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Marika had come to believe in her own myth. She has suffered a thousand indignities. Losses, failures. All of which she could weather. Her long-since dried blood would’ve spilt upon the sands and she’s taken it all with set chin and firm brow, unwavering and steadfast.
But this?
She sucks in air like it will help, but there is no reprieve in this land for her. Nothing, nowhere, from the deepest depths of Nokron to the Mountaintops above. Breath seems only to remind her of what which lies in her flesh. That which she is tied to, for all time. A burden, a scar, a curse, and a blessing all melted and congealed into one, like flesh melting off bone.
Queen Marika does not weep, and yet finds it wracking her chest all the same in muffled silence as she fights for the reins of control over herself again. And soon her iron grip is back again. So, her fit is brief. She gathers herself and eases herself to stillness, rises onto her feet, and leaves her twins to their fate. Thinking any farther than that opens a dark void in her heart, and she refuses to linger at its edge.
And that’s the end of it. Somehow hollowness and immense weight make their home in her breast together and makes each step back into the sun a monumental effort.
Godfrey does not speak to her for a time. So be it. Even though the silence is deafening. Sour anger blooms when Godwyn asks her why. The answer she supplies? Because it must be done. And after that, she knows he trusts her less. The initial sting fades once she finds a balm.
It is a good thing. She is a god. Men should not trust gods like they trust their mothers.
In these times, usually she would search her faith for assurances. Not simple trifles, not a hand to pat her shoulder or cheek. The Greater Will provides the tools with which one could help themselves. And yet neither in causality nor regression does she find a good reason to throw her children into a stinking pit. No, the reasons are much more tangible, yet less grounded. The Omen are cursed. It is that reason enough for her followers. Like a flame that she’d lost control of.
The only solace is that they are close, right beneath her. Better than if she’d had to send them across the sea. Better than if the gnashing teeth of a crowd got their hands on them. But that is only a bitter sedative, it brings no reprieve.
She is immortal, and time should heal all wounds. But there is a cavernous absence inside her, beside her, around her. The edge crumbles as she stands on it, forcing her to retreat lest she fall in. What would it mean to fall in? What is she afraid of? She cannot die, but she also found out long ago there are things other than death to fear.
She does not awaken in the middle of the night to a crying babe and instead to not but silence and her own cloying thoughts that become more difficult to ignore. They gnaw on her like worms in her flesh, wriggling away. The more she tries to draw her attention away the more they demand it.
In another time she’d maybe find something or some way to relax. Godfrey was once good for that sort of thing, now he has difficulty reaching her gaze without looking like he just barely leashed his fangs in protest. And every time they look at one another, the worms writhe.
She sighs. She looks out over her city. The city that grew up around her Erdtree, under its grace. It reminded her of what she knew of forests (of a time before, yet the knowledge would forever linger). The largest trees shaded the underbrush, creating their own climate; certain plants needed certain conditions met, and the fierce might of the sun upon them dried the soil and withered all life. In an abstract exchange the brush held the top layer together, funnel the water down where on bare ground it’d just roll over impassively. Marika was less a shepherd and more of a gardener. Gardening was as much about the soil as it was about the plants themselves. So, she planted her shady tree and had watched her city grow up magnificently beneath its boughs.
And like any gardener, it never felt like enough. She could pull out weeds and nourish the earth, and it helped, for a time, but the grander her garden became the more problems that arose as all sorts of maladies and pests came to siphon off some of its vibrance. Were it really a garden, she could always try fire. Burn it and start over again. But it wasn’t a garden, it was a city, with people seemingly unaware of or oblivious to fissures forming.
When she’d undertaken her burden, she knew her faith would be challenged. At times, it had been. In the stories she spread and made sure were told, her wars were glorious. In her memory (and perhaps, maybe, Godfrey’s, though he lived for battle yet still) however they were just wars. Men died; names forgotten on the wind. Sons and daughters did not come home, all on Marika’s behalf. It was a good death, yes, but it was hard to feel it so when you watched someone’s guts spill out or have them choke on their own blood filling their lungs. Better than being hanged, or starving, or squandering in some other way maybe, but still, what a waste. So, she’d never thought it selfish when she’d plucked death’s rune from the Ring. At least that way whence someone died that way their soul would arise again someday and know peace again. Even if, indeed, it was still in exchange for her Godhood.
All roads led back to where it all started, it seemed. She was a gardener. She snipped the failed crop and folded it into the soil so some good might’ve still come of it. It’d never bothered her before, but now when it was her own fruit it’d felt like she’d stepped on a rake. And despite knowing this, her heart of stone still ached every time she thought of the empty crib. Her handmaidens had been kind enough to take it away quickly, mindful enough without needing her asking, but for some reason found herself furious at them for it.
If only she could separate these things from herself. Become a dejected observer, sort them out stoic and impassive.
She turns over an idea in her head.
Trees can be divided. Lightning will split the trunk in two and if they survive, from both boughs’ life will sprout again. Though that’s a violent ordeal, one that does not ensure each half (or even both) will survive. A less severe move on the part of the parent plant was cutting—plucking off a young twig and replanting it in some form of rooting stock. Once again, success was not guaranteed, but when was it ever? And if nothing else it was less likely to risk the life of the original stock. If the branch withered, so be it, so long as you weren’t hacking off half its limbs the progenitor would continue unbothered.
Even the Erdtree sends up shoots, suckers from its roots to reach skyward where it itself could not touch.
She can’t exactly hack off her arm and stick it in the ground, though, so she needs to think on it for a while. She also has to determine how best to ask permission for something like this without giving away too much.
You cannot trust a god like you trust your mother.
She doesn’t sweat, or bleed, and her stomach can’t really twist in knots, and yet somehow, she still has those sensations when she raises her arms and beseeches her god.
I could act better to your will if I could separate this weakness from myself.
I could better enact your will if I had something I trusted most not kept here, in Leyndell.
The hearts of men are frail and easy to lead astray. I do not doubt my ability to bring most under heel, but I cannot do so in the far corners of the world where our light does not reach the shadows.
She thinks of her twins.
If I did not have this distraction eating away at me night and day.
Please.
Please.
Please.
She is not below begging.
Her request is granted.
The Erdtree shines, but its near pitch black in its heart.
A heart of stone hammers in her chest from memory. Her legs feel weak, knees wobbly. When was the last time she’d known fear? Despite what she reminds herself—if she fails, if whatever she makes withers and dies in her arms, so be it, she’ll live on. She’s already lost so much. But what if this is only a sign of what’s the come? What if she’s not strong enough, or she takes too much? How will she know?
Enough.
Marika silences those thoughts. No. It will either be done right, or not at all. That fear is of the girl who was once called upon by a god, not by who she is now, and not who she will allow herself to be again. Fear is the unwelcomed guest; to greet with caution but care.
She does not use a blade for the task. What such blade could do so, anyways. She kneels at the stone anvil and concentrates. She imagines her life flow, the golden spark within, even far before the Greater Will’s envoy nestled within her. In her mind, it’s almost like a thread at first, but upon further consideration its more like a rope. Braided, woven, many disparate threads joined and wound together.
Her plan was to separate her pain from herself. The loss. To hand it to another. It would be easy, should have been. Then her faith would be true and certain again, unconfounded by useless doubts. What did it matter anyway now that she bore that she could never rid herself of —not that she would ever rid herself of. But it was making her duties needlessly difficult, like something stuck between her teeth. But how could she hope to form a pearl around this grit if all she did was fill it with poison? She didn’t just want to hack off a limb to prevent a disease from spreading.
Do I even deserve to be free of this burden?
The thought came as ice water down her back—not that she felt cold anymore either. But she was cold. Her heart was heavy. She hung her head and let out a deep sigh. But her brow furrowed deeply.
Her mind was made.
She separated a pinch of the threads out but did not divorce it completely from its stem while she sorted what would go where. From that fraying bundle, she poured in her devotion—drank from the deepest well of her faith, the victories that had made the failures bearable. Loyalty, in its purest form, loyalty she was not even sure she knew anymore. Burden comes from devotion—diligence, in its more sublime shape. Terror and blessing all at once. She could maintain her devotion, but it should be a weight. It should be, to remind her.
The moment of truth. If it was going to be an execution, it should be merciful and short.
She ripped the coils apart, and it was a pain like no other. Searing white behind her eyes, ice in her parched veins, lightning zipping up and down her spine. She collapsed in a heap, gasping wildly for breath for lungs that did not need it. The pain was everywhere—nothing specific, nothing she could press a hand to and grit her teeth for, so she just writhed. Head pressed to the stone-cold floor, the world spun around her as her vision faded and tunneled into darkness, heat filling her mind and turning it to a blank fog. Distantly she considered if felt like either something was tearing itself out of her, like an insect ridding itself of its old skin, or that her consciousness was floating away from itself and an untethered balloon.
Maybe she’d made a mistake. Maybe she was dying. What a strange thought.
She woke up feeling like she’d been run over by a chariot.
Her head pounded, her body protested at every subtle movement. Even the intercostals of her ribs ached at every breath, to say nothing of her sore throat. Her mouth tasted coppery although perhaps it was just another memory.
It was maybe the worst pain she’d felt, but she managed to sit herself upright though any further movement made stars shine. At first, in the gloam, she saw nothing before her that looked different than how she entered.
Well, even if she had failed, at least she hadn’t died. What a pathetic way to go. Who’d even find her, Godfrey?
Marika rubbed her temples and heard someone else grunt.
She jerked her head over her shoulder, feeling a sharp pain in her neck and shoulders. But she put that aside when she saw someone else behind her also trying to rise up on their hands and knees. Long red hair fell down its back and over its shoulders, which shook as they gasped briefly.
She reached a hand to their shoulder, and they turned to face her. It was like looking at her reflection in a still pool into another world.
They sit silently for a while. She wonders if they will crumble into dust. Inside the Erdtree it’s difficult to tell how much time has passed, and she had no way to tell how long she’d collapsed for.
If they will wither away, they either will already have done so by now, and either way she cannot stand to be gone much longer.
“I will be back later.”
She says and then departs. She needs time to figure out what to do with them—like, for instance, giving them a name, and some clothes.
“Is something wrong?” Godfrey asks, eyebrows furrowed but now in concern.
Yes. Her head still throbs—something it shouldn’t do. She doesn’t know if something terrible will happen to her—what if she separated too much and will fall apart? But she puts that fear aside. It won’t do her any good for either of them to worry about what’s already come to pass.
“I will be fine. You need not dote like the man you are not” she says and waves him away. “I must retire for the evening.”
He just nodded and walked away. For as much as he claims to crave battle, he’s very careful about arguing with her.
With her remaining strength she crawls into bed and sleeps for hours untold, not even waking when Godfrey eventually came to join her for the nights rest. When she wakes the next morning, he remarked upon it—the first full night of sleep she’d gotten since… and then he trailed off after treading into rough waters. But she wasn’t angry, in fact if he hadn’t brought it to her attention, she’d almost have overlooked that fact given her thoughts focused mainly on whether her cutting had made it through the night.
So, she departed again, bidding him farewell once more and with both levity and trepidation fighting within her.
But there they were, waiting for her patiently. She unraveled a dark tunic for them to wear. She did not need to eat, and they asked for nothing otherwise, so they stood for a time, and she thought of what exactly to do next.
Usually, Marika took some satisfaction in planning far in advance, for many externalities (though also had enough wisdom to know that anything engineered for safety could, itself, become a point of failure). What she had failed to do this time was think of two things—a name, and what to do with them now that they were here.
She also wasn’t sure how to refer to their… condition? Arrangement? None of this was helped by the fact they’d spoke not a word, looking at her and waiting.
Maybe she should have poured in a little more guile. But that wasn’t what she needed. She had asked the Greater Will permission for a tool. A tool should do its job and no more. A tool could protest under pressure, and she’d do well to listen lest it break, but it should do its job all the same.
But what was that job? What task would she have them undertake? She didn’t know, and neither did they did it seem.
Her distaste was apparent, though, and it seemed they could feel it. She sensed it, too. It was an odd feeling, a recall and play back that just felt plain alien. It’d be something to get used to and detach from. In time she could, but for now it was more grit between her teeth.
It felt strange for her to decide their name, the more she thought of it. She was not their mother—that revolted her, them both it seemed—so it was not for her to name them. But what would they do? Name themselves? This was giving her a headache.
Eventually after much debate, she gave up. It was time to table this and leave them again. To attend to her duties.
Like her sleep, she finds her focus unfettered once more. It was almost like breaking a fever. For a time. Until she gets the sense someone is over her shoulder. She double takes a few times throughout the day, garnering unwanted attention from her attendants though their concerns are allayed. If not, they might’ve just chalked it up to her still dealing with the loss.
And she has, in an abstract way.
She carries her burden, but she knows that now and for all time there will be part of her whose faith is still unshaken.