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Marika counts herself lucky to have had one child before, and to know the signs of labor. It is in the night when they come, though this close to the radiance of the Erdtree, one would not know it for the eternal light of the sky. A ripple of discomfort wakes her in the middle of her dreaming, to the lonely expanse of her bed, and she wonders if it is only a passing phantom, a false start. So she waits - and when again and again it comes, she finally stands, drawing close her robe, tightening the knot which held it in place.
It is early. The Finger Maiden, who attended her both this pregnancy and the last, who had been Godwyn's wet nurse, had predicted at least three more weeks. But Marika was Queen, and she would not allow herself to fret too deeply when assisted by capable hands - even if she had to beat back the feeling of wrongness that slithered up her spine.
In measured paces, one hand on the castle walls, Marika made her way to the hall outside, where guards and attendants always stood ready for her. This was her preference; though she had a system inside her chamber to call for aid, she was a woman of strength who would rather walk her way to call upon what she needed in person.
Or perhaps that was just stubbornness. Either way, it was seen as a strength, another reason why the Will favored her.
Those of night duties were often of strange and solitary disposition - this red-eyed attendant whose gaze did not quite seem to register anything, was no exception. She didn’t even note the stiffening of the armored knights, the slam of their polearms to the ground as they took to attention. It took Marika's voice to draw the woman from whatever waking dream she spent these dusky hours in.
"Fetch my Maiden and my midwife." Her voice was sharp and clear, betraying neither pain nor even the slightest discomfort. "With haste. When thou returns, stand by within mine chamber. There may yet be more orders for thee." No verbal response; simply a mere deep, formal curtsy and the sound of her shoes on the stone tiles as she did as ordered.
Marika returned to her bedchamber in silence, making it halfway back to her bed before another contraction began, sending weakness and pain through her legs. She hissed, teeth gritting, sweat beading on her head - but she was a warrior. A warrior. This was just another, different kind of battle.
It does not take long for the woman to return, alongside Maiden and midwife. The energy changed immediately- gone was the solitary coldness of the room, instead replaced with the focused energy of those who knew their jobs well. The older Finger Maiden took a place beside her Queen's head while the midwife gave her instructions, leaning in close to Marika with an apology, "I am sorry to have misjudged the time, though these things do happen. I am certain all is well."
"I blame thee not." Came Marika’s reply, offering alongside it a thin-lipped, closed smile; all the affection a Goddess could offer to her subjects. The intent was recognized; an affectionate pat of the hand and a brighter smile from the old Maiden told Marika so.
For that, she was grateful. Another blessing counted - and there had been so few of those since she was chosen by the Will.
"You are indeed in labor, my Queen." The midwife's voice confirmed every suspicion she had. Without hesitation, the Queen turned to face the attendant, who remained as silent and shadowed as the clouds before the moon. "Go. Send a message-hawk to the Elden Lord and summon him. Do not return without him."
Another curtsy, the closing of the door. And then - the waiting. For all the pain and excitement about a child's birth, there was so much waiting. More now, without Godfrey.
The approach of armored feet was welcome - but then came the realization that they were far too light to be her husband. The news, though, was still something to bring a warmth to her heart. Hastily written (and not in Godfrey's hand; the script was far too delicate upon the page) and rather terse, it declared the Elden Lord had taken the fastest mount and set forth towards Leyndell.
While the trip would take some hours yet, knowing he was coming was already of great comfort.
Those hours passed well, mostly hushed, in the gathering of every supply needed and the midwife's prodding and checking. From time to time, Marika would speak to either of the other women (or the midwife's assistants), mostly of their work - the health of the children born to the nobles of Leyndell, the whisperings of the Fingers the Maiden was beginning to hear more and more. Speaking of how she would soon be a Finger Reader, a position most respected.
Finally, when the sun was free of the horizon, yet still young, did she hear the heavy, familiar footfalls of her husband.
Godfrey was ever-reliable, in his own exceptionally loud manner. It was likely the manner of his blood - disciplined as he was into being a fine king (by none other than himself), warrior-blood and its wild abandon rolled through him, untamable and undeniable in the beast upon his back. In times like these, when excitement and tension both rippled through the air as to be near-visible, his kingliness fled and the warrior returned; bounding now through the doors to their bedchamber with an air similar to a wild beast on some chase.
"Marika!" The thunderous bellow that came from her husband was welcome in its predictability (and in the way it shook the very tiles of the bedchamber). Though, she noted, with some pain-addled and hazy amusement, the attending elder Finger Maiden and midwife flinched at the sound.
The Queen had not even time to blink following his entry before he was at her side, massive hand engulfing hers and squeezing with a firm - yet tender grip - the kind he gave in their seldom moments of peace alone, holding Marika close to his frame. Behind him came the earlier attendant, short of breath and sweat-streaked, as if to rival Marika's own appearance.
"Thou needn't have run, my dear Elden Lord." Marika's tone is as light as she can make it, despite the labor-pains. She had done this once before and she would again; this was the pain that came before great warmth and love. "Look; the messenger has far more work than thee to do, and she is quite tired already." Godfrey merely took her hand to his lips to press a kiss there, mumbling of his excitement. Only great Serosh's roar betrayed his amusement at her teasing admonishment.
Still, his presence, torn away from war for a meager few nights, was already of great comfort. Godfrey was more composed this time around; Marika would forever recall his wild-eyed desperation and occasional leave of her to pace like a caged beast during Godwyn's long labor. This time, though woken in the night and rushing from the Mountaintops to her, the braid in his beard was still tight, his hair windblown and damp but not so much as to be completely wild.
She relents; with a meager three other witnesses (two of whom had seen her in her first labor, perhaps one of the least composed moments of her lengthy life) the Eternal Queen felt safe in a show of tenderness often scoffed at in a kingdom steeped in war and strength. She detangles her hand from his to reach up and pull his beard lightly, a sign between the two of them that she craved the press of his lips on hers. It's with a grin that he follows her urging, a low rumble of "As my Queen wishes," brushing past her ear when he moves back.
She turned her head once more to the night attendant, who stood with an awkward stiffness as it sunk in that she was witnessing a secret tenderness. "I thank thee for thine services tonight. Thou willst be the one to run and fetch all else we may need." A nod, quiet. The woman looked exhausted, but before Marika could tell her to take a moment for food and drink, Godfrey took over.
“Take a few moments for yourself now. Before the work really begins.” Some shock registered for a moment - the Elden Lord was a pillar of strength, and very few civilians had ever seen him wear an expression other than a dour scowl. In this moment, he wore his gentle smile - one of a friendly regard for the well-being of his people, the one Marika had first seen while he thanked a dying young soldier for all he had done.
Perhaps that was when she decided she loved him.
With thanks, the attendant leaves; she is gone for but an hour, and comes back with more life in her eyes than before. The Maiden bids her to sit in the meanwhile, taking place beside her to speak in quiet voices while Marika listens to her husband’s tales of the Mountaintops. At some point, she closes her eyes to focus on the simple feeling of his words as their bass resounded through her body. An anchor, a focus, in the pain.
It’s only when the sun reaches a higher point in the sky that the midwife finally says the time has come for Marika to push. She needed no further urging - the entire ordeal had left her exhausted and she was most eager to greet her new child and rest.
The moment she began, Marika felt something different. A sharper sort of pain. Another wave of that earlier wrongness rushed through her. A spike of anxiety writhed alongside the pain in her gut, and her grip on Godfrey's mighty hand tightened. "All will be well, my dear Queen." He assured her - but he could not know just what she felt.
Somewhere within this hour - or was it less? More? The attendant fled the room at a quiet order, returning with more linens, and two assistants to the midwife, who this time did not leave.
Something was wrong. Something was wrong and she felt more dread than she had ever in her life. Yet the Maiden assured her, "We are almost done."
At last, Marika felt the midwife take away something from her. There was no sound yet - no cries. The grim expression which shadowed, briefly, her beloved husband’s face before he forced a smile (which did not reach his eyes) to return frightened her.
The only phrase she could hear in her mind was ‘stillborn’.
The Queen could not see what the midwife handed to one of her assistants, but the stone of grief had already settled within her breast. Heedless of the company now, her head lolled to the side, pulling Godfrey's hand to her cheek, hoping to hide the dampness of her eyes.
"My lady." Came the midwife's voice. "There is another. A twin."
Marika pulled her face away from the warmth of that hand, catching her husband's gaze. The Elden Lord held a glimmer of hope inside his eyes, which caught inside her - bolstered by a low rumble from Serosh and another squeeze of her hand. Even if her first of this labor did not draw breath, there was a chance for the second. She would try again.
"Then there is more work to be done."
She could push past her shadow of grief. So she thought, till that, too, was banished - a cry began from a further end of the room. Alive. Her child was alive, just weak. The Queen's gaze turned once more to Godfrey, some excitement dancing within her - and he smiled back, but not entirely to his eyes. Why?
Dread crawled into her throat now. She could not voice this fear. She could not voice anything, it was so cloying.
Though the second child came faster, there was more of that pain. An agonizing sharpness inside her, working its way from her womb downwards with the baby. Briefly, it occurred to her that it was not wholly unfamiliar; she had felt some sharpness in her belly over the past few months, as if a small knife twisted inside of her. It was also not lost on her the way the attendant left for yet more rags and water, or how the Maiden mumbled a silent incantation for healing over the Queen.
'If I were a less beloved, less attended woman, I would have bled out.' The remark stayed stifled in her throat, pinned beneath that stone, but she knew its truth by the pallor of her hand against the scars and calluses of her Elden Lord’s.
At the very least, this one’s cries came immediately. Still, the same shadow passed over Godfrey's face, some solemn look of grief, unspoken yet prevalent. The Maiden and midwife both remained quiet, as the mewling infant was carried to be cleaned, joining their cries with that of its sibling.
None spoke a word. No congratulations. No excitement. Not at all like Godwyn's birth, when the room filled with joy and light and a declaration of a son, Godfrey's bellow of relief for the closing of the ordeal. It felt oppressive. It felt like a funeral.
"The children art crying for me." The Eternal Queen's voice is as steady as she can force it to be through her exhaustion and slowly fading pain. "Yet, I hath yet to see them."
Godfrey's thumb ran across her fingers, stopping to idly twist the wedding band she wore - a sign of his anxieties, as sure as his tendency to check and recheck his armor and weapons before leaving her in his war campaigns, or to fiddle with the braid in his beard until the knot came free and it fell loose and wild about him. "Marika…" His voice lacked the stone-solid backbone to it. Serosh's roar resonated with mourning .
It was the Maiden who answered her in full. "The children are born Omen." The tenderness in the aging woman's voice was replaced by the firm words of one who knew the Will, who passed its judgment to others. "They do not befit the royal family, or the touch of Grace."
What?
Marika's sharp mind emptied. Her entire world tightened and constricted to the pounding of her blood in her body and the crying of her children. Even Godfrey's forlorn face faded into a vague mass of color, steadily towards some darkness of half-awareness. Omen. The children born cursed by another God. Children doomed to be cast away, out of the sight of the Will. Slaughtered.
To prevent any possible defiance, any sign belonging to another Outer God.
Why her? How? Her flesh was the resting place of the Elden Ring, why did it not protect her? Was it because of her proximity to the Will that this other deity leveled such a terrible fate? She was Queen. She was a Goddess in flesh. Perhaps, yet, something could be done. Silently, she prayed. Prayed to the Will, to the Grace seated within her - let her keep her children.
Marika knew not how long she had let herself fade away, or if any words had been exchanged in that time. She had found her voice around the weight in her chest, in her throat, and spoke now with a tone that bore harshness; the cold steel of a woman who would not be denied. "Bring mine children here, and allow me to see them. Maiden, go now to the Fingers and seek counsel. The rest, attend thine duties."
There is a small bustle of confusion - Marika's orders are clear, yes, none are certain of the wisdom of her decision. These children would have to be cast aside or killed; there was no real use in even a moment spent holding them. Godfrey, however, takes her side. "As our Queen has ordered, you will do. Go." His voice is nearly as thunderous as a roar from Serosh could be - at this moment, it is the most beloved sound in the world.
The Maiden moves first, passing by Marika with a glance that bespoke of pity; intended well, but still stinging as a nettle in her heart. As the attendant and assistants spring to action, the midwife came forward, each arm bearing a bawling infant, swaddled in the finest of cloths they had - shimmering gold, and so soft. She passed them to Marika, murmuring that she would attend to the afterbirth silently.
With her children in her arms, Marika felt some new sense of peace. It would be fleeting, yes, but every storm had lulls and she would not rally against it. To see them also helped her understand the sharp pains.
They were near identical, barest hints of pale white hair against grayish skin. Their differences were, at first sight, primarily in the pattern of the horns that sprouted from their tiny bodies - the very thing which had caused her pains. 'In time,' she thought, pointer finger tracing along the ridges of one of the younger twins' horns, 'They will grow to resemble magnificent crowns.' Should they be allowed.
"Marika." Godfrey called her name, drawing her attention to the elder. His voice held a small smile in it, the reason for which she found after noticing part of his hand entangled in a fluffy appendage nearly the length of the babe, free of the swaddling cloth. "This one has a tail."
Odd. Omen usually possessed horns - and only horns. She wondered if they were doubly cursed, part Misbegotten as well, for Godfrey's closeness to the Crucible and all the knights who took up its mantle alongside him.
Rather cute all the same, and it seemed to delight her husband how it wrapped around his fingers on reflex.
"Hold them for a moment." She urged, untying the knot which held her robe closed against her sweat-streaked flesh when he did. "This will quiet them." A child needed to feed, and it was a mother's duty. Even should they be torn from her arms, she would feed them at least once.
Quiet them it did. Her hands rested on their backs; that was when she noticed an additional shape on the younger. A small flick of her eyes to her Lord, and Godfrey pulled back the swaddle just enough for them to see the hint of small, featherless wings curled tight against their body. Just like a baby bird.
"The children will still need names to be recalled by." Godfrey comments, so lowly that the remaining few women could not hear. "We can discuss that later?" And though there is grief in his tone, there is also some weak hope that something good can still be found in this. Some fondness in memory. Oh, how this lion-hearted man so loved his cubs.
The twins are sleeping when the Maiden returns, the room mostly cleaned. No other servants had been summoned on Marika's order - the less who knew of these babies, the better it would be, the tighter the secrets kept. The older woman's face was drawn, though, expression grim, and though she closed the door tight she did not venture as close to Marika's side as otherwise she would.
"The Fingers have spoken. As these babes are royalty indeed, their horns need not be severed. Omen is still an affront to the Will, regardless of the blood running through their veins; it is still accursed. Thus, they must be cast beneath the earth, to the ruins beneath - the Shunning-Grounds. None must know of their lives. Those who stand within this room must vow to secrecy. The twins will be bound in golden shackles, so that they may never escape. Once those are done, that is when they shall be brought beneath the city."
No mercy, then. With her miniscule hope dashed, a new feeling took root - a bitter beast of doubt grew, encircling her heart. For all her service, this was the Will's reward.
"Then so it shalt be." No hint of emotion in her voice, her eyes. "We shalt all claim a stillborn child. Finish thy duties now, then leave us. Your Queen must arrange where to place these secrets." Your Queen must mourn.
The bodies within the bedchamber slowly dwindled as the mess left with them, but Godfrey and the Maiden remained. When it seemed no further interruption would come, Marika lifted her head. In an act that was so unbefitting of a Queen, she spoke a plea.
From a mother to a mother, not royalty to a subject. "Please, do all thee can to ensure my children live."
"I will, my Queen, but the Fingers are clear in what must be. They are of your blood, and the Lord's as well; I believe they will be strong. I shall secret them away with me, where visits may be made in quiet, but I can only delay the shackles so long."
"That is more than I could ask of thee."
And that was it. Her infant twin sons, named Morgott and Mohg in a somber room, bereft of witnesses, removed from her chest while they slept. Though she wept silently in her husband's arms, Queen Marika steeled her nerves to announce a lie to a kingdom which would grieve for her, but not in the same way. For they could never know her children lived, yet were separated from her.
She swore there would be no more tears after that night. That, too, was made a lie - just as the Will's promise to always look over her had been. Two days after the birth, when Marika was back on her feet, young Godwyn ran to her, waves of golden hair trailing behind him like rays of sun. He wore an innocent smile, taking the folds of her gown in his small hands as he beamed up at her and asked, with cheer, "Where is my baby sibling, Mother?"
"The Will decided it would take them." She replied, intending to remain strong. But the gentle sadness of her firstborn's face and the sting of the lie brought her to her knees, where she pulled the boy deep into an embrace and sobbed.
She held him tightly. Tightly, for the sons she would never be able to hold.