Maidenless No Longer (Elden Ring)

Bonus Chapter #14: The Tarnished

Even now though, even now neither of them were willing to give up. Laid out on the bed on either side of his cock, both Marika and Ranni have a hand apiece wrapped around his shaft, stroking him up and down as they glare at each other from around the side of his large girth. Ranni has even snuck a second hand of her four down to his balls, but Marika has yet to notice yet. It's only a matter of time though.

They look at him... and he looks back, a smile on his lips, warmth and affection in his eyes. For he is their husband, and this... this has been his story.

... He doesn't remember his own name. They call him the Tarnished. Well, these days they call him the Tarnished Lord, but still. Even if he wanted to, even if they asked, if they begged... he couldn't tell them, what he had been called all that time ago. In a similar way, he did not recall his original history either.

Was he one of Lord Godfrey's original soldiers, exiled from the Lands Between and then returned to it after so long without grace? Or was he a descendant of one of those soldiers, called because of the Tarnished blood that flowed through him? He honestly couldn't say. Much... much was lost to him over time.

You didn't really think about that sort of thing, on a general basis. Your own name. It was your name, wasn't it? How could you possibly forget it? But at the same time, names were only words in the wind. Hearing someone else address you by your name... was a great way to keep those words on the wind where they belonged, in your head.

Unfortunately, he was never very good with words. That was something about his original self that he remembered. Or... thought he remembered, anyways. He was absolutely terrible with words. He was confident he'd tried explaining, the first several times through. Waking up in that Church again and again, trying to work it all out, trying to get the best ending for all involved.

In the beginning, it'd been about Melina. His kindling maiden. When she'd first burnt up, he'd been horrified. But he'd carried on, as she would have wanted. He'd carried on, reached the end of the road... and become Elden Lord. Elden Lord of an Age of Fracture. Sat upon the Elden Throne, he'd been so lonely he'd wanted to scream.

And then he'd done it again. Funnily enough, he didn't quite remember how it started at this point, only that it had, and only that saving Melina had been his original priority. And it hadn't even been all that hard, either. Using the Frenzied Flame, and then the needle, while convincing Melina to stay rather than leave... it truly wasn't that difficult at all.

Perhaps a thousand do-overs to get it figured out? Ten-thousand, maybe? A drop in the bucket, in the end. He'd saved her, but when that next ending came, when he and Melina stood side by side and hand in hand... he'd realized that it was still incomplete. In those ten-thousand do-overs, he'd made friends. He'd found lovers. He'd created bonds and eventually come to realize that Melina... Melina was far from the only woman in the Lands Between who needed saving.

Whether they all deserved it or not, he could care less. The Tarnished Lord did not consider himself a good man. No, he was simply a man. Neither good nor evil. He couldn't stop himself from caring. He couldn't stop himself from hunting for ways to give each and every one of his bonds a happy ending. In doing so though, he expanded his knowledge of the Lands Between and lost all memory of what came before it. As he'd come to realize, words weren't enough, and so he stopped using them.

In the end, what people really responded to... were actions. And so, the Tarnished had shown his purpose through his actions. But in doing so, he had stopped giving the bonds he created his name. To him, he was the silent warrior, and in some cases their silent savior. A Tarnished of no renown, to be sure. It was easy, to lose his original self. Easy to one day wake up in that Church and remember the names of everyone he intended to save, but not his own.