Help! I can't stop thinking about Marika and Rennala in Elden Ring and now it's got so bad I've had to come back to Tumblr to write a little ficlet about it. Except now this is only part one of three and Rennala isn't even in it yet and also I seem to have written it from Miriel's POV. (Spoilers obv)
Pt 1
He met Marika but thrice in all his long life. Still, he believed that he knew her as well as anyone might.
He met her first in the morning of the world, when she came to him in her majesty. Her hair was gold, her sword bright and her arms red to their elbows in blood.
"The giants are defeated then?" he said.
Her grin was as fierce and as chilling as a storm wind. "They were too weak, and my cause too just."
"And they were betrayed."
She laughed. "The trolls' choices were theirs alone. They ripped their god from their own chests."
"As you have taken the Elden Ring into yours."
He could see it shining within her, a rune of beautiful complexity. But he knew that she saw only its power, and in that power, simplicity.
"And after the giants?" he asked.
"My son yearns to test his metal against the ancient dragons. I think I will permit it. A distraction will do him good. He's too much his father's son." There was no warmth in her voice when she spoke of her husband, and little for her only child.
"And then?" he asked.
"And then these glintstone-rotted lands will be purified."
"I see."
"You think me incapable?"
He shook his head, because young though he had been in those distant days, he'd never been a fool.
"You offer absolution, do you not?" she asked unexpectedly.
"Such has been my task."
"Will you bathe me in this dew of stars?" Her eyes were glintstone blue as she held his gaze."
"Which sins do you wish absolved?"
"The giants, and the dragons. The sorcerers, the storm kings, the Nox. Others I cannot remember or who are yet to come."
"Come to me again when you have learned to regret your deeds," he told her. "And then I will absolve you of them."
