The crash into the blackness was painful. She landed with a loud crack that did not feel as painful as it should have for the fall it had been, yet the wind was blown from her lungs, and her head felt like it had been shaken around for someone's party in a stick.
"You..." She heard an all too familiar voice echo quietly as she tried to gasp. Yet she couldn't breathe. It was Him.
Slowly, she turned her head to stare at the man in the cage. The man who had caused every hurt, every pain that had driven her to madness and tyranny. Yet... had it always been just Him?
"R.. Radagon." She muttered as she began to catch her breath. She slowly stumbled to her feet, finding the ground felt almost incomplete. She realized he was hunched over in a small space that seemed to hold bars that she couldn't quite see, but she could feel their presence all the same.
"Queen Marika, the Eternal." He nearly spat her name out with the same venomous tone as one would discuss a pile of filth.
"You... You! You are the cause of all of this! My paradise! My people! You have ruined everything in my existence, my life!" She angrily roared at him, screaming and stomping with a violent rage that she could no longer contain.
"Am I now?" He sneered, glaring at her violently. "How am I all to blame, hm?"
"You are a parasite! A parasite that infected me back in that jar!" He gave her a confused glare that she simply ignored in her spiteful rage. "You... You are NOTHING." His face twisted into rampant fury once again.
"I made us!" He angrily bit back as the bars around him seemed to heat with no light nor sign beyond the sense they both shared.
"You are just a leech upon my glorious rise, festering and milking from the teat you stole from a poor woman who fought for EVERYTHING I HAVE EARNED!" She screamed, beating a fist against those hot bars, ignoring the scorching pain that briefly seared her before turning away with a growl as she gripped her wrist. He grew quiet for too long, far too long for her comfort. When he retorted, however, she felt her blood run cold.
"You have earned nothing without Bloodshed, oh Tarnished Queen." He said with no lack for venom and toxic intent, despite his quiet and low tone.
She stared into this abyss for far too long, silently holding her mouth as the true horror of everything finally came to her.
"You are right..."
"We are just monsters. You may have locked me away, but we are one and the same. The only difference is that I am honest."
"No... it's worse than that..."
"Oh, do tell."
She felt a tear slowly fall down her cheek as every memory, every shame, blistered back in sharp reality. Every soul he slaughtered, every woman he violated, every order she gave, every child ahe sacrificed for her ends.
"We are A Monster."
Both stood in silence for far too long. A low and shaky silence that seemed to rattle them both to their core. Radagon's face slowly warped into confusion. Marika's into horror.
"You were never some... criminal stuffed in the jar... you are just wearing a face, my... our mind could blame..." She trailed off as her hand slid from her mouth. "I... I am a Monster..."
"No." She heard a gentle voice say as she felt a warm hand on her shoulder asnher strange guide appeared once more. "Perhaps, once you were, but that isn't now."
"But-"
"Shhh." A gentle finger to her lips stifled her. "I wasn't done, Ma'am, so no interrupting." She quieted. "Good."
Her guide lead her quietly away from the cage as Radagon sits there in silence, solitude, and confusions.
"Things are more complicated than you may realize. Yes... he is you, and you are him. There are things you both did that some may never forgive. However, not everything was your fault." Marika listened skeptically. Her hand rubbed her other arm as her guide led her into a small grove, and she found they were back inside that strange flower garden of a church.
"There has always been something plucking at your strings. A god that has used you as a puppet. I can not tell you what actions were yours and which were their influence. I suspect he is the side of you that was always more susceptible to its pull, but I can't absolve you for all your guilt, your sins." Marika felt her heart once more throb with guilt. "But I can tell you that they aren't on you anymore."
Marika looked at her strange guide, feeling a twinge of hope appear inside. "They... aren't?"
"Mhm. Ever since you appeared in that cave, Luna has been slowly peeling away at its claws at the cost of her mind and memories. She believes it is a price to interact here, but very few places she visits have such strange rules. You took great pains to make the entirety of the Lands Between sacred ground. The very soil here is blessed." She smiled warmly to Marika.
"It... was my life's work."
"And you succeeded, but..."
"But...?"
"Luna's heritage makes her particularly disagreeable to sacred things. By coming here, she had to give up the majority of who she is to begin unbinding the claws around your soul. She has split her own soul. All her power and memories are working to free you. That way, she won't burn just by stepping along the soil here. Her muscle memory, her skills, her talents stay, but her very identity slipped. She knows what home is, why she's here, but until this thing is removed from you, she won't fully be herself again."
"Another lost hero... dying for-" a firm but not all that painful slap across Marika's cheek stunned her out of her growing misery as she looked at her guide.
"Now listen here. She did this willingly for you. She was asked to come here," as she wagged her finger at Marika, "and she could have said no. She said yes because she saw how badly you were hurting."
The gilded queen quietly held her cheek, tears welling up slowly. "For... me... I had thought.. that was just..."
"Flirting? A pass? Maybe just playing up the knightly role? Luna is a theatrical woman, but she isn't one to play with someone's heart. When she says she's here for you, it means she's here for you." She placed both hands on little fists at her hips.
The gold ruler of the lands between sat in that moment for a long time. She let her mind roll through her memories like a wheel, spinning across treads she had run far too many times. Yet, the clearest were always the memories of her children and of her time with the knight. She had felt a clarity at her side that had become a fleeting dream to her. Every child felt like it was snatched away far too soon, or trapped by games she no longer even knew if she had been playing or a pawn in. There was far too much to make up for, and never would there be enough time. Yet...
"I... I am sorry." She said it firmly now. Not to her guide, not to Luna, but to herself. To all the ways she had slipped and let herself become a willing pawn. To her children, so scarred bynher carelessness or allowance of this thing to truly possess her like a sword. To all those she had hurt. To all the women, she could never give the virtue back to. She wept inside for the things she had taken that could never be given back, but sitting here in the dark and weeping with pity for herself would never resolve the pain she had caused.
"I.. I am going back." Her guide beamed.
"You always could. You just had to want to." As the door to the church began to glow with a soft moonlit shine.
Marika turned towards the door, clenching her fists briefly in nervousness. "What if... I can't do enough?"
"Do what you can. That's all anyone can ask for out of you. This is your second chance, Marika." She patted her back.
The queen glanced back at her as her strange guide walked back to the flower garden. "Just... who are you?"
She smiled gently as she picked a single lily from the garden and gave a gentle smile. "Oh, I'm just a flower girl. Spreading little rays of light in the dark. Go on now. You have a lot to do."
Marika smiled at this non-answer, pleased enough to know that this wasn't just the game of yet another god. She breathed deeply and began to walk towards the light.
She would not fail her people a second time.