On Arthur's side, Snape came knocking as well.
Compared to Dumbledore, Snape simply didn't have the same depth of experience. When it came to actually running Hogwarts, he couldn't possibly take care of everything.
He was genuinely worried the Dementors might float their way into the castle itself and attack the students, so he specially came to ask Arthur to keep an eye on things—and step in if anything went wrong.
Arthur naturally agreed. He had no intention of letting something like that happen on his turf.
What? You're asking since when Hogwarts became "his turf"?
Please. His name is literally written on the deed. How is it not his turf?
In the Lands Between, Arthur's slow but steady advance finally led him into the Erdtree Sanctuary in Leyndell.
There, he encountered a golden phantom of Godfrey, the First Elden Lord.
To put it bluntly, it was just a combat puppet that carried a fragment of Godfrey's strength, nowhere near the real thing.
Arthur cut it down without much effort.
Once the phantom evaporated, he glanced around the sanctuary—and spotted a throne hanging down from the dome overhead. A figure in priestly robes sat rigidly on it, a corpse long since dried up. Its head was covered with a white cloth, and in its hands it cradled a book.
Arthur leapt up, plucked the book from the corpse's arms, and let the system identify it for him.
Golden Order Fundamentalism — Original Text.
He flipped it open and found a prayer recorded within.
A basic, foundational incantation of Golden Order Fundamentalism—one of their root dogmas. It could erase all abnormal statuses, dispel special effects, and strip things back to their "true form."
Its name: Law of Regression.
Return, and all things converge toward the unchanging.
Arthur snorted.
All things are changing, all the time. You want everything to "converge toward the unchanging"?
He'd suggest they just go full Frenzied Flame and burn the whole world down. Once everything's ashes, sure—then it's all "unchanging."
Ranni heard that little snort and tilted her head.
"My king, is something wrong with that prayer?"
"Nothing much," Arthur replied, lips quirking. "It just reminded me of an amusing little truth."
"Oh?" Ranni asked. "And what truth would that be?"
"You'll see in a moment," Arthur said, turning to walk toward the church's exit.
He hadn't gone far when the Miquella sleeping within him stirred and floated out.
"Arthur, I sensed something familiar," Miquella said softly. "May I see that book?"
Arthur handed it over. Miquella took the volume and lightly tapped the back cover.
Another prayer shimmered into existence on the surface, lines of golden script surfacing where there had been none before.
Its name: Radagon's Ring of Light.
Miquella looked at the prayer with a nostalgic expression.
"When I was young, I created a prayer based on the Golden Order and gifted it to my father. As a return gift, he gave me one of his own. That prayer… is this one."
Arthur skimmed the effect.
Form a golden halo, expand it outward, strike all around. Strengthen the range of charged attacks.
He wasn't particularly impressed. Compared to incantations, he still preferred sorceries.
"Convenient timing," Arthur said. "We're just about to go deal with something related to Radagon. Since you're awake, you can come along for a look."
Miquella nodded and returned the book.
They left the sanctuary, descended the staircase, and stood before Radagon's statue.
The stone figure was two stories tall, Radagon's arms spread wide at his sides. A dense tangle of thorns formed a halo behind his back.
Arthur stood at the base of the statue and raised his hands, assuming the gesture for the Law of Regression.
Golden sigils flared beneath his feet.
Before their eyes, the statue's image shifted—Radagon's features melted and redrew themselves into someone else's. The figure became Queen Marika, exactly the same as the one Arthur had seen hanging in the Roundtable Hold when he first arrived in the Lands Between.
At the same time, words appeared carved into the stone at his feet, as if rising up out of nowhere:
Radagon is Marika.
Arthur looked at the line, then at the transformed statue, and chuckled.
"I may not agree with Golden Order Fundamentalism," he said, "but they do get a few things right.
For example—only regression reveals secrets. Regression is truth."
The small Ranni in his arms, and Miquella at his side, could only stare blankly for a moment.
Of the two, Miquella was the most shaken.
In his head, there was now only one thought:
My father… is also my mother?
Ranni, meanwhile, finally understood why Radagon had suddenly abandoned her mother, wed Marika, and become the new Elden Lord.
All three of them were Empyreans; they all knew that Empyreans could split off an opposite-gender half of themselves.
What stunned them wasn't that Radagon could be a half of someone else.
It was that Radagon was Marika's half.
But then… why had she done that?
Why create a half of herself, marry it into Caria's royal line, and then abandon everything to return to Leyndell?
Ranni voiced her confusion.
Arthur answered,
"Radagon doesn't represent Marika's will. Marika isn't a creation of the Greater Will; she's one of the Numen, a race from beyond the Lands Between. She has her own mind and her own desires.
But the Greater Will chose her to be the vessel of the Elden Ring. And to the Greater Will, vessels don't need a will of their own.
So it exploited the Numen trait and forced a second self to bud out of her—that second self is Radagon.
Radagon follows the Greater Will, not Marika."
He went on,
"As for why Radagon did all that? He was gathering power for the Greater Will.
For example, Radagon went into the temple at the bottom of the Lake of Rot and obtained the power of Scarlet Rot. Then, when he and Marika had children, they passed that power on—creating Malenia, born with the Rot."
Miquella's expression changed. His sister's affliction—her cursed, inescapable rot—had turned out to have such an origin.
Ranni, however, only gained more questions.
"In that case," she asked quietly, "why would Marika agree to merge with Radagon and bear children?"
Arthur spread his hands.
"That part, I don't know. Maybe she couldn't resist the Greater Will and chose to endure. Or maybe… she had plans of her own."
In truth, Arthur did have a theory: perhaps Marika wanted to reclaim her half.
In his previous life while playing the game, the first time he entered the Erdtree proper, he had seen Marika hanging there, crucified in mid-air.
Only when she sensed his intrusion did her form shift into that of Radagon, and the boss fight began.
Which implied that by then, Radagon had already been pulled back into Marika's body. The two of them were locked inside the same flesh, wrestling for control.
That also explained the scene from the game's opening cutscene.
One moment, Marika kneels in penitence, hammering at the Elden Ring. The next, the figure becomes Radagon, attempting to repair what she was shattering.
Their goals were diametrically opposed.
Marika wanted to break the Ring.
Radagon wanted to restore it.
Arthur shook his head, letting the speculation go.
The Lands Between were full of secrets, layer upon layer. If he wanted answers, he'd just have to keep moving forward.
"Come on," he said. "It's about time we paid a visit to the final king of Leyndell."
Still tangled up in the knot that was his father (and mother), Miquella quietly slipped back into his crystal, choosing to sleep again.
He couldn't untangle it, and he honestly didn't feel like trying.
He'd parted ways with Radagon long ago—otherwise he wouldn't have run away with Malenia in the first place.
For him, the only thing that mattered now was whether his sister was still safe.
Leyndell, Royal Capital.
The Elden Throne.
This was the highest point of the city, a place from which you could look down over all of Leyndell.
After months of methodically picking the capital clean, Arthur finally set foot there.
He hadn't been in any hurry, but Morgott had long run out of patience.
He'd had to stand in front of the Erdtree doors the whole time, watching as Arthur looted his glorious capital from top to bottom. He didn't dare abandon his post, and the frustration had been simmering ever since.
Now Arthur was finally here.
He could finally put an end to this wretched Tarnished.
Morgott slowly descended the steps in front of the Erdtree's entrance. As he came down, his voice echoed through the vast chamber.
"Foul Tarnished, driven by the flame of ambition… you have at last come before the Throne.
Now, let the name of Morgott the Grace-Given be carved upon thy mewling epitaph!"
Arthur, however, had already tuned him out.
The moment Morgott started monologuing, Arthur had quietly pulled out his summoning bell and called in his "big brother."
He knew perfectly well this was the boss. He wasn't some third-rate villain who wasted time trading speeches with people trying to kill him.
The Mimic Tear stepped out, drew Moonveil, and charged Morgott without a word.
The two clashed in the center of the arena, sword flashing against cursed blade, and for a while, they were very evenly matched.
Morgott parried the Mimic's strikes while raging,
"Vile Tarnished! Is this all thou canst do? Hide behind borrowed might? If thou hast any pride, face me thyself!"
Arthur rolled his eyes and ignored him.
He turned instead toward the entrance and said calmly,
"Aren't you going to come say hello, old friend?"
At the threshold of the arena, a figure slowly appeared out of thin air.
Melina.
"You've hardly seen me in so long," she said, voice soft as ever. "Yet your senses remain as sharp as ever.
Do you require my aid? At the foot of the Erdtree, I can still wield part of my strength."
Arthur shook his head with a smile.
"No need. Just watch from the side. Once I turn him into glitter, we'll have plenty of time to catch up."
Morgott was a demigod, after all—and in Arthur's eyes, demigods were basically walking magic crystal ore.
He absolutely was not about to let Melina walk in and kill his loot.
The whole reason he'd stayed back and let the Mimic do the opening work was to prepare for converting Morgott into sorcery crystals afterward.
On Morgott's side, the more he fought, the more he realized he couldn't break this summoned copy.
Unable to resolve the battle quickly, he finally made his choice—
He'd release the shackles on his own power.
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