Chapter Text
Melina is surrounded by fire.
It stretches as far as the horizon in every direction—tongues of flame in red, yellow, and black, all reaching flickering fingers skyward. They lash at her riding clothes, billow her cloak outward, caress the mottled flesh of her hands, but they do not burn her.
A voice echoes across the blasted land, a whisper barely audible beneath the crackling flame. “Empyrean,” it whispers. “Empyrean.”
Melina finds her fists clenching. Dread dreams of consuming fire and accusing voices have plagued her since the day her brother tied her to a stake and set torch to the kindling. This is not quite like the other nightmares, but the differences are academic. She knows this devil, is familiar with the sting of it buried in her heart. And today—“I reject this,” she says aloud. “Yes, I am Empyrean. Yes, I am burned. But I am bodiless no longer. And these dark dreams, I refuse to allow sway any longer. I have learned hope, and no night terrors shall drive it from me again.”
The fire does not answer. The voice, however, does—more insistent, somehow urgent. It is masculine, and somehow both young and old at once. “Empyrean,” it says. “Duty.”
Melina’s eye narrows as she cast about, looking for something—anything—that she could blame for these whispered echoes of her own insecurities. But there was nothing—nothing but endless flame in three colors. “If I have a duty,” she hisses, “it is to undo the harm this family has done. It is to break my mother’s legacy of cruelty. It is not to take up her cursed mantle. It is not to wield this fire and bring about yet another Order to rule the Lands Between. I refuse. I make my own fate.”
“Duty,” insists the voice. “Empyrean.”
“I—”
“Melina?” Melina spins on her heel. Barrett is standing amidst the flames, mere paces from her. His luminous green eyes cast about, taking in the field of fire.
Melina finds herself snarling. “No,” she hisses. “These nightmares are mine—my loathsome birthright. They will not taint you. I refuse.”
“I appreciate the thought, Sweetheart,” Barrett says in his honeyed drawl, meeting her gaze, “but this ain’t you imagining me. You were tossing and turning, and we couldn’t wake you. Parvati thought something odd might be going on, and she’s a decent oneiromancer, so she sent me in to check on you.”
“Empyrean,” says the voice.
“And I think she might’ve been right,” Barrett says, jerking his head upwards as if to refer to the strange voice. “You recognize that voice?”
“No,” Melina says.
“Nor do I. But that means it didn’t come from you. Whoever that is, this dream is theirs.”
“Yes,” answers the voice. “Empyrean. Duty.”
Melina frowns. “To what end?”
“Don’t know. Has anything tried to hurt you here? Other than, you know,” Barrett gestures at the flame surrounding them, “reminding you of some of the worst memories you’ve got.”
“No,” Melina says. “The voice has merely repeated the words ‘Empyrean’ and ‘Duty’. Its tone changes. The words do not.”
“Trying,” says the voice. “Duty.”
“Trying?” Barrett frowns, raising a hand to the smooth metal at the side of his head, where his ear would be, were he a man of flesh and blood. “Parvati, you hearing this?”
“Yes.” Parvati’s voice emerges from the air around them. “Perhaps whoever is sending this dream is inexperienced. Dreamscapes resist stability—they may be trying to create something more conventional, but are unable to assert their will over Melina’s dreams. I can likely stabilize the connection, allow them through. Alternatively, I can shut the doors and banish them, waking you both.”
“That sounds like Melina’s decision,” Barrett says, looking at her. “What do you want to do, sweetheart? We don’t know who this is or why they’re reaching out to you.”
“Empyrean,” insists the voice. “Duty.”
“Why are they speaking in broken, single words?” Melina asks.
“They likely are not,” Parvati’s voice says. “Most likely, we are only receiving very simple fragments of more complex ideas they are attempting to convey. But these fragments certainly are part of what they are trying to convey. Whatever this person wants to discuss, it has to do with ‘Duty’ and the concept of the ‘Empyrean’. And they can seemingly hear some portion of what we say, given they appear to be responding to us.”
“So the question is, do you want to hear the full version of the message?” Barrett asks. “It’s up to you.”
Melina looks at him, considering.
“Please,” says the voice. It sounds desperate now. It shakes with it. “Duty. Please. Empyrean.”
Melina sighs. “Fine,” she says. “Stabilize this dream, Lady Parvati. I will receive this… visitor.”
“Very well.”
Between one blink and the next, the fire goes out. Melina is momentarily plunged into darkness. The only light, for that instant, is Barrett’s green eyes watching her.
Then the world reasserts itself. She and Barrett stand near the center of a dilapidated stone chamber. She does not recognize the room, but its architecture—the columns, the marble, the flagstones—calls to mind Leyndell, or the other temples and fortresses of the Golden Order.
Two figures are opposite them. One sits in an ornate seat with long curtains shrouding its flanks. He is a tall, gangly man, with brilliant red hair and a scarlet serpent twining itself about his body. One of his eyes is closed, but the other is yellow and slitted, just like the serpent’s. The other person is a woman in polished silver armor, kneeling beside his seat. Her hands are resting on one of his, and her head is bowed. Pale blue light glows from the point of contact.
The man lets out a sigh of apparent relief. When he speaks, it is the same voice that echoed in the field of fire. “I thank thee for choosing to hear me,” he says. “There will not be another opportunity for us to speak, I fear.”
“Who are you?” Melina asks. But she thinks she knows. Not his name, perhaps, but she knows of him what she knows of herself.
“I am Messmer,” says the man. “Son of Marika and Radagon. Empyrean of the Flame of Ruin.” His one open eye narrows slightly as he looks her up and down. “Thou… I feel as though I know thee, somehow, though thou’rt too young for us ever to have met.”
Melina remembers unbidden the words of the Godskin who killed Barrett atop Dominula, who referred to some strange connection between herself and an Empyrean rival of her mother long ago. She thinks of the words Marika said over her pyre all those years ago, when she visited the mountaintop alone. But she says nothing more than, “I am Melina. Your sister, and an Empyrean myself—though I do not know to which Outer God I am connected.”
“Dost thou not?” Messmer asks.
“Well,” Barrett says quietly, “the others are all accounted for, right? The Full Moon has Ranni. The Rot has Malenia. The Formless Mother has Miquella. The Flame of Ruin has you. That only leaves one of the Five.”
“The God of the Dragons,” Melina says. “Whom some have called Azula.”
“Yes,” Messmer says. “Before our mother’s time, she was perhaps the most powerful of the Five.” He stands, but Melina sees that he leaves behind an image of his body seated in his throne, still in contact with the woman beside him. He, too, is dreaming, she thinks, and the woman beside him must be his oneiromancer just as Parvati is theirs. “I do not know why thou wert so long hidden from my efforts,” he says. “I have been trying to reach out to any Empyrean still in the Realm of Sunlight for many months. I found the Malenia thou mention’dst,” he nods at Barrett, “but she was… unwilling to heed me. If her will is even her own, it is one so devoted that she will hear nothing against her brother.”
“Miquella,” Barrett said. “We’d heard he’d gone into the Land of Shadow to repeat the ritual Marika performed. I’m guessing you’re not in favor of that plan?”
“Thou’rt correct, steelforged Shardbearer,” Messmer says. “My forces and I are giving all we can to slow him. The dread creatures of the Abyssal Woods, those servants of Frenzy, even they have emerged and are harrying his forces. But it will not be enough. And I confess…” he trailed off, glancing back towards the woman with her hands still resting on his own. “I confess I fear what shall come when he reaches us here,” he says softly. “When my forces are spent, my soldiers twisted and bound in thrall to him. They cannot stay thus, ‘tis true. He must eventually cast off all these magics. But by then there will be none left to stop him, and no time left to rally those suddenly freed.”
Melina’s stomach drops in horror. “No,” she whispers. “He—surely he would not use his powers so.”
“Thou art familiar, then?” Messmer asks, looking back at her. “They call me ‘the Impaler’ in these lands, for my spear hath pierced many a heart. But mine, at least, is a spear of steel. Miquella pierceth men with love, and filleth their blood with his sweet poison. I have watched armies throw down my banners and take up his for nothing more than a look and a smile. The Lands of Shadow are all but his. Only the seal over Enir-Ilim still holds him back—but if he can take me, or harness my connection to Ruin, he can burn that seal away. It will not now be long; a matter of weeks, if not days, ere he ascendeth to the Gate of Divinity and claimeth our mother’s mantle.”
“And what happens then?” Barrett asks. “I get that it’s probably not good, but we’re still short on details out here. What exactly does it mean if Miquella becomes a god?”
“He will have control over the Elden Ring and the Erdtree by default,” Messmer says. “Even from within the Realm of Shadow, he will be able to exert control over matters in the Realm of Sunlight. But that is without accounting for his connection to the Greater Will—a connection I do not understand. Why the Greater Will hath thrown so much of itself behind one demigod’s efforts, I do not know. But it hath. Our mother was the chosen vassal god of the Greater Will, but never did she intimate to me that it was a patron to be trusted. That lesson, it seemeth, is not one she properly impressed upon our brother. Whatever powers Miquella may gain by the Will’s patronage, I cannot guess—nor what power it might gain by his apotheosis.”
“I mean, if he can claim direct control over the Elden Ring and the Erdtree, that’s bad enough,” Barrett says, looking at Melina. “We’ve already seen how much damage the Erdtree can do when it’s just running Marika’s leftover commands. I don’t want to imagine what it can do in the hands of a man who apparently can already mind control whole armies without it. And that’s just the Erdtree—the Elden Ring is maybe worse. Would Miquella gain control of all of the separated Great Runes, too?”
“Any Great Runes not held by an Empyrean, certainly,” Messmer says. “And likely any that were held by an Empyrean would be seized after only a brief struggle.”
“Yeah, Marika apparently redefined death in the Lands Between just by taking one Rune out of the Elden Ring,” Barrett says. “I don’t want to see what he could do with the whole thing. Okay. So that’s really bad. What do you want us to do about it? We can try to get into the Realm of Shadow, but we’re not certain how to breach in—we don’t even know for sure whose Throne World it is, yet, and while we think the Divine Towers out here are part of what’s keeping it stable, we’re not sure how quickly we can find our way through the seals.”
“No,” Messmer says, his eye focused, not on Barrett, but on Melina. “There is no time for lengthy experiment. I would be grateful for thy intervention—it might save us here—but it is of greater import that thou stop Miquella. And there is only one way to do that from the Realm of Sunlight. The only way Miquella can be prevented from immediately claiming the Elden Ring…”
“…Is if another god has already claimed it,” Melina whispers.”
“Yes.”
“…Oh,” Barrett says softly. “You want us to gather all of the Great Runes out here and bring them together under one Empyrean’s control to rival Miquella.”
“Just so. I know not how scattered the Great Runes are—I have gathered they were taken up by many lesser demigods following the Shattering, but thou wilt need as many as thou canst possibly find, as well as the core of the Elden Ring itself, if thou’rt to have a hope of resisting Miquella once he claimeth divinity.”
“It doesn’t have to be you, Sweetheart,” Barrett says, reaching out and taking Melina’s shaking hand. Even through the dread, even through the blood rushing in her ears, she still revels in the contact, in the thrill of knowing his electric touch. “We can talk to Ranni, get her to do it.”
“No,” Melina whispers. “The Full Moon is one of the Greater Will’s thrall-gods. We do not know if Ranni can safely wield the Elden Ring without being enslaved to it as well. Whereas Azula… if I am consumed, we know it will not be by the Greater Will.”
“You won’t be consumed,” Barrett says flatly. “We can find another way. We can break into the Lands of Shadow. All of us have broken into Throne Worlds before. The timeline is close, but it’s definitely not impossible. You don’t have to do this, Melina.”
She looks him in the eye. “If I wielded the Elden Ring,” she whispers, glancing down at where his foot expands into strange brass, “I might be able to save you.”
“There’s got to be another way,” he says.
“Perhaps. And you may be willing to stake your life upon it, my love. But I am not.” She turns back to Messmer. “I understand,” she tells her brother. “Hold out as long as you can. Not all of the Great Runes are accounted for. It will take time to gather them. But I will take them up. I will be your Empyrean, since it seems someone must.”
She feels her heart break as Barrett folds in on himself in the corner of her eye.
“Thank you,” Messmer says softly. “I wish you the best of luck. I will not reach out to you again. If I do… it is not I that does it.”
“If I speak again,” Barrett murmurs hoarsely, “I am not Kabr.” He shakes himself and stands up straight. “Okay,” he says. “If this is what we’re doing… then this is what we’re doing. Parvati, pull us out.”
Melina’s eyes open to the comforting weight of Barrett lying prone on the bedroll beside her and two faces looking down into her own. Thermidor looks concerned, but there is understanding in Parvati’s red eyes. Snow drifts gently down around them. “We’d best hurry,” Parvati says. “We can be back in Leyndell by daybreak tomorrow if we make haste.”
“What happened?” Thermidor asks as she sits up. “Is everything all right?”
“No,” Barrett says hoarsely beside her. He pulls himself up into a seated position beside her, shoulders hunched. “But it is what it is. We’ve got work to do.”
“I’m sorry,” she tells him, feeling tears prick at eyes that would not exist had he not found her, cared for her, loved her. There is so much she wants to say—that she feels monstrous to be so easily throwing away everything he has given her, that she wants nothing more than to tell Messmer to impale himself upon his own spear and leave her out of their family’s machinations, that she hates this as much as he does. But as he looks up and meets her eye, she sees that he knows. There is no blame, no anger in those eyes. But there is hurt, and it cuts her like knives.
“Me too,” he says, leaning forward and kissing her. “Me too.” He pulls away. “Let’s get a move on. Long road to Leyndell.”