Loretta had deviated to scout ahead down a long and broken path. This place had a strange gravity that created ruinous passages of floating rubble. It left Ranni with a sense of almost still time. Were it not for the ever swirling vortex below, she would even call it frozen.
Melina had rushed in ahead, certain her ability to slip into the shadows still held firm without her incorporeal form to fall back on. Ranni would begrudgingly to admit that the girl had taken to the magic of Luna's book like a fish to water. It was adorable watching her figure out each spell when they had had the time for such frivolity.
The downside, however, was it still left Ranni to figure things out on her own. She grumbled lightly as she flosted idly down a small corridor illuminated by everburning torches that resembled the maws of dragons. This place must have been part of the age long before the Erdtree, or at least the Erdtree she knew. It must then also hold secrets to undoing such trees. Be it their own or plots to bring down her mother's, surely the dragon's had something to counter Miquella's plans. For this could only be Miquella's doing.
Who else could work the Haligtree as her mother once had the Erdtree?
The boy was a meddlesome issue. He made Ranni sick to her stomach for how he always carried himself. So self-important by birthright alone, and would begrudge any weeping heart to hear of his awful curse. She would allow him that much leeway in years past, but the boy never once learned to grow. Perhaps that, too, was part of his curse. It made her forehead pulse in irritation that such threads of fate could be woven. That the gods could be so careless as to doom a child to evil before he even got a say.
Evil, however, was what Miquella was. Ranni had seen it. Seen the things he did. What he called loved. It was brainwashing.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud belching noise. She glanced up to see a knight in heavier armor that reminded her at a glance of Stormveil, yet it was far too old and ridged along the metal with either ornamation divots, or just polished over ridges bitten into it by rust and age. He had expanded his torso with a crucible spell that instantly had the moonwitch diving back just as a blistering wash of fire burst from beneath the knight's engorged helm.
"Wicked little bastard." She growled as she raised a hand, only for another knight to smack her against the back with his tail and send her hurtling into the firestorm. She shouted, reaching out with her mind toward the magic she had been taught. A moment later, a dome of ice shrouded her, barreling through the flame and crashing her into the knight like a bowling ball. It shattered as she hit the ledge that overlooked a large chamber below, and Ranni righted herself back into the air as the second knight helped up the former.
"You two are quite irritating." She spat venomously as her amber eyes began to burn with icy power. "You are an obstacle now." She raised a hand as both knights raised their held halberds.
"I hate obstacles." A blast of cold mist as the knights swung down, hitting and shattering only the railing. They noticed too late as they tried to correct their stances in confusion that the floor had been splashed over with ice, making one fall off the broken railing while the other crashed into the floor. The moonlit doll landed on him, sat neatly atop a rather sharp shard of ice weighing in at arpund two tonnes. The knight did not make another sound beyond the gush of air, escaping shockingly dry lungs.
"One down." She turned, strutting off into a flutter of sparkling, icy mist to the chamber below. Another dull yellow hall, this one was wider and filled with six collumns. One was shattered near the back of the room while the knight was righting himself beside another. "One to..." She let the words slip as she noticed the walla of mist forming over the two entrances to the north west and south, as well as the balconies above where she had entered.
A burst of light ripped out of the candles at the back northern wall that had been set up like a restored shrine. A figure began to step from the flames as Ranni gulped in anxiety. She recognized the hue of that golden arm anywhere.
Malenia let out a long and ragged breath as she swept her golden metal arm to the side, the metal sockets clicking as the blade shifted grip in the hand. The wind alone forced the lunar mage to form another barrier of ice. The knight she had chased was reduced to shreds, armor, and all. Yet, as Ranni took in the red-haired queen of war, something was wrong.
There was no joy in her face. Her helmet was gone, though her armor remained. Her scarred over eyes told little, but the lack of a sneer or even a smirk on her face told Rannie everything the rune glowing in her chest hadn't already. "Miquella... your own twin..."
The woman was haunting in her stillness. Every hair had been smothed out and placed in a prestine ponytail. Her armor had been polished, her lips painted. She looked like a doll. She walked like one, too. Even with the metal limbs as a limitation, she had a dry gait that seemed bereft of the confidence she knew her own flesh and blood to have. No child of that bastard could walk without at least a pint of arrogance, much to at times her own shame.
Ranni floated down to the center of this arena, watching her once sister stalk towards her. She did not feel love for her, but the pity for what she had let herself become riddled Ranni with pain. To see one with such gifts allow pain to blind even their soul to the machinations of the most wicked of them all. Perhaps Ranni would weep for her passing. Once it had been finalized.
"I am sorry, Malenia..." She whispered more to herself as the click of the opposing woman's hand rung out. She dove back, fluttering slightly away from the first slash that tore her beloved hat right from her head and tore it into shreds of ribbons with the true depth of her numerous swipes. For what she had lost in personality, she had not lost on strength.
Ranni hit the ground, biting back her rampant irritation at the dirt against her as she bathed the floor in ice. Malenia only took a second to adjust before stabbing down at her, missing only by a hair's breath before throwing the slab of stone now buried in her blade and threw it at the barely dashing witch. She was sent coreening through the southwest pillar, crying out in pain as she felt her back crack against the wall. Her eyes widened in shock and pain as her body briefly twitched and ached. Then, all feelings in her legs gave out.
"N.. no..." She shook as Malenia encroached on her. She began to panic, unable to call on her magic as her mind spiraled acrosd thoughts, and her weak, fleshy body lacked the ability to even run on its own now. She had lost all control now. Her selfishness. Her arrogance had put her right into the very wall she had spent her life running away from. She couldn't focus. It was all so dirty. She was bleeding, as well, and it stung where she could even feel it.
"Help... me..." Ranni's eyes solidifed. Her tears stilled for a second as the words croaked from Malenia's throat. Her hand raised suddenly in a jerky fashion, and Ranni understood why she seemed doll like when Radahn had not. Radahn had obeyed.
Ranni raised her hands as Malenia's blade drove right through her chest, blowing a hole out the back wall where Ranni had been perched. It had missed her heart and Aorta by three milimeters, though she would likely need to speak to Luna about a commission when they met once more. She stilled her own urge to flinch as the wetty flesh of her left arm hit the floor with a wet slap.
"Have you." She whispered as her other hand touched the crest on her chest, siphoning every last drop of magic she could like a vacuum before Malenia lurched back away and screamed. She tore at her hair for a moment, screaming and barking in confusion before she snapped into stillness once more.
"Just enough... for now." She whispered as she floated back up, freezing just the bleeding left shoulder socket before raising a hand to the ceiling. She was in a newfound level of pain, but in a way, she felt a newfound kinship with the rotborn knight now. Perhaps losing limbs did that, or maybe it was the blood loss. She was going to assume the blood loss, for the moment at least. She could fix it later.
The entire freezing flash froze before shattering above and falling down atop the rotriddled warrior. She slashed apart each piece, but Ranni could tell her idea had worked. Already gone were the precise strikes. She was slashing randomly, repeating motions. Miquella couldn't pinpoint guide her now.
The knight turned up towards the witch as the last pieces crashed down, only to see her forming a massive sphere of ice like a dark moon in front of her.
"...Forgive me." She whispered as she poured whatever drop of mana and magic she could draw on left as the spell pulsed between her fingers. It slowly condensed and compressed with her focus as Malenia launched herself toward the snowborne caster. The moon flew, barely large than a child's ball now. Malenia could easily have slashed it away. She swung.
She missed. The orb struck her. In a second of perfect stillness, she almost seemed to smile as ice formed across her every cell. Ranni could almost hear a tearful thank you as the statue of Malenia struck the ground and shattered into a scattering of the finest red snow Ranni had ever seen.
At its heart, Ranni swore she could see a flower. A single gold and red flower before she fell herself into the reddened snow, and consciousness at last faded from her eyes. Her final thoughts before sleep took her, filled with anxiety.
Miquella had brought back others. Would this really be the last time she saw Malenia?