As the unnamed Finger Maiden whose purpose was to guide the Tarnished under the Eternal Queen's direction, she had long since prepared herself for whatever manner of hero might emerge from that elevator in the Chapel of Anticipation.
The Eternal Queen had already sent down her revelation: the champions she had once cast out of the Lands Between would be called back.
What she had never prepared herself for was the fact that her Tarnished — in both bearing and appearance — was utterly unlike any Tarnished she had ever known.
She remembered it with perfect clarity: the moment this Tarnished stepped off the elevator.
Her eyes had fixed on the Finger Maiden immediately. As though she had seen a ghost.
"…So you were here with me all along…"
That was the only thing the Tarnished said before everything that followed began.
Then she had fallen into a long silence — and without another word, she had seized the Finger Maiden's hand and dragged her out of the Chapel of Anticipation at a sprint.
She pushed open the heavy stone doors and, without a moment's preparation, cut down the Grafted Scion they encountered on the path with a plain, completely ordinary longsword.
She hadn't even glanced down at the heap of shattered limbs. She simply walked through the blood, heading on her own toward the road that led to Limgrave.
From the Chapel of Anticipation through the Stranded Graveyard, all the way to Limgrave.
The Finger Maiden, somewhat on edge, kept close behind her. What she saw along the way made her wonder whether this Tarnished had ever truly received the blessing of Queen Marika — because she was not heading in the right direction at all. The grace pointed toward Leyndell, Royal Capital, to the north. She was going the opposite way.
More than that — there was something about her that seemed to repel all living things.
The Tree Sentinels patrolling the plains of Limgrave would charge the moment they caught sight of her, unprovoked. The Runebears resting at the forest's edge would bare their fangs mid-meal and launch themselves at her the instant she came into view.
— She defeated them all, of course.
Although the Finger Maiden had feared, more than once, that the Tarnished's small frame was about to be torn apart by a Tree Sentinel's greataxe or a Runebear's claws.
The Finger Maiden also occasionally caught her muttering things like "why can't I cancel this" — which meant nothing to her whatsoever.
None of this was normal. The Finger Maiden tried to speak to her during the journey, but the Tarnished kept to herself and went on with what she was doing.
She spoke to no one. She only walked, slashed, parried, and executed in silence.
It was as though she had already memorized every blade of grass, every stone in the Lands Between — skirting every pointless confrontation with uncanny precision, heading straight for the eastern wildlands known as Caelid.
The Finger Maiden didn't understand what she was after. But she had no choice but to follow.
This Tarnished didn't rest. She didn't pray. She didn't stop. All she did was quietly seek out traveling merchants along the road and ask them things that made no apparent sense to the Finger Maiden.
And so it was that the Finger Maiden was led by her Tarnished all the way to Caelid.
She wasn't sure if it was her imagination, but she thought she saw the Tarnished girl breathe out in relief when she stood on Caelid's green plains.
She looked out across the fields of Caelid, and the tension she'd been carrying in her shoulders — tight from the moment they'd set off — eased, just a fraction.
No one could tell what she was thinking.
"…There's still time."
"Stop Miquella from ascending to godhood… there's still time for all of it."
That was the Tarnished's second utterance — spoken to herself, her fingers moving unconsciously to touch something broken in her chest. A shattered Great Rune.
The Finger Maiden could feel it — she seemed to have let out a breath she'd been holding.
But that relief lasted less than three seconds.
The Tarnished girl spun sharply around, grabbed the Finger Maiden's hand again, and led her deep into the forest — toward a little-known lift descending beneath Caelid.
What came next was entirely beyond the Finger Maiden's expectations.
In the tributaries of the Siofra River, the Tarnished became a reaper, harvesting all manner of aberrations and monsters in her path.
To gather power — Runes — she began her harvest. She seemed to have a particular fixation on the docile Albinaurics sitting vacantly at the cliff edges; she returned to them again and again with what could only be described as a certain fondness.
After each collection, she would silently hold her hand out to the Finger Maiden who belonged to her.
This cycle repeated several times over.
Until at last the two of them stepped into that temple of piled stone and arrived at the heart of the Mohgwyn Dynasty —
"What is that…?"
The Finger Maiden had expected that, as intruders, they would face a more intense battle. What she found instead surpassed all her expectations.
In the center of the temple, beneath that enormous cocoon, a fierce battle was already underway.
The demigod who led the Mohgwyn Dynasty — the Lord of Blood, holding his sacred spear — was being completely overwhelmed by another figure who appeared to be a demigod as well.
A girl with flowing red hair.
In the dim firelight of the temple, that red hair carried an unmistakable gravitas — identical, in some quality she could not quite name, to the Starscourge General Radahn himself.
"Don't you dare — don't you dare take Miquella from me!"
Mohg raised his Sacred Spear, reaching out to the Outer God known as the Formless Mother for her blood blessing.
But no matter what manner of blood magic he rained down on his opponent, it was like throwing stones into the ocean. Not a scratch.
Could it be — had the Tarnished already known there was a demigod with a Great Rune here before they arrived?
The Finger Maiden wasn't sure. She watched her Tarnished with anxious eyes.
Even with some Runes absorbed, the Tarnished's power was still woefully small in the face of two battling demigods.
But at that moment — the Tarnished girl began to tremble violently.
The silence she had kept throughout her entire journey broke. She stared at the red-haired girl's back — the one locked in battle with Mohg — and her barely audible words carried a disbelief the Finger Maiden had never heard from her:
"Ranni…?!"
To be continued…
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