The camp had been secured and settled as their moonlit knight slept. Melina had assured Marika she would be alright. She simply needed time to heal, just like Marika herself had. So, they had agreed to have her stay behind with Ranni, Fia, and Malli, while Blaidd scouted out ahead of a party consisting of Marika and Melina.
This odd tree was familiar to her. It had been her son, Miquella's great attempt to recreate the Elden Tree. A truly beautiful attempt that now bubbled and boiled across endless dead branches and broken roots with the bulbous rot of her other child, Malenia's curse. A disgraceful and unjust pain that child had suffered her entire life.
"Not exactly my first idea," Marika mused as she affixed a spare rope to her belt, "For our reunion trip."
"Well, better any than none, right?" She chuckled as she finished adjusting her row of vials and daggers along her inner belt. Their knight had taken to ensuring everyone had choices and options for their fights, finding flexibility a key to success. They weren't exactly going to turn their noses up at handmade daggers and bombs, though some of the enhancing vials did bring slight concern.
"I suppose so." The queen smiled.
"Besides, what better way for we golden order girls to bond that beating down our foes?"
"Perhaps you take a little too much after me."
"You say that like it is bad."
"Just... I hope you don't make Mother's mistakes." She touched Melina's shoulder and offered a gentle smile. The candle leaned in and rested her head against her mother's.
"I shan't. That is my word to you, my queen."
"I do not seek your word as your queen, Melina."
The little candle looked her mother in the eyes as her cheek reddened slightly. "I ask you as your mother."
...
The initial descent had been relatively easy. At least, as easy as travel usually was for them. Only a few dozen giant acid spitting ants and some bulbous shaped creatures that fired evil glowing bubbles at them. Melina found them rather irritating, though her mother seemed to have a look of guilt whenever they took one down.
They walked onto the odd serious of platforms that surrounded the dead tree. Gold and white braces long tarnished by decay and rot. They were a maze of rising and arching ladders and bridges that seemingly went to nowhere, bur Melina was already working out a route.
"So. You and Ranni." Marika asked as they ascended the first ladder.
"And. Ahem. Fia." She responded shyly as she followed up.
"It seems fire truly does catch twice." She chuckled as she climbed up and smashed down a random misbegotten that had stood near there on guard. Her hammer moved as fluidily as an exterminator, swatting a rat.
"We are. It is complicated to explain.. much happened when you were gone." She fiddled lightly with a light pink lock as they navigated the strange bridges. They creeked under boot but never showed signs of snapping. Still, the ropes tying each bridge felt tenuous, and Melina began to wonder if they would hold under any sort of fight or pressure.
"How did you meet?" She looked over her shoulder as her palm caught a rushing circle of sharp holy light. Her fingers shattered it like glass, and Melina marveled more than a little at the raw might her mother had reattained. With barely a flick, a wave of shattering golden light, different from before, shattered the white clad priest who had launched it. He was sent careening in pieces into the abyss below.
"We met for the first time when Fia first came to the lands between." She smiled fondly at the memory, dipping below the swing of a pair of crystalline spears before jamming her dagger right under the plate of the foremost crystal knight. Its body was a jagged assortment of misaligned blue crystals that rigidly jerked in motion. A single wrench up just below its plate, and it fell apart like shattered glass. The other was not so methodically killed as blunt force tends to ruin crystals quicker.
"My. You tested her for Torrent."
"Yes. She was not who he sought, so at first, I did not approach. Though, she had a baring to her. A kindness and a wrath I could not discern."
"She fascinated you."
"A lady who lives happily amidst the dead? What wasn't there to wonder over?" Her dagger sunk into the skull like shell of an annoying, hiding snake disguised as a snail. It had tried to reform its little duo, but Melina wasn't too interested in round two.
"And Ranni!?" Marika inquired as she leaped across the cavern between two structures, bringing down her hammer and destroying the rotted things that had littered it. Several exploded just before Melina landed, stunning them both and launching them back into a building they had previously scaled. Both landed with a loud thump, just before the axe of a large and withered misbegotten smashed the floor between them.
Melina rolled with a yelp and twisted on her heel. She had started to prepare a spell before stilling as she watched Marika wrench the massive cleaving axe from the beast and force it hilt first from torso to jaw. "That was... excessive." She muttered as her mother cast aside both with a dismissive ease and grasped her hammer again.
"Just some pests, Melina. There's no reason to worry."
"...but they don't come back this time."
"...I know." She could hear the quiver in Marika's voice a little. "Can we talk about you and Ranni, please?"
Melina knew at that moment her mother needed her mind on less stressful things. Her wife was in the same coma she had been in from what they had told her, and they were way off track to their goal. They also had no clue what they would find down here or if it could even help them get back out. Maybe now wasn't the time to focus on her mother's lingering feelings about those of the crucible. Not today.
"Ranni and I knew one another for a long time." She smiled lightly, trying to shift the mood.
"Oh?" A smile came back properly as they walked through once gilded halls turned overgrown with vines. Pottery once befitting a palace lay in shattered pieces where it wasn't simply filled with filth.
"Yes. We had quite the plan in place, actually. We may have had different end goals, but a worthy tarnished would have allowed us to end this nightmare." She held her head high, even though all that planning hadn't exactly ended how they wanted.
"And then our troublemaker showed up." Marika mused as she caught the spear of a strange knight. Its weapon was crescent shaped, and its armor held tufts of red that resembled rot. A cleanrot knight of her sister, Malenia. Why wasn't she surprised to find out she was down here, too? Her mother rammed her hammer hard enough to put the knight's breastplate through their back, and it didn't exactly seem in a hurry to attack again after that.
"Yes." Melina giggled softly as she walked along a curved hallway. "She has become quite the problem for us, hasn't she?"
"Yes, but I quite like this problem. She is... fun."
"Dangerous, but fun. Just your type."
"You know your mother so very well." She laughed happily for the a good moment, and Melina enjoyed the simple warmth of it again. It had been too long.
...
They came onto a long plateau after a few more twisted and turns. They had to backtrack more than they had been happy to, but this appeared to be the right way. The daunting atmosphere told them that much, at least.
Marika stepped forward first as Melina followed behind. The massive thumps of a horse's hoof rang the metal plateau as a figure turned the bend. "No..." she heard Marika mumble.
A massive knight turned the corner, and there was something very wrong about her. Silver and blue armor bublged out with red boils and strange red growths like pulsing spores. Her helmet had been completely swollen and bent within its own metal, yet the pain in her eyes sung just as real.
Her horse stumbled barely a few steps before collapsing and practically melting as its own body liquified into red spores and spilling organs as the woman collapsed off of it. Melina caught the tail of a golden lock around the bend as she rushed towards the woman, but she could not think to linger in it now.
"Loretta?!" Marika shouted as she rushed over, recognizing the knight. She was once a carian knight. What was she doing here??
"H..el.p...!" She choked violently.
Melina rushed by her as she recognized this thing. Scarlet rot. It was horrid and deep in every part of her system, but fire could keep it at bay.
"Loretta..." Marika started to offer comfort before she heard Melina clap her hands together. "Melina?"
The candlelight focused on the magicks Luna had taught her. They felt so foreign, especially the lack of control. Insistence that these powers would help better by request than demand left her unsure, but she did trust Luna.
"Ara-umbra Lili-asha..." Her hands slowly wound with fire, circling weaves of soft and comforting oranges with almost soothing yellows. "Ara-nichet." She wove the flames across her fingers, remembering the way she had been taught to use this. The spell was a true panacea, but it required extreme focus. You had to weave the cleansing fires through every cell, like scrubbing clean a carpet fiber by fiber, or else you would end up causing the cells to over reproduce. Mutate.
"Candle..." She muttered affectionately, admiring the skill of her daughter as Loretta shakily watched on. "Careful..."
Melina breathed deeply as she knelt down by the bleeding and infected knight. One weong move, and she would not only kill Loretta, she would become infected herself. "Hold as still as you can for me..." Loretta only offered a weak nod. Plenty for her.
She placed her hands just over the knight as Marika knelt down beside them both. Marika had a talent first and foremost for destruction. It reflected in how she had tried to be a proper caster at their start but seemed so much more at home on the frontlines alongside Luna. Melina, however, had a true talent for healing. Not just the body but the soul. She had been made to be the fire that burned away the rot of old. She had never truly forgotten the crux of that purpose.
"Aratha... guide me..." She gave a small prayer to the land she had found most direction with under Luna's tutelage. Passion, as she had said it translated to. "Ara-vack Yja!" She shouted as her fire flashed and swam into Loretta.
She could see it all now. The fire helped. It seemed to feel like something was guiding her hand, leading her through everything with ease. Her right hand felt lighter even. Her right eye seemed to gain heavier focus as she stared at Loretta. She could see everything for a few moments as she worked. Every cell and infectious pustule. Every last spore.
Her flames woven through Loretta, cleansinf away the rot like she was cleaning away a dying forest. The woman slowly seemed to have clumps and swollen pieces of herself fall away in ashen piles of dead rot, revealing the true woman beneath as she let out a sharp and sudden breath. A silvery blonde haired besuty of powerful form. She was shaken, weak, but Melina could see the barings of a knight through the now malnourished and aching woman.
Marika lifted her up into her arms and shrouded her with her own cloak for the woman's dignity. Her armor was shattered, and Melina felt deeply for the horse that had not even had the chance.
For today, though, one life would be spared by fire.