Marika
Torrent was charging up through the broken down stairwells and disparate ramparts that lay scattered amidst the rubble of what once was likely a beautiful gate town. Scattered mages who wore the strange stone helmets and masks of the academy, resembling sculptures of scholars past, guarded this passage with a mindless mechanical nature. Likely, these were ones who lost their minds and were directed here by whomever might still hold their faculties.
Marika only hoped they outnumbered the mindless. 'My hound stands guard.' She felt His heated biting voice as she touched the side of her head, just as a glint stone missile barely missed her shoulder. She flinched a second later than she should have and gripped onto the seal in her left palm. A triangle with a crest inside crudely shaped like the elden ring. A seal her knight had forged from random scrap to her specifications. It lacked the potency of a true erdtree seal, but it made for a proper alternative in the interim.
Blaidd snarled before leaping away from their line to tackle and maul the assailant. He soon rejoined their charge with a random arm still held in his panting maw before snapping it to the intimidation of the forward guard. Many quickly scattered, seemingly holding enough sentience to value some part of their life, or at least an aversion to undue suffering.
Torrent leaped over a small rampart before Blaidd tore it apart with his charging body, which scattered a pair of cowering nobles that rapidly vanished into dust. He laughed in revelry at the violence, and Marika could only giggle with how it reminded her of a far younger and happier Maliketh.
They were encroaching on the wall of blue magic that guarded the main gate. She gripped onto the key Melina had ensured that would allow them passage through the magic wall. She knew it was a risk to pass through this way, especially with how bitter Rennala might be, but it was vital to find what information they could before making their way to the capital. It was not their final destination Marika had grown to suspect, and they would need every advantage they could once they passed that barrier.
"Let us hope Melina was telling the truth!" She called her companions, earning her a pair of grins. Both were very confident in her daughter, and the thought brought a small amount of joy to her.
She raised the key, holding tightly onto the waist of her knight as it began to glow. A glistening rune formed across the massive blue wall before it briefly shattered. The wall of blue remained, but as they ran onto it, it wobbled and let them through like a wall of shifting waters. Their vision faded briefly before they all re-emerged onto a large open courtyard that had two blue gateways to the north and the south. To the west was a massive elevator leading up into the academy while a grace glistened at the center of the courtyard.
Blaidd laughed triumphantly as Torrent allowed them to dismount before dispersing. The entire academy likely had guards against spirits, and he had earned a good rest for a while either way.
"We have made it, haha!" Thrusting a fist into the air in cheer as her knight laughed in agreement.
"Yes indeed, brother! I can only hope the welcome will be as warm as your spirits." Her knight responded with a strong smile and a hand on one hip.
Marika smiled at how energized her companions got. She adjusted her robes and checked a few of her perfume bottles, happy to see they were all in their place. Just in case they were in for a less than warm welcome, she wanted to be prepared.
"Alright. Let's head up. I'm hungry for some learning," her knight said with a big and cheesy smile. The queen could not help but snicker just a little at the silliness of that as they stepped onto the center of the elevator. It shuddered for a moment, dust swirling from age. Then, it began to rise.
A few moments of patience ended as the three of them left the stilling platform and emerged onto a thin walkway. In front of them, misty and mysterious, towered the great academy just to their distant left. The entire place rang of old secrets and lost knowledge as magic and glint stones seemed to permeate the air and mist alike. Marika speculated that it was part of the protective charms that guarded the royal family and their closest allies within the academy and had likely been what had foiled Him in millennia past. The thought brought a small smile to her face as she pictured the face of the woman who she had once called a wife.
...had she?
The very thought made her pause and touch her temple as her two companions walked a little forward. How much of the memories with Rennala had been Him, and how many had been her wearing His face? Just like he had worn hers far too often, who was to say the same could not occur?
The thought began to strike at her heart as memories of that so very sweet of witches began to pour back. Unmarred now by the red haze that so often clouded His section of their memories, she nearly buckled beneath the sudden rush. She stifled down a cry as the pain briefly blinded her, desperate to hide the affliction from her companions as both seemed to be in awe of the view before them.
A glistening palace and scholar house that was built of glistening marble and vast garden fields that seemed to bleed with excess magic and mana. A somehow still living and breathing testament to the glories of the moon and her many followers. A fact that did not go unnoticed as the blade on her Knight's waist, newly sharpened to a far deadlier degree now, seemed to hum with a new found purpose. It seemed to sing with the natural affinity of moonlight in this place, and she would bet that made it much deadlier as well.
"Blessed be..." Her knight muttered reverently, holding her hand in a practiced motion in front of her heart like a cupped half moon. She closed her eyes and simply basked in the misty glow of the magic here, seeming at peace for a few brief moments as she lowered her head.
"Ay... Mistress Ranni's ancestral home. No wonder it's as beautiful as can be." The wolfman added in equal wonder at the sight. The walkway in front of them was already lined with potted trees that glistened with magic fruit that seemed to smell of wondrous, untold flavors. The thought alone helped calm the ache that was thankfully fading in Marika's head, and replaced it with a slightly growing hunger that made her salivate slightly to her slight embarrassment.
Her knight seemed to notice with a slight chuckle. "Careful now. There's an old adage about unfamiliar fruits and forbiddance." Her knight playfully jabbed.
"O-oh?" She looked at her, blushing at the gap supposedly in her knowledge.
The knight laughed far more loudly at her response than she expected, and she could almost hear a hiss in the way she would snort when her laugh got that loud reminding her a little of a snake. It was far too cute for her to ignore, and made her giggle in response to her own questioning.
"Well, I'd say it would be more inappropriate to eat someone else's harvest without a proper invitation. Guest or no." The wolfman added as they began to walk along the path towards the open gates that led into an even larger courtyard. It branched in several directions with stairwells and gates in the distance that were partially obscured by the vast haze, as well as a crumbled and disconnected grand stairwell to their right that didn't seem too hard to cross onto if they leapt from the right angle. Marika even suspected that Rennala might even be up at the top of that stairwell, locked away from the rest of the academy due to her sorrowful condition.
She felt a twinge of pain, knowing it had been her own hands that left Rennala in her sad and diminished state. Trapped watching her most loyal scholars be reborn and undone by her own magic, unable to move beyond the motherly craving they had left deeply instilled in her when both they and their daughter had abandoned her. Marika even doubted Ranni fully recognized herself as her mother, and if she did, it was likely in a very unfavorable light. She had always been far closer to Rennala, and Marika doubted that had changed simply due to her departure from the academy so many years ago. Even including the collusion she had committed alongside Marika so many years ago now that had tragically ended with Godwyn's death.
"Trail says the queen of this place is up those stairs, but I suspect she isn't unguarded," The wolfman spoke in a more focused and gruff tone, "So if we are headed there first, I suggest we prepare ahead a time. The queen of Caria won't just open her doors to anyone."
"Let's see if any of the scholars will speak with us, then." The knight added a warm and encouraging smile as she spoke. Marika sighed, yet let her own smile spread. The sight of that goofy grin always made it hard for her to be pessimistic.
"Yes, I think that would be best."
....
Marika
"Look, all I asked was if they had any books written in common!" Her knight shouted as they ran down the hallway. Blaidd had been separated from them some time ago, but neither were worried for his safety. The wolfman was crafty and quick, unlikely to pick a fight he had no hope of success in and would likely escape the hole he had fallen down easily.
A sentiment she sadly did not share for their own circumstances as glint stone comets and twirling arcs chased the two and crashed against book shelves and statues with only the slightest error in targeting that allowed the duo to evade each, if only slightly. The spells caused havoc where they landed with splashes of exploding glint stone and shattering rock and wood as they impacted that made the duo dodge more just to manage an unscathed exit.
Both swore they heard a loud crash and the sound of a massive pot behind them as they rushed up a stairwell to a small grouping around a strange altar and turned heel right onto a twin set of follow up staircases. Spells launched behind them, but failed to find their mark as both kicked up dust with their speedy retreat. A strange, yet familiar misty wall appeared in the doorway at the top just beyond a thin hallway, and both knew that this meant a foe of greater strength awaited. A foe they were unable to simply avoid.
A silent nod shared between the two as both ran towards the mist and ducked down their heads. Two hands touched and began to part it as they silently agreed to the terms that came with such passage, and then stepped through just as two more spells smashed against the mist wall harmlessly.
They emerged into a debate hall that had long since been abandoned with scattered papers and broken chairs all over the large raised desks and floor. Many were in hand writings of various lands and cultures, but all seemed to hold information that pertained to Caria and its royal family. Namely, debate as to its necessity.
It would seem, as both saw it rise from the back of the debate hall, that the great wolf that called this hall its home was likely to blame for its state of disarray. A large and mangy wolf with thick red and orange fur that instantly reminded the golden queen of Him. His hound. One of her final gifts to Rennala. Or was it His...?
She did not get a chance to dwell on the specifics as her knight yanked her aside just as the wolf leapt across the entire hall and bit done violently where Marika had stood mere seconds before, before forming a red orange blade out of magic and sweeping at the two in a practiced twin arc of aggression, followed by a leaping downward swing that split apart the wooden flooring like tissue paper.
Two swift swings of her knight's gleaming sword just barely deflected the wide sweeps as Marika prepared a proper incantation, before having to abandon the chant as she leapt away with the crashing swing. Her knight has dove to the opposite angle, but threw a knife that dug itself into the wolf's snout to angered results. It snarled, quickly smacking out the blade with a paw after a few angry swipes before turning its hateful gaze onto her knight and charging at her with a sweep of glowing blue blades that flanked it like a prepared barrage of little missiles.
It snapped and swiped with fang and paw as those blue blades seemed to randomly fire at her knight as she dueled the beast. Two of the five found their mark and slashed into the knight's left arm, but allowed her to deal two devastating slashes on the wolf in retaliation as it retreated a bit. Its snout began to focus on a large swirl of magic that the golden queen recognized for a sincere threat.
Changing chants and rushing to her knight, the gilded goddess shouted in defiance as a hand rose up. The wolf had taken to the air as high as the high ceiling would allow it, and unleashed a blast of pure glint stone magic at her knight in a full and proper arcane comet, larger and deadlier than the pale imitations of the scholars that had pursued their initial entry. They had seemed so angry the instant she spoke, and her knight had nearly secured them passage through the carian library before she had fumbled their talks.
She suspected why, but she held her tongue in front of her knight. It would not aid their goals to suggest her presence would almost always stir strife, no matter what corner of the Lands Between they traveled. So she had decided that silence and her disguised name would be all others got, aside from her knight and those she personally grew to trust such as Blaidd, the snow witch Ranni, and Melina.
"I defy thee! In the name of the Golden Order!" She shouted in pure defiance as she raised her hand holding the seal. It glowed and expanded in a matrix of light that turned into a dome-like shield, crashing against the surging comet of arcane power as Marika felt her faith be tested. Her will held together the latticed light that protected them from the starlit might that threatened to turn them both to dust, and she held firm. The light glowed more fiercely, before pulsing and shattering the comet to the wolf's notable astonishment as it slowly took a few steps backward.
Its eyes seemed occupied with deciphering the puzzle of this battle, and it seemed to be running out of options to complete it without losing its own life, even if momentarily in these lands.
The incantation had been one she had been crafting ever since she realized they were headed towards the academy. It was made to shred and scatter the layers of magic that glint stone sorcery compounded and used to stabilize itself, resulting in a shield that could almost stop any form of carian sorcery, given she had the time to recite it's casting incantation and held firm to her faith while it worked its power.
Her knight gave a grunt of approval behind her, and she could practically feel the smirk on her face of pride. She had always seemed to enjoy watching Marika theorize and craft new forms of spells and incantations, and the golden goddess would be lying if she said the wonder in her Knight's eyes every time she created something new did not make her heart flutter.
Things she really could not focus on as she forced her mind back onto the wolf ahead of them as her incantation began to fade. Golden eyes met old orange ones, and instantly the fury in its eyes melted away.
Marika slowly gulped, standing upright now as she began to slowly approach the wolf as her knight stood by, prepared to leap to her defense. Her hand stretched forward slowly as her other began to lower the blue scarf that covered her mouth. "Do not be afraid, old friend." Speaking as calmly and gently as she could muster as the two slowly approached each other.
After a few sniffs of her outstretched hand, the wolf began to lower its snout and press its forehead against her palm. She smiled tenderly, remembering back to those early days when this wolf was barely more than a yapping pup, eager to chase floating golden balls that she would form as Rennala laughed and held little Ranni. More memories that brought countless new questions to the gilded Queen's already tormented mind, threatened to overwhelm her.
She was, thankfully, spared. Her wolf leaned closer, nuzzling into her chest and neck with a long overdue affection that brought a long sigh out of the golden Goddess. She hugged onto its snout as she nuzzled back against the mane of fur on its head and let herself briefly revel in the company of a friend she had not even known she had made. It was a deeply comforting sensation that she would not soon let herself forget, even if it opened a few uncomfortable possibilities.
She could feel the soft smile on her knight as her steps soon put her beside the queen as her face turned towards her in a display of said smile. The sight warmed Marika deep inside as the wolf howled proudly before curling up in front of her on the floor and panting obediently. The knight chuckled softly, letting the wolf sniff her own hand before quickly spoiling the massive beast with pets and belly rubs that had it rolling around on the floor.
Another ally, if a strange one, had joined their long journey. She only hoped Blaidd would not be so greedy with the treats when they met up again.