Maidenless No Longer (Elden Ring)

The crumbling ruins of Farum Azula are surrounded by a massive raging storm filled to the brim with dragons and flying Beastmen. To even reach the remnants of the ruined domed city was a perilous journey, to be sure. But at the center of the ruins was another storm, a raging tornado that moved so fast that not even the crazed, broken denizens of Farum Azula dared to brave it.
 
It was to the very edge of that tornado that her Tarnished had brought them. It was on an expanse of ruined floor floating just off of the side of said tornado that he’d forced them to lie down. And it was that tornado now that expanded to cover the three of them as the world itself seemed to reverse in time, everything flowing backwards as Melina shut her one open eye as tightly as she possibly could with a grimace.
 
For a long moment, she feared that this was to be their end. Perhaps her Tarnished had finally bitten off more than he could chew. Perhaps they were doomed by his hubris, by his vanity, by his greed.
 
… But no. The tornado passes them by, and for a long moment they are barely protected by the downward dip of the crack in the stone he’d found for them to lay in. They are buffeted, but with his strong, masculine hands grasping at their own, it’s as if nothing on this world or any other could possibly blow them away.
 
And then it’s over, and the winds die down. Slowly, hesitantly, Melina deigns to open her eyes. What madness has her chosen champion wrought now? What has he done? As he sits up beside her, Melina does the same on one side of him, while Malenia does so on the other. She pays the red-haired demigod they’ve brought along for the ride no mind, however.
 
Instead, she focuses on their surroundings, taking in the… arena they seem to be in. The fully intact arena, with the pillars that had been in ruins mere moments before now standing up straight, and an arena floor that had been consumed by a tornado now completely untouched and pristine once more. The circular stadium is massive in size, and was likely the pride of Farum Azula, once upon a time. Indeed, if this is just the stadium, the domed city in turn must have been insanely impressive at the height of its power.
 
As they rise to their feet, Melina continues to gaze around, gawking at the restored scenery. Until, that is, her eyes lock onto something floating in the air off in the distance, in the very center of the arena. No… no, not something. Rather, someone. Melina’s one open eye grows wider as she recognizes the form of a massive two-headed dragon curled in on itself, arms and hands crossed over its chest and wings folded in close to protect it from the elements.
 
Its not flying, but simply hovering there, as it protected from the elements… or rather, from time itself. Melina’s jaw drops open, and even to her ears, her voice is rather shrill.
 
“Is that… is that the Dragonlord Placidusax?! My Tarnished… please do not tell me you brought us back in time to the past where Placidusax still reigned!”
 
She’s not expecting a verbal response, which is why Melina is quite surprised when she gets one.
 
“No!”
 
Except, that’s no masculine voice. That’s very much a woman’s voice… Malenia’s voice specifically. Whipping around, Melina finds that in her moment of distraction (and to be fair, the curled, hulking form of Placidusax is QUITE the distraction) her Tarnished had moved on Malenia, taking the Blade of Miquella by surprise. The red-haired swordswoman had clearly let her guard down around the Tarnished. Not surprising, considering he’d beaten her silly and then helped her save her brother, seemingly out of the kindness of his heart.
 
As such, when he’d walked right up beside her and yanked the needle from beneath her breast, Malenia had been unprepared for the sudden seemingly inexplicable act of betrayal. As her brother’s needle is removed from her, the Scarlet Rot returns with a vengeance, bubbling up from within Malenia’s body in under a second.
 
Unprepared for it, the red-haired demigod falls back, crying out as she shudders, her body trembling under the sudden renewed onslaught of virulent rot and disease and infection. Melina allows herself to feel a moment of pity for the other woman, before turning her curious gaze to her Tarnished. Just… what was he up to?
 
Holding Miquella’s Needle aloft, her Tarnished looks right back at her and grins… and then, he raises a finger… and pricks it. The effect, much to Melina’s shock and awe, is immediately. In an instant, the massive burn scar he has all across his torso and back from the Three Fingers’ embrace roars to life in a yellow-orange frenzied flame. However, as quickly as it rises to defend it’s claim, it’s sucked away, every last ounce of the fire flying across his body, up his arm, down his finger, and into Miquella’s Needle.
 
In a heartbeat, Melina can tell that her Tarnished has just done away with any claim that the Frenzied Flame has to his mind, flesh, or soul. In an instant, he has undone his foolish act, saving himself and possibly the entire world from burning at the hands of madness and flame.
 
Pulling the needle back from his finger, he turns around and kneels beside a whimpering, almost sobbing Malenia. And slides it right back under her breast, into its previous place. Once more, Miquella’s Needle goes to work. Except, it’s obvious it does so much more than it did previously. Indeed, Malenia’s breathing quickly evens out, her gasps rapidly dying down as her rot scarring… actually begins to clear up. The calcified rot covering her eyes pulls away, and for the first time, she’s actually able to look upon him clearly.
 
Her limbs do not regrow, Melina notes, but every other trace of the Scarlet Rot’s impact upon her body disappears in a heartbeat.
 
“H-How… how can this be?”
 
Malenia sounds awestruck, and to be fair, Melina shares her opinion. This was the Tarnished’s plan all along. She’d thought him a self-sacrificing idiot, but he’d known how he was going to save all of them the entire time, even himself. But the question nevertheless remained. How?! How had he done this?
 
The answer comes from taking another look around the impossibly reconstituted arena, the still hovering form of the Dragonlord Placidusax, and most importantly of all, what lay beyond said arena. It was not a fully reconstituted version of the domed flying city of Farum Azula. Rather, it was endless fog in all directions, when one tried to gaze past the massive pillars that ringed the humungous stadium.
 
… This was not the past. Traveling back in time was not possible. They had not returned to a time from before the Erdtree and the Elden Ring. They had not come back to a time before Queen Marika and her Elden Lord. Rather… they had come to a place outside of time.
 
It all begins to coalesce in Melina’s mind. She’s a smart girl. Had to be, for her purpose. Had to be able to think quickly on her feet, had to be able to connect the dots and problem solve when difficult situations presented themselves. And with the information she had on the subject, she was finally able to postulate some answers.
 
The cataclysm Farum Azula had faced… came from within. The destruction of the domed city was the doing of the Dragonlord Placidusax. Something had spooked him. Something had caused him to flee to this place. In doing so, he had torn Farum Azula to pieces around him. In running here, to this place between Caelid and the Mountaintops of the Giants, he had ripped the domed city to shreds, leaving a streak of ruins strewn across the Lands Between in his wake, and causing some of the once great city to remain wrapped around his sanctuary, drawn by the gravitational pull of his power.
 
Meanwhile, the Dragonlord had locked himself away at the heart of a storm that was beyond time itself. He had come to a place outside of time, a place where he could exist eternally, where he could wait for a paradigm shift. He had been what ruled before the Erdtree, before Queen Marika and the Elden Lord and the Elden Ring.
 
Through this, he had clearly hoped to be what ruled after as well, no matter how long it took. After all, in this place, it would be but a blink of an eye, wouldn’t it?
 
This didn’t explain precisely HOW the Tarnished knew to come here… but it DID explain what he’d done, to both himself and to Malenia. Melina was, after all, far more familiar with Miquella’s Needle then she was with Farum Azula and Placidusax. As such, she could say with much more confidence what had just happened with all of that.
 
Put bluntly, Miquella’s Needle was crafted with no one besides Malenia, his dear sister, in mind. It was one of several in fact, crafted to try and ward away the meddling of outer gods… like the entity behind the Scarlet Rot which had infected his sister for so, so long. Unfortunately, Miquella’s needles did not solve the problem. They were a temporary solution, unalloyed and incomplete.
 
And unfortunately, even an Empyrean such as Miquella, with a Goddess such as Queen Marika for his mother, did not have access to the one resource that he needed to complete his work. The resource that even demigods could only collect a finite amount of. Time itself.
 
Miquella’s needles were incredible artifacts, to be sure. But even as beautifully crafted as they were, they could only truly grow in power with time. As ages passed, only then would they fully grow into their own. Not just thousands or tens of thousands of moons, but MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of them. That was how long Miquella’s Needle would have needed, to have any hope of permanently fighting back the influence of an outer god.
 
Unless, that is… one had access to a place outside of time. Where time itself stood eternally still. Where both a single instant, and countless eons were passing at the same exact… time.
 
That was the place that the Tarnished had brought them. In this place, Miquella’s Needle was alloyed with Time Eternal. The Empyrean’s greatest project was finally complete. And given the Frenzied Flame’s claim to her Tarnished’s soul was only weeks old, the finished artifact had made short work of it, had sucked up the Frenzied Flame from within his mortal body and assimilated it with ease.
 
Unfortunately, Malenia’s connection to the Scarlet Rot was not so easily broken or consumed. However, it was only a matter of time now. She would need to keep the finished needle in her flesh at all times, as she had before, but now? Now time was on her side. Now, it wasn’t a temporary measure because it would eventually fail on her. It was a temporary measure because it would eventually SUCCEED.
 
All of this, Melina understands and comprehends, forced to accept that her Tarnished not only had a plan this entire time, but more than that… his hare-brained scheme had WORKED. Melina opens her mouth, though what she’s going to say, she doesn’t know. She never gets the chance anyways however, because before she can speak, something happens that causes her to freeze in terror.
 
A draconic roar echoes across the stadium, causing her to flinch and look to Placidusax, who has unfurled his wings and awakened from his slumber. Why? Because while Melina was busy connecting all the dots and following the insane logic of her Tarnished’s actions back along their paths until she finally had the entirety of his mad plan laid out before her… her Tarnished had begun to walk forward.
 
Proximity was what had awoken Dragonlord Placidusax from his slumber. And with the Tarnished so far ahead of her, there was no way for her to catch up with him now. Likewise, Malenia was still on the ground. The Scarlet Rot within her had been beaten like never before, and was being pushed further and further back, sucked up into the hungry needle alloyed with time eternal that now lay in her flesh… but the moment where she had been without the needle had still taken quite a lot out of her, and she was still recovering.
 
Neither of them were in any position to help the Tarnished, but that didn’t seem to give him any pause. No, instead, in response to Placidusax’s earth-shaking roar, Melina’s chosen champion lets out a roar of his own and breaks into a run, speeding towards the Dragonlord with all his might, his swords held aloft in front of him.
 
What follows is… well, not much of a surprise, in the end. Placidusax loses. Because of course he does. What, did the Dragonlord think that NOW was when Melina’s Tarnished would be beaten? Did he think that she had chosen so poorly that the old guard could possibly bring down the new? Melina knew her Tarnished. She knew what he was capable of. In comparison to all of that, defeating the massive, hulking, two-headed monstrosity of a dragon before him? Piece of cake.
 
Though, even Melina was a little awestruck, her jaw dropped open, when her Tarnished managed to jump on Placidusax’s back, driving his hulking Greatswords deep into each of the Dragonlord’s skulls and bringing his two heads together with a foot planted on top of each of them as he rode the corpse into the ground. Placidusax’s wings beat a few moments more, as if the Dragonlord himself did not know he was dead, resulting in the Tarnished managing to ride his body to within a dozen feet of where Melina and Malenia were both watching, gobsmacked.
 
As he finishes with the Dragonlord, Melina’s Tarnished hops down off of Placidusax’s corpse with a cheery grin on his face, landing with ease and striding forward as he sheathes his blades and plants his hands on his hips.
 
“Take me.”
 
For a moment, Melina thinks that came from her own treacherous lips, and freezes in place in mortification. But… it’s not her that her Tarnished looks at, and only a moment later does the kindling maiden realize it wasn’t her who said those two words either, though she was definitely thinking them.
 
No, those two words came from the woman next to her. Malenia, Blade of Miquella, is blushing a bright red crimson as both Melina and the Tarnished gaze at her. It’s clear she didn’t mean to say that out loud, not even remotely… but equally clear from the challenging look she’s directing the Tarnished’s way that she’s not about to take it back either…

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