Malenia
It felt so strange to be free. I had forgotten when Miquella... Or, I suppose Orianna, showed me that strange flower. How long had I been under the spell she called love? When had it started as affection and been mangled into control? It was only in these moments that I first grasp how deeply her hooks had been sunken into my very soul. For at last, free of all her magic, all her power...
All I could feel was pain. I laid there, perhaps too useless for who I was. I heard the shattering crashing around me, the feeling of powerful arms hefting me from my sunken form upon the slowly dimming sea that once I was part of. I could not see it, yet, I always felt it's glow. It had comforted me before. Now? It felt like a harsh reminder of a daze forced onto me by one I once trusted. How I would have eagerly followed you, Orianna, had only you trusted me. My dear twin, why in the end were you truly my greatest betrayer?
The shattering explosions deafened what sensibilities I had, casting only hazed echoes against my eardrums as my would-be saviors rushed us toward one of their members. I heard the faint sound of chanting, the shout of exhaustion as another reassured. I felt a burst of warmth beneath us before everything felt... so heavy. So intensely heavy.
I slipped away into dreams. I felt the sorrow of it all come down with a hammer blow not even my greatest foe Radahn could have delivered unto me. I felt like a woman coming free from a cloud for which she was thrown into, only at last gasping for fresh air and finding it painful on the throat. How I missed the toxic kiss now of her blissful entrancement. It would have been easier.
Yet, even as the pressure hammered down on my heart, a flicker reminded me of why I had right to anger and hurt. The sole reason I could never ignore the ache of Orianna's betrayal. Our flower. I knew she was out there. I could feel her in my heart, for she was cursed as I. The one blessing of this horrid blossoms was she was akin to a sapling, now. No matter how far her petals fluttered her away, I could still feel the thrum of her heart right against mine. She was my everything, now. The eons I had spent in that haze, the poor girls damaged by my misguided loyalty, how I wept countless nights when her control wained and knew not why. How she always detested them and their cursed flesh, or perhaps she was jealous of another holding me.
Our flower was special, and I knew she still lived. I wished to have a chance for all of them, but no heart stepped anymore than hers. Even though that pained me more than I could ever say, what right did I even have now to claim title of mother to them? Never had I treated them as such. Daze or not, the burden of their blood would likely weigh me down forever, but I dare not claim motherhood anymore. They had deserved better. Our flower deserved better now. I survived, and if I kept to that survival, so too must I become better.
Not just for my flower. For all my wilted flowers before her.
I began to slip into dreams. It was cold when we escaped, at least, it felt cold. So very cold. It reminded me of the snowfields that hid us far from distant eyes. I felt myself falling as all sound faded away. It felt... cold, but it did not feel unwelcomed.
"It seems you can handle this place. How incredible." A quiet voice spoke nearby to me. It was dark and ancient, yet still held a maturity akin to mortals. Feminine, maybe, but it was too hard to fully tell.
"Where...?"
"Does it truly matter, now?"
"...Yes."
"Really now?"
"I have someone still out there."
"What of Orianna? What of the rivers you swim in?"
"Rivers...?"
I felt myself swallowed to the throat and beyond in seconds. My nostrils filled with the smell of iron and viscera as my hand pointless struggled against the thick fluid. I gripped at my neck, choking quickly as I felt this hot flood consume me.
Then, suddenly, I felt a crash against sandy shores. The ground was like sandpaper on my raw flesh, and it grew wetter and dripping from the blood surely bathing my pained form. A cough ripped through me, surely coating the ground in more than just spittle as I struggled to rise. "Even with all this on you, you seek still to fight?"
"I was used!" I screamed in anger, the full weight of my feelings coming in a bark that would send a lesser being cowering.
"Were you, Malenia, Blade of Miquella?"
"I..."
"You were a victim, yes." I felt the ground shift, my back crash against the stone brick of a castle as the slaughter of thousands ripped through my ears. The very dip and carving cut of my own techniques burned at me, and I would have cried were there tears to shed in me. I heard most damnedbly the sounds of each dying's family at home. First, the soft goodbyes and wishes for safety, followed by every mournful wail as my blade tore through flesh. "Stop this..." I murmured.
"Was this Orianna, too?" The voice echoed as every battlefield I had tore through was reflected back at me. My own smile burning into my mind as clear as day, a smile not placed on my face. A smile as joyful as the summer rain. A smile bathed in blood that I could never excuse away. Decades raced by, centuries of campaigns I had led refreshed in my memories as days turned to weeks and months in moments. It was agony, it was beyond pain until at last the voice returned.
"Im sorry..." I began to choke out as the sound of children, so very many children screaming as they were dragged to Orianna's secret labs. How I led those hunts. How I allowed her to gleeful dissect and torture, all because I had hoped to cure a disease that lined my very soul. I truly was a cancer upon this world, reaping its life as greedily as my twin.
"Do you see now?" The voice echoed, seeming tired. I could not begin to count the centuries it felt as if Inhad waited to hear them again.
"Yes..." The voice grew quiet.
"Do you, now?"
"I am a cancer..." I croaked out.
It was quiet. Quiet for a long time before the cold shackling buckles against my body came away. I landed in another's arms, cradled for the first time with a gentleness Orianna had only ever pretended to have. It was so calming that, for once, the ache of the rot felt easier. The voice whispered gently to me as consciousness began to fade once more.
"Then perhaps Judgement shall wait for you, Malenia. Live. For her, but now, too, for yourself." It whispered as I slipped into darkness, and ferried away to yet another dream.
Was that, truly just a dream?