Chapter Text
A kingdom without death prized few qualities so highly as its people’s collective ability and inclination to have children. One doesn’t go to the effort of producing a child without a purpose behind the intention, so the existence of a younger generation is what marks a civilization that believes in its own future well enough to raise new lives to see it.
Although the dragons, like the fire giants, originate from an older world order.
“It is arrogant,” Fortissax said once, “the presumption that thy kind beareth so vital a position in the world that thou must force more of thy kin upon it.”
When it put it that way, childbirth nearly sounded unneighborly.
Godwyn had not considered that a sexless race might take reproduction as an attack. Before the war and the treaty, the dragons and the golden kingdom had had no peaceful relations of any sort. They had neither understood each other nor sought to.
Godwyn took a moment to frame into words his implicit understanding of the concept. Certainly, he told Fortissax, a parent brings a child into the world for a reason, but the reason is far less grand and more self-centered than what Fortissax suggested. A child is not meant to inherit wholesale a parent’s position in the world, nor to prolong their influence should they somehow pass on, but simply to claim a newly opened role that no one yet exists who could fill. A marriage, for instance, might require a trueborn child to demonstrate the strength of the union.
However, Fortissax did not entirely grasp the idea of marriage, either. If a relationship explicitly meant to exist between two people requires the introduction of a third, unknown individual in order to function, then that alliance was tenuous from the onset – at which point Godwyn had to correct it: the third member is implied in the definition.
Fortissax absorbed that. “I see,” it said. “I see what I have been missing. Then the reason a marriage requireth the creation of a wholly new being, rather than an exchange of any thing less profane, is….”
Godwyn answered easily, “Nothing but a child can ever bear the obligation of repaying its parents for its existence.”
“How blessed that Leyndell hath thee, brother,” Miquella said on a different occasion. “I am a dreadfully poor son.”
The Haligtree rose around them, yet growing into the shape that would become Elphael. Miquella had not abandoned his work to meet his visiting brother; instead, a retainer had greeted Godwyn’s small retinue at Ordina and led him alone through the passage, down the tree’s branches, and to the stairway that led around a corner to the flowered arbor where Miquella crouched with a pair of pruners and dirt-stained gloves up to his elbows.
Godwyn did not mind the lack of welcome. Through no fault of anyone else’s, walking across the Haligtree felt more like venturing into a hostile country than the invasion of the giants’ lands had. If Miquella and Malenia went to the extent of treating him as a welcomed guest rather than merely allowing him to be one, visiting his younger siblings’ home would have rubbed too closely to treason.
It was too obviously blasphemy, this living, changing mimic of the mountainous Erdtree, and watching Miquella care for his little hobby garden in a sheltered corner of the tree perturbed Godwyn in ways he could not define.
The bustling varieties of flowers and fruits in the alcove, encompassing every sort from anemones to roses to strawberries to begonias, bloomed vibrant and overwhelmingly red, even those that should not have thrived in this season or climate. Gold held a significance that no other shade could match, but Miquella’s favored color, when he had the opportunity to choose, had always been red.
Godwyn had coaxed out the reason for it when Miquella had been younger. He was glad he had, because Miquella at this age would not have given him the same answer.
Miquella wanted, he had told Godwyn then, to collect beautiful things in red to show to Malenia, so that she would not associate the color of her own body with only rot.
Each of the demigods had their clear strengths and weaknesses, but lacking love for his family was not among Miquella’s few shortcomings.
Godwyn replied, “Certainly not.” Miquella made a small skeptical noise, demonstrative enough that it placed him closer to his physical age. He had never grown out of certain habits, and Godwyn, in turn, had never been certain of to what extent they were an affectation. “If Mother disapproved of thine activities, she would not have allowed them to come to fruition.”
Miquella paused and looked up at Godwyn seated on the bench. His eyebrow was raised. Godwyn kept his expression earnest. Miquella could survive a spot of uncertainty about whether a pun had been intentional.
“How fareth Leyndell these days?” Miquella asked, turning back to the cranberries.
Godwyn smiled. “The queen is eternal. Thy lord father is…”
“…attempting his best,” Miquella murmured, “as ever.”
Peace had reigned for centuries, and still the current Elden Lord did not seem to understand what to do with himself off of a battlefield. Godwyn knew well enough that Radagon was not all of Marika’s bloodthirst, nor her bloodthirst alone, but sometimes the man himself did not seem to believe he was anything more than that.
Godwyn could not have claimed for certain whether Miquella had divined Marika and Radagon’s relation. Malenia, at least, Godwyn did not believe had. Godwyn saw her as akin to her blade: direct, unyielding, and possessed of proficiency she had earned through her own dauntless effort and commitment, but also somewhat lacking in nuance and, unfortunately, not particularly skilled at improvising outside of her established sword forms. Between the twins, Malenia was not the one who enjoyed solving mysteries.
Miquella, meanwhile, put Godwyn more in mind of a butcher’s blade. Only intended for cutting one set of materials, but far more versatile despite that than a weapon of war could become. And less precise, sometimes, with where he aimed and what he struck than his younger sister was.
“Our uncle sendeth his regards,” Godwyn continued. “He wisheth to see you more often.” Maliketh wished that Miquella and Malenia would tear down the Haligtree and return to roost in Leyndell, but if he could not have that he would settle for this compromise.
Miquella sighed, nasal and deeply put-upon. “My sister can arrange a schedule.”
“Shall I inform him, or wouldst thou prefer it to remain a surprise?”
“The former, if thou wouldst.”
“Of course,” Godwyn said, but he added, “Miquella, thou dost understand that you are always welcome at home, and that nothing of that changeth if you should choose to arrive unannounced.”
Miquella clipped a branch and plucked several fruits from another before he spoke again. “Is Fortissax well?”
“It is.”
“Thou shouldst invite it if thou decidest to visit again.”
“It doth not enjoy traveling far from its sister.”
“Of course Lady Lansseax must come, too. We have the space now to accommodate even two dragons, I should think.”
Godwyn ran a thumb across a whorl in the living wood of the bench. The first time he had seen the tree, it had not been half the width of a wing in Leyndell’s palace. “How large dost thou imagine the Haligtree might grow?”
“As tall as the mountains,” Miquella said flippantly, “with a breadth greater than the entire Altus Plateau.”
From the beginning, he had meant it as a competitor to the Erdtree.
Then he said, after picking an insect from a redcurrant leaf and crushing it between his teeth, “We did not establish a counterfaith cult in hopes the queen would approve of our course.”
“Even so.” Gently, Godwyn told him, “She doth not disapprove.”
Miquella pouted. Several hundred years old, Empyrean and aspiring rival to a god, heretic and polymath, inventor of his own branch of incantations, and he was pouting. It was a little much.
Steadfastly ignoring it, Godwyn continued, “Thou must never doubt that she loveth thy sister and thee.” The words carried force, for they were an echo of Marika’s, and Miquella hunched his shoulders as the truth of them fell upon him like a hammer blow. “She is your mother. She would not have brought you into the world if she did not have a plan for your existence.”
“What plan would that be? For us to establish a counterfaith cult against the Golden Order? For me to cure my sister with none of the queen’s assistance?”
“For you to flourish,” Godwyn replied, a word choice which earned him another side-eyed glare, “in whatever manner suiteth you. I am the firstborn. It is enough that I be a good son and heir” – a fully ceremonial title when the reigning monarch would never abdicate – “and whatever other roles might yet be required.”
Elden Lord, he meant and did not voice. Miquella had never seen one Elden Lord cast aside for another, so Godwyn did not wish to raise the possibility of that future to him. If Marika should decide that Radagon no longer served her purposes, and if she had no worthy candidates in line to claim the title after him, Godwyn expected he himself was the first of her reserves.
“But you must discover your own place in the world,” he said, “a task more difficult by far. I cannot envy you for it. I will not lie and tell thee I am wholly supportive of the path you have chosen, but if our mother harbored objections she would not have kept them hidden.”
Miquella groaned. He tossed a strawberry over his shoulder at Godwyn’s head, and Godwyn caught it and popped it into his mouth.
Once he swallowed, he said, “The taste is different from the fruits thou grewest in Leyndell.”
“Improved?”
“Different.” As ripe and as sweet, but sharper on the tongue. It reminded him of the smell of his forge, heat and iron, which was a remarkably queer taste to ascribe to a fruit.
“Improved.”
No use trying to reason with Miquella when he got like this. Godwyn asked, “A new strain?”
Miquella’s braids swayed as he shook his head. “The soil conditions are merely different so far north.”
Godwyn spun the strawberry leaves in his hand, then let them go and watched them flop to the ground.
The soil they lay upon looked and smelled and felt unremarkable. It was brown. It was fertile. Innocuous.
He did not ask to see Miquella’s arms beneath the gloves, and he did not ask whose blood fed the Haligtree. Miquella looked hale enough, sweaty and dirty and ruddy-cheeked, steady with his hands and clear-eyed, and Godwyn was his brother, not his keeper.
Eventually the Haligtree would require more sustenance than Miquella alone could offer, and then the problem would likely become Godwyn’s, among others’. There were only so many factions in the Lands Between for Miquella to go and start a war with, and none with borders the Haligtree’s roots extended to. Without even that much, any conflict they began would serve no purpose but to water the Erdtree, whose roots did cover the land.
When the day came to pass, the twins would require help they would not ask for. Godwyn could not have said he looked forward to the prospect, but he would bear a duty to them still.
He let that settle and said instead, “Wouldst thou like to hear a secret?”
“A true secret?” Miquella asked without looking. “Or is this the children are more frightened of thee than thou art of them again?”
“Miquella,” Godwyn said, “am I the one thou art upset with?” Godwyn had attempted one failed ploy to convince Miquella to overcome his distaste for children, and five hundred years later Miquella still took every opportunity to unearth it from its grave whenever Godwyn acted too conciliatory for his tastes.
“…No.” Dragged forth like Miquella had had to draw the word kicking and fighting out of a thorned thicket. “What didst thou wish to share?”
Godwyn tipped his head back enough to find the sun’s silhouette through the Haligtree’s canopy. This far north, it shone paler in the sky. Almost silver more than gold. “Mother,” he said, “is not a god of prosperity.”
Miquella yelped, a pair of trimmers dropping from his hand, and sprang upright, spinning towards Godwyn in the same motion. His eyes were blown wide, and his face besides his cheeks had gone nearly white.
Godwyn drew his attention back down to Miquella. “Prosperity doth not lie within her domain. She is a god of war and blood. And eternity doth not quickly nor easily adjust its nature. Yet she built a kingdom, despite that. Grew it from a sapling to the ruling empire that is all you and I have known it as. The sort of love that would lead a god of war to raise two of her children in an era of uninterrupted peace: that belongeth to you.”
“…I suppose it doth.” The shock was fading, but something else Godwyn had not expected seeped forth to replace it, some realization Miquella had pieced together and which Godwyn could not discern the shape of. “And what sort of love,” Miquella said faintly, “must he require for a god of peace to march to battle in a war god’s name?”
Godwyn tried to parse the hypothetical and failed. “What dost thou mean?” It might have been a private reference between Miquella and Malenia. Godwyn was their older brother, but they were not half as close with him as they were with each other.
Miquella bit his lip, then he turned away and sank slowly back into a crouch beside his fruit basket. For a long moment he did not respond. Godwyn allowed him his quiet.
Miquella trimmed another handful of buds, then tucked the tool out of sight into a pouch at his waist and spoke two incantations. The first was a minor healing miracle, to no obvious effect, and the second a simple spell meant for purification. The dirt on Miquella’s skin and clothing lost purchase and fell back to the garden. He stripped off his gloves, folded them away alongside the rest of his tools, and wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.
“I do understand. I love her, too,” he said, picking a berry out of the basket. He nibbled at it, then lowered his hand. “Of course I do. Even if, for gods, love and worship might be too similar to pry apart.”
That was true. “Doth it bother you?”
Miquella took a full bite of the berry, chewed, swallowed. “No,” he said, rising to his feet with the basket held loose. “I wonder if it should, but no. Not at all.” He turned to Godwyn. He resembled very much, as ever, their mother, even smelling of green things rather than stone, and with a softer body and his hair left largely loose in the style of those who did not expect to step upon a battlefield. “Malenia will conclude her practice session soon. I typically bring this down to her just as she doth. Shall we go?”
A cultural exchange extended in both directions. Just as Fortissax had not experienced certain human realities, Godwyn did not fully understand dragons. He confessed to Fortissax, “I cannot imagine how it would be to live without a parent.”
Fortissax considered that and considered Godwyn with eyes tinted a shade of gold Godwyn only saw in dragons. He had never been looked at in the way Fortissax always looked at him: as if, to it, there was no one else in the kingdom more important.
“If any human could,” it said finally, “it would be you.”