Elden Ring: Putrefaction of Gold

The Ravenous Beast

Maliketh pushed open the door and crept toward the bed where Ranni slept. He lept up and loomed over the princess as he brought his frothing snout near her. His tongue slipped out between his pointed teeth as it licked her delicate red cheeks.

No, Maliketh.

Marika's voice was like a whisper but stern to where it caused Maliketh to stop with his skeletal blade in hand.

Ranni stirred, and the beast fled away into the night.

He found Marika before the Erdtree.

"Why doth thou prevent me from sating my hunger?" said Maliketh.

Marika stood with a dark cloak wrapped around her, showing she had stolen away into the night her guise as the Fair Lady, no doubt to see one of her forbidden children. Which one, Maliketh wasn't sure. Surely, not Messmer, for he is locked far away in the Realm of Shadows, to which Marika vowed never to embrace him again. It must be that omen son of hers, which she had brought out of his exile for purposes that the beast-man could not fathom. Maliketh asked, secretly, time and time again, why his half-sister seemed content in keeping alive children whom she bore no real love for instead of letting him destroy them as he had the children of her rival.

Perhaps it was different when it was one's own child.

"If it is the Greater Will's intent she sees destruction, then let it be by her own shadow's hand," said Marika.

"That fool?" scoffed Maliketh. "He is too much a man."

"I don't care for thy father's philosophies of the superiority of beast blood, Maliketh," said Marika. "I wish her not to be killed."

"Why? Could a mere man seal away death itself and destroy she who had come against thee?" boasted Maliketh.

"A superior being would not have seen defeat at the hands of my beloved Godfrey, who himself was but a man. I do not want the mother of my grandchildren killed," said Marika.

"Mortal grandchildren! How doth thou knowest that upon seeing their faces, thy stepdaughter would not have a renewed interest in defying thee?"

"Thy purpose is only to seal away and protect the Rune of Death and nothing more. I have no further need of thee more than that. All life, mortal or demigod, is mine and mine alone. Lay so much as a drop of saliva from thine sniveling snout, and I will see to it that thy will truly hunger with an unsated appetite," said Marika.

"Only the Greater Will may curse me, Marika."

Marika smirked, and then, with that final warning, she walked into her bedchamber to make her way to the Erdtree, no doubt. To again bargin and rationalize her sin to keep alive those who were considered profanities to the Greater Will.

In seeing her gone, Maliketh let out a growl.

Therefore if you work upon your bodies, take the most ravenous gray Wolf, which by reason of his Name is subject to valorous Mars... He is very hungry, cast him the King's body, that he may be nurished by it; and when he devoured the King. - The Last Will and Testament; Valentine Basil (177).

Ranni awoke with a start and looked over at Godwyn, snoring next to her. Sweat ran down her face, and her hand moved to her stomach. Miquella had been there as well, snuck in as he had always done to place a single lily by the bedside next to a drawing that Ranni had made when she was little. Ranni had to smile. Her little brother had to be the only one who would break into a place to show an act of kindness. No doubt convinced the chambermaids to allow him access, such the manipulator he was. If it wasn't for his purity, Miquella might have annoyed Ranni.