Chapter Text
Upon the blooming of the scarlet flower in Caelid – the night of the fierce battle between General Radahn, the Starscourge, and the one-armed valkyrie, Malenia – the rot converted the land into hell on earth. The rot settled first, then creeped, then expanded; an entire region of The Lands Between consumed by the scarlet sickness.
And as flowers do, with its bloom came seeds. Seeds that flew out from the plant’s ovaries and descended upon the region. The early blooming ones died as quickly as they came, as the rot hadn’t taken complete hold of Caelid yet. It’s a slow moving thing, and rot seeds can only thrive in a rot-ridden environment. But after a time, those seeds did bear fruit.
The first seed that grew gave birth to Mary, the eldest sister of five. The second gave birth to Maureen, then Amy, then Millicent, and finally, from the final seed came the youngest: Polyanna.
And when each daughter was born, Gowry the sage came to greet them into the world.
However, with each daughter’s birth, they were bestowed a terrible curse, the one that bore them in the first place. The scarlet rot. Upon taking their first breath outside the seed pod, they suffered the agony of the scarlet eating away at them, even in infancy. But unlike a true seed, when they grew they did not have to fend for themselves. Gowry, who had been keeping an eye on them and watching their growth inside their seed pods each day, was there when they finally emerged like a bird from an egg, or a butterfly from a cocoon.
The old man adopted each daughter as his own; raising them, guiding them. The sisters grew to love each other and their adoptive father.
The first daughter, Mary, was the most serious and coldest of the five. Partially because of her status as eldest but also because she was first, and had suffered the rot for the longest. However, her pain and experience made her the strongest and most determined sister.
Maureen loved Mary but felt she was stuck in her sister’s shadow. Maureen always felt the need to impress, to go the extra mile, but many a time Mary would come on top almost effortlessly. Maureen was by far the most competitive sister, with a bold personality.
Amy, the middle child, was the troublemaker. She was always getting her sisters and herself into mischief. Although she was the prankster, Amy was the most fun and usually the child to come up with fun and exciting activities.
The youngest, Polyanna, was the kind and creative soul. Anna, the others nicknamed her, could paint, sing, sew, dance, and do just about any other art you could think of. She performed and created for all of her sisters. She was also the most patient and unreasonably kind.
The one sister set apart from the rest was Millicent – the fourth sister. Although they were each other’s best friends, Millicent was the outcast of the group. Quiet, unsure, and timid for much of her life, Millicent was the sister who was left alone when they did activities in groups of twos. She played with the rest of them, but there were also many times she found herself just watching or twiddling her thumbs. Despite her awkwardness, she was appreciative of her sisters’ love.
But their love could not fill the hole she felt since she was a girl, and it could not be filled by Gowry either. It was the love of a mother.
“Gowry,” A youthful Millicent asked one day. “Where is our mother?”
The old man talked about Malenia many times. He recounted her greatness, her leadership, and most importantly her strength, which was granted to her by her god-parents and the scarlet rot. Millicent found it difficult to understand this. How could her mother be so strong, when Millicent, afflicted by the very disease, felt so frail and spent days or even weeks in bed when her own rot flared up?
“Malenia… She is at Miquella’s Haligtree, but the tree’s location is shut off from most of The Lands Between. She is there, but I don’t know where ‘there’ is,” Gowry answered.
Millicent twisted the hem of her skirt in her hands. “But why isn’t she here, doesn’t she want to see us?”
“After her fight against Radahn, she was left incredibly weakened. From what I know, Malenia fell into a deep sleep and to this day she is in a coma, recovering from the rot she unleashed on Caelid.”
“She sleeps too?”
“What?” Gowry asked.
“When her rot is bad, she sleeps too?”
A pause.
“I suppose she does.”