the woman's soul, but it wasn't what she had before. Up close he could feel the remnants of what had been in the dead creature, and contrasting that feeling, or the lack of feeling, he could see what the woman laying on her back in front of him lacked.
Two fingers glowing gold with the light of the Erdtree, Miquella pressed his fingers to the woman's forehead, and focused, mustering his faith and focus, blending the two together and then sending a surge of restoring light, a Lord's Blessing, straight into the woman. The golden sigil burned beneath Miquella's feet, it's light visible even through the cursed blood he knelt in.
The woman drew in a shuddery breath, sounding quite belabored, grey eyes flickering open. Her eyes skittered over Miquella who drew on his most basic offensive incantation, readying it to let fly at a moment's notice.
Tears beaded at the woman's eyes.
"Why! Why would you take it from me?" The woman wailed.
Miquella recoiled as if slapped, faith and focus slipping away like mid-autumn leaves caught by a rough breeze. He fell backward with a splash into the blood, further staining his white robe with the fetid and putrid blood.
The woman continued to wail, face contorting with agony. She lifted her bloody fingers to her mouth, sucking on them, trying to clean the blood from them with her mouth. Miquella scrambled backward, putting distance between her and him.
There was a flutter of wings and a shadow loomed over the woman, visible even in the darkness. Miquella drew in a shuddering breath, scooting back some more.
Shunk!
A massive beak speared down, stabbing straight into the woman's chest, and her wails cut off abruptly with a squelch. The beak stabbed down again, and again. Miquella could only feel his own breaths come in faster, and faster as he watched what was happening in front of him.
The crow's beak, because it was a monstrous crow, was lined with teeth, and massive tumors dotted its feathers, almost occluding its sight. Its feet were dotted with huge cruel claws. It stabbed again, brutalizing the woman's body once more with its massive beak before it opened its mouth, catching the woman's body, and lifting her into the air. The bird craned its head back, beak lifted into the air, and then swallowed the woman whole, or what was left of her. She made no noise as she slid into its gullet.
Miquella gaped in horror at the crow. It lowered its head, cocking it slightly to stare at the place the woman was before it stepped forward again, moving to the pieces of the bat creature that had attacked Miquella before. It paused, lowering its head, seeming to almost snuff the corpse, before it raised its head again, extending its pinions briefly and then stalked back into the darkness with heavy steps.
Miquella sat in the blood for quite a bit longer, feeling the blood soak up into his white robe ever so slowly. It was his fault, just as it was his fault that Malenia went to war. He was responsible for the woman's death, if he hadn't tried to cure her, heal her, then she would still be alive.
Miquella rocked himself slowly, bloody hands wrapped around his knees. For a long moment, he was just tempted to sit and try to wait until someone found him, but then the thought crossed his mind of what exactly could find him. He shuddered.
Gritting his teeth, Miquella got to his feet again, pulling on faith and focus, pooling them prematurely, ready to form into an incantation at the slightest premonition of danger. Yet, nothing happened. No giant birds stalked from the gloom, nor did any bat creatures burst from the darkness.
Miquella resisted the urge to light his way with a golden incantation, mindful of what lurked in the darkness. Presently, something massive slithered off to the side, blood and gore displaced by its passage. Miquella stilled, his breath coming in shallow puffs of air for a long moment, before he continued on once more.
Miquella was left in the dark with only his thoughts. He shuddered again as memories of darkness seemed to intrude on his waking mind, recollections of talons against his flesh drifting between moments. He shivered, clutching his cross-shaped Erdtree seal, weathered as it was close to his body, letting just the slightest golden light linger out into the darkness.
Something scraped over stone, and a figure stepped free from behind a towering blood drenched pillar. It was a man, and Miquella froze for an instant, remembering the woman from before. The man's sword seemed to emite a dull blue light, and the darkness seemed to recede.
The man was clad in a grey cloak, pristine white shirt beneath. He had brown hair with subtle patchwork dashes of grey, with more lingering at his temples. His visage was stern, a deep wariness, and a penetrating gaze. He noted Miquella immediately, but did not otherwise react beyond a very slight widening of his eyes, just barely there. His step forward into the blood was as soundless as the creature from before.
Miquella swallowed and stepped back a step, bare feet still sqloshing in the blood. The man was about three or four heads taller than Miquella's diminutive stature. The man's sword, still held low, slowly moved between them but in a relatively nonthreatening gesture, at least as non-threatening as it could be.
"Who are you?" Miquella asked, almost whispering, the nature of the darkness and blood getting to even the demigod.
"Morgan, Warden of the White Council," the man responded after a moment, his tone stiff. His grey eyes flickered over Miquella quickly, lingering on the bloodstained white garment, before flickering down to the golden Erdtree seal clutched in Miquella's hands.
"Ah," said Miquella even though it meant nothing to him. He furrowed his brows, racking his memory, trying to dredge even the faintest memory to the surface, yet nothing did. The name at least was within conventions, Miquella supposed, but a Warden, of what? The white council?
Morgan jaw seemed to stiffen, and he regarded Miquella for a moment, before with some reluctance he broke the silence, "Now, who are you?"
Miquella hesitated for an instant. The last creature had a negative reaction to him naming himself a saint, not even St. Trina itself but the very notion of a saint. He also could not call himself Miquella… he did not know how many of his sister's enemies lingered. There were others even that also desired to wound the Leyndell royal family. No, he could not claim the name of Miquella.
"I am known as… Trina," Miquella answered, his back straightening slightly as he again adopted the guise of Saint Trina. His body feeling slightly more, the benefits of his other form re-settling metaphysically.
"Trina?" Morgan responded, eyes lingering on his face but not quite meeting his eyes. Instead, the man's slate grey eyes slid away, examining the blood dripping and running down the pillars, pooling in piles of putridness. Miquella's nose crinkled.
"Aye," Miquella responded.
"Never heard of her," Morgan said, surprisingly brusque. Miquella frowned, was he eternally slated to be mistook for a comely girl? Still, that was one worry abated, yet… he couldn't help himself. Almost everyone in the Lands Between had heard of the lauded St. Trina, and while Miquella was loathe to let it be known that Miquella and Trina were one in the same, it still was important.
"Not even Saint Trina?" he asked, and at that Morgan's gaze sharpened, swinging back to Miquella with some intent. The lines, crow's feet, around his eyes tightened as he peered at Miquella, who hastened to add, "Not that I'm a saint, just Trina."
Morgan continued to just stare for a moment, before he grunted, stepping away. Yet Miquella noted how his muscles remained corded and tense.
"Um," Miquella raised his sealless hand slightly, trying to signal for the other not to leave, "Where are we? I was sleeping, you see, and now there is naught but blood."
"I can see that," Morgan said, more grunted really, but his attention did weave back to Miquella, "This way has changed abruptly from what I remember."
"Way?" Miquella asked, curiosity evident, slipping back really, in his voice.
Morgan's face twitched, but he responded all the same, "Way through the Nevernever."
Now it was Miquella's face that twitched. The Nevernever? The same thing the bat said?
"If I may ask?" Miquella asked.
Morgan did not drop his sword but nodded curtly, so Miquella continued, "Are you with the bats?"
"No."
That was it?
"Can I follow you?" Miquella tried, at least he would be better than the giant crow and bats
"No." Morgan said, his voice not changing in the slightest.
"Why not?" Miquella asked.
Morgan seemed to look at him without really meeting Miquella's eyes.
"No place for a child."
"And this place is?" Miquella responded curtly.
"No," Morgan said, and his voice was strangely monotone, "But you're not a child. Even if you wear the form."
Miquella bristled, brushing his golden locks out of his eyes and staring up at Morgan, "This is my body, I would not usurp another."
Morgan raised an eyebrow, but said nothing else. He looked torn for a moment before he took a step and started to walk away again, glowing blue sword held before him, lighting the way. His boots stepped heavily in the blood, before he abruptly paused, shooting a glance over his shoulder.
"Bats?"
"Uh, yes?" Miquella responded, "They said they were with a 'Red Court'?"
Morgan's lip twitched, maybe toward a sneer, Miquella couldn't be sure in the dim light.
"Where?"
"Back that way?" Miquella gestured, kind of helplessly back the way he had came, "I could… show you?"
Miquella really, really, did not want to show him but it was literally better than continuing to creep through the dark and hoping not to stumble into one of the giant crows or worse. There was probably a worse in there, in here somewhere, wherever here really was.
Morgan grunted, vaguely making an affirmative sound, and stalked away toward the way Miquella indicated. His gait never lost that tenseness that clung to his body as tightly as a strung bowstring. Miquella hastened after him, his bare feet splashing in the blood. He resisted the urge to call for Morgan to wait, he wasn't that childish!
His bleeding-heart nature was going to kill him, something that Malenia had chided him for many times before. This time, Miquella was inclined to agree with his red-headed sister.
He was back in front of the bat creature that had become a woman. For all that she had been a monster wearing human flesh, she also still hadn't attacked him until the other one had, and Miquella was kind of responsible for the agony she'd experienced, at least partially.
He stretched out a bare foot, cursed blood covering it, and nudged the woman's bare shoulder. She was still alive he could see plainly from the way the blood shifted under her breath, it was lucky the blood wasn't deep enough to drown in. The woman didn't move, just lay there.
Miquella got closer, reaching out with both hands and with a heave, rolling her onto her back. Her forefront was drenched in a covering of cursed blood, which most likely wasn't very sanitary on multiple levels. Both spiritual, for Miquella could see a taint there already, spreading through the woman's soul, but it wasn't what she had before. Up close he could feel the remnants of what had been in the dead creature, and contrasting that feeling, or the lack of feeling, he could see what the woman laying on her back in front of him lacked.
Two fingers glowing gold with the light of the Erdtree, Miquella pressed his fingers to the woman's forehead, and focused, mustering his faith and focus, blending the two together and then sending a surge of restoring light, a Lord's Blessing, straight into the woman. The golden sigil burned beneath Miquella's feet, it's light visible even through the cursed blood he knelt in.
The woman drew in a shuddery breath, sounding quite belabored, grey eyes flickering open. Her eyes skittered over Miquella who drew on his most basic offensive incantation, readying it to let fly at a moment's notice.
Tears beaded at the woman's eyes.
"Why! Why would you take it from me?" The woman wailed.
Miquella recoiled as if slapped, faith and focus slipping away like mid-autumn leaves caught by a rough breeze. He fell backward with a splash into the blood, further staining his white robe with the fetid and putrid blood.
The woman continued to wail, face contorting with agony. She lifted her bloody fingers to her mouth, sucking on them, trying to clean the blood from them with her mouth. Miquella scrambled backward, putting distance between her and him.
There was a flutter of wings and a shadow loomed over the woman, visible even in the darkness. Miquella drew in a shuddering breath, scooting back some more.
Shunk!
A massive beak speared down, stabbing straight into the woman's chest, and her wails cut off abruptly with a squelch. The beak stabbed down again, and again. Miquella could only feel his own breaths come in faster, and faster as he watched what was happening in front of him.
The crow's beak, because it was a monstrous crow, was lined with teeth, and massive tumors dotted its feathers, almost occluding its sight. Its feet were dotted with huge cruel claws. It stabbed again, brutalizing the woman's body once more with its massive beak before it opened its mouth, catching the woman's body, and lifting her into the air. The bird craned its head back, beak lifted into the air, and then swallowed the woman whole, or what was left of her. She made no noise as she slid into its gullet.
Miquella gaped in horror at the crow. It lowered its head, cocking it slightly to stare at the place the woman was before it stepped forward again, moving to the pieces of the bat creature that had attacked Miquella before. It paused, lowering its head, seeming to almost snuff the corpse, before it raised its head again, extending its pinions briefly and then stalked back into the darkness with heavy steps.
Miquella sat in the blood for quite a bit longer, feeling the blood soak up into his white robe ever so slowly. It was his fault, just as it was his fault that Malenia went to war. He was responsible for the woman's death, if he hadn't tried to cure her, heal her, then she would still be alive.
Miquella rocked himself slowly, bloody hands wrapped around his knees. For a long moment, he was just tempted to sit and try to wait until someone found him, but then the thought crossed his mind of what exactly could find him. He shuddered.
Gritting his teeth, Miquella got to his feet again, pulling on faith and focus, pooling them prematurely, ready to form into an incantation at the slightest premonition of danger. Yet, nothing happened. No giant birds stalked from the gloom, nor did any bat creatures burst from the darkness.
Miquella resisted the urge to light his way with a golden incantation, mindful of what lurked in the darkness. Presently, something massive slithered off to the side, blood and gore displaced by its passage. Miquella stilled, his breath coming in shallow puffs of air for a long moment, before he continued on once more.
Miquella was left in the dark with only his thoughts. He shuddered again as memories of darkness seemed to intrude on his waking mind, recollections of talons against his flesh drifting between moments. He shivered, clutching his cross-shaped Erdtree seal, weathered as it was close to his body, letting just the slightest golden light linger out into the darkness.
Something scraped over stone, and a figure stepped free from behind a towering blood drenched pillar. It was a man, and Miquella froze for an instant, remembering the woman from before. The man's sword seemed to emite a dull blue light, and the darkness seemed to recede.
The man was clad in a grey cloak, pristine white shirt beneath. He had brown hair with subtle patchwork dashes of grey, with more lingering at his temples. His visage was stern, a deep wariness, and a penetrating gaze. He noted Miquella immediately, but did not otherwise react beyond a very slight widening of his eyes, just barely there. His step forward into the blood was as soundless as the creature from before.
Miquella swallowed and stepped back a step, bare feet still sqloshing in the blood. The man was about three or four heads taller than Miquella's diminutive stature. The man's sword, still held low, slowly moved between them but in a relatively nonthreatening gesture, at least as non-threatening as it could be.
"Who are you?" Miquella asked, almost whispering, the nature of the darkness and blood getting to even the demigod.
"Morgan, Warden of the White Council," the man responded after a moment, his tone stiff. His grey eyes flickered over Miquella quickly, lingering on the bloodstained white garment, before flickering down to the golden Erdtree seal clutched in Miquella's hands.
"Ah," said Miquella even though it meant nothing to him. He furrowed his brows, racking his memory, trying to dredge even the faintest memory to the surface, yet nothing did. The name at least was within conventions, Miquella supposed, but a Warden, of what? The white council?
Morgan jaw seemed to stiffen, and he regarded Miquella for a moment, before with some reluctance he broke the silence, "Now, who are you?"
Miquella hesitated for an instant. The last creature had a negative reaction to him naming himself a saint, not even St. Trina itself but the very notion of a saint. He also could not call himself Miquella… he did not know how many of his sister's enemies lingered. There were others even that also desired to wound the Leyndell royal family. No, he could not claim the name of Miquella.
"I am known as… Trina," Miquella answered, his back straightening slightly as he again adopted the guise of Saint Trina. His body feeling slightly more, the benefits of his other form re-settling metaphysically.
"Trina?" Morgan responded, eyes lingering on his face but not quite meeting his eyes. Instead, the man's slate grey eyes slid away, examining the blood dripping and running down the pillars, pooling in piles of putridness. Miquella's nose crinkled.
"Aye," Miquella responded.
"Never heard of her," Morgan said, surprisingly brusque. Miquella frowned, was he eternally slated to be mistook for a comely girl? Still, that was one worry abated, yet… he couldn't help himself. Almost everyone in the Lands Between had heard of the lauded St. Trina, and while Miquella was loathe to let it be known that Miquella and Trina were one in the same, it still was important.
"Not even Saint Trina?" he asked, and at that Morgan's gaze sharpened, swinging back to Miquella with some intent. The lines, crow's feet, around his eyes tightened as he peered at Miquella, who hastened to add, "Not that I'm a saint, just Trina."
Morgan continued to just stare for a moment, before he grunted, stepping away. Yet Miquella noted how his muscles remained corded and tense.
"Um," Miquella raised his sealless hand slightly, trying to signal for the other not to leave, "Where are we? I was sleeping, you see, and now there is naught but blood."
"I can see that," Morgan said, more grunted really, but his attention did weave back to Miquella, "This way has changed abruptly from what I remember."
"Way?" Miquella asked, curiosity evident, slipping back really, in his voice.
Morgan's face twitched, but he responded all the same, "Way through the Nevernever."
Now it was Miquella's face that twitched. The Nevernever? The same thing the bat said?
"If I may ask?" Miquella asked.
Morgan did not drop his sword but nodded curtly, so Miquella continued, "Are you with the bats?"
"No."
That was it?
"Can I follow you?" Miquella tried, at least he would be better than the giant crow and bats
"No." Morgan said, his voice not changing in the slightest.
"Why not?" Miquella asked.
Morgan seemed to look at him without really meeting Miquella's eyes.
"No place for a child."
"And this place is?" Miquella responded curtly.
"No," Morgan said, and his voice was strangely monotone, "But you're not a child. Even if you wear the form."
Miquella bristled, brushing his golden locks out of his eyes and staring up at Morgan, "This is my body, I would not usurp another."
Morgan raised an eyebrow, but said nothing else. He looked torn for a moment before he took a step and started to walk away again, glowing blue sword held before him, lighting the way. His boots stepped heavily in the blood, before he abruptly paused, shooting a glance over his shoulder.
"Bats?"
"Uh, yes?" Miquella responded, "They said they were with a 'Red Court'?"
Morgan's lip twitched, maybe toward a sneer, Miquella couldn't be sure in the dim light.
"Where?"
"Back that way?" Miquella gestured, kind of helplessly back the way he had came, "I could… show you?"
Miquella really, really, did not want to show him but it was literally better than continuing to creep through the dark and hoping not to stumble into one of the giant crows or worse. There was probably a worse in there, in here somewhere, wherever here really was.
Morgan grunted, vaguely making an affirmative sound, and stalked away toward the way Miquella indicated. His gait never lost that tenseness that clung to his body as tightly as a strung bowstring. Miquella hastened after him, his bare feet splashing in the blood. He resisted the urge to call for Morgan to wait, he wasn't that childish!
Heh, casually curing vampirism just because he doesn't have context for what vampires are, is exactly the kind of thing I expect from Miquella lol. And the conflict of having an adult mind in a child's body and all the problems that comes with it is real.
I wonder though, would Miquella be considered an Outsider, being an Empyrean connected to an Outer God however unwillingly it might have been? I'm confused about what exactly counts as one.
I wonder though, would Miquella be considered an Outsider, being an Empyrean connected to an Outer God however unwillingly it might have been? I'm confused about what exactly counts as one.
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Pridakarbiter
Unseelie
- Location
- Arctis Tor
A lot of the initial concept of the story came from me wanting somebody that could actually just casually cure vampirism. All the myriad background issues Miquella has are also immensely interesting to consider and write.
I think he could be an outsider, but more likely an outsider-tainted being or something like that. Or the outer gods could be inside creation still, like normal gods, and he could be nothing notable.
At some point there will be a soul gaze or sight viewing in story and then I'm going to have to make a proper decision.
Thanks for reading!
Hm, I see. It'll be interesting to see how things turn out.
Oh and thank you for taking so much time to write so many good stories, I really enjoyed reading them!
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PDQ-88b Yes Man
"That's it! Make me take my medicine!!"
YES! MORE ELDEN RING/DRESDEN FILES CROSSOVER! WHAT SWEET AMBROSIA YOU BRING, O APHRODITE OF LITERATURE!
Pridakarbiter
Unseelie
- Location
- Arctis Tor
I'm glad you're enjoying my crossover so much!
I'm going to try and get a few chapters out this coming week, I will see how it goes.
Hyacinthium
Writing about sad cannibals as we speak.
- Location
- Bedroom
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ehhhh, I'm not entirely certain how well that would track. The Erdtree isn't exactly a burning bush unless you say fuck you, if you get what I mean. This is just going off of my irl knowledge of Christianity. There's really just superficial similarities. It would be interesting to analyze the game through a lense of Christianity though. I suspect that someone with experience or a degree in, Christianity focused, religious studies would have an interesting interpretation.
C4d
Has approximate knowledge of many things.
- Location
- Germany
I doubt that, the Greater Will and the White God are diametrically opposed in their philosophy.
In Df the most important thing to White God is humanities free will while the Greater Will is all about ordering the world according to its preset while having everyone in it follow it unquestioningly (its in the name).
Also Miquella renounced the greater will and is actively working to cut off all meddling by outer gods, if only to free his sister from the scarlet rot. But as we can see in the game his methods also work on other things.
However this has to be said with the caveat that we know barely anything about him as a person beyond that he cares for his sister, lost faith in the golden order after it failed to help her, and might be generally benevolent with how all the outcasts of the golden order seek refuge in his haligtree.
- Location
- Australia
Oh another story... Hmm, him being a benevolent Outsider would be interesting, it'd confuse the hell out of the Dresden folks.
Strayed
No Gravy Beam for you.
He is not an Outsider. People from other dimensions =/= Outsiders. Outsiders are only eldritch gribblies from beyond existance.
Chapter 3:
Pridakarbiter
Unseelie
- Location
- Arctis Tor
Chapter 3:
Sure, swift steps brought Miquella of the Haligtree and Morgan of the White Council into the darkness. Morgan's sword lit the darkness with a pale blue light which made the darkness seem to undulate and slither like serpents in the shadows.
Miquella mulled different words over in his mind, trying and failing to piece together the perfect question to ask. He could ask for Malenia? Whether this 'Morgan' knew her, knew of her, at least? It was understandable that good Saint Trina could be unknown, after all, Miquella had never meant for his alias to become as popular as she did.
Though, he did admit that it worked out far better, in Miquella's expert opinion than his mother's own attempts with Miquella's father. It was a closely guarded secret, really, but Miquella could not help but learn of it. It was not even quite clear if his siblings of Marika's issue even knew for sure of Marika's problems bringing her own ego to heel. Two beings, separate but one. Radagon, Miquella's father. Marika, Miquella's mother. Two in one. One in two.
A tragedy was written upon a golden tree. Miquella swallowed, pulling his hand back from where it almost grazed against a swollen pustule of blood, a pustule that had seemingly sprouted from sheer stone.
A moment later Miquella stopped, only faintly able to tell that Morgan still followed him from the sound of his slow and silent footsteps. The man did not speak, only slowly, out of arm's length draw forward until he was in line with where Miquella stood.
"I slew one," Miquella said, gesturing vaguely into the darkness, "There are many more."
He could hear them out there in the dark. More clearly now than when he first awoke. Wretched moans of ecstasy. Animalistic snarls and barks, things shuffling in the dark, just out of sight. Miquella felt a little like a child should feel, with nothing but the light of the pale blue sword to his right and the dim, pale golden light of his Erdtree seal. A childish fear of the dark, that never really went away, especially in the darkest of nights.
Before this night and darkness, Miquella was not quite sure that he would have been scared of the dark. There were dark things in the world, but they knew Miquella's place in it. He had provided sanctuary for the refuse and downtrodden. Misbegotten were story tale monsters whispered of by the matrons of Leyndell. Stories whispered to toddlers and saplings that refused to go to slip beneath warm blankets as the sun's light waned. Little did those children know of the fate of the Misbegotten, forced to waste away in hard labor at the hands of a master that saw them as little more than malformed animals. At least they were better off than the Albunairics and the Omens.
Miquella shuddered, the motion bone-deep, but that crow… that was no Misbegotten, nor Omen.
Miquella wrinkled his nose against his will, every instinct of his body screaming at him to retch. The pervasive reek of rot was stifling, all-consuming, so strong that it almost felt tangible against his skin, hanging in a fell miasma. It was stronger here than it had been before.
It reminded Miquella of his sister. A sickly sweet, heady scent that made Miquella's head swim as if he was floating. It was not a pleasant scent, for all that Miquella could never hope to clearly remember a time when the rot clung to his sister like a jealous lover.
It was this self-same scent that seemed to linger in this place. At first, Miquella admitted, he had lied to himself with some certainty.
It could not be Scarlet Rot.
It could not.
This cursed blood was not the curse of an Outer God manifested through perverse will into this world. Yet, before Miquella's mind's eye, he saw the crow again, as it pecked and devoured the woman that had been a beast. The tumors on its face and feathered breast were not normal.
Miquella could lie to himself all he wanted, but he knew the Scarlet Rot better than perhaps any living thing except the wretched Kindred of Rot that dwelled in the deepest reaches of dread Ainsel River, in its most forsaken depths.
Hence, Miquella was left with only one question to ask. What had Malenia done? His heart seemed to constrict within the demigod's chest, each breath a labor, slowly squeezing his breath from his heart. A rough voice jolted him from the panic that threatened to close like an iron vise around his heart.
"You did this?" Morgan asked, his voice little more than a grunt. He didn't even seem that interested.
He stood just outside of the furthest reaches of a base incantations area of effect, just outside where the sigil would reach if Miquella poured just a fraction into the necessary focus.
A charred broken body lay in front of the grey-cloaked man. Morgan prodded the body with the pointed tip of his enchanted blade, the body crumbling into dust before Miquella's eyes. It was the first thing to attack him here, the one he slew before he regressed the other to be as it should be. It was more horrific half crumbling as it was, its features turned seemingly petrified into a wide snarl, for all that its brown fur was burned away in black burns.
Miquella managed a nod, a shaky little gesture as he drew closer, eyeing the thing on the ground, half-submerged in blood as it was.
"Saint, is that what you claimed?" Morgan said finally, straightening, fixing Miquella with a look.
Miquella swallowed stiffly, the motion barely visible. He straightened his robes as best he could with his bloody hands. It didn't really help to make him more presentable.
"Saint Trina," Miquella offered quietly, "That is what I was known as."
"Known as?" Morgan asked, and his eyes seemed discerning, peeling away the layers that Miquella constructed about himself, piece by piece.
"This is not the work of St. Trina," Miquella stated, the protest slipping through his lips, "Trina offers sleep to those who need it, not slaying those that cannot."
Morgan raised an eyebrow. Again, he did not meet Miquella eyes directly, instead, his sharp eyes focused on a spot just to the left of Miquella's face. Miquella, in turn, twitched, and fought against his instinct, before he reached up to wipe at his cheek, yet nothing was there. Instead, Miquella left the wetness of the chill slick of the blood.
"I see," he said, not elaborating any forward.
Instead, he stepped into the darkness, moving away from Miquella before abruptly stopping in the middle of two columns. Miquella stumbled after, half again as silent as the veritable wraith in front of him. Morgan moved as swiftly and silently as a veteran knight, and every time he did, Miquella could feel his hackles raise, instincts screaming that the man in front of him was dangerous, was a killer. Miquella clenched the seal in his hands more closely, until it felt like it was leaving gouges in Miquella unblemished palms.
There was a man standing in front of Morgan. Naked as the day he was born and then some. Miquella swung his eyes upward, his face reddening slightly against his will. The man's eyes were cloudy and distant. Manacles closed around each leg, and blood stretched up his legs. It was easy for Miquella to surmise that the man had been traipsing through the blood for some time. The man himself seemed to be staring into everything and nothing.
"Thralls," Morgan whispered, raw fury slipping into his voice.
The man's eyes snapped toward Morgan then, but the cloudiness did not fade from his vision.
"What… what ails him?" Miquella asked, voice barely cast as a whisper as he stepped closer. Morgan glanced his way, lips twitching for a moment, before he ground his teeth, raising his sword to cast more light around the two. Another man, standing like the first, attached to the first by a rope was revealed behind the other, and then another, a woman, skin pale and unblemished.
"Red Court Venom," Morgan explained curtly, "It steals the mind. They've been given their fill and then some. Cattle before the slaughter."
"An affliction?" Miquella asked, his own voice hesitant.
Morgan shot him a look but didn't answer, stepping forward, starting to make a slow circle.
Miquella hesitated, hands half raising before he lowered them. Abruptly his mind flashed back to the woman. Did he dare? Miquella swallowed again, trying to still his heart as it hammered within his little ribcage.
"I can help them, I think," Miquella said, voice cast just high enough to be audible to Morgan. He stopped for a second, glancing back at the demigod.
"I have not asked you to do so, nor would the White Council reward you," Morgan said, some distaste crawling over his features at the words. They seemed to almost physically pain the man, as his scowl grew heavy and his fingers seemed to creak on the leather grip of his blade.
"I do this freely," Miquella assured, his gut seeming to clench. Red Court Venom was poison, or was it a drug? Those things were easier to remove than more insidious things. If it was the Scarlet Rot, then Miquella could kiss the idea a bittersweet goodbye, that thing if left to fester propagated backward and forward in equal measure until it had always been there and always would.
Morgan made no noise of assent, just stared at Miquella as if he was seeing him for the first time. There was the same wariness as before, but there was also an inkling, a fragment, of something else.
Miquella mustered his will, pouring his focus into his faith. Not faith in Marika, or faith in the Erdtree. Not faith in the Greater Will. Instead faith in the Haligtree, and faith in the primeval truth that all things seek to be. The Law of Regression burned in his flesh, the universal truth that all things were made with a purpose, with a meaning, and all things sought to return to that meaning.
The golden triangle of the crucible of all creation burned in front, before, and behind Miquella, superimposed on his body, its rings slipping across the surface, Miquella in the center, and Miquella poured his faith and will to realize its truth. Regression was reality, only an Outer God could reject its reality and substitute its own will in Miquella's place.
For a second something did. Something foul and rotten, that reeked of a haze of blood and sex, a perverse fecundity covered in barbs and teeth. For just a fraction of an instant, it recognized Miquella's order before it was swept aside, icy talons clutching at Miquella's heart and just grazing it with a cruel grasping sharpness.
One of the men in front of him gasped, a deep shuddering inhale. The cloudiness faded from his eyes, focus slipping back into his gaze. His eyes widened, taking in the blood on the ground and weeping from the carven idols before it dropped down to Miquella, still standing with both arms outstretched to his sides.
"What. You. How?" the man said, collapsing to his knees, raw anguish flooding across his face, "I'm free?"
The man behind him seemed to be choking on dry land, and the woman seemed to be drawing in great gasps of air, on the verge of hyperventilating. For a long moment, there was only the noise of breathing in the still silence.
"You- What was that?" Morgan demanded, his eyes stabbing into Miquella's and the world seemed to swirl before Morgan jerked his head away as if he'd been stung. Miquella wobbled on his feet, reaching out a hand to place it against the pillar nearest to him. The rotten blood flowed down and over his pale hand, coloring it crimson and black. Miquella heaved a breath, focusing on his will, forcing himself to remain standing.
"The Law of Regression," Miquella murmured, and his voice sounded faint even to his own ears, "It returns all things to be as they should be."
Morgan stood silent for an instant then grunted again, almost wavering he seemed to consider something before he scowled.
"I've changed my mind," He said, "I think you should come with me."
Miquella startled, and replied, his voice slightly tremulous, "All I did was cast Law of Regression. Many Fundamentalists of the Golden Order know of it."
Miquella in truth was wavering. Was not his goal to escape wherever this place was? To find Malenia?
Morgan shook his head, stepping closer, peering at Miquella more closely, "What you speak of, girl, might as well be Etruscan. I don't recognize your spell, but if it just did what it seems to have done, then you need to see the White Council."
Miquella eyes flashed to the side, what was 'Etruscan?' The 'White Council?'
"Take us with you," the other man said, almost stumbling over the words. He stared into the darkness and blood with barely veiled terror on his face.
A deep sonorous cry echoed from somewhere deep in the dark. Rising and rising before it fell.
"Don't leave us here!" The woman shrieked, just about throwing herself at Miquella's feet. The blood splashed upward from where she groveled.
Then a shrill shriek, far too close for comfort, pierced the shadows. Morgan stiffened, turning, his sword held in front of him, the blade outward. Miquella felt his heart drop from its position in his ribcage and splash into the bile within his stomach. He recognized the screech almost too well.
It was the same sound, the cursed bat-creature made when it attacked him the first time. Only this time, there were so many more from out in the dark.
"Stay close!" Morgan demanded, his voice tight. His dark eyes speared into Miquella's for a second time, just the barest fraction, enough that Miquella almost seemed to swirl in his own thoughts once more and then Morgan pulled away, tension coiling in his muscles.
Miquella took a step backward, and the blood splashed up over his legs once more.
Morgan glanced around once more, muttering something beneath his voice, and then he lifted his sword straight out and slashed downward, the world parting, stretching open, before his blade as he did so.
Miquella's breath caught in his throat, the sight at once brilliant and horrifying. A tear in reality itself, the blood giving way to metal and smooth stone, glass, and mirrors.
"Hurry!" Morgan said, half-turning. His eyes stabbed past Miquella into the darkness around them and narrowed.
Sure, swift steps brought Miquella of the Haligtree and Morgan of the White Council into the darkness. Morgan's sword lit the darkness with a pale blue light which made the darkness seem to undulate and slither like serpents in the shadows.
Miquella mulled different words over in his mind, trying and failing to piece together the perfect question to ask. He could ask for Malenia? Whether this 'Morgan' knew her, knew of her, at least? It was understandable that good Saint Trina could be unknown, after all, Miquella had never meant for his alias to become as popular as she did.
Though, he did admit that it worked out far better, in Miquella's expert opinion than his mother's own attempts with Miquella's father. It was a closely guarded secret, really, but Miquella could not help but learn of it. It was not even quite clear if his siblings of Marika's issue even knew for sure of Marika's problems bringing her own ego to heel. Two beings, separate but one. Radagon, Miquella's father. Marika, Miquella's mother. Two in one. One in two.
A tragedy was written upon a golden tree. Miquella swallowed, pulling his hand back from where it almost grazed against a swollen pustule of blood, a pustule that had seemingly sprouted from sheer stone.
A moment later Miquella stopped, only faintly able to tell that Morgan still followed him from the sound of his slow and silent footsteps. The man did not speak, only slowly, out of arm's length draw forward until he was in line with where Miquella stood.
"I slew one," Miquella said, gesturing vaguely into the darkness, "There are many more."
He could hear them out there in the dark. More clearly now than when he first awoke. Wretched moans of ecstasy. Animalistic snarls and barks, things shuffling in the dark, just out of sight. Miquella felt a little like a child should feel, with nothing but the light of the pale blue sword to his right and the dim, pale golden light of his Erdtree seal. A childish fear of the dark, that never really went away, especially in the darkest of nights.
Before this night and darkness, Miquella was not quite sure that he would have been scared of the dark. There were dark things in the world, but they knew Miquella's place in it. He had provided sanctuary for the refuse and downtrodden. Misbegotten were story tale monsters whispered of by the matrons of Leyndell. Stories whispered to toddlers and saplings that refused to go to slip beneath warm blankets as the sun's light waned. Little did those children know of the fate of the Misbegotten, forced to waste away in hard labor at the hands of a master that saw them as little more than malformed animals. At least they were better off than the Albunairics and the Omens.
Miquella shuddered, the motion bone-deep, but that crow… that was no Misbegotten, nor Omen.
Miquella wrinkled his nose against his will, every instinct of his body screaming at him to retch. The pervasive reek of rot was stifling, all-consuming, so strong that it almost felt tangible against his skin, hanging in a fell miasma. It was stronger here than it had been before.
It reminded Miquella of his sister. A sickly sweet, heady scent that made Miquella's head swim as if he was floating. It was not a pleasant scent, for all that Miquella could never hope to clearly remember a time when the rot clung to his sister like a jealous lover.
It was this self-same scent that seemed to linger in this place. At first, Miquella admitted, he had lied to himself with some certainty.
It could not be Scarlet Rot.
It could not.
This cursed blood was not the curse of an Outer God manifested through perverse will into this world. Yet, before Miquella's mind's eye, he saw the crow again, as it pecked and devoured the woman that had been a beast. The tumors on its face and feathered breast were not normal.
Miquella could lie to himself all he wanted, but he knew the Scarlet Rot better than perhaps any living thing except the wretched Kindred of Rot that dwelled in the deepest reaches of dread Ainsel River, in its most forsaken depths.
Hence, Miquella was left with only one question to ask. What had Malenia done? His heart seemed to constrict within the demigod's chest, each breath a labor, slowly squeezing his breath from his heart. A rough voice jolted him from the panic that threatened to close like an iron vise around his heart.
"You did this?" Morgan asked, his voice little more than a grunt. He didn't even seem that interested.
He stood just outside of the furthest reaches of a base incantations area of effect, just outside where the sigil would reach if Miquella poured just a fraction into the necessary focus.
A charred broken body lay in front of the grey-cloaked man. Morgan prodded the body with the pointed tip of his enchanted blade, the body crumbling into dust before Miquella's eyes. It was the first thing to attack him here, the one he slew before he regressed the other to be as it should be. It was more horrific half crumbling as it was, its features turned seemingly petrified into a wide snarl, for all that its brown fur was burned away in black burns.
Miquella managed a nod, a shaky little gesture as he drew closer, eyeing the thing on the ground, half-submerged in blood as it was.
"Saint, is that what you claimed?" Morgan said finally, straightening, fixing Miquella with a look.
Miquella swallowed stiffly, the motion barely visible. He straightened his robes as best he could with his bloody hands. It didn't really help to make him more presentable.
"Saint Trina," Miquella offered quietly, "That is what I was known as."
"Known as?" Morgan asked, and his eyes seemed discerning, peeling away the layers that Miquella constructed about himself, piece by piece.
"This is not the work of St. Trina," Miquella stated, the protest slipping through his lips, "Trina offers sleep to those who need it, not slaying those that cannot."
Morgan raised an eyebrow. Again, he did not meet Miquella eyes directly, instead, his sharp eyes focused on a spot just to the left of Miquella's face. Miquella, in turn, twitched, and fought against his instinct, before he reached up to wipe at his cheek, yet nothing was there. Instead, Miquella left the wetness of the chill slick of the blood.
"I see," he said, not elaborating any forward.
Instead, he stepped into the darkness, moving away from Miquella before abruptly stopping in the middle of two columns. Miquella stumbled after, half again as silent as the veritable wraith in front of him. Morgan moved as swiftly and silently as a veteran knight, and every time he did, Miquella could feel his hackles raise, instincts screaming that the man in front of him was dangerous, was a killer. Miquella clenched the seal in his hands more closely, until it felt like it was leaving gouges in Miquella unblemished palms.
There was a man standing in front of Morgan. Naked as the day he was born and then some. Miquella swung his eyes upward, his face reddening slightly against his will. The man's eyes were cloudy and distant. Manacles closed around each leg, and blood stretched up his legs. It was easy for Miquella to surmise that the man had been traipsing through the blood for some time. The man himself seemed to be staring into everything and nothing.
"Thralls," Morgan whispered, raw fury slipping into his voice.
The man's eyes snapped toward Morgan then, but the cloudiness did not fade from his vision.
"What… what ails him?" Miquella asked, voice barely cast as a whisper as he stepped closer. Morgan glanced his way, lips twitching for a moment, before he ground his teeth, raising his sword to cast more light around the two. Another man, standing like the first, attached to the first by a rope was revealed behind the other, and then another, a woman, skin pale and unblemished.
"Red Court Venom," Morgan explained curtly, "It steals the mind. They've been given their fill and then some. Cattle before the slaughter."
"An affliction?" Miquella asked, his own voice hesitant.
Morgan shot him a look but didn't answer, stepping forward, starting to make a slow circle.
Miquella hesitated, hands half raising before he lowered them. Abruptly his mind flashed back to the woman. Did he dare? Miquella swallowed again, trying to still his heart as it hammered within his little ribcage.
"I can help them, I think," Miquella said, voice cast just high enough to be audible to Morgan. He stopped for a second, glancing back at the demigod.
"I have not asked you to do so, nor would the White Council reward you," Morgan said, some distaste crawling over his features at the words. They seemed to almost physically pain the man, as his scowl grew heavy and his fingers seemed to creak on the leather grip of his blade.
"I do this freely," Miquella assured, his gut seeming to clench. Red Court Venom was poison, or was it a drug? Those things were easier to remove than more insidious things. If it was the Scarlet Rot, then Miquella could kiss the idea a bittersweet goodbye, that thing if left to fester propagated backward and forward in equal measure until it had always been there and always would.
Morgan made no noise of assent, just stared at Miquella as if he was seeing him for the first time. There was the same wariness as before, but there was also an inkling, a fragment, of something else.
Miquella mustered his will, pouring his focus into his faith. Not faith in Marika, or faith in the Erdtree. Not faith in the Greater Will. Instead faith in the Haligtree, and faith in the primeval truth that all things seek to be. The Law of Regression burned in his flesh, the universal truth that all things were made with a purpose, with a meaning, and all things sought to return to that meaning.
The golden triangle of the crucible of all creation burned in front, before, and behind Miquella, superimposed on his body, its rings slipping across the surface, Miquella in the center, and Miquella poured his faith and will to realize its truth. Regression was reality, only an Outer God could reject its reality and substitute its own will in Miquella's place.
For a second something did. Something foul and rotten, that reeked of a haze of blood and sex, a perverse fecundity covered in barbs and teeth. For just a fraction of an instant, it recognized Miquella's order before it was swept aside, icy talons clutching at Miquella's heart and just grazing it with a cruel grasping sharpness.
One of the men in front of him gasped, a deep shuddering inhale. The cloudiness faded from his eyes, focus slipping back into his gaze. His eyes widened, taking in the blood on the ground and weeping from the carven idols before it dropped down to Miquella, still standing with both arms outstretched to his sides.
"What. You. How?" the man said, collapsing to his knees, raw anguish flooding across his face, "I'm free?"
The man behind him seemed to be choking on dry land, and the woman seemed to be drawing in great gasps of air, on the verge of hyperventilating. For a long moment, there was only the noise of breathing in the still silence.
"You- What was that?" Morgan demanded, his eyes stabbing into Miquella's and the world seemed to swirl before Morgan jerked his head away as if he'd been stung. Miquella wobbled on his feet, reaching out a hand to place it against the pillar nearest to him. The rotten blood flowed down and over his pale hand, coloring it crimson and black. Miquella heaved a breath, focusing on his will, forcing himself to remain standing.
"The Law of Regression," Miquella murmured, and his voice sounded faint even to his own ears, "It returns all things to be as they should be."
Morgan stood silent for an instant then grunted again, almost wavering he seemed to consider something before he scowled.
"I've changed my mind," He said, "I think you should come with me."
Miquella startled, and replied, his voice slightly tremulous, "All I did was cast Law of Regression. Many Fundamentalists of the Golden Order know of it."
Miquella in truth was wavering. Was not his goal to escape wherever this place was? To find Malenia?
Morgan shook his head, stepping closer, peering at Miquella more closely, "What you speak of, girl, might as well be Etruscan. I don't recognize your spell, but if it just did what it seems to have done, then you need to see the White Council."
Miquella eyes flashed to the side, what was 'Etruscan?' The 'White Council?'
"Take us with you," the other man said, almost stumbling over the words. He stared into the darkness and blood with barely veiled terror on his face.
A deep sonorous cry echoed from somewhere deep in the dark. Rising and rising before it fell.
"Don't leave us here!" The woman shrieked, just about throwing herself at Miquella's feet. The blood splashed upward from where she groveled.
Then a shrill shriek, far too close for comfort, pierced the shadows. Morgan stiffened, turning, his sword held in front of him, the blade outward. Miquella felt his heart drop from its position in his ribcage and splash into the bile within his stomach. He recognized the screech almost too well.
It was the same sound, the cursed bat-creature made when it attacked him the first time. Only this time, there were so many more from out in the dark.
"Stay close!" Morgan demanded, his voice tight. His dark eyes speared into Miquella's for a second time, just the barest fraction, enough that Miquella almost seemed to swirl in his own thoughts once more and then Morgan pulled away, tension coiling in his muscles.
Miquella took a step backward, and the blood splashed up over his legs once more.
Morgan glanced around once more, muttering something beneath his voice, and then he lifted his sword straight out and slashed downward, the world parting, stretching open, before his blade as he did so.
Miquella's breath caught in his throat, the sight at once brilliant and horrifying. A tear in reality itself, the blood giving way to metal and smooth stone, glass, and mirrors.
"Hurry!" Morgan said, half-turning. His eyes stabbed past Miquella into the darkness around them and narrowed.
- Location
- Australia
I imagine there are a few… issues… the White Council would love to see Regressed.
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
Could it potentially cure warlocks from Dark Magic poisoning? Or destroy Nemesis? I've never played at Elden Ring so I know literally nothing about it.
- Location
- Australia
Mechanically it strips you and those around you in a large area of all buffs or debuffs regardless of type. Mostly used in PvP to hilarious effect after someone buffs themselves all the way up, but it also works on bosses and enemies (and NPCs and allies). Lore wise, it is as Miquella said, it resets everything back to a default state, as it was as it came into being essentially. It could story wise be used in an offensive manner I guess too. Restoring someone's illness they've had since birth and the like I guess, but that would go against what I understand Miquella stands for - he is the ultimate White Mage, with max levelled Charisma.
In the case of his sister Melania (Blade of Miquella), Regression would never work on her because she was born with the Rot as far as I can remember. if she had contracted it later it should be able to reverse it, of course that would stop you being infected again though (Hence Miquellla alloyed golden needles that block Out Gods to a degree, and stop the Rots progression in his sister). I guess a combination of Regression and the needle would have cured his sister, but having to live with a huge golden need shoved into your body permanently would suck - better than the Rot though. In Dresden, it would mean Vampirism, Lycanthropy, uh, Fae charms, even Warding spells would be reverted. I'm guessing the snap Miquella felt in the first chapter was either the connection to the Formless Mother going bye bye, or the way back to the Lands Between. Only thing that could probably stand against it is something that exist outside reality like the Outer Gods, but they'd have to focus at it, I presume.
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Ando Owen
Yandere Illya is watching you.
- Location
- Montpellier
The Golden Order is the embodiment of Queen Marika's rule upon the Lands Between, the realm where Elden Ring takes place. Imagine a god imposing its logic and rules into a land until you cannot recognise it without it, the Golden Order is the symbol of it.
What is important to know is that among worshippers of the Golden Order, there is a theological school named the Golden Order Fundamentalists. Miquella was one of its members. Their defining traits would be two things :
- If they had a motto, it would be Faith seeking understanding. They try to pursue faith by deepening their knowledge of it through understanding. Within the game, it is understood as faith/intelligence hybrid spells.
- This is probably by this motto they were led to the idea that the Golden Order was defined by two principles : The Law of Regression and the Law of Causality. Regression is the idea that things yearn to go back to where they came from, and Causality that from one thing comes another.
I would like to point out the brilliance of tying these two concepts by the image of a tree. The roots represent Regression, the origin, while the branches represent Causality, the ever-growing infinities open by the succesion of events. They are tied together by the trunk of the tree, allowing synthesis and connection between the two opposite concepts through a Japanese understanding of tradition. Shuhari. Learn from the master, break away from the master, become a new master and take in new apprentices to perpetuate the method.
To be honest, there is very little that Regression and Causality cannot do if they are polished enough, and Miquella is likely one of the strongest spellcasters in Elden Ring. Regression is perfect in order to return something into a previous state, like curing poison or dispelling magic affecting something, this is the in-game use of the spell too. Any kind of transformation should be able to be regressed through the Law of Regression.
Miquella learned Fundamentalism in order to cure his sister Malenia from the Scarlet Rot, however he couldn't manage it. This is why he tried to find another path than Fundamentalism in order to save Malenia.
As for why he couldn't cure Malenia's Rot, I have two ideas why. The first being that whatever god entity touched Malenia is stronger than Miquella's attempts and it couldn't be removed. The second possibility, and the most fitting, would be that Regression has a logical weakness, that is concomitant events.
For example, if one used Regression to cure vampirism, one couldn't regress the blood thirst and the weakness but keep the improved physique and powers one can get from vampirism. They are the same thing expressed in different ways. Malenia and Miquella were cursed at birth, so it is very likely that curing Malenia from Scarlet Rot through Regression would delete her from existence as the Rot is directly tied to her birth, and Regression wouldn't be able to erase one but not the other.
Miquella's needle is likely due a change of tactics. Instead of erasing the Rot, he would try to suppress its effects into irrelevance. But the Shattering likely happened before he could fully realise his plan. The Haligtree likely took a huge chunk of his time. And then there was Mohg.
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Chapter 4: Trespassing in Death
Pridakarbiter
Unseelie
- Location
- Arctis Tor
Chapter 4:
Light seared into Miquella's eyes, nearly blinding him with its intensity. He raised a hand toward the sky, shielding his eyes against the scalding luminescence.
"Quick," Morgan called, voice strained, "into the light!"
Miquella's feet burned under him as they touched hot sand and he hopped for a moment on bare feet, rolling his feet to prevent them from burning.
Through the haze of sunlight, Miquella caught sight of Morgan by the door, the burly man reaching out and grabbing one of the naked men and roughly pulling him forward so he wasn't blocking the tear in reality itself.
Still squinting in the light, Miquella could only stare at the rend. He couldn't help but draw a connection to the sorcery of the evergaols, and wonder if they had stepped into one before he discarded the idea a moment later. The evergaols worked to create a layer, removed from the waking world by one or two steps, enough that the prisoners were incapable of interacting with the surroundings but could still watch time and nature pass them by as they lived out their sentence.
Here was different. It felt different. Miquella could almost taste it in the air on his parched lips. Power. Teleportation was not an unknown skill, the Maosoleum knights utilized a bastardized version which worked much the same as the evergaols, stepping out a phase with reality to discorporate and strike from behind. A stable, focus-powered gateway? That was sorcery that Miquella did not know and did not know of, which was all the more surprising.
Of course, Miquella had never been allowed into Raya Lucaria. A virtue of being the child of Radagon, Miquella suspected. It did not matter by what margin Miquella solidly exceeded the entrance examinations, he was barred from attendance. So it was possible that such rites were known to the advanced Conspectus sorcerers, but Miquella had been to Selia, and there they knew nothing of such a spell.
It was new sorcery, and for that Miquella was intrigued.
The second thrall followed the woman, clutching at the bare arm of the first. She was trembling, just about shaking, her hand clenched around the pasty arm of the second man. His eyes were wide and horrified all the same. All three of the thralls were still completely nude, putrid dried blood clinging to their feet in much the same manner as the blood clung to Miquella's fair features.
Miquella startled, lurching backward as a brown-furred hand, adorned with cruel black talons fairly dripping with visceral lifeblood, burst from the hazy crystalline surface of the portal. Miquella surged focus and faith to his seal, a holy incantation almost slipping from his fingers. The pattern held for just an instant, reluctant to break Morgan's own spell. The rest of the creature's body seemed poised to follow, a squashed head almost breaking the surface before the creature snapped backward with a barely audible scream, its flesh smoldering at the barest touch of sunlight. Miquella's grip on his incantation, a golden spear, loosened and he let the pattern of faith fall away back into motes of golden light.
Could those things not cross over into wherever they were? Miquella cast his gaze around. Only sand and dust, cracked earth, and blue sky overhead greeted his eyes. No Erdtree. Only a brilliant sun that scorched the Earth with abandon. Miqeulla forced down a wave of panic that threatened to bubble free. He was Miquella! Just because the Erdtree was missing did not mean anything. A mountain could be in the way, or it could be obscured by sorcery…
Miquella looked at the barren and flat sand and cracked earth, surface as flat as a blade's edge. Seeds of panic threatened to germinate again, and again Miquella forced it down, repeating the words to himself, the Erdtree's absence meant nothing!
Morgan just about refrained himself from physically pulling the two stragglers forward, away from the aperture and swung his sword at the tear, cutting the air. With a hiss of displaced air, the portal gateway collapsed in on itself.
"Twice-damned vampires," Morgan muttered to himself before glancing around once, his lips twitching before he stilled, an expression of focus dancing across his face. Sweat beaded along his brow already from the heat.
The three former thralls shifted on the burned and scorched earth, cracked as it was. Miquella found the heat uncomfortable, just as much as they. Already his white tunic clung to his body, and his sweat beaded along his hairline. He raised a bloody hand, already drying, to wipe at his brow, leaving a sense of stickiness across his face. Miquella resisted the urge to rub at his cheeks.
Miquella frowned. For just a second he allowed himself to think. Vampires? The creatures had a proper name?
"Vampires?" Miquella asked, his tone quietly hesitant. It wasn't a word that Miquella was familiar with in the least, and Miquella had perused many a bestiary in his research, made by the brightest minds in Leyndell and beyond.
Morgan glanced at him, his concentration slipping, "The Red Court."
"Ah," Miquella replied, turning away, his own eyes staring away toward the distant horizon, "I had surmised they were some form of giant bat."
Miquella still did not even know what the difference was between "Red Court" and "vampire" beyond that they were both used interchangeably. Again, the nomenclature of calling itself such and Morgan confirming it seemed to indicate that the creature, this vampire, was part of a polity. A polity that Miquella had just made himself an enemy of, so Miquella sighed slightly, sweeping his blonde braids back from where they had fallen across his eyes.
Morgan did not react to Miquella's statement about the bats, nor to Miquella sigh, or at least did not react in a way Miquella could hear. His expression did twitch but that was it.
The first thrall, cleared his throat, still shifting his feet as if the ground was made of hot coals, yet he seemed to be slowly becoming accustomed to the heat. Miquella's gaze flickered to him, and just as the man was about to speak acted, focus and faith pooling again, and the golden coils of a seal formed around his feet, even visible in the blinding light of the sun.
"Erdtree bless us," Miquella murmured, quiet enough that none of the others should hear, and then the blessing burst from his body in motes of gold, striking each of those with him in turn. The three thralls visibly relaxed, their feet stopping their pitiful dancing even as the Protection of the Erdtree settled around them and the sun lost some of its uncomfortable light.
Miquella's belief in the Erdtree was not absolute, it was not blind faith. However, he could understand that there was power there, and it could be used by those that believed it could be used. So Miquella believed that it could be used and it was. Belief and worship of the Erdtree were not the same, even if the scholars deemed it to be so. A god was not granted worship on existence alone, but not worshiping a god did not predicate disbelief.
Either way, Miquella was somewhat sure that he could, in fact, eventually substitute the incantations of the Erdtree for Haligtree ones that served the same purpose. It did mean, that at least somewhere, the Erdtree still existed in some form, and that was a slight comfort since it meant Marika, that mother, still lived.
"What did you do?" Morgan asked. His eyes were narrowed but his tone wasn't accusatory, it was more clinical than that.
"I blessed us," Miquella responded blithely, his lips pursing slightly. It was beginning to grate on him, just the slightly to be questioned so much. He was of Marika's get, and he could not help the irritation that bubbled in his breast. A second later, Miqeulla quashed such feelings, after all, he still had plenty of questions to ask the Warden of the White Council himself and Miquella was not hypocritical enough or egotistical enough to apply a double standard.
That was more Malenia's thing, Miquella thought just a little snidely to himself.
"I see," Morgan responded, just as blithely, "Why?"
"To resist all damages, as it is, the light of sun here is quite damaging," Miquella answered after a moment, gaze slightly pensive as he glanced toward Morgan again. The man stood still near the doorway, sweat still beading at his temples. His sword was in between the two again but was not held aloft between them, instead, the point was directed toward the dirt.
Morgan grunted, ever the eloquent speaker and then raised his free hand and gestured vaguely around them. For all the expression seemed almost random, it was anything but that, Miquella could feel the subtle wafting and swelling of power brush against his skin as Morgan readied some kind of spell before it seemed to fade away as quickly as it came.
"We are inordinately lucky," Morgan said, "The day broke here but a few hours past. If we had exited anywhere at dusk, they would already be upon us."
"Magic? Those were really vampires?" One of the former thralls asked, standing uncomfortable in the sun. His hands were stretched over the area his smalls should have covered, and Miquella again kept his gaze away. All three were unclothed as they had been before, and it felt improper to stare.
"Aye," Morgan replied, his voice heavy, "You were enthralled by the Red Court. Their venom is a potent aphrodisiac when they wish and dulls the mind. Makes it easier for them to feed."
"Feed? On people? I remember…" the female thrall says, before trailing off.
Morgan solemnly nodded before glancing back toward where the hole in reality was, "We should leave this area immediately. I will do what I can to see you to wherever you want to go, but that can wait until after these vampires have lost our trail."
"They cannot open a gateway as you did?" Miquella asked, shifting on the balls of his feet. His Erdtree seal seemed warm in his hand.
"No." Morgan replied, dashing Miquella's hopes which had just begun to climb, "They almost certainly can, especially from such a place of blood. They hate the sunlight, and that is our only ally."
Miquella glanced upward at the sun, as it hung as a silent watcher far in the sky. How many hours of the day had already passed?
"You cannot open a gateway to another place?" Miquella finally asked, stepping away from the group a little and kneeling to pick up a handful of harsh red rock, grains of sand clinging to its rough surface. He hefted it consideringly for a moment before dropping it as Morgan spoke again.
"I cannot here, nor I expect I would wish to," Morgan responded curtly, "This is Death Valley."
Morgan glanced at the sun, sweat still beading along his brow, and started to walk before stopping abruptly and turning toward the thralls.
"With luck we can reach a road or a path. There I will attempt to open another doorway into the Nevernever." Miquella could see as clear as day the doubt that played across Morgan's face, "We must get out of the desert before nightfall."
Miquella was tempted to ask 'why' but held his meagre tongue. He already looked the fool, there was no reason to open his mouth and remove all doubt. It was clear that Morgan was familiar with both their new enemies and the place they had now arrived. It was also clear that he expected Miquella to know of the vampires.
Morgan had initially discerned that Miquella was not wholly a child, but Miquella feared that the more he expressed he did not know, the more Morgan would begin to treat him as one. If there was nothing else that Miquella hated more, it was being treated as a child. Well, Miquella barred his teeth behind his lips, he hated the Rot more, but that was on an entirely different level.
"If we but tarry a moment," Miquella offered, "I could cast more protective incantations upon us. Speed our travel."
Morgan glanced toward Miquella, indecision playing across his stony features for less than a second, and he replied, "Freely given?"
"Of course," Miquella scoffed lightly, his voice high, and showing all of its childlike nature, "You art an ally."
Miquella knelt, holding faith and focus in equal measure, and the golden coils formed around his feet again, as the symbol of the Erdtree formed in front of him, its healing roots, etched in sigil as they were, reaching out to each of the four around the demigod. His focus and faith flowed freely from him, bolstering Morgan and the three thralls.
The lines etched across Morgan's face relaxed just slightly, some long-held pain easing for a fraction of a second before his expression shifted back into stony stoicness. The thralls were more vocal, they groaned and the woman moaned with relief, just about falling back into the sand.
Perhaps, Miquella mused, he had overdone it?
"Thank you," the first male thrall said, "Thank you. I don't know much about this magic thing, but you have my thanks. I owe you one for getting us free from those things."
"Gracias," the woman whispered, two hands still covering herself as best she was able.
Her skin was darker than the two men, both of whom had skin about as fair as any Northerner. The woman's complexion matched those of a Seafarer, tanned by the light of the sun and hard toil. The men though, for all their fairer complexion had the rough hands of laborers, not even the calluses of sword fighters.
"I desire no thanks," Miquella said, "I only ask that you flourish anew in return."
The three, the two men, and the woman looked at him with something akin to devotion and Miquella did not quail away from their adoration. For all that it left a little sting inside of him, for here were more that adored him not because of who he was, but for what he had done.
Morgan, still without expression, yet seeming faintly disproving strode away, long strides easily crossing sand and cracked earth.
Miquella hurried afterward, the sand seeming to burn his feet even though it left no real damage. The faith within his veins provided a soft healing as the sun beat down mercilessly.
"I'm Greg, by the way," the thrall beside him said after a moment between breaths, already breathing hard despite the healing and the way the sun was partially negated by Miquella's power.
Miquella nodded his head, blonde braids flying as he stepped around a desiccated brown bush that Morgan had simply stepped over briskly.
"I am Trina," Miquella responded.
"Izel," the woman offered after a moment, sounding quite hesitant. The second man remained still and silent.
"Trina," the woman, Izel, said, "It is a pretty name for a pretty girl."
Miquella frowned but again didn't bother to correct her. After all, it was partially true from a certain point of view. Idly, Miquella wondered whether mother was mistaken for a girl all the time as Radagon? Father definitely had the hair for it.
Morgan did not offer his name to the former thralls, only continuing on with a relentless pace that made Miquella's lungs begin to burn, a sharp stabbing stitch of pain emanating from his lower side before long, forcing Miquella to let the golden coils wash over him yet again, easing the pain in his short legs and side, and easing the belabored breathing of the three former thralls.
Greg's and the other's skin was starting to turn pink, even under the light of the Miquella's incantation, and Miquella's spell as it washed over them, returned a more normal ruddy pallor to their skin.
"Morgan!" Miquella called, and the Warden strolled to a stop, glancing back at the four. Sweat beaded across his face and drenched his white collared shirt, visible through his grey cloak. The grey cloak itself was untouched by sweat, as pristine as when Miquella first saw it.
"What is it, Saint Trina?" Morgan asked, his breath a little heavy.
"I am incapable of sustaining us perpetually," Miquella explained through breaths that came a little faster than normal, "My focus wanes."
Morgan exhaled forcefully, before he responded, "There is a road just over the horizon. We can rest there."
Miquella nodded slowly, eyeing the way they still had to go. Already his legs ached, and that was even with healing incantations at his beck and call. For just a fraction of a second Miquella allowed himself to consider whether prosthetic legs were really that bad, after all, then his legs would not tire. But yes, if Malenia's complaints about chaffing were any indication, they would not be any more pleasant.
Morgan started to turn before he glanced back the way they came, and his lips twitched into a grimace, "With luck, our trespass has not been noticed."
Light seared into Miquella's eyes, nearly blinding him with its intensity. He raised a hand toward the sky, shielding his eyes against the scalding luminescence.
"Quick," Morgan called, voice strained, "into the light!"
Miquella's feet burned under him as they touched hot sand and he hopped for a moment on bare feet, rolling his feet to prevent them from burning.
Through the haze of sunlight, Miquella caught sight of Morgan by the door, the burly man reaching out and grabbing one of the naked men and roughly pulling him forward so he wasn't blocking the tear in reality itself.
Still squinting in the light, Miquella could only stare at the rend. He couldn't help but draw a connection to the sorcery of the evergaols, and wonder if they had stepped into one before he discarded the idea a moment later. The evergaols worked to create a layer, removed from the waking world by one or two steps, enough that the prisoners were incapable of interacting with the surroundings but could still watch time and nature pass them by as they lived out their sentence.
Here was different. It felt different. Miquella could almost taste it in the air on his parched lips. Power. Teleportation was not an unknown skill, the Maosoleum knights utilized a bastardized version which worked much the same as the evergaols, stepping out a phase with reality to discorporate and strike from behind. A stable, focus-powered gateway? That was sorcery that Miquella did not know and did not know of, which was all the more surprising.
Of course, Miquella had never been allowed into Raya Lucaria. A virtue of being the child of Radagon, Miquella suspected. It did not matter by what margin Miquella solidly exceeded the entrance examinations, he was barred from attendance. So it was possible that such rites were known to the advanced Conspectus sorcerers, but Miquella had been to Selia, and there they knew nothing of such a spell.
It was new sorcery, and for that Miquella was intrigued.
The second thrall followed the woman, clutching at the bare arm of the first. She was trembling, just about shaking, her hand clenched around the pasty arm of the second man. His eyes were wide and horrified all the same. All three of the thralls were still completely nude, putrid dried blood clinging to their feet in much the same manner as the blood clung to Miquella's fair features.
Miquella startled, lurching backward as a brown-furred hand, adorned with cruel black talons fairly dripping with visceral lifeblood, burst from the hazy crystalline surface of the portal. Miquella surged focus and faith to his seal, a holy incantation almost slipping from his fingers. The pattern held for just an instant, reluctant to break Morgan's own spell. The rest of the creature's body seemed poised to follow, a squashed head almost breaking the surface before the creature snapped backward with a barely audible scream, its flesh smoldering at the barest touch of sunlight. Miquella's grip on his incantation, a golden spear, loosened and he let the pattern of faith fall away back into motes of golden light.
Could those things not cross over into wherever they were? Miquella cast his gaze around. Only sand and dust, cracked earth, and blue sky overhead greeted his eyes. No Erdtree. Only a brilliant sun that scorched the Earth with abandon. Miqeulla forced down a wave of panic that threatened to bubble free. He was Miquella! Just because the Erdtree was missing did not mean anything. A mountain could be in the way, or it could be obscured by sorcery…
Miquella looked at the barren and flat sand and cracked earth, surface as flat as a blade's edge. Seeds of panic threatened to germinate again, and again Miquella forced it down, repeating the words to himself, the Erdtree's absence meant nothing!
Morgan just about refrained himself from physically pulling the two stragglers forward, away from the aperture and swung his sword at the tear, cutting the air. With a hiss of displaced air, the portal gateway collapsed in on itself.
"Twice-damned vampires," Morgan muttered to himself before glancing around once, his lips twitching before he stilled, an expression of focus dancing across his face. Sweat beaded along his brow already from the heat.
The three former thralls shifted on the burned and scorched earth, cracked as it was. Miquella found the heat uncomfortable, just as much as they. Already his white tunic clung to his body, and his sweat beaded along his hairline. He raised a bloody hand, already drying, to wipe at his brow, leaving a sense of stickiness across his face. Miquella resisted the urge to rub at his cheeks.
Miquella frowned. For just a second he allowed himself to think. Vampires? The creatures had a proper name?
"Vampires?" Miquella asked, his tone quietly hesitant. It wasn't a word that Miquella was familiar with in the least, and Miquella had perused many a bestiary in his research, made by the brightest minds in Leyndell and beyond.
Morgan glanced at him, his concentration slipping, "The Red Court."
"Ah," Miquella replied, turning away, his own eyes staring away toward the distant horizon, "I had surmised they were some form of giant bat."
Miquella still did not even know what the difference was between "Red Court" and "vampire" beyond that they were both used interchangeably. Again, the nomenclature of calling itself such and Morgan confirming it seemed to indicate that the creature, this vampire, was part of a polity. A polity that Miquella had just made himself an enemy of, so Miquella sighed slightly, sweeping his blonde braids back from where they had fallen across his eyes.
Morgan did not react to Miquella's statement about the bats, nor to Miquella sigh, or at least did not react in a way Miquella could hear. His expression did twitch but that was it.
The first thrall, cleared his throat, still shifting his feet as if the ground was made of hot coals, yet he seemed to be slowly becoming accustomed to the heat. Miquella's gaze flickered to him, and just as the man was about to speak acted, focus and faith pooling again, and the golden coils of a seal formed around his feet, even visible in the blinding light of the sun.
"Erdtree bless us," Miquella murmured, quiet enough that none of the others should hear, and then the blessing burst from his body in motes of gold, striking each of those with him in turn. The three thralls visibly relaxed, their feet stopping their pitiful dancing even as the Protection of the Erdtree settled around them and the sun lost some of its uncomfortable light.
Miquella's belief in the Erdtree was not absolute, it was not blind faith. However, he could understand that there was power there, and it could be used by those that believed it could be used. So Miquella believed that it could be used and it was. Belief and worship of the Erdtree were not the same, even if the scholars deemed it to be so. A god was not granted worship on existence alone, but not worshiping a god did not predicate disbelief.
Either way, Miquella was somewhat sure that he could, in fact, eventually substitute the incantations of the Erdtree for Haligtree ones that served the same purpose. It did mean, that at least somewhere, the Erdtree still existed in some form, and that was a slight comfort since it meant Marika, that mother, still lived.
"What did you do?" Morgan asked. His eyes were narrowed but his tone wasn't accusatory, it was more clinical than that.
"I blessed us," Miquella responded blithely, his lips pursing slightly. It was beginning to grate on him, just the slightly to be questioned so much. He was of Marika's get, and he could not help the irritation that bubbled in his breast. A second later, Miqeulla quashed such feelings, after all, he still had plenty of questions to ask the Warden of the White Council himself and Miquella was not hypocritical enough or egotistical enough to apply a double standard.
That was more Malenia's thing, Miquella thought just a little snidely to himself.
"I see," Morgan responded, just as blithely, "Why?"
"To resist all damages, as it is, the light of sun here is quite damaging," Miquella answered after a moment, gaze slightly pensive as he glanced toward Morgan again. The man stood still near the doorway, sweat still beading at his temples. His sword was in between the two again but was not held aloft between them, instead, the point was directed toward the dirt.
Morgan grunted, ever the eloquent speaker and then raised his free hand and gestured vaguely around them. For all the expression seemed almost random, it was anything but that, Miquella could feel the subtle wafting and swelling of power brush against his skin as Morgan readied some kind of spell before it seemed to fade away as quickly as it came.
"We are inordinately lucky," Morgan said, "The day broke here but a few hours past. If we had exited anywhere at dusk, they would already be upon us."
"Magic? Those were really vampires?" One of the former thralls asked, standing uncomfortable in the sun. His hands were stretched over the area his smalls should have covered, and Miquella again kept his gaze away. All three were unclothed as they had been before, and it felt improper to stare.
"Aye," Morgan replied, his voice heavy, "You were enthralled by the Red Court. Their venom is a potent aphrodisiac when they wish and dulls the mind. Makes it easier for them to feed."
"Feed? On people? I remember…" the female thrall says, before trailing off.
Morgan solemnly nodded before glancing back toward where the hole in reality was, "We should leave this area immediately. I will do what I can to see you to wherever you want to go, but that can wait until after these vampires have lost our trail."
"They cannot open a gateway as you did?" Miquella asked, shifting on the balls of his feet. His Erdtree seal seemed warm in his hand.
"No." Morgan replied, dashing Miquella's hopes which had just begun to climb, "They almost certainly can, especially from such a place of blood. They hate the sunlight, and that is our only ally."
Miquella glanced upward at the sun, as it hung as a silent watcher far in the sky. How many hours of the day had already passed?
"You cannot open a gateway to another place?" Miquella finally asked, stepping away from the group a little and kneeling to pick up a handful of harsh red rock, grains of sand clinging to its rough surface. He hefted it consideringly for a moment before dropping it as Morgan spoke again.
"I cannot here, nor I expect I would wish to," Morgan responded curtly, "This is Death Valley."
Morgan glanced at the sun, sweat still beading along his brow, and started to walk before stopping abruptly and turning toward the thralls.
"With luck we can reach a road or a path. There I will attempt to open another doorway into the Nevernever." Miquella could see as clear as day the doubt that played across Morgan's face, "We must get out of the desert before nightfall."
Miquella was tempted to ask 'why' but held his meagre tongue. He already looked the fool, there was no reason to open his mouth and remove all doubt. It was clear that Morgan was familiar with both their new enemies and the place they had now arrived. It was also clear that he expected Miquella to know of the vampires.
Morgan had initially discerned that Miquella was not wholly a child, but Miquella feared that the more he expressed he did not know, the more Morgan would begin to treat him as one. If there was nothing else that Miquella hated more, it was being treated as a child. Well, Miquella barred his teeth behind his lips, he hated the Rot more, but that was on an entirely different level.
"If we but tarry a moment," Miquella offered, "I could cast more protective incantations upon us. Speed our travel."
Morgan glanced toward Miquella, indecision playing across his stony features for less than a second, and he replied, "Freely given?"
"Of course," Miquella scoffed lightly, his voice high, and showing all of its childlike nature, "You art an ally."
Miquella knelt, holding faith and focus in equal measure, and the golden coils formed around his feet again, as the symbol of the Erdtree formed in front of him, its healing roots, etched in sigil as they were, reaching out to each of the four around the demigod. His focus and faith flowed freely from him, bolstering Morgan and the three thralls.
The lines etched across Morgan's face relaxed just slightly, some long-held pain easing for a fraction of a second before his expression shifted back into stony stoicness. The thralls were more vocal, they groaned and the woman moaned with relief, just about falling back into the sand.
Perhaps, Miquella mused, he had overdone it?
"Thank you," the first male thrall said, "Thank you. I don't know much about this magic thing, but you have my thanks. I owe you one for getting us free from those things."
"Gracias," the woman whispered, two hands still covering herself as best she was able.
Her skin was darker than the two men, both of whom had skin about as fair as any Northerner. The woman's complexion matched those of a Seafarer, tanned by the light of the sun and hard toil. The men though, for all their fairer complexion had the rough hands of laborers, not even the calluses of sword fighters.
"I desire no thanks," Miquella said, "I only ask that you flourish anew in return."
The three, the two men, and the woman looked at him with something akin to devotion and Miquella did not quail away from their adoration. For all that it left a little sting inside of him, for here were more that adored him not because of who he was, but for what he had done.
Morgan, still without expression, yet seeming faintly disproving strode away, long strides easily crossing sand and cracked earth.
Miquella hurried afterward, the sand seeming to burn his feet even though it left no real damage. The faith within his veins provided a soft healing as the sun beat down mercilessly.
"I'm Greg, by the way," the thrall beside him said after a moment between breaths, already breathing hard despite the healing and the way the sun was partially negated by Miquella's power.
Miquella nodded his head, blonde braids flying as he stepped around a desiccated brown bush that Morgan had simply stepped over briskly.
"I am Trina," Miquella responded.
"Izel," the woman offered after a moment, sounding quite hesitant. The second man remained still and silent.
"Trina," the woman, Izel, said, "It is a pretty name for a pretty girl."
Miquella frowned but again didn't bother to correct her. After all, it was partially true from a certain point of view. Idly, Miquella wondered whether mother was mistaken for a girl all the time as Radagon? Father definitely had the hair for it.
Morgan did not offer his name to the former thralls, only continuing on with a relentless pace that made Miquella's lungs begin to burn, a sharp stabbing stitch of pain emanating from his lower side before long, forcing Miquella to let the golden coils wash over him yet again, easing the pain in his short legs and side, and easing the belabored breathing of the three former thralls.
Greg's and the other's skin was starting to turn pink, even under the light of the Miquella's incantation, and Miquella's spell as it washed over them, returned a more normal ruddy pallor to their skin.
"Morgan!" Miquella called, and the Warden strolled to a stop, glancing back at the four. Sweat beaded across his face and drenched his white collared shirt, visible through his grey cloak. The grey cloak itself was untouched by sweat, as pristine as when Miquella first saw it.
"What is it, Saint Trina?" Morgan asked, his breath a little heavy.
"I am incapable of sustaining us perpetually," Miquella explained through breaths that came a little faster than normal, "My focus wanes."
Morgan exhaled forcefully, before he responded, "There is a road just over the horizon. We can rest there."
Miquella nodded slowly, eyeing the way they still had to go. Already his legs ached, and that was even with healing incantations at his beck and call. For just a fraction of a second Miquella allowed himself to consider whether prosthetic legs were really that bad, after all, then his legs would not tire. But yes, if Malenia's complaints about chaffing were any indication, they would not be any more pleasant.
Morgan started to turn before he glanced back the way they came, and his lips twitched into a grimace, "With luck, our trespass has not been noticed."
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
Thanks for the update🙂 Has Trina already killed people with magic? If it is so, I hope he doesn't reveal it when he's too close to Morgan, it would be bad😁
Ando Owen
Yandere Illya is watching you.
- Location
- Montpellier
I can perfectly see why Miquella would be barred from Raya Lucaria. This would be a humiliation for Rennala.
I noticed you miswrote Miqeulla a few times.
As for asking questions to Morgan, the issue isn't really hypocrisy or ego but power and prestige. Miquella is a demigod, he is used to being on top of most hierarchies. He is also noted in game to be particularly good at being charismatic and charming people. If Morgan was from the Lands Between, he would show great consideration to Miquella, if only for his status. But here, Miquella is a stranger meeting another stranger, there is the unease of the unknown and the threat of violence is too present to ask questions unilaterally.
It's not double standard. It's being on an equal footing due to the lack of context between the two.
I noticed you miswrote Miqeulla a few times.
As for asking questions to Morgan, the issue isn't really hypocrisy or ego but power and prestige. Miquella is a demigod, he is used to being on top of most hierarchies. He is also noted in game to be particularly good at being charismatic and charming people. If Morgan was from the Lands Between, he would show great consideration to Miquella, if only for his status. But here, Miquella is a stranger meeting another stranger, there is the unease of the unknown and the threat of violence is too present to ask questions unilaterally.
It's not double standard. It's being on an equal footing due to the lack of context between the two.
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