Chapter Text
“The Lord of Leyndell sends the Fell Omen to parley with me.”
Morgott snorts. “He sends himself. As you requested.”
Behind the golden helm, the weight of Malenia's attention shifts. “He sends...”
“A son born frail, so that a hidden, quiet life away from the capital was arranged.” Morgott can't tell what expression he's wearing, and frankly he doesn't care. “Where he might have remained, content in obscurity, had the line of succession not arrived at him. Feel free to replace the details with more palatable ones. It's what our mother did. Now, what do you want, and why could we not negotiate it through an envoy?”
He still would have met Malenia as Margit, her demands be damned, if she didn't have an army arrayed behind his city. There's a time and a place for showing his contempt, and it is not while an Empyrean on the war path threatens Leyndell before the city has recovered from the rest of his family.
If she tries to take Leyndell in this moment, she'll succeed. But, by the Erdtree, he'll make her bleed for it.
She keeps her silence, still working through the bomb he dropped. “Well?” he presses, rapping his fingers on the table between them.
They're in a meeting room. The windows have been covered, the torches have been blessed – most of the light sources in the Erdtree's cradle have been, now – and the chairs have been lined against the wall or pushed snug against the table. Morgott can't sit in them, and Malenia doesn't appear uncomfortable standing. She's agreed to leave her two Cleanrot Knights outside, and he didn't bring anyone in the first place.
One of his advisors threw a fit at that, but Morgott can tease quite a bit of mileage out of selectively pretending to be a sewer rat who doesn't understand words longer than two syllables. They start talking down to him, he calls them out once they've dug themselves into a hole, and then, while they sputter, he reminds them that whether or not their king heeds their advice is his choice.
His advisors were chosen by Radagon. They understand their roles, perform them well enough, and don't make trouble as often as they can. Morgott has bare-bones knowledge of statecraft from the bits and pieces Godfrey fed him over the years, but he doesn't have enough to run a city, let alone the lands under its jurisdiction as well. He relies on the handful of officials trustworthy enough to know what he is.
That doesn't mean he likes it.
Besides, if she's come with a trick, he'll survive more easily without a human between them.
She asks, “Do you have proof?”
He sneers and gathers grace into a blade. Malenia rests a hand on the sword's hilt at her waist, but he flips the knife and carves a shallow line horizontally down the outside of his own right arm. “Marika's blood,” he says, letting the knife fade. “The same that runs through yours and Miquella's veins.”
Malenia cocks her head. Morgott's blood drips onto the floor and runs in rivulets down his hand to his stave. “...That suffices for now.” She hesitates, then adds, “You've inherited her sense of drama.”
“If you say so.”
“Are you going to stop that?” she asks, gesturing at the cut.
Morgott doesn't look at it. “Are you going to keep changing the subject?”
What he can see of her face hardens. “No. We can speak of business, then. Morgott.” He relaxes marginally. Since she deescalated, she likely didn't come to start a fight. “I've come to request safe passage through Leyndell.”
“For what purpose?”
“To spread the word of Miquella's Haligtree.”
There's no messenger quite like an army. His grip tightens on the staff. “I'm not inclined to support that.”
“I didn't know you were in a position to refuse.”
He considers saying no anyway, knowing it would decimate Leyndell's forces, would weaken Malenia's, thousands displaced and injured and dead, a level of damage to the city's infrastructure that would require decades to rebuild from, the Erdtree's secret – that it has not sealed itself until the next worthy claimant to the title of Elden Lord arrives, but that it has sealed itself to everyone, indefinitely – blown open.
That would all happen, unavoidably, if he refuses. But it would also spite Malenia, which might nearly make it worth it.
...That's Chaos speaking.
“I'll open the gates,” he says. “You can send your forces through in groups of fifteen, with intervals of half an hour between. Escorts will see them without detour to the western gate.”
She pauses to do the math. “I will not waste a week on moving my soldiers.”
Morgott's been learning numbers through osmosis and necessity. If he had six or seven minutes and significantly less pride, he could conjure a counting frame to estimate the size of her army with.
Malenia continues, “Intervals of ten minutes,” and Morgott settles in for the long haul.
It takes them an hour and a half to sort through conditions. Groups of fifteen, intervals of fifteen, and Morgott will guarantee them passage in the same manner on their return. Malenia calls for insurance, something for her to hold onto and then to return to him when she makes it home from her campaign; he agrees through gritted teeth. She'll need to work out how to handle her supply line herself, though he won't stop her from purchasing from Leyndell if she has the funds, and she'll not pillage from the lands under his protection nor harm the people there nor proselytize.
He spends the discussion wondering why she'll wage war against everyone south of Leyndell but not Leyndell itself. He doesn't work it out until they've nearly finished: it's because she's using the city as a buffer.
Leyndell sits upon the choke point that hides the only path to the Haligtree. Any enemy who attempts to reach Malenia's home needs to get through Morgott first, and he can't attack it either because he's protecting the Erdtree, so she doesn't even need to defend the place herself.
He hopes she knows he can invite Godrick or Rykard or Radahn or Ranni through at any point. He won't, but he can.
“What are you looking for as insurance?” he asks.
“I will take something from Leyndell,” she replies, “and something from you. You can choose what to part with for yourself, but from Leyndell I would like the original manuscript of the Blessing of the Erdtree incantation.”
That... sounds important. Morgott should argue her down.
To what?
He drums his fingers on the staff's handle. Each day finds a hundred new ways to remind him that he's a spare piece playing the part of a monarch. He doesn't know what treasures his city has. He was never intended to take Godwyn's place.
He calls for a break to consult with people who know more than him, then, upon his return, convinces her to agree to Barrier of Gold instead. She gives no indication of surprise, which confirms she set the original price too high.
He really can't stand his family.
For his own half of her demand, he's not so petty that he'll pluck a pebble from the ground and offer it to her as his beloved pet rock. But he doesn't own much to give away. He supposes he's fond enough of the kitchen, which never serves water flavored with his own waste. Maybe she can have a chef's hat from there.
No, there is something he can let her take.
“Are you coming?” he says, not making it a question.
“Where to?”
“To your brother's room,” says Morgott. He smiles faintly, humorlessly. “The other brother. Godwyn. And then you will leave, and may I never have to think of you again.”
She brings her knights, which is sensible. He brings no one, which is less so. If he guessed correctly and she prefers him alive to hold the city, then she won't try anything. If he was wrong, or if she acts against him anyway, or if she discovered what he did to her parents, then he'll have an excuse. He doesn't appreciate her holding a knife to his throat.
Mohg has told him before that he uses Morgott as a baseline. The Lord of Blood's recruits should be at least half as truculent and angry after a bad day as Morgott already is before breakfast. But the formless, seething mass of pent-up violence constricted inside of his chest isn't anger.
He haunts a world not made for him, not meant for him, furniture constructed too small to seat him and legislation written in script he cannot read and family members who spark as much emotion in him as strangers and history a black box that culminated in the present day through decisions he hasn't the cultural context to understand. Protect the Erdtree, protect Leyndell, protect the people who will call for his slaughter if they learn of him. Lovelorn son, reign ye well in Our shadow. Grace-Given Morgott, veiled in gold, who defends his land against all comers, and so well has he accomplished his duty that no one questions any longer his decision to employ Omen and night riders. Leyndell loves the king it believes it hosts, and the Erdtree will never love him at all. If his name survives beyond his death, he will still only be remembered for the ripples he left in his wake.
He's spent most of his life in a single room. In the later years he could hardly stand up in the cell without scraping the ceiling – how convenient that the new shackles kept him locked to the floor. But here? Now?
The sky traps him in vertigo if he looks up for too long. When he stands on Leyndell's walls with a view of the plateau stretching to the misty horizon, the wind carrying the scents of fields blooming gold and green, smoke rising in lazy trails from the chimneys of people he will never meet, the Erdtree's light dappling the earth below and the ever-present whisper of its leaves rustling far, far above, Morgott sees a world he cannot fill by simply existing.
Do you understand, Mohg? That's not anger.
Dust blankets Godwyn's room. Malenia pauses on the threshold, mouth twisting.
“You knew him,” Morgott says.
“I remember him,” says Malenia, “which is not the same. You must not have met him at all.”
Morgott glances at her, then steps into the room, heading for the writing desk beneath a narrow windows.
Godwyn preferred his living space cohesive in theme and tidy enough not to trip over. The only populated piece of furniture he had was the vanity, which holds neat rows of cosmetics arrayed before the mirror. He kept a handful of keepsakes scattered out of sight in drawers and on low shelves, a diary inside of the desk with dates years apart and most entries blacked out by his own hand, and a dragon's stone scale in an unlocked chest near the bed.
Morgott doesn't bother with those this time and reaches for the desk. One of the upper drawers held a false bottom before he broke it open months ago. He takes from the hole a bronze charm a quarter the size of his palm.
Godwyn took after Marika in at least one hobby – he had a personal forge that shows more personality by far than his bedroom. He smithed weapons on occasion, but mostly trinkets and jewelry and sculptures cover the walls there. A wind chime shaped like a soaring hawk with each primary feather a bell. A model of a sleeping four-winged dragon, the scars on the body rendered in such detail that Morgott can guess what forms of injury left them. An unfinished portrait of Godfrey where placing it under sunlight will resolve the lines of his hair into Serosh.
The doll in Morgott's hand is one of Godwyn's worse creations, a child's flawed memory. The proportions are laughable compared to his other works, the colors show too dark and too light in turns, and Morgott has never had so much of his body covered in horns.
He tosses it at Malenia, who catches it easily and turns it over in her flesh hand. “Ah, I see. That's why....”
He eyes her, but she doesn't finish the sentence.
“He would have wanted to give it to you. I will make sure to return it,” she says. She lowers her arm and turns her face to him. “The offer Miquella made to Margit stands.”
“As does Margit's answer.”
She hums shortly. “You asked me to come because the people who passed us on the way over would have thought more of it they saw you alone. What would happen if they knew your true identity?”
Seriously? What a sharp pivot from offering him sanctuary at the Haligtree. “Are you threatening me with that?” No one will believe her. Morgott is too well liked, and, more than that, he's made himself necessary. Leyndell only has the one demigod defending it.
“No, I've no intention of telling anyone other than Miquella. If I should wage war against you, brother, it will be by the sword. But if you're... content with your place, then what of the Omen in the shunning-grounds?”
“You'll leave them alone.”
“They don't understand language, do they.”
“Because no one taught them,” Morgott snaps. “Of course they don't. You can't explain to them what you want, so don't bother.”
She nods. To her extraordinarily minor credit, she doesn't call him heartless. He had the accusation leveled at him earlier in his rule – Morgott is horrific for abandoning the other Omen underground, but if he brings them out then he would be monstrous. The people who left them there always escape mention.
“I still don't understand what appeal the Golden Order holds for you.”
“Great,” says Morgott. “You don't need to.” If she wants to have a conversation, maybe she should have left the army at the Haligtree.