It was a quiet night. The stars above were still. Their camp was set up near one of the sites that glimmered with golden grace, and a fire warmed them from the chill of the late autumn air. Their two tents were prepared and well blanketed from any weather.
It was... cozy. Marika allowed herself that brief comfort. Cozy. A feeling she had not felt for what could be centuries, or worse still, far longer, and her aged memory had rotted even worse than she had long feared it to. Quick was she to bury those thoughts lest they welcome in a darker form of madness than she was comfortable inviting within her mind.
She shook her head softly, her thick golden hair lightly drifting in the open air. It still smelled of dirt and cave muck. She would need to remake her braids. Difficult as she had soon discovered much of her powers to be annulled. A momentary grievance. She knew she would regain control in time. She simply had to practice. Surely, it was mental blockage, and with time, she would re-establish her divinity.
And... then what? A total derailing thought that she thankfully was cut off by her savior. A savior she very quickly was growing to regret.
"We need to make way by dawn." She spoke with a voice as soft as a fox with its smoothness that made one wary of every word for falsehood. "We make head for Stormveil."
"My son will give us -" she had started, only to be cut through once more.
"The one you once called son is long gone. Godrick the Grafted will be dealt with, should we encounter him on our journey towards Liurnia." Her hands idly moved supplies into packs as she spoke. Her words had stern finality to them that made Marika's blood boil and her mind fume. How dare this low commoner instruct her Goddess on how to conduct herself and where they were to go?
"I must rebuke u -" She was once more cut off.
"I couldn't give a rat's ass if you rebuke me, My Queen," the very word itself venomous on her tongue, "but I am here on a favor and a mission. I do not care what you think you might be entitled to or why. I am here to deliver you to the shadow lands, whole. There are many other parts to our quest, but finishing it... That is my intent." Her eyes honed on Marika like ice slicing through molten gold, and she shuddered. Something about this commoner made her far more aware than she felt comfortable of her new, if hopefully, temporary mortality. It was a feeling of vulnerability she had not felt since He had been fused to her flesh by the cruel hornsent, and not soon would she allow such a slight to go unrewarded in time.
Yet, something else wormed its way among her thoughts. Those same terrifying stares also made her feel certain that this journey would be safe. That, as frightening as she was, meant Marika had something that sent greater chills through her just to look upon than even her son's pet dragon at the peak of his fury. It was a terribly curious feeling indeed. It brought further uncomfortable questions to her mind that she was quick to bury and stuff into that wretched urn in the furthest corner of her thoughts. The one place her tears had safe harbor to wet the floors, and it was not an urn so easily opened by this darkest of millenia in her time. The flood would be disastrous.
....
A week of camping and scouting later.
Marika quietly tended to the fire as thenstars speckled lightly above.
She had buried the feelings once more. Her savior and her rarely took time to do more than quip so far. She was insufferable.
Her eyes lingered on the flames. She feared fire at times in the past. Now it felt like a soft relief, for all she had once treasured were now just idle grains of sand in the annals of time. Her golden order from what she could see was still alive, if a skeletal ghost of what it once was. This was not the marching steps, however, of a surviving empire. Soon, a new age would come. She had accepted that. She had been in the embrace of that cursed tree far too long ago now to care. Her only concern was that it would be an age far better than hers. For all the hate that still thundered within her heart, regrets too tinged the strings and made every hateful beat sting against her deepest part. A solemn reminder that her hatred had taken its bill in full. A reminder grimly compounded on by nearly every sight they had come to see being monuments to her failings.
She wondered if her reluctant savior seemed to resent her as a result of those failings, and were that the reason, she would let her angers fade.
'We should catch them by surprise.' The crimson thought hit her, and discreetly, she touched her face. Thoughts themselves briefly seared at her brain. He had spoken, and his voice was as red hot and harmful as it had ever been. She fought instantly to squelch the voice and its burdgeoning mind, desperately pressing them back behind the bars she hopelessly built to contain them, just as a hand rested on her shoulder.
The wind blew lightly, causing Marika to turn slightly as the whipping chill helped her heated feeling toward the hand. Gold met Blue, and they shared a quiet, pained moment as her eyes accidentally locked with her saviors. She knew not why, but this knight knew of her suffering and empathized. Further proof had Marika been more leveled headed she may have noticed the knight was more than a cold set of eyes at a glance. Yet, the gilded queen was neither leveled nor in her right mind. So, instead, she quietly leaned against the palm that touched her, allowed herself that brief moment to savor how warm it felt on her bare cheek, before yanking her head away, unable, unwilling, or both, to let another see her so vulnerable. Her voice hissed out as she jerked her shoulder soon after, "Do not goude me with those false bearing eyes... I shall not be pawned by another..."
Her words rung with ache, with centuries of betrayal and unspoken anguish. Her reluctant savior seemed to be quite frustrated by that.
"Gods. You truly are all alike in your hubris." She spoke with a snide frustration.
She turned back towards the fire and set to work, ensuring the fish they had quickly procured was cooked properly. Food was unneeded to survive, but the gilded queen's body had much healing left to do. She was covered in sores from her restraints and more still as if she had been reborn with only half her skin intact. Wrapped garments covered her normally pale, now ghostly, and grim flesh, while the rest was covered by a coarse yet warm and dry dress that had quickly been hewn together when she had been cut down from those shackles. It would do, for the time being. It was painful on her exposed skin, but her knight had only said she needed to wear it when the sun was out. She had clung to it still, even as the hour turned late, for it was warm and smelled idly of strawberries.
Her eyes drifted slowly towards the distant reaches, just beyond the cliff next to their campsite. It reached outward, and in the far distance, she swore her eyes could catch the splotched glimpses of where she thought should have been Caelid. General Radahn had ruled there, yet what glimpse she could garner with her still greater sight was poisoned earth and rotten corpses. Surely she had not been gone that long, had she?
Yet as her eyes fell to closer landmarks, they saw little but ruins and rubble. Broken monuments and scattered groups scouring the land for either food or for some habits that her imposed living death had made so normal. The sight brought painful twists back to her stomach, and she tried to focus on the smell of the fish to quell that growing unease. It smelled of pepper and lemons, and that alone brought ease to her mind. It seemed her moonlit savior had some skill at handling food, if only modestly so. She hoped the meal would ease more than just the ache that currently bubbled up in partbthanks to the smell and thankfully overtook the former knots that had filled it.
The blueclad lady sat down after a few minutes and offered a whole fish to Marika. The golden goddess nodded gently and took it with a soft utterance of gratitude. One bite into the crisp skin quickly sent her into a ravenous and rabid frenzy. Hunger became her only thought until the growing chuckles of her would-be Protector caught her ear. She looked up only to somehow spur on harder and even snorting laughter, and she grew flush. "W what in the Erdtree's name i-is," pausing only to wipe her mouth briefly with a bandaged arm," so hilarious Lady knight?"
"Hahahaha! You eat like one blessed by a pig god. You truly are a lover of food!" Was her retort, and Marika felt an odd swelling of both humorous laughter and indignant rage as she balled up one of the old bandages.
Marika raised an arm, only for her protector to smirk and make her feel her whole body stiffen for a moment. That smirk was too charming yet revealed fanged teeth. Four enlongated canines alongside otherwise normal teeth, with two more visible than before. Her pale skin reminded the gilded queen much of moonlight itself. It brought a soft blush to her cheeks. "Now, I bet roses themselves balk at that shade of red with jealousy." she teased.
Marika felt her flush turn to fury, and she threw both the stick and balled up bandages with renewed strength. The ball missed her strange ally, but the stick was the real shot and found itself right into her forehead with a loud and resounding bonk. Her moonlit savior wobbled for a second or two before shaking her head and rubbing her forehead as the hood fell back. The sight made Marika question more than even godhood had.
Thick, raven haired curls that all ended in blue twinkling tips. They framed her face perfectly and almost seemed to move in the wind the way one would watch the strands of moonlight in the night sky or the crackle of blue flames against their own smoke. Her face was strangely sat on the line of strong yet beautifully shaped. Somewhere between the strength of a man, yet the beauty of a woman. It was an odder thing than she had been ready for, as Miquella cast a similar visage when it came to the playful twistings of the sexes. Yet, somehow, it felt so different when the one who held that kind of visage held none of her own blood.
'She is surely here to kill us.' Whatever thoughts had started were burned in His raging insurgence, and she clutched her head in sudden ache.
The knight was quick to frown and approach. She was not easily aided, though, and swatted her hand at the one that had moved to support her. "Do not interfere! You could not comprehend this pain!" She hissed out angrily, too blinded by the furnace that was His encroachment to catch the soft response of her knight, before, soon, darkness took hold once more.