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They say she is born under the full moon. Those who hear the story of the Carian Queen will speak of her life as though she was destined to be as she is. They will choose to ignore the fact that she was born in early summer, too late for spring changeover and too early for the solstice. A mediocre day for someone who earned every ounce of her power.

Caria is a House of minor nobility in those early days, long fallen from grace. In the ancient days when the giants roamed on their mountaintops and Liurnian astronomers made the long summit yearly, the House of Caria stood tall providing security on that route. Those early Carian Knights with their budding sword sorcery and glintstone traps carved a path through the monsters that called the snowfields home. It was the Carians Astrologers who met the first giants and made the pacts between man and giant. And it was the Carians who failed to adapt to changing times, who saw their complicated bladework surpassed and replaced with the glintstones that so easily mirrored the stars.

“I’m going to be a Knight,” Rennala tells her mother who smiles indulgently.

“If that is what you desire, my little Moon. So long as you work towards it, I’m sure you will be great one day.”

And because she is six, she demands a story as well. “Tell me the one about the Dog Popes.”

If there is one gift she holds, it is her inquisitive mind. By seven, she’s read every tome in Caria Manor and even filched quite a few from nearby towns. The wealth of a kingdom could not sate Rennala’s appetite for knowledge. A fallen house like Caria can barely keep its scions clothed and fed.

Mother always makes certain Rennala is fed well. They are not part of the main house, second cousins twice removed at best, but Caria looks after their own. Though the definition of the main house changes every other generation. Whoever gains prestige and brings wealth is usually chosen as head of the house. As such she eats at the main dining hall with all the other children vying for the chance to be head of their dying house. A good third of the children are the daughters or granddaughters of the previous Lady. There is no enmity held. No one wants to be remembered for two generations as the person who made the House’s situation worse.

At the tender age of eight, Mother takes her on the pilgrimage to the Mountaintop of Giants. Mother must have gotten tired of hearing, “Please, please, please, I want to see the giants, pretty please with frost on top,” each morning, and twice in the evening.

The pilgrimage takes weeks. Caria Manor has the benefit of being near Altus, the bridge spanning the chasm being repaired for the second time in her life. A precarious crossing, but faster than ascending the tower and making it to the Dectus Lift.

Altus is always painfully bright, painfully golden. Unrelentingly so. God-Queen Marika took the idea and ran it into oblivion. Not a hint of moonlight or frost is to be found, not a drop of water as far as the eye can see. Young Rennala doesn’t understand how anything grows and will not understand that life blooms where the gods rule for a long time.

Through bustling Leyndell they go, filled with its towering Knights and conspiring nobles. The strength of divinity is almost oppressive but no one else seems to care that a sun is pressing down on them. Mother, at least, is tense, her discomfort strangely brings Rennala comfort.

Across the bridge to Rold where god’s influence lessens, where grey and even blues become more prevalent. Where the ocean can be seen and the snow peaks glimpsed.

Taxes paid, bribes negotiated, a few bandits dispatched courtesy of Mother’s Carian swordwork, and they are in the frigid cold of the Mountaintop. For the first time in weeks, Rennala can breathe again. With frost in her lungs and snowstorms wiping away the golden taint, she feels whole again.

“Mom, mom, look, there’s snow everywhere.”

“Indeed there is. Come, let us meet the giants.

Those who hold the Golden Order sacrosanct might imagine Giants as dull, perhaps even mindless beasts. They are anything but.

“How do you keep these heaters running?” she asks fearlessly, the desire for more knowledge bright in her eyes. “I thought you might be siphoning it off from the forge, but I couldn’t find any connections—no heated water pipes like what we use in Liurnia—and it’s not like you need to be warm, so it would have to be for us humans. I’d rip the unit apart, but Mother is already angry with me for stealing from the library.”

The giant she’s speaking to, one of an age with her—but certainly not of similar height—watches Rennala rant patiently, already used to her. He’s got flowing locks like fire and sits framed by the eternal fire of the Forge in the great distance.

“It is a… how do you say—paired instantaneous interaction? Yes, that translates well enough. There are rods inside that chamber with atoms perfectly entangled with those in the forge. What happens to one, must happen to the other. Thus, heat applied to one applies heat to the other.”

She narrows her eyes at her giant friend. “Doesn’t that violate energy conservation? Wait, it definitely does. If you spun one rod, then the paired one needs to spin in the opposite direction to maintain momentum. So we’re breaking the laws of the universe and that’s illegal.”

His grin is particularly brilliant. “Not when you have a god as the power source.”

And Rennala, ten and precocious and feeling so seen can’t help but laugh as well till she’s crying. Of course. The idea is brilliant. Why serve gods when you can get them to serve you. Especially when they’re benevolent. The ancient dragons were happy enough with whatever they called their god, so why does it have to involve some one-sided transaction.

Maybe she should go to Farum Azula. Somehow. Getting there is impossible these days. Too much temporal manipulation for her young mind to fully grasp.

“Teach me your magics.”

The Giant shrugs at her demand. “Alright.” They’ve always been a kind and generous sort. “My name is Teledji.”

“And I’m Rennala.”

“I know. Everyone is quite aware of you.”

They learn that fire is almost anathema to Rennala’s soul. She can make wild embers and sparks with great discomfort, and maybe in a decade or twelve—depending on what happens to the whole undying immortals thing Queen Marika has going on—she might wield it with some degree of proficiency.

For now, Rennala is covered in soot and scorch marks after her twentieth failed attempt to cast a flame.

“Silly girl,” Mother says, patiently applying burn salve to Rennala’s hands. “You’ve forgotten your history. We are Carian, my darling, and it is here that our ancestors observed the song of creation in the night sky. When has the night sky ever been bright?”

“Um, at higher latitudes during the longer days—”

“Days, not nights. After the sun sets, what remains but the glorious night? Here, above the clouds, where we touch the sky, there is no sun to block our view of the truths.”

Her mother presses a kiss to her forehead and it bites with frost. Oh, I’m stupid, Rennala thinks. Theirs is the cold night filled with stars, not the heat of the forges.

“We’re Carian,” she says, understanding the cold blood within her just a bit better.

“And don’t you ever forget it.”

When they make the pilgrimage back, Teledji walks with them as far as he can. They must make an incongruous sight but that is the beauty of the promise between man and giant, starlight and flame eternal. So long as they try, they can learn from another.

“O Flame, carry the daughter of moonlight home. O Flame, warm the soul of my sister. O Flame, guide her true when she is lost.”

Rennala bows as a Knight would, a counterpoint to her mother’s curtsy that the old astrologers would perform.

“House Caria honours its oath, Counsellor Giant. Call upon us and we will always answer.”

Rennala is only eight. She is too naïve to understand that sometimes promises are broken no matter your best efforts.

*

*

*

Ten is when she is old enough to join the order of knights and she does so gladly.

Knighthood is utterly unlike what she imagines it would be. She thought there would be more glory and epic battles of magic and wit. Instead, she gets the drudgery of training and patrols and the tedious politicks of officer school. If she could, Rennala would skip out of officer school—she certainly has the grades—and avoid that aspect of it all. But knighthood also involves physical training and Rennala is average at best with a blade and that’s assuming a generous bribe to the instructor. If only they’d let her just use a quick sorcery and summon a sword the size of the school to flatten her opponents. But no, every Knight needs to be able to wield bow and sword and shield.

A part of her does enjoy testing her physical might against other girls her age or the troll squires, forcing herself to stand ready and deflect all blows no matter how mighty. Her blade will break before she steps back. And break blades she does, so many that they start calling her the Broken Blade as though it is a mark of shame. How can it shame her when she winds with a broken straight sword against girls nearly a decade older?

The moment she’s legally allowed to—and perhaps she’d worked her charm to get a special dispensation—Rennala joins the Academy as well. They hate her, of course, warned by whatever connections they had in the Knighthoods of the strange girl with stranger ideas and an uncompromising attitude.

They become background noise as she tackles the libraries with a hunger that borders on gluttony and obsession. She wants to know it all, every minute outside knight class and sorcery school picking out secrets from the ancient tomes of Raya Lucaria.

She compromises on her visits to Mother without noticing. Daily visits become weekly become bi-yearly as she grows into her own person, studying sorceries with a fervour that terrifies everyone around her. The knowledge doesn’t come to her freely, no, but she sees the strands of magic just a bit better, hears the clarion call of invocations just a smidge clearer, and senses the way glintstones make the cosmos vibrate in just the right ways. It drives her to seek out more, to perfect what she does, and in turn to learn new things to perfect.

Patrons are more common now. A scion of Caria in the Academy for the first time since its founding is a curious thing. A spellblade expert skipping entire decades of study and achieving new masteries of magic unheard of as well. A prodigy, they call her. A generational talent, more say. An abomination, the old Masters say, jealous of her talents.

They court her interest, and she flits between one group of nobles to a group of merchants, forging connections through acts of magic and her intellect that enthrals. She does this even as she maintains her duties with the Knighthood, with many wondering how she balances the impossibility of her long days.

Temporal magic is the answer. Manipulating time to give her a few extra minutes for a nap here and there had been one of the first things she learned to do. A secret any good student learnt, not that there were many. The few she knew like Rogier find the Academy unpalatable, the knowledge they seek too heretical even to the Academy.

Her ascension to full Knight of the Order Caria comes faster than she expects. One day, she is juggling the ramifications of mobile pocket dimensions and the next, Mother is standing in her doorway. For a long moment, she thinks she has studied too much and is suffering a hallucination.

Her analytical mind realises Mother wouldn’t be carrying a bundle wrapped in silver and blue.

“Mother,” she greets after a long minute of thought. “You look well.”

A smile, then, and Rennala feels painfully young. Mother closes the door and crosses the distance between them, setting the bundle in her hands. Rennala frowns before unwinding it.

A sword. One of immaculate design and embellishment. She is initially rather insulted at such a poorly designed sword. Each of the numerous designs in the blade would bring it breaking, the gold of its guard too pliable to deflect an emergency strike, and the pommel weighted too heavily by the jewel.

Then she touches it and all hesitation is dispelled. Rennala has felt power before. A concert of giants singing together was powerful. A coalition of sorcerers weaving spellwork was powerful. This, though, puts all that to shame.

It freezes her even as it burns, the impossible power within demanding greatness.

“This is the Sword of Night and Flame. It is the mark of our covenant to the giants and proof that once, Caria stood above all other Houses. It has not been wielded for an age now, not since our earliest descendants.”

Rennala has heard of it before. Every child of Caria has heard of it. Her cousins when they played pretend always wanted to be the ones holding it during their games. 

“They say it was made of sky metals and shaped in the Fell Flame.”

“They say many things about it. It is yours now and I believe it will have a greater destiny in your hands.”

It is absurd to gift a legendary armament such as this to a girl. It is ridiculous that anyone short of the greatest Carian Knight should ever wield it.

And then Rennala remembers that she is the only Carian Knight. The only one who took up her family's heritage and brought them to some degree of respectability.

Only she has a right to wield this blade that carries night and fire all at once.

“Thank you, Mother.”

“Do us proud, daughter.”

“I will.”

*

*

*

The Sword serves her better than any sword before. No Sword has been so reassuring to wield, no Sword so confident to match strength with trolls and clash against magic bladework. In time, she learns to tease out the innate power within it. Fire and Starlight are both housed in the delicate patterns of the blade and she challenges herself to master them. Frost and moonlight may be her greatest affinity, but she will not disappoint Mother or herself.

She is Rennala, foremost of the Carian Knights, and stands tall against those that threaten Liurnia. She has only just settled into her role as a Captain when the dragons siege Leyndell.

Liurnia very aggressively stays out of it. Liurnia very quietly toasts to the dragons. If the capital falls and the Erdtree burns, well, Liurnia will continue observing the stars and communing with the cosmos. Why should they fear dragons when the sky is a companion to the stars? Learning to live with each other is not impossible.

In the midst of this war to determine the order of the world, Mother contracts the Scarlet Rot.

Rennala doesn’t notice, not for a long time. Distracted by her Knight’s work and the secrets of the library, she does not visit often, and the few times she does, Mother hides it from her. It is only when a squire bursts into her room and tells her that Mother is on her deathbed that she learns the truth.

The rot has withered her away, stealing vitality and beauty from Mother. Her lustrous hair fallen out, her skin gaunt and pallid.

“Little moon, is that you?”

“It is.”

“Take me home.”

Not Caria, for they are already there. The journey to the Mountaintop will be a treacherous thing. Rennala does not care. If that is her mother’s last wish, then she will siege Leyndell herself for access. A horse, supplies, and her Sword are all that she takes before setting off with Mother seated in front of her.

She seems to almost have shrunk from the Rot, no longer taller than Rennala. She fits against her chest as a child would, a sight that chokes Rennala. It leaves her horrified even as she charges around battalions of soldiers and encampments, flinging magic at dragons that are a bit too curious.

The attention of god settles upon her, golden and oppressive. It follows her across the bridge to the Lift, threatening to annihilate Rennala at any moment. She pays it no mind. Not even a god can stop her.

When the biting chill of the Mountaintop hits them, Mother takes a deep breath. It will only be hours later that Rennala realises it was her last.

She buries Mother in the snowfields, on a hill out of the way. She digs the grave herself, breaking her fingers to do it. Uncaring of pain and frostbite. Who is she kidding? Children of frost do not fear the snow. To dig is all she has left. To honour her mother is all that matters.

“Sister Rennala.”

She stops in her tracks, surprised by how easily a giant can vanish if they don’t want to be seen.

“Counsellor Teledji.”

The traditional title Carians call the giants. Counsellor. Earlier, more literal translations of the title were somewhere between Master and Teacher. Mother taught her that.

“Might I sing for the Mother we have lost?”

“You may.”

Teledji’s voice is clear and deep, a rumbling thing carries across the valley. From here, Mother will always be able to see the Forge, and should the sky be clear, the moon as well.

A herd of spectral deer make up the congregation. Mother told her once that they were a gift to the Giants from an ancient Carian astrologer. A way for them to interact and understand the smaller creatures that populate the lands between.

Whatever the truth, they kneel, lulled to peace by Teledji’s singing. When he is done, Rennala takes the Carian sword she has kept sheathed and places it deep in the snow where a headstone would be. Mother was many things, but she was a daughter of Caria first.

For the last time in her life, Rennala weeps. She weeps for a mother she knew too little and never loved enough. She cries for a mother who loved her anyway and stood beside her no matter her failings. She cries, oh how she cries, her lament echoing in the snow long after she is alone.

Her throat is hoarse and her fingers numb when she finally falls silent. Just her and the grave.

It reveals itself to her then.

The Full Moon in all its unknowable glory, a god observing her in her grief. Illuminating Mother’s grave. It should be an honour. It should fill her with hope and faith.

Rennala would rather have her mother back.

In the quicksilver light of a God, she makes her vow. Till her dying day, no one will ever make Rennala compromise.

Not even her own God.

She will not be the Full Moon’s Rennala. It will be Rennala’s Full Moon.

She hopes Mother will be proud.

*

*

*

The light of the Full Moon infuses Rennala. It makes her ethereal and unknowable. More god than human, more magic and starstuff than flesh and blood. Without it, she may have only been a once in an age prodigy. With it, she plucks the strings of creation with hardly more than a thought, the once unknowable now trivial.

The primaeval currents within glintstone speak to a history of Ages before dragons and Erdtree, a time when all was void and the void was all. Before the first lights but after the last ash of the dark souls, where the grand secrets of creation are held. Rennala knows them almost instinctively, and if just puts in the right work, they unfurl like a lotus in bloom.

Knowing that Creation is at her fingertips, she refuses to compromise in her position any longer.

Her ascension as Head of the Academy comes after a trial by combat. 

Maybe in another life, she would have simply worked her way up the ladder, wielding bewitching charm and magic to secure her position. But Rennala has sworn before the Moon, before a god, before the cosmos, that she will not compromise, and these stodgy old Masters who haven’t achieved anything in decades will not be the reason that she compromises.

She challenges them all. The Headmaster and every Master who ever doubted her, called her too ambitious or too reckless, those who threatened her and tried to bar her way. She calls them out before her peers and demands they prove their strength in the ancient ways of the Academy when Mastery meant besting those who came before.

At midnight, the challenge is answered. At midnight, a legion of ancient Masters each capable of ripping castles apart answer her call, their glintstone staffs burning like miniature stars.

Rennala does not bow. They do not deserve that courtesy.

In unison, they cast their spells. A Terra Magica field that spreads across the duelling grounds immediately. It enhances all spells and can make a novice a master if only for a moment. More spells to amplify, to conjoin their disparate magic together into one coordinated whole. A series of magic better suited to war against a god than a mere student. 

All of this just to defeat her. Spells to destroy castles and nations, levelled against Rennala. She feels honoured to have inspired such dread in their hearts. Maybe had she not met her god, she may have succumbed to this onslaught, yielded there and then.

Rennala calls upon the Full Moon, slipping higher and higher in the air. The chill of it enfolds her, embraces her like a lover, as magic that would rip Leyndell apart slams into the moon.

When she lands unharmed, it is to silence.

Perhaps she didn’t need to summon a Storm of Stars across the entirety of the academy, but she wants to make a point. It was Caria that reached the summit first. It was Caria that found the stars first. And it is Caria that the Moon blessed.

They will have no chance to dismiss her, to pretend she is anything other than Rennala of the Full Moon.

And if they dare, well, it’s been a while since she ran someone through with her sword.

*

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*

Queen Rennala is a good title, she decides at her coronation. Perhaps not her favourite, but it will serve.

Years and years have passed since she became Headmistress and since then she has reforged the Academy in her image. House Caria passed leadership to her, its daughters bending the knee before her. There was no resentment, only faith that she might lead them to ascendancy once more.

With the legendary Sword of her house and the resources of the Academy, she has uplifted them further and further. Once a minor house, Caria Manor become the lynchpin of Liurnia. Smaller houses had flocked to hers to become vassal houses. The many towns and villages begging for her protection. She gave it freely, and joined the web of noble House and common town to the power of Raya Lucaria, raising them higher and higher until all Liurnia had bowed to her will.

In one fell swoop, she became a ruler.

Pope Miriel officiates the ceremony. In the halls of Raya Lucaria, he speaks the history of the last Lunar Queen and he speaks to the future Rennala now holds in her hands.

She will not wear the traditional gowns of royalty. No, she is a Carian Knight and a master wizard. She will be both today. The cloth of her Knight garb is a lustrous blue. The breastplate and pauldron are sturdy meteor metal embossed in silver and embedded with azure jewels. The flaming red fabric emblazoned with the symbol of Caria draped over her shoulders and falling to her knees.

Today, she is resplendent.

Today, she becomes Knight Queen of Lirunia.

And tomorrow, giants shall die and Rennala shall rage.

It happens so fast, perhaps even timed for her ascension. They only hear the news in the days that follow, how the Elden Lord put the giants to the sword at the behest of Marika. The giants slaughtered to a man, the Fell eye on their stomach impaled to separate their souls from their god.

Their culture. Songs that told the history of these lands before even the dragons made it home now lost to time. Hymns that charted the procession of stars lost because of Marika’s madness—and it can only be madness to kill giants, the kindest and most noble of all species. What of their technology so far in advance of everything else in the Lands Between?

If she goes to the Mountaintop, what will remain of the Crystal Towers and the underground cities?

And what of Teledji? Where is his corpse? Rennala needs to give him funerary rights, needs to give them all funerary rights before she does anything else.

The slaughter of the giants calls into question her competence, and maybe that was Marika’s goal. Perhaps she had taken note of the moon's daughter running across her capital during a war and decided to punish her.

What Marika could not anticipate was the sheer hate it inspired in her people. Caria may have held the oldest relationship with the giants, but it did not hold the monopoly. The preceptors and astrologers, heretical Stargazers and children of the cosmos, all had reason to travel to the Mountaintop, and all the giants accepted easily. All the giants guided to greater knowledge, offering shelter and protection to all.

In the days following the proclamation, Rennala has never seen quite so much fire in Liurnia as families far and wide lit bonfires to honour those fallen.

The traditional pathways to the Mountaintop are barred, sealed by the power of Golden Fundamentalism and Erdtree aggression. Worst of all are the ancient dragons who stand with Godwyn and his Crucible Knights. An overwhelming army, greater than what a Carian Queen can justify waging war against merely for passage to her rightful heritage. She wishes to mourn her friends amongst the giants and to see for herself what remains. So desperate is she that she tries diplomacy, offering unto God-Queen Marika years' worth of Liurnia’s taxes. It nearly inspires a revolt in her lands.

Marika answers her diplomatic requests with an army.

“How uncivilised.”

“Indeed,” Miriel the Dog Pope says. “There is a particular savagery to Marika’s actions.”

“If their Queen is this barbaric, it makes me weep for that nation. I suppose her marriage to a barbarian chief makes more sense in retrospect. May he die an ignoble death, alone and forgotten.”

“Should we be so lucky.”

“Might we save the banter for after we have won this war,” War Counselor Iji suggests.

The Golden host is led by a man of flowing hair the colour of fire. He races to take the bridge leading to Caria and the Dectus Lift.

Her rage is a frigid thing. Liurnia’s great lake freezes over as she makes the journey across the bridge alone. Not even her most loyal Knights dare follow in her wake, not when liquid nitrogen drips around her.

Let him freeze. Let them all freeze. There will be no Gold in Liurnia. This is a land of mist and frost, of moonlight and starlight.

When Rennala calls upon Tera Magicus, it is the colour of quicksilver infused with starlight. She feels the strength of god bound to her magic, feels the Full Moon infuse the violent storm cloud of stars that she summons across the battlefield. Stars rain down, tearing through the lesser ranks of foot soldiers. She wields devastation and death as easily as she breathes.

Let the world remember the name Caria and let them tremble. Let them know the giants will not be forgotten.

As for the dragons, she holds no mercy. Mortals following a God-Queen, she understands even as she loathes it. But the dragons who preceded everything Gold? Whose power once shook the lands as they flew unburdened by the concerns of those on the ground? They, she hates the most.

She thrusts her Sword of Night and Flame forward. And from it, emerges the Flame of a Fell God. A beam of incandescent heat that consumes the dragon.

The burning carcass lands in the middle of the army.

Today, the world learns that dragons burn.

It is not a pyre worthy of the giants.

But it will serve.

Only one figure remains. The head of the host, his hair flowing like fire as he stands on the stirrups of his horse. A weapon raised high that he twirls, golden magics following the lazy arc of the weapon. Rennala tenses, ready for an attack.

The burst of gold dust is just that, dust. Flashy and beautiful, but not harmful. A warning that he could unleash incantations to affect the battlefield just as well as Rennala. Acknowledgement that today the battle went Lirunia’s way.

And perhaps enough arrogance just to have the last word.

“Men,” she says with a sneer.

“Aye, a foolish lot we are,” Iji agrees.

Her victory brings them peace for a time.

During that time, the construction of the Cathedral to the north of the Moonlight Altar progresses apace. It will be the foot of the bridge she builds to reach the Mountaintop once more. A bridge of starlight and frost. When it is complete, she will journey there and she will remember all that the giants were.

Marika can have Rold. Rennala will have a bridge of her own, one that a Tyrant Queen can’t control.h

It is not yet completed by the time the golden host invades again.

The golden barrier is new.

It tastes of the laws rewritten, of time redone. Fundamental magic that she knows to be wary of. The first host had assumed moonlight gentle and left their defences weak. They won’t make the same mistake after watching a dragon be burnt to death.

She can no longer merely summon magic to end an army. No, this will be a war fought as all wars must be fought; on the killing fields surrounded by the fetid corpses of your fallen brethren.

The question of which order of knights might have had catastrophic repercussions if Rennala didn’t merely select two rising stars from each order: Cuckoo Knights in Rennala’s gleaming blue and subdued reds, there’s the most martial of orders; the Royal Knights with their moon discs punctuating their helms and spectral bows to snipe even the most distant of foes; the Troll Knights with their greatswords and impenetrable phalanx barrages; and finally her own order of Carian Knights, wielding glintstones and sword spells in one hand, and steel in the other.

To her delight, one of the Carian Knights is a first cousin once removed. A girl who likely grew up hearing stories of the Knight Queen Rennala. 

Radagon to the North, the contingent from Stormveil to the south. A war on two fronts. A war to determine Liurnia’s right to survival.

Stormveil’s forces don’t make it out of the castle mouth, besieged by showers of glintstone magics. Oh, their trolls can certainly weather the storm, especially so with their shields. Liurnian troll knights have armour, magic and training. It isn’t even fair in comparison.

Her focus can remain on the host to the north and the peculiarity of the battle. 

Throughout the battle, all she can wonder about is where Radagon hides. Where would he be? Why would he not be at the vanguard? He seemed the type to fight an army alone so where—

Realisation runs through her. Where better to strike than the home of your enemies. Where better to bring your might than the ancestral land they hold dear. And for she is Carian, it will be Caria Manor.

The Champion looks at her. His hammer is surprisingly clean of blood despite the bodies she has seen littered everywhere. Shattered armour and broken bones, but no deaths from what she has seen.

“I am glad.”

“Why?”

“That I might face you, Knight Queen of Caria. Now come, show me your strength.”

It is only the restrain he has shown earlier that makes her put away her sceptre and summon her Sword. A simple battle between champions.

This, she understands.

*

*

*

The news will be simple, and the proclamation will be heard across the Lands Between.

Radagon, Champion of Leyndell, was defeated in single combat by Queen Rennala.

That, alone, ends the war faster than anything else Rennala could have suggested. Even the most degenerate wretch would honour the outcome of a battle between Champions.

The battle had been gruelling and Rennala had come close to death many times. Champion Radagon wielded strength to put the giants—don’t think of his hair, don’t murder him for his crimes—to shame, his every blow breaking the ground beneath Rennala.

A battle for the ages, one that will be spoken of in distant ages to come.

For now, she has the task of diplomacy and ensuring the Champion does not escape confinement.

From dusk to dawn, her Knights, Carian and Cuckoo both, challenge Champion Radagon. He is given no water, no rest, and forced to use different weapons each day. His Fundamentalist faith is bound by glintstone shackles enchanted by the moon’s frost. 

To her bitterest surprise, Radagon is deserving of his title of Champion. No matter what weapon he wields, he is unbeatable. Whether facing one or six, he holds them back. He ripostes with katana, counters thrusts with a violent downward stomp and even jumps off people’s faces. With daggers, he is a wraith and impossible to hit, until he unleashes flurries to attacks that even the most seasoned knights struggle with. Curved swords flow like water, colossal weapons easily wielded with one hand, spears that become whirlwinds of death.

It is the hammer where he is most deadly. The simple tool seems right in his hands. Even the simplest blacksmith’s hammer seems divine in his hands.

At the edge of exhaustion is when he is most deadly. When he can no longer merely spar and slips into a fiery haze of survive-kill-win, Radagon is at his most lethal. It happens so quickly on the fifth day. Before, he would yield once his exhaustion started. Yield with a bloodthirsty grin and a deep stretch.

She isn’t certain what happens this time. Perhaps it is the number of opponents wielding ranged magic causing his frustration to mount faster. Perhaps it is simply his body giving out after days of constant combat.

Rennala summons a wave of frost. The implosion of cold staggers him for a split second, enough for Rennala to flit like moonlight to stand in front of him and bring up her Sword of Night and Flame. She parries, but only barely, feeling his monstrous strength run through her body as she is forced to slide back.

Embarrassing for a Carian Knight, but Rennala was always a greater sorcerer. With no staff to aid her, Rennala is forced to channel her magic through her Sword. She ripostes a sudden thrust and calls a phalanx of blades that surge forward and push him back. Another sweeping backstep and a spectral pack of dogs is surging forward.

Distance secured, she brings sword and staff together in a cross, calling moon and glintstone together. The shackles binding Radagon become as miniature stars.

Golden fundamentalism immediately surges to counteract her binding. To her horror, it begins chipping away at the physical shackles.

Reason returns to Radagon’s eyes. “Oh,” he says, staring at the shackles. The light fades immediately, Fundamentalism vanishing with a thought.

He isn’t mortal, that much is certain. Not with those skills. Not with that level of Fundamentalism. Rennala is moon-blessed and the greatest mind in generations, and Radagon nearly dismissed her power without a thought.

Perhaps he is like her, gold-blessed and holding true to God Marika. Her counterpart in the Golden Order. 

He is a mystery and Rennala has always loved mysteries.

*

*

*                    

In retrospect, that was the moment the first seeds of love were planted in her heart.

*

*

*

Negotiations with Marika are exhausting. God has plainly never been rejected and handles it with ill-grace. Her demands are absurd, the concessions she desires so antagonistic that Rennala assumes it is a pretext for war.

“Perhaps I might write her a letter,” Radagon suggests, blood dripping slowly from a cut on his forehead. “I think I might know how to best appease Queen Marika.”

They are sparing in the courtyard, the autumn breeze soothing as orange leaves swirl around them. It is a perfect day by every definition and an excellent one to spar. Counsellor Iji had advised against this, warning that the Golden Order was inherently treacherous to those not fully within grace, and Radagon is the Golden Champion.

Foolish as it may be, Rennala is running out of options for a peaceful resolution. She permits Radagon to pen the letters in his elegant penmanship, utterly incongruous to his general boorish nature. The letter is a surprisingly simple thing that speaks to Radagon’s general health and safety, and the hospitality of Liurnia.

“I make you fight from dusk till dawn.”

“It is quite lovely, yes. Do you think I might entertain myself on your mounted knights? They seem more than capable of riding me into the ground.”

“Your phrasing is intentionally atrocious.”

“It is.”

Against her better judgement, Rennala smiles and is rewarded with Radagon’s golden smile.

Days pass like that, Radagon forced to exhaustion by her Knights who have started a complicated tournament system with a truly astounding prize pool. When he isn’t being forced to fight, Radagon spends his evenings attending to Rennala in the private courtyard, regaling her with stories of Leyndell and Altus.

The prison cell turns into an elaborate guest suite in the same wing as Rennala’s rooms and they often have breakfast together. Before she knows it, he is a more constant feature of her life, all crass wit and radiant strength.

She has almost entirely forgotten about negotiations when Marika’s response comes.

“Marriage,” Rennala says flatly, so offended that she’s skipped past anger and waded into hysteria. “She thinks I will marry you?”

“I have been told I am quite attractive.”

“So you can repent for your territorial aggression, I have to be wed to you.”

“God clearly supports this union almost as much as I do.”

“I will not marry you.”

“That would be blasphemy.”

“Then I hope God is listening. I will not marry you, Champion Radagon. I will not compromise on this. I am Queen in my own right and only moonlight will rule Liurnia. That is how it has always been and that is how it will always be. Until the very last day of Liurnia, the Erdtree will not rule these lands. Not so long as the giants are remembered, will your God be permitted to rule here.”

He watches her steadily, unconcerned by the moonlight bathing the room. He stands out, somehow painted in warm tones despite his charcoal skin. Almost like a sun burns beneath his skin.

“There is a path forward that will not require you to compromise.”

“Tell me.”

He does. It is a neat solution to the problem.

Champion Radagon is to be wed to Queen Rennala. A marriage in only one direction, Radgon being dissolved into House Caria without Liurnia giving anything to the Erdtree. A Consort, in short. A political union to appease them both.

Their wedding draws the most important names in the world, from the heads of noble houses to respected artisans and military commanders. Even Godwyn the Golden is in attendance to witness this momentous occasion.

Rennala hates it all. It feels too much like a compromise even if she will remain unchained.

“Is that a turtle?” Champion Radagon asks, bewildered, as they make the long walk down the aisle.

No one will ever hand her off. Rennala is head of her house and nation. The very suggestion from one of her uncles had been grounds for execution.

“A dog, actually.”

“I’ve seen dogs and they do not look like that. Dogs are monstrous beings of endless malice.”

“Miriel is the kindest person you will ever meet. Don’t insult our honoured Dog Pope or you’ll see me on the duelling grounds.”

“Is that all it takes to anger my darling wife?”

“You may be married to me, King consort, but do not overstep your bounds.”

She will not marry him, no. Love him, perhaps, but only because he shares her love for combat and is occasionally intelligent. But he will not be King of Liurnia to usurp her place here.

“One day, you’ll realise the absurdity of naming me consort and I will laugh at you.”

*

*

*

The sun has long set but under starlight and the guidance of the moon is when Liurnia truly awakens. The day is for sleeping and night is when the parties begin. Rennala thinks of her years in the Knighthood fondly, cramming for two hours in the afternoon before exams and partying for the next twelve. It seems impossible that she had that kind of energy but she also didn’t carry Queenhood on her shoulders quite like this.

They sit on a lounger overlooking the Three Sisters which are currently home to a few children sneaking in.

Radagon, her consort of just shy of two decades, is still unused to the schedule. He dozes lightly, his head lolling onto her shoulder at regular intervals. She allows it only because he is warm and she has come to love his strange habits. For one so given to bloodshed, little else rouses him to anything but placid compliance. A dog until forced to reveal his teeth as a dog.

Sometimes, Rennala hates the habit of labelling everything as a dog. It makes comparisons difficult.

One child has the brilliant idea to throw a brick through a window instead of just walking through the open door on the other side. Rennala watches fondly as the spectral guards rise from the mist and chase after the troupe of children.

“It might be nice to have some of our own sneaking out when they think we aren’t looking.”

“You want little demigods running around?” Radagon asks sleepily.

Rennala’s frigid blood freezes completely. Those words were said easily, so simply that Rennala worries that she misheard him. Except her hearing is perfect and her recall better. Even had he slurred those words, of which Radagon never mispronounces his words, it wouldn’t change what she heard.

“Only the children of a God might be demigods,” she says, working through a swirling mix of emotions. Radagon awakens fully then, eyes blowing wide. “They say the giant’s final curse—”

“—Don’t—”

“—was for their blood to never vanish from this world. Every giant I ever met had red hair. I never met a human with hair that shade.” She reaches out to a still Radagon and tugs on a strand. They are thick, each one individually just a bit too large to belong to a human. But for a giant who needed thick strands to withstand snow flurries? “Just what are you, Radagon?”

“A mere Champion.”

“You are far more than that.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“We can never go back if I answer. You will need to make a choice once you know. You cannot delay it. Once you know, you can never unknow.”

When she met the Full Moon, that marked a turning point in her life as she learnt truths of the cosmos hidden to most. No, even before that, there were truths she could never unlearn. That promises could be broken no matter that they were made in good faith. That the moon could learn to love the sun and exist in unison. That she would never bow to anyone, not the god hiding beneath he skin or the god of the Lands Between.

She does not fear knowledge. She seeks it out fearlessly, damn the consequences that follow.

“Speak, my consort.”

“You are Headmaster Rennala, moon-blessed scholar of Raya Lucaria, yes? That statement is objectively true. Beguiling and bewitching, a mage of immense power. But you are also Knight-Queen Rennala, wielder of the Carian promise and greatest of the Carian Knights. That is also true. Perhaps the moon could only accept the former, but the latter was also true of you. So maybe you cast aside the Knight and leave behind the scholar. Maybe you give unto one half the faith of your god but not the power to rule. Perhaps you divest your bloodthirsty tendencies and leave it to suffer the curse of your actions.

“Maybe this part of you born of bloodshed and war meets a Knight on the battlefield. Perhaps this part of you meets an equal in strength and warfare. A god-blessed queen raining starlight and frost on the battlefield. Remember that though you left the faith in your gods to this part of you, it is still you. Would it be so surprising that this part of you, made of parts you gleefully discarded, might make different choices than even those you envisioned?”

He holds her gaze steadily. Those eyes she long thought a very warm brown are in truth golden as the radiance of the Erdtree. How many things has she willfully ignored and discounted? The impossibility of his weapon skills, the incantations he so casually wielded, the power to easily overpower even a god-blessed mage of the highest order.

I was so blind to you, she thinks, uncertain for once in her life. 

“Perhaps you were always a free spirit and loathed all shackles. Perhaps the authority you coveted with every fibre of your being clashed horribly with your need for freedom. Perhaps those parts of you are so fundamental to your being that even the divested part of you would rage as well against authority. Even if that authority is yourself and the Greater Will that governs these lands.”

“This, then, what is it?” She gestures to them, separated by so little. “A ruse to get a Carian Queen under your influence? To gain more power—”

“I love you.”

He says it easily. Implacably. As certain as the chill of the moon and the golden warmth of fundamentalism. He says it as a god would say it, and so it is made true to the world.

“I love you as the sun loves the moon, content to only ever be a reflection of your glory. I love you as a mortal loves his goddess. I love you as a warrior who knows bloodshed as his truest home because I have seen you spill oceans of blood and do so gleefully. I love you, because how could I not?”

“Can love alone ever be enough?”

“I would like to find out. Perhaps—”

Her hand snaps out, fingers curling around his neck. “Say perhaps again and I will skin you.”

It would be so simple to squeeze and crush his throat. Divinity might help him survive that, but not a full moon rammed down his throat as well.

“Perhaps,” he enunciates slowly, amused, fearless, and utterly loveable. “Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.”

“If I ever receive anything less than your full devotion, I will kill you.”

“I know.”

Slowly, he raises his hands and from his upturned palms, divinity is made manifest.

The cross-hatched marks are a Great Rune. She’s glimpsed them before on Radagon’s clothes. A symbol she hadn’t understood. The right to rule the Lands Between, or at least a portion of it.

He lays it in her palm and closes her fingers around it. The edges slice through her flesh and she drips blood and frost upon this half of the Elden Rune. Infuses the ideas of starlight and moonlight within gold.

“Is this devotion enough?”

She answers with a kiss.

*

*

*

Lord Godfrey the Lion Regent, Consort of God-Queen Marika, is exiled. For the one who put the giants to the sword, it is not enough. Nothing short of his head adorning the Forge will be enough.

“Does this make me the Elden Lord?”

Radagon looks away from a toddling Radahn just long enough for Radahn to fire his toy arrow. Distracted as he is, Radagon still catches it in the air, snapping his fingers and sending Radahn flying into the lake.

She loves the boy, has since the moment she laid eyes on him, but he was a nightmare to birth and he screamed for two years straight. She prays to the Full Moon that the next one isn’t a monster. Another boy, she thinks. Hopefully, he vaguely looks like Rennala, unlike Radagon who she sometimes thinks is a Radagon clone she incubated. Only his paler skin, more slate than charcoal, and the almost pink shade of his hair disabused her of that notion.

“That is a quite complicated question on the rather fluid metaphysics underpinning the Lands Between and the cosmos beyond.”

“My dearest consort, I was making pocket dimensions in my teens.”

“I didn’t mean to say anything of your intelligence. I, unfortunately, am not the smart half, so my knowledge is limited. The more cultural definition of Elden Lord is merely consort of Marika and as you are not wed to her, you are disqualified. As the male aspect, one might argue you could be Elden Lord, but whilst I am your consort, you are not my wife, so you disqualified yourself. Imagine rejecting godhood because you refused to admit your love.”

“You’re pushing your luck.”

“Gods are innately lucky. That is what much of my portion of the Elden Ring represents. Luck and the favour of the divine. The Laws of Battle. The Codes of Honour. The Laws of Causation and Regression as well. I believe the gravitational constant might be there, but I can’t change it without Marika’s portion.”

“If only this once, I find myself in agreement with the Tyrant Queen. You should never be given such power.”

“If I did, you could change it as you pleased.”

“Honestly, Radagon, why would I change the constant of gravity. I rather like it. And it would ruin my view of other galaxies if gravitational lensing stopped behaving.”

“I would make you other constellations.”

“I admire the ones we already have.”

“A third of them are rather disgusting gods.”

“Please don’t speak so negatively of yourself. I don’t want my children to learn self-deprecation from you.”

“My dearest Queen, did we ever teach Radahn how to swim?”

She looks to the lake with no sign of Radahn. “Resurrect him if he’s dead.”

Her consort sighs. “That is a severe misuse of my divinity. Now excuse me as I go make sure we haven’t failed as parents.”

No resurrection is needed. She refuses to question why her toddler can breathe underwater. She does consider how much more difficult it will be to find him now.

*

*

*

She trains her children personally. Radahn is at an age where he wants to be just like his parents, though he can’t decide if he’d rather take after his father, the King Consort—Rennala had conceded that title just to spite Marika, to make her forever remember that if half of her was lesser than Rennala, all of her would be lesser—or his mother, the Knight Queen.

Rennala breathes a deep sigh of relief when Fundamentalism doesn’t come easy to Radahn. Or she will, once she’s figured out whether to laugh at the hilarity of the situation or shout at her kid.

The situation in question is Radahn losing control of discs of light and Rennala’s hair suffering as a result.

“I’m sorry,” he whines, thick tears refusing to fade away. A sensitive child, too loyal and kind for this world.

Rennala thumbs his tears away. He takes after his father more, skin like slate and a red mane from birth. The only thing he has of Rennala is the shape of his ears and the faint moonlight just beneath his skin.

“As you’ve said already, my dear.”

Behind her, Radagon flicks his hand, and a golden blade appears. With a sharp tug, Radagon slices through his own locks.

“Father?”

“I needed a haircut anyway.” He winks at his son, fond and indulgent. “Might I borrow three strands from you?”

He doesn’t wait for permission and somehow steals the three longest strands. With graceful fingers, he weaves their hair together. Three bands for them all. Rennala’s pitch black intertwined with Radagon’s fiery red and Radahn’s that approaches a softer pink. When that is done, clear gold overtakes them almost as though they are dipped in amber. Bracelets, of a sort. 

“One for you and one for your brother hiding behind the pillar.”

“I committed no wrongdoing!”

The boy peaks past the pillar. Smaller than Radahn who already comes up to Rennala’s shoulders and lanky in a way Radahn never was. From a distance, one might think his hair is black. If one didn’t know Radagon’s nature, they might dismiss any red as a trick of the light. But it is the deepest of reds, the red of old congealed blood.

“That only makes you more suspicious, Rykard.”

“I am not suspicious.”

He trots over anyway, eagerly grabbing his bracelet. Then he grabs Radahn’s collar and pulls him down.

“You ruined Mother’s hair,” Rykard hisses, enunciating his words with a pretentiousness Rennala hopes fades away in his teen years.

“It was a mistake.”

“Excuses are unbecoming of you.”

Rykard is very much half Radahn’s size and that’s with a stuffed tabard. The sight of him dragging his older brother away is incongruous and yet hardly uncommon in Liurnia.

“Shut up.”

“Silence yourself.”

“No, you shut up.”

There’s a crash the moment they turn the corner. “I fucking hate you!”

Radagon looks at her. “Are we going to stop them?”

“Children can raise themselves. Until they both scream like they’re terrified then I don’t care.”

“When our traumatised demi-gods are murdering each other, I hope you know it’s your fault.”

“Excuse you, our children will murder everyone else. Have more faith in them.”

Her words are punctuated by a wall collapsing and a piercing shriek from Radahn. Rennala winces.

“At least they both inherited my physical strength,” Radagon says with a sigh.

“I’m strong as well.”

“I let you win that duel.”

As much as she loves him, Radagon is an idiot, and he’s soon reminded that Rennala wields stars as weapons.

*

*

*

Her third child is born under a lunar eclipse after a nightmarish pregnancy that had more new moons than should have been celestially possible. Rennala refuses to consider it a sign. Her people have already started calling Ranni the Lunar Princess, not merely a lunar princess like the other royals princesses born of Liurnian blood.

Radagon laughs at her when she suggests Ranni will be a perfectly normal child.

“She’s an Empyrean,” Radagon says, staring down at a slumbering Ranni. “Whether we ignore it or not, she is as she is.”

Ranni alone inherited her father’s hair as it is. Red and flush with the curse of giants, contrasting vividly with her charcoal skin. Beautiful. Glorious. Easily loveable when she isn’t screaming her lungs out.

Barely a year old and already marked by the influence of the Two Fingers.

“You should have stopped this.”

“I was a bit distracted convincing my other half not to start another genocide.”

“One might ask the Mountaintop to stop snowing as well.”

“My feelings exactly. There is a certain nobility and honour to warfare. Without that, I fear terribly for this land.”

He lifts his daughter, so similar even as a babe that they may as well be twins separated by time. He seems calmest with their children, the need for violence hidden a bit easier, the maddening faith of his fulfilled in three children with far too much energy.

“A piece of me and a piece of you,” Radagon hums, a stupid tune he’s sung since Radahn was born. “A piece of gold and a piece of silver. A piece of faith and a piece of wit. A piece of me and a piece of you.”

“You know, traditionally I should be the one losing my mind after a pregnancy. Is this behaviour normal for gods?”

“I’d have to ask the other gods in the Lands Between. Ah, yes, let me send the thing sleeping underneath the Lake of Rot a message. I’m certain it will be willing to answer the question. Or you could always howl at the Full Moon.”

“Your humour has worsened.”

“I’ve always wondered why only an Empyrean could become a physical god,” he says, changing the subject poorly. “I know Dragonlord Placiduax was consort to no one and the Leaping Carp bestowed his title to him directly.”

“I’m sorry, what do dragons have to do with fish?”

“The god of Dragons is a carp.”

“You’re being intentionally obtuse.” 

“Entirely literal. It swam upstream against the currents of the cosmos and at the end, ascended heaven as the first and greatest dragon. Thus, it is a god, for it won against the cosmos.”

“That’s absurd.”

“But true. It makes me wonder about the necessity of Empyreans. Was I—Marika, I mean… was she chosen because she had the potential to become a god? Or did choosing her grant her the potential like the other Empyrean candidates.”

“Have you considered the Two Fingers just wanted to exert control over her destiny?”

“Brother held that suspicion as well.”

“Maliketh? The shadowbound beast? Was suspicious of his creators?”

“I am entirely literal when I say brother and he certainly wasn’t birthed from a pair of ugly fingers.”

“I thought people were being metaphorical with that term?”

“Oh no, not at all. Numen are shapeshifters. Our—their norms aren’t quite the same as yours. Maliketh passed through Mother’s loins same as Marika. But his role as shadowbound beast was… he was the first, and all others were made in his image. After the Gloam-Eyed Queen’s treason, the Outer Will and its Two Finger agents couldn’t trust Empyreans so implicitly. There were other Empyreans who weren’t related to their shadows, but a familial bond is harder to break. A cruel thing, when one considers it. The greatest kindness is to exile them so that they may live as their own person. I wonder what form Ranni’s will take.”

“I certainly haven’t given birth to a half-wolf, and I have no intention of doing so.”

“One will exist regardless. It is the will of this land’s god and thus it has already been set in motion.”

“I will not allow my daughter’s executioner in her presence.”

“Shadows are children as well. Maliketh, for all his blind loyalty, was Marika’s confidante for a time and closest friend. He made her laugh, my love. He knew when to push me to achieve more and carried me—her—when she stumbled. They were siblings first, Empyrean and Shadow second. It was not so terrible.”

“The Black Blade is no one’s loving sibling.”

“He is to Marika. Do you know he was Godwyn’s nursemaid? Bundled the brat right up and carried him on his chest in a carrier for his first few years. There are a few loyal dog jokes Godfrey made. He bore those insults proudly because he chose to love his family unashamedly. He won the war against death not because God asked it of him, but because his dearest sister was afraid of dying with her goals incomplete. He loved me enough to be reviled and I did not love him enough.”

“Do you miss him?”

“As I was before? No, I never could. As I am now? Freed of impossible chains? Yes, I can admit so.”

“Then you are better than Marika.”

“You are biased.”

“Only as you have proven your better nature. Marika knows neither love nor honour. She would shun her children underground instead of facing the difficult task of parenthood and she would use assassins before taking to the field of battle. You are not her, dearest one, you are greater.”

“You spoil me with your words. Thank you, my Queen.”

“I will accept no thanks for reminding you of simple truths. Another simple truth I’d like clarification on is your fidelity. Are you certain this shadowbound child won’t be yours?”

“I mean, it would make it easier to maintain influence over Ranni if it was part of the household. I’m also not risking impregnating a woman. You’ll cut my balls off if I did that.”

“You could try with a man,” Rennala says with a smirk.

He raises an imperious red brow. “I am the male aspect of the land’s physical god. That isn’t the impossibility you think it is.”

“Don’t be weird.”

“You brought it up. And I’ve seen what becomes of people who can’t manage glintstone magic. I did nothing weird in comparison.”

“You can’t get men pregnant.”

“You have a very narrow view of the world.”

He refuses to clarify no matter Rennala’s insistence.

*

*

*

“Have you seen my bracelet?” Rennala asks him a few days later.

“Ask your children?”

“They’re your children today.”

Radagon’s bracelet goes missing. Neither of them notices or particularly cares. They have two children who, on a good day, only terrorise half the kingdom. Unless there’s a call for help, they have both learnt to ignore it.

“It’ll show up eventually.”

*

*

*

Six months later, it does.

“I have bad news and worse news,” Radagon announces cheerfully, far too amused for it to be anything good.

“It’s barely past noon. How are you this energetic?”

“I’m powered by sunlight.”

“You aren’t a plant and you haven’t seen the sun in weeks.”

“Ignoring your blatant lies, the bad news is that we’re pregnant again.”

“I would know if I’m pregnant again.”

“The worse news is that you’re not pregnant.”

She forces herself awake and listens to the story in its entirety. The longer Radagon speaks, the more certain she is that a vacation to the Mountaintops is a good and necessary thing. Anything to avoid the sheer nonsense her beloved Consort gets up to the moment she looks away.

“You fucked my cousin.”

“I, Radagon, did not fuck your cousin. Apparently, the bracelet made of my divine hair may have helped impregnate your cousin. Let us be very clear on my complicity in this act. It was, in fact, a virgin birth. Quite the miracle you might say.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“It’s quite hilarious. Why, merely my hair can impregnate women. No other man can boast such an accomplishment.” He shrugs then. “It is in everyone's best interests that said bracelet only used my power to do this.”

Rennala blinks, the implication horrifying her immediately. Her gorge rises, beaten down only by her certainty that the moon had nothing to do with this.

“Do you think this is the shadowbound beast?”

“The Greater Will shall do as it wills.”

The answer is not what she desires but Radagon wheedles out of answering anything if he can avoid it. In the coming days, she brings her cousin into the royal residence and they both pretend the other doesn’t exist like reasonable adults. Dinners are fraught with silence and breakfast is a minefield on a good day.

“Are we getting another sibling?” Radahn asks from his perch. His perch being Rykard futilely squirming in the mud.

“Maybe. I have yet to decide what to do with the child.”

“I think I would like another sibling.”

Rykard finally slips out from under Radahn’s mass. His glare is truly vile and would put the fear of God into any other child. Radahn’s used enough to being stabbed by his brother.

Before the two start fighting and possibly destroy her garden, Rennala throws Ranni at the boy who scrambles to catch his giggling sister.

“You’re a terrible parent,” Rykard declares, though the impact is lessened by Ranni pawing at his face.

“Don’t be mean to Mother.”

“She threw your sister.”

I’ve seen her drop from the fourth-storey window and land unharmed. You’re a worrywart.”

“I’m going to stab you now.”

Seeing the three of them together makes something in her chest constrict, the frigid chill of her blood warmed by the knowledge that somehow, impossibly, these children are hers.

As days turn to months, Rennala finds herself called away to handle a Naturalborn of the Void threatening to escape confinement. It means she misses the birth of the child and then his first birthday by the time she returns. She’d been surprised to realise there was an entire civilisation of people living outside of the grace of the Erdtree right beneath Eastern Liurnia. Learning their language had taken longer than she expected and meeting their strange god had taken her somewhere outside of standard spacetime.

Her children haven’t burnt Liurnia down by the time she returns, much to her surprise. Much to her bewilderment, Rykard had taken one look at the babe and refused to let him go.

There is no reason cold and efficient Rykard should do so. The babe couldn’t possibly be that cute.

Rennala takes one look at Blaidd and says, “fuck,” beneath her breath.

Blaidd toddles along, his wolf head comically large for his body, his eyes somehow even bigger. It isn’t fair that the pup is so cute.

“Did you have to exile my cousin?”

Rykard glares at her and maybe once he reaches her waist it might be fearsome. “She wanted to keep him but he’s mine now.”

“If I don’t adopt Blaidd, are you going to stab me in the back and take over Liurnia?”

“Don’t be silly, I’ll stab you through the brain stem.”

“Of course, my mistake. You’re growing to be quite the treacherous serpent.”

“Thank you.”

Well, it seems she has another child. No one has to know that Blaidd is her favourite for simply not causing her nine months of grief.

*

*

*

When Ranni is twelve, and Blaidd ten, she takes them to Mountaintop of Giants. This is Ranni’s heritage as a daughter of Caria and it shall be her who carries the promise of their lineage should Rennala pass away.

She is thankful that Rykard’s possessiveness faded as he found some other object of his obsession. She cannot deal with another child with ambitions for world domination and Blaidd could get even the pettiest noble to cave with his wide eyes and innocence. Much better that he stays with Ranni who has only ruined the careers of scholars who doubted her intelligence and destroyed a minor noble house.

“Once, the giants lived. Once, their forge burnt high and eternal. Once, we sought their knowledge and friendship and companionship. The giants were the best of us, my little moon. They taught me much of the ancient magics of this world. When life was suffocated by the void, it was the light of embers that gave us strength and warmed our pitiful souls. It was the giants who tended this flame and protected us before we knew either thought or language. The giants fought not for territory or wealth, but for the spirit of culture and the light of knowledge. We are lesser for their loss.”

Her mother’s grave is untended, steel worn away by the gale of years. The grave was never anything special, marked only by a Carian sword standing tall despite the age that has passed. From here, the Forge is visible, and on a clear day, the Full Moon shines brightly over the gravesite. It is a good place for a true mother of Carian descent to be buried.

She allows Ranni to hold the Sword of Night and Flame. The weight of it nearly sends the girl tumbling down. But, as all daughters of Caria must one day do, she stands tall and undaunted in the frigid gale.

“This blade is the mark of our covenant with the giants. It is a heavy thing to carry. It is the memory of those we failed but who would forgive us anyway. But so long as one daughter of Caria lives and carries this blade, they will not be forgotten. One day, I will pass this burden on. It may not be to you, but I would have you know so that a rightful wielder might be known. Do you understand what I ask of you, my little moon?”

“Upon my name as Ranni the Lunar Princess, blessed by the majesty of the night sky, I do so hold true to the promise my foremothers made to the giants. Till this flesh is slain, I shan’t forget the lives of giants.”

“I accept your oath, daughter of Caria. May it bring you comfort and may it drive you when you are lost.”

She takes the Sword back and picks up her daughter. Together, they return to the base of the hill where a weak fire burns. It is only by Rennala’s command of frost magics that it has yet to be extinguished.

“Would you not like to see more as well?”

“I like it here,” Blaidd says, huddled beneath a royal blue cloak and two blankets embossed with the heraldry of Caria.

Here, of course, being right next to the fire.

“Come, Blaidd, my child, I did not bring you here merely to sulk.”

“But it’s cold over there.”

There, of course, being away from the fire.

“Then you’ll have more incentive to learn the fire songs. That way you won’t ever be cold again.”

His eyes widen—and oh Moon, Rennala will never be able to say no to him.

“Coming.”

Blaidd trots along. Pressed against her neck, she feels Ranni smile. Maybe indulging Blaidd won’t be entirely terrible.

“To Ranni shall go all frost and moon, but to you, Blaidd, shall go all fire and steel. Through you, we might begin a new tradition for the wolf-sons of Caria.”

The giants communed through verse and song. Too many of which were lost to the fog of time. Rennala remembers only a few.

O Flame, grant me strength. Let my faith Catch Flame and burn, oh burn till only embers and ash remain. Flame, cleanse me. Flame, protect me. Burn us all that we may dance as dust. Burn the tree that life may grow from ash.

Rennala grieves her ignorance even as she teaches her youngest child. Those were the basic songs, those that even the newest of outsiders could learn. But the songs of history and culture were drowned in blood. The songs that spoke of entangled flames and decaying flame are lost and they will never return.

Some days, she wonders if she has a right to wield the Sword of Night and Flame. It was their promise to be allies unto the end of all things and Caria did not raise their swords in defence of the giants. Could not do so with the old pathways to the Mountaintop sealed. A weak excuse, one she does not allow to justify her inaction.

Only the small things might give their spirits respite. Others will sing their songs and carry their flame. The sons of Caria will grow up knowing of the Mountaintop that is their second home, the giants who are their fallen kin, and that will have to be enough.

To her pleasant surprise, Blaidd has an excellent singing voice and takes to fire magics easily.

To her despair, Ranni’s singing voice can only be described as a war crime and she refuses to be left out.

*

*

*

“Children were a mistake,” Radagon says in bed, listening to the howls assaulting the castle.

“Just curse them to silence above a certain volume level.”

“I’m not cursing our children because we’re failing to raise them with manners.” He pauses. “I also won’t look away if you decide to curse them.”

“You’re a terrible husband. You’re meant to give me whatever I want.”

“I’m your consort, so no, I don’t have to do that.

“I want a dog in the divorce.”

“I’ll get you a puppy if you shut up.”

The next morning, she finds a red puppy shredding her pillows. A stray. She just stares at her husband who shrugs. Bewilderment long having melted into amusement.

“This is not my fault.”

“Somehow, I find myself doubtful.”

*

*

*

Life is simple for a time.

Radahn discovers gravitational magic and very quickly proves he is Rennala’s son more than his father. He goes from merely nudging objects with his magic to reshaping Selia’s mountains in a matter of months. All so he can take care of his horse, Leonard, once it became clear Radahn would only keep growing.

Liurnia goes from strength to strength. Their people are well fed and there is enough magic in their blood to handle any drought. Trade with the far-flung lands beyond is bountiful and they start only five wars. She suspects Radagon had a hand in four of them, usually when he was getting antsy. Better his rage be consumed during a night of the hunt than Liurnia.

Blaidd meets Maliketh and nobody dies except for Rennala’s pride when her child flings rocks around like a heathen. He’s a Carian, for pity’s sake. A royal one at that. Last in the line of succession, maybe, and that’s his own fault for being born last, but he’s on the family portrait and they use dignified magic. But no, Ranni is having fun with a witch in the woods whom Ranni thinks Rennala knows nothing about. The truth is that Radagon has to stop her from strangling the crone. She used hedge magic. Hedge magic! Esoteric and inelegant magics for lesser mortals.

“You’re an elitist,” Radagon reminds her.

“I’m a Carian.”

“That means the same thing now. Just leave them be. They all know moon and glintstone magics. Order above, but Ranni’s even loved by the Dark Moon. Your children are fine.”

“They should know more traditional Carian bladework. It’s unbefitting that they are all so incompetent in it.”

“I’m not telling those menaces what to do.”

“Coward.”

“I don’t fight losing battles. Besides loving you. Love truly is a battlefield, and you, my love, are unrelenting.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, my King Consort.”

It admittedly gets them in bed but that is expected. Their marriage is strong and without nonsensical secrets being kept like her husband also being the God Queen of the Lands Between.

Her last child, Rykard is… the boy is a savant, but the boy is also an idiot. Not stupid. Oh no, he’s often too smart for his own good. But certainly dumb.

“You want to form a covenant with the devouring serpent that’s promised to devour the gods with you,” she says patiently, finally sitting up in her bed. Today was meant to be her day off. She had planned it for years. One full day of peace and quiet ruined by this. “Devouring such gods as the god that will decay your internal organs, the one that will show you true death, the one we’re in a cold war with, the one that burns hotter than magma, the fish the dragons worship, and—

“Don’t say it like that. You make me sound stupid.”

Even the puppy—it’s a fucking giant wolf; why did I let Radagon do anything?—looks up from its spot in the corner, unimpressed with her child. At least the puppy learnt new tricks like Carian Phalanxes and Greatswords and retaliation. A wonderfully obedient puppy—there’s a giant wolf in my room and it thinks I’m its mother fuck fuck fuck—who had appropriate pastimes like slaughtering Caria’s enemies and hunting down traitors.

“This is quite the rebellious phase,” she says instead.

“It’s not a phase, mom. We’re going to become super powerful and then you’ll finally be proud of me.”

He crosses his lanky arms, still stuck in the long adolescence of Marika’s rule. The boy will never be quite as large as his brother, something she suspects is a curse from the Giants. A cruse she doesn’t quite mind seeing Radahn’s lumbering bulk and fiery hair, reminded of the Giants she once knew. Teledji haunts her memories less as the years pass, but the thought of him doesn’t leave her near tears.

“I was quite proud of you when you finally won a spar against Radahn.”

“That doesn’t count. He was going easy on me.”

“And what of that time you stopped a coup in Caria?”

“That was nothing—”                          

“I doubt the young Lady Tanith considered it nothing. You might consider courting her.”

“Don’t be weird about this.”

“You’re the one who brought up a god-devouring serpent which I’m still not certain isn’t a strange euphemism.”

He freezes, then. No child wants to discuss sex with their parent and Rykard is more of a prude than his brother.

“It’s not a phase,” he grouses instead of touching on the possibly uncomfortable topic of discussion.

“It sounds like a phase.”

“You’re the first person I’m feeding to my snake.”

“You can keep playing with your snake so long as you don’t let it eat anyone who doesn’t consent.”

“I hate you!”

Rennala smiles. That’s more like it. “I love you too, dear. And I’m proud of you. So is your fool father. You know, you should leave him some work otherwise he whines and starts finding new ways to break the laws of the cosmos with Fundamentalism.”

A wince shared between the two. If it isn’t Radahn reshaping mountains out of boredom, Ranni freezing the pipes again, Blaidd starting fires, then it’s Radagon creating pockets of altered time in unused rooms or breathing life to new strains of man-eating vines or blowing things up. Sometimes, Rennala wishes she wasn’t a single mother to five. Usually, she can leave Rykard alone, but then he goes and starts talking to serpent gods.

“I’ll let him feel useful about the wastewater plant.”

“Very generous to make your father deal with fecal excrement.”

“He’ll be with his own kind then.”

That startles a laugh out of her. Rykard’s cheeky grin has her rolling her eyes. They both know he won’t accept any punishment unless she has a concrete explanation of why it’s fundamentally wrong to insult one’s idiot father or start a secret prison where you experiment on your political enemies or hire a troupe of assassins to assassinate another troupe of assassins so a mercenary band can clean up your evidence. Normal teen things, really.

“Your god-eating plan does have one fatal flaw.”

“Which is?”

“You’d have to kill your father as well.”

None of her children are dumb, not at all. Ranni’s already mimicking spells she sees despite barely being able to read. Radahn might never open a book for pleasure, but he’s always been filled with empathy and kindness, a brilliant tactical mind, and an aptitude for gravitational magic that will probably split the continent in half on accident.

But Rykard is the one who learnt politics before he could hold a sword. He fixes problems before Rennala even knows they exist, and she is more than happy to name him regent and wash her hands of the tedium of running a kingdom.

“He’s not a giant,” Rykard says uncertainly, grasping the idea quickly.

“He is not.”

The boy takes his hair in hand and stares at it. It was painstakingly crotched in deceptively thin locs, almost like individual strands on a casual glance. Any casual glance would mistake his hair for black.

“My hair is red.”

“It is. Thankfully, I will always know if your father betrays his vows.”

“Oh my god, my dad is god. Why? Who thought that idiot was a good candidate for god? He’s the dumbest person I know. There’s no hope for us if he’s god.”

She nods slowly. “Which is why you shouldn’t feed yourself to a giant serpent that wants to eat the gods. You don’t want that level of stupid in you.”

“I can’t believe my plans for world domination have been foiled so easily.”

“You should workshop them with your siblings.”

“Ugh, no. Radahn only cares about his army, Blaidd just wants to be a duelist, and Ranni’s definitely going to take over herself if I don’t move quick enough.”

“As long as you’re aware they’ll help if you ask.”

“Wait, um, mum, please tell me they’re separate people and I don’t have to figure out if dad’s a girl on some days.”

Her pleasant smile turns withering. “You’re grounded.”

“Come on.”

Smart enough not to argue. If only he used that intellect on devouring fucking serpents and didn’t make covenants with them. With her luck, it’s a genuine god. 

“And I’m going to go freeze your snake.”

“That’s just petty.”

“You can have it back when you learn to respect people.”

“That’s going to be never.”

“Then you’ll have to figure out another plan to take over the world.”

“Together?” he asks shyly.

Oh, he just wanted attention.

He’s small enough still to fit under her arm. She’s missed that, she realises. Letting them run wild hasn’t given her as many opportunities like this. As much as they trust her, her servants often know of her children’s accomplishments long before her. She presses a kiss to his head.

“Together,” she agrees.

“Together!” Radagon screams in their ears.

The first thing they do together is run Radagon out of the manor.

*

*

*

The proclamation comes in the dead of winter, at the height of Liurnian strength. It comes when no one expects it and goes against all reason.

Put the children of moonlight to the sword.

Marika’s proclamation sends ripples through the Lands Between.

There was meant to be peace. Champion Radagon of the Golden Order had married into Carian royalty. Their nations should have been allies. Moonlight and Erdtree are not inherently in opposition. Peace between the two is not so impossible a concept.

Anyone who knew either Marika or Rennala knew peace would be impossible. Not for two women who would never bow. Half the world is at war with the other half, a continuation of the war between giants and Erdtree. Rennala stares at her beloved Sword and feels the weight of it now more than ever. It is happening too soon. Rennala thought she would have more time. She thought her children would have time to temper themselves in lesser battles, to grow their armies before they wage this war. Radahn’s Redmanes are untested yet and Rykard’s Inquisitors are still training.

“It’s too soon,” Radagon says, echoing her thoughts. “This wasn’t meant to happen now. There aren’t yet enough demigod children for Marika’s plan nor have the Tarnished grown strong enough. This is madness.”

Marika’s plan is a thing of elegance that Rennala has teased out of her husband over the ages, but ultimately came down to creating forces powerful enough to challenge the Greater Will outside of its influence: Tarnished banished to struggle in warfare eternal until the time was right, demigod children capable of matching might against the gods, and her only conspirator Lord Godfrey as a final backup.

Her consort has yet to stop pacing, his nervous energy great enough that their puppy fled to pastures unknown. Hopefully, it’s killing their enemies and not terrorising a hapless noble house.

“Perhaps she has finally realised the truth of your betrayal.”

Radagon shakes his head. “Even I am not so reckless. I wouldn’t throw this plan away just because one piece wasn’t behaving correctly. A single piece isn’t enough, and my role is largely fulfilled. If anything, she should be pleased the part of her bound to hold faith undying with the Greater Will has rejected it. It risks me and therefore risks Empyrean blood.”

“Our daughter is an Empyrean.”

“And the children Marika and I would sire would be guaranteed to be Empyreans. She could have uplifted another Lord and sired more demigods without issue, omenblood tendencies aside.”

She takes Radagon’s hand and forces him to look up at her. “Worry not, my dear. If it is war she desires, then it shall be defeat she learns.”

“How can you say that? How can you dare—”

“I am Rennala and I dared demand obedience from the Full Moon and it bowed. I dared demand obedience from God and he gave me his undying loyalty. I dare, Lord Radagon, because my strength is unquestionable, and no god holds strength enough to make me bow my head. I will kill Marika, not for power, but merely because she demands that I bow my head. I will end her order so that my children grow under my guiding moonlight. And I will break the Greater Will so that my fool consort might stand free as my equal. To doubt is to call me a liar. Would you accuse me of lying, my love?”

“No, never.”

“Then it is as it is and we must win this war.”

“I love you.”

“As you should.”

*

*

*

Ages ago, they had to expand the hall housing the war table ages ago to accommodate Radahn. It makes her feel diminutive in the space, less said for Radagon who hardly comes up to her chin. They enter the hall of glittering marble together, a Knight Queen in wrought silver armour and a King Consort with a divine hammer buckled at the waist of his simple grey skirt.

Hanging from the walls are banners of every House of Liurnia and the heraldries of every order of Knights who have pledged their lives for the cause of Liurnian independence. Not a single one dared refuse, not a single noble dared believe the Tyrant Queen would see anything other than moonblood before putting them to the sword. 

The hall is packed as well with the Knights of all orders, proudly standing for Caria and Cuckoo and Liurnan Royalty. The heads of Liurnia’s many noble houses and the wisest of glintstone scholars. Set dressing for the true actors in this play.

How can a mere duke compare to the radiance of Radagon and the luminescence of Rennala, the towering colossus of Radahn and the molten will of Rykard, of Ranni’s Dark Moon hiding in the shadow of her soul and the shadowbound beast himself made of tight aggression and cold ferocity? A family of gods, demi-gods, and god-touched.

“No vow has been broken,” the Dog-Pope Miriel says calmly, taking up space at the head of the hall. “What peace we had was a lack of aggression, not a solemn promise. There is no blasphemy here for Liurnia has always kept its own gods and we do not hold the Tyrant Queen as holy.”

A murmur of assent passes through the audience.

Rennala suspects then that Miriel knows the true nature of Radagon and their children. She will do nothing as Dog Popes tend to be the least interested in strict definitions of faith. Dog Popes tended to freely speak of heresies if asked and encouraged others to explore them.

Miriel continues his speech as Rennala’s thoughts drift to the map of the battlefield, wondering which contingent of forces must be left behind to handle Stormveil. Then she considers if Marika might order the dragons to cross the oceans and approach from the east. What forces then would handle the defence of the capital? Would there be a smaller contingent sent first? It’s been too long since Rennala organised an army or led a battle. Those skills fade with time and her solution has been to send someone else.

“One must lead,” War Counsellor Iji says, shaking her from her thoughts. “One clear voice to head the armies of Liurnia. In times past, this very question has destroyed houses and felled armies before the first battle was waged. We settle it now whilst we have time.”

Iji’s words are grave, befitting the situation they find themselves in. God herself has declared children of frost and moon anathema to the Lands Between. Even the Elden Lord might be banished at God’s whim and the world will accept it.

She pets her puppy—why is my giant wolf smarter than most of the Lands Between???—soothingly as it picks up on the tension. Its eyes flit between her children, settling on Rykard. Always Rykard. Most ambitious of her children. Most volatile as well.

“The answer is known to us all,” Ranni says and Blaidd nods.

Radahn shrugs. “Rykard, obviously.”

Her second child narrows his eyes. He’s not really a child anymore, the lankiness of his teen years given way to wiry strength. Smaller than his siblings, but not lesser. Never lesser.

“It should be Mother.”

“Not me?” Radagon asks slyly, crossing his arms across his broad chest and Rennala needs to stop staring.

“You will get distracted by the first interesting opponent you see. You are objectively the worst choice. You lost to Mother twice. Your track record is suspect at best.”

“Mother holds no interest in being a commander,” Ranni says gravely, half-hidden by Blaidd’s royal cloak, “and I hold little capacity for warfare.”

Radahn stares at his brother, holding his gaze. “I can lead an army better than anyone save Lord Godfrey. I can’t lead an army and run a kingdom and deal with diplomacy and handle the politics and assassins at the same time.”

“I am the youngest,” Blaidd says simply, his gravely tones shaking the hall. Youngest, but certainly not least.

“We do it together,” Rykard declares sharply, a hint of childish wonder, but mostly the strength of will Rennala has carefully nurtured.

Rennala stands and her puppy—remember to feed it the fleshy Erdtree knights for dinner tonight—rises with her.

“Well, if that’s sorted, I expect your plan in the morning, Lord Commander Rykard.”

Her children nod as one.

House Caria nods as one.

In them, she sees untold hopes and dreams made manifest. Come what may, her children will stand above all.

*

*

*

There is a tedium to war that Rennala loathes. The waiting sickens her. It was the worst part of her Knighthood. She lives for interesting times and waiting is the exact opposite of that. Oh yes, there are skirmishes and more than a few assassins, but her children deal with those issues magnificently.

Their first major victory comes when they finally manage to take the Dectus lift. With that, and the bridge between Lirunia and Altus, they will control the flow of war.

“You should enjoy the peace.”

She raises an imperious brow at Radgon who throws his hammer for their giant wolf to catch. It trots back and accepts more scratches than it deserves.

“I’d like to kill you more.”

“Me me or other me?”

“Both.”

“Don’t say that, you’ll upset the puppy.”

She stares at the puppy—wolf, it’s a fucking giant wolf—and its glimmering interest. “I think it’s more interested in eating the assassin under your foot.”

Radagon looks down, evidently having forgotten why they’re up so early in the morning. “Oh, I forgot about that. Take it to Rykard and let him know I said you can eat it later.”

The wolf nods happily, biting down on the assassin’s colour and dragging it along the stone hallways.

“How much of that did it understand?”

“I’m starting to suspect it can speak and just refuses to.”

“Lovely. I can expect a coup in a few years.”

“Dogs are loyal so long as you feed them a healthy diet of assassins and knights.”

She rolls her eyes and slips back into the blankets. Those won’t be the last assassins. Marika has a love for such methods.

All too soon Liurnia is knocking on Leyndell’s doors with siege engines and trebuchets, grand magical ballistae to shoot down dragons, and legions of soldiers.

It is a sizeable force and under the leadership of her children, they’ve torn through the Erdtree forces. It was all going great until the news came in.

The return of Lord Godfrey.

If there is one man who can kill a god, then it is him.

“I’ll handle it.”

And if there’s a god willing to walk to his death, it is Radagon. But like it or not, she is not making her children face an Elden Lord. Not them. Not yet. 

They can deal with the likes of Godwyn the Golden riding atop the Lichdragon Fortissax, red lightning sparking around the pair.

Rykard sighs at the sight and reaches for his greatsword. “Come, brother. We have a dragon to kill.”

“I’ve never had the pleasure of killing one. Do you think I can make armour from it?”

“I’m certain we can find someone.”

If they hold no fear, then Rennala will not dishonour them.

Whoever that woman is, she certainly isn’t mortal. Rennala can sense the soul of a dragon in her, one shared by the Dragon cultist beside her.

She pats her dog’s hide. “Hey boy, you see those two?” It nods eagerly. “Kill.”

*

*

*

She loses track of the battle as they travel further into Leyndell. Counsellor Iji is a godsend, coordinating their forces as demigod children wage war against one another. Deeper they penetrate crowded Leyndell, past nobles put to the sword and civilians conscripted as fodder in this needless war. Screams rend the air and blood turns Leyndell into a crimson city.

Rennala feels no guilt. They all had a choice to leave. They had every moment between Marika’s proclamation and now to leave. Did they think because the Tyrant Queen declared a war that the capital would be safe? Fools. Heresy is a Liurnian, special and they commit it gladly. And when the time has come for atonement, their Dog Pope will offer forgiveness to those who hold faith in higher beings.

Higher they go, ascending the many levels of Liurnia. Her Carian Knights clash against Crucible Knights, Royal Knights matching strength with Dragon Cultists. Through it all, she and her remaining family ascend higher and higher they go, past courtyards of bleached stone that are stained red, up thick branches of the Erdtree and against battalions of footsoldiers.

And there, in the Sanctuary of the Erdtree, they find death awaiting them.

Maliketh, the Death of Gods.

He stands resplendent in his black armour, the Black Blade thrust into the stone beneath him. The rune of death is a sickening presence that distorts the air around them, a chorus of the damned screaming at them.

His eyes flicker to Blaidd and Ranni, to her children. Something like sorrow crosses his features.

“Why would you have me be kinslayer, Lord Radagon?”

“You will kill no one, Black Blade,” Blaidd declares, his rumbling voice unwavering.

Blaidd is young. Too young for this fight. Everything he learnt, he learnt at Maliketh’s feet. He charges forward anyway, sword coming down with an explosion of frost. A low sweep and fire bursts to life, forcing the opposing shadow away.

He stands undaunted in his cape of sparkling blue and armour that fits him better than ever in this very moment. Her youngest child, her precious boy who howled three days out of the month just to annoy Rykard. Her beloved son so infinitely loyal to Ranni. He’s grown without her looking, too young for this fight, but too old to stand aside.

Perhaps an impossible fight alone. But not with Ranni beside him.

“Go, Mother, and win.”

If nothing else, Rennala can stand tall in the knowledge that she raised good children. Even should she die, they will make something great of what remains. 

“It would be nice if they thought I was useful,” Radagon mutters as they run past death made manifest, striking down Knights with discs of order.

“Perhaps if you were useful, they might.”

He laughs as they burst through to the foot of the Erdtree where the Elden Throne resides. She expects to see him, but it is still a shock to see Lord Godfrey in the flesh. She wasn’t yet an adult when he was exiled and that was an age ago. The paintings failed to depict the strength of his features, the way his presence makes the cosmos sing.

Beside him, Two Omens stand. They, Rennala is ignorant of. Marika had no love for Omens. That much was known. The practice of Omen killing was outlawed in Liurnia for no other reason than to annoy Marika. One carries the distinct scent of Fundamentalism but the other smells of blood even from here.

“Queen Rennala,” the First Elden Lord greets respectfully, nodding as one royal to another. His spectral belies his rage, lips tugged in a wicked snarl.  

“Lord Godfrey, we meet at last.”

“A shame this meeting will not last long. As I breathe, no child of moonlight will rule this land.”

“You won’t breathe for much longer.”

“Traitors, all of you. But you, Radagon, greatest traitor of them all.”

“Morgott. Mohg.” Radagon greets the Omens instead, ignoring the Elden Lord. “I see the sewers did not destroy your spirit.”

“My blood remains unbroken, traitor. Come, now, and die.”

“Hoarah Loux, ever so honourable. Ever so loyal. If even I defy Marika, then she knows her plan is wrong. She knows and yet you follow her blindly.” Radagon’s hammer appears in his hand, sparks of gold dripping from it. “So be it. Let me show you the might of a god.”

Golden light bursts from Radagon as a god readies to battle a Lord.

In the cataclysm of gold, Rennala slips through the fog and ascends the Erdtree.

*

*

*

A world contained within a tree. An expanse of water that spreads far as the eye can see, spectral branches of the Erdtree interspersed here and there. Awaiting Rennala is God herself.

“I am Queen Rennala, blessed of the Moon, and Knight of Caria. Today, you die.”

“I suppose you are a pretty little thing,” Marika says, her grin more violent than anything Radagon wore. “I see why I would fall for you.”

“I did not choose you, Tyrant Queen.”

“I am your God,” Marika declares, a sun blooming to life behind her.

“What is god to a non-believer?”

Behind Rennala, the Full Moon manifests. In her right hand, she holds the promise of Caria to the giants, the Sword of Night and Flame. In her left, she holds a sceptre that has called forth stars.

It will be enough. It must be enough.

For her people.

For her nation.

For her children.

For herself.

Rennala raises her blade, and the battle begins.

*

*

*

She remembers it in fragments. Discs of golden radiance meeting Carian retaliations. Beams of hard light bisecting the arena. Slipping into a Full Moon to avoid explosions that would flatten mountains. Rays of cascading light slam into crystal barriers.

They wage war as masters of their craft, sorcerer and fundamentalist. They wage war as Queens fighting for their rule, for the right to decide the fate of the Lands Between.

More than that, they fight as women diametrically opposed, with pride in their hearts and blood in their mouths. They fight to win the war that they’ve waged against one another since the moment Rennala was born. Since the day she made her oath to never compromise, she was set against Marika for she could never bow to another. When the giants were put to the sword, Rennala knew it could only end in this confrontation.

Rennala has trained for this day for years. On the Mountaintop of Giants, hidden from the Erdtree’s sight, she hones her frost magic against her husband’s radiance. She learnt that hard light always exploded and passed through barriers. The ruthless swings of a hammer, the relentless lunges and leaps, the sheer speed upon which a god might lay traps of magic between flurries of physical blows. How high they rise before bringing calamity to the world.

It ends not because Rennala is a mage who surpassed god. No, it ends because Rennala put in the exhausting work to learn this fight.

“Magnificent.”

It is done. Marika lays in the water, her blonde hair spread out like a fan.

The Sword of Night and Flame is broken in twain. An echo of grief runs through her, seeing the broken promise between Caria and the Giants. But fierce pride consumes her. It took the legacy of both their people to avenge the giants.

“I hope you are prepared for the next phase.”

“Oh, you bitch.”

It rises almost delicately from the water, the starry reflections given form as the thing grows and grows and grows till it towers over her. The full weight of its presence cascading is oppressive and blinding.

An Elden Beast.

A manifestation of the Erdtree and the Golden Order. Galaxies are contained within the Golden suggestion of a form. A final defence. A true manifestation of the Greater Will. A failsafe should its avatar on land fail.

Her magic feels thin. Her body shakes with exhaustion and blood blinds her. Death has never felt nearer and now she must fight again. She must win against another god.

Even the light of the Full Moon won’t be enough. If she wasn’t exhausted, this wouldn’t be impossible.

As it is, it takes only one massive swing to shatter her. A conflagration of golden radiance that carves through her feeble defence.

She lay beside Marika, exhausted and broken and defeated. So close to victory only to have it snatched away from her. But that is war. Only the victor may decide what is honourable.

“What strange turns this story has taken,” Marika says in a voice clear despite her defeat. “Is this how your journey will end, oh fair Knight? Radagon yet lives and he will be consumed by the Greater Will. Was your love for him false?”

No. Never. Just as the moon lives beneath her flesh, the gentle touch of moonlight speaks of her love for Radagon. Foolish Radagon. Bloodthirsty Champion and doting father. Her equal trusts her to win against God, to win against his lesser half.

What is god to a non-believer? What is a Beast to a thinking Queen?

Stand!

Rennala forces herself to trembling knees, clutching her bleeding side. Her armour had caved inward, shattered by Marika’s hammer. Shards of metal have pierced through her for most of the battle, one grievous wound amongst many.

Stand!

Rennala clutches her broken blade. If she is to fall here, today, she will do it knowing she held true to the Carians, to the giants, and to herself.

Stand!

Elegant fingers wrap around her own, subtly gold to her own silver. Marika. The dying god that yet lives is in her space, pushing forward.

The press of her lips burns Rennala. Stuns her shocked despite the vibrations of the lumbering beast behind them.

“Struggle forever, my Carian Queen, and prove to me that my love was true. Accept this boon as our dowry.”

With a single slash, Marika slices through her throat.

The blood rises and rises and rises, carried upward by powers unknown. The blood reminds her of fire at that moment, of embers carried by the wind. She is entranced, enough so that she doesn’t hear Marika’s corpse land with a splash in the water, but why care for the dead when blood turns silver, reaching past the boundaries of this pocket world.

Frigid wind buffets her suddenly, stinging her wounds. Snow on her tongue. Each breath fogs as the world falls silent, waiting in anticipation. In a snap, Rennala understands. A pathway made of godsblood. The bridges of starlight that she forged between the Mountaintop and Caria. Pathways that danced along and between the branches of the Erdtree. Infused now by the power of a God. A gift, a boon. A miracle.

Of course, Marika got the last word in.

The last Fire Giant crashes onto the world thunderously. The ground shudders, the air displaced violently. Rennala raises her arm, shielding her face as a roar deafens her.

She sees him, then. Knows him, then. Teledji. Her childhood friend.

He slams into the Elden Beast, thick locs of red flung around like whips of fire. It has been an age since the world witnessed the ferocity of a Fire Giant and he does not disappoint, battering his massive arms against the Elden Beast. Each strike feels like the end of the world, the aftershock of each blow shacking Rennala’s bones.

It should be hope that fills Rennala. It should be faith. All she feels is grief.

His sanity has been stolen, his kindness replaced by rage and hate that burns thick. But burn it does. The Flame of the Fell God surges higher and higher as Teledji clashes with the Elden Beast. They both want revenge, Teledji driven by base instinct, the Fell God by desperate opportunity. It is uninterested in supporting the fight so much as it spreads clouds of embers to scorch the spectral trees.

The Erdtree burns as she watches the battle. Rennala takes the opportunity to draw upon the power in the moonlight bridge and heal herself, the pale light infusing her. Sorceress, heal thyself, the old saying goes, and so she does. 

It happens suddenly. A reversal of fate, exultation of golden divinity that brushes aside Fell Flame. A counter of a desperate lunge, a riposte, and a stab forward. Just like that, it is over.

Teledji, impaled by the Elden Beast.

The Last Fire Giant killed by the Greater Will. The genocide is complete. The war is over. Nothing can be done, not against God.

Rage consumes Rennala then. Rage that burns incandescent and chills her blood at the same time. Rage at the injustice of it all, at all she has had to accept because of gold.

No. Not like this. Not today.

She has carried many titles. Gained more than she ever believed. Mother. Queen. Moon-blessed. 

She was a Carian Knight first.

The bridge of starlight remains, and she tugs at it, breaking it and reforging it in the same motion. All starlight and frost belong to her and they will bend to her will. The spell is trapped so deep in her bones that she could cast it on her deathbed.

In a single moment, the greatest Carian Blade is birthed.

It glitters with frost and trapped stars, bathing the arena in moonlight. It reminds her of a childhood spent on the Mountaintop, of a time before a mad God put her friends to the torch. The time before impossible promises were made and more impossible people were met.

Teledji catches the massive sword.

In a single moment, the greatest Carian Blade is swung.

It carves straight through the golden beast, cleaving it in twain. 

The Beast shatters.

In the quiet, relief fills Rennala. Victory, at last. If only she had someone to share it with. Rennala stumbles to the fallen giant, hoping against hope for her friend to still be there. A spark of recognition. A hint. Anything, please.

But even looking at her, there is no intelligence in the giant’s eyes. She holds vigil as he fades to dust. He will not go alone.

The songs of the giants may be lost, but Rennala will sing of this moment. She will sing until the world sings in harmony with her. She will sing so that the giants are never forgotten.

It has been an age since the giants fell and finally it is done. How long she spends with the cosmos around her is unknown to her. Perhaps an hour perhaps an eternity. Her awareness is drawn back as a hand rests on her shoulder. She knows the shape of those fingers intimately.

“Hello, dearest one.”

Radagon, her beloved husband. He is missing his left arm, cut clean through near the shoulder. A devastating blow. The wound is staunched by the light of his divinity but it pains him terribly. He smiles at her anyway.

“That was a fun fight.”

She isn’t surprised by that at all.

He extends his remaining arm as the burning world around them swells with gold. Light unparalleled converging upon them. When it fades and the world is bleached to grey, she sees it.

The Elden Rune in all its glory. 

Just as he did when she learnt the truth, Radagon offers her his divinity without thought. Hers to use and control, hers to misuse and destroy. Whatever choice she makes, Radagon would follow happily.

“You could break it,” he suggests after a beat.

“That won’t solve anything. Someone will find the pieces and their reign might be worse. The power would drive our children mad.”

He smiles fondly, then. “It would be mildly entertaining.”

“Don’t encourage violence between our children.”

“I said mildly entertaining. Mostly a tragedy. Come now, and choose your destiny, my love.”

A god and god-blessed. A consort and a Queen. Empyrean and Carian. 

Here, in this moment, they are bound by something greater than destiny, more unbreakable than fate. 

She takes his hand finally.

Between their hands, a Full Moon blooms. Upon its surface will forever be the golden markings of the Elden Rune. Radagon grins, understanding her as always.

From the ash of the great tree, life will bloom once more, nurtured by the gentle light of the moon. But it will not always be night. The warmth of dawn will peak through the clouds and invigorate the lands between. There will be faith in something greater, but it will be up to people to discover new secrets and choose what they hold true.

When she looks up, she finds that his eyes are molten silver.

She knows her own burn golden.

There exists so much more they must do. The matter of death and mortality. The other gods in the cosmos. So much and so little time.

“My dear Elden Queen, will you accept godhood and be wed to me?”

“I think I just might.”

But for now, they have each other.