Burning Chains

Chapter 10

Gareth was beginning to understand Ranni, more than she probably wanted him to. He wasn’t reading her mind or anything, he didn’t really need to. The Dark Moon was lucidity, but it was also its own form of desolation, the earth frozen over rather than the earth burned. Though hers was the destruction that brought isolation and his was that which brought unification, her nature was of the barren snow as much as his was the barren ash. He was the ruinous sun to her baneful moon, and perhaps in another life that may have meant something, but not in this one.

She rejected what she was so strongly that she could not see the strains of it that bled into her ideology. She wished to avoid becoming the destroyer so strongly that she would destroy the world to do it. It wouldn’t be quick like his fire would have been either. It would be slow and brutal, an endless winter instead of her mother’s endless summer, where magic would decay until it disappeared from the world entirely, cut off from its source. He couldn’t align himself with that, especially not when he had Mohg, a chosen priest of the essence of life itself, at his side. Mohg was a scion of fire and passion and pure blood lust, he could not live in a world so dark and cold.

Ranni would only be a temporary ally to them. He would take his body and help her incapacitate Maliketh, but the moment the rune of death was taken from him, Gareth would attempt to steal it. He was not an honorable man, he was a clawer and a scrabbler. If he could do it without harming his beloved, he would wrest the rune of death from his erstwhile allies for his own ends. It was merely a question of sneaking into the capital and up to the mountaintops of the giants. He and Mohg had done it before, managing to sneak their way into even the Consecrated Snowfields to spy on Miquella and his attempts at growing a second Erdtree. The demigod was quite focused in his work, enough that he hadn’t noticed when Gareth quietly established a monastery at the edges of the small plateau or when Mohg had set up a teleportation gate. Or more frighteningly, he didn’t care.

He banished the thought from his mind. Now wasn’t the time to consider the gaping void in his knowledge that was Mohg’s half brother. Today he was going to get everything he had ever wanted. His burning madness was channeled into a single point, Mohg and Mohg alone. Once he underwent the change Ranni had offered him, Mohg would be his, bound to him forever as his husband. There was only one thing left for him to do, fulfill his end of the bargain.

The Frenzied Flame grinned in excitement as Ranni guided him to her mother’s library. Or at least his human guise did. She could not be sure whether the veil he wore was actually an accurate representation of his emotions or if it was merely designed to display certain emotions when its wearer wished it to. Many members of the nobility wore masks to hide their true emotions while at court, this could merely be a more sophisticated version. Of course his excitement could also be utterly genuine, but it could be for reasons other than she was meant to believe. She may have asked him to help her mother, but it was out of pure desperation. For all she knew he could be taking some sort of sick pleasure in the act. After all, he had admitted that he could not actually heal her, only make her more comfortable. Maybe that was a lie, maybe driving her further into madness was somehow entertaining for him. There was also another option, one she had some difficulty accepting.

Ranni remembered when she was a child and had first told her mother that she was a girl, Renala had cried tears of joy. Ranni was her dear Princess, her moon and her stars of course she would always love her. Her father had been much more restrained as he always was, impossible to read at all times. Yet he had been the one who had spent late nights teaching Renala the principles of his own holy magic of illusion and transformation so that they could devise a way to replicate it via sorcery. The day they had granted her the body she intended to leave behind, she had worn a similar expression to the one the Frenzied Flame bore today. It unnerved her. Something that far from humanity should not react to things in the same ways she would have. What did that mean about his nature, that he was the desolating flame and yet he acted so much like a human and what did it mean about hers if instead, she acted so much like a god.

“Most of my mind is still human.”

Ranni was very tempted to hit him with her staff. It wasn’t long, but like her mother’s it was metal.

“Keep thy mind where it belongs.”

“We need to be connected for me to speak to you. It isn’t my fault you aren’t guarding your thoughts.” He cocked his head slightly in a sickening display of false innocence. By the moon and stars she hated the smug bastard. Though as the thought entered her mind she saw his stupid self satisfied grin widen. She decided now was a perfect time to remember the sound of Radahn’s singing. Oh how he loved to sing, it was such a shame he was completely and utterly tone deaf.

The Frenzied Flame winced and Ranni felt a rush of satisfaction.

“Keep thy mind where it belongs.” She reiterated.

“Yes your, majesty.” He gave an exaggerated bow as Ranni opened the door to her mother’s library.

“Ranni, is that thee?” Ranni flinched at her mother’s frantic tone.

“Yes mother, it is me.”

“Thou hast not come to visit me in quite some time.” Her hands shifted on the amber egg she clutched, the memento Ranni’s father had left her, pulling it tighter to her body. “What hast thou been doing out of my sight.” Rennala’s eyes narrowed, and her mouth tightened in fear. Ranni felt yet another chip break off of her heart.

“I have brought you a visitor, mother. Someone who may be able to grant you solace.”

The Frenzied Flame raised his eyebrows at her, but she paid him no mind.

Rennala’s eyes widened as her gaze landed upon him and she curled in on herself even further.

“Hast thou finally decided to kill thine own mother?!”

“Mother please,” Ranni felt her eyes well with tears.

“I knew thou wouldst betray me! Just as thy father! Just as thy brother!” Rennala began to reach for her staff.

“Mother!”

“If you have anything you want to say now’s the time,” The Frenzied Flame whispered. “You’ve got until she starts to cast.”

“Mother, I love you!” Ranni cried, just before Rennala’s eyes glazed over.

“I know thou dost dearest,” The Queen said in a softer tone, the tone of the mother that she’d lost to paranoia. Her dull eyes caught the Frenzied Flame in her gaze. “Oh thou hast brought a friend.”

Ranni turned as heat suddenly hit her face. He had unveiled himself, revealing the ball of flame that had become his head. Rennala did not react at all.

“Hello, your majesty. Princess Ranni tells me you can help those who find discomfort in their bodies.”

“Of course dear, I am always willing to offer to aid friends of my daughter.” She lowered her amber egg to the ground and the Frenzied Flame laid his hand on the side of it as Ranni had instructed. His arm slowly sank into the amber, until the gen enveloped him. “Now, bear this sweeting into like anew.” Rennala smiled as she retrieved the egg from the floor. “Wilt thou come home this evening my dear? ‘Tis a special night after all.”

“Oh? I was unaware.” Ranni felt goosebumps forming at the back of her neck.

“How couldst thou forget? Thy father returns from the front this night.” Rennala smiled with her glassy eyes. A pleasant delusion. Ranni felt herself almost vomit. But yet this was what she had asked for. Her mother was content. She could not jump at shadows because she could no longer see them. The Frenzied Flame had told her what he would do, he had laid the dagger in front of her and didn’t even ask her to, merely told her she could, thrust it into her mother’s back. And yet still she’d done it, entirely of her own volition. This was just the first knife laid out on her table. She knew there were yet more daggers, one for Godwyn, one for Iji, and one for Blaidd, each that she would have to take in her own hands and thrust into their bodies as they looked into her eyes. Their blood would be on her hands too. Suddenly she needed air.

“Ranni, shouldst thou leave? Thy friend!” The shell of Rennala called to her retreating back.

Ranni had given Gareth fairly concrete instructions on what he was supposed to do. He was to keep the form he wanted to take clear in his mind while he was inside the egg to guide the process of transformation. The more complicated the changes were the more difficult it would have been. Luckily he wasn’t particularly creative, nor was there very much he actually wanted to change, so he let himself relax into a sleep-like state.