Marika the village girl

The morning after the rain, the air was thick with the earthy tang of soil and humus. Warmed by the sun, it was almost muggy.

Horace Loux walked along the muddy path through the camp, his boots sinking into the soft, wet earth before he dragged them free with a squelch.

His elder brother had told him to come meet Marika.

The order had been direct and left no room for argument.

He thought as he walked, his thoughts flowing quietly.

Their tribe came from the bitter, frozen realm the Lands Between called the "Wasteland."

There, wind and snow were constant visitors, food was a blessing, and survival itself was an endless, brutal struggle against wild beasts and other tribes fighting just as desperately to survive.

It was in that very hell that Hoarah Loux had used his fists and greataxe to forge his reputation as a "king."

Truthfully, Horace Loux had never understood how his brother had led the tribe straight to the Lands Between without error.

The Wasteland was their familiar battlefield, a wilderness that resonated with their blood.

They could not even get their bearings there, yet out on the boundless ocean, Hoarah Loux had seemed to point out directions entirely at random.

How on earth had he known exactly where the Lands Between were?

Perhaps... this was fate? Some unseen pull?

The Lands Between, birthplace of the "Crucible of Life."

Legend said the most primordial life force had burst forth here, evolving into countless forms.

It was this world's "umbilical cord," the source and final destination of all the power of life.

Perhaps every civilization and people born from the Crucible's power and scattered across the vast outer realms bore a mark deep within their souls calling them home.

That made his brother's "picking up" Marika all the stranger, even lending it a fateful sort of absurdity.

Under the Hornsent's harsh rule, persecution, and confinement, shamans were already vanishingly rare.

Yet Hoarah Loux had gone on an ordinary hunting patrol and "picked up" a shaman in the wilderness who just happened to be an "Empyrean"?

Unless this was no coincidence.

Unless some being had secretly nudged the course of fate.

The Two Fingers, or the Mother of Fingers behind them?

If this was their work, everything made sense.

They needed to find a consort and lord for their chosen Empyrean-Marika-someone powerful enough, pure enough, and "useful" enough.

The "king" Hoarah Loux, who had won such renown in the Wasteland, was undoubtedly a highly tempting choice.

He was powerful, had a "clean" background, and commanded warriors who did not fear death. More importantly, he and his people craved recognition, craved a "place," and that desire would become loyalty and fervor toward whoever gave them that "place."

If he ruled out interference from the Two Fingers, only one even more outlandish explanation remained: his brother Hoarah Loux and that Marika were made for each other, a choice ordained by Steins Gate.

That romantic notion tugged at the corner of Horace Loux's mouth. He thought it far more likely that the Two Fingers were behind it.

The present Land of Shadow had not yet suffered its later banishment. It remained closely connected to the main body of the Lands Between, the undisputed center of this vast territory.

Here, worship of the primordial Crucible of Life remained the dominant faith.

The Aspects of the Crucible, the infinite possibilities of life's forms, were manifestations of power here.

Because of this, the creatures of the Land of Shadow generally bore features of the "Crucible"-horns, scales, mixtures of feathers and fur, and so on.

The Hornsent, who revered the Crucible and took pride in their own forms, had naturally become the rulers of the Land of Shadow.

In Belurat, they had built the magnificent religious structure Enir-Ilim, a holy site of their faith.

All life came from the Crucible, including "barbarians" like them from the Wasteland.

Though the Crucible's features were less pronounced and elaborate in them than in the Hornsent or other creatures of the Land of Shadow, the source of their power might well be the same.

Was Hoarah Loux's inhuman strength, his bursts of power and endurance beyond all reason in battle, some manifestation of the Crucible's power within him?

He was simply more accustomed to using raw physical power and combat skills, and had never deliberately displayed or developed those unusual aspects.

Perhaps these were precisely what had led Marika and the Two Fingers behind her to choose him in the end.

After all, compared with the Hornsent, Hoarah Loux would be more accepting of the Golden Order.

With these tangled yet increasingly clear conjectures in mind, Horace Loux arrived before the largest tent in the center of the tribe.

The warriors on guard saw him and stepped aside, respect in their eyes.

He lifted the tent flap. Inside, it was a little emptier than last night, and the traces of last night's argument seemed to have been carefully cleared away.

The fire still burned brightly, illuminating the two people standing beside the hearth.

Hoarah Loux had changed into relatively clean leather armor, and his hair had been braided anew. With the rainwater and sweat washed away, his mountainous physique and sharply defined face stood out all the more.

Standing beside him, a little farther back, was that inherently evil Marika.

For the first time, Horace Loux truly looked at her.

She was very tall, nearly as tall as an ordinary tribal warrior, but her figure looked slender, wrapped in a dark robe.

Her hair was a rare golden color, falling over her shoulders with a slight curl at the ends.

Her face... was very young. Her skin had the pallor of someone who had long been kept from strong sunlight, her nose was straight, and her lips were pressed together, making her look a little nervous.

She had none of the lofty bearing he had imagined, none of a schemer's unfathomable cunning, and none of the composure that came with weathering life's hardships.

She looked like a village girl who had suddenly been pushed to the center of an enormous stage, trying hard to adopt a bearing befitting her position, while the clear look in her eyes betrayed her true nature.

Hoarah Loux spoke, his voice much calmer than last night. "Hesa, come here. Meet Marika."

He turned to Marika, his tone softening a little without his noticing.

"This is my younger brother, Horace Loux. The cleverest person in the tribe."

Marika inclined herself slightly forward. "Horace Loux... Heorh often speaks of you. He says you're the brains of the tribe."

Horace Loux nodded and returned a simple tribal greeting. "Marika."

He used her name without any honorific.

Then a brief silence fell over the tent.

Hoarah Loux watched his brother, seemingly waiting for him to offer some "clever" insight.

Marika continued looking at him with those large, clear eyes, waiting for him to continue.

Horace Loux looked at this almost "innocent" Empyrean and his simple-minded elder brother before him. After a moment's silence, he finally decided to ask something.

He cleared his throat, trying to sound as though he was opening a discussion rather than questioning her.

"Marika, what exactly do you plan to do next? Lead our tribe... and then what?"

Marika blinked those clear eyes and answered quite naturally, "I don't know."

Horace Loux paused, then tried another approach. "Then who do you think we—or rather, you—will be facing? Who will stand in your way?"

This time, Marika thought a little longer, but in the end she still shook her head with complete honesty. "I... I don't know."

Horace Loux felt a slight throbbing at his temple.

Patiently, he asked his third question, the one he considered most essential. "If you succeed and become... a god, governing the Order, what can you bring us? What, specifically?"

This question seemed to touch on some "point of knowledge" in Marika's memory.

Her eyes brightened, as though she had finally found a question she could answer. She straightened her back and spoke in a noticeably stiff tone.

"The Elden Lord will walk beside me, and we will establish the perfect Golden Order. Life, souls, cause and effect-all will fall into their proper order. Everything will return to the embrace of the Erdtree, finding peace and eternity in the cycle of Grace. There will be no more disorderly strife, no more needless losses. All things will take their proper places, and both life and death will have a path home..."

Her words were filled with grand terms like "Erdtree," "Grace," "Return to the Erdtree," and "order." They certainly sounded convincing, painting a radiant vision of the future.

Yet Horace Loux noticed a subtle sense of "reading from a script" whenever she said these things, as though she were repeating a set of lines someone else had taught her.

The Two Fingers! They had definitely drilled this into her.

At this moment, she seemed more like a reciter who had been handed a script.

Horace Loux sighed silently and turned his gaze to his elder brother, Hoarah Loux, who had been listening quietly all this time.

Hoarah Loux caught his brother's look, then glanced at Marika, who was still working hard to maintain her "Empyrean" bearing. His rugged brows knitted.

With a sweep of his large hand, he interrupted Marika, who might still have been preparing more theories about "return to the Erdtree." His voice boomed with matter-of-fact bewilderment.

"Hesa, why are you asking all these roundabout questions?" He patted the faintly rattling axe handle at his waist, his gaze sharp and direct.

"Who's a friend and who's an enemy-isn't that what a 'clever head' like you is supposed to figure out and tell me? Just give me their names, tell me where they are, and we'll go beat them. Isn't that all there is to it?"

Horace Loux looked at his brother's face, brimming with fighting spirit, then glanced at Marika beside him, who looked a little lost after being interrupted.

His blood pressure was beginning to climb.

He suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of absurdity and helplessness.

He had imagined many versions of this meeting: Marika speaking with a silver tongue, beguiling people with divine radiance and exquisite promises; or concealing her depths, probing and courting him through words laced with hidden barbs; or displaying imposing majesty, using her authority to force him into line.

The only thing he had never imagined was this-two people standing in pivotal positions that could shape the future of the Lands Between, one his elder brother, whose head was filled with hot blood and battle and who understood little of complicated schemes, the other a young Empyrean who seemed inexperienced in the world and somewhat poorly educated, both blinking equally "clear" eyes as they waited for him, the "clever one," to take command.

He had a bellyful of things to say, but now they were all stuck in his throat.

Why was the future Eternal Queen just like a village girl?

The timeline is a bit of a mess. The rough sequence in the author's book is:

The Crucible of Life gives birth to the various races → the races scatter and leave the Lands Between → the age of ancient dragons (the Eternal City should also be flourishing during this period) → the Elden meteor crashes down → the Fingerslayer Blade takes shape, the Mother of Fingers loses contact → Astel, Naturalborn of the Void falls → Nokstella falls, the ancient dragons weaken → the initial Erdtree (based on the text, this should be the fusion of the primordial Crucible and the meteor; the Erdtree is red at this point) → the Hornsent become dominant (the Erdtree and the Scadutree are collectively called the spiral tree, hence the Hornsent's worship of spirals) → Marika's period, the Empyreans contend for supremacy → the age of the Erdtree (including various wars), Radagon formally appears → a brief age of plenty → the Night of the Black Knives → The Shattering → the period when the game begins

That's roughly how it goes. Please let me know if there are any problems.