Chapter Text
When Morgott offhandedly mentions the shackles, Mohg derails the conversation with a gasp, a raised finger, and an expression of exaggerated, dawning revelation. “Oh. Do you know why Father switched from the chain?”
Morgott narrows his working eye. “He... never explained.” Mohg props a hand beneath his chin behind his horns, studying Morgott with unabashed intensity. “You did something.”
“I certainly did!” Mohg is still watching. Morgott's mouth twists, and he glances aside. Far past the walls of the Elden Throne's court lie the giants' mountains, glowing faintly silver with snow even nearing midnight and from this distance. Easier to look at than his brother settled upon the ground with him. “I will not apologize. Though I wish it hadn't reflected onto you.”
Eventually Morgott says, “If you hadn't acted, I would have.”
“You had a plan too?”
“Something like it.”
“An impulse, then,” Mohg guesses.
“You're staring. Again.”
“Am I? It's only because I enjoy watching you.”
“My face is not that interesting.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn't say that,” Mohg murmurs. “I used to wonder how you would look. I'm very thankful you don't appear anything like I imagined. I was picturing a smaller Father.”
Morgott tips his head back. He can't see the stars. The leaves miles above blot them out. “I didn't know you existed until Radagon mentioned it. I had suspicions, but nothing... concrete.”
“It would seem we owe him,” Mohg says, tone blank.
“We owe him nothing.” Morgott flicks his gaze to meet Mohg's. “I've repaid him in full.”
Mohg laughs, high and rasping, until he doubles over breathless with a hand pressed to his forehead. It's contagious enough that Morgott cracks a smile. He doesn't consider the memory entertaining, but if even one of them does that might be enough.
Perhaps speaking this way before the Erdtree isn't entirely appropriate, but one day it would find out regardless no matter where the conversation took place. The souls that return to it carry their memories with them. Mohg found Morgott behind the Elden Throne brooding at the seal he set across the passage into the tree, and they had little reason to relocate to anywhere farther than a different side of the courtyard.
Morgott's seal past the throne is redundant when the tree's own thorns already bar the path, but he means for the barrier to stop anyone from seeing the thorns, not reaching them. The sight of them will give the game away. The Erdtree wouldn't have grown them so thickly if it intended them as a temporary measure.
The shattering of the Elden Ring was an act of terrible violence, but any attempt to set it aright would require – at the very least – access to the Ring. The Erdtree denies them that. Marika committed the deed, Marika has suffered the punishment, and the rest of them will either survive the consequences or not. Morgott isn't unused to locked passages and gods who don't answer, but....
“I've brought something, by the by,” Mohg announces, dragging him back into the present. Mohg draws a small earthenware bottle from inside of his sleeve and dangles it by the neck between two fingers. The scent of alcohol follows it.
“You drink now?”
Mohg shrugs. It's like watching a theatre curtain roll over a hill. “Not so much, but this one comes recommended. I met a truly lovely man the other day. Beautiful sword work, I could have admired it without tiring if only he wasn't demonstrating it on me.”
“He – ”
“He reminded me of you.” Mohg places the bottle on the ground with a clink.
“He cut you?”
“I've recovered.” He spreads his arms wide to demonstrate his range of movement, sleeves billowing with the motion. “As has Okina. We're family now. He explained it as such, and I... I mean, I didn't entirely follow, but he was very assured on that point, that drinking rice wine with our blood intermingled in it made us family. Who am I to argue?”
What does he mean for Morgott to do with that? “Where do you find these people.”
“The majority of them? At the end of a trail of someone else's blood.”
Right.
Obviously.
“Where, specifically, did you come across this one?”
“Not in East Altus. Any crimes he may – or may not! – have committed should not fall beneath Leyndell's jurisdiction.”
Morgott works his jaw. “Of course.”
“Never mind that. He gifted me another sample besides the one we shared. I meant to ask if you would like any.” He taps a fingernail against the bottle. “I'll be drinking it either way. I have to build more of a tolerance, I almost started coughing in front of him.”
“That's the only link in that chain of events you still find concerning,” says Morgott. “I'll pass.”
“As you prefer.” For a bare instant, disappointment shows through the crease around Mohg's eye. Anyone would have missed it without watching closely.
Most of his expressions come across as manufactured. Which is not to say that they are fake, but that he practiced them before a mirror, smoothing the edges and honing the subtleties until they conveyed what he meant them to and no less. He might consider it a necessity: more of his face than his brother's is distorted by horns and fangs.
But that flicker came from a true reaction.
Morgott sighs. “I'll have a little.”
Mohg brightens. “I was so sure you would say no! ...I forgot to bring cups.”
“You meant to drink it from the bottle once I said no.”
“Nobody has explained to me yet why that's a problem.”
“It means you don't have friends, or it means you do and you don't think of them.” People tend to dislike sharing saliva, even through a method so indirect as drinking from the same container, and there's something too about spreading illness that he hasn't grasped the mechanics of. Sickness stemming from poor air, and the methods of passing that air along.
It might also be a tradition justified retroactively. More customs than not seem to stem from that origin. Memorizing common practices when so many don't seem to have a reason for existing in the manner that they do has been trying.
“Does it?” says Mohg. “I see. Even if that's true, you wouldn't like to give the impression.”
Morgott shapes a thimble-sized cup into being. (It's thimble-sized for him, so it's still too large.) “Only enough to cover the bottom.”
Mohg unstoppers the bottle and pours with overdone care, withdrawing with a flourish as soon as he's met the specification. Morgott eyes it. It smells like poison.
Tastes like it, too.
“Are you going to keep gathering miscreants who've made attempts on your life?” he asks, lowering the gold cup with most of the contents still remaining.
“How do others make friends?” Mohg says thoughtfully. “I could try speaking with them first, instead... but this seems more effective by far.”
“This,” says Morgott, “and the abductions.”
Mohg blinks. “When did I mention those to you?”
“You didn't.” Morgott considers taking another sip and decides against it. He'll down it in one go once he's ready to force himself through that. “You need to be more careful.”
“Ah.” After a moment Mohg says, “I appreciate the warning.”
“Do more than appreciate it.”
“I will be more careful,” he says indulgently.
If Morgott dies and anyone by then still cares one jot for proper succession, then the man sitting across from him will become the king of Leyndell. Morgott can choose a different heir before then, but the state of the world is somehow such that any other candidate would do equally awful or worse.
Maybe he can name Okina heir.
Or Morgott can try to never die.
Whatever ruler comes after him will move to kill the Erdtree, and Leyndell and the Lands Between with it. No monarch would accept the tree's decision because every person who lusts after a crown is the same level of arrogant. The way the Tarnished from the Roundtable Hold talk sets him on edge every time he has to hear them. Most of them can't even see grace.
He's been weighing the merits of officially ending succession, severing the line at himself. It would be symbolic only, since Leyndell's unlikely to outlast him, but he's about to decide he can live with that.
Though he doesn't need to settle his mind on it in this moment. He files it aside and begins, “When you said you did something for Father to switch to the other shackle.”
Mohg smiles. He proffers the bottle but, when Morgott shakes his head, takes a swallow from it himself. He makes a considering sound. “A very acquired taste.” Then he replies, “I broke out. It made him realize steel wouldn't cut it anymore.”
“You used magic?” Morgott guesses. Mohg doesn't deny it. “How did you acquire a catalyst?”
“I will tell you, but let's make it a trade. I'm just as curious about your side, brother. If Father didn't tell you anything, then did he – what, come in, set the shackle, and leave?” He raises an eyebrow. “Just like that?”
It was somewhat more involved. “Essentially. Who would you rather go first?”
“You,” says Mohg immediately. “I can try to end us on a marginally more upbeat note.”
Morgott's stories do trend towards the joyless, and this one doesn't break the pattern.