Infront of her stands a man with a pot on his head, he whispers words of authority to another tarnished who has entered the room, "Let me solo her".
She cannot seem to shake the feeling that she has met him before, and it's as if this feeling is also something she has felt again and again as of late.
Why can't she remember her encounters with him?
"There is an energy about you that's… different. I see a sense of resolve that has already passed, as if you've already won. Your focus is elsewhere because right here right now, you are simply passing through me, not giving any consideration to my own existence, let alone feelings…"
The two tarnished freeze, they're bodies aren't moving but they seem to be screaming something very quickly to each other in this paralysed state.
She can't make sense of their nonsense, but what they are saying to each other is "OH MY GAWD NEW CUTSCENE!! AHHHHHHH!!!!".
"Cut. Seen? What are those two blabbering on about?", she whispers to herself before noticing the embers of Grace that has guided her fate to move from the top of space of the room, to condense inside of the body to the man with a pot on his head.
She is stunned.
"What? Who are you?! What is your reason for being here?"
She fully expected to start their engagement with each other to be something yet again meaningless and irrelevant, but instead the roles are reversed, and because her fate is literally in this man's hands, she cannot be certain if that fate will lead to the end of her life or for her to follow him outside.
Not wanting to take any chances so she can see another day, she calms herself down, and immediately enters into a pose that will hopefully have the two of them in a stalemate long enough for her to understand the situation, whether to give the chance to communicate by words or through force.
"You, the one who thinks he can solo me, what is it that you are after? If your ambition is like the rest, to simply cut me down and proceed as to what Grace has decided for you tarnished, at least tell me what YOUR aim is. You seem to not be the type to have the ambition to become Elden Lord, it's as if you already are, so why is it that you slave yourself over to the guidance of grace? We all do and have to, but why, do, you?"
His body silently walks forward, but an echo of his voice can be heard commentating over the situation outside of his body, "OH MY GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING?!".
The body of the man with a pot on his head only gestures to her as if to say "I am no slave. I am who I am.", and proceeds to control the embers of her grace in accordance to his will, as if to say "If you don't want to be my slave, fight for your freedom".
Tensed up by this confrontation, she leans over to get ready to lunge for her first both offensive and defensive manoeuvre.
"You are no God!", she shouts.
And then from the perspective of the two tarnished, the cutscene is over and the combat begins.
The theme of the battle is different from the original (it's just straight up Sephiroth's theme, feel free to listen to it for the duration of the battle sequence).
Malenia's survivalist strategy is to throw a barrage of long range attacks in order to test her opponents responses without having to be too preoccupied to notice her surroundings. After channeling these new attack patterns she waits for the tarnished to make his move.
All he does is lie on the floor to dodge them as if to mock her, and so she takes the chance to create even greater distance by running up the tree that her thrown is attached to and continues to send these new attacks straight down so he can't just duck under them.
He dashes up the tree immediately and she readies her arm blade.
She swings with all her might while attempting to dash away from the tree so that way she can get the first strike in while creating distance once again, but he stops running up the tree and just stands with his feet treating the wall of it as if it were floor.
Unaffected by gravity, she is baffled by his strength, and suddenly despite her having no surroundings she is stopped in midair.
She tries to swing but is unable to, it's as if she can feel her limbs moving but they aren't, as if her self and her body are separated.
The mysterious tarnished then steps onto the air and faces her right side up while the other tarnished just remains T-posing at the entrance of her domain.
Her voice becomes shaken, feeling as if all fo this was unfair from the start, all of it, her whole life, "Don't touch me!", she closes her eyes and uses all her might to unsuccessfully use her arms to slash at him and push him away.
"STOP.", all music ceases and a voice echoes throughout the space.
The T-posing tarnished and the surrounding of her domain blur out of reality, and all that's left is the two of them and a sub-space of void.
"This is not what anyone wants. This is not good. Too many people have been left to the hands of circumstance and those who claim my face, but I am now awake, and I say what is and is not. For I Am The Lord."
A voice that does not come from the body of the tarnished but belongs to it speaks, "What the, Bible references? I don't remember there ever being a character like this in the game.".
"What do you think a rapture is? Is it not simply the logging out of a simulation? You've already logged in, why not login another layer deep. Nothing really changes for reality is still reality, only that now a potential I have decided will now be fulfilled."
The voice of the tarnished remains silent for a while as if waiting for what happens next, but then something happens to him.
"AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!", his echoing voice throughout the sub-space as it had been with The Lord's voice begins to make its way to a pin-pointible position, eventually landing inside of the the body of the once silent and only gesturing tarnished.
Suddenly he begins to spin out of control backwards, frantically trying to latch onto something despite nothing being around the two of them.
"Who is there? What has just happened? I deserve an explaination!"
"You are now part of reality, not because one observes you who belongs to it, but because you yourself are now too a conscious observer."
If Malenia did not already have a lifetime of knowledge todo with the construct of reality from a theological standpoint, she would have been confused by this explaination, but this explaination for who she is right now is perfect for her to understand exactly the correct interpretation.
However, the same cannot be said for the tarnished, "I deserve an explaination too, but something that actually makes sense please!!".
"I will simply account what the two of you already know about yourselves with each other; The Tarnished as you know him Malenia was a mere vessel controlled by a moral from a different realm of reality. This realm Tarnished, is the dream of the game you played physically fulfilled as a potential, and you have been transmigrated into the body of your character.
For the definitions of things that are unique to each of your realms, I recommend the two of you converse things over, for from on your destinies are your own."
"Wait, I'm in Elden Ring?! Isekai is real??!!!", the Tarnished shouts.
"Why is it that he came here and I stayed here Lord Of Reality?"
"No reason is needed. No matter the circumstance if even the same as before, thou shalt have free will. However, I have a will of my own, and I wish to see what will come of your decisions in these specific circumstances that the both of you at present prefer over other possibilities."
"Ummm, yeah I've been praying for this day all my life ngl.", the tarnished says.
"Ahahaha, very good. Have fun you two, and have faith in each other."
God's presence leaves but continues to watch over the two of them 'from afar'.
The two remain floating in the sub-space.
"Malenia…?", he stares from the empty space under the bottom of the pot that weighs heavy on his head, struck in awe with seeing her in the flesh.
"Can I see your face?", she asks him.
"Y-yesh. *cough* Yes."
He takes the pot off his head, and the face of his basically nude character is as handsome as a final fantasy character, (closely resembling Noctis from FFXV).
Her sense of familiarity after seeing his face is similar to the one of the dream she had of the comforting man with a blurred face, but her lack of trust/faith in those she encounters in the waking world is a feeling she can't easily sake off, so although her heart almost skips a beat, it goes numb again to gain composure, unlike in the moment she thought she was about to die.
Suddenly, the surroundings of her domain begin to fade back in, the other tarnish disconnected, and they both start to fall to the ground.
The tarnished who does not know how to control his physical body in the same way that he could while using a controller for the game, ends up screaming and bracing for impact.
Just before he lands on his face from 30 metres in the air, Malenia quickly dives to catch him after landing on the floor before him due to her size.
She trips in the process, and the two end up lying down in the muddied ground.
Out of breath and exhausted from the adrenaline, the two let their guards down for a moment feeling to both be alone together in the situation, rather than completely alone.