"Please enforce your patience for a brief mont, Your Highness. Lord Epsilon will materialize within the hall shortly." A Two Fingers Priest bowed to the stone floor, his gray vestnts scraping the flags as he slowly backed out of the chamber.
Lucia quietly monitored the surrounding architecture. From the millisecond his boots had cleared the threshold of the Church of the Two Fingers, he noted that this sanctuary operated on a far lower, more ascetic frequency than the other grand monoliths of the capital. It shared zero trics with the overwhelming scale of the Erdtree Cathedral or the Ancient Dragon basilica; its internal dinsions were intentionally minimalist.
The walls in his line of sight were assembled from raw, un-carved white ashlar blocks, entirely devoid of gold leaf or imperial relief work. The high vaulted ceilings lacked the expensive glintstone or magical rune lanterns popular in the Upper District, relying strictly on the guttering light of tallow candles to pierce the dimness.
Furthermore, the structure featured no public chapels, nave benches, or prayer rails for common believers. It comprised nothing more than a dozen spartan cloisters reserved for the inner priests.
Its structural purpose had never been to aggregate a flock or distribute dogma. It was designed from its foundation to function as a sterile cosmic anchor—a quiet, low-vibration laboratory where the priests attended to the physical wood of the Fingers, through which the flesh could parse the transmissions of the Greater Will.
Lucia waited for less than two minutes before an intricate Erdtree seal flickered in the center of the flagstones. Streaming gold light coalesced into the physical form of the Two Fingers Emissary, Epsilon. The entity remained swathed in its white linen vestnts, etched with the geotric patterns of the Elden Ring, its lower half terminating in those twin, glowing columns of pure gold energy that consistently triggered a localized instinctual revulsion in Lucia's demigod brain.
"Your Highness," Epsilon murmured, its voice vibrating through the stone without the use of a throat. "If your ledger required a consultation, a simple summons would have drawn my presence to Valeria Hall within the watch. Why commit your own divinity to the lower thoroughfares?"
"Your compliance does you credit, Emissary Epsilon. Drop the court protocol; let us take council," Lucia replied with an aristocratic nod, gesturing to a massive, custom-built stone chair opposite his bench.
Epsilon executed a asured bow, its complex biochanical fra settling into the seat.
Because the entity lacked a human skull, Lucia bypassed the standard tactical step of tracking micro-expressions. He paused for a heartbeat, selecting his vocabulary with absolute precision before launching his spear. "My recent cycles have been heavily conford to physical cultivation, preventing from monitoring your office. The error is mine. But I have cleared my schedule today because two separate calculations within my matrix require your direct guidance."
"Disclose the variables, Your Highness."
"First—" Lucia locked his silver eyes into the center of the cloth wrap covering Epsilon's core. "Does the mission file you carry obligate your alignnt to the preservation of the Golden Order currently administered by Their Majesties? Or is your code conford strictly to assist my trajectory to beco the God of the next era?"
The inquiry was a razor-sharp, treasonous strike, but Epsilon's transmission returned without a single microsecond of lag. "The Law is rely the systematic matrix of rules by which a sovereign entity governs the material cosmos. Therefore, whenever a God is replaced on the throne, the underlying Order must naturally undergo a total structural regression. Since Your Highness is an Empyrean personally selected and locked into the board by the Greater Will, if your stats achieve ascension in the coming era, it is a mathematical necessity that you overwrite the Golden Order. Consequently, the mandate bestowed upon my office by the stars is conford solely to secure your ascension."
As the literal spokesperson for the supre cosmic intelligence of the setting, communicating within the blank stone of a dedicated transmission house, the probability of Epsilon deploying a diplomatic lie was absolute zero. Lucia's blunt offensive was engineered to verify his baseline safety paraters through the most primitive, binary ans available.
It appeared that within the boundaries permitted by the cosmic code, this Two Fingers proxy was entirely locked into his faction—an orientation that conford perfectly to his ta-projections.
"Understood," Lucia murmured after a long silence, the tension leaving his shoulders. "Then let us parse the secondary variable. My tactical engine is currently locked in a gridlock."
"Does Your Highness refer to the private invitation dispatched by Elden Lord Radagon to command your presence at tomorrow's lakeside banquet?" Epsilon transmitted.
Lucia's hands went still. Considering that a supre cosmic database stood behind the Fingers, tracking a secular palace mo was nominal work for the entity. He nodded slowly. "Aye. The Elden Lord has summoned my presence in an absolute private capacity. By every standard of courtly compliance, my boots must clear the pavilion. But the ancestral blood-feud separating Radagon and the Carian Royal Family is a volatile quagmire. Tomorrow at noon, Knight Moongrum intends to launch a diplomatic offensive. If my shield enters that circle, I am intentionally stepping into a crossfire that carries zero dividend for my house."
"The calculus is clear," Epsilon's upper digit bent slightly, a gesture that mirrored human contemplation. "Though Your Highness has maintained an permanent ideological friction with the Elden Lord due to your Empyrean alignnt, your strategy seeks to prevent that friction from mutating into open warfare. Concurrently, the three incoming Carian demigods share Radagon's bloodline; you have no desire to be consud by their dostic civil wars, correct?"
Lucia smiled, his teeth sharp in the candlelight. "The width of your calculation does your office credit, Emissary."
Epsilon remained still for several heartbeats, the candle flas reflecting off its white linen. "Your Highness has mapped the physical layout of the field with excellent precision. My office can offer but a solitary axiom to crack the deadlock: Where a gridlock manifests, a choice must be enforced. And where a choice is enforced, a premium dividend must be harvested."
"If your schedule contains a fraction of leisure this afternoon, I petition you to listen to three historical fragnts from our archives. Once the logs are complete, re-calculate your choice."
A premium dividend must be harvested...
Lucia chewed on the phrasing, his gar-intuition flashing as the underlying structure of the plot unlocked behind his eyes. He leaned forward, his focus absolute. "Disclose the fragnts, Emissary."
[Fragnt I: The Tenth Winter Past]
'The Ancient Dragon Dynasty and the Erdtree locked their signatures into the grand covenant of Leyndell, terminating the Unification Wars. Her Majesty Marika imdiately executed the total military exile of Elden Lord Godfrey and his Eastern Legion into the southern badlands. Upon her return to the capital throne room, she issued a unilateral sovereign summon to recall Radagon from the west, commanding him to accept the mantle of King Consort.'
'Radagon was a champion whose entire identity was conford to the absolute advancent of the Erdtree; he should have cleared his saddle and ridden for the capital within the watch. Yet, our logs state he lingered within the Carian Grand Manor for months, violating the Queen's tiline. Before his boots finally cleared the western gates, he deployed his personal Red Wolf—the beast that had anchored his flank through a decade of crusoes—to remain permanently at Rennala's heel.'
'At his imperial coronation, the capital guilds prepared to lt down the dynastic treasuries to forge a monolithic greatsword—an asset engineered to mirror the primordial stone hamr held by Marika, serving as the physical monunt of his executive authority over the Law. To the court's horror, Radagon delivered an absolute, unyielding refusal. He consented only to embed slight, geotric Fundantalist modifications into the hilt of the Moonlight Greatsword hand-delivered to his chambers by Queen Rennala on their wedding night. That modified steel remains buckled to his hip at this exact watch.'
Lucia's pupils dilated. The Golden Order Greatsword.
He was intimately familiar with the item descriptions. Though Radagon had politically severed his flesh from Liurnia, his personal vanguard beast had maintained a constant vigil over the Full Moon Queen until the literal end of the world. Even when the future Tarnished would storm the Academy spires centuries down the tiline, they would find the scarlet wolf holding the line inside the Debate Parlor.
And that legendary greatsword—which would later be plundered by a common Leonine Misbegotten in the coastal caves—was indeed a corrupted, re-forged variant of the Full Moon regalia, its blade still retaining the pale lunar geotry beneath Radagon's golden law lines.
Before his engine could fully parse the psychological implications, Epsilon initiated the second transmission.
[Fragnt II: The Seventh Winter Past]
'Elden Lord Radagon extracted a unilateral concession from Queen Marika. Operating in absolute secrecy, the two entities simultaneously brought the stone hamr and the lunar steel down upon the Elden Ring, violently shearing a specific Rune fragnt from the cosmic matrix. Radagon personally encased the raw shard within a spherical shell of star-amber thick with primordial life, hand-delivering the egg to Rennala's chambers via a blind courier.'
'The high court scholars claim the concept anchored to that severed Rune is the logic of pristine life and tabolic continuation. The whisperers within the inner palace walls argue that Radagon physically fractured a segnt of his own divinity, fusing his soul into the amber to maintain a permanent presence beside his forr partner. My office advises Your Highness to treat the latter point as nominal palace gossip—but the ledger of the transfer remains closed.'
The Great Rune of the Unborn, Lucia calculated, his knuckles turning white against his cloak.
Lining up these two historical fragnts, the traditional image of Radagon—the cold, fanatical, borderline robotic instrunt of the Golden Order who possessed zero human traits—was completely shattered. The entity who had broken Rennala's crown had left a fraction of his own soul wrapped in amber to hold her hand in the dark.
[Fragnt III: The Present Era]
'Across the recent winters, Elden Lord Radagon has routinely cleared his schedule to exit the capital plaza alone. He rides without a vanguard, explicitly forbidding the Rodel Knights from tracking his itinerary. His destination is permanently locked: the absolute edge of the listone precipice cutting across the southwestern rim of the Altus shelf. He plants his boots at dawn and does not turn his horse until the starlight locks the sky. It is only over the past two winters that the frequency of these rides has decayed.'
The entity bowed its swathed head, its golden legs pulsing with a faint, low-frequency hum. "The archival transfer is complete. My office inquires: has Your Highness locked the premium dividend within the data?"
Lucia rested his jaw against his fist, his mind turning the variables at maximum velocity. Tracing the geography of that southwestern Altus cliff... an operator standing on that stone would be looking directly down into the mist-shrouded basin of Liurnia of the Lakes, tracking the distant highway that led back to Caria Manor.
The man who ruled the world was spending his midnights staring down at the kingdom he had ruined.
Radagon was a walking paradox—a cosmic entity saturated with a glorious, unyielding divinity on one face, yet anchoring a raw, bleeding human grief on the reverse. His defense of Fundantalism had begun to mutate into a fanatical, borderline psychotic obsession, yet he remained deeply, agonizingly bound to the lover and the children he had hand-delivered to fate.
Lucia had previously deduced that the cold civil war dividing Marika and Radagon was a binary split between humanity and divinity. Now, looking at the Radagon file, he recognized that these two violently conflicting characteristics were currently tearing the Elden Lord apart from the inside out. He wasn't a pure incarnation of the Law yet; his flesh still crackled with the volatile sparks of a mortal man.
After a long, heavy silence, the Prince's silver eyes focused. "The dividend you are pointing to is leverage, Emissary. You are telling that Radagon's absolute priority tomorrow isn't a political conquest—it is the safety and alignnt of his Carian children. If my shield successfully diates the friction, preventing Moongrum from forcing a total schism, the Elden Lord will carry a massive, un-vouched moral debt to my crown. A debt that must be settled in raw political capital. Correct?"
Epsilon let out a soft, low-frequency chi—the draconic equivalent of a dry laugh. "Since Your Highness has successfully mapped the location of the profit... write your choice across the ledger."
Lucia surged to his feet, dropping into a deep, respectful bow. "My thanks, Emissary. You have cleared the fog from my path."
Clearing the Church periter, the carriage wheels had barely locked before Lucia reached for his parchnt, his charcoal pencil flying across the vellum to draft a formal, private response to the palace. He accepted the invitation for tomorrow's lakeside watch without a single courtly filter.
With the ink blotted, he sat back against the cushions, his fingers casually stroking Shirley's thick, silver fur as the carriage rolled toward Valeria Hall. His engine was already mapping every tactical permutation that could manifest along the water tomorrow.
Once the transaction with Radagon is locked, Lucia calculated, a cold, predatory thrill settling into his veins, it matters zero what manner of daggers Moongrum clears from the leather. So long as I preserve the structural integrity of that pavilion, my crown will have established an permanent, un-shakable foothold within the absolute heart of the capital.
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