This place was a true maze even to itself. Melina had bobbed through winding rubble ways that almost felt like mapped out stair wells of shattered buildings. Each covered in the walking dead that glowed with the sigil of Miquella and his awful control. It was an awful thing to put upon the soul.
Her boots had tapped across several floors and winding hallways. She had seen hanging chandeliers that seemed half broken yet burned with ever-present blazes. The ceilings, when not outright absent, were high and vast as if made to be traversed by great beasts as much as men. More than once, she had crossed draconic beasts that reminded her at glances of the misbegotten, yet they seemed far too ancient to be such creatures.
They were withered and grey along their wirey hairs, and their bodies were practically glued to their skeletons. They were always hunched over, even in combat, with long and wrinkled necks that flapped lightly with what loose greyish blue skin there was. Most other places had scales of a dull and moldy green, like bronze that had tarnished. Their hands were gangly and gnarled with lumps, and their weapons were crude and simplistic at a glance. A closer look found well carved markings in wood and burned patterns in metal that were both ritualistic and personal. They were not stupid or primitive.
Just very old.
She had too many close calls, and the last had been what got her lost. She wasn't sure how to get back to Ranni or Loretta with the hallway she had originally come through collapsed, and the way forward was guarded by an imposing knight who wore armor of dragon bones. His horse, a massive black steed, wore similar attire. His arm hefted a massive weapon that almost looked like the stub of a dragon claw that was fashioned into a great club or hooking mace. Such a foe surely guarded something important, though. She resolved after some internal deliberation to strike ahead and find the others once she had followed this route to its end.
Strangely, she felt an odd dread as she began to approach the mounted knight. Her heart thumped painfully anytime her eyes drifted to the door behind him, but she wasn't sure why. The knight did not offer much chance for thought. On sight, he pulled at the reigns of his steed who neighed angrily. His helmet briefly glowed with red lightning across the almost eagle like shape at the top of the bone molded piece.
"Seems you have no time for pleasantries, either." She growled, drawing her dagger from beneath her cloak. Her off hand gripping her tome. He responded with a blast of fire from the mputh of his steed, which reduced the spot she priorly occupied to molten rock. The dripping pieces of the rising stairway fell through and into the vortex below, but Melina had already closed the gap.
"Suuwoo!" She shouted as she slashed with her blade at the steed's harness, water forming like a high pressured cutting tool as it bore through the harness and bite rather deep into the steed itself. The creature reeled in pain, twisting and lurching as the knight atop was sent careening to the floor just before a second slash brought the horse down for good. "I have no time for games anymore. Arntha." She said angrily as her blade burst to flames. This mounting dread picks at her mind every second, making her more irritable, but she wouldn't let an enemy exploit that.
The knight growled beneath their helmet, and a massive burst of red lightning struck him and his raised mace. His entire body bristled with it before several bolts crashed down around him. The candle danced through them, gritting her teeth as one struck her shoulder and burned part of her flesh and her cloak right through. He brought down his mace as the last bolt struck it, completely shattering part of the stairwell and surging the rubble with motes of burning red power. She barely avoided it as she leaped over his initial swing, blade red hot and angry as her own eyes.
"ARNTHA!" She roared as she slashed, a blazing trail of smoke and seared flesh fell before the knight himself slumbed over. Soon, his corpse fell into the vortex alongside his head and his horse.
She was panting as she righted herself. She felt like her entire body had started burning and itching. She scratched lightly at her neck as she turned and began marching up the last few steps. What was this ache?!
She noticed a golden rune had begun forming itself on the back of her hand. That was when the voice rang in her mind like a bell. "Let go, dear sister. Let go. Give up these worthless endeavors. You will all be safe with me."
Her answer was a roar of defiance as she gripped her wrist. The sigil was spreading up her arm rapidly, and she felt her eyes water as it burned deeper than anything she had ever felt. "No! No, no stop!" She shrieked as her eyes fixated in the burning sigil. For a moment, she considered her dagger, but a hand grabbing her wrist stopped her worst ideas from coming to fruition.
"Melina?" The sigil and the pain vanished in an instant. She snapped her head around and looked at Loretta. Had it all just been an illusion? "Are you injured?" She asked gently. She stepped closer and noticed the burn on her shoulder. Wordlessly, she pulled out some leaves and stripped them of some thick semi-clear goo. She rubbed part of it into the burn. At first, it hurt, but soon, it began to sooth her expertly.
"Thank you. It seems he managed to get a nasty hit in before he was done." She sighed in some relief to now have company again, though she yearned more than a little for her moonlit princess. Especially now.
"Anything else?" She asked as she finished wrapping Melina's burn. She briefly considered telling her what she saw, but she felt that her will would be stronger now. She knew what it was and what was coming.
"No," She lied as she looked at Loretta with a soft smile, "But thank you for your concern."
"Allies protect allies." She answered and patted her shoulder. "So. What is this?"
Both looked at the top of the stairwell. A massive doorway, columned with have decayed pillars, was crested by a massive rune marking that reminded the two far too much of the Elden Ring for coincidence.
"Just what is this place...?" Loretta muttered quietly as she walked forward. The doorway led to a large circular plateau that sat at a crooked angle. Its walls, once decorated by tile like mosaics, now simply lay in crumbled remains as ghosts of former glory. Four massive circular pillars sat in what both guessed were the cardinal directions of the room, with a circular mosaic of what Loretta guessed to be a starmap on the floor.
"I don't know..." She whispered.
In the center of this room floated a black tear in reality. A piece of the Elden Ring itself, but a piece that had long been locked away. The rune of Death. It hovered in the air like a curved rip in space and tine itself, searing the edges and twisting beyond its vectors with a terrible dark red glow.
"That is..." Loretta muttered in shock as she stared at the rune. "If that is here... how...?" Loretta muttered in confusion. If the rune of death was still hidden away, how had things begun to die again?
"Thank you." A voice echoed along the walls. It was soft, feminine, and warm, yet its chime held a dark incantation. It was evil masquerading as a motherly. "I was looking for this."
"Miquella?!" Loretta shouted. She looked around, angrily growling. "You trecherous bastard!!"
Whatever further discussion was to be had was cut short as a figure landed across the ancient arena with a rumbling crash. Melina looked on in utter horror, and she felt her eyes grow wet with sorrow for a few moments.
"Morgott..?" Standing there, clutching his beloved and bloody blade, stood the once Fell Omen. His eyes were hollow and empty of life, yet the sigil of Miquella beamed from his forehead like a third, invasive eye.
"Kill them." He spoke before his presence faded. Morgott cracked his back as he righted his body, letting out a hissing and harrowing breath like steam.
Loretta drew her glaive in preparation, but Melina was rendered utterly speechless. This was beyond sick. "It isn't him, Melina." Loretta shouted as she stepped forward and put herself between the disgusted candle and the walking corpse. "Honor him by felling this abominable mockery."
Her eyes focused in a little more clearly. She stared at the hollow eyes and glistening, parasitic rune. Her knuckles clutched her dagger, remembering how Miquella had likely tried mere minutes ago to make her into the same obedient zombie.
The phantom omen lurched forward and swung, his skill remaining in his ancient bones as his blade blistered through the air with such speed that it left behind heat. Loretta, however, was no mere knaive. She dipped and parried through his assault and found it was almost as mechanical as a training doll. A puppet repeating practiced motions. Spells cast only as they are meant within a practiced sequence, and no forethought of combat left.
It truly was not the Morgott Loretta would have called a great warrior. A greater king. For all the crimes done to him, his tale was legendary among those who had abandoned the Erdtree. Enemy or not before, she knew what a good fighter was. It was more than just talent with a blade or the ability to repeat an attack with grace.
This was a mockery of their artform. She swept and slashed, steadily starting to drive back the corpse puppet as Melina launched flames and blades of water, cutting off his attempts to create space and form grander spells. They had victory within their grasp.
Then, when he had landed painfully nesr the center after a rather hard slash from Loretta's glaive, Loretta understood her mistake. It was a Puppet, but she had forgotten that puppets have masters.
"...heeehehehehe." He started to cackle in a cruel and dry mimicry of Morgott's laugter. The sound rattled the two to their bones as hios hand shot out suddenly and grasped the floating runes. His body convulsed even as no screams erupted, showing the false mockery of the proud king for what it was in full. A mockery, and nothing more.
The rune pulsed and burned at his flesh, turning the entirety of the gripping hand to little more than crumbling ashes, but the intended effect came all the same. Black and red lines surged across the false Morgott's flesh, searing and spreading like the worming roots of an invasive plant. His horns, always cut down, began to regrow and mangle themselves far too similarly to the depictions Loretta had witnessed of the Lord of Blood, and his skin darkened where it wasn't aglow with horrible power. His treasured blade crackled and grew as the power subsumed its crystal body until it more closely resembled a broken shard of blackened volcanic metal than the once auroric blood crystal it was.
"I have what I came for." The puppet spoke, but it was a monotone and painful sounding fascimilie of the real Morgott, just as his laugh had been. A glittering pure gold portal began to form behind him.
Loretta was not eager to simply allow him to snatch and run, and bolted as fast as her feet could take her. She charged and roared, tackling the mock puppet to the ground and hurling her glaive, charged with all the magic she could muster left, at the base of the portal. The glaive exploded by the tip, shredding stone tile and pure gold threads of magic alike. The spell formed a brief, but terrible dome of crushing and shredding blue power that ripped apart nearly the entire section of the plateau that the portal had occupied.
"No... Running..." She coughed painfully, though her rush had left her vulnerable. The growing black infectious slowly spreading across her armor and flesh alike confirmed that worry. She coughed painfully, but her metal covered hands gripped the blade. The fallen puppet looked up in an expression that snapped quickly from smug arrogance to confusion. "Cowards like you... Never understood..." She coughed roughly, but her eyes ignited rapidly in heavy moonlit glows.
The candlegirl realized a moment too late what Loretta intended. "But that is why you will always FALL!"
"LORETTA!"
The knight once of Carian royalty glowed for a brief moment as magic unwound from her. Her body and sou bloomed in a single instant, forming a spell unique to Renalla, but taught privately to a select few. Loretta's body became surrounded by a Moon all her own, blue and bright and as lovely as the night itself, but she had no magic left to draw upon. Melina knew, still, how she had managed it, but the cost was more than Melina would have let her pay willingly.
The brief, pale sphere kept for only a moment, enveloped around the two conbatants before it exploded in a massive eruption of magic. There was nothing left, save for the once more hanging rune of death, and a single flower that glistened like the tears of the moon with a pale white color so pure and radiant as to put even Miquella's gold to shame.
Melina stared at that horrible rune, having seen what even touching it had done to the body of her late brother. It wasn't something she could leave behind, but taking it on meant wearing its burden as her own.
She stared down at the flower as it fluttered down, still caught in the wind of the space where the rune hung in the air. Nothing remained of the spot the two had stood at, but the whirling and deafening silence of solitude and the dull hum of the vortex below. Loretta had given her life. Melina had already prepared herself for the same.
She gently caught the flower and set it behind her ear. She had not known Loretta long, but she had known her enough by her actions. Her eyes transfixed on the darkened sigil, and she knew that it was the key to felling her far more twisted brother.
With a stretched hand and a pained face, strained from shock, battle, and witheld tears for her fallen comrade, she hesitated for just a moment before grasping the black rune tightly. She expected to rumble away.
Melina did not expect to feel a hand touch her own in response.