At dawn, Lucia stood in the courtyard, thodically reviewing the sword techniques he had wrested from Samuel the night before. The sudden rhythm of heavy footsteps broke his concentration. Turning his head, he watched a handso young dragon with gray hair and red eyes step through the courtyard gate, clad in gleaming light armor.
"Why are you fully geared at this hour? It's not as if we're marching onto a battlefield," Lucia said, lowering his blunt iron training sword and offering a faint smile.
Aegis bowed with rigid, formal precision. "As Your Highness's captain of the personal guard, maintaining constant combat readiness is my most fundantal duty."
Lucia opened his mouth to argue, but the words died in his throat. He took a slow breath, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and nodded helplessly. "Right. Of course it is."
Of the dragons in his retinue, Aegis and Guilel had accompanied him the longest. They were of identical age and their martial prowess was a dead match, yet their temperants were worlds apart.
Guilel had initially resented their exile to Leyndell, her stubborn pride flaring bitterly during their journey through the Vanya River Valley. While that rift had since healed into a normal lord-and-captain dynamic, she had clearly spent every single one of her life's talent points on violence. If Lucia ordered her to cut soone down, she was flawless; in all other aspects of strategy or nuance, she was utterly clueless.
Aegis was her polar opposite. Possessing a tactical wisdom that belied his two hundred years, he carried an almost fanatical sense of responsibility for Lucia's safety. Sleeping while clutching a spear or patrolling in full plate was a daily habit. Lucia had long since given up trying to change him.
"What brings you to my quarters so early, then?" Lucia asked, shearing the sweat from his brow.
"A ssenger arrived from Priestess Lansseax," Aegis reported. "She requests your presence at the Ancient Dragon Temple this morning. Furthermore, she specified that Your Highness should dress in common attire and leave behind any weapons that might betray your royal bloodline. I suspect she intends to take you into the city proper."
"A stroll through the capital?" Lucia mused, his fingers tracing his chin. "I've been confined to Valeria Hall for a month. It's high ti I saw the streets."
He turned back toward the palace chambers to change, tossing a command over his shoulder. "Prepare an ordinary carriage. We leave as soon as I'm ready."
A quarter of an hour later, an unremarkable single-horse carriage slipped through the Gate of Heroes on the eastern flank of the Golden Temple, dissolving quietly into the labyrinthine grid of Leyndell's streets. Though the morning traffic was light, the scale of the capital was massive; it took three grueling hours of winding through cobblestone avenues before the looming silhouette of the Ancient Dragon Temple finally rose beyond the carriage window.
It was an architectural titan anchoring the eastern plaza. Bronze gates over ten ters tall capped the marble courtyard, their weight supported by massive quartz pillars. Vivid, deeply carved reliefs of ancient dragons spiraled across the exterior walls, converging on a singular, primordial symbol at the center: the Initial Ring.
In the epoch when the Dragon God Halaris reigned as the sole true deity and Placidusax held the mantle of Elden Lord, the Erdtree existed only in its raw, primal state—the Forge of Life. The dragons did not worship the geotric constraints of the modern Golden Order. Their Initial Ring was a complex, organic network of eleven interlocking circles that mirrored the vast, tangled root system of a cosmic tree.
Though the temple was nominally co-ruled by Lansseax and Fortissax, the latter was constantly away, waging campaigns alongside Godwyn the Golden. The staggering burden of the temple's daily governance fell squarely on Lansseax's shoulders.
The carriage ground to a halt a block away. Lucia hopped down, smoothing his heavy steel chainmail. He had swapped his distinctive Dragon-Scale Blade for a mundane, un-enchanted longsword. Glancing around the bustling plaza, he noted at least a dozen rcenaries, caravan guards, and sellswords dressed in nearly identical gear. He blended in perfectly.
"Take the carriage back," Lucia instructed quietly, patting the wooden fra as Aegis and the Storm Knight driver looked on. "I'll navigate the interior alone."
Two fully armored Knights of the Dragon Faith flanked the grand bronze threshold. Their mandate was security, not inquisition; they allowed the stream of humanity to pass unhindered. Lucia stepped into the flow, nodding politely to the guards as he slipped through the long stone corridor and into the vaulted front hall of the cathedral.
The oak doors opened to reveal a sanctuary that mirrored the grand architecture of Farum Azula. Colossal stone dragons coiled across the high ceilings. Below them, a wide stone nave cleaved rows of tiered seating where nearly a hundred believers sat scattered in quiet contemplation. Pristine, sharp morning light pierced the floor-to-ceiling stained glass, casting dramatic geotric shadows over the faces of the congregation.
At the altar stood Lansseax in her human guise, her white priestess robes catching the light as her elegant, lodic voice filled the vaulted space.
"The fundantal schism between the Initial Ring and the modern Elden Ring lies in the excision of Destined Death," Lansseax explained calmly to the crowd. "In our ancient faith, death is not an eternity of reincarnation managed by the Erdtree. True death is a return to the natural order—becoming the vital nourishnt that fuels the cycle of the world, granting new life to all things through our final passing."
"Lord Priestess, a question if I may," a knight in polished golden armor interrupted, his hand raised, his brow furrowed in genuine distress.
Lansseax offered a patient smile, gesturing for him to speak.
The knight stood, his voice tight. "According to your words, death is an absolute end. If that is true, does it not an the Golden Doctrine—which promises eternal life within the Erdtree—is false?"
A collective gasp rippled through the pews. Confusion and panic flickered across the faces of the common citizens. If the Golden Doctrine was false, then the very foundation of the empire they lived in was a lie.
"Peace, my friends," Lansseax said, her voice dropping to a soothing, fluid cadence that imdiately washed over the panicked crowd.
"Faith does not ask us to surrender our intellect or blind our capacity for independent thought. It is not a cage, but a lens through which we perceive the cosmos. The great Dragon God Halaris left us a sacred proverb: 'The deeper one reaches for knowledge, the swifter they discover their own ignorance.' Even the gods are re wanderers on the path of truth. Why should a contradiction in doctrine breed panic?"
She turned back to the golden knight, her expression serene. "The two concepts are not inherently hostile. The Dragon Faith views the return to the Erdtree as simply another facet of the natural cycle. Because the Erdtree stands, mortal souls are purified into their absolute essence upon passing—and when those souls are reborn, every trace of their forr life has been washed clean. What the Golden Faith calls rebirth, the Dragon Faith recognizes as new life. They are two nas for the sa eternal river. They can coexist."
A visible wave of relief swept through the sanctuary, the believers nodding in profound realization. Lucia smiled from the back row, deeply impressed by his sister's rhetorical tightrope walk. Lansseax closed the sermon with a final prayer, and the congregation slowly filed out into the blinding afternoon sun, their doubts laid to rest.
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