586 Scarlet Sky by NeonZangetsu (Elden Ring)

Latest update: December 3, 2023

(Author has already moved on to a new story, so don't expect any more updates)

Summary:The Golden Sky is dying alongside the Golden Order; the era of the Scarlet Sky shall soon rise. When the new age comes, there will be prosperity under the moon. For our Lord, for our General, for He who cradles the stars. Long may he reign. Reincarnated as an unlikely demigod, a young blond makes his mark upon the world once more..in a rather unexpected fashion. Narutoxharem.

Link:https://m.fanfiction.net/s/14127835/1/Scarlet-Sky

Word count:42k

Chapters:9

The Golden Sky is dying alongside the Golden Order; the Scarlet Sky will soon rise.

When the new age comes, there will be prosperity under the moon!

Long may he reign."

~A Prophecy.

Scarlet Sky

Waking up wasn't so bad.

Honestly, it came as a bit of a surprise to Naruto. When you've spent a pivotal two days of your life fighting reincarnated zombies, meet the disembodied spirit of your transmigrated father, and decide to flash a goddess with a tasteful amount of boy-on-boy action ,you come to the conclusion that not only does the afterlife exist, but everyone ended up there in the end. There was a comfort there, knowing that once his work was done and he had finished what he set out to do; that he could pop his clogs and sally forth to the next great adventure.

"...?"

He had hardly expected that adventure to be quite so literal and starting up quite so soon, He'd expected to die and be dead. One and done. Off to the pearly gates to meet his parents. That sort of thing, no lingering grudge or will to send his soul on the roulette wheel of samsara. Death was supposed to stick and all that. He'd accepted his end with open arms. It had been a good one, too. Spectacular. Rather than die a miserable death in battle, he'd lived a full life before passing away in his bed at the ripe old age of two hundred.

Yup~! Two hundred. Uzumaki genetics, they were stubborn, even in death.

So it was with somewhat muted surprise and slight consternation that sensory feeling was returned to him.

With it came the unfamiliar sound of a woman screeching in pain; and with it another's voice giving encouragement.

There's a reason why we don't tend to remember our births. Frankly speaking, its horrifying. Imagine being at rest. Knowing that all you have known is warmth and safety-seamlessly blended in his case to the release of death-only to be forced through what is essentially the eye of a needle into a bright land of indifference.

Noise! By the Sage it was noisy, new synapses firing, sensory overload layering from new skin and new eyes that refused to open even as he consciously willed them to. The experience was so awful that he briefly forgot just what it was that he had been doing prior to birth.

Opening his eyes like this was...honestly a little intriguing.

'Oh yeah,' his mind filled in, taking a second to notice where memory ended and conscious thought began, 'Being dead. Honestly not the kind of thing you'd catch yourself forgetting.'

That's right, he remembered now. He had gone gladly to his grave surrounded by his descendants. His grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren and the like. A true Uzumaki lived for a terribly long time after all, and a jinchuuriki even moreso. Sure, maybe that ridiculous level of longevity might've made him a little snarky along the way, but that was to be expected, wasn't it? With old age came wisdom, and with wisdom came the realization that life itself was fleeting. Best to be enjoyed while it lasted and come what may.

As such, Naruto observed the proceedings with a distant sort of detachment, faintly amused by it all. Comprehension began to niggle at the back of his mind nevertheless, which prompted something of a...problem. 'Wait a minute…I'm dead. SO WHAT IN THE NAME OF KURAMA'S NONEXISTENT BALLSACK AM I DOING BEING BORN!?'

As grandiose as his minute old existential crisis sounded, reverberating inside the confines of his otherwise newly pink brain, the panic soon gave way to curiosity. Taking in his surroundings with watering fresh eyes; he would be delighted to see that they, at least, were a vibrant shade of orange.

Naruto found himself in a large room opening onto a balcony overlooking a star studded dawn, the inkiness of the night giving way to the coming sun that filled the room with an awesome red light. Tall gilded bookshelves lined the walls of the room containing a variety of books, trinkets and other curiosities that hummed with a tinkling sound and internal blue light, the same light that twinkled from the assortment of noble furniture. He'd never seen a vanity mirror the size of a small building before but somehow it fit in with the luxurious bed he found himself in the center of, swaddled in dark blue silks and clutched against the breast of a slowly panting woman.

.

..

...wait a second.

'What's this?' he squinted up at said woman, a regal beauty with long, flowing dark hair. Sweat streamed down her brow in taxing rivulets, but her exhausted face was full of fascination and deep adoration, directed solely at him. 'I don't recognize her. Why is she looking at me like that?'

He felt the woman shift the silks she held him in, eyes never once leaving his pudgy face; indeed, the dark-haired stranger gazed upon him as if he were her entire world. Baffling. Wait. He was being held. That was it. That explained this strange sensation. He could feel gentle hands wrapped around his body. Holding him, cradling him close. Almost as if he were...

Realization broke like the dawn.

Perhaps, a hundred years ago, he might've felt dismayed. Now?

He started to laugh. Well, well, well. Wasn't this interesting? Unexpected, curious, even!

'Kurama?' he shot a mental thread inward, feeling his internal voice bleed off into the darkness of his soul. A beat of concern rose in Naruto's mind when silence reigned. No response. He tried again, fearing it would be in vain...and was rewarded with a groan not a few seconds later.

"Ach, my head…" a familiar growl prickled against his awareness, sounding like he had just suffered a truly god-felling hangover. "Feels like we just got wrung through a blender...

The laughter redoubled.

"Isn't he lovely, beloved?" the woman spoke in a tongue Naruto didn't recognize yet intuitively understood. He wondered briefly if Ninshu was at play. Hmm. Another question that could be answered later; he was too busy giggling to himself for the time being. "What shall we name our little sweeting?"

A man's voice hummed from across the room. Naruto craned his weak neck to see a tall man, red of hair with precise features dressed in a red and gold doublet with a short kilt. Unlike what he assumed to be his mother, this one's eyes were a bright gold. "He giggles in the face of the fresh dawn, bringing light into our life with the day. A happy sun indeed, Radahn sounds like the perfect choice."

A faint smile creased the newly named babe's cheeks. "Radahn? That's the name you gave me? Alright. I'll allow it."

Strange, his voice had an odd echo to it, much like theirs...wait. Why had everything stopped?

Time itself stretched onto into eternity as those faint, squeaky words echoed through the birthing chamber. The regal man, the woman who clutched him close, even the assorted handmaidens carrying bloodied towels and water from the room; all became statues, looking at him as if he'd grown a second head.

The woman yelped. "He spoke?!"

Naruto blinked before squeaking in amusement. "Oh? I can still talk?" he touched his cheek with a pudgy hand. "Well, that's useful. Hmm." he waved his arm up and down. "Seems I have full motor control, too. Good. At least I won't have suffer through diapers again. What's wrong?" He surveyed the room and several sets of mouths that gaped and closed like goldfish. "You act as if you've never seen a baby talk before."

The couple shared a look of incredulous surprise before lifting the little redhead up and holding him close, their surprise bleeding into pride.

"By the gods!"

"Just born and already talking! As expected of my son!"

When it came time to convey this story to the Carian royal scribe, it was said that the man who would go on to be known as General Radahn, conqueror of the stars, was born standing up with nary a cry. And while the truth was something far more bizarre and sworn to secrecy, it was something that the King and Queen agreed upon every time they laid eyes on him.

He was Radahn, the sun warmed their spirits, he who made them happy.

And elsewhere, another life had come into the world.

A most special one indeed.

(.0.0.0.)

Leyndell, Royal Capital of the Lands Between, was known for many things.

One of its least discussed facets was its soundscape. On a normal day, one could not go five meters without hearing the distant sound of the chosen of the peerage making their passage to and from the city most closely touched by the Golden Order. It was not unheard of for the sounds of skilled artisans to play their music of choice from the rooftops using gilded flutes or bespoke Carnyx, and when the wind fell just so, one could hear the distant but ever-present hum of the Erdtree, the grace of the Goddess Queen Marika the Eternal made manifest.

Tonight, that was nothing compared to the innermost sanctum of the castle, stronghold of the goddess herself.

Oh what sounds and mystical hymns were whispered in the presence of the Goddess and her consort...

"FFFFFFFFFFF UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!" screamed a refined voice pushed to the point of crassness.

Godfrey winced, watching his beloved thrash upon the bed sheets, her glowing ichor cooling on the black silk sheets as she raged.

There were very few things that frightened the Elden Lord; he had routed armies, reduced enemy holds to a barren wasteland of superheated glass, snapped a Lymgrave bear's neck when he was nearly ten. But right now, he was terrified. Not for his love of course; for as she twisted and turned, a squall of handmaidens dabbing her forehead, she was bringing his heir into the world. Marika would survive this. She was immortal, eternal, the light of his life and the apple of his eye.

Nay, it was for himself whom he feared!

"Ngh!" he grunted, his beefy arm giving a wet sounding crack when Marika's iron grip punched a seventh compound fracture into his radial bone. These last few hours of labour had been brutal indeed. Serosh chuffed in sympathy on his shoulder and encouraged him to try and sooth his wife. "Push, my love! You're so close now!"

"Raaargh!" Marika did not take his encouragement well if the three cracks from his ulna bone were anything to go by. "You did this to me you bearded brute! If I survive this, I swear, I am going to shatter your pelviccceeee-aaaahhhhhhhhh!" Her threat devolved into another shriek of pain.

Godfrey felt a certain level of irony from that, even as the Handmaidens prevented Marika from reaching for her hammer to prang him across the temple. As with anything of worth in this life, there was a toll to be paid. To gain strength you sacrificed time, for wisdom you offered patience and for life the price was pain.

CRUNCH.

'For me as well it seems,' he winced as Marika's grip redoubled.

Even if she was a true god, bearing a child was painful. He might not have an arm left at this rate.

But eventually the room was filled with a new sound, far divorced from the hoarse shrieks of the pregnant queen or the Elden Lord's slowly splintering arm. It was a cry that silenced the rest, the full throated and brilliant wail of new life, for Godwyn the Golden had just been born into the world.

Almost a pity. He'd hoped for a daughter. Gwynevere had a lovely ring to it. Perhaps the next, then...no!

His eyes bulged as another life was coaxed from his wife's womb, a squalling girl.

Twins. Gods preserve him, he hadn't expected that...and oh, the ground was rushing toward his face...

Marika released her consort's arm with a wet pop, her fingers tipped with his blood, and made a grab for the black silk swathed children. Their sire toppled to the ground, spent from nine hours of enduring his queen's pain and fury. She held them close and looked down at them, struck by just how perfect they were. Her Godwyn, her son, her first born. And her Gywnevere, her lovely little daugher...

"Nothing in this world is so perfect as the two of thee...

She cooed at them, a far cry from the fearless and stern martial leader she was feared as; now the golden haired mother that the Order preached her to be. Yet as she sat there, oblivious to her handmaidens swabbing the sweat from her body in favor of committing the newborn faces of her son and daughters to memory, there was a snag.

It began like an itch at the back of her mind, a telltale and loathsomely familiar presence that was neither word nor feeling, the magisterially malignant concepts of the Greater Will communed to her. Marika wanted nothing more than to present her bare bottom to the Erdtree and make vulgar gestures for the incorporeal creature having interrupted this special moment, but she had neither the strength after the painful birth nor the want to make her twins hear something so rash. He was too perfect for that. So she sat there, rocking her perfect golden children against her bosom as they burbled incoherently, no doubt subconsciously interpreting the warbles through the Elden Ring.

The goddess paused, recognizing the object of the Will's thoughts, it was... concerned at something Radagon had done. No, that wasn't right.

'Something that my brother self has brought into this world.' she thought, catching glimpses of euphoria along their shared soul. She wondered idly what could have him so happy and why it made the Will quaver so. No matter, for it did not concern her in slightest. Her face broke into a small but genuine smile. 'Let the Will seethe, I care not for Redagon's path, I am simply glad he is euphoric. And if the besotted will is afraid, then let it suffer, today is our day, not its.'

With this lingering thoughts, she put it out of her mind. Only the scantest of thoughts remained.

Perhaps one day little Godwyn and Gwynevere would find themselves a friend.

Yes, she rather like the sound of that...

Link:https://m.fanfiction.net/s/14127835/2/Scarlet-Sky