Maidenless No Longer (Elden Ring)

Chapter 2: Sellen

A/N: Sellen won't be a major part of this fic, but she will get a Happy Ending all the same. Still, since she's on the way to the Tarnished's next waifu, she's the focus of chapter 2. Chapter 3, meanwhile, will be about Irina, so if you know who that is, feel free to get excited

-x-X-x-

Sellen had been known by many titles throughout her life. Some, she gladly laid claim to. Student, once upon a time, but also for the rest of her life, for there was never not something new to be learned somewhere. Scholar. Sorceress. And then, there were the titles that, while true, were not something she was quite so pleased with.

Exile. Fugitive. Apostate Witch. Thief. Prisoner.

Yes, not for the first time, Sorceress Sellen is reminded that she is not even truly here. This hideaway of hers, located beneath some ruins in central Limgrave, is not actually inhabited by her true body. She is but a projection, a mere facsimile of her true self, pushed out into the world so that she might still enact her will upon it.

That is not to say she is not grateful for the respite. Why, if she could not do this much, she's quite sure she would have gone mad by now. Exiled from her home at the Academy of Raya Lucaria, hunted down by Witch Hunters and imprisoned deep underground for her so-called crimes of trying to push the limits of Glintstone Sorcery, Sellen was... hm. There she was, getting lost in her own thoughts again.

Better to consider other things, truly. She was happy to be alive. Happy to be free enough to do this much, at least. While her corporeal form might be trapped elsewhere, here in this basement she had carved something of a niche out for herself. What she would do next, she had no idea, but at the very least, she had some modicum of freedom here to carry out her research, to continue to study the mysteries of glintstone to its fullest extent.

Of course, it was a little difficult to do so, when the sounds of battle were filtering down through the stone from up above. Not for the first time, Sellen glances upwards, as the ceiling shakes overhead yet again. Someone is out there. The ruins she's made her home away from home in, that she's converted into an extra laboratory, are... mostly uninhabited.

Outside the door, there is of course the Mad Pumpkin Head. The ogre-like creatures made for decent enough guards and luring one into place had not been all that difficult for someone of Sellen's skill and power. Likewise, her nature as a... figment meant that the creature did not try and attack her.

To it, her existence barely registered. All that it truly knew was that there was something worth guarding down here in her basement, her collected sorceries and research providing enough of a call of treasure to make it place itself outside her door and stand in defense of her and her work. Seeing as she had no real need to leave the area, given her lack of a true body and what not, it was the perfect arrangement.

Meanwhile, above ground the ruins were inhabited by Poison Flowers and nothing more. Not the most noisy or rambunctious ruin denizens at most times... unless, of course, they were disturbed. Sellen's eyes narrow beneath her Glintstone Crown and her unseen nostrils flare as another massive banging sound results in small fragments of stone raining down on her from above.

The roots of the Giant Poison Flower that called these ruins its home tighten up overhead... and then go slack, decaying before her very eyes. Someone had killed the flower, and likely all of the smaller Poison Flowers as well. How... enterprising.

A small tendril of worry begins forming in Sorceress Sellen's thoughts. Just who was it, who was traipsing around her ruins? Godrick's men, perhaps? She'd chosen this part of Limgrave because not only was it a quieter area of the Lands Between, but it was also far enough away from Stormveil Castle to keep most of Godrick the Grafted's soldiers from getting too interested. But perhaps she'd been wrong about that.