Elden Ring: Putrefaction of Gold

The Dual Nature of Motherhood

Blaidd perched up on the roof over Godwyn's balcony and looked out over the garden that surrounded the base of the Erdtree. It was a decent enough view. He could see towards the chambers of Marika's demigod children from this vantage point. He saw Miquella reading to a recovering Malenia. He spotted Rykard pacing back and forth while he and Ranni argued.

But he couldn't see into Marika's bed chamber, the throne room, or the sanctuary from this point, much less reach any of them. The Erdtree obstructed his view far too much.

"So maybe spying on Queen Marika wasn't what you looked to do," said Blaidd. The Half-Wolf peered over the edge down to Godwyn's balcony. "A good place to stage an ambush, but one doesn't easily kill a demigod. Not with that sort of dagger. Kidnapping, perhaps? But who?"

Blaidd had to chuckle to himself at the thought of someone trying to whisk away Radahn with his massive size. He'd have to use his gravity magic to assist with his own kidnapping.

He sniffed the air and caught a whiff of something.

"Humm... incense?" he mused. He sniffed again. "No. Perfume. A woman? Well, they do often make for better spies. And children are more likely to trust a woman than they would a man."

The twins did make sense since neither of them had been paired with a shadow. The fall of Farum Azula made eligible beast-men difficult to come by. The Carian royal family was fortunate enough to find an orphaned Blaidd to bond with their daughter Ranni, but he was many times removed from the bloodline.

"But why wouldn't you just disguise yourself as a perfumer if you wanted to take one of the twins?"

Blaidd bounced a bit on the roof and heard that the roof still creaked. An intentional design for precisely the purpose of detecting anyone attempting to go over the roof.

"The question is how did you get here without someone at least hearing you. You escaped through the sewers to throw off the scent, but that couldn't have been how you came. Guards aren't always the most perceptive, but surely they would have caught two tall women leaping over the ramparts."

That left one theory that the intruder might have used a portal that only went one way. And he had just the place where such a device would deposit them: right in the wild gardens where Marika had forbidden anyone to go. All he had to do to prove his theory was follow the trail...

"Oh, blasted," said Blaidd as the clouds opened and a gentle rain began to fall. "It appears getting to the bottom of this problem isn't written in the stars anytime soon."

Blaidd leaped down from the roof onto Godwyn's balcony.

"Oh, there you are. Did you find anything?" Seluvis asked as he looked through Godwyn's bookshelves.

"A great deal more than you, I would suspect," replied Blaidd.

"Even if Godwyn had the ambition to try an elaborate sort of assassination attempt, I doubt he'd have the brains to pull it off."

Blaidd always hated how the Preceptor had to wear that mask along with his silly hat that had the stars drawn on it. It wasn't as though the symbolic appearance of the sown-up mouth ever kept Seluvis quiet. But more, he liked to see people's faces when he spoke with them.

"You would think a demigod would care to have at least a tidy living quarters," said Seluvis as he picked up a dirty cloth with his forefinger and thumb to put it aside.

"I suppose if you had someone wiping your ass instead of you kissing theirs," scoffed Blaidd.

"Don't forget that we serve the same mistress."

"Well, Queen Marika wanted Mistress Ranni to stop by. I'm sure she's worried sick at this point after hearing Godwyn was injured. You keep searching and try not to disturb anything. The last thing we need is for Godwyn to know we were poking around here," said Blaidd.