I beat Malenia

 I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella.

I haven't mentioned it much, as I don't like to bring up games I'm currently in the middle of when I'm off in the emphermal world of gaming, but I've been trucking along with Elden Ring for the past couple of months. Itself a spectacular celebration of everything that FromSoftware had done before in the Soulsborne genre bubbling up into an fabulous fantastical world of incredible depth and proportion. I know that George R.R. Martin had his hand in creating this world and I am curious to what extent his efforts were required, but it's Hidetaka Miyazaki who's DNA I recognise most prominently slathered all over this product. From the themes to the visual motifs to the types of characters we meet, the stories we create and the demigods we slay on our journey to repair, and then take control of, the Elden Ring. Enigmatic, ostentatious and deliberate; Elden Ring has been a delight. And then there's Melania.

Malenia has a reputation among Souls players, a reputation that nearly every game of this genre has rocked at least one character with this description: She's the 'hardest boss ever', so they say. Like The Orphan of Kos before her, (I never had the pleasure) or The Pursuer, (although his difficulty mostly spawned from his broken hit box) Kalameet the Black Dragon, Pontiff Sulyvahn who's reputation was then overshadowed by The Nameless King who's legacy was then supplanted by Slave Knight Gael. Oh, and of course I can't just forget about The Demon of Hated and the only boss in the series who is known as the hardest and happens to actually be the final boss to make sense of that distinction, Isshin the Sword Saint. Yet even through all of that, somehow Malenia earned a slot as either comparable to some of the greats or even more extreme than all of them put together!

Of course, to some extent I like to think that the exaggeration of Malenia's terror may be due to the fact that she hails from the giant explosion in popularity that the series recently enjoyed, most people probably never fought against many of those other bosses, but even card-carrying alumni reported her toughness, so I'll admit I was curiously dreading her presence all throughout the narrative. Of course, you'll get those small minded weirdoes who approached the fight with some wildly overstuffed and severely broken build, killed her in three attempts and then declare her reputation overstuffed without actually facing her as an ordinary player might, but anyone who took their normally optimised and balanced build up to her door, expecting a fight to match the scale of what they'd experienced getting there, was in for the kind of rude awakening you only expect to befall the victim in a horror movie.

Lingering by the roots of her young brother Miquella's Halingtree, Malenia writhes in her born-affliction of Scarlet Rot, the undefeated swordswoman winner of all her battles. She sits in her chair, beside the carved shape of her young brother in the roots, waiting for the return of the infant Miq who was stolen from the tree before he could be fully infused into it by Mogh, Lord of Blood- who himself hoped to become the consort of the young Empyrean to raise himself to godhood. A bit lazy of her not to go out and save the little prince herself, but then I guess she didn't know where to look. And to be honest, I don't exactly blame her for not knowing, I'm pretty sure no one except for Gideon knows about what Mogh was up to thanks to the fact he is a late addendum to the game and lore, so haphazardly shoved into the world that he somehow exists in two locations at once. (Say what you will about 'projections' but allow me to counter with this: I killed the Lord of Blood first, so who was projecting the Omen King Illusion?)

But all of that is just fluff when it comes to actually facing the Empyrean in battle. Malenia is known for never losing a fight, and it is an accolade she defends fiercely. The first time I entered her arena, knowing her reputation, I found myself dead with the first ten seconds. No lie. She sped across the room and struck me down in three hits. That was when I knew I was in for a ride. Malenia is one of those speed-demon style bosses, fast and punishing like a sword-spinning ballerina. Sharp and precise she is a machine built for single combat that demands you keep up with her every movement. Her basic moveset is consistent enough in speed and sweep to lull you into a pattern, before she switches up here and there in just enough ways to keep her frustrating. In her basic suite of moves alone Malenia is a tough and deadly opponent.

And then there's the Waterfowl dance. Perhaps more legendary than the woman herself is the famous move in which the swordswoman rises up into the air and causes everyone to vacate their bowels before unleashing what can only be described as 'Anime nonsense'. A charging flurry of ceaseless strikes that blossom around her like a whirlwind of knives as she zooms towards you, three times, to ensure you fall to her fury. The attack is basically a death sentence when you get caught in it, with the only possibility to dodge pretty much belonging only to people with a light load of equipment. And even then the timing ain't a walk in the park. I knew it was a doozy when my only solution for it at the end of the day was to figure out the exact threshold at which she unlocked the attack and figuring out how to bait it from far away enough to avoid the worst of the flurry. (Moonlight Greatsword beam did wonders.)

Yet if I was to pick the one aspect of Malenia that was the most painful, perhaps not for how it slew me but more for how it broke down my spirit, it was the healing. Oh yes, Malenia is the only boss I can currently think of in the entire Souls franchise who can heal, and she does it off of her strikes. Like a vampire she seeps the essence of your pain into herself, although it goes a bit beyond vampiric persuasion considering the fact she also heals if the attack is fully blocked and therefore deals no damage. That is a cardinal sin of boss design for one simple fact- no one wants to look at the bosses health bar after their death and see all damage done melted away from a crazed flurry of life-seeping attacks. For a game built around the tenets of damage and retreat, chipping away at the great oak until it falls, that alone was the biggest gut punch.

So painful was Malenia that I had emotionally checked out by the time I beat her. Even looking again at the footage I can see it. How little attention I was paying until my last Dark Moon hit and I glanced down to see the woman at the final slither of health on her second, thankfully easier to handle, phase. In a manner that only the most extreme boss encounters can do in a Souls game, I was stunned at my own victory. I sat there for about three minutes without doing anything, lightly shaking from the surprise of it all. I suppose some part of me had resigned myself to jumping into that fight again and again forever, burning my life at the altar of Malenia, letting myself be ground soundly into dust. Like a dog chasing a car I had no idea what to do with the victory, what my life even meant anymore. If fighting Malenia broke me, beating her was the shattering. 

That's about it. See ya.