Work Text:
The sound of the hammer is deafening in the shadow of the heart of the Elden Ring. The light that the dying ring gives off illuminates their faces and breaks their bodies.
TINK
Radagon, Lord of Elden tries to hold back their hand. His fiery hair had faded to give way to Marika's gold. The gold cold as steel and burning with rage. The same rage that had assailed her when she avenged the Shamans.
TINK
The second Lord of Elden fights for control of their body. His chest is too big for a man's but his body is too muscular for a woman.
He had fought wars, fought monsters but none could match Marika's thirst for blood
His son was dead, the Greater Will had done nothing and all of the Erdtree was going to pay for it.
TINK
One of the runes finally cracks, at the same time the crack in their body begins to drop pieces of flesh like porcelain.
Radagon regains control for a few seconds and tries with all his might to repair the rune. But his body was not his body, it was their body.
TINK
The Empyrean thinks it is his punishment, the counterpart of his desire to reach divinity. He had been a general of the army of the golden order, consorts of the lunar nation of Rennala. But Marika had been absolute master of their body since the day Radagon had joined the ritual of the jar.
The Golden Order must be saved. It was more important than anything, whether it was his children and his former life with Rennala or Marika's desires.
Radagon knows chaos and that is why he clings to order.
TINK
But Marika wasn't like him. She had only wanted divinity for her revenge. She had created the Golden Order to finish exterminating the sources of her hatred and finally have control over her destiny.
But it was an illusion, none of them were free. And Marika had known it for a long time.
TINK
Godwyn's death had been just the last straw that had broken the patience she had forged in the times of peace established by the Order. Returning to the anger and the desire to purge from her early years as divinities. The vengeful divinity who had not hesitated to create their first son to make him her first weapon of destruction.
KRAC
The runes are broken, Radagon struggles with control, against emotions that are not his own. The joy and satisfaction that run through their bodies as his world collapses. He doubts that Marika is in the same distress as him. But she is not happy. She can never be.
Not when the last good thing in her life had been taken away from her. The only child that the young Shaman would have dreamed of raising in her village in another life, without jare and sacrifice.
Their body takes a little more femininity while Radagon still tries to repair the ring. Marika does not bother to hold him back anymore. And Radagon wishes to return to the time when he was general of the Golden Order. To the time when even if his destiny was not his, his body was.
He hears Marika's vicious laughter in his mind. Mocking the irony of the situation. Radagon feels the remains of his mind fall apart as he is unable to reassemble the glittering pieces of the ring. And he almost wants to remind Marika that now she has nothing too.
But the pain in his body and the broken shards of the ring remind him of his mission. So he lifts his hammer and strikes, strikes and strikes.
Marika was not happy, if she was not happy no one could be. Marika did not have the freedom promised by the Greater Will. And if she did not have what she wanted, she was going to impose it on everyone.
She looks at her work with a shining gaze.
The Ring of Elden is broken. Radagon's blows are useless and for the first time in his existence he falls to his knees, collapses against the forge. The shards of the runes sink into his skin.
The world collapses and their bodies too.