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Chapter Text

“My Lord, come quickly.”

Morgott could smell the ash clinging to the Perfumer’s clothes. Bitter and stale. He toppled his desk in his haste. Ink and loose manuscript coated the floor like a wound’s viscera.

“Where is he?” The growl crept into Morgott’s harrowed question despite his efforts.

The Perfumer, at least, was stalwart, “His chambers.”

“Have mercy.”

The prayer warbled for its aimlessness. The prayers of a God had no divine ear to make their dens in. The Perfumer threw themself against the wall as Morgott bolted past. The thrash of his tail chipped stone from a pillar. Suddenly the halls he’d walked for decades- the halls he’d helped build with his own hands- were labyrinthine. The Lands Between had gone without the Erdtree’s brilliance for a century, so torches lined the walls in sconces. They threw impregnable shadows into every doorway and corner.

But his feet stayed the course as his mind scrambled. They bore him to the polished wooden door he’d carved himself. He had once been proud of his handiwork- of the drooping, pearlescent bells of glovewort and the intricate bundles of violets’ umbels. The flowers of death he had etched into his son’s chambers. The tomb he had unwittingly transformed it into.

The door was already ajar- left cracked in the fleeing Perfumer’s wake. No sound eked from the room. Pale light painted Morgott’s feet a ghastly violet-white hue. He told himself that silence was a good sign. Whimpering, crying, and muttering often meant something else was worming its way into places it shouldn’t. Morgott entered.

The writhing glow of ghost flame washed color from Morgan’s face. His hair was leached of its warm brown tones and resembled instead the ashen locks of a spirit. The pallor of his skin was slick with the shine of sweat. His chest waxed and waned with tranquil breaths. It was no consolation that Morgan’s body remained alive. Godwyn’s had, too.

The filaments of shattered wards lay across his dark lashes. Clung to the door like strands of spider silk as Morgott slipped inside. He could not touch his son. The Omen blood of the Golden Lineage spurned Morgan’s soul. Even a fleeting caress would be too selfish to chance. So Morgott checked his broken wards with shaking hands.

Many were frayed- the gold of their webbing rent as if something had thrashed in anguish against it. A silver fish trapped in a gilded net. A typical symptom of Morgan’s curse. The Order’s holy magic yet marshaled Death even in the new God’s hands. It kept Morgan’s soul from straying far. It kept other spirits from investigating the still-living flesh.

But some wards had been snipped clean through. Golden dust evaporated beneath Morgott’s shuddering exhales. No spirit had ever managed that. The gold of holy incantation was agony to those that deviated from life. No ghost did this. No ghost that Morgott had ever encountered.

Morgott had attracted wraiths all his life, but it always took him a couple harrowing minutes to find Morgan’s restless spirit. The wards’ weave made fetters seen only by God. They bound a silver, larval thing into the room’s blackest corner. Morgott was plucking away the threads when another set of footsteps thundered up the hall to Morgan’s room.

The Lord was ready to snarl his admonition at the clumsy Perfumer’s tread until he recognized his wife in the entryway. It was typical for the Elden Lord to be abed as Morgott toiled through his sleeplessness. It was also typical for her to ride with a Night’s Cavalry patrol on short notice. He was selfishly gracious that she could be here with him- that she could take some of the load.

“Do you have him?” she whispered breathlessly.

“Aye.”

Morgott uttered an incantation that made the ghostflame torches lash with indignation. From Morgan’s chest gilt roots sprouted. Limbs of pure Grace the wayward spirit seemed keen to abandon. They grasped at the opaque soul and wrested it back within its vessel. Beneath Morgan’s skin, unseen by God and Lord, his soul was stretched to fill its shape again. It wasn’t quite resurrection, for Morgan had not truly died. But Morgott had created the technique by studying the rebirth of Tarnished in Marika’s Age and Mohg’s exceptional command over wraiths.

Morgan’s lips parted for a quiet, rasping gasp. Cyrielle sat down upon the bed, took up her child in her arms. Morgott pretended to ignore the way she subtly wiped the back of her hand over one eye.

The boy was born from the Death-touched Lord. ‘Twas bound to happen.

The murmured condemnations were as insidious as the shrieking of wraiths. A curse needed cause. In Morgott’s brief childhood in Grace, Lord Godfrey had been similarly slandered. Convert though he was, he had championed the Crucible the Golden Order had vanquished. Thus, his firstborn sons were made to bear his sin. Morgott had defied Death to resurrect his consort. Thus, Death must seek a soul in compensation.

The gold of Cyrielle’s scars was incandescent against Morgan’s pale skin. Those marks had been Morgott’s first miracle. Though the people remembered his False Sun first- the incantation he’d used to end the famine at the start of his Age- it was the consecration of Cyrielle that was his first grand achievement.

The rumors… that was all they were.

…And even if they were not, it was his burden to bear. Not Cyrielle’s. She had not asked to be remade.

Morgan jerked in Cyrielle’s hold and vomited acrid ash down her chest. The faintest violet hue bruised his cheeks. It somehow wounded worse that he no longer returned to his body sobbing in fear. So young and already resigned to the lethal wanderlust of his spirit. He clutched at Cyrielle’s arm. Anchored himself to her as he forced his breaths to slow and deepen. Morgott pressed his back into the wall. He would not taint the cold of ghostflame with the fire of his blood.

He was not a little boy anymore. In a decade, he would surpass Cyrielle in height. Then the softness of youth would cede to the growing man. But when his mismatched eyes caught on Morgott’s gaze, the Lord could only see a child.

“I wasn’t tuning, Da. I swear.”

Morgan’s voice was made thick by the dust cloying on his tongue. Morgott blinked. The physical distance he had to keep between himself and his son manifested an emotional one. Morgan sought foremost to assuage his father’s ire. Even if Morgott possessed not a mote of anger.

“Never mind that,” Morgott rumbled. “Art thou in pain?”

Morgan shook his head. Typical boyish bravery. Holy magic could pin in the wayward spirit and repel malfeasance, but it was not gentle. It was a shackle that did not scar the body but harmed its dignity all the same. And even then, it was not a hurt that Erdtree incantations could soothe. At least, the Elden Lord and her God were too wary to attempt them.

“I’m alright, Da, really.”

Morgott would send for herbalist remedies- if the Perfumers weren’t already fetching them. His fists balled up against his thighs. As close an embrace as he would dare. It had taken them years to understand what caused the expulsion of Morgan’s soul. The boy had always been mature beyond his years, and he had taken great care not to exacerbate his curse. He had been a gifted Spirit Tuner all his life. Now the spirits clamored at him, and he had been made to abandon his gift. A restriction he had abided by faithfully. Morgott would not insult his son by suggesting he had lied about his Tuning activities.

It was Cyrielle that spoke, “What happened? Do you remember?”

“I- no. I was sleeping.”

Morgott sighted a carafe of water and plodded over to it. The bowl of ice it sat in was half-melted. Leyndell’s youngest Demigod cost the Capital a fortune in imported ice. Slushy melt dripped over Morgott’s cupped palm like frigid tears. He leaned to hand it to Cyrielle. But it was Morgan that lurched forward to grasp at the needed drink. The God of Order almost dropped the carafe into Morgan’s lap as their fingers nearly brushed in his earnestness.

“Careful,” he cautioned hoarsely.

“S-sorry.” It was all Morgan managed to utter before gulping down the water. In that brief silence, Morgott was granted a chance to panic.

“In thy sleep?” he asked.

Morgan gasped like a man drowning. Cyrielle took the carafe from his trembling hands. But then she just held the freezing vessel against her side. Wards, swords, and discipline had protected their child. None of which could be used in the realm of sleep.

Morgan’s expression cinched with telltale confusion. A revelation dawned in his eyes- gone silver in the light of ghostflame.

“I was dreaming… I was in a cold place… Full of death.”

Each fragmented description Morgan recalled seemed to labor him. As if he had to dig through sands to fish out the fading memory of the dream. Morgott was furious at this inversion of fate. He was flayed by it. It was Omen that were meant to be terrorized by their dreams. It was an injustice Morgott had spent one hundred years reversing. Now it was his human son that was suffering. It was his human son that was cursed.

“It was as if… the Plateau was a graveyard,” Morgan continued hazily. “And if the graves themselves were also spirits.”

“And this land is what coaxed thy spirit?”

Morgan sat up straighter, disentangled himself from his mother. He shook his head.

“No. Someone tried to speak to me.”

“Who?”

“I-I didn’t see, Da. Or I don't remember.” Morgan blinked rapidly at Morgott’s urgent questions. And Morgott was hollowed out. He waited for Morgan to offer his words without prompting. Eventually, Morgan said, “I just heard their voice, and then I was torn apart.”

The nightmares imposed by wraiths had never been prophetic. They were the imposition of pain and fear imprinted upon the only souls that could bear their anguish with them. Morgott was inclined to believe that Morgan’s cursed mind had unwittingly split his soul from his body all on its own. Such was the life of the accursed, to be betrayed by their bodies again and again.

“T-they said-”

“-Morgan, ‘tis alright.”

Morgott suddenly dreaded hearing the curse’s invocation; he made to gently stop his son with a raised palm. Morgan wilted into Cyrielle’s side. Determination made violet his pallid cheeks. His boy, who used to stand on his shoulders to watch the splendor of the world through a spyglass. His boy, who used to make aunts and uncles out of the grizzled war-dead. His boy, whom he had condemned to break the Greater Will’s curse upon himself. His boy, who was meant to be an Empyrean.

“They said… Join me, Anchor, and be unmoored no more in my coming Age.”

Chapter Text

Roses bloomed where blood was spilled. Their black-thorned vines sprawled across ancient battlegrounds. Memorials eroded. Gravestones could be desecrated. But the land didn’t forget where it had been made host to a tumultuous tomb.

Or so Moiragh had been told. Her uncle and father had lived through a war that had seen entire horizons choked with crimson florescence. While Deathblight sowed its greedy brambles in graveyards, roses marked those buried without headstones by the thousands.

Young Moiragh had never seen bloodroses propagate to such numbers. Just before her birth, the Erdtree had been razed and a God slain. The resulting ashfall had sepulchered a country. The land had gone to sleep and awoken almost virginal. The flowery remembrances to the Shattering War were gone. At least from the Altus.

In modernity, there was a single place in all the golden Plateau where one might behold a proper garden of deep red roses.

Between Leyndell’s inner and outer walls- beyond the crumbled, cluttered centuries-old graveyard- a Minor Erdtree was slowly being coaxed from its dormancy. Gold shone dimly in the webbed cracks of its bark. Papery leaves adorned its branches. As did amber fetishes bound to them on fine chains- each depicting the likeness of a horned bairn. In the spindly Tree’s shadow, a house of healing had been constructed.

It was not a Perfumers’ apothecary nor a chapel for Erdtree Pastors. Not that Order magicians and herbalists didn’t ply their craft within. It was a place for the bloody work of life and death. Some wounds still necessitated sutures. Some limbs still needed amputating. Bones demanded splinting. Blood diseases required treating. Here, those that wished could place their bodies into caring hands that would allow them to pass peacefully with dignity. Here, midwives could tend to complicated births and safeguard the tender lives of infants and mothers.

Here, timber walls and arches of stone were embraced by clawing thorns. Heavy rose blossoms hung their blushing heads in sympathy. They heard the cries of the pained and assured them: No one shall breach our fangs to harm you while you are most vulnerable.

Roses bloomed where blood was spilled.

Moiragh did not take offense that her temple was branded with the heralds of bloodshed. To live was to be injured, eventually. Better to suffer life’s agony in sympathetic company.

The Heiress of Blood trod over fallen petals as she crossed the threshold. Surgeons dressed in white weaved around temple nurses clad in black. Industrious but not panicked. In the corner, a Perfumer uncrated vials of numbing aromatics made from Trina lilies. An exhausted looking woman paced before one of the tall windows. An impossibly small infant slept in her arms as she cooed to it.

Moiragh did not come here every day. But it was one of her favorite places to be all the same. It was hers. Silver wrought wreaths enshrined the sparse seals of Lord Morgott’s Order. The black and gold heraldry of Leyndell was trimmed with Truth’s vermillion rather than Order’s blue. The crests above the east and west wing doors boasted corvids with roses clutched in their talons rather than the ram-horned lion of the Capital. It had always amused Magpie that her pet name had incorporated itself into her iconography somewhere in time.

She breathed in a great lungful of air. Blood she scented beneath the stronger aromas of disinfecting flame and antiseptics. That tacky, sanguine sweetness. She stood in the midst of dozens of little hurts and was rejuvenated. The God within her had once gorged on suffering. In that regard, the past century had been fairly lean. But Truth was sated in this place. Proud.

“Lord Moiragh!”

A surgeon lumbered over. His tunic was already stained with blood so early in the morning. He unwound the scarf that masked his mouth. A delightful flush darkened his cheeks a rosy shade. His work excited him.

He bowed to his God. Those that committed themselves to Truth’s healing house weren’t as formal with the Goddess as her common adherents. To the laboring parent and the exsanguinating hunter, she was the rescuing reach of the divine. To her practitioners, she was demystified. They’d seen her tears and held her hand and shared in her pranks. The gray-haired ones had known her in her childhood.

The surgeon continued, “There’s a man out in the garden. Insists he’s ill but won’t let anyone near enough to mind him.”

“Is his condition dire?”

This was not an uncommon occurrence in the Rose Temple. Though her clergy were skilled, there were those that sought solely the blessings of the Goddess of Truth. They would stubbornly bleed a mire upon the floor rather than do the sensible thing and acquiesce to a surgeon’s attention.

“No,” the surgeon shook his head. “He looks like he’s come a long way alone. Blind, too, determined fool. But he isn’t about to bleed out atop the stoop.”

Moiragh was equally disquieted and relieved. Her malformed winglets beat once. The surgeon winced.

“There is another thing, Princess. He is asking for Lord Mohg.”

She didn’t waste her breath asking why. She already knew her beleaguered surgeon wouldn’t have an answer. She pursed her thin lips thoughtfully. They pinched around her protruding tusks.

“I can send him away,” the surgeon offered.

“No, I’ll see what he wants.”

Moiragh marched through the temple’s main hall, swept through the kitchen, and emerged into a dim Altus morning in the shade of Leyndell’s immense outer wall. Roses twined about the wooden fence that enclosed the garden. It was dominated by edible herbs and vegetables, though the volunteering Perfumers had commandeered a portion for easily-growing medicinal plants. This time of day the chickens were typically out plucking bugs off of the leaves. Instead, they purred and clucked by their coop. Where a robed figure held out his palm laden with feed.

He was a diminutive thing. Not even two meters tall. Moiragh was the next shortest member of the royal family. But that was only because her youngest cousin was yet a child. He’d hit his growth spurt soon enough and leave Magpie the smallest again. She was still nearly twice this man’s height.

His traveler’s cloak was crusted with the grime of travel. He smelled strongly of sweat and mildewy boots. She could discern from the back steps that he was not bleeding. But there was a wrongness to his scent. Something akin to illness that made her insides twist. Something that caused him incredible pain.

It is not illness, but invitation.

“Hey, Kid.”

The man cast the rest of the chicken feed into the grass before straightening. He faced her; his eyes were covered by dingy bandages. And Moiragh realized the damp reek was that of the sodden land of the Lakes. She strode towards him, the motherly warmth she’d carried with her to the Temple was reforged into matronly sternness. Her narrow shoulder’s set, her spine became a steel rod. Let the sharpness of her horns speak for her.

“Have they no healing sorceries in your Academy, Carian?”

“Good grief, keep your voice down.” The man’s hissed admonition was more aggrieved than disdainful. But as chickens pecked at his rancid shoes, he amended acerbically. “Also, yes. Leyndell didn’t invent the concept of medicine.”

Moiragh came as close as she dared. His name she barred herself from speaking like the invocation of a curse. As if any acknowledgement of him might bring the wrath of Liurnia upon her shoulders in an instant.

Not too long ago, the Goddess of Truth and her loyal twin had breached a treaty older than themselves to meet a decrepit, shut-in Lord. The consort of the absent Moon God. Scant records in an ancient subterranean palace had betrayed him as a brief compatriot of the Lord of Blood. Thus, brazen Moiragh had sought him out to better understand herself. Moiragh and Marie had put two kingdoms in peril to question Aster the Carian. Now he stood before her in her home, in violation of the same tenuous treaty. She reminded herself she had no right to be cross. Yet. She knew desperation when she saw it.

“Why are you here?”

“Look, Kid, I need Mohg, and you aren’t Mohg.”

His despair- the secrets withheld- made for tempting fruit. Round and fat, fragile skin stretched to cracking from the ripeness of its flesh. Aster’s face was a ravage of scars. And even beneath the bandage occluding his eyes, she could make out the pinkened scar of the trident. A symbol that meant much to the God within her.

“A letter wouldn’t have sufficed?”

Aster scoffed derisively. “I can’t afford to be ignored.”

“Then show me what ails you. Let me make an earnest effort. Then we can bother my father with this nonsense.”

“Nonsense.” Aster chuckled. The delectable fruit went to saccharine rot. “Gracious, you don’t know the half of it, Princess.”

A thin arm emerged from the cloak. Its complexion so white it bore the blue tinge of snowfall. The veins threaded up the delicate flesh like glintstone ore in milky alabaster. That perfect stone limb was marred, however, by a festering mark. Angry, raw flesh radiated heat to Moiragh’s hovering hands. The malodor wafting from it was acrid.

It is not illness, but invitation.

“What caused this?” She could not see the wound the sickness had been borne from. Infections took root in the blood when the flesh was compromised by injury.

He knew, but he was reticent to say. The cinch of his dark brows betrayed him. With his free hand, he lowered the blue-violet hood of his cloak and unwrapped the bandages over his eyes. There were the polished glintstone spheres she remembered. Azure and veined with turquoise. But the sockets themselves smelled like the strange infection in his arm. The skin blistered and scabbed. Viscous puss gathered like a tear in one corner. Too thick to properly fall.

The God in her was suddenly abrasive. The Carian’s torment was no longer enticing, but tainted.

Thickly, Aster asked, “Can you fix it?”

The man’s secret was too wretched for even Truth to desire. Moiragh passed a thumb over the black stain. Aster hissed, but did not jerk away. She felt beneath his skin- within his meager muscle- a foreign body. Slender and sturdy. A claw she pressed into fetid flesh. Sweat glistened at his brow as blood beaded from the prick she’d made. The pad of her thumb communed with his ichor. She sifted its substance to find the origin of his agonies. There was no fever, no poison, no filth. But fire.

Fire singed her and she gasped.

“That… is a first,” she muttered. It was humiliating how she panted- spooked. A tiny blister bubbled where she’d touched his blood.

“Gods,” Aster spat. Cursed. “Just… just get it out of me.”

Moiragh took a knife from her belt. She gripped it by the blade and squeezed until her blood was drawn forth to sanctify it. A mere pinch in the torrent of Aster’s diffusing agonies. When the last brilliant embers faded from the blade, she took the hot metal to his arm.

The flesh yielded like an overripe plum. Only his juices were soured and scorched. Pain poured from the incision, but he barely grunted. There, nestled in a charred cocoon of meat was a slim object. Practically flanked by the bones of his forearm. Mercy, she should have worn gloves. His blood was searing.

A surgeon would have used forceps to pluck the needle-like thing from his flesh. But Moiragh did not have tools with her. So with a snap of her fingers, flame cleansed her claws. The old man whimpered as she rooted the gold splinter out in two pieces, for it was split in twine. Aster paled as he stared at the halves in the dirt.

With sutures conjured from his very capillaries, Moiragh set to staunching the wound. The flesh within was still burnt and putrid. But its cause was a maladious curse rather than an affliction of the body. It was beyond her ability to fix, and Truth bid her close the lesion and be done with it.

Aster did not begrudge her giving up. His sorcerous stone eyes glared at the thing she had removed from him. As if he could shame it with a look.

“What is it?”

Curiosity stepped over her compassion for a moment. This, too, Aster did not resent her for. His arm sealed up with a pink seam of a scar.

“It’s the only thing keeping me alive,” he rasped. A dry, bitter laugh rattled in his throat. “Or it was before it went and broke itself in half.”

Truth was too prickly to be useful, so Moiragh had to take charge despite the dread coiled around her spine. “How… how can I-”

“I have to see Mohg.” the man’s white throat clenched as he swallowed. “Either he fixes this, or he kills me. Or Morgott kills me. All preferable outcomes to waiting this out to see crawls out of the ash, hmm?”

Moiragh did not want to be responsible for his life. For this man that had once, very briefly, existed in her mind as a potential father. He had denied the relation years ago, and yet the child in her held a seed of affection and she could not crush it in her fist. Sacs of memory were laden behind her eyes. The God knew the reality of Aster and Lord Mohg’s past. She only needed to ask to learn the whole of it.

As though he could sense her thoughts, he asked, frigid and soft, “Have your self-righteous parents ever told you who I really am?”

With sudden, inexplicable agitation, Moiragh growled back, “Your name has never once eked from their lips.”

“Then you don’t understand how much shit we’re all in. I feel it, the draw of blood. Your father made me his convert and now a thousand agonies drag me to his God. Get me in front of Mohg, now. This is his problem. He… he has to answer for this.”

Moiragh’s tail lashed. She could grab that rotten fruit and glean sense from the reeking pulp. It was always a tiresome thing to commune with her God. Always painful. But she did not require divine introspection to ponder the severity of Aster’s illness. It had escaped her notice at first, on account of the burning, but there was kinship in his ichor. The faintest filament of mycelia. A tiny part of her indeed clotted within him.

It is not illness, but invitation.

She recognized at last the mantra was not a warning of Truth. It was the voice she never remembered in her waking hours. But here were their words scrawled into the delicate skin of a rival Lord. Of her almost-father.

I invite thee, Truth, to the place of thy birth.

Chapter Text

A century ago, the Erdtree had burned and the God within it had died. A soul in a lifeless vessel had transfigured herself into a beacon of a comet. An accursed soul in accursed housing had reclaimed a broken divinity for himself. A damned soul pierced by black thorns had been rescued from total annihilation.

With the Golden Order reforged upon Morgott’s heart, sleep came easier to all Omen. The wraiths barred from eternal rest found the path to solace cleared. In a steady trickle they abandoned their haunts in Omen dreams. Those that remained proved to be unfortunately spiteful.

And the one that lurked within the velvet wrinkles of Mohg’s slumber was particularly vicious. Nearly a century ago, Mohg, Lord of Blood, had killed his godly husband. The Divinity of Mohgwyn Dynasty had no intention of letting him forget.

Mohg awoke with his pulse pounding in his gouged eye socket. A fair hiding place, for he could still feel venomous mandibles rooting in his insides. His breath was stalled, his limbs immobile. A phantom hand remained at his scarred throat. Crimson compound eyes were branded into his vision as afterimages.

His paralysis was broken by his silent sob. A shallow, wavering aspiration that stung his single eye. He held his hand against chattering teeth.

Mohg oft slept in a sitting position- it was rare that he was comfortable enough on his back or belly to do so. The wakeful shivers of his immense wings stirred the feathers of his recent molt that had escaped all his cleaning efforts. Or perhaps he’d kept them for a nest.

He couldn’t think about a nest. Not with bile rising.

Mohg staggered to the sable curtains of his chambers. He threw them open and hissed at the daylight. It was late in the morning, not dawn as he’d presumed. The light of the Erdtree and the sun assaulted his sensitive eye. For a moment he could turn the hatred in his dreams upon the city of Leyndell.

Morgott had made the Capital into a place worthy of the name. But it had still been their prison for centuries. It was difficult not to resent the years wasted in holy shackles. And now, freshly woken, it was impossible not to resent how happy he was here.

He had sacrificed everything for this. Everything.

His dreams would not let him forget.

A hunt would warm his blood enough to sear away the encroach of memory. Viscera on his claws would remind him that he was strong. But in the end, he knew there would be food in the larder, easier prey on his aching joints. He would be soothed first by seeing his child.

This late in the morning, Moiragh could be anywhere. In her Rose Temple devouring the suffering in people, or in any of the palace’s numerous gardens teaching her cousin Gwyn- or any scullery maid with the aptitude- blood incantations. Her and her spirit twin could be combing the fetid clots of the ruined Dynasty grounds. Poking at ghosts.

The royal dining room wasn’t empty when he trod within. At the far end of the table, the youngest of the Golden Lineage nursed a jug of water and brooded over a plate of chilled fruits. The hideously expensive sort imported from either Liurnia or- Mother forbid- the Weeping Peninsula. The wedges of faintly bruised flesh and the glass of the jug sweat in the muggy spring heat.

Mohg forgot his moroseness at once.

“Good morning, Morgan,” he murmured first. His soft voice carried in the quiet hall.

“Good morning.”

“Are you alone?”

Morgan flushed. “I want to be.”

His hand hovered over a slice of fruit. His fingertips were tinged grayish. It was unnatural for a child born of doused Omen blood to have ichor so cold. It was unnatural for a child to be forbidden from touching his family- save for his mother.

“Where is Cyrielle?”

It wasn’t like her to be apart from Morgan after an attack. Morgan rolled his shoulder in a slouched, miserable shrug.

“Mum’s with Da. He is… very upset.”

His last words he muttered dryly. Like kindling in his throat. Mohg bristled on behalf of his nephew- his son. Feathers fluffed in the gaps of his shirt. Shuddering with restraint, Mohg extended a wing. It spanned half of the dining hall, the tips of his primaries brushed the table’s corner. Morgan’s eyes slid to the shining feathers hesitantly.

Mohg said, “Not with you.”

Morgan reached out, his fingers dewed with the sweat of his jug. Gently, he had a loose handful of Mohg’s primaries. If he ever witnessed the clandestine contact, Morgott might perish on the spot. Mohg’s blood ran hottest of all. But he was no fool. The ends of his feathers were bloodless.

“It does not feel like it.”

That was just how he was. Marriage and children hadn’t cured Morgott entirely of his emotional constipation. Anger came to him too easily when he was frightened.

Mohg said, “I will stay with you if you wish.”

Morgan released his feathers. “I am fine. I think I want to be alone.”

“Very well.”

Mohg’s hunger was consumed by ice. His brother’s children were his children. He’d been with each one all of their lives- just as Morgott had been with Moiragh. He lovingly smothered the instinct to remain despite the boy’s wish. He left to find his twin.

Godhood had made Morgott a creature of habit. Without the Margit alias to disappear into, Lord Morgott had fewer hiding places. Mohg knew them all, especially his brother’s favorites.

The entryway to the Erdtree’s heart was a crumbling, charred gash. As far as Mohg knew, he, Morgott, and Cyrielle had been the last to ever set foot in the sanctum before it had burned completely. God, ever protective of his fragile Tree, had moved the Elden Throne to the Fortified Manor. The location in the city’s center served it better. The former platform of the Elden Throne had been converted to a garden only Morgott tended.

He was there now, still wearing his sleep clothes- which is to say, a ragged pair of pants and nothing else- though it was midday. Both of his arms glowed with a mesh of sparkling incantations as he furiously hacked at something in the soil. The fur of his tail was fully erect. It thrashed; the horned end ripped the plot behind him. God did not care, such was his rage.

Mohg was appalled on Morgan’s behalf. A small hand darted out to snatch at his wrist. A hand far too feeble to restrain him. A hand calloused and golden.

“Whatever your grievance,” Cyrielle whispered. “-forgive him. I do not think I could bear to hear you two fight.”

“I met Morgan just now.”

The Elden Lord’s gold-blotched eyes flashed, and a part of Mohg regretted his irritation. It was not his intent to shame her, but he had done so regardless.

She replied brusquely, “Morgan is cursed, not an infant. We were with him all night, and now he wants to be by himself. The curse has taken much from him already. I won’t take his autonomy next.”

“Be that as it may-”

Morgott snarled. Soil and ash stirred into a thin cloud. Clods flew upon the bare stone as he tore an umbral plant out by the roots. Cyrielle let go of Mohg at once, her eyes wide. Gold scorched the wizened bramble to cindery motes. It was destroyed utterly by Morgott’s holy wards.

His brother panted, hands aglow and stained with smears of dirt. Sweat made stringy the hair clinging to his face. His teeth were bared, but his expression was hideously dire. A quarter of the garden was ravaged- either by Morgott’s careless tail or his brutal pruning.

Cyrielle’s voice wavered as she murmured, “We found the thorns this morning.”

Thorns. Black thorns.

Have mercy.

“That is the last of them,” Morgott called hoarsely. He deflated with a somber exhale. “Cyrielle, send for the Pastors and the watchmen. The Perfumers and the Cavalry as well. If the Blight can grow here-”

He stopped, noticing Mohg at last. He still possessed the spirit to chuff a tired acknowledgement.

“Deathblight,” Mohg hissed in lieu of a greeting. “Are you certain?”

Morgott’s frown communicated much. Namely, that his question was an imbecilic one.

“What other plant sprouts so viciously?” Morgott stood, and with a lazy gesture the deep gold of an Erdtree spell surrounded the dais. A final protection against the brambles. “‘Twas not here the morning before.”

Mohg swallowed dryly. His tongue licked the backs of his teeth. “You blame Morgan.”

“I blame his curse.”

“The Prince of Death fouls the deeproots to this day! Why look elsewhere to cast your suspicions?”

It rankled, of course, to remind Morgott of their brother’s corpse. Neither Omen had known the Dragonfriend- the purest amber scion of the Golden Lineage. Godwyn had been a baby when they had been banished to the Shunning Grounds. Mohg felt no attachment to him. Morgott, however, grieved even in the present.

Morgott was aghast, and Mohg pressed forth: “Is this the first time thorns have grown in the wake of Morgan’s curse?”

Cyrielle interjected, “As far as we know.”

Her voice was tainted with desperation. And Mohg was made to war between his sense of decency and his desire to set his foolish brother straight. But it was Morgott that continued, however subdued:

“Perhaps ‘tis not the curse itself, but the manner by which it was invoked.”

“He was visited in a dream,” Cyrielle relented, before Mohg was forced to ask what that meant. But the words tore at her. It was apparent. Flayed by grief.

“...Visited?” Mohg echoed.

“Aye.” Morgott had the gall to glare accusingly. Mohg refused to wither. There was only one figure they’d known to ever wander in dreams. “He was given a message, and it set his spirit fleeing.”

Cyrielle clarified, “It sounded like this person was promising him an end to his curse should a new Age arise.”

If Mohg had a crueler heart, he might have met Morgott’s scowl with a sneering rebuke. A declaration that Morgott was putting too much stock in a frightened child’s dreams to alleviate his own guilt- to diminish his sense of powerlessness. If Mohg were bolder, he would have reminded his brother that the Demigod that once walked in dreams had died in his care. What Morgott dared imply was impossible.

But Mohg looked at Cyrielle’s anxious expression and felt himself incapable of either spite or courage. In truth, their fear was infectious. They each stood ramrod, gazes flicking between one another in silence. Painfully ignorant of how to proceed.

“Lord Mohg?”

A courier of the palace bowed at the garden’s arch. Mohg rumbled his wordless acknowledgement. All hot breath between clenched teeth. The courier bowed.

“I bring a message from the Daughter, Moiragh. She wishes to meet with you at once.”

Oh, to be rescued by divine intervention.

—-------------------------------------

Mohg wasn’t dressed to walk about the city. But he would not make Moiragh wait for him to drape himself in finery. When his daughter winced at his attire, he took it on the chin.

“Did I wake you?” She asked, already apologetic.

Mohg chuffed, “No, Dearest.”

She was resplendent in skirts of sable and red. Leather manchettes decorated her forearms in carnelian stones. Her thin upper arms and shoulders were bare. Horns made a briar of them. Making up for the small, tidy growths that comprised her Omen crown. White hair was styled in braids around the bases of her horns until it was all elaborately lifted from the back of her neck. The feather fan of her tail sparkled where it had brushed against dewy grass.

Moiragh had been a noisy child. Even as an infant she must have known her life had been fragile. Because she had made her existence bombastic to compensate. Victorious in the face of dire odds. One never had to guess where Moiragh was in the manor. She had been a child overflowing with laughter.

Moiragh the young woman was far more subdued. Her words were restrained, because she understood they held weight. But she smiled at him now, lips pulled taut over gleaming tusks. Her pale gold eyes squinted into honeyed half-moons.

She had survived him. But only just.

His magnificent, single fledgling. Too frail to fly or fight, but the housing for a God all the same.

“I need your help,” she confessed. A statement that would shatter the faith of her least worthy followers. Mohg summoned forth a raspy purr.

“Anything.”

Moiragh took his hand and began to lead him across the bridge to the gate. People stopped to watch the Daughter and her vassal pass. Though none dared approach. Out of respect for Moiragh and out of fear of her father. Even in the new Order- even with his Dynasty dismantled… He focused on the tiny, warm hand in his own.

But soon they strayed from the paved streets leading to and from the renewed Capital. Moiragh traipsed with him into the woods.

“I think I am being called. To a place I have never been but have known forever.”

Fatherhood had long ago drained his religious fervor. Before Moiragh’s birth, such a declaration would have ignited his very blood. Now caution was his first impulse.

“Why do you say so? Did Truth impose this upon you?”

“Impose! No!” Moiragh snorted at the ridiculousness of the notion. “I’ve had dreams. The one who speaks to me does not have Her voice. But when this stranger bids me come, the God within me agrees.”

Mohg’s gorge rose. Nausea was a knife in his gut, planted by his brother. It twisted now, at Moiragh’s insinuation. He could not ignore it now, that icy pain. The hand that grasped the hilt was fine and fair. Wizened and exsanguinated- adorned with a silver ring. Reaching through the mouths of his children to torment him.

But it couldn’t be.

It couldn’t be…

“Your… brother has had similar dreams.” His voice was weak.

“I imagine he has. He is an Empyrean.”

“Moiragh-"

His child tugged on his claw. He was slowing, and she was determined to pull him along. She possessed not the strength to budge him a centimeter. But he could not refuse her summons. She was his God. She was his little cub, stumbling through the undergrowth to show him fungi and insects with childish glee.

“You have had them too,” Moiragh said gently. “You are a Lord, after all.”

“I-I think not, Beloved.”

“Perhaps you do not remember them.”

That frigid knife pressed deeper. It clipped his organs- he felt he tasted blood. After pushing away the memory of the dream all day, Mohg clawed for it desperately. The patches of it- the smears- that could be recalled were harrowing and brutal.

There had been the reek of fetid blood. He’d been tangled in chains- or roots. He’d coiled around a nest, shivering over broken eggs. He’d sat his Lordly throne, and watched a monster devour a black-robed knight. There’d been that bloodless hand, shoved into his ribs. Plucking at his bones and siphoning the heat of his blessing.

And in each of those horrible, senseless visions, there had been a pale gold light. A single leaf adrift upon the stone. A single bud upon the pricking brambles. A single spark in bestial eyes that promised he was being dutifully guarded. But whatever respite those vestiges might have offered, he’d flinched away from them.

Lords and Gods of the Old Order. I beg of thee, hear my voice.

“I do not understand,” Mohg rasped. His heart was a panicked thing- a caged bird. “Who speaks to me, my child or my Goddess?”

“Your daughter,” Moiragh winked. “And I am asking you to be nice. Promise me, Papa.”

“I swear it.”

He was impotent to say anything else. His nightmare, Morgan’s curse, the Deathblight, and now his mercurial child. All endured without a bite to eat. He was on the very brink.

Moiragh call to the trees, “Come out! I have brought him.”

Mohg scented him before he saw him- before the wretched Lord emerged from the brush pinching burrs from his sleeves. The reek of ruined and unwashed flesh made Mohg drool in disgust.

The last time Mohg had seen Aster, he’d tried to kill them both. One final sacrifice before the Divinity’s corpse. Malenia and Miquella, destroyed so that Ranni could have her neglected consort.

A century had left Mohg smoldering. His ambition had been doused by the obliteration of his Dynasty. His hatred soothed by the birth of his child. His wounds had been stitching themselves closed for decades. He felt them all tear themselves anew. His scars split into crimson furrows at the sight of a single man’s scars.

A snarl ripped free of his chest. Was shredded by his fangs. Deep, guttural, and bountiful in rage.

“Papa,” Moiragh hissed. Alarmed. Mohg noticed how fiercely he was trembling in her grip.

“Mercy upon mercy bestowed onto you.” Mohg shook Moiragh from his hand, lest she feel how his blood boiled. He stalked to the diminutive sorcerer. “Greedy Thing, you could not remain in your stagnant puddle of a-"

“Don’t!” Moiragh snapped. In a voice that locked his very sinews. It was then Mohg noticed he’d raised his hand- his spur moments away from plunging into Aster’s chest. Aster had thrown up his hands. The scar of the imprinted seal on his palm remained dull.

“I know you hate lies, so I won’t pretend it’s a pleasure to meet with you, either,” Aster choked out. “But maybe it’ll delight you to know I’ve come to beg. On my proverbial knees- I’m much too sore to actually get on them-"

“Be silent!”

Aster didn’t marinate in his alarm for long. He straightened, hands still aloft for clemency. The sleeves of his robes slid down his skinny arms. A dark mark bled like ink upon his forearm. Mohg growled an animal warning.

“So, you see it,” Aster muttered. “That’s why I’ve come. The needle’s spent, Lord Mohg. I need something else.”

“Spent?”

“Finished. Broken.”

“How?”

“It happened in my sleep.”

Mohg may as well have been carved from ice. All morning he’d been bleeding. Each hour thieving him of warmth and sense. His wings beat anxiously, as if they could rescue him from this dreadful day. He barked: “How?”

“That’s the weirdest thing about it,” Aster laughed wryly. A breathy, desperate sound. “I remember it perfectly. He told me to find you. That if we met, I could be healed.” In the coming of the new Age.”

“I did heal you,” Mohg spat. “When this Age was newly born. At great cost. I curse Ranni for foisting you upon me-"

“Foisting! Look, my memory isn’t good for anything, but I know you bartered for my sorry hide when you-"

“My obligation was met! The Flame was banished. That you are endlessly careless with your blessings does not concern me!”

“But it does!” Aster shouted. His voice risen at last. “You promised!”

His chin pointed in Moiragh’s direction. The Daughter stood, her hands clasped over her mouth. Her honeyed eyes wide. Her Godly wisdom was abandoned so that the overwhelmed child could gape in distress. She blinked balefully as Mohg's eye met hers.

Mohg understood what Aster implied. The absent Ranni would not turn her sights upon the Formless Mother so long as Aster was safeguarded.

“That I did,” Mohg conceded. The years had frayed his faith in that vow. It had been used to deceive him. It had cost him his Dynasty. His Divinity. But he had promised Ranni one thousand years. “I will protect your life, Carian. With stone walls and steel chains and a fetter about your weeping eyes!”

Chapter Text

Cyrielle pinched at the skin of her scarred hand. The golden sheen of her flesh might have looked unnatural, but she still stung where her nails dug in. The flow of blood warmed her palm. Yet she kneaded it with aimless dread. As if she could wipe away the incantation that preserved her and see the rotten, blackened bones beneath.

Before her lay a letter. One of dozens that had steadily arrived in the past week. Most bore noble seals; those colored blots of wax deigned the matters described upon the parchment urgent. They signed paper pleas with exclamation marks. Limgrave was in minor turmoil. Nepheli Loux, by some mysterious ancestral lark, had lived far longer than she should have in the Age with Death unbound. But she was at last too old to rule Stormveil. As the southern country resigned itself to necessary change, its impatient and spoiled nobility whinged to Leyndell often.

“Put those away, or I shall cast them into the fire,” Morgott groused as he marched into the study. He brought with him the scents of soap and wet fur. He was wringing water from his hair. The hand clenched in his towel had been scrubbed gray-violet. “I cannot bear another word of petty, mindless grievances.”

He spat, irritated. Cyrielle could tell he’d been simmering in ill-content. Usually, she was unphased by his scalding utterances. But the day had left her too raw.

Morgott paced the room, dripping. His voice mounting as he was finally permitted to air his frustrations. “They debase me with their complaints. They worship my graven image and then seek me to rain retribution upon a sheep thief or a blasphemer! I cannot bear it! My son…! Our son is…”

His thin garment could not conceal how tense he was. He was not a God or a Lord but an agitated lion. Cyrielle feared he might lunge across the table and snatch the letters from under her nose to destroy their inked offenses for good.

She declared, “It’s Summonwater.”

“Ah…”

Cyrielle scratched the back of her golden hand. Phantom insects crawled up her arm.

The lands south of the Altus had been populated by refugees displaced during the Erdtree’s razing. A city had exploded around Stormveil Castle. But after a century, people had spread out across the green country. The Summonwater ruins had been rapidly colonized. The surrounding wetland was uniquely fertile for farming and hunting alike. The crumbling stones were converted into new foundations. When she had been merely Tarnished, Cyrielle had excised the Deathroot from that place. At the behest of the Order, she’d driven out Those Who Lived In Death.

“The paddies have gone to rot. The graves stir near Stormhill. Flies are breeding in the waters and bringing disease.” She stamped each letter with an accusing finger.

“Cyrielle.”

“The Deathroot is growing back!” The words clamoring in her mind all day rang forth a bitter curse. “Do you… really believe it’s all connected to Morgan?”

Calloused fingers encircled her scarred wrist. His coarseness was a boon to her itching. It banished the buzzing in her ears. He was a God’s vessel, and it was impossible to feel anything other than alive when his pulse was against hers.

“Forgive me for what I said before. I spoke rashly.”

Cyrielle’s throat was dry. “But what if it’s true? What do we do?”

It was unfair to lay it upon his shoulders. His miracles had staved the thorns for a time. He could cure infestations in fresh corpses. But the Blight upon the land- born of Ranni’s murder- could not be undone by his hands alone. His dominion over Death was paltry. Ineffective beyond his role as the Erdtree’s God.

His thumb massaged the back of her hand. Coaxed the tension from her fingers.

“I could consecrate the wetlands. The dead will settle.”

But he’d done that before. When the town had beseeched the Lord’s aid in quieting the soulless remains at its conception. Cyrielle had been there, to watch Morgott’s Gold burn life from fetid flesh and waterlogged bones. So that another group could take that land for themselves.

“Summonwater should have never been settled,” she asserted. She shook her head. “If a blessing didn’t take the first time, it won’t the second.”

Morgott sighed, “People hath made lives there for generations. They shan’t leave when the brambles spread. I cannot abandon them to that fate.”

“Perhaps we will all have to accept this is something we can’t hold back forever.”

“Investigating Summonwater’s plight may bring me a solution to the curse upon my brother and Morgan.”

“It would be better to consider the dreams,” Cyrielle replied tersely. “Now that we know they’re being shared.”

It was time to confront what had driven her to the study in the first place. What had caused her to stare with glazed eyes at the same handful of letters for hours to escape Mohg and Morgott’s snarling. Only to find there was nowhere to go that wouldn’t viciously remind her how tenuous her peace had become.

Morgott said, “I asked Marie and her brothers if they had received similar invitations. They each deny it.”

But then, they were not Lords. Nor Gods, nor Empyreans.

Cyrielle’s breath hitched. A frigid spark arced in her spine and raced down to scarred fingertips. The thought had leapt forth, predatory, against her awareness. Grabbed hold of her with steel jaws.

Morgott carried on, “Moiragh hath confessed to dreaming. Mohg… swore his are unaltered.”

“You seem unconvinced,” Cyrielle murmured. She slipped free of the mental fangs. With the chill no longer boring into her, she was left with only confusion. She had no idea where that thought had come from.

“Mohg is lying to me. However much he claimeth to despise dishonesty. He will not peer too closely into these portents. They frighten him.”

“Is that what you argued about, then?”

“Mmm.”

“Come on, you must say more than that.”

Morgott sniffed, “I will not.”

There were few things Morgott refused to talk about when it came to his twin. After decades of living with the pair, Cyrielle had begun to catch unwitting glimpses through the concealing veneer. The quarrel, then, had probably been about Mohg’s late husband. The one that had died suddenly of his illness before Moiragh had been conceived. Cyrielle resolutely looked away from secrets laid semi-bare. It wasn’t her right to probe if Morgott didn’t want her to.

“Who else, then?”

Morgott tilted his head. Furrowed his horned brow. His little wings shivered beneath his shirt. Cyrielle guided them through the slits in the fabric.

Now who was scared of the truth?

“I know,” she whispered. “-that Aster is in the city.”

In a hundred years, she’d hardly spared him a moment’s consideration. It had been nothing to pick his frayed threads out of the weaving of her history. When she told her children about her Tarnished past, the parts regarding her once-friend had been easy to remove.

She’d thought she had forgiven him. But it was distance that had made her numb to his memory. With that distance erased, she was awash with hatred.

She stared at her golden hand nestled in her husband’s palm. She felt the intangible echo of a black knife in her side.

“I want to tear his head from his shoulders and be done with him forever.”

“In that we are agreed,” Morgott growled. “But thou’rt my temperance. I will not lose thee to anger. A pathetic Lord he maketh, but a Lord he remains.”

“Then tell me something good.”

Morgott hummed. The sound was rich, nourishing. She wanted to lay her head against his chest and cradled by the timbre of his voice.

“Cynric held court in my absence today.”

“All morning? He didn’t escape with his bow the moment it became tiresome?”

Morgott smirked. “Thou malignest the Prince, Tarnished. He did well. He hath the aptitude for it… when his attention it doth keep.”

“That’s why I gave him a twin. So someone can sit the throne when he inevitably wanders from it.”

Morgott snorted. It was as good as laughter to the Elden Lord, and she smiled. She gestured for a brush, and he gave her one. She began to detangle the damp ends of his hair. It was waist-length- as long as he could feasibly tolerate it. It was a simple joy to groom the silver-while strands. To see the threads of gold within shine. After this, she would preen the kinked feathers of his wings.

But when the last knot was teased from his mane, Morgott took Cyrielle’s hand. Tugged her close.

“Come,” he rumbled. And Cyrielle was utterly tethered. She drifted away from her desk. From the letters bleating their demands. “Now I will show thee something good.”

The personal quarters of the royal family occupied the uppermost tier of Leyndell’s palace. The branching, budding lower floors were crammed with studies and workshops. Sparring yards and a great hall. Dining rooms and libraries. All of it draped in flowers and vines from innumerable terraces. Such that the gilded apses of the palace attempted to recreate the splendor of the unburnt Erdtree.

Morgott led Cyrielle to one such terrace. The vines entwined on the pillars and balustrade were already fragrant and blooming. This one was a favorite of his. One could tell from the sheer number of furnishings he’d made for it with his own hands. Chairs and tables. Games to be played with carved pieces or polished stones. Toys that he’d whittled for his bairns- toys that remained even after their respective child had outgrown them.

A bowl sat on the balustrade. Within was a puddle of half-melted ice that buoyed a plate of fruit. Morgan’s leftovers. Bees hovered over the cold, sweet wedges and halves. Insects droned by their ears, and Cyrielle shuddered. The imported, mid-spring succulence was a luxury most couldn’t afford.

Cyrielle plucked a piece anyway- plump and orange and sticky with juice. The cool flesh sat heavy in her stomach. Made her teeth tingle. The saccharine taste was marvelously decadent.

Morgott claimed for himself the melon rinds- the fruits most suited for his large hands. “Ah, they are still there.”

Meters below, a small courtyard was lined by potted herbs. Morgan was curled by the feet of a sentinel statue. A book of bound, unmarked paper lay in his lap. With charcoal he drew. On the opposite side of the yard, Marie sagged into a puddle of horns and fur in the shade of the wall. If either child glanced upwards, they would see their mother and father watching them, elbows planted upon the balustrade.

“Would that I had your blood, Morgan,” Marie groaned. “And half as much fur.”

“You don’t mean that.” Morgan’s brusque retort. He rubbed a finger over a mark he’d just made.

“Not all the time, obviously,” Marie scoffed without missing a beat. “But I hate this time of year. I’m boiling alive!”

“Hold still. I am trying to get your tail.”

Morgott crunched on a fruit’s stone. He murmured to his wife, “She is too old to tease her brother, so.”

Cyrielle hummed. A berry’s pustules popped against her molars. “He doesn’t mind. It’s what sisters are meant to do.”

Their eldest and youngest returned to a companionable silence. Or, if they spoke, it didn’t reach Cyrielle and Morgott’s eavesdropping ears. The plate’s offerings were nearly consumed when Moiragh swept into the yard. A handful of golden leaves flounced from her skirts. She strode to Marie and wilted into her cousin. She pushed her toothsome face into Marie’s stomach and screamed. The sound was swallowed by fur and fabric. Her tail whipped about until it found Marie’s own to coil around.

Morgott emitted another tiny, throaty sound. He picked shards of pit from his fangs. “‘Twould appear Moiragh is still upset about Aster’s imprisonment.”

“Why?”

“Because she is kind. Because… Mohg’s accursed blood bindeth the man to her.”

“Mercy,” Cyrielle muttered. “He didn’t…?”

“I think not. She is unharmed”

An ancient memory grasped fiercely Cyrielle’s insides. Of Morgott bloodied, his life fading from his eyes. Of her Lord succumbing to the injuries Aster had dealt him. That had been the least of it. The Tarnished had made himself kindling for the Erdtree. Thousands upon thousands had died for his selfish self-pity.

Cyrielle included.

Moiragh- her siblings- they would have to be told. Cyrielle grieved that. Not for Aster’s sake, but for her tender niece. She would not delight in informing the Princess her benevolence was being squandered.

She didn’t want to think about that anymore.

“Have you had any dreams, Morgott?”

Lords and Gods of the old order-

“Only the usual sort. Even if I were to receive such messages, I am uncertain I would know which came from the Greater Will, and which did not.”

“Might the Greater Will have anything to do with this?”

Morgott shook his head, lips pressed thin. “‘Tis doubtful, Wife.”

No one knew God better than its vessel. Cyrielle found no reason to argue the point further. She licked the fingers of her left hand.

“I have had a few nightmares. Sometimes… one of the children will reach for me. I will go to embrace them and see that I am rotting before my eyes. Sometimes I am trapped in a lightless place that smells like a grave. Or I will be adrift- beyond my body. Something else will be there, controlling my arms and legs. And it will hold you and kiss you, but no matter how loudly I call for you-"

She slapped at a prickle on her golden right arm. A honeybee was smashed beneath her palm. Morgott’s gaze was a brand. Silently discerning. But he merely touched one of his knuckles to her heated cheek.

“Thou didst not speak of this to me.”

“You have worse nightmares. I did not want to bother you. And, in my defense, I did not consider them to be dire omens.”

“What of promises?” Morgott asked gently. “The Carian imbecile was promised a cure for his madness. Morgan was promised an end to his curse. In thy dreams, was a gift sworn to thee?”

“Unless the promise is death,” Cyrielle grimaced. “No.”

“No,” Morgott echoed. “Never. That is not thy fate.”

His tail curled around her calves. velvety fur warmed her legs through her trousers. She placed a hand on a coiled, ruddy horn. Death was fated for them all, now. But she understood what he meant. Below, the Prince and his sisters laughed at something unseen and unheard by their parents.

“I give thee my promise, Cyrielle. We will find the source of these visions. We will discover just what they desire from us. But until then, let us urge the bairns not to heed them.”

“Agreed.”

Chapter Text

He had been proud of it. The God that had chosen Moiragh for a Vessel had once been entirely formless. The Greater Will claimed the Elden Ring and its Beast for vassals. The Mother of Truth had instead chosen an unlikely young man to be her emissary. Papa had been able to commune with his God through the warped tines of the trident. Though she lacked a mouth to speak with, and ears to listen with, blood she shared from incorporeal wounds.

Papa had shown Moiragh the spear, once.

Moiragh was observant in the remembered form of her child self. Memory dragged her through history’s fate. Though she was an older soul in possession of more wisdom, she could only watch the past unfold through a bairn’s eyes.

It gathered dust upon an altar, the spear, as well as Bloodroses. Thorns coiled about the tines. Even at her tender age, Moiragh understood that the thing must have harvested blood in torrents.

She bounced for her enthusiasm. Until she was forced to stop and cough mightily. Papa’s hand went to her back. She was so tiny, his palm made for a suitable brace.

Peace, Beloved. He purred.

“It’s pretty,” Moiragh chirped.

Do you recognize it?

She cocked her head, but did not respond. The young woman watching understood the question, but her past self did not. She’d never seen the spear before today. But it did spark in her mind the flame of familiarity. The stench of gore bid her to reach out.

Careful. She was halted by Papa’s gentle murmur. Mind your hands.

Instead, his long arms grasped the spear’s handle over her head. Rose petals and leaves shed themselves fretfully at the disturbance. They relinquished their grip with a perfumed sigh.

Moiragh’s tail whipped the backs of her legs. It looked like a marvel to touch, but she clutched her hands under her chin so that she would not be tempted to disobey. It was so ridged and sharp. Sable like her and Papa’s horns.

This is your birthright. I do not have much to give you, Beloved. But when you are old enough, this shall be yours. It was Her gift to me. So that I might speak with a God.

Papa was always giving his things to her.

“Show me!”

There is no need, anymore. I can speak with you whenever I wish.

“Please!” She whined.

Her excitement swelled and burst past the bulwark of restraint. She bounded fourth, hopping on the balls of her feet. Her little fist closed around one of the tines. The last thing she saw was her Papa’s fearful, widened eye. A saucer of gold in deep black.

Ah, something within her was far too eager. Starved by the weakness in her flesh. A claret fog engulfed the room, and Moiragh was rent by a dozen unseen claws.

Moiragh the woman felt the pain again. She was consumed by it. Elevated by it. Red mycelia- divine filament- rang in a Godly timbre. The Mother of Truth lent her voice to the drone. In the memory, small Moiragh’s nose spurt blood. She blinked and went blind as it leaked from her eyes. There was a hand around her narrow chest, and it was squeezing her heart to stillness. As it spasmed in answer to feed the formless chalice. To sate the Vassal with power.

She coughed, searing. Too shocked to cry. Papa loosed a sound inhuman- a sound that signaled to the wounded child that she needed to be afraid. A raucous clatter followed. Though she could not see, she knew it was her Papa throwing the spear aside.

The Mother held Moiragh’s face now, as she had done all those years ago. A stale note, like breath, warmed her panting mouth. In the past and in the present, it was comforting.

You will be stronger for this, she promised.

Papa gathered her up in his arms, and it was like being cradled in a brazier. Her skin was burning, and she screamed. He dabbed her eyes, and feeble, veiny fists tried to beat him away.

She could see again, in hazy colorful blotches. Thunderous footsteps heralded the arrival of Da. She knew it was him by the smeared hues of gold, cream, and silver.

Morgott! Help!

Da crossed the room, and there was the crack of bone striking bone. Moiragh curled into a ball, and the action made her gulp air. She spent it on tears. Papa lurched backwards, away from her. His wings made a cacophony as they beat against the furniture.

Malicious imbecile!

Papa made a noise of submission, high and soft and aggrieved. He was hit again.

Moiragh of the present would have flinched if she were not locked into the rigidity of the past. If her child self weren’t writhing in terror.

Morgott, please. Papa begged.

Moiragh squeaked as she was touched again, anticipating more misery. But Da’s hands were healing. Gold pried away the ripping talons. It dammed the flow of her ichor. Until all that she spilled were sobs.

She blinked with healed eyes, trembling and keening. The Gold had warded against the Mother and her assurances. Moiragh wondered if she was wicked for missing her.

Papa huddled in the room’s corner. Splintered wood in his clothes and feathers. Blood streamed over his fangs from his nose. He would not look at her.

She reached with shaking arms. Mewled a wordless cry of want. Papa responded with an animal croon of his own. Rejection, refusal. Moiragh wept louder, and Da tucked her against his chest. She clung to fur and whimpered.

Thou swore to me, Da hissed. And I to thee. Thy duty first is to the child, not the God.

Do not scold me. I know that I erred.

Thou nearly killed her.

Papa wheezed. I know.

The vision faded the moment Da marched from the room with Moiragh clutched in his arms. Moiragh returned to herself. She was allowed, at last, to feel of her own volition. She loved her Papa. She loved her Da. The echo of pain made her shiver, but there was nothing in her that could resent it.

She never saw the spear again. She’d asked after it one once, years later, and the Lord of Blood had answered honestly: I destroyed it.

He had become a weaker vassal. To spare the body of his child. Finally, the Formless Mother engulfed memory in incorporeal claws. Truth felt not in emotions, but in the flesh. But She had a lot of feelings about her Vassal.

The Mother used this memory often to establish contact. Because she was a Goddess for the suffering. And her vessel had suffered so very, very little. Lord Mohg had done too well a job in raising her. The Mother’s frustration made the hairs on Moiragh’s nape prickle. But it was drowned in the bottomless spring of the Daughter’s affection. The meager bloodletting of a hospital would never compare to the rivers that three-pronged spear had once summoned. But Moiragh had been taught to alleviate pain, not impose it. The God that dwelled in her veins had to make its peace with that. After all, Moiragh had not chosen to be her vessel- nor had Mohg.

It was strange to be apart like this. To feel separately and speak. But it was necessary, sometimes, for understanding. If Papa could not perform this duty for her. If Papa would not tell her why he had imprisoned the injured Carian Lord. If he would not discuss the parallels in all their dreams.

A headache blossomed behind Moiragh’s eyes. It would be agony to communicate to her God in words. To do so was to wound herself.

“What is the place you are from?”

Moiragh spat a clot upon her feet after posing the question. She sucked down a ragged breath as her insides cramped. She’d been frail all her life; she understood Papa’s reticence to bring her harm. But Moiragh could not afford to be as considerate with her vessel as he.

At least when Truth replied, it was not torturous. The ground beneath Moiragh’s feet sprouted tawny grasses as high as her waist. She stood on a cliff. And below, a prairie sprawled. Thick with gravestones and death. Bloated red flies nipped at Moiragh’s flesh. They laid eggs beneath decaying skin, made nests in her membranes. Perhaps it was significant that the death below had been kindly tended and buried while the thing that had borne Truth had been abandoned to rot. Moiragh was not permitted to speculate on what Truth showed her. She could not be allowed to inject her biases into the God’s memory.

Moiragh was gently removed from the past. She braced herself.

“We need to go there, I think.”

We?

It was too soon to answer the question hummed against her heart. But the Mother was not unkind. In her incorporeal palm, a lily sprouted. White petals soaked with blood.

Lords and Gods of the Old Order. Accursed Empyrean kin.

It was the voice of Moiragh’s dream perfectly recalled by Truth. Sweet and soft like nectar. She cupped her hands beneath Truth’s. A petal fell and brushed her wrist. Ichor flowed in a languid trickle from the gash it made.

Join me in the bloom of a new Age. My roots shall take the blood from the soil. May no drop drawn by hatred spill upon it, evermore.

Moiragh was perplexed. The Mother was rankled. The lily dropped its petals into the blood pooled in their palms. It seemed marvelous, this promise Moiragh was entreated to witness.

It sounds like a lie. The Mother protested.

“Well, then.” Moiragh’s mouth filled with blood. The cut on her wrist spurt. “That will not abide.”

—------------------------------------------------

Moiragh awoke with blood dripping down her arm. With her lungs wheezily rattling. Her invitation was being wasted on the polished floor. She marshaled her body to move. Cupping her hand to her chest so that no more of her would be spent in vain. It stained her dressing gown, smelling acrid and savory. It shimmered in the lantern light the chromatic hues of Omen blood. But it was brilliant crimson above all.

“Lords and Gods. Accursed kin.”

She muttered the guest list to herself. It was anchoring through the necessary pain. A haze shadowed her steps. There was a density to it. A draw- a pull. The droning buzz of flies that so beckoned her to shut her eyes. She could not succumb until everyone had received her mark.

There were five she needed to visit by her estimation.

The Empyrean rested just a few doors down from her own. The chill of ghostflame was anathema to the heat of her bloodflame. This would be the most dangerous task of all. The tip of her middle finger she held over a flickering white-black candle. So much of her ached already she hardly felt it scorch. When its pad was singed and numb, she dabbed a tacky swipe across his collarbone. Far from any vital arteries.

“Travel safely,” she whispered to her youngest brother. The last thing she wanted was for him to be harmed.

The God of Order appeared just as Moiragh exited his room. She was not surprised to find him about.

“Thou’rt awake?” he asked slowly. Warily. Surely he scented the blood. “Moiragh,” he choked. “What didst thou do?”

Moiragh absorbed the hurt in his voice as his worry for his son weighed against his love for his niece. The Gods within them bristled territorially, and Moiragh surged forward to hug her Da. He gingerly grabbed her before she could. Her ring finger left an imprint all the same.

“Moiragh…” he gasped. Before he collapsed and was utterly lost to this world.

Moiragh stepped over his limp tail.

The Elden Lord slept alone. Her black armor lay in dismembered pieces at the bed’s foot. As if she had considered riding before being ensnared by sleep. It made sense, of course, that she would be conflicted about leaving the palace.

Moiragh left a thumbprint in her surrogate mother’s scarred palm.

The ruddy cloud was growing around her. The walls of the palace felt thin. As if she could tear through them with a fingernail. The Erdtree’s feeble sapling was pitch. A mourner's shroud was being hung on its branches. She needed to hurry. Her own footsteps hounded her to another bedroom- this one darkened by heavy sable curtains despite the Erdtree’s diminished light. This one without a bed so much as a nest, a familiarly scented pile of feathers and fabric.

The Vassal was next, for he was a Lord. He slept fitfully, trapped in a nightmare. Sweat rolled from his brow to his gleaming teeth. The Vessel of Truth dabbed her summons beneath his eye with her pinky finger. The dream abandoned him, then. Or, rather, he abandoned it.

She butted her head against his bumpy forehead. If only she had been granted a moment to explain- he would be so frightened when he awoke without her. But there wasn’t time to spare.

Moiragh jogged to the dungeons, lightheaded. The gaol’s guards were gossamer ghosts. They stirred at her passing, but didn’t seem to notice her.

“Do you smell blood?” one asked.

“No, but I do smell burning.”

The consort was awake in his shackles. The scars of his eye sockets were furious. The black wound of his arm was not improved. His shuddering exhale betrayed a silent, suffering fear. He could say no words to garner sympathy from the God of Order, nor could he weep any tears.

“Kid?” the blind man rasped.

“Hey,” Moiragh replied.

The pointer finger of accusation was his salvation.

—------------------------------------------------

Marie was not a God nor a Lord nor an Empyrean. Truth would scold her for her indulgence, later. But she doubted the dream-speaker would spurn one more guest.

Her cousin’s nose wrinkled as Moiragh staggered into the room. Marie’s great mane of hair was a tangle of little silver braids and wild waves. The edges of one of her lopped ears was notched. Moiragh had hewn the mark with her fangs so long ago she didn’t remember doing so.

“Magpie,” Marie groaned sleepily. “You’re bleeding.”

Moiragh sat upon the bed’s edge, breathing hard through her nose. Dark ichor dripped onto Marie’s sheets.

“Come with me, please,” she whispered.

Marie, without hesitation, clasped her hand in that bloodied palm, fingers entwined. “Of course.”

Chapter Text

“Cy! Your handsome old stranger is awake and raving.”

“My handsome old stranger?”

“Aye!”

Cyprus’s leg twinged at the thought of standing. His burns had healed years ago. The cleansing flame hadn’t claimed his life, but it had severed some part of his will. His body still pitied itself. His leg couldn’t abide forms nor stances for more than a couple of minutes. His scarred arm trembled when he bid it grasp a blade. It was especially bad, now. He had exerted himself dragging that useless hornsent to the gates. He’d walked with a limp for the rest of the day. He resented his guest for that.

“No one else can see to him?” Cyprus asked tersely. He was a Warrior that couldn’t dance. His existence at the Tower settlement was justified with nonsense tasks like these. He could be grateful for their tolerance and annoyed at his lot simultaneously.

The loft ladder groaned as his fellow Warrior ascended. Cuta was wise to show only her horned crown and her narrowed, green eyes. “No one else has gotten him to cooperate.”

“Then I’d rather slit his throat than waste my breath.”

“He might feel indebted to you.”

Cuta was unfazed by his threat. Unfortunately, she knew the substance of his character. But she’d also seen the hornsent. No one was putting a blade to that flesh. Not willingly. Cyprus wasn’t the only person of feeble faith in Belurat. But something in the strange man’s visage replanted hope into withered hearts. And Cy was no exception.

Cyprus shook his head, “I do not want him indebted to me.”

“The Grandam asked it of you.”

He rolled his eyes. Cuta might as well have opened with that.

He groused, “I’ll try talking to him.”

He maneuvered his way delicately down the ladder. The hip socket of his burned leg ached in complaint. He wouldn’t have bothered going up there if he knew he’d get summoned down so soon.

“Thank you, Cy,” Cuta smiled warmly. “He’s where the Warriors left him.”

Cyprus nodded, then left his hovel. The air was immediately viscous with sounds and scents. So much life was packed into the city bounds it boiled like a soup pot. It smoldered like a dry pile of tinder graced by an ember. A crowd congregated before a doorway that sported a rack of polished horns. A member of the household had recently died, and the gathered came to share in the lament. Fabric dyers met with weavers and meandered down the road in search of supper, fingers stained and bandaged. A mother tried to teach her fledgling bairns to pray. They were more interested in slapping the dribbling fountain water. A masked Warrior watched, serrated blade at their back. By the frown of the mask, one might assume Belurat’s elite to be disapproving. Cyprus knew better. When bairns were consumed with the arduous joy of living, it was impossible to focus on anything else. It was ambrosia.

Belurat was once a holy city. A place of enlightenment for spirit callers and ascetics. But then the Tower was sealed, and the valley below was engulfed by war. Belurat had been forced, then, to make itself into a fort. Hornsent swarmed the streets. Unbelievers and believers. People from all walks of life. Cyprus was sure some ancient monks were rolling in their spiritgraves as children screeched in shrines and elderly women smoked pipes as they created sacred gold and purple textiles. Cyprus had, once, resented the displaced masses. Until he’d been marked by fire and reminded he had more in common with the destitute, refugee farmers than he did his fellow Warriors.

What good had prayers done for them anyway?

Word of the newcomer had spread rapidly. The strange hornsent had been set up in a tower not presently being used to house spider scorpion livestock. Candles molded into entwined spirals slumped across the stones at the tower’s entrance. Clean, mauve drapes had been hung over the doorless entryway with pearlescent bells tied to the tassels. Chips of bone and horn. Cyprus commiserated with the poor man. He hadn’t been in Belurat a day and they were already making him into a Divinity.

“Are you awake?” Cyprus called to the curtains.

He received no reply.

“I am going to come in, and we’re going to be civil, aye?”

More silence. Cyprus muttered a curse and slipped into the building. Light trickled in from above, bleeding from curtain wounds and crumbled stones. But the hornsent was darker than the shadows that melted into the tower. He was crouched- mantled- over a nest of offered cushions and feathers.

On second meeting, Cyprus had to confess Cuta was correct in her assessment. The outsider was old, and he was mightily handsome. Even Cy wasn’t too proud to admit- at least to himself- that his bravado was leached from him the longer he stared at the stranger.

Despite the gouged-out eye, his gaze was piercing. A cascade of shining feathers carpeted his bare chest. Thin arms were compensated by gnarled talons and the most beautiful wings Cyprus had ever laid eyes upon. And his horns. They coiled and twisted into interlocked loops. Spirals of iridescent, black ridges that denied his face any softness. His forehead was bony, his chin bearded with more horns. His mouth full of fangs lacked the plushness of lips to sheath them.

He was enormous to boot. Big enough that Cyprus was as awed as he was wary. He could admit that his faith had seen stronger days. But the wriggling specter of his ascetic education warned him that he stood before something akin to the divine.

But then he looked into that golden eye and saw his fear was mirrored. Dagger teeth clacked in warning. But otherwise, the stranger made no threat against his host. Nonetheless, Cyprus kept his distance- and his hands from his blades. Even if his arm wasn’t a ruin of scars, he doubted the weapons would do him any good should the hornsent choose to use his teeth.

“I am Cyprus. We met once already, though you were not awake to remember it. I was with foragers- fellow hornsent, not the brood- when I found you in the grass.”

Cyprus remembered plenty, however. His joints still throbbed in revenge. Climbing and descending Belurat’s many steps had enjoined his legs to recall their weakness. If anyone knew just how many fistfuls of feathers he’d torn out dragging the strange man to the foot of the gate’s daunting stairs, he would be flayed in the square.

“What is it you want? Thanks?” The stranger spoke well, despite his lack of lips. And his voice issued forth a pleasing, guttural rasp.

“You can tell me who you are for a start.”

“I will answer no questions until my child is returned to me.”

Cy blinked at that, “I found you alone.” He didn’t think too hard about the implications. If he didn’t state the obvious, then perhaps he wouldn’t have to counsel one more person through their grief.

“Liar.”

Cyprus raised an apologetic hand, “What cause have I to lie to a fellow hornsent.”

“That word again,” the man hissed.

“Hmm?”

“What does it mean?”

Raving indeed. Cyprus buried his compassion deeper.

“It’s what we are,” he answered. Holding the stranger’s glare as he traced a hand over one of his own branching horns for emphasis.

“…I see.” He sounded wounded. Like an animal concealing injury.

“Do you know where you are?”

“I will answer no questions until my child is returned to me.”

An outsider for sure.

“Do not be cross with me,” Cyprus sniffed. “You who wear the colors of the Impaler’s lot. If you weren’t hornsent, I would have cut your throat and left you for the Bitch Queen’s Grace.”

Low thunder rumbled in the big man’s chest.

Cyprus flattened his ears, “I’m not threatening you. I’m asking you to let us help. If your child is hornsent then they could be in danger. We haven’t seen them, but we can help you find them.”

It was a moronic thing to promise. The child was more likely dead than not. Cyprus’s insides writhed. He was trying to get the hornsent to talk. That was all. The stranger would understand. His horns were an osseous mane- a signal, the Grandam would claim- of his lifelong suffering.

Cyprus, with his aching legs and ashen heart, chose to believe, then, that the nameless child was still alive. He would not make his promise into another betrayal.

“Tell me about them,” he urged.

“You pity me,” the stranger accused instead. “My daughter is no helpless bairn. She is a woman grown in the embrace of the Mother. Her blood boils.”

Cy cocked his head. Half of what he’d said was nonsensical. The other half was something of a relief. In truth, he had been picturing a babe toddling in grasses as tall as she. A young woman had more of a chance. A young woman with blood afire… perhaps it was best he kept that to himself.

“That’s all well and good but-"

“Am I your prisoner?”

Cyprus glanced around at the enshrouded tower and its crumbling construction. “No, but I can understand why you’d feel that way.”

Another rumble roiled from the stranger’s chest. He rose like a spreading shadow. A contagion of dark. Gold glinted in some of his feathers.

“I am Mohg. If that name means anything to you, then you know not to impede me.”

That name meant nothing to Cyprus. Nonetheless, he stood aside as Mohg swept past him and emerged from the dim tower.

Late afternoon light set ablaze the gold in his plumage. He shielded his eye from the brilliance of day, and a growl sizzled in his maw. In the open, his feathers were more obviously kinked and bedraggled. The mauve curtain he tore from the entryway to wrap around his broad shoulders and drooping wings. But it did little to lend modesty to the barrel of his torso and its scars. Blue tones in the black stood out against the gold and purple.

He was being gawked at everywhere. From shuttered windows and shaded alleys. Children carrying water pots stopped in the middle of the path to blatantly jab bewildered fingers at him. The stranger- Mohg- was blind to them all. As if he were used to being ogled. Not even the prayers murmured in his umbral wake gave him pause.

Mohg marched forth, his great horned head scanning the sky and the streets and the buildings. Despite his surefootedness, he was lost. More than spatially. He was hunting for familiarity. Cyprus limped after him.

Belurat was once a holy city. Now, it was an overwrought ruin. People flocked to its bounds for safety, but that did not preclude Marika’s rotten progeny from razing it every few decades. Mohg’s head swiveled between half-collapsed streets with children playing in the rubble to towers choked by golden spirals tenderly polished. Between boarded windows and buckled roofs and a courtyard seeded with memorial fetishes like it was a crop. Mohg’s breath came heavier, and Cyprus did not believe it could be blamed on exhaustion.

Mohg ascended. Stair after stair. He seemed to notice, now, the searing eyes of the locals. The footsteps that crept behind Cy. The ruined Warrior put out his arm to halt their advance, but most were too enraptured to heed him. Finally, the stranger spread his wings. He was aloft in two beats, propelled by the awed shrieks of his audience. He alighted not far off. Hunched on a roof clutching that curtain around his throat. Cyprus groaned forlornly and began to scale the nearest roof.

Mohg did not flee from Cyprus as he limped his way across five ravaged buildings and a scaffold to meet him. Mohg gazed outward over the city’s wall. There wasn’t much to see beyond the steep cliffs and the chasms that offered Belurat meager defense against the crusaders. His bearing reeked of despair. His perch moaned beneath the weight of both hornsent. Cy was loudly panting now, the mirage of the capable Warrior was utterly dispelled.

“Found what you were after, Pretty Fool?” Cy grunted unkindly. He’d earned the right to be sour.

The feathers at Mohg’s ample breast bristled. “What is wrong with it?”

“With what?”

He snarled, “The Erdtree.”

Cyprus followed Mohg’s squinted stare. But, of course, it was the twisted Scadutree that held aloft the veil over the Shadowlands. He’d never laid eyes on the Erdtree, but his Warrior’s education had versed him in history most would rather forget.

“That isn’t the Erdtree.”

Mohg’s responding exhale communicated more than words. Some of Cy’s aggravation was blown away with it.

Gingerly, he asked, “Are you… a child of the Erdtree?”

“No.”

But his eye was golden. The same shade as Grace. The same hue in the edges of his flight feathers.

They grimaced at one another, each drowning in a torrent of revelation. The bells tied to Mohg’s improvised shawl chimed with every uncomfortable shift of his wings. Cyprus was discomforted by his seething vulnerability. By his silent fear. Cy leaned against the wall adjoined to their perch.

“The last time a child of the Erdtree crossed the realms was many decades ago. Long before I was born. I’ve seen him, though. Once. When I was not yet a man. He called the place he had come from the Lands Between. You came from there too, didn’t you?”

Mohg managed to meet him where he was at. “…Aye.”

“That can only be done by someone truly powerful.” He was shamelessly fishing, now. Watching Mohg’s thorny expression through slitted eyes. “This land was sealed away more than a thousand years ago.”

Mohg was no fool. He revealed nothing. “Only one other in all that time?”

“He’s known as Miquella the Kind. Supposedly a scion of Marika herself. Imagine,” Cyprus spat upon the shingles. Mentally, his various mentors- all dead- slapped him for disrespecting Belurat’s sacred grounds.

But it was Mohg that hoisted him off of his feet. With one hand fisted in the front of his tunic. It was, thankfully, the hand without the black spur. Cy’s back scraped against singed brick.

“How long ago?”

Cy’s hands clung to Mohg’s. He wasn’t being strangled, but his body was in misery. “I don’t know! Fifty years?”

“What foul dream is this?” He hissed, accusing. A wretched wetness to his eye. “Miquella is dead.”

Cyprus, scarred and startled and far too uncomfortable to be properly frightened, blurted: “I-I suppose he could be.”

Mohg’s eye brimmed. A tear slipped down his sallow cheek and dripped from a fang. His hardened face was impossible to read. Was it grief that flavored his soft gasp? Terror?

Murmurs rose like a stormfront. Hornsent beheld their guest laying hands upon a Warrior. They gathered around the building, looking up with mouths agape.

Then Mohg came to himself. With a shudder he relinquished Cyprus and sank to his knees. Cyprus leaned against the wall for support- a hand on the hilt of his sword as the child of the Erdtree wept.

Chapter Text

Morgott opened his eyes, and was smothered by a sky wholly alien to him. It wasn’t clouds that occluded the sun, but a gauzy black shroud- draped over a dark tree, bent and husklike. It wasn’t his Erdtree. And that simple fact brought more relief than it did anguish.

“Moiragh-" he groaned his niece’s name.

The last thing he remembered was her drifting out of Morgan’s room, her blood aflame such that Morgott could feel its heat meters away. Moiragh was as much his child as Morgan. He hadn’t wanted to think her capable of something so… foolish. He didn’t know what he would have done if she hadn’t cast that spell over him. He didn’t know what he would have done…

“Morgott?”

It wasn’t Morgan’s voice. Nor Moiragh’s. It was utterly unfamiliar to him. There was the sound of a book closing- that weighty snap- then the rustle of robes.

Morgott sat up. His useless wings throbbed in complaint; they’d been pinned beneath his bulk. He blinked against the brilliant light of-

Well, it wasn’t a fire. It was a gilt stake sprouting from the earth. Red-gold blossoms- tiny, spindly things- surrounded the base. Something deep within Morgott shuddered at the sight of it. Some cord of his that anchored him to the Greater Will.

There was no time to dwell on it, for a man was suddenly beside him. The Lord had expected a Perfumer or a Leyndell Knight. The stranger was neither. Winded, he clumsily plonked a jar sloshing with liquid beside Morgott’s knee. Water, by the fresh smell of it. A self-deprecating laugh eked from the man’s faceless mask.

“These aged bones embarrass me in the presence of the Lord of Leyndell. For shame.”

Morgott eyed him warily, ignoring the offered water. He commanded, “Speak thy name.”

“A fair enough question. I am Sir Ansbach. We’ve never met, but I know you, Lord Morgott.”

“Alas, by that regard thou’rt unremarkable. I am God. I am known by thousands of men that I have never met.”

The ridged helm tilted. “You are God?”

“A God,” Morgott amended.

But that admittedly clarified little. Because Ansbach asked delicately, “Alongside… Marika the Eternal?”

At last Morgott was uneased. “Marika is dead. Her divinity is mine. It hath been mine for one hundred years.”

Morgott did not resent the man’s silence. He did not protest as Morgott stood. The Lord resisted the urge to begin plucking burrs from his forearms and tail. But his wings shivered as they were exposed to the air. A scruffy divinity he certainly made. If this diminutive knight wished to deny him, he would not begrudge him. So long as he kept his hands from his scythe. God accepted the water, finally. It was icy in his throat.

Ansbach muttered, more to himself than Morgott, “I suppose it is difficult to keep abreast of current events here… A hornsent is God. Marika is dead. I wonder if…”

Morgott put Ansbach’s rambling from his mind. There was movement in the grass. A lone figure glided past twisting trees and stone monuments set askew. Dark hair was tied back in a partial ponytail. But the wind set it lashing about their shoulders. A cape of blue fanned behind them. Embroidered with gold so pale it appeared silver in the strange twilight shrouding the land. However, it wasn’t a cape at all, but a thin blanket tied at their throat like a cloak. Morgott inspected himself at the revelation. He was clad in the plain trousers he typically slept in.

“I warned the young man about the gravebirds. But they do not seem to mind his presence.”

This Ansbach relayed casually. He pointed to a tall arch upon which a long-necked, winged creature perched. Ghostflame sparked in its beak. Morgott’s pulse fluttered as it swiveled its head to watch Morgan pass. But as Ansbach had alluded, it was otherwise unreactive.

Morgott cupped his hands to his mouth.

“Morgan!”

The boy whipped around. He was too far off for Morgott to see his expression clearly. And if he shouted back, the wind snatched away his words. The blanket cloak wrapped around his lean frame like lazuli wings.

Morgott motioned for Morgan to return with a sweep of his arm. The boy came charging up the hill. But it would take him a handful of minutes to reach the stake. God scanned the horizon, then. Mountains hemmed in a sprawling sea of grass. If there existed buildings, they were dilapidated and crumbling. There wasn’t another living soul within sight. Save for-

“Sir Ansbach,” he rumbled. “Thou hast me in a vulnerable position, as I am certain thou’rt aware. I grant thee a fragment of my trust, because my son standeth unharmed in the wake of my slumber.”

“A trust I shall not squander, I assure you,” the knight replied.

“Who art thou, truly?”

“I once was in service to your Lord Brother, Mohg.”

“My condolences.”

Ansbach stiffened. His fingers twitched like questing spider’s legs at his hip. When he replied, he seemed distant- vaguely confused. “No, I- Well, never mind that. I serve a different master now.”

Morgott could not begrudge him that. It was good of him to escape the cessblood madness before it seeped in. Much of Mohg’s former Dynasty had been lost to it decades ago.

“A boon for thee,” Morgott said. “What remaineth of the Dynasty is senile and fractured.”

“Is that so?” Ansbach paused. Again, his fingers moved in that odd, searching manner. Half-grasping for nothing. “Ah, Lord Morgott. I reveal to you my frailty once more. I was a Pureblood Knight, but I hardly remember those years under Lord Mohg’s wing.”

It at last occurred to Morgott that the fall of Mohgwyn was one hundred years past. When the Divinity had hatched from his cocoon a mere spirit. When Morgott had set upon the nobles and white masks for baby Moiragh’s dignity. Ansbach was an old knight indeed. One that had surely taken Mohg’s blood directly. It was the one thing that could have granted him such longevity in the New Age.

“Regardless, I would say that fate steered us to meet,” Ansbach nodded at the cross. As if that was supposed to mean anything to Morgott. “I found you and the boy asleep beneath this. I can only surmise Kindly Miquella has called you both, just as I.”

Morgott scoffed callously. “More than age doth addle thee, Knight. Thou’rt not as unscathed by the accursed blood as thou seemest.”

“Oh?” The noise of inquiry was airy. Unoffended.

“If Miquella is thy master, then I bring thee bitter tidings.” Morgott watched as Morgan lagged on the hill. Stopped to catch his breath a few dozen meters away. Morgott hissed, “Miquella is dead.”

“That cannot be so. The task given to me by Kindly Miquella is yet writ upon my heart.”

“I watched the Empyrean die,” Morgott growled. He recalled that wretched day. Burdened both with guilt and the Greater Will’s hateful curse, he’d seen the white blooms on the ember-strewn Mausoleum floor, the opalescent moths spewing from the cocoon’s seam. He’d had a hand in it, Miquella’s demise. But that, he would not reveal to this servant. “‘Twas nearly a century ago.”

Without a hint of agitation, Miquella’s man hummed, bemused, “Look around you, Lord. If I may ask it of you.”

Morgott had been surveying the landscape all the while. A stony sentinel for his heir as he took his time returning to the cross. There was nothing about this place he recognized. Not the blackened Tree seeping molten ichor. Not the veil eclipsing the sky. Not the gravebirds scanning the gently waving grasses. The plain was more of a valley, bordered by jagged mountains. Islands of collapsing villages floated within the grass. Eerie corpses for the lack of lively roads leading to and from them. He scented the air and found it stale. Burnt.

Ansbach folded his arms over his chest. The ruby of his Pureblood Knight medal gleamed in the dim sunlight. It seemed odd for a former Knight of Mohgwyn to still wear the mark of a sanguine pact made whilst in service to another master. The old man said, “You find yourself in the Land of Shadow. A realm rent apart from the Lands Between an Age ago. You could sail the world entire, and never find its shores. So vicious was the obscuring veil laid over it. This is a land of death as much as it is one for the living. All manner of spirits and souls find themselves here eventually.”

A frigid breeze stirred the fur of Morgott’s tail, and it bristled. “Thus Miquella’s soul resideth here?”

“That, and more. Perhaps what you witnessed was no death, but a passing of another sort. Miquella the Kind was divested not of his life, but of his final tether to the Land of the Erdtree.”

Morgott’s hair was coming loose from its braid. It tangled in his horns. “That… cannot be.”

“Here.” Ansbach, frustratingly patient, gestured at the stake in the earth. “I encourage you to not take my word for it.”

Tentatively, warily, Morgott reached for the slender cross. The spark of holy magic warmed his calloused palm. And an encroaching echo- not unlike the Greater Will’s voice- inserted into his awareness a message.

I abandon here the flesh of my body.

The words were wavering and agonized in the timorous voice of his half-brother. A voice he had not heard in four hundred years. He snatched his hand away, spitting. A fierce pain lanced his chest. Grief and regret and confusion. Morgott refused to believe his senses could deceive him so thoroughly. Ranni and the Greater Will had conspired against the Mother of Truth. Her blood had thickened to tar in Miquella’s shriveled veins. Morgott had felt Miquella’s last breath.

Morgan’s arrival signaled an unspoken end to the conversation. He puffed from running up an incline. Rosy color blotched his cheeks, but not a speck of perspiration shone on his brow. Morgott at last noticed how cold the air was. His mind was harrowed with a dozen questions. He scrounged for the most important he could ask:

“Art thou well, Morgan?”

“It’s marvelous Da.”

Morgan smiled. Morgott noted with some heartache that he was more animated in this graveyard plain than he had been for months in his holy, palatial home. It was with a withering sorrow that he knew he had to remove Morgan from this land as soon as possible. Lest the Shadow Lands proved too tantalizing for his wayward spirit.

Morgott grimaced. His son’s grin was dampened.

Ansbach bowed to the young Prince before addressing Morgott again. “I sense in you, Lord, a desire to return to your home. I must caution you on the folly of the endeavor. The Shadow Lands are sealed from the Lands Between. The ways between realms are few. Did blood magic draw you in?”

Morgott blinked and nodded.

Ansbach chuckled, “My tenure as a Pureblood Knight has made me useful to Kindly Miquella. The power of the Mother of Truth is, perhaps, the most reliable gateway.”

Morgott pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he needed to find Moiragh. If she had even crossed worlds with them. His sigh beckoned for the wisdom of his God. But the Greater Will had cooled so much in their century conjoined that it rarely spoke at all. Its attention was beyond him. His probing thoughts could draw it near enough to commune. Mercy, perhaps this was some vengeance of the Mother’s devising. Enacted through her cherished vessel.

They were trapped. He glanced at Morgan, but his gaze could not linger. He could not contend with his wariness while his son was so gleefully enraptured.

Ansbach declared, “Do not despair. I cannot shake the sensation that fate has drawn us together under a common cause. You and I both now seek the same person. It is the mission Miquella carved into my spirit countless years ago. Now, with your assistance, I may finally bring it to fruition.”

“What mission is that?” Morgott asked blandly.

“Why, to find Lord Mohg and bring him to his God.”

Chapter Text

Cyrielle roused with her nose rimed with dust. With her back aching and the sensation that her lungs had been ground to useless pulp by grit. Her first deep breath brought about a dry, hacking cough. She braced herself against a hard floor. Scraped her palms against coarse stone.

When her eyelids at last pried themselves open, ghostflame greeted her. It leached all color from her surroundings leaving gray stone and black shadows. Even the scar on her right hand lacked luster. She did not recall having fallen asleep in Morgan’s chambers.

Unless Morgan had taken to collecting cobwebs and collapsed skeletons in his bedroom. Unless he had taken to slotting caskets rather than urns onto his shelves. Unless he had replaced his beloved, whittled figurines with brittle skulls.

Cyrielle was conscious of the cold clinging to her skin. Of the staleness to the air that didn’t feel nourishing enough for living flesh. Rising on trembling legs, she was forced to conclude that she had awoken in a catacomb.

“I was asleep,” she said aloud. In a hoarse whisper swallowed up by the pitiless flames. She remembered holding the helm of the Night Rider in her lap. She remembered thinking that on horseback she might outpace her worries for a few selfish hours. Ultimately, she remembered sagging into bed, paralyzed by the very concern she wished to escape, and closing her eyes.

Her lungs rebelled, resisted breath. The room blurred as her vision was obstructed by tears. She had fallen asleep and simply not woken. Just as her nightmares had prophesied. And here she was, roused again by the curse of Undeath. A hideous cadaver that would wither to rotten bones as her entire world left her behind-

“Don’t be foolish,” she muttered. If only so that she could hear someone’s voice. “Morgott wouldn’t bury me like this.”

Nor Mohg. Nor Marie. Nor Cynric and Gwyn. Nor anyone else that had ever loved her. She wouldn’t have been dumped upon the catacomb floor, dressed in the sable leather armor she’d dozed in.

Something else was afoot. That should have terrified her more. But she was a God’s consort and abundant in faith. So long as she wasn’t dead, she could escape this place.

Cyrielle had plundered many a tomb in her Tarnished years. When she’d landed on Limgrave’s shores, destitute and armed with little more than a dagger, she’d been quickly embraced by the Golden Order’s purposeful guidance. And in thanks, she and her old knife had trawled the lower lands harvesting Deathroot. She was familiar with tombs. With their inhabitants and guardians.

She needed to find a path upward.

The burial chamber was devoid of helpful objects. No armed crests hung like fruited vines ripe for picking. No ancient remains laid in repose possessed a rusted blade on offer. Cyrielle supposed she could search the coffins. But, well, she wasn’t desperate enough to stoop that low yet.

But she did pry a torch from a sconce. The dancing flames chilled her cheek rather than warm it. The grit of eroded centuries crunched beneath her booted heels as she approached the room’s singular door. It felt delicate at the brush of her fingertips, as if it might collapse off of its hinges and explode into dust. Instead, it opened, groaning, without resistance. More ghostflame illuminated a vast chamber- and the faded sigil painted on the old door. A sort of fragmented spiral- twining branches. Cyrielle had never seen anything of its like.

She bent to examine it. Tried to trace ancient lines that had been worn away. It was probably an outdated symbol of the Erdtree. She swept the floor again- the walls. Some of the pillars in the greater chamber were carved in a spiral shape. There were disintegrating shrouds braided over some alcoves, dangling from coffins.

And beside her foot, there was a horned skull.

Empty sockets stared out forlornly. Its yellowed cap was crowned with pebbly growths. Tiny, twisting horns.

The Omen skull wasn’t unique, either. More horned remains drew her eye. Thorny femurs and lumpy clavicles and fanged grins. Cyrielle was surrounded by dead Omen.

She loosed a shaky exhale. The Shunning Grounds had butted against tombs. Time and neglect had seen their walls crumbled such that the catacombs were colonized by Leyndell’s imprisoned Omen. When the sewer system had been consecrated and restored, Morgott had made certain to keep burial grounds and waste separated. But it seemed likely Cyrielle found herself in one of Leyndell’s tombs. It was comforting to tell herself she wasn’t far from home.

The chamber beyond the room she’d awoken in was a deep shaft. She dared not peer over the railing to see how far it delved. Wide stairs had been built into the wall, spiraling up and down the subterranean tower. Dim doorways beckoned from frequent landings, threatening a labyrinthine journey should she stray into those narrow halls. Catacombs were craftily constructed, but an exit was more likely to be found in the upper levels.

She climbed one flight- one full rotation around the tomb’s shaft- before she heard a scuff upon stone. The rasp of mail against leathers. Slowly, slowly, someone’s plodding arrival was muffled by the stifled breath of thousands dead.

Cyrielle paused on the stairs. Her own breath was bated as a stranger emerged onto the landing in front of her. They came from shadow, stiff and methodical. There was nowhere for Cyrielle to hide. When they spotted her, they, too, halted.

“Hello?”

The armored figure was unmoving. The axe in their hands lowered. Ghostflame made silver their armor. An iron halo silhouetted their helm. And Cyrielle was certain she’d seen the symbol before.

The torch made for a poor weapon. But she was Elden Lord, and she had trained with the renewed Order’s most scathing magician for a century. She was not powerless. But her marriage to an Omen had instilled animal instincts within her. The stranger loomed at the top of the stairs. She would be driven backward. Downward. Further into the tomb- if she let herself be cowed.

“I am lost,” she declared. There was no point in pretending otherwise. “I am not sure how I ended up here, but I only want to return to the surface. Please, I swear I will not trouble this-"

She choked on her words as the figure began to descend. The axe they slung across their back, which Cyrielle interpreted as a friendly sign. She ascended a few steps herself before freezing again. The heavy air of the crypt disguised well the scent of the figure. But mere meters apart, she could not deny they smelled like Death.

“Wait!” she shouted. Commanded. Brandishing the torch before her- as if the flame of the Dead would be any deterrent. The knight advanced with startling speed. Cyrielle had no time to react.

They grabbed her hand in a vice grip. Mail-gloved fingers squeezed her scarred ones. Cyrielle gasped at the contact; the metal was frigid. A skull’s rictus grin was all she could see of the knight’s face beneath their visor and straw-like ashen hair.

“You are One Who Lives in Death,” she murmured. “Forgive me. I am not a pillager of your grave.”

The knight gave no indication that they had heard her. They did not pull on her golden arm, nor did they relinquish her.

“Have you come?” The dead knight wheezed. “-to be granted audience with Our Prince?”

Cyrielle swallowed. She was the Lord of the Erdtree. The wife of the Greater Will’s vessel. Even without a weapon- with her arm restrained- she knew a dozen holy incantations that would cause the knight grievous harm. She would not resort to that.

“I am not one of you.”

The knight sighed. The risen bones still pantomimed life. The skeletal face leaned forward. Cracked teeth sat loosely in their osseous settings. Patches of skin, blackened with putrescence, clung, malodorous, to the jaw. Beneath the visor’s helm, their skull bereft of eyes leered.

“I will leave,” she asserted again. And she swore The One could smell her vitality on her wavering voice.

The knight did not speak again. They had no chance to. A shrill whistle sang through the stagnant halls like a maddened songbird. The knight cocked their head a heartbeat before Cyrielle was showered with bone dust and shards of dislodged teeth.

She staggered back, sputtering and flailing as the skeletal knight keeled over- a clamorous heap of mail and metal. The ghostflame torch she dropped, and it clattered down the steps as if to escape.

“Marika’s tits!” She screamed. A curse that would have earned her a fatal glare from Morgott if she ever wielded it in his presence. Instead, a dour laugh chased after her as she rubbed bone meal from her stinging eyes.

“Were you always so hopeless? Or has Lordship made you soft?”

“I wasn’t trying to hurt them!”

She answered quickly. The words rising up and rushing forth with such familiarity it chilled her. With her eyes closed against the assault of obliterated remains, she imagined she occupied not the body of the blessed Elden Lord, but of a mere Tarnished.

“What color was its eyes?” her rescuer demanded.

Cyrielle didn’t answer. She was shaking. Why was she shaking?

“What color, Cyrielle?”

“They didn’t have any eyes! They were dull!” She barked back.

“Then it’s probably fine.”

Cyrielle recovered at last. Her welling tears banished debris from them- nothing more. She had stumbled up the steps in her mindless effort to flee. The now-headless knight was a mound upon the stairs. But already a glow suffused their armor- they would reform any second. Skeletal hands yanked on the knight’s greaves, and the body tumbled down the abyssal shaft. An awful clang clawed at the walls accusingly.

Aster stood, hands on his hips, peering- unseeing- into the dark.

“Here’s your chance to push me off the edge,” he remarked glibly.

He was so small. In all the time she’d known him, they’d been practically the same height. She’d never seen him in her present form- in the revived body of Morgott’s consort. He was more than a meter shorter than her… and terribly thin. The soft-cheeked smile that plagued her past was no more. Aster’s face now was a gaunt canvas for scars. When he glanced in her direction, she averted her eyes. His own were gaping sockets rimmed with festering burns.

The mark of the trident was pink against his pallid complexion. It was easy to forget he’d once been Mohg’s ward. For Mohg never spoke of him. It seemed no one ever had pleasant encounters with Aster. None worth the effort of remembering, anyway.

“No,” she said. Shock gave way to anger. Like snow sliding off of the mountain face- devastating and unstoppable. “No, you are going to explain yourself first.”

“You looked like you were having trouble-"

“Not that!”

Cyrielle shouted. The two words sapped so much of her strength to feed her fury. She was inexplicably outraged for the One Who Lived in Death.

“What have you done?”

She could sense in him the desire to quip. To play coy and mock her question. He chewed his cheek before answering: “I didn’t do anything. This isn’t my fault.”

Cyrielle had been around Omen too long. Watching her husband and children bare their teeth in frustration nurtured in her the desire to do the same. She bit out: “You are lying! Like you always have!”

“Seems your mind is no sharper than mine. I rarely lied to you, Cyrielle.”

She was going to kill him. She marched forth two measly steps, but she might as well have been walking on stilts of worm-eaten wood. It was enough to inspire some dread in Aster regardless.

“It was Moiragh!” he blurted.

“What? How?”

“Well, I don’t know!” Aster threw up his hands. “Sometime after your Beloved took my glintstones and chained me up, the kid was in my cell. She… put her blood on me.”

Aster’s neck was so very fragile; the tendons against his throat practically protruded against sweat-dewed skin. She was moved so swiftly to rage to hear her niece’s name come from his mouth. They had been careful, she and Morgott, to protect the children from this specter. Now he invoked Moiragh as if she were anything to him.

“What complete nonsense-!”

“What in the world are you so upset for? I’m telling the truth! Mohg gave me his accursed blood. I know when I’ve been in contact with the Formless Mother. I just woke up here. Same as you.” He gestured to his clothes- a filthy robe of rich indigo- and to the staff he carried. It was little more than a wizened stick with a chip of glintstone. “I had to pull this keepsake off of a skeleton! If getting myself trapped in this tomb with you was some plot of mine, I certainly can’t recall it. What could I possibly hope to accomplish-"

“You could kill me. You could finish what you started.”

They stared at one another. Rather, Cyrielle glared at him and Aster’s empty sockets winked uselessly.

“Please,” Aster murmured. “Don’t be frightened of me.”

“I’m not frightened of you, Aster. I hate you.”

His feet shuffled in travel-battered shoes. White ash crusted the heels. Cyrielle could feel blisters forming on her own feet just by looking at them. Then, the sorcerer said, “There’s a way out beneath us. But I wouldn’t trust it, Cyrielle. There’s something wrong with this place.”

“I’ll see for myself.”

It was brazen of her to present her back to him. She marched past him, near enough a swipe of her arm could topple him over the railing and into the fathomless pit below. But she did not- nor did he make any contact with her. Still, he trailed after her, several meters behind. Too clumsy and slow to be threatening. There was the dry rasp of his palm rubbing over the wall as he followed after her.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“I’ll bring you to the exit if you are so determined to see it. You’ll get lost otherwise.”

“...And you remember the way?”

“Morgott took my eyes, but my senses aren’t totally ruined, unfortunately.”

“Unfortunately?”

A somber giggle coiled around the shaft in miserable staccato echoes. Aster said, “Surely Morgott told you why I came to Leyndell.”

“He did.”

She was satisfied to leave it there; she did not require reminders that Aster was dangerous. But her former friend cleared his throat, awkward and demure.

“I don’t want to go mad again. I… may need your help to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Cyrielle said nothing. Aster sighed, his fingers curled around an arched entryway.

“Through here. A lift will take us down.”

Indeed, the platform bore them both to another immense chamber. This one was resplendently lit with dozens of ghostflame torches. It was fit for nobility, with vaulted halls- as wide as Leyndell streets- leading to sequestered burial chambers. Golden flowers pushed up through the pale stone. And the shattered remains of imps littered the paths. Including one twice as tall as Cyrielle with what appeared to be a dragon’s maw for a face.

“This is where I came to,” Aster explained, unprompted. “It’s hardly fair that I had to face down a horde of feral imps while you-”

“Be quiet.”

They crossed the chamber to a final descending stair- to a final descending lift. Then there, as Aster had promised, was a shut set of doors. A meager barrier between the hall of death and Cyrielle’s freedom. She dashed for it. Her hands slammed against the double doors, and they yielded immediately to her. Revealing water and trees and flowers. It was beautiful-

Aster wriggled in front of her- threw out his arms to bar her way. As if he wasn’t a feeble Lord of an absent God and she the Elden Lord.

“You’ve had your look. Now let’s turn back and find another way.”

Wind caressed her cheek and the last of her patience was dispelled.

“Cyrielle!”

She shoved past him. Hard enough his back hit the wall, and he gasped. A stale breeze carded through her hair, carrying with it a cool fog and the faint scents of mud and wildflowers. Before her lay a haphazard graveyard. At the far end of a murky pond was a ruin so deteriorated only an arch and a wall yet stood. She tried not to dwell on the similarities between this quaint, peaceful graveyard and the Blighted towns of Summonwater and Wyndam.

Cyrielle was grateful she’d gone to bed with leather shoes on. Her feet sank into marshy earth as she left the shelter of the tomb. It was hazy and gray like the drizzly dawns of Limgrave. She strode forth into a drier patch of brilliant pimpernels- the brightest she’d ever encountered. Shading her eyes with her hand, she looked up into…

She couldn’t see the sky.

Sheer cliffs hemming the graveyard in. She noted the height of the leafless trees. Their interlocking branches and dripping sleeves of moss made an impregnable canopy that spanned the chasm. She could not tell if it was dawn or dusk. She sighted neither sun nor stars. Suddenly the air didn’t taste nearly so fresh. It was just as stagnant as the catacomb’s.

She walked along the pond’s edge, trying to spy a gap in the canopy. Behind her, Aster called: “There’s nothing out there!”

She ignored him. There were fissures in the chasm walls. Cracks that branched and glowed like lightning hewn into rock. Perhaps this place was somewhere in Gelmir’s range. Except the fiery gleam in the ravine wasn’t born of magma.

She paused beneath the archway of the crumbled wall. She leaned against mossy brick. Planted in the earth before her was a sword. One much too large for Aster, which was probably why he’d left it. It was golden, and it was forged in a peculiar shape. It was more like narrow tines forced to curl about one another until the amalgam formed something vaguely sword-shaped. She pulled it out of the ground. It had heft and wasn’t unlike her favored halberd. It resonated with a holy energy. She was reminded of Morgott, and for that reason, she held onto it.

It was bleaker beyond the boggy graveyard. The trees grew thicker and taller. A path wound through roots and boulders and vanished into darkness. Cyrielle squinted into the gloom. There were more pimpernels and fallen branches and…

Yellow, sparking eyes. Staring at her. Right at her.

She fell back, making the disheveled wall a barrier between herself and the scouring eyes. The moment line of sight was broken, she shuddered. Cold, suddenly. Footsteps sloughed through the muck behind her.

“Stay back, Aster,” she snapped. Steadier now with a sword in her hands.

“It’s Frenzy. That’s all there is beyond that wall. It’s in the animals. It’s in the roots. We shouldn’t be here.”

She looked at him, then. Beheld the burnt-out ruin that had killed her and then Morgott a century ago. Concern bowed thick, black brows. Fear made thin his lips. It was not gratifying to see him so scared, knowing that something in the tainted lands beyond the graves was likely calling for him.

The Carian imbecile was promised a cure for his madness.

She could not dismiss the idea that she was experiencing her family’s premonitions play out before her. But why? Why should she be saddled with protecting this man she loathed before all others? This monster she could not scrounge an ounce of affection for?

“We aren’t beneath Leyndell.” she muttered. The rationalization that had brought her comfort in the catacomb dissolved to bitter ash. This couldn’t be the Capital moat- it was far too deep. It couldn’t be the gorge by the sea- there were too many trees. “Where are we?”

She rubbed her arm idly. It itched where the One Who Lived in Death had grabbed her.

Aster replied, “I haven’t got a clue. But I need to find something to stall the Frenzy. And we aren’t going to find it in that direction. That place is… gone.”

Cyrielle was inclined to agree.

Chapter Text

Mohg perched on a spiral pillar. A pleasant wind filled the sails of his wings, and for a moment the weight of dread upon him lessened. To his left, a golden field that reminded him of the prairies of the Altus gone gray with age splayed out beyond a chasm. Spectral gravestones made for a morbid crop. This impossible land would appear desolate, except that a crowd of Omen clustered beneath his perch. They stared out from the gates- the walls. Peered at him through the smattering of trees on the slope leading to Belurat.

Mohg had grown used to being an object of curiosity. Early in life he had come to understand that even amongst Omen he was particularly unique- monstrous. The Graceborn declared him revolting. But the strange Omen of the strange city buzzed with uncertain awe. Like they were waiting for him to do something incredible.

All except the one named Cyprus. He leaned against Mohg’s column. Thick, scaly arms crossed over a broad chest. Frowning, probably, beneath that short silver beard… and the barbels. The long shells of his ears flicked away the occasional fly and made the spiraled rings in them clink against one another. Mohg spread his wings for balance, and Cyprus looked up, arching a pale brow and wrinkling his forehead. He had Graceless eyes- the hue a dull mauve without a fleck of gold.

He was a bold one. Weakened as he was by whatever old injury had left him heavily scarred, he followed Mohg around as if it were his duty. It probably was.

Mohg hadn’t been reprimanded for putting his hands upon the Warrior. He hadn’t hurt the man, but he had revealed himself to be a poor guest. No one seemed to resent him for it. Even if Cyprus’s omnipresent scowl felt personal.

He was going to help Mohg find Moiragh. They hadn’t spoken about Miquella since.

Mohg shuddered.

He smelled blood. Accursed blood. Blessed blood. Nothing so mundane as whatever could be spilled by the hornsent audience gazing up at him. Mohg inhaled deeply- opened his mouth and tasted the breeze blowing down from the sheer cliffs to his right.

There were threads about his heart he was reluctant to pull. Vassal he remained to the young God. It would be too easy to wound her in reuniting with her. He plucked one string and shared in a pinch of pain. Blood beaded above his one eye. A sprinkling borne from his child seared his cheek.

But it told him what he needed to know.

“Thank you,” he murmured to the shining droplets.

He jumped down from the pillar. A single beat of his wings scattered the hornsent- stirred them as much as the tall grasses.

“Did you find something?”

Cyprus had to call out to be heard over the chattering hornsent. Mohg’s stride was not swift. But if he wanted, he could outpace his host on foot or by wing. He let Cyprus catch up- the thump of his cane gave his tread a rhythmic gait.

“The spire on the southern cliffs.”

“Prospect town,” Cyprus supplied. “It isn’t worth your attention.”

Mohg sniffed. “Alas, I am guided there regardless.”

Cyprus loosed one of his wounded sighs. As if being in Mohg’s presence was a unique sort of torture. “It is a ruin. Even when the fires drive our people up there, they do not approach the town. It is claimed by a foul God.”

Mohg put a hand over his heart. “Then remain here and do not impede me.”

“I made you a promise,” Cyprus replied regretfully.

Mohg appraised his host. His enfeebled limbs and the furrowed grimace on his lined face. The button horns that breached his scars. The branching horned growths about his shaggy silver hair. Mohg was honored. This stranger would venture into danger, would make himself a proxy offering to Moiragh’s well-being. The Lord’s heart beat a traitorous thrill. When was the last time someone had gifted their lifeblood to him like this?

“Lead on, then.”

The path hugged the cliff. It appeared to have been carved out of the mountain long ago. But the terrain was otherwise hostile. Nothing wheeled would ever be permitted up the slope. Scrubby plants clawed at Mohg’s a sarong of faded purple and gold- the only thing the hornset had to dress him with on short notice. Mohg reflected on Cyprus’s flippant remark: ...Even when the fires drive our people up there…

Belurat was built on an isolated butte. Walled by rock and surrounded by a chasm. Even if the dry plains beyond were set ablaze, only smoke would ever reach the people sheltered within. And the pass, as craggy and rough as it was, made for a poor path of exodus.

Giant bats screeched overhead. A dozen roosted into the overhanging rock of the mountain. Glinting eyes watched the pair pass. Orange wings shivered excitedly within the cluster. Mohg answered them with a hiss of his own. With a showy beat of his wings. The bats were cowed. A handful dropped from their roost to fly into the yawning gorge.

“Sorry, lads,” Cyprus huffed in mock sympathy. “If anyone gets to devour these scorched bones, it’s going to be the big man. You don’t stand a chance.”

“I am not going to eat you,” Mohg grumbled.

“It was only a jest.”

“Hmm.” Mohg grunted in the manner of his twin. He had been born to hunt. With claws and fangs to tear his prey, and no pads or lips to sheath them. He’d often overheard mutterings… that the mere fact he possessed teeth at all made him liable to strike and devour without restraint.

Cyprus offered no apology, and Mohg did not expect one.

The path concluded at a plateau. The spires of Prospect Town emerged from a forest. A plain of windswept grasses and shallow ponds greeted them at the summit. And of course, plentiful gravestones.

They were battered by a strong wind. The same force that had carved the plateau from a mountain eons ago. Mohg felt as though his feathers would be torn from his membranes. His host stumbled in the wake of a gale. Mohg caught him by his unscarred arm. Cyprus snarled anyway.

“Unhand me. I am not your wayward bairn!”

Mohg scoffed. His nerves were unraveled, but he did not release Cyprus to fall face-first to the ground. But he did not allow his tongue the same temperance: “No, but the newborn fawns I fed her in her crib were more sure-footed than you.”

Cyprus bared his teeth- But perhaps it was to banish the smile that threatened at the corners of his mouth. “You doubt my ability,” he accused. “I assure you, it’s only the swords that are for show.”

He raised his cane, cupping his broad hand over the dark amber gem embedded in the pale wood. In the protection of Mohg’s extended wing, he crafted a spell. The rings in his ears clinked softly as he cocked his head- closed his eyes. Chapped lips formed unintelligible words, then quirked into a thin smirk that flashed the tip of a blunt fang.

In the air around them, Mohg noticed wraiths. A dull gold- not so fiery a hue as the wraiths he had called in his life. The formless specters whispered, but their words were not for him. They did not wail or cry. Though he thought he felt the weight of interest rest upon his horns.

The spirits spiraled around the Lord and his host. Gold lightened to silver, then pale gray. Until they resembled nothing more than the faintest wisp of clouds upon the wind. And when they vanished entirely- when Cyprus completed the spell- the blustering gales touched them not.

“Well, tell me, Mohg. Do you see the restless dead? Do you commune with them?”

“I can.”

“Our world is a tomb. It is a living flesh, a hive of countless souls planted into an earthen vessel. In Belurat, I learned to speak with them. With the spirits in storms.”

“Most enlightening.” Mohg wondered if a world could be bled. Or if that condition was unique to the beasts that walked upon it.

With the gales soothed, Cyprus limped to the cliff’s edge. Mohg followed, dry grass rustled in his wake. The valley plain stretched out to the horizon. Hemmed by jagged mountains and capped by the far-off tower of an immense castle. Charred ruins pocked the otherwise tranquil landscape.

Beside Mohg, Cyprus shuddered. His hand, pebbled with blue-gray scales, he held to his teeth. His sclera pinkened to a shade that nearly matched his irises.

“All well?”

“Mmm,” Cyprus hummed inscrutably. “It’s… just that I cannot bear to see that damned thing.”

He pointed to a wrought metal heap. Mohg had disregarded it as just another smoldering ruin. But he bristled to see that it moved. Ponderous and dreadful. It was a brazier with legs.

“Something’s got it excited,” Cyprus muttered bleakly.

“Should we be concerned?”

“So long as it doesn’t head towards the city… Best to put it out of our minds.”

Cyprus turned in the direction of Prospect Town. Mohg watched the pyre trudge for a minute longer. It was kilometers away, trailing smoke. He felt he knew, now, what fires threatened the hornsent city.

“What is it?” He called to Cyprus’s back.

“That is the Impaler’s gatekeeper. Belurat has been razed before. It will be razed again. But people flock there regardless. Its master knows this. The furnace golem is our warden. People cross the plain to reach the city. If the furnace doesn’t kill them… they pray they die of old age before the Erdtree armies return.”

“Erdtree armies?” Mohg rasped thickly. The ambling giant trod upon the valley raucously. “I thought these lands were sealed from the Lands Between.”

“They are. The armies crossed an age ago, and they are eternal- helmed by a demon begat from Marika’s loins.” Cyprus spat on the ground.

“...Does this demon have a name?”

“He isn’t worthy of the dignity of a name. As his sort sees fit to strip us of ours. The Impaler is what we call him.”

Mohg grunted. He wouldn’t press Cyprus on the matter, but his curiosity was riotous. Apart from Ranni and Morgott, all of his siblings were dead. Had been dead for decades.

What of Miquella?

Mohg huffed, his breath hot on his teeth. Even if Cyprus wasn’t mistaken- or lying- it mattered not. Miquella would never condone such a thing. Fire had never been his way.

Cyprus hurriedly rubbed his face. Alas, his guest was too avian- too much a predator- not to notice the act. How his burned fist quaked.

“I am sorry,” Mohg said gently.

Cyprus waved his hand dismissively. “I am sure the Lands Between is no kinder to our sort.”

“No… It was not.”

“Then save your apologies and your breath, pretty hornsent. We are in Bloodfiend territory.”

Mohg was tired of not understanding anything. But he could sense by Cyprus’s awkward crouch and flattened ears that he would not have appreciated having to answer more illuminating questions.

Stealth was a challenging task for a winged man more than four meters tall and another that required a staff to walk. The sparse forest was all too happy to betray them with the heralds of snapping branches and crunching leaf litter. Paved roads of stone were clotted with fallen bricks and toppled spires. Sun-bleached tapestries waved, wraithlike, in the gusts Cyprus hadn’t banished.

“Odd,” Cyprus declared at last, after surveying the corpse-like ruins for many silent minutes. “These woods are their hunting grounds. If Bloodfiends were about, we’d know it. But I haven’t seen a single whisker.”

Mohg smelled them- their blood. His teeth dewed with the threat of drool- that yearning for a time when the world was ripe with promise. When his blood was most potent, and he was going to be a God’s consort.

He shivered as the sky went hazy. A crimson fog engulfed the spire of what Mohg supposed was a chapel. It was the tallest building standing. And it enjoyed the privilege of overlooking the town at a hill’s crest. The reek of blood worsened. And it was as though a voice was torn away by the wind. Calling and chirping in infant tones only a mother would recognize.

“Ah, there they are,” Cyprus laughed quietly. “Perhaps you are a good luck charm, Mohg. The Bloodfiends are preoccupied with their blasted rituals. We should have time to- Mohg?”

He emerged from the paltry cover of windswept trees. His wings flapped to smooth the feathers kinked by grasping branches. “She is here,” he said. His heart would take his wings and fly to frigid heights.

“Your daughter?”

“Yes.”

Cyprus winced audibly. A faithless, hopeless sound. Mohg was no fool. He sifted all it was meant to imply. With a growl, he marched up the crooked road. The weedy path pocked with shattered crockery and brittle, sun-dried bones. The red haze faded overhead; Mohg increased his pace.

Cyprus stumbled after him. “What do you know that you aren’t telling me?” he asked brusquely. Harshly.

Mohg replied, “Be not afraid.”

He heard the congregation before he saw them. Before he and his host clambered up the last talus of once-civilization. The gathered crooned and chittered in a language Mohg couldn’t quite decipher. But he’d heard it all the same whispered from incorporeal lips for many, many years.

The courtyard before the devastated church was crowded with bodies. Huge, with long arms and sturdy, squat legs. Happily fattened on piles of exsanguinated corpses and their marrow. They faintly resembled Omen, but each was entirely without horns.

They were not very attentive- many lay prone or reclined on their side in the huddle. Or they were too engrossed in their worship to mind their visitors. Upon the steps of the church, one of the people loomed over their fellows. Their hands clutched at the shaft of a three-tined spear. They thrust it into the empty air above them.

Nihil.

Mohg’s earnest and crude invocation. The memory came to him instantly, as did the tacky, warm hand that had caressed him in pride, after. As blood had dripped from his maw.

The presence of the Mother did not materialize again, no matter how many times the Bloodfiend attempted to wound her. Mohg observed them. Nostalgic and immediately affectionate towards the tribe. Meanwhile, Cyprus fidgeted beside him. Hands toying with his staff and swords.

“Cease,” Mohg admonished him. “We are but guests.”

As he’d anticipated, his speech at last garnered the Bloodfiends’ attention. The creatures blinked at Mohg. Clacked their protruding teeth curiously. The one holding the trident aloft lowered their arms.

Mohg strode forth, shoulders straightened. Teeth catching the sun. He chuffed to them- though he could not know for certain they would be receptive to such communication. Small eyes squinted at him, but noses quivered, drinking in his scent. He gave them a shallow cut upon his palm. A courtesy, so that they could know him better.

“Mohg!” Cyprus hissed.

“This is your great terror?” Mohg extended an arm. A Bloodfiend placed a meaty paw into it. “They are children.”

“They are accursed!”

“For an Omen you know little of curses.”

“I am no Omen! I am hornsent, and you-!”

“Ignore the brute,” Mohg cooed to the congregation. They stared at him with bulging eyes, muscular shoulders tensed. Curious little ones. They circled him- sniffed him. He was reminded of a time long past, when men and women- most spurned by the Order they’d been born to serve- beheld in him their savior. This was more natural than the cloying reverence of the people of Belurat.

The fork was shoved into his free hand. And though it was a crude construction of sticks and carved bone lashed together, Mohg could feel something wriggle at its end. Feeble like a fish gasping its last. A throbbing artery with a powerful pulse.

He could grant them a proper communion. It was what they desired. He could shower the pale stone ruins with accursed blood. He could paint his God’s influence upon the once-holy spire and make this hollow town into a den of fire and blood. The fertile grounds for ministry.

And for a moment, it was so tempting. There was no greater gift he could bestow- no greater demonstration of strength. But the wound would be shared with his Daughter.

He held the fork horizontally. “She was here?” he asked in a whisper. His blood smeared across the haft of the fork from the cut he’d made before.

One of the flock sidled close. Kneeling on knobby legs, she presented a bowl hewn from bone. Mohg allowed her to place it in his palm. It was warm- from more than the woman’s body heat.

Within, there glistened a stunning ruby. A raw lump of precious carnelian substance. A blood clot. Too tiny to be anything more than a morsel- if he had any desire to consume it. By the chromatic sheen of Omen blood, he knew at once where it had come from.

“Blessing,” the woman rasped. “For us. For you.”

“She knew I would come?”

“For you,” the woman reiterated sweetly.

“Where did she go?”

More than one of the congregation pointed behind Mohg.

“North,” the woman elaborated. “To the fire and the shadow.”

“She was well?”

With elderly, shaking hands, the woman took his in her own. “Mother of the mother,” she simply said. “We envy your love.”

And a dozen bloodied handprints were pressed to his clothes. He wore no black to swallow the stains. Ruddy marks peppered the fine fabric that had been gifted to him.

“Fork. Clot. North. That is what she told.”

“Thank you,” Mohg inclined his head. He felt he should return their kindness. But he had nothing to give. Not anymore.

Cyprus had disappeared when he turned to retrace his steps. He toed down the talus and the crumbling stairs. His eye flicking between the gifts of the Mother’s worshippers. As he contemplated this message from Moiragh, Cyprus emerged from a shaded alley.

“So you are a Bloodfiend, then,” he muttered as Mohg approached.

Mohg said nothing. He merely cradled the flesh of his child. Her blessing granted to the inhuman faithful. The one they had graciously relinquished to her vassal.

“Unbelievable. A blood magician. The Grandam will flay me alive- You aren’t going to eat that, are you?”

A growl gurgled in Mohg throat, phlegmy. “No. But it might do you some good Warrior.”

“I suppose it makes sense, in a way. They say the Mother takes advantage of the suffering.” Cyprus carried on acerbically, ignoring Mohg’s jab at his infirmity.

Mohg’s feathery ruff rose. He remembered a time when he had been so thin his bones had been eager to pierce him from the inside out. He’d forgone hunting for months to brood a fragile nest. But his eggs had never hatched. He’d clawed at the fetter around his throat. Mad with grief and despair and anger. His own blood had stained his fingers before it had burst into flame.

“You assume much,” Mohg hissed.

“Do I?” Those violet eyes flitted upwards. To Mohg’s tangled crown of horns. But his ears laid back. Dropped for the weight of the rings. “The Bloodfiends were hornsent, once. When they witnessed Her birth from the corpse of a desecrated ancestor, they were cursed to inhabit those forms. Your Mother was born from our suffering. She delights in it!”

“Drivel!” Mohg snapped. “She shares in it with us. If all the world must hate our kind, let her make our pain into strength.”

“The Golden One bids us burn and your Mother makes kindling of our blood in sympathy. Joy!” The fool had the gall to brandish his cane- his staff. Impotent swords swaying against his hips.
He barked, “What does a worshiper of the Mother want with Belurat?”

Mohg stared. Perhaps it was not a clot in that bowl but his own heart. “Only my child. I want nothing to do with your city.”

He was being driven out again. It would be nothing to batter this infirm old man with a swipe of his talons. He could consecrate this ruin for his Mother with Cyprus’s blood. But it wouldn’t change the truth. The reverence afforded him by the foreign Omen was conditional. He was a heretic yet.

Mohg sneered, “I release you of your promise. Loath am I to force one so unwilling into Her service. Let us part ways, lest I be tempted to hold you to your empty oath.”

With a heavy heart, he broke the gifted fork in twine. He stalked to the cliffs to cast its pieces to the land below them.

“Wait-!” Cyprus stumbled forward. Much of his fierceness dissolved to dour mumbling again. “The child- your bairn. Is she…?”

“She was here, but no longer.”

“The Bloodfiends didn’t…” his mauve eyes fell upon the blood in its vessel. “…hurt her?”

“She was good to them. They were good to her in kind. But she has left this place, and I must follow her.”

“You’re leaving?”

“Yes, Fool. Is that not what you desire?”

Cyprus grasped for his elbow. With the unburnt, scaled hand that shimmered like the ocean’s surface. His ring-laden ears pressed against his wind-tousled gray mane. He was broad. Muscular. Mohg could see the shade of the great protector flame had stolen from the hornsent city. But now he could only plead with beautiful eyes. With a twisted, gray-violet hand trembling as he held his staff.

But then he returned to himself. He relinquished Mohg, scoffing- snorting through his wide nose. He scratched at his beard. All that vulnerability smothered beneath a scowl. He was so much like Morgott.

“Then go! Outsiders only ever give us trouble. Find your daughter and-“ he sighed. Threw up his hands, exasperated with himself. “-and be well!”

It was then that the air was rent. Thunder boomed without a storm. An intangible ballista bolt shattered against the cliff. Cyprus flinched reflexively, the heels of his hands pressed to his ears. His cane nearly slipped from his grip.

“By the Divine,” he sputtered. “It’s close.”

Mohg didn’t have to ask what ‘it’ was. Wordlessly, he and Cyprus dashed through the woods. Cyprus raced all the way to the plateau’s edge. Skidding across the gravelly soil so perilously Mohg feared he’d have to snatch the Warrior up from a fatal fall.

“No…” Cyprus moaned. Wheezed.

The furnace golem had indeed marched closer to Belurat’s boundary mountains. It was still far from the bridge and the arched gateway. But it was near enough Mohg could hear its creaking movements. It stomped, and fire erupted about its feet. He was reminded of the Giants and their Fell God. Morgott had once had an intense fascination with the extinct race.

“Someone is trying to cross the plain,” Cyprus shouted. As if Mohg needed the morbid narration. He could see a speck of a figure darting around the abomination's feet. Leaping away from the falling flames.

The high sun snagged on silver hair. Upon a golden flash that made Mohg squint for its brilliance. The furnace golem staggered, allowing the figure time to flee into the grass.

“What was that?” Cyprus gasped.

Mohg launched himself from the cliff’s edge, plummeting towards fire and doom.

Chapter Text

Morgott!

The plain was a smear beneath Mohg. He dove towards the golem with a falcon’s urgency. The drab grassland was dreadfully aglow. The promise of another soul extinguished had bolstered the construct’s flame. Mohg felt its heat on his face as he closed the distance. Even the ghostly gravestones withered when the golem trod over them.

Morgott summoned a colossal axe. The golden blade slashed across the furnace’s foot. A bit of smoke issued forth, but it was unbothered. It raised its leg, sparks dripping from its heel.

Mohg’s blood froze as the golem stamped a crater into the earth. Fire burst from its body like a tidal wave, consuming all. Birds combusted and fell; scraggly trees were rendered to ash instantly. Morgott leapt clear of the lethal blast. He landed hard, hands planted against singed soil for balance. The golem’s opposite leg was already lifted.

Morgott wasn’t prepared to jump a second time. His lashing tail hindered him. His legs hadn’t the time to push off properly. Flame swept forth anew, a wall of devastation. Mohg collided with Morgott midair. His wings beat furiously as Morgott cried out in his arms. Mohg knew his claws were piercing. Blood warmed his fingertips where they clutched at his brother’s arm. The thermal made from the surging heat bore them both beyond reach.

It had been enough. Mohg faltered, and he plummeted with his twin ten meters to the ground. Strained and weary already. Morgott thrashed against him. A curled black horn scraped against his chest and-

It wasn’t Morgott he was entangled with.

The furnace turned sluggishly, searching for its prey. It allowed Mohg and Marie a few harrowed seconds to collect their wits. Apart from the shape of her nose and the darker tone of her ram-like horns, she was every bit the image of her father. Mohg blamed his diminished eyesight for the mistake.

“Papa!” His niece gasped indignantly. “You frightened me!”

It was an absurd accusation to levy at him. But he could forgive it. Grounded, the immensity of the walking pyre was astounding. In all his years, it might have been the largest abomination he’d ever beheld. Its horn-maned visage was staring down at them. There would be no easy escape.

Rope coiled around the legs. Braids as thick as Mohg’s own torso. It was stiff and blackened with a coating of tarry clay and pungent salts. It surely protected the material from the fire that gushed from the golem’s every crevice. The metal wicker creaked with every laborious step. It almost limped, the hideous thing. He noticed, then, that it was full of corpses. From heel to over-full basket. Charred bodies reached for salvation that would never come. Skulls pebbled with horns screamed voicelessly. Mohg panted in agony.

“The bindings ensure the legs keep form-”

“I know!” Marie barked over the racket. She hefted another incanted axe in her hands as she straightened. “We can’t outrun it.”

“...Aye.” For the first time in nearly a century, Mohg missed his spear. Castrated from his God- divested of his weapons- what did he possess but animal arms. Fangs and claws that would inspire no fear in this lifeless creature of hate.

The golem went to one knee. Heat lanced Mohg’s back as he pounced forward with his child. Splashes of magma were flung from the monster’s swiping arm. Mohg’s mantled wings took stray splatter as Marie swung at the rope.

The blade bounced off. Mohg bit back a keen of his own as blisters bloomed across Marie’s nose. With a barbaric roar, she hacked at the leg again. And again. Chips of the clay coating flaked in great shards. An arduous wound was hewn into the coil.

The golem regained its footing, and Mohg tore Marie away. He anticipated another stomp. Instead, the brazier flared into a searing column. Marie’s weapon dissolved as she threw her hands over her face. Mohg shielded her with his body.

With the tarry armor pierced, fire devoured the rope. The golem stumbled as the binding encircling the leg snapped. The weight of its pyre made the steel cage of its structure groan. With the girdle destroyed, the leg bulged. Blackened remains tumbled forth. An entire incinerated horse crumbled into ash the second it touched grass.

Marie whimpered, injured for having beheld the truth of the golem. Metal shrieked and putrid slag dribbled from the lilting machine like blood. Mohg whirled, grabbed his daughter’s hand.

“Keep your wits, Warrior Blood,” he commanded. Strained to shout over the hissing of combustion and the creaking of weakened metal. He invoked the teasing nickname he reserved for Marie’s mother. The girl had seen the Shunning Grounds when they were but an abandoned crypt. She had never witnessed anything so heinous up close. Not in the gentler world her father had made.

Godfrey reborn, she’d been declared. By people that only knew the First Elden Lord from lionizing myths. Marie had inherited her grandsire’s strength. But the despair in her soot-smeared expression proved at once she had not Godfrey’s heart for war.

“Go to the arch in the cliff.” Mohg spun Marie to face the path to Belurat.

“I am not going to run!” Marie objected. She twisted out of his grasp- mercy, she was strong. Her lids were puffy from ashen grit. Irritated tears tracked trails on her face.

“Do not argue!” Mohg snapped. It was not his wont to raise his voice at his niece. But it was better to wound her feelings than see her engulfed in an inferno. “You will go. I will lead it elsewhere.”

The golem had recovered enough to stand. A blazing cyclone rose from its body.

“Go!” Mohg pleaded, before he launched himself skyward with such urgency his back twinged. Fortunately, a gale of volcanic air filled Mohg’s wings. A thermal powerful enough to bear him upward without so much as a flap. His mouth was so dry his teeth ached. He did not know how he would force this monstrosity down. The monument to desecration could not be bled- could not be consumed. It was consuming. Even though Mohg’s blessed blood did not balk at flame, he was starting to feel the sting of clinging cinders on his skin.

The golem shuffled on its compromised leg, ignoring its previous prey to swat at the airborne pest circling it. Mohg hunted for anything that could be rent with fang or claw.

There was a flash of gold in the grass. Marie hadn’t gone. Her form was made into a shimmering mirage as the prairie smoked. Her scream shocked the wind itself like a thunderclap. And a great hammer flew from the sweltering haze into the golem’s leg.

The incanted weapon shattered into motes. The construct’s knee bent with a hideous squeal. Bolts popped and struts warped. Magma and ash spewed from the limb like viscera. It stumbled in the puddle of its spilt innards. In the remains of a thousand dead. Its own weight became too much to bear.

It gushed more horrors as it collapsed. Coals as large as Omen tumbled from its brazier cone. Dragon bones and a myriad of burnt skulls. Mohg landed at once. His eye watered- streamed tears- as he snarled in fury. The furnace whined like something alive.

Mohg took the horned visage into his hands. Blisteringly hot. Fire had not touched him earnestly in hundreds of years. But he felt this. Pain stabbed up his arms as he made to wrench the mask free. The golem moaned again. Its bad leg kicked and cracked into ruined shards.

He pulled until his fingers bled from the blisters clamoring over one another. And then, at last, the wretched face was torn from its body. Mohg cast the thing away, growling. The beat of his wings stirred embers like carrion flies.

The golem ceased its struggles. The inferno within dimmed so rapidly it was as if it’d been doused. Mohg looked to the visage lying in the grass. The air around it cooked. The scent of it nearly made him sick.

He was suddenly shoved to the ground. Blistered palms skid against coarse rock. He hissed his alarm, but Marie was unrelenting.

“Roll, Papa. You’re on fire.”

Indeed, sprawled on his back, he could see the embers devouring his wings’ feathers. Thus, with a bit of awkward flailing, and Marie’s hands slapping at his membranes, they were extinguished.

Uncle and niece merely breathed in the sweltering stillness after- Mohg semi-reclined on his back and Marie knelt beside him. Wisps of smoke curled off of their forms.

“I told you to flee-"

“It is a good thing I didn’t. What could you have done against that thing if I hadn’t buckled its leg?”

Mohg did not much enjoy being on the receiving end of Marie’s ire. He had often teased Morgott for being goaded into anger by his obstinate firstborn. Now he sympathized with his twin.

“Whatever was required to ensure you lived,” Mohg replied.

The entwined spiral of exhilaration and fear hadn’t quite calmed in Marie. She shuddered at Mohg’s words. But it was the golem she kicked. A wrought iron claw shattered against the heel of her boot. The brazier of corpses was so brittle with its flame snuffed. That was enough to deflate her.

“I did not seek this horrible thing out,” she insisted, wavering. “There was nowhere to hide, in the end. I couldn’t outpace it…”

Mohg stood on aching legs. Marie’s face was masked with ash. It made the silver of her thick fur blotchy and spotted. Like a leopard of the mountains. Her own hair was singed in places. It was a wild nest of a mane- poorly tamed by braids.

“Have you seen Moiragh?”

Marie shook her head. “Her hand was in mine. We came here together. But… I woke up alone. I couldn’t hold on.”

Mohg sighed.

“I’m sorry, Papa.”

Mohg unfolded his arms. Marie slipped inside them. She was as tall as he, right down to the curve of her horns. The ridges of her dark rack clacked against his own as they did their best to bump foreheads. They both smelled like burning. Marie’s whiskers were prickly where they’d been scorched.

“…I’m sorry.” She echoed herself.

“Do not blame yourself.”

Marie nodded. Their horns scraped at the motion.

“H-here.”

Her trembling hands opened to cup a spark of gold between them. Her scholarly grasp on Erdtree incantations wasn’t as developed as her conjuring skills. But a warm aura wreathed them both. The mounting pain of the burns was instantly soothed. To Mohg, the spell always tasted of damp cave moss. Fresh and earthen and part of the world rather than a holy power. Marie’s own red-violet injuries were scabbing over and closing up. The blisters deflated and were banished in the wake of renewed skin. But Marie’s expression was one of intense discomfort.

Until at last she wrenched herself away to spew viscous bile- acrid scented. The incantation collapsed, incomplete. Though most of the hurt had been healed regardless. Marie doubled over, coughing, and Mohg held her shoulders.

“What is the matter?”

“I don’t know,” she groaned. “It’s never felt that way before.”

“The spell?”

She nodded. There were still sores on Mohg’s palms. They stung as he supported his child. This was a strange land indeed. He looked to the false Erdtree looming over them: “Refrain from invoking the Erdtree here. This is not its land.”

Mohg was well enough to fly back to Belurat, however scorched his feathers. But that would have entailed leaving Marie behind. He wasn’t strong enough to bear her more than a few meters. It was a wonder indeed to be reminded that his eldest daughters were grown women. But children were forever cursed in the eyes of their parents to remain bairns. Until circumstances lifted the veil for a moment to force them to reconcile the unstoppable conquest of time.

Marie and Mohg walked together in the dead plain. Grasses brushed against their calves. Mohg’s borrowed clothes were burned to tatters. The sarong was ripped to his knees. Marie was spared that indignity. But her shirt and trousers were so sodden with smoke Mohg had a difficult time believing that they hadn’t been gray at the outset.

“She came to me in my chambers,” Marie blurted suddenly. As if she had interpreted Mohg’s appraising glance at her clothing as something more judgmental. “She was distant. Like I could touch her but she wasn’t really with me.”

“Did she tell you why she did this?”

“...No.”

Marie became morose once more. Silently plucking pod-like violet berries from bushes they passed. Mohg could smell how bitter they were as Marie chewed them. The seeds crunched between her molars.

He rasped. “I cannot fathom why she brought us here.”

But perhaps he did, if he cared to string together the evidence into a coherent strand. But he couldn’t. The filament required was of unalloyed gold. Miquella flitted enticingly into his thoughts and he could only flinch away. It was impossible. The Divinity couldn’t have coaxed his daughter with dreams. He couldn’t have broken Aster’s needle.

He couldn’t be here.

Mohg had his arm around Marie’s shoulder when they reached the archway leading to Belurat. And it was there they were set upon by a raucous crowd. Mohg bristled as they lunged at him and his niece. But it was joy they heaped upon the pair. Cries of elation set Mohg’s jaw clacking. Waving hands reached for Marie’s tail and his wings. He hissed. But that only discouraged them for a heartbeat.

Staves strung up with severed horns rattled in their wake. Spirits like wraiths spiraled over some hornsents’ heads. Mauve sashes were waved in their path. Everywhere, people wept.

“They’re like us,” Marie murmured. An aged hornsent reached for her prayerfully, and she took their hand. Her eyes were thin yellow rings in black sclera. Marie was new to such adoration. The Lands Between did not worship its Demigods as it once had. It especially did not praise the child born when Omen prejudice was yet at its peak. She glanced over her shoulder at him, eyes still watery. “I’ve never seen so many Omen.”

“Hornsent,” Mohg corrected automatically. He was used to worship. Indeed, an old scar greedily lapped at the promise of love. He flapped his wings in warning when the mob surged too close.

Until Cyprus limped in from the fringes, puffing and leaning on his cane. Mohg could tell by the part of his lips and the cinch of his brow that anger was trying to take root. But his violet eyes were just too round.

“Make way!” he barked. And the crowd actually listened. Despite his infirmity, the dual swords hanging from his belt were symbols of his authority.

It had taken Marie and Mohg a couple of hours to cross the plain to the gateway. Cyprus had to have hurried as fast as he was able down the cliffside path to reach them in that timeframe. His arm shook where he gripped the cane. He slipped in the mud, and Mohg caught him by the elbow.

“Easy,” Mohg rumbled to the once-warrior.

“You destroyed it,” he panted in answer. Harsh and coarse and almost resentful. More hornsent were running down the passage to Prospect Town, spyglasses in hand. Dozens of people. With even more lingering on the steps to the city proper as the news spread. “Spirits damn you, you beautiful creature.”

“Is that what this is about?” Mohg muttered. Chips of horns painted silver and gold were now showering the path. Offerings. He was being given offerings.

“They think you’re here to save us all,” Cyprus winced. “Sorry.”

Chapter Text

Salza held her name in his mouth like succulent fruit. Its tender skin bruised by teeth. No matter how gentle he tried to be, mastication was its eventual fate. Her husband savored it- savored her. Deaf to the way the syllables spoken in his voice had become the same sort of torment he’d hoped to spare her from by marrying her.

Because she was only ever Samandari when no one else was listening. Otherwise, she was Girl. Or Wife.

The Fort of Reprimand was not as comfortable as the Keep. But Sir Edredd had persevered to accommodate the Fire Sage and his young wife. He’d succeeded well enough, for Salza murmured her name, delicate and wanting. The command was disguised as a sweet bribe. A playful coaxing husbands imposed upon their wives everywhere. Or so Samandari had convinced herself.

Her own voice she’d long ago sequestered within herself, hidden like contraband. The Fire Sage hadn’t wed her for her stellar conversation, after all. But she did sigh, unbidden. Forcing her iron rod of a body to be a little more pliant.

“Ah, I know thou’rt tired,” Salza replied in sympathy. “...Samandari.”

Her name tacked on like an incantation. An attempt to make the dismissal of her lack of desire seem like an apology. She did not refute him, because she was exhausted by the journey. She did not agree with him, because it would not have kept him off of her. Indeed, even in her icy silence, his hand quested under her slip.

Her head lulled, and she distanced herself from her husband’s attention by glaring at the hearth’s fading embers. A few tenacious flames yet sprouted from hot coals. Orange, natural fire- not the black and red abomination Salza held mastery over.

Hello?

She could not commune with the fire in her first language, because Salza knew it. Again, her voice was useless.

Is anyone there?

But of course, there were no spirits in the blunt hearths of the Erdtree People. The fires they stoked were unfeeling, life-consuming monstrosities.

—---------------------------------------------------

A good wife rose before her husband.

It was one of Salza’s many instilled rules. In Rauh dawn and dusk were heralded by sonorous bells clanging in the hollowed mountains. Now she awoke to the stinging slap of her husband’s schedule. Years of reminders had been forged into its own clamorous bell that jolted her awake with the fear of castigation.

Salza did not stir as Samandari extricated herself from the blankets- from his thin limbs. He was not disturbed as she hurriedly dressed in a gown of simple, weighty burgundy. The dark shine to the silk of Rauh moths made her feel as though she were a tacky clot to Salza’s brilliant open vein.

She brushed out her hair, scraping the teeth of the comb against the golden bands strangling the bases of her horns. She patted her thighs and stomach, making sure the fabric didn’t cling to the excision scars that pitted her torso. It would not do if Sir Edredd’s company thought Sir Salza’s wife was unsightly.

Reprimand’s improvised guest quarters lacked windows. The hearth was presently choked up with ash, and an effigy of Marika gazed down at the cinders approvingly. It was not often that Samandari saw her Queen’s likeness. She seemed very tired and sad. Samandari supposed anyone would be tired and sad with the Lord for a son. With Salza for a disciple.

Salza would not tell her why he had dragged her from their home to the war-ravaged south.

This is not a place for thee. He’d lectured her again and again. Not because he’d believed she’d forget, but because they’d lacked for conversation during the long ride.

But Queen Marika reminded Samandari of the sole reason she’d been looking forward to her stay at the fort. Stashed amongst her needlework were her forbidden objects. She snatched them up and slipped from the room.

Dawn was doing its best to drag Reprimand from the shadows. But like a bat in a crevice, the fort pressed into the cliff in rebuke of the light. In the yard, pages and women were getting cooking fires going and tending to horses. A pair of soldiers were offering a deserter a choice: the noose or the iris. The sounds of his begging disguised Samandari’s leaving. She padded along the rampart, a dingy bit of metal and a twiggy candle clutched to her breast- her blasphemous contraband. Her heart pounded in her constricted horns.

This early, she found a secluded spot quickly. Pressed against the shaded side of a turret, she assembled her altar: a warped plate of tin and a stolen yellow candle she’d whittled into a spiral with her fingernail. When her husband left home to rain fire upon a hapless village, she was afforded plenty of time to indulge her heathen culture.

She placed the crooked stub upon the shallow, smiling sliver of metal. The wick she lit with an incantation that felt like it ate a tiny part of her soul to conjure.

She wasn’t allowed to wield her Lord’s flames. But she was not permitted flint or tinder either. There were no sprites where the Lord’s people took residence. So, she took her chances with evil magic.

The candle sputtered a vile vermilion for a few seconds. The heat against Samandari’s fingertips was blistering. Then the fire was sated by the corpse wax of the Erdtree People’s holy candles. The malice was purged from the flame, and it glowed a friendly yellow-orange.

The Jagged Peak fatally pierced the fog on the horizon. Like an agonized horn sprouting from the earth itself. A storm wreathed its summit; blood-red lightning darted through the black clouds.

Samandari had grown up in a green place. A jungle. Where life clung to every available surface because it was just that rich. Not one verdant thing lived on the Jagged Peak. It was a place for stone things, ruinous things.

Belurat- Salza had told her as if she weren’t already aware- worshiped the spirits in storms. Not her clan. Her mother had taught her to befriend the sprites in flame… and the demons from the Keep. Now she sat on the rampart with her tiny illicit altar.

“O’ horn-decked beast. From higher sphere delivered,” she prayed. Her voice barely more than an exhale. Fragile, weak. Unimpressive to her patron deity. “Turn your rancor from the mountain and cleanse this land of woe.”

Her mind went to her family- her mother and father. Her younger brother. The resting place of her even younger brother. The one who had died shortly after birth. So laden with horns his infant heart couldn’t keep his blood flowing. She should have felt guilty, imagining their demise. Thinking about her parents’ orchards set alight- all the green flayed away to expose the bones of the world.

But it was better- always better- to get death over and done with. The Lord’s armies liked to peck and nibble- choosy carrion beasts they were. Stripping off the bits they made rotten a little at a time. Mother and Father had lost two children already. The Lord would be after their last, eventually.

Yes, best to just burn and be done with it.

“I will be your Sculpted Keeper… Please.”

In Rauh, fires consumed unruly forests. Devoured litter and undergrowth. New life was nourished by the sacrifice. When Bayle came to lay waste to the Shadow Lands, what emerged from his ashes would be happier, Samandari hoped. And kinder.

—---------------------------------------------------

“There thou art, Girl.”

Samandari hurried in the bedchamber with a tray of tea. Dawn had progressed enough to finally throw the tenacious shroud of night from the Fort. The pages had ceased sneering and granted her use of a kettle when she’d announced that it was intended for the visiting knight. Her husband. She’d leant on those words so viciously she’d imagined Salza’s spine breaking under her weight.

“Wert thou troubled at all?” He asked lowly. Protectively.

“No, my Lord,” Samandari whispered.

There was only one Lord to the Erdtree People. But that did not mean his knights did not preen a bit when the ignorant hornsent misused the title. Vanity was a flaw easily exploited. Salza, for one, was softened at once.

“Thou shouldst not stray from me,” he warned mildly. “The soldiers here are distrustful of thy people.”

Distrustful.

If only Samandari could roast the word on her candle and sear it from Salza’s vocabulary forever. He was using it to mask the crueler truth.

“I understand,” She replied quietly. As if she, stolen away from her family by war’s entitlement, had simply forgotten the danger Grace’s people posed.

Breakfast was a quick affair. Salza drained his tea and paid Samandari a compliment for the perfect brew. The cooks had sacrificed a few slabs of bacon to please the Lord’s esteemed knight. And Salza scarfed them down seemingly without tasting them.

“Very good,” he grunted to no one in particular. “Girl, with me.”

Samandari was not too proud to admit that walking beside Salza made her feel safe as the fort swallowed them up. Salza’s veiny, scorched hand at her shoulder reminded her every so often that she was not entirely forgotten as he spoke brusquely with Sir Edredd. It was appreciated, because the golden-eyed people in the Fort’s underbelly stared while she passed.

“-its blood got on her skin. She has suffered blisters ever since.”

“Acid?”

“Fire. But that is not the half of it. The thing cannot stay awake for more than a few minutes... One of the guards startled it awake, and his eyes began to bleed. The fool is still blind.”

Salza sighed wearily, “I can see to him after…”

“The soldiers think it might be a local deity-”

“Yes, I surmised as much from the correspondence.”

Salza’s tart retort was the final word. For the two knights and Samandari had arrived at a secluded cell. Sir Edredd procured the keys to the locks.

“Girl,” Salza said grimly as the door opened. “Stay here.”

Samandari bowed. And she, looking like prey already exsanguinated, avoided eye contact with the prisoners and gaolers alike. Fortunately, she was not made to wait long. Salza emerged, thoughtful and perplexed a few minutes later.

“’Tis hardly older than my Sam! A mere child!”

“But you sense it!” Sir Edredd insisted. “It is unlike anything we have encountered!”

Salza ran his fingers through thick, ashen hair. It was a habit of his whenever he went without his sage’s hood. He said nothing further to the black knight and motioned for Samandari to follow him with a stiff wave.

She obeyed.

Curled up in the cell was a creature. Horned, winged, tailed. With a hide sewn from shadow. Like a strip had been torn from the Veil itself to form a flesh and blood being. Or perhaps it was smoke. Because this being- this person- housed a flame in them. A warmth that beckoned to Samandari at once. Their face was hidden by a fan of feathers at the end of a skinny tail. But Samandari was instantly certain that they were beautiful.

She jumped as Salza’s hand alighted- however gently- upon her shoulder. “Be not afeard, Samandari. Whatever it is, it must be hornsent. Keep thy courage. Here is the part thou shalt play: be a sister to thy kin. Lord Messmer is besotted by this fort’s gossip…” He paused, emphasizing his disdain with a haughty exhale. “But its care falleth to thee until he might assess its worth.”

Samandari nodded once, and the key to the slumbering ember’s shackle was placed into her trembling palm.

Chapter Text

Morgan and Morgott sat a couple of meters apart. They were silent, because the roar of the river was so raucous they’d have to shout in one another’s ears to be heard. And the chance of making contact was too great a risk.

It hadn’t taken Morgott long to carve spears from green, supple wood. He’d made functional tools with worse materials- splintered chair legs and rotted boards- for half of his life. He had learned how to whittle complex figures with his wriggly boy in his lap. Even now, years later, Morgan was eager to watch his Da work. He’d always been inquisitive.

Morgott passed Morgan a few of the finished spears. He set them in the grass, shafts pointed towards Morgan. Morgan gathered them into his lap.

His skin was streaked with mud, and his brown hair was tangled with dried leaves. Morgott could forget that his youngest child was as hardy as his Omen-born siblings. This was the boy that had spent his childhood exploring tombs. He had slept on stone and collected cobwebs on his clothes and befriended the dead. This sojourn into a strange wilderness hadn’t phased him. Not outwardly, at least.

Morgan stood and waded out into the river. He slipped and was forced to windmill his arms for balance. He grinned over his shoulder in Morgott’s direction. He was a clumsier hunter than Cynric. Even Gwyn. Morgott’s mouth twitched, ceding a small smile of his own. He ventured out into the water himself.

The current was swift and shallow. But fish idled in their shadows long enough to be stabbed. Opalescent bodies slapped against Morgott’s ribs and arms as he held his catch aloft by their gills. Trickles of blood matted the hair of his forearms. It would all wash out in the stream.

Soon, four sizable fish squirmed in Morgott’s fist. He trudged back to shore to thread them onto a spear embedded in the ground. Impaled through their gills, the fish gaped and died on dry land. Morgan wrestled with a lone fish. He possessed neither claws nor teeth with which to subdue his prey. Morgott returned to his spot in the river’s middle. The rush of water prevented him from offering instruction on technique. Despite that, his son was victorious against his quarry in the end.

Upstream, waterfalls churned the current. Mist drifted through the canyon and kissed Morgott and Morgan with cool lips. For this reason, they risked only their trousers getting soaked- Morgan’s shirt and cloak were neatly folded by the campfire. Every so often, Morgott’s back would twinge, and his miniscule wings would shake themselves out. Mohg had unwittingly bestowed to him the limbs a hundred years ago. Morgott still didn’t feel entirely in control of them. The cream-gray feathers flapped against Morgott’s thighs, frightening a fish beyond his reach. He growled. Morgan laughed so hard he snorted. A swipe of Morgott’s tail utterly drenched his child in playful vengeance.

After an hour, they’d caught ten fish between them. Though Morgott had contributed most to the harvest. God had no qualms about eating his prey whole. But the Pureblood knight and Morgan would need their meal descaled, gutted, and cooked. They marched to higher ground to prepare supper.

“I’d have gotten more with help,” Morgan huffed.

Assistance from a spirit, he surely meant. It was no criticism of his father, but both a lament and a request.

“Thou didst well enough on thine own.”

Morgott’s gentle refusal. Morgan took it in stride.

“I saw one with horns.”

“Spines.”

“No, Da. Horns. I let it go.”

It was apparent, for no horned fish flopped on the end of his stick. Morgott reappropriated three of the spears into spits. From mouth to tail, he strung the slippery fish- organs removed- onto the stakes. Then he jabbed the pointed end into the rocky soil, leaning the spit so that the fish roasted over the campfire. Morgott believed his son. Through his tainted divinity, Crucible blessings were becoming more abundant in the Lands Between. Nonetheless, he’d never seen so many Crucible-touched beasts before. Owls and deer and rams and wolves. He was almost unnerved by it.

“Let us wash before Ansbach returns,” Morgott said.

The amicable knight had given God an offering of soap. It was a meager sliver in Morgott’s paw. It would be ground to impotent suds against his fur. Morgan made use of it, however. Happily rinsing the grime from his face and hair. Morgott scrounged for a coarse stone to scrub himself with instead.

When they had finished, Ansbach still had not come back. Morgott sat in the shallows and let the current waft through the fur of his tail. Morgan trudged up the rocky bank to check on the fish, but he came back down a few minutes later. Morgott raised a brow. Morgan shook his head; they were not sufficiently cooked. Then he sat beside his father, wriggling his toes in the gritty pebbles. Less than a meter separated them.

The water was chilly. The land overall was cold with an autumnal shroud. Something timidly brushed against Morgott’s submerged hand. A fish, he figured, come to nibble at his fingers benignly. Then it happened again, and the fur along his nape prickled. A hand slid beneath his own-

“Morgan!”

He wasn’t sure why he’d roared. Not an ember of fury was stoked in his gut, but his voice was all anger. Morgan yanked his hand away. He massaged his fingers as if to soothe a sting. Damp hair made a curtain over his profile. He hung his head.

“Foolishness!” Morgott spat. Because he lacked control. Because he’d been startled.

Morgan’s lips moved in a flurry, but he spoke too softly for Morgott to hear. Morgott gestured to the campfire, beckoned his son to a quieter place so that they might talk. Morgan shook his head and turned away. It was then that Morgott finally noticed the Pureblood knight navigating the stony incline. His arms were laden with objects. Books and what appeared to be edibles to accompany the roasted meat. Morgott went to meet him. Morgan did not follow.

Ansbach grunted as he bent to deposit his things onto the ground. “Apologies for the delay.”

Morgott corralled wayward, tumbling fruits into a circle of river stones before they could roll into the stream and be lost. “Didst thou find what thou sought?”

“I believe so. I sighted it in the scope, and the way seems clear. We may reach it before nightfall if we make haste.”

“And Mohg?”

“I am afraid I’ve seen no sign, Lord Morgott.”

Fat dripped from the fish and sizzled against the coals. The flayed skin blackened around pinkish-gray flesh. Ser Ansbach opened one of his books; a hand drawn map spanned two pages. With a stick of charcoal, he made a mark on a patch of winding blue.

“Forgive my asking, but… does something ail Morgan?”

“Hmm?” Morgott stiffened where he sat. His lip twitched over a blunt fang.

“I suppose he is old enough to answer questions about his person. However, I do not want to cause him offense. I can suffer your scorn, Lord, but not his humiliation.”

“Hmm.”

“You shy from touching him. When His Eminence was familiar with Kindly Miquella, I noticed Malenia was oft treated similarly-"

“My son is not afflicted,” Morgott bristled. Though his fur was too wet to rise properly. His agitation was with himself more than the once-knight of his twin. With only his father for company, Morgan was condemned to be isolated. “My son is cursed. I am the danger to him. His spirit crave’th cold. It resents the heat of Omen blood.”

Ansbach glanced in Morgan’s direction but possessed the decency not to stare. The boy had finished combing his hair and was presently trying to braid it. He was bent over a puddle, using it as a mirror. It didn’t seem to be helping him any.

“Whether thy love is claimed by Miquella or Mohg, do not betray their nephew. I reveal this to thee for his benefit. If something befalls him, he may require thine aid. He is imperiled in my hands.”

“I understand.”

Sir Ansbach’s resolute response was a balm. Morgott couldn’t trust the man entirely, but those two words earned him a great deal of goodwill.

Ansbach leaned towards Morgott, then. “I shall be careful myself. My pact with Lord Mohg left my blood forever altered. I cannot deny, it is a risk, even if I am no longer bound to it. Perhaps after we locate Mohg, we should take the prince to the hornsent. They are a people well-versed in hexes and curses. They may know of a way to soothe his spirit.”

“Hornsent?”.

“Omen,” Ansbach replied. “Like yourself. Though I would not use that term with any hornsent we might meet. Rightfully, they would not suffer you the insult.”

The Greater Will roused at that. Finally expressed some curiosity. It gnawed at something in the back of Morgott’s mind. Like a dried fruit’s stone. Yearning for the memory of the sweetness that once encased it. Instead, there was a bitterness like poison, and the metal tang of gold filament. It retreated, abandoning Morgott to endure its nostalgia and repressed familiarity. He blinked, rubbed at his temples.

“I shall heed thy wisdom, Knight.”

“See that you do, Lord. Though I am loath to command a God, so.”

—----------------------------------------------

Food mended quickly Morgan’s hurt feelings. Or perhaps it was that Sir Ansbach was making a sincere effort for Morgan’s sake. Morgott chewed fish fat and scales from under his claws as the former Pureblood Knight handed Morgan his scope.

“Keep a lookout, young Lord. I shall navigate.”

Morgott smelled the reek of brine long before the coast was revealed to them. White sands were blanketed in azure blooms. Ships in the conspicuous shape of coffins were run aground all over. Beached in the rolling sea of forget-me-nots.

Here, the gravestones were corporeal. Morgott was reminded of the battlement memorial in Leyndell. Most of the graves had been eroded by age and the Erdtree’s ash. The Shattering’s dead were further forgotten. And it was not for the first time that Morgott wondered what this place was, that death could be so abundant and beautiful. He was wary of it. Because it felt so natural to pass through the cerulean tomb. Like he belonged there. Like he was coming home.

For a moment, the blue hills before Morgott blurred. They became greenery pocked with colorful blooms untainted by salt-laden air. And the hand that rested upon a golden poplar was not his own.

“All well?”

Sir Ansbach’s inquiry was frustratingly gentle. Kind. A tear Morgott didn’t recall having shed disappeared into his whiskers. Ahead, Morgan sat upon a grave. No doubt waiting for the two old men to catch up.

“Aye,” Morgott lied. The shroud of sadness hadn’t been his, originally. But it infected him. The Morgott of the Shunning Grounds- the part of him that hunted for sustenance and cast aside any threat with brute force- had driven him this far. Now Morgott, father and husband, surged forth and overwhelmed him.

“But we are wasting our time.” It was an unfair thing to say. The land was vast, and Ansbach’s mission dictated by Miquella was his only lead. He glared at the gleaming cross on the overlook with some resentment. The buttery gold darkened the indigo sky behind it.

“It may help to abandon your fear,” Ansbach counseled. Morgott wanted to throw him into the roiling sea. “We are each guided by Kindly Miquella. If he brought you here, then this is the path he wishes you to tread.”

Morgott confessed in a low growl, “That is my concern.”

Ansbach said nothing in reply, which suited Morgott fine. Morgan traipsed around the golden cross, the scope pressed against his eye. A salty breeze tugged at his hair.

Morgott asked, “What hast thou spotted?”

Morgan considered his answer for a while. He was still deciding how angry he was with his father. Ansbach crouched by the cross. Gulls squawked overhead.

“A dragon.”

“Ah.”

“There is ghostflame in its chest.”

“…Mercy.”

“It’s sleeping, I think.”

Morgott exhaled, “Do not stray from the cross, aye?”

“Yes, Da.”

Morgott turned to Sir Ansbach and noted the man’s stiffness. His hand hovered over the stem of the cross, as if he’d suddenly forgotten what he’d been doing a second before. God knelt beside him.

I abandon here my doubt and vacillation.

“Strange,” Ansbach whispered drowsily.

“Is it?” Morgott rumbled. He could not deny the worrisome prickle that inched along his spine.

“Look here,” the knight pointed to purple blossoms wilting amongst the blue. “Miquella discarded more than his flesh. It seems I have… hmm.” Ansbach waved a hand dismissively. “Forgive me, I must be tired. My mind is a little foggy…”

Morgott touched the cross again. The Greater Will curled feelers around it, fascinated.

“What else barred Miquella from Godhood if not his cursed flesh?” Morgott pressed.

“I am uncertain. But surely it was not his other half. She must be here, St. Trina. Her and all the parts of Miquella she carried.”

Morgott pinched the bases of the horns sprouting from his brow. “I must understand why Miquella seeks Mohg. I care not for his neglected pieces.”

“…Then we must act swiftly. I believe we have found the last place Kindly Miquella afforded himself a moment’s hesitation.” That Ansbach could sound so dire immediately confirmed to Morgott that his own wariness was not unwarranted.

Footsteps approached, and both men silenced themselves.

“You never told me about Uncle Miquella,” Morgan accused. He loomed over Ansbach’s shoulder, frowning.

“I did not keep him secret from thee,” Morgott retorted. “Thou knowest of the Haligtree and his twin, Malenia. Thou knowest the war they both wrought upon Caelid.”

“You did not tell me he was cursed.”

Morgott’s tail betrayed him with an irritable flick. In truth, there was much about his brother he’d kept intentionally obscured. All for Mohg’s sake. Morgott had barely had the strength to confess his own atrocities to his children. He’d endured their short-lived hatred when they’d come to realize how many of the world’s ails he had perpetuated in the past. But he’d shielded Mohg all these years. And buried poor Miquella in the process.

“Eternal youth was Miquella’s yoke,” Ansbach explained obliviously. “He has lived for nearly a millennium. Yet he wears the form of a boy even younger than you, Morgan.”

Morgan’s brows cinched over his mismatched eyes. He bit his lip. Cyrielle was returned to Morgott in a look. “That… doesn’t seem so awful,” he said. Morgott was stricken with grief.

Ansbach, at least, could carry the conversation without being burdened with Morgan’s mortality. “He was the mirror to Malenia. He was abundance and she, decay. He is trapped in his curse. Divinity was fated in Malenia’s flesh. Yet Miquella was doomed to be an Empyrean forever. With no hope of ascension.”

Morgott stared at the cross. There was the sting of Gold behind his eyes. The Greater Will was present again.

What God doth Miquella court?

But it did not know. Perhaps Ranni’s Dark voyage would thwart him as much as his curse.

Ansbach continued, “I have followed Kindly Miquella’s footsteps for many years. Either he hoped to shed his curse to attain Godhood, or he believed Godhood would divest him of his curse. Either way, the cross is evidence of his desire.”

I abandon here my doubt and vacillation.

“Do you believe it worked for him, Sir Ansbach?” Morgan murmured.

“That is precisely what I aim to discover.”

Chapter Text

There were spiders in Aster’s spine. Flighty, scurrying things. Squeezed into the crevices between vertebrae. Pedipalps massaging chills into the bones. It was a feverish sensation- frigidity born from the smoldering heat under this skin. There were aches between his joints, and an unbearable throbbing in his head. He hoped the simmering migraine was caused by his strained sight rather than the whispers congregating furtively in the back of his mind.

Without his glintstone eyes- forced to be reliant on the sense the Flame bestowed upon him- he could only see things imbued with Godly essence. Wherever Mohg’s pup had banished him to, there was precious little of that to be found.

But there was Cyrielle.

Over three meters tall and faintly golden. She was the Greater Will’s moon, reflecting its light. The details of her appearance never came into focus. Like an unfinished sculpture of butter left to the sun’s mercy, or a painting whose pigments had become smeared. The darkness of his vision ate away at her edges. Especially around her right arm and the sword she’d pillaged from the graveyard. Those gleamed in pale, holy hues at her side. She postured at the far end of their camp, left arm raised.

She’d been doing this for hours. Flicking her hands in gestures too fine for Aster to really read. Blinding him with potent flashes of magic that fizzled as rapidly as they were called. Like a match struck in gaseous vapors. Her will consumed itself brilliantly without the anchor of roots. Aster hissed as yet another failed incantation seared his sockets.

Cyrielle, prompted by his noise of discomfort, snapped, “I do not understand it. I haven’t needed a seal for decades.”

“So that’s it? You can’t cast anything?”

“You have been staring at me all the while, so you ought to know the answer is yes.”

Everything he said elicited a caustic response. No matter how light and careful his tone. If he weren’t so utterly dependent upon her, he would have told her ages ago the bereaved hard-done-by ex-friend act was getting old. He was doing his best wasn't he? Hadn’t so much as eyeballed flint funny since the needle had been implanted in him. And it wasn’t his fault the thing had broken in the first place.

The whispers flared. He stomped them out with a psychic boot: Shut up.

“Is the issue with all incantations or just your grace given ones?”

The golden figure jerked, and her brief silence signaled to Aster he’d earned a withering glare.

“I think you are right,” she conceded all the same. “The Erdtree is… not here.” She paused. Obviously disconcerted. “But look-"

Her avatar burst into action. She became a smattered cosmos of aureate streaks and black speckles. Aster realized, when the image settled a bit, that she had swept her scavenged weapon in an arc before her. He jumped out of his skin as yellow thorns erupted from the abyss. A wave of them, barbed, curling and wicked. Scrabbling at the ground, questing for flesh to rend and-

“Don’t overreact,” Cyrielle commanded coldly. “It did not come anywhere near you.”

She wasn’t even lying at his expense. The thorns dissipated as quickly as they’d come, meters away from Aster’s stump. Though he was seated no longer. Mossy wood was against his back. Cool dew kissed his bare neck and…

And suddenly that was all there was. All there ever had been. A void. Unpleasant dampness against clammy skin. A figure bearing a weapon that singed his senses. He opened his mouth- to shout a warning? To beg? Not even he knew. But his intent mattered not. Because it was in his skull. In his ribs. Probing ever deeper until his bowels were speared. Impaled but not permitted to die. And oh, the suffering would have been marvelous if not for-

This wasn’t Aster’s memory. He could not seek what the Flame chose to take from him. He could paw through the ash and diligently taste the remains of his consumed life but not recognize what the detritus had once composed. However, this was definitely not part of him. It was a thing swollen and wretched, toddling over the remnants of its meals. Bug-eyed and groaning for having been dragged from Aster’s consciousness.

There was smoke in his mouth, his nose. He fled from the oozing, shambling monstrosity until he emerged into clean mountain air. Until there was solid ground beneath his feet and a tree against his back. In the black of his snuffed vision, a candle flickered. Tarnished at the edges.

The pain in his head was blissfully familiar. Bearable.

He was far too heavy to hold himself upright. The brittle tinder of his legs gave out, and he slumped against the trunk. His breath expelled hot embers from his chest. The heels of his hands pressed against his eyes. Molten tears blistered the coarse, scarred skin. They stung his cracked lips. Despite the ineffective blindfold of his fingers, he knew that Cyrielle’s accursed sword was being pointed in his direction.

“Don’t…” he wheezed.

“I can see the entrance to the catacombs from here. We have barely begun, Aster. If you want my help, you are going to have to keep control.”

“It’s the sword,” he gasped.

“The sword?” Cyrielle echoed. Her frigidity shattered by incredulity. “How? You are familiar with it after all?”

“Yes- I. No. I’ve never seen that thing before. I-I don’t know.”

“Answer with confidence, please.”

“I don’t know.”

This time, when a memory limped to him, it was welcome. It was Varré’s voice. Sneering and unkind. Velvety insult padded by genuine laughter and a tenacious fascination. Mohg’s White Mask had delighted in toying with Aster all those years ago. But he had cared. Cyrielle was all fury- Aster’s humiliation softened her none. She was just hateful.

Do this for me. For us.

Varré drawled in the back of Aster’s mind. He was huddled around a ghastly yellow campfire. Smirking beneath a crimson mask and wiping clean a bloodied needle. The Flame claimed all the pieces of Aster’s past he wished to hold onto and left him with its most bitter leavings. Varré had ordered him to kill Cyrielle. How could he forget that he’d been willing to do it, however briefly?

“You have to understand,” Cyrielle said. “-how much of me wants to shove you back into that tomb and barricade the doors. Moiragh and Morgan are somewhere in this forsaken place. As are Morgott and Mohg. Make yourself an obstacle, and I will not hesitate to remove you from my path. Am I clear?”

Aster rubbed the scalding ichor from his face with the back of his hand. “Who is Morgan?”

“My son.”

“You made another?”

“I have four children,” Cyrielle replied, clipped. An instinctual retort she hadn’t desired to give but had been unable to contain.

Perhaps it was the wraith of Varré curled around the shell of his ear that goaded Aster. Vicious words sat inert on his tongue: a colorful jab about how Marika would die again to see the title of Elden Lord had been granted to an Omen’s broodmare. But he clenched his jaw to keep his voice caged. The thought tasted foul until he simply swallowed it down. Once upon a time, he might have been the sort of man to speak cruelly without restraint. He couldn't know for certain, because too much of him was burned. But he refused to start with Cyrielle. No matter how irritating her attitude.

“You can tell me about them,” he offered instead.

“Why would I?” The predictably angry retort.

“You’ll feel better if you do. You don’t think I’m not grand company. Whatever. Tell me about someone you do love.”

“You don’t care about them. I do not want you to pretend that you do.”

He wished the woman would give him an iota of credit. Still, he supposed she was correct. Children were not interesting on principle. If Cyrielle regaled him with tales of her well-adjusted and adored offspring, his thoughts of them would be lost to the great sea of ash in his skull- forgotten. He did remember Marie, though. The eldest. The younger, goat-eared, ram-horned double of Morgott. And Moiragh.

Moiragh…

Aster had seen her face once through glintstone eyes. Varré’s sanguine ambitions had clotted and dried. He was a shattered skeleton in the abandoned Mohgwyn Palace grounds. His meager legacy survived in the face and eyes of a woman who would never know him. Moiragh was not Cyrielle’s child by blood, but the girl was the implied fifth kit of the Elden Lord’s litter. So, there was one kid Aster of Caria worried about.

If only he could comprehend why she had banished him here.

Aster got to his feet. His feet ached. Blisters bloomed between every toe. What he wouldn’t give for dry, clean boots. But he’d endured worse, so he stood. And though Cyrielle had not been able to chart a course for them, they began to walk. With the catacombs at their backs, forward was the sole path available to them.

“Do you like it at least?”

“Hmm?”

“Being a mother.”

“Of course.”

Aster grunted, “Really? You never struck me as the type.”

A half-lie. Aster very well couldn’t remember most of the time he’d spent as Cyrielle’s traveling companion. Perhaps she’d babbled endlessly about her blissful dreams of parenthood.

The golden shape of Cyrielle undulated in an amorphic gesture Aster assumed was a shrug. “It was not something I dwelled on, no. I did not journey to the Lands Between intending to settle and raise a family. We all had the same purpose writ into our souls. We were supposed to kill the Demigods and repair the Elden Ring. I did try to ignore it for a while but… Well, you recall what it was like, don’t you?”

Aster was about to relay that he didn’t recall much of anything, when something shockingly stumbled out of the dark. The musk of a tomb clung to its clothes, but there was no grave dirt beneath its fingernails. Its shirt was torn and stained; its hands trembled in shackles. A iron mask encased its face, and from one round hole stared a bloodshot, indigo eye. Alas, the memory smelled of him. Stale and unwashed.

“Aster, am I losing you again already?”

“N-no. No,” he rasped. “I was just remembering… when I woke up. As Tarnished.”

Cyrielle hummed. Curiosity stripped some of the acid from her tone. “You never told me about that.”

“Because it was horrible,” Aster confessed. He licked his dry lips. His voice was inching up his esophagus like bile. He did not want to share this past. But if he did not, it was liable to vanish forever. Everything spilled out.

“Godfrey’s Tarnished conquered my home. My people, whoever they had been. When no centimeter of earth remained free, the brutes remolded themselves into rulers and started inventing wars with one another. They were our bloody nobility, and when they died, they sealed armor and weapons in their tombs. Horses and dogs and slaves, too. All so that when Marika’s Grace summoned them home, they would be prepared.

“I was supposed to be someone’s slave. I’d committed a crime, and that had been my sentence. I was going to be some insufferable prick’s spiritual squire in his next life. Alas, Godfrey’s fellow sowed his oats in one too many of the local maidens. I had the blood of the Lands Between. I was the one Grace called.” Aster added mirthlessly, “Granted, a lot of this was told to me by the city priests and historians- I woke up completely clueless. What a lark it was.”

Cyrielle said nothing. Aster listened to her gentle tread over grass and stone. He tripped over a root, and she did not reach out to help him keep balance. He puffed as he recovered his footing.

Then he muttered, “So, uh, I suppose I understand what you mean. Hard to imagine a life at the end of the trial when the trial was all there was.”

Cyrielle was silent for a long while. “My first was an accident. I should not have been so naive. It was bound to happen. But I was content to just be Morgott’s wife. I treasured that safety after everything. Then suddenly I was pregnant, and a part of me mourned. It was over. I had ruined everything.” Her voice wavered. Aster could picture its quaking. “It was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. Volcano manor was probably worse but-” Aster snorted, bemused. Cyrielle did not berate him for it. “But then she came, and she was perfect. It was like the final piece of me I had left behind finally caught up to me. I am happy.”

“Oh.”

The chilled mountain wind scoured Aster’s overwarm cheeks.

“Aster?”

“Yes?”

“Are there any sorceries that might lead us?”

There was heat on his neck. Aster dabbed away an oozing tear trail of magma. “No.” But he thrust his stolen staff in Cyrielle’s direction. She leaned away from him before realizing he was offering it to her, not brandishing it. “If a conduit is what you need, glintstone is as good as any.”

Cyrielle sniffed, “Erdtree magic cannot be channeled through glintstone.” She took the staff anyway.

“Tsk. Erdtree scholarship. So narrow minded. What is the harm in trying? Either it works or it does not, and we are no worse off.”

Cyrielle exhaled. Short and sharp- too soft to be a snort of exasperation. She’d laughed. Not in a sour way- at his expense. A person only made a noise like that when they were smiling.

She removed herself by several paces. As if twirling a staff around required so much space. The coiled sword was pointed towards the ground, and it was the vague outline of the staff she held aloft, reflecting her light.

Aster smirked despite himself when the staff began to radiate its own golden glow. If only because it meant he’d been right. Its corona steadily grew- in seconds it matched Cyrielle’s shine. Then it eclipsed her. Scabs around Aster’s sockets cracked as he squinted against the luminous assault. But he witnessed the collapse of the spell. The aurora was hewn by a splinter of sable. The whole thing crumpled inward with a mighty crack!

The ground shuddered. As if to shrug Aster off of its shoulders. He kept his footing as the world moaned. Stone shattered and earth shifted. Wood groaned, and the wind whistled as its trajectory was disturbed. The mountain pass heaved, beleaguered, for what felt like an age. It settled just as slowly. Resentfully. Aster only dared speak when all had become still once more.

“What happened?”

He couldn’t see. But there was Cyrielle. Just Cyrielle. A sputtering ember wreathed in smoke.

“The staff is broken. Sorry.”

The flint of her voice was insincere. It was desperately- and unsuccessfully- disguising her blatant fear.

“I don’t care about that! What happened? I- I didn’t see…"

The shrill shrieks of flushed birds quieted. Trees ceased shivering. Leaves shaken loose brushed Aster’s face as they fell. He batted them away from his nose, spitting like a spooked kitten. Then he heard nothing but Cyrielle’s quickened breath.

“We have to go,” she declared.

“You really aren’t going to tell me what the f-"

“Magic will not lead us. What more needs said?” She snapped. Her hazy form jerked, and Aster heard the cleaved halves of his weapon disappear noisily in the undergrowth. Cyrielle had tossed them aside. “Stay close.”

“Cyrielle-"

“Speak again, and I will leave you here.”

Aster was confident that she wouldn’t. Otherwise, she would have just pushed him down the shaft in the catacomb. She’d had innumerable chances to be rid of him. Whatever had convinced Moiragh to bring them to this place had required him. Cyrielle was not about to tempt its ire by disposing of him.

Regardless, he pressed his lips together as Cyrielle positioned herself behind him. Until her panting was a buzzing swarm in his ears.

“I- Follow my guidance,” Cyrielle ordered shakily.

“Naturally, milord.”

Her guidance was communicated in touch. He sidled when she tapped his shoulder. Bent if her fingers poked his crown. It was slow going. They inched along to the arduous pace of Cyrielle’s caution.

With the Elden Lord at his back, everything before Aster was pure abyss. If he desired to give himself a worse migraine, he could squint and parse out the barest differences in obsidian shades. The outlines of objects as divine dust collected on their surfaces. But as it was, Aster was blind. And Cyrielle’s stifled breathing and ginger directions made Aster feel as though he were being forced down a narrowing tunnel.

“Step up.”

The command came too late, and Aster tripped. Cyrielle caught him, hissing her annoyance. He was pricked in the calf by something cold. He was overused to pain, however. He did not react as a drop of hot blood welled at the tiny wound. What was one more tacky substance to collect in his boot?

“All well?” Cyrielle muttered.

“Yeah. ‘M fine.”

Not long after, the leering sensation of dread ebbed away- removed its hovering fangs from Aster’s nape. Cyrielle’s shepherding became less insistent and flighty. The den of ancient terror widened.

Cyrielle sighed over his crown, “Mercy at last! People! Omen!” He was jostled as she rushed past him to, presumably, hail the people she’d spotted. She shouted, “Hello!”

She was answered by the compounding, territorial rattle of a dozen blades being drawn.

Chapter Text

“You haven’t taken your eyes off of him for hours.”

It was like Cuta to try and startle Cyprus when he was on watch. His barbels twitched, “How would you know, unless you haven’t taken your eyes off of me?”

She sidled up to him. Her greatsword was sheathed at her back because she carried rations in her cupped palms. They were shallow bowls of thick, spiced gravy poured over simmered rada fruit and seeds. The plains fostered many succulent grains that were more flavorful and nourishing than pith. But those crops were dried and stored for the dearth of winter. The bitter fruit rotted quickly, so it was eaten first. Two young, soft-shelled spider scorpion claws floated in the fragrant sauce. A purely indulgent addition to the meal. Cyprus immediately set to sucking the meat out of a knuckle.

“You’re supposed to be guarding him.”

“He doesn’t need my protection.” Cyprus gestured with a spice-stained finger at the tower’s entrance. A new curtain had been hung to replace the one Mohg had torn away. And before the archway, a mountain of offerings was piled. Woven textiles of rich purple- tunics and shirts that would never fit him. Carved spirals and horn tenders. However, most of the gifts consisted of food. Not from Belurat’s stores, but from its people’s own larders. Purses of barley and cracked jars of flour. Roasted nuts and dried venison. Fresh fall vegetables and fruits- the truly precious stuff. Mohg was pawing through it all. Squatted on the cobbles picking delicately at his spoils. Cyprus groused, “They adore him.”

“Well of course they do. I didn’t see it myself, but…” Cuta raised a brow and Cyprus sighed.

“I saw it all from Prospect Town. I…”

When Cyprus had traversed the Gravesite Plain as a grimy child heavy with grief, the furnace golem had been there. Patrolling aimlessly in the grassy tide. It had come with the armies and stayed when they left. Belurat’s warden of fifty years had finally fallen. To a hornsent. To a blood worshiper. The ground surrounding its remains continued to smolder. Or so the scouts purported. Cyprus disguised his shivering by biting into the spider scorpion claw. There was still a delectable crunch to it.

“I know,” Cuta bit her lip. “Look, do not hate me, Cy.”

“What?”

“Grandam wants to speak with him.”

“About the furnace?”

She nodded. Cyprus sniffed and shook his head. He’d suspected this was coming. The arrival of a big, handsome hornsent was above the old woman’s notice. But the ruination of the Impaler’s abomination was not.

“So that is why you put these claws in my food. You think a bribe will make me as soft and sweet.”

Cuta chuckled, “It was Grandam’s idea. You owe her, now. Make sure you get Mohg and the girl in front of her.”

She waved him off, then. Relieving him of one duty just to saddle him with another.

He dawdled so that he could finish his meal as he walked with his aid. So that he could stare at Mohg a bit longer. Cyprus wasn’t the only gawker. Mohg had attracted an audience the moment he left his shelter. But he was blind to their interest and deaf to their whispers. He wore a gold-tasseled sarong- no one had been able to find any robe or shirt that could fit him and accommodate his horns or wings, apparently. He smoothed down the feathers of his chest idly as he sorted his gifts. As his wings shifted in adjustment, Cy realized Mohg wasn’t quite alone.

A flock of bairns prowled in his shadow. Thin urchins and rosy-cheeked apprentices. Children dressed in threadbare rags and children swaddled in rich clothes. Tiny hands would reach out from the feathered shelter of his wingspan- would paw at his leg- and Mohg would bestow upon them his own offerings.

His generosity was thoughtless. It rankled Cyprus to see so many of their resources be lavished upon the stranger. Then, it rankled him to watch Mohg give it all back to grasping children. Cyprus knew he was being unfair. Regardless, he spooned his meal of chaff gruel into his mouth as a scruffy bairn made off with a jar of candied citrus peels. A priceless luxury from Rauh no one- not even the Inquisitors and Warriors- had been allowed to taste in nearly a decade.

“None of it to your liking?” He asked briskly as he approached. He set his empty bowl upon the makeshift shrine.

“What use have I for trinkets and treats? I will leave soon and take nothing with me. Your children are wasting away, and your city’s generosity is heaped upon me in error.”

“My apologies. I should have told them to bleed out upon the stones instead.”

“If it were earnestly given, I would be honored.”

His honesty ripped the barbs from Cyprus’s tongue. He stammered, “...I think not. We’re already being bled dry for a greedy God.”

Mohg hummed. The sound grated upon itself until it became a raspy purr. Though it was for the children, Cyprus felt his face warm. Mohg murmured, “I am grateful for the joy of the bairns. The sign we found in Prospect Town soothes only so far.”

“I have no children myself… I can only imagine your worry.”

“Why ever not? You possess the temperance for it, Warrior.”

He was being mocked. An eager child yanked a fistful of feathers from Mohg’s wing membrane. He didn’t flinch. Cyprus winced on his behalf. Mohg laughed; it was a light puff of breath.

“This is nothing. This is joy. Happy bairns will pluck you bald. It is their way. Happy bairns will conceive of the most astounding ways to freeze the blood in your veins.”

Cyprus leaned on his staff. “Oh?”

Mohg was an enormous man- when tension loosed from him it was astoundingly visible. His shoulders dropped a few centimeters. His wings sagged so that the flight feathers puddled around his feet. A filmy veil of reverie made distant his eye.

“The Crucible formed my daughter without flaw. But she hatched early. My child, she could not reason that the state of her wings kept her gravity-bound. She convinced herself that she must instead cast herself off of greater and greater heights. Every moment my back was turned she scurried to a lofty ledge, eager to throw herself from it.”

It was impossible to ignore the honeyed, dewy softness in his gaze. That flint of searing gold was made molten. His acerbic front sloughed off in the remembrance of his daughter.

“She was so small I could catch her in the cradle of my hands.” He cupped them, made a bowl of callouses and scars and claws. “Oh, what a game it was to her. Because she knew I would never let her fall.”

Cyprus grappled with the urge to point out that if he had let the girl plant her face in soil once or twice, she’d learn she wasn’t destined for flight. But what purpose would those words serve, but to poison Mohg’s reminiscing? He tried to recall if his mother had ever attempted to weed such habits from him, or if she had been hovering and permissive. Memory taunted him behind a screen of smoke.

“I used to chew on my barbels. One would think the pain would be deterrent enough. Grandfather would slap my hands in warning. I don’t believe he ever got used to…”

The memory disintegrated into soot before it could wound him further. Mohg was gracious enough to let his story limp by unfinished.

He replied, “My child was months old when she grew her first set of teeth.” He pointed absently to a spot on his shoulder, brushing aside the feathers there. Beneath the dark shafts, silvery pockmarks were revealed. Needled half-moons hewn into his body.

Cyprus whistled his sympathy. The bairns that clambered over Mohg gave Cy a wide berth. The stranger’s teeth and horns deterred them not. But Cyprus’s swords made the children wary. They skirted his legs to pilfer more vittles from the horde.

“She sounds like she was a handful.”

“She is perfect,” Mohg’s immediate rebuttal. He patted his bristling ruff down with a stiff hand.

Cyprus tilted his head, “I must ask, though. Who is the woman, if not your daughter?”

“She is my brother's daughter. More of my family is lost in these lands. I must seek them out. As soon as my niece recovers.”

“I am fine,” the protest heralded the young woman’s emergence. She ducked to exit the tower; she was nearly Mohg’s height. And though her horns were not as numerous as his, they were enormous. She did not look dissimilar to a leonine ram- complete with a shaggy white mane and lopped ears. “You’re the one dallying.”

The bairns huddled against Mohg in fear of the woman, though she possessed fairer features. Perhaps it was because she vaguely resembled the Dancing Lion. Shyness corralled them into Mohg’s shadow. Mohg, for his part, hefted a basket and plonked it in front of his niece.

“Eat.”

“My, there’s something left for me after all!” she declared teasingly.

Mohg hissed to Cyprus, “She would never speak to her father that way. The little coward.”

The top of Cyprus’s branching horns barely grazed the woman’s clavicle. ‘Little’ felt like a patronizing descriptor. And indeed, the woman’s small smile hollowed itself of mirth. She busied herself with breakfast. Her tail flicked its horned end irritably.

“Marie,” Mohg began. Either oblivious to the woman’s embarrassment or unfazed by it. “This man is Cyprus. A Warrior of our generous host.”

Then Marie’s attention was upon Cyprus, and he at last sympathized with the bairns. The irises of her eyes were gleaming gold seeded with fiery embers. They glowed all the brighter in black sclera. But it was not her appearance that unnerved him, but her youth. She towered over every living soul in Belurat- save her uncle- but she was hardly older than a child. There were linen wraps on her arms; they stank of the poultices used to treat burns. Someone had taken shears to her hair, for most of the scorched ends had been cut away.

“Thank you. The people here are very kind.” A bandaged hand, fingers reddened and sore, reached for dark bread. Whole seeds speckled the crust. Most of Belurat subsisted on pan fried cakes of flour ground from rada casings and water.

“Well, that isn’t my doing-”

“Would you like it?” she asked. Her hand hovered over the loaf, waiting for Cyprus to stake his claim.

Cyprus’s face was aflame. Of course he wanted it, despite the fullness of his belly. Despite having just eaten a decadent meal.

“N-no.” Resentment smoldered, and he wished he could extinguish it.

“You might as well partake,” Mohg rasped. “As I said, we shall take little with us.”

Cyprus clasped his hands behind his back. “Ah, well. Be that as it may, before you continue on, the sages of Belurat would like to meet you.”

“Well shall not.” Mohg’s blunt refusal.

Marie scowled, bared a fang. “Papa!”

“They will beg to keep us,” he said plainly. “I would spare them the heartache.”

“I…” Cyprus floundered. Though he did not know for certain what the Grandam would ask of the Lands Between hornsent, he felt as though Mohg had flayed him with his talons to discover a secret he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying.

“What consequence awaits us, Warrior, should we refuse the summons?”

“None. You are not our prisoners. All the Grandam requests is a conversation.”

Mohg chuffed, amused by Cyprus’s futile insistence. But Marie stood. She swallowed down her mouthful of food and brushed invisible crumbs from her whiskers.

“I will go.”

Mohg said nothing. The nostrils of his nose flared, but his expression was otherwise inscrutable. Not so to Marie, it seemed. She turned to address Cyprus.

“I will go. Will you escort me, Sir Cyprus?”

Cyprus blinked at the title. It was one more dagger slotted under his ribs. Every wound this conversation had earned him bled painfully onto the cobbles.

But surprisingly, it was Mohg who grunted, “He is no knight. He is a Warrior.”

Then he rose, lending the umbra of his wings to the omnipresent shade of the Veil. To Cyprus’s appreciative nod, he explained, “Where the child goes, I go.”

Marie smiled a bit smugly. Cyprus felt sorry for her. He wasn’t even sure why.

“What of the…?” Cyprus swept his arm to gesture at Mohg’s offerings.

He scoffed, “Leave them.”

“It will be rummaged through, I fear.”

“Good.”

The path was a mercifully short one. The spire that had become Mohg’s den was one of many that circled the city’s center. Several of the spires had fallen in the sackings that punctuated the centuries. They’d been rebuilt to be toppled again and again. Now, those that collapsed were left alone. There wasn’t enough labor or materials to spare for them. And, frankly, it was doubtful anyone alive had the knowledge and skill to head a reconstruction. Cyprus, Mohg, and Marie toed over a patch of rubble to cross the street. Cramped, makeshift homes conjured from the detritus and brick crowded the corner.

It was difficult to bear Marie’s blatant, wide-eyed curiosity.

“It is like Leyndell,” she murmured to Mohg. “-before Da rebuilt it.”

Cyprus had never heard of the place, but he figured it was not a positive comparison.

Belurat’s grandest spires and temples accompanied the divine theater. This was where the spirit callers and sages were educated. The campus for tenacious but dwindling erudition enclosed a graveyard. It had once been a handsome garden- a vain, verdant ornament. But Belurat, so desperate to bury their dead in the midst of a siege, had torn up the flowers and hedges to reclaim the soil. Rings of severed horns bound to wooden branches were planted into the earth. A dense crop that was only disturbed to mend broken or rotted stakes. The entwined tree at the courtyard’s center was the one reminder of the place’s original purpose; it was too sacred to dispose of. The city had not buried anyone there in two hundred years or more. It was full.

Shorn horn effigies had been deemed heretical in the past. It was a heathen practice to desecrate a hornsent’s body to keep a trinket. But those who could not afford to make the proper shrines for their departed- and, really, who could?- simply cut off a horn. It was housing for the deceased’s spirit should they wish to walk the Belurat streets again. A tutelary deity in absurd miniature. It was, however, strange to Cyprus to think the ritual of grief had not always been this.

The graves did not faze Mohg. Perhaps he did not recognize them for what they were. Or worse, he was aware and was numb to it. Ah, the young woman idly flexed a wrist to touch a curling horn. Mohg tugged her away. He understood.

He did.

Is there any land that doesn’t wish us dead?

Their destination was a smaller building squeezed between larger towers- domed at the top of its third story. It was an intimate lecture hall transfigured into a place for priests and sages and governors to congregate. Thankfully, the entryway was large enough for Marie to duck into. Mohg paused in the threshold. Head cocked towards a huddle of grimy vagrants. Cyprus bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from spitting on impulse.

“Something the matter?” He asked. More sharply than he’d intended to.

“They have no horns. They are the first of their sort I’ve seen since waking in your hospitality.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Their eyes are black. Their Grace is severed.”

“On the Impaler’s orders,” Cyprus tossed forth the obligatory defense. Lest the stranger blame Belurat for the wretches’ fates. “They are hostages. That is the excuse the Inquisitors get told, at least. But they each bear the Iris of Occultation. The Erdtree peoples have forsaken them. Should the fires come again, these blind bastards will earn us no mercy.”

Mohg watched the spurned of the Impaler’s armies haunt the dusty shelter they had been graciously given. Shining, abyssal eyes streaked their sooty cheeks with tears. Each had once yielded flame and steel against the hornsent. Each one was a murderer. A pillager. A defiler. And the city heaped upon them underserved kindness. They lived like beggars, and it was better than they deserved.

Cyprus awaited with vicious dread for Mohg to cast judgement upon him- to express sympathy for the pathetic lot. Instead, he grunted in his throat. Vanished in a rustle of feathers into the hall. It was Cyprus that lingered in the street’s end. Anchored by hatred and grief. As a Warrior of the Tower, the disgraced soldiers disgusted him. Though they saw nothing of the holy city- blinded by the seal planted upon their eyes- they tainted it all the same. A woman jogged to the hovel, a jar of water balanced against her hips. She greeted Belurat’s hostages warmly. Caressed the cheek of a sobbing, gray-haired man. Cyprus trailed after his charge seething. He had been born without Grace, and he got along perfectly fine.

They ascended the stairs in a single file. Belurat’s guests were so broad there was no other option. Cyprus went first, which was also necessary. But his slow pace, he supposed, allowed everyone time to admire the architecture. The dome was supported by spiraled columns. Twisted yellow banners spanned the distance between each. Braided tassels dripped from their edges. But the ceiling itself was the most spectacular feature. It was a mural of a cyclone; lightning forked through swirling hues of silver and gray. Rampaging within the current of wind was a mirrored pair of Divine Lions. Ferruginous horns crowned their heads. Roaring jaws were rimmed with fangs in excess. Dull mauve cloaks flowed from their shoulders. And below their snarling muzzles and splayed claws stood an entire retinue of Horned Warriors flanking a diminutive, elderly woman. Strangely, but fortunately, no Inquisitor was among them.

She sat in a seat typically reserved for a sage lecturer- a square bowl of a chair filled overbrimming with cushions for the Grandam’s aged hips. Beneath her headdress, ruddy horns jutted forth. She could not see, but Cyprus could feel her disapproving glare all the same.

Behind Cyprus, Mohg made a low noise. Bemusedly condescending. He was unimpressed with the welcome. Cyprus’s pride was inexplicably wounded.

“Amused?” The Grandam asked. She had heard him, too.

“Only by your guard,” Mohg admitted. When he did not deign to elaborate, Cyprus winced.

“Thou art Mohg, I am told. And Marie?” The Grandam did not await an answer. “I am a Sage of Belurat.” All this said bluntly. Shoving formalities and greetings to the side.

“We will not receive the honor of your name, Sage?”

Grandam ignored Mohg’s question, “Didst ye behold it, the lament of Belurat? The memorial to our dead innumerable. To the masses starved, burned, and tortured.”

”Indeed.” Mohg’s tone was cold caution. Polite but without compromise.

Cyprus, for a moment, feared for the old woman. The embers of iniquity had roused a flame within the priestess. But she would meet her match if she were not careful.

“The Erdtree people grew bored of slaughtering us. The march from their umbral Keep is too arduous for their delicate feet. They satiated themselves on the carcasses of their conquests and the prisoners they enslaved. Thus, Belurat was made a gaol. The furnace was appointed our warden. The invaders were given no cause to look upon us with torch in hand. Now the golem is dead! Messmer’s wretched eye will no doubt fall upon us again.”

Cyprus shuddered hearing the Impaler’s name. He saw himself as a bairn again, stumbling over smoking bricks. His shoes little more than leather scraps on his feet- his soles baked and bloodied. He’d crossed the plain to find the sacred city at his dead mother’s urging. He’d discovered instead a city in mourning. The gates were blackened, and a crowd wept beneath a cluster of pikes upon which horned men and women were speared through. They had been the city’s Sculpted Keepers. Cyprus had been taken in, despite the devastation. He had been raised to replace the martyred. Even in that he had ended up a failure.

“I did not do it for your sake,” Mohg snarled. Cyprus startled into the present. Gone was the pleasant rasp in Mohg’s tone. It was all bestial growling. “Is it your wish that I had sat upon my hands and watched my niece perish?”

“‘Tis my wish the child had exercised proper caution at the outset. Tsk. The Crucible did not bless her with wisdom.”

“She is without fault. I was fortunate enough to be met with your welcoming city when I was lost. The girl was alone.”

“Most curious,” the Grandam said. Clipped and acidic. “That ye should appear from nowhere, ignorant of this land and its perils, to kill a monster that hath claimed Keepers and the spirits within them. Stranger still, I hear the girl wielded Erdtree magic, and ye were untouched by the flames.”

Erdtree magic.

Cyprus had never witnessed Erdtree magic before. It must have been the gold streak Marie had summoned to buckle the golem’s leg. Miquella of the Lands Between had presumably tried to teach his hornsent followers the incantations of his homeland. In that, it was assumed he had failed, for no hornsent of Belurat was capable of wielding the power of healing.

“Well, girl?” the Grandam barked. “Demonstrate thy talent. Dispel the ridiculous rumor or impress us with thy gifts.”

The Warriors leaned forward. Cyprus was not exempted. He turned to watch Marie with cinched brows. The girl stood ramrod beside her uncle, fists clenched at her sides. Unbeknownst to her, Mohg’s hand hovered at her elbow. Cyprus recognized the conflicted compassion of a parent: to offer support unasked for or to let Marie handle the challenge unaided. Either way, his eye had become an auric dagger stabbing into Grandam's forehead.

Marie shook her head. “No.”

The Grandam sneered, “A lion she doth seem, but a rabbit’s spirit resideth within the fearsome vessel.”

“I am no coward,” Marie lifted her chin. “But I am no performer, either.”

“Ha!” The Grandam cackled miserably. Thin, veiny hands beat against her knees once. “Nay. Speak plainly, then. Art thou a charlatan instead? Useless!”

“Useless!” Mohg snarled at last. “Charlatan! Coward! Pathetic insults you spit in the face of a princess without gratitude! Without reverence! Your warden is dead! Yet more you demand of her! Of me!”

“Ye have damned us!” The Grandam cried. Her bony fist she thumped against her lap.

Mohg raked his claws down his arm- scored red furrows into his flesh. Blood dripped down his arm, into the bowl of his hand, and to his claws. He flung out his arm. Splatters of shimmering ichor painted the rug before the Grandam and her guard. Then it- and Mohg’s arm- caught fire.

Brilliant crimson heat flared in a menacing arc. It banished the chill of autumn. Shouts of alarm chased one another into the domed ceiling- “Messmerfire!”- where they were devoured by the cavorting lions. The Warriors that issued them drew their serrated weapons.

“Messmerfire!” the Grandam echoed, despairing. “In the blood of a vessel so blessed! An omen this is!”

Though she had given no order, some of the Warriors converged onto Mohg. The polished surfaces of their blades were stained by the reflection of the fire. As though they’d already been bloodied.

Cyprus stepped between Mohg, Marie, and the advancing Warriors. “Enough!” he barked at them, embodying thunder. “Find your wits, will you! He spouts bloodflame, not the Impaler’s affliction."

He was the least of their number. A tottering invalid compared to the rest of them. For a moment, the instigating Warrior appeared as though they would plow through Cyprus anyway, serene mask incongruent on the shivering, furious body it was conjoined to. But the Grandam’s interjection snatched the impulsive desire from them.

“A worshiper of the Formless Mother?”

Cyprus answered, “Yes. The Bloodfiends treat him as kin.”

He hadn’t wanted to betray Mohg like this. But it was far better to be known as a Blood Cultist than to be lumped in with the Impaler’s lot. Mohg’s resounding growl unmoored the last lingering will for retribution. Cyprus's intercession hadn’t rescued Mohg and his niece from the Horned Warriors; he had saved the Warriors from them.

“My blood is fire,” Mohg hissed. His words were the heat of his flame made manifest. “The Mother cherishes my blessings, but her favor did not ignite my blood. I have always been this. All Omen of the Lands of the Erdtree are born with this boon. This power you cower before allowed me to tear your warden apart!”

Marie placed her hand on Mohg’s ravaged arm. Gold glowed beneath her fingers. And as the red flames smothered themselves, intangible threads stitched Mohg’s self-inflicted wound closed. Her magic chimed, not unlike a bell. She wilted, and Mohg bore her weight unflinchingly. The fire on the rug was extinguished, leaving only a scorch mark. The Warriors, instantly drained of hostility, murmured in awe.

The Grandam’s lip curled as the acrid stink of smoke wafted from the rug. “Hornsent with blood that resists the consuming flame. Hornsent that can call upon the Erdtree to heal. Ye are surely emissaries of the divine. The deliverance born of thousands of prayers unceasing. Our curse upon Marika’s Land brought ye to our lands.”

Mohg’s jaw clacked at the mention of a curse. But he said nothing. Marie’s eyes were guilelessly wide. Not Mohg. He was stoic, like a statue of a long-dead sage revived.

“If ye know not the purpose of ye arrival, I shall tell ye!” Grandam declared. “The curse beareth fruit! The seed hath sent ye forth! Wrest the Serpent from the shadows and destroy him!”

The curse. The hex was as lovingly maintained as the entwined trees in Belurat’s mass grave by the order of scholars with which the Grandam had been trained. They sustained the vitriol of the hornsent. They fed to an ancient malediction the pain of thousands of wraiths. The humiliation of those shorn and defiled. They brushed against the Crucible itself. Cyprus appreciated the power of curses, but he had not held faith in the messianic hex in decades. The lay people of Belurat invoked it as a prayer. Because it was always comforting to imagine the strumpet’s ruinous humiliation even if it was unlikely to come to pass.

Mohg’s eye narrowed. As the Warriors surrounding him bowed, only Cyprus witnessed the spark of Mohg’s ire: he did not appreciate being compared to a curse.

“We cannot ask him to abandon his family.” Cyprus argued. Quiet, for he found himself plagued by an unsourced anger. “Taunt his niece. Run at him with blades. Kneel before him as though he were an Erdtree Lord. It will not matter, because none of you are listening.”

Silence, then, shrouded the room. As if Cyprus’s meek scolding was a hex itself that had stolen their voices. Mohg filled the empty space as though Cyprus had set a stage for him.

“Foolishly, you each mistake my kindness for servility.”

“Kindness!” the Grandam hissed.

“You still live, yes? Have I not answered your insults with remarkable restraint?”

At last, the Grandam was willing to give up the final word. Mohg met Cyprus’s gaze. His jaws parted a sliver, and Cyprus thought he might address him. But his tongue merely ran across the backs of his teeth, collecting spittle before it became drool. Then he left the room, herding Marie out with him.

Each Warrior was rooted to the rug- awaiting direction as Mohg and Marie descended the spiral stair out of sight. Cyprus was no better off. His breaths were exerted. As if he had taken to chasing after them instead of staring at the arched entryway gormlessly.

“Find ye a post,” the Grandam barked to her guard. Humiliation was a whetstone to her voice. “I have caused our guests offense. Should they indeed depart, hinder them not. But if retribution they seek, meet them with steel.”

The Warriors hastily abandoned the room. Cyprus remained. Ensnared by an amorphous obligation.

“Cyprus.”

“I apologize for speaking out of turn.”

But the Grandam just waved her hand, sighing. Her venomous authority dissipated. She was suddenly a tired, elderly woman- a grandmother. She was one of the last hornsent who could call down the most primordial of spirits. Her prayers had once roused the Divine Beasts. The Horned Warriors were all her students, and that made her influential enough to lead them. It was not a role she’d chosen for herself. But if not for her, the Tower Inquisitors would have taken absolute control in the city.

“Waste not thine apologies on me. Thou spoke true. In my prayers I am sorely tempted to curse those girls. The vanished daughter and the foolish niece. But I must admit the fault is not wholly their own… If my son was imperiled…”

Cyprus cleared his throat, “It is not too late to apologize.”

“Bah! He hath been granted his weight in Belurat treasures. I will not honey my words for him.” But then the Grandam became solemn. “Belurat shall prepare for his absence… We shall evacuate to the gaol.”

A desperate measure. Cyprus grimaced and whistled low. “Jori will not like that.”

“No one will like it,” Grandam groused, fussing with her trailing robes. “Jori and her Inquisitors have gone, anyway.”

“Gone? Where?”

“How am I meant to know? She was squawking about a ward trespassed as she was taking the horses! Despite my pleas. Bah! We need the beasts for the carts! Not chasing after blasphemers in our hour of need!”

The Grandam had no love for Jori. Respect, sometimes, but never affection. It was impossible to appreciate most of the Tower’s spiritual traditions when the threat of annihilation loomed. The ancient prescriptions for sacrifice and sainthood had fallen out of favor centuries ago. When the Impaler’s cull had dulled the luster of blood ritual.

The Tower was obscured in shadow. Apart from the Warriors and Inquisitors, hardly any of Belurat’s citizens cleaved to the old ways, let alone knew them. Besides, Jori had always scorned the Warriors for losing Belurat’s Divine Beasts. Only one remained in the hallowed theater. And it had not housed a spirit in decades despite the ardent prayers of the Grandam and her acolytes.

“How convenient that the Inquisitors should find an excuse to leave us.”

“Indeed,” Grandam sneered. But her heart wasn’t in it. No matter her misgivings, she was a Tower faithful herself. A scholar of bygone traditions, same as Jori. “Alas, she claimeth the horses, and I claim her gaol. Monsters and wraiths and all.”

Cyprus had entered Belurat’s gaol twice in his life. Ancient curses kept the tunnels iced in perpetuity. He recalled it, the collapsing, frigid cavern. Preserved by the rancor of spirits and the freezing cold. Even then, a hideous, rancid reek had pursued him down every slick corridor. It had been a place of holy work, abandoned to neglect even under the care of the Tower faithful. But even in the Land of Shadow, the resentment of the dead was an enemy the hornsent could survive. The Impaler’s wrath was not.

“Whatever must be done. Name the task, and I will set myself to it.” Whether that meant quelling the grotesque amalgams that crawled in the depths or warding the entrances or clearing the roads of debris. During the furnace golem’s tenure, the road had fallen into disuse. Only small, swift parties had even dared to travel it at all.

“Thou shouldst go with them. The Cultist and the Erdtree-tainted child.”

Shame prickled beneath Cyprus’s scales. “I am a poor excuse of a Warrior. But I can be of use-"

“Perhaps if thou hadst earned thy scars a hundred years ago, thou wouldst have been encouraged to follow the path of the tutelary ascetics. Two hundred years ago, thy body would have been offered to the Tower. Alas, the old ways suit us no longer. And perhaps this elder is glad for it. I remember thine earliest years with us- my son and I.”

Cyprus remembered them too.

“Well, I’ve no son now. No husband nor sisters. I have ye, those burdened with courage, faithfulness, and duty. My Warriors. I sense it, Cyprus. That man is part of something greater.”

“There were those that said the same of Miquella.”

“Marika’s whelp was no hornsent, was he? Go with him, I beg. Thou hast endeared thyself to him. Help the man find his child. Sometimes it is the spirits’ wont to be served before aid is granted.”

Cyprus privately believed the spirits had nothing to do with Mohg and his kin. Fire and blood were not the way of Belurat’s deities. But he felt no compulsion to argue this with his surrogate mother.

“If he will have me, I will go.”

“He will,” the Grandam asserted. Cyprus envied her confidence. Her voice dropped to a whisper, “Now, young man. I demand from thee honesty: is he truly as handsome as the whispers purport?"

Cyprus smiled, took up her hand to kiss the back of it. “He is gorgeous, Grandam.”

Chapter Text

“This is as far north as I dare go. The Ellac Greatbridge is only a few kilometers away. It is a miracle we have not met any of the Impaler’s patrols as it is.”

“If Moiragh crossed it, then I must follow.”

“She did not, I assure you,” Cyprus argued. “Castle Ensis controls the bridge. No hornsent would be permitted to cross.”

The implication was a noose around both of their necks. They had not encountered anyone sworn to the Impaler- the brother Mohg did not recall having. But they had caught glimpses between the trees: the dark, crimson sparks of distant torches stalking the ever-twilight, the far-off barking of hounds, and smatterings of black tents sighted on the horizon. There were pits full of bones. The roads they avoided were lined with corpses impaled on stakes taller than Marie. Mohg understood how the Lord had earned his namesake.

“We can search the area,” Cyprus continued. Perhaps unnerved by Mohg’s silence. “But it is best to camp in the village ahead. The Graceborn are terrified of it. We won’t be disturbed.”

They’d already scouted through three destroyed villages in the few days they’d traveled northward. Each had been an ashen husk. Crushed by the ancient, one-sided war. Reduced to scorch and shadow. They had inspired in Mohg grief. If not for the dead and displaced people who had once lived there, but for Moiragh who surely had stumbled through the same charred ruins alone.

This place was different. The moment Mohg saw crumbling buildings through the trees, his feathery nape prickled. Animal instincts roused themselves and peered from between his ribs. The tiny village was abandoned but not incinerated. The faint stink that wove between the narrow trunks reminded Mohg of the maggot-laden garbage piles he’d scavenged through in his youth. He hesitated on the path and issued a rumbling growl.

“It’s far from luxurious, but it is safe,” Cyprus declared.

“It smells of rot and disease.”

“Ah, well. That would be the plague. Does the Lands Between not have fly sickness?”

Marie balked, “Fly sickness?” She looked to Mohg with big, helpless eyes. Because her uncle was wise in his ancient age and had intimately known threats eradicated before her childhood. He shook his head for her and Cyprus’s benefit.

Cyprus scratched his bearded jaw, suddenly seeming very put-upon. “The town was blighted a long time ago, but it is no danger. The dead were given proper burial rather than burned. That keeps the illness at bay. All we must do is treat the man-flies with compassion. If any remain, that is. After so many years they tend to retreat into the chasms, the mountains, or underground.”

“Do they carry the plague?” Marie asked.

He shrugged. “They were its victims. Those infected typically died. Some, however, were transformed into the man-flies.” Then, to Marie’s horrified expression, he insisted, “We hornsent have dealt with this plague for an age. Man-flies nest in Belurat. So long as the dead are given due respect and the man-flies are not aggrieved, nothing can harm us.”

Cyprus had proved himself a competent guide. Mohg valued his company all the more since he’d defended them both in front of the foolish, elderly Sage. He chose to trust the Warrior’s judgement.

Marie required some coaxing before she would agree to camp in the ravaged town. “For Magpie,” she murmured as Cyprus led them past the first decrepit buildings. Nature was eroding the evidence of civilization. Birds’ droppings stained high windowsills and roofs. Roots buckled wooden foundations. Mohg realized how dark it had become when a cool misty drizzle began to drape itself over them. But every once in a while, he’d spot a peculiar formation nestled into a doorway or cradled in a ditch. They were insectoid carapaces- not unlike that of cicadas- the size of men. Each emptied of whatever had been pupating within.

Cyprus paused every so often, ears swiveling despite the weight of the rings in them. Listening, certainly, for the raspy buzz of wings. Mohg heard nothing, and apparently neither did his host. Cyprus relaxed and meandered down a muddy road towards an immense memorial- not unlike the one Mohg had witnessed in Belurat. Only, the stakes in the ground did not bear so many severed horns. Wreaths of ebony, thorny wood were instead laid before nearly invisible plots for the dead.

“I have been here twice before,” the Warrior explained. “- and I have never seen a man-fly about. Fortunately, that is still the case. All that remains is to pay our respects.”

He held his cane in both hands. He passed his fingertips over the stone at its handle. At his invocation, mist froze into amorphous shapes of icy fog. Silvery and barely seen. If Marie hadn’t gasped beside him, Mohg might have disregarded the spirits as artifacts of his poor vision. The spirits of snow danced around the graveyard. Their delicate but deliberate attention halted the encroach of the forest.

“Should we…?” Marie ventured.

“Spare them a kind thought if you must. A hornsent ought to do the hard work.” Cyprus’s eyes trailed the steps of his conjured spirits. Their twirling, symmetrical dance withered grasping tendrils and killed overgrown grasses. “Some say the fly sickness is no natural disease, but a curse run amok. It might have been a weapon made by Tower scholars to combat the Impaler. All it did was invite the choler of the spirits, I suppose. It is hornsent who suffer. As always.”

Soon, the spirits of wintry storms had done all that they could. Their fluid forms melted into rainfall, and they puddled around the wizened, entwined trees at the graveyard’s center.

With a soft sigh, Cyprus retraced his steps back into the village’s heart. The buildings there were sturdier. They’d weathered time and neglect better than their neighbors at the town’s edges. Cyprus surveyed a handful of them, stomping floorboards and kicking at support beams. Anything that complained too loudly was deemed unfit for shelter. He discovered a hidden cache buried beneath one house.

He pried open the musty hatch. “Villages like these are places of safe quarter for traveling hornsent. Old supplies are often stashed away.” He pawed through molded sacks of gray scraps- some sort of rancid jerky by the offensive scent of it. He frowned. “But it has been some years since I came here myself. It might do us good to hunt our own food.”

“I can do that,” Marie nodded, eager. In her hands, a conjured bow materialized. Slotted into her fingers as if she’d possessed it all the while.

“Then I will gather fresh water,” Cyprus said. “But remember that you must not harm the Crucible-blessed.”

Marie scowled. “The horned beasts? What does it matter? They are animals regardless. Perfectly suitable to eat.”

Mohg wasn’t quite angry on Cyprus’s behalf. But he was prepared to admonish Marie for her poor manners. It wasn’t necessary.

“Perhaps we thought the same, once. The Impaler’s forces claimed our great beasts. The most divine they hunted for sport. Some they tamed for war. The rest…” Cyprus waved a scarred hand flippantly. “The rest are culled.”

He looked as though he could carry on, describing the no-doubt vile and wasteful uses the Erdtree peoples found for Crucible-touched carcasses. But his flinty eyes absorbed Marie’s abashed expression and his jaw snapped closed.

“Alright,” she muttered. Spat in the tone of cracking ice. “I beg your forgiveness.”

She stalked off before it could be granted or denied. White-furred knuckles paled as she clenched them into fists. Mohg did not linger to hear Cyprus’s verdict either. He followed his niece. The oppressive cloud cover overhead and the approach of twilight forsook their surroundings to the pitch of night. But Marie’s silver hair gleamed with dewy droplets of condensation. At the treeline, Mohg finally called her name. She whirled on him, eyes round and glistening.

“Can I do anything properly? Magpie needed me, and I lost her. Belurat is going to be sacked thanks to me. I cannot even feed us without a lecture!”

Mohg closed the distance and took hold of her shoulders. The horns that sprouted from her clavicle were no deterrent. His thumb was pricked, and it bled a single, stingy droplet.

“You must not carry this blame.”

Marie snarled, “It does not matter how much of the fault is mine. The least I can be is useful. I am going to hunt.”

“I will accompany you.”

He would not let her wander the hostile wilderness alone. But he wasn’t about to needle her with useless warnings. She would have spurned them spitefully. The perfect scion of the Omen King, it was her nature to reject advice offered in love. And if she did not want him coming along, there was no feasible way for her to prevent him from doing so. Fortunately, she voiced no objection.

Mohg’s Crucible patchwork meant he was most deadly on the wing. The forest canopy was too dense for an aerial ambush. But in the dark, he could feel the sanguine warmth of prey. The cold rain and winds disguised their approach. He sniffed out the quarry, and Marie dispatched it with a golden knife or arrow. In a few hours, two deer were slain, as well as a huge, squat pheasant or grouse neither Mohg nor Marie had ever seen before.

The shower had become a downpour when they returned to the village with their spoils. Marie’s tail lashed irritably against Mohg’s legs, and it cursed him with painful nostalgia. He was reminded of the way Morgott used to stand beneath sewer grates to collect water during a deluge. Being wet had been a misery for him. But he’d endured to ensure they had pots full of water tainted only by Leyndell runoff.

Marie retreated into the shelter house with their carcasses. Grumbling and shivering from the restraint required to not shake herself out all over the interior.

“Poor thing. All that fur weighing her down.”

Cyprus emerged from one of the more dilapidated hovels. He was stripped down to his underclothes, but neither the damp nor the chill bothered him.

Mohg replied, “It seems like not so long ago we could not keep her from throwing herself into puddles.”

“I sympathize with the impulse,” Cyprus chuckled. “I was born with a water-loving nature. The moat of Belurat is poisoned, and the city is so… fragile. Storms are more trouble than they’re worth. So we beg the divine spirits to douse the plains rather than our streets. I have not felt this whole in years.”

“Rain was very precious to me in my youth. Where I made my home far from the Erdtree’s light, rain did not fall.”

“I could not imagine living in such a place.”

Mohg could not explain that he’d spent centuries chained away from open skies. An inclination for subterranean dens had been tortured into him. So, Siofra had been a perfect compromise. Cyprus’s remark had been careless but conversational. Mohg did not resent him for it.

Cyprus had removed the rings from his ears. They flapped with abandon as he shook out his sodden hair. His white mane spiked in wet tufts from his cheeks to his nape. A thick stripe of fur trailed down his spine. But his limbs and chest were hairless. Instead, copper and cobalt scales made a mosaic on his gray skin. They were densest along his forearms, thinning out to mere patches across his torso. Where the burn scar coiled over his body, his scales became silvery pebbles. Disorderly and displaced by osseous buttons. But even in the gloom his body shimmered. Blessed by the rains, he was bestowed a gorgeous patina of blue, green, and near-gold.

“You are staring,” Cyprus accused.

“You are beautiful.”

It was an honest assessment. But the truth often made people defensive. Mohg’s hornsent host bared his teeth. Then he looked askance- glared at the jars he’d set out to gather rainwater. His barbels flicked, agitated.

“You would be the first to say so in a very long while.”

“That is a pity.”

Cyprus recovered. The cracks hewn by his surprise were repaired with caustic substances. “What is it about me you find so alluring? My old age? Does your flaming blood desire this body ruined by fire?”

“I am old and scarred. I do not think myself ugly for it.”

“Well no. Of course not. You are stunning.”

It was apparently a sentiment shared by half of Belurat. Mohg had been ogled all his life. That other Omen were intrigued by his appearance scarcely bothered him. Except, the horned people of this land blushed when he caught their eye. It wasn’t just that he had vanquished their warden, but that they thought his features handsome. And that was rather novel to him.

“So… a princess. Marie is royalty?” Cyprus pounced on the opportunity to change the subject at Mohg’s hesitation.

“Indeed.

“That would make you…?”

“The brother of a Lord.” Mohg’s voice was beheaded by the shearing clack of his teeth.

“You told me the Lands Between was unkind to our sort.”

“It has changed since my brother claimed power. We sought Lordship through our own means. He cleaved to the Golden Order. I made a Dynasty in the Formless Mother’s name. He was successful. I was not.”

Cyprus absorbed his response. Pale brows hooded his violet eyes. Curiosity visibly warred with good sense. Then he asked a question Mohg did not hear.

There was movement behind Cyprus. A papery flutter in the shadow of one of the hovels. There was a delicate rasp that Mohg couldn’t be certain he'd heard over the percussive pattering of the rain. He squinted past Cyprus’s shoulder at a cluster of half-collapsed cocoons anchored to a home. Each and all were split open. The emergence of a newborn monstrosity had been immortalized by its sturdy, dried pupal casing.

A hand flopped out of a husk. Wizened and gray, it fell limply into a shallow puddle. A black vein climbed up its wrist, and moths with ravaged wings clumsily crawled across the palm.

The dead fingers twitched. Curled. The flash of a silver wedding band robbed Mohg of all sense. His pulse deafened him. And in the paralyzing fear he remembered what it was to be loved.

Then the creature within the cocoon sighed. The exhalation broadened the gaping seam of its cage. The void yawned at Mohg. Sound and light were torn away until he was certain he would be drowned by a hope so terrible he’d never surface again.

“Mohg!”

Fingers snapped under his chin. A spark of turquoise and a note like a knife in his ear. He sucked in a frigid breath. The fire within him hardly warmed it.

“You saw something?" Cyprus demanded.

But it was difficult enough keeping air in his lungs. Mohg could not answer beyond a pathetic gasp. His eye betrayed him; it darted to the huddle of pupal husks. Eventually Cyprus caught on and glanced in that direction as well. The corpse in the cocoon was gone.

“Flies? I know they’re a sight, but they are harmless.”

Mohg shook his head. It was a vision- madness. He knew that. But it was agony. His love survived despite all. He could not be rid of it as the wraith of his husband taunted him.

“Ah, I see how it is,” Cyprus whistled softly. He guided Mohg to sit, herding him with gentle gestures. The steps groaned at their combined weight. Neither man was small, and seated side by side their shoulders were crammed against one another. Mohg hands trembled.

Cyprus wrung his in his lap. “It seizes me as well, sometimes. Women shouting is what brought it on when I was young. Once, Grandam dropped an urn on her foot. The way she cried out, it was just like-” He stopped himself. Coughed to clear his throat. “Nowadays it’s the smell of burning. But that is the woe of three quarters of Belurat. Every meal is salted with someone's pain returned, it is said.”

“The cocoon,” Mohg grunted. Because he valued the comfort of hurts shared.

Cyprus was decent enough not to pry. “What I said before about the bridge… Please do not think that I have lost hope for your girl. Or you.”

Mohg wheezed. He could breathe now, but only just. As if his lungs were one more vessel for him to slowly drown in blood.

“We will find her,” Cyprus murmured.

“I must,” Mohg hissed. The words seared him. “I pray I perish if I do not.”

Chapter Text

In Samandari’s village, bairns sported shorn heads during their childhood. It was easier to teach young hornsent to care for their blessings without a tangled rats’ nest in the way. Healers could tend to the inflamed, cracked skin at the horns’ bases as they inevitably went through spurts of rapid growth. Oils could be rubbed into their ridges without causing matting. Until children proved to their families they could be trusted to cherish their horns, bairns wore scarves and caps over their tender scalps. Samandari’s friends had liked headdresses with braided tassels that hung over the ears best. They were very feminine. Samandari had instead favored the styles preferred by boys: simple and boxy caps secured with stiff bands sewn with beads. The kind that didn’t cover the nape, exposing Samandari’s neck to the sun.

Past a certain age, the presentation was meant to incite shame. What child older than ten lacked such pride in herself? Samandari, however, had been unbothered; she’d liked her hair short. Whenever it began to curl around the shells of her ears, she’d act out. She would bring her friends to her family’s orchard to eat fruits and neglect their chores. She would throw stones at eagles and quip at the sages to make her peers snicker.

Sammi!

The scolding of her mother was exhumed by bittersweet reverie. Her mother had rarely shouted; her condemnations were groaned in a drawl as though the mischief of her daughter was personally wounding.

She would then shave Samandari’s head, bemoaning that her lovely daughter was far too beautiful for a little boy’s cap and a bald head. But after the finger-wagging and exaggerated sighs, she would kiss Samandari’s forehead and hold her until her tears dried.

Samandari stared into the cold eyes of her reflection. Devoid of the gift of Grace, they did not glint with sacred ore in torchlight. Abyssal was how the wives of Sir Salza’s peers had described them. All of them Graceborn noblewomen with their blessings writ into their irises in shimmering hues. Samandari supposed they were right. The eyes of the Erdtree People mirrored their fortune and supposed superiority. Hers were gaping shafts to a hollowed-out spirit.

Salza liked long hair on women, thus Samandari had shoulder-length locks. Thick and straight, her hair only crimped in the Rauh humidity. It was as dark as her eyes- a shade of brown that appeared black in the eternal gloom of the Shadow Keep. She brushed it before the mirror. It was clean and silky. She hated it.

It was good for one thing, however: hiding the bands Salza had cinched around the bases of her horns. Gleaming gold choked pale, ridged bone with a limp hand. Samandari was one of the lucky ones. At worst, the bands gave her occasional migraines. She had met other hornsent- slaves or concubines granted the favor of gilded fetters- that writhed in their sleep and spent every waking moment in agony as their spirits were repressed. The bands were crude tourniquets. Instruments of torture more than wards against the Crucible.

In the mirror, Samandari’s lips twitched into a wicked smirk. It was with some satisfaction that she recalled the Grace of her captors could be severed with far more ease than her horns. As unimpressive as they were.

But dressed and groomed, she had no excuse to linger. For once, Salza had vacated the bed before her. They were not at his estate, but the Lord’s Keep. Here, Sir Salza was as much a servant to the Lord as Samandari was to her husband. She claimed a precious hour for herself. But she dared not risk a lengthier respite. As nice as solitude was, it was solitude in the Shadow Keep. She missed her husband’s manse.

There was routine at home. There was Rauh at home, even if a portcullis and kilometers of gated roads stood between her and any chance of returning to the place of her birth. Her husband’s estate was still muggy and green. Birds roosted in the crenellations and fog followed the morning rains. She was the Lady of that house. She’d had purpose beyond warming an old man’s bed. She was not needed at the Shadow Keep. Here, she was not a wife, but a vestigial tail to the eccentric Sir Salza- his indulgence. A useless hornsent girl was subjected to greater scrutiny than an indentured one. At least for this stranding, she had been set to a task.

Samandari was able to brave the Keep- to leave the sanctuary of isolation- for Reprimand’s captive.

Her husband’s study was directly below his bedchambers. But she had to venture into the hall to reach it. Which meant she was liable to pass a servant or an aged scholar or even an aimless Fire Knight. So, despite having just brushed her hair, Samandari donned a scarf over her head. It was the same rich, crimson hue that the Lord’s Knights were clad in. A pin at her clavicle bore the symbol of her husband’s order. The garb was meant to protect her from the Keep’s warier denizens- those that would take up arms against a strange hornsent interloper. But Samandari was only guaranteed safety at Salza’s side. If a Fire Knight saw fit to put her to the sword, a red scarf would be feeble protection.

Three keys jangled on a chain at her throat. The first was to the bedchambers, which she locked as she exited. The second opened Salza’s study. Samandari slid into a room that smelled deceptively familiar. Sir Salza was a sage of hornsent culture. Rauh demanded his interest most, as it was damaged least by the Lord’s crusade. Thus, Rauh was permitted a foothold in the heart of the Shadow Keep. Incenses made from herbs and flowers sourced from the region occupied an entire shelf. Withered vines and stunted trees that flowered but never bore fruit endured in their strangling pots. Broad leaves absorbed the meager daylight shining through the windows. All of Salza’s real treasures- the avian armor of a Warrior, the fertile gardens, the stone artifacts of the two-headed eagle- were kept at his estate across the bridge. But there was enough here to make his homesick wife grieve.

Half of the room was a cluster of worn desks and overcrowded bookshelves. The other half was partitioned by an iron cage. Salza had something similar in his manse. It was used in his experiments. Samandari had seen all manner of creature kept within: Miranda sprouts, winged spider scorpions, venomous lynxes, and Crucible-touched birds. This was the first time a person had been trapped in the cage.

The Keeper’s new cell was nicer than the one in the Fort of Reprimand. The Shadow Keep did not lack for dungeons. But Salza- and presumably the Lord- had thought it wise to keep her apart from the common and base. She was to be a secret from the hornsent that might recognize her as a deity and from the opportunistic hands of the Erdtree’s faithful.

Samandari went to the cage. To her chest she clutched her third key. It granted her entry into the cell. But it would not unclasp the shackles around her charge’s ankles. Salza had not said as much, but Samandari had known well enough not to ask- nor to attempt it. Even if she could remove the fetters from the woman, escape was impossible.

The well-greased hinges of the door yielded without the barest rasp of complaint. Though it would not have mattered if they’d screamed like a beast being flayed. The Sculpted Keeper slept as though dead- a peaceful wreath of feathers and horns. Samandari toed into the cell quietly- politely- all the same. She knelt beside her ward, breath shallow. But the woman did not stir. She hadn’t moved of her own volition since she’d been rescued from Reprimand.

Feed it. Water it. Keep its hygiene.

Salza’s brusque orders echoed in the stillness. What a grand scholar of the hornsent he made: he did not recognize an ascetic Keeper when he saw one. The woman would not require food. She was dormant. Hibernating. This was not unheard of…

Right?

Samandari had to believe that myths half-remembered were true. She had already tried to force the inert woman to take nourishment. She had managed to pry open her slack jaws before she was overcome with nausea. Her own fingers pressed to a pliant mouth! She had vomited thin bile into an empty teapot and then eaten the prisoner’s intended portions herself. They had been bland enough to stomach.

She noticed that blood rimed her charge’s nostrils. Crystalline flakes shone like rubies despite having dried. An oily bubble inflated at the corner of her mouth. Salza had impressed upon her that the Keeper’s blood was dangerous. Samandari was careful not to let it smear upon her skin as she sponged it away. If she bent close, she could see the purplish warmth blood brought to the woman’s deep gray complexion.

It was then- with Samandari’s cloth-robed finger nearly up her nose- that the Keeper’s eyelids cracked, exposing luminous yellow irises. Like the full moon rising over the Plateau. Samandari, startled as she was, found she could not make herself move. She watched consciousness crawl back to those hooded eyes. Then they drifted to her face.

“Oh,” the Keeper drawled drowsily. “You.”

Samandari could not help herself. “Me?”

Her voice was so atrophied the syllable had as much shape and intent as a gasp. But the Dragon’s Keeper seemed to understand. She grinned, squinting her eyes into cheery, crescent slivers. Even with her unwashed, stringy white hair half-draped over her face, she was beautiful.

“Quick heart,” the Keeper elaborated.

Unbidden, Samandari’s hand fled to her breast. Beneath her palm, her heart furiously thrashed against her ribs.

“Frightened.”

“Not by you,” Samandari insisted. She did not want the Keeper to think her cowardly.

“No,” the Keeper agreed gently.

Samandari licked her lips. Salza had ordered her to fetch him the moment the woman woke. But the Keeper was already drifting away. Her smile sagged in exhaustion and her eyelids were nearly shuttered.

“I pray every day that the curse upon you is lifted,” Samandari declared.

“Oh.”

Then the Keeper slipped back into slumber. Nonetheless, Samandari assured her, “Until then, I will protect you.”

—-------------------------------------

The next day, Salza was excitable. He barreled about their quarters, muttering to himself. So loudly that Samandari could not believably feign sleep until he departed to wherever his cloister of knights congregated.

She could not ask him what worried him, because he was about as eager to divulge his business to his wife as his wife was to hear it. If Salza possessed one decent trait, it was that he did not burden her with the responsibility of appeasing him always. There were men that struck their wives and berated them at the slightest upset. Salza was wise enough to understand his wife was not the source of his woes. That did not mean he didn’t expect a bit of commiseration now and again.

Her spine chilled when their eyes met. He chewed the inside of his cheek. His gaze bored into her- so dreadfully thoughtful that Samandari’s pulse was in her ears.

He said at last, “The Lord is gathering his knights to the Keep. Wear thy scarf always. Hidest thou thy horns. As soon as Lord Messmer doth determine the fate of the captive, I am sending thee home.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

Such tidings should have worried her. There were always Fire Knights at the Keep, but Salza’s warning implied that more were returning from their fronts. From bitter encampments and blood-soaked forts. Men and women who fed their own resentment as they put Samandari’s people to the torch. But in the moment, she was simply relieved that her husband did not cross the room to paw at her.

Salza sighed, “Gaius arrived in the night. I shall ask him if he might allow thee to greet the boar, hmm?”

Samandari could not fend off her gratitude. Gaius was a strange man. He was as much a knight as the Lord’s guard, but he was not granted the title of Sir. Though he was from the lands of the Erdtree, he was not one of its people. He was as Graceless as the hornsent, but the Lord favored him before many of his noble Fire Knights. Despite that, he was reserved. Tolerant. Almost kind. He knew Samandari was fond of his mount.

Despite herself, she smiled. Her husband smiled back, and the gold in his eyes sparkled handsomely.

“Be diligent, Samandari. Be brave,” he commanded good-naturedly before donning his hood and leaving her alone.

An hour later, in the study, the Keeper coughed. Bloody saliva dripped down her chin in viscous globules. The colors within the crimson shone against her violet-black skin. Her white fangs were stained pink. Samandari was frozen in panic as her charge wiped the substance onto the back of her hand. Then she sat up. On her own.

“Quick Heart!” Her voice was not so drowsy, but it was soft. “I am glad...”

Samandari was startled by the noise that loosed from her throat. It was a hiss that sizzled between her teeth as she rushed to the Keeper’s side. It was a sound her mother had always made when her Sammi had slunk home with wicked scrapes on her knees and tears in her clothes.

“You are bleeding!” She blurted it like an accusation. Her mother did indeed hide in her quavering tone. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” she protested. She wiped her wet mouth again and licked her lips “Wanted to ask…”

“Anything.”

“My sister. My family.”

“You were alone.”

“How long?”

“Many days. More than I know.”

The Keeper was silent for a while. Long enough Samandari feared she might succumb to sleep again. But she did not. She glanced around, her neck a languid swivel. She absorbed her surroundings. Scratched idly at the fetter around her foot. Samandari was ashamed, but the woman did not comment on it.

“Are you hungry?” Samandari asked breathlessly.

The feather fan of the Keeper’s tail flicked. It was difficult to know if her faraway, hazy expression was a symptom of her cloying curse or a sign she was deep in thought. Eventually, she shook her head.

“I am sustained here.”

Her humble refusal made Samandari feel a bit foolish. Sculpted Keepers- those that could withstand the choler of a Divine Beast- were not as tethered to mortal needs as someone as insignificant and common as herself.

“Would you… like to be bathed?”

Even if she did not desire to eat, her hair was lank and greasy. The scent of unwashed skin clung to her. The Keeper nodded, and Samandari collected a pail of water heating on the hearth in the bedroom, a sliver of her soap, and some cloths. Thankfully, the woman was awake enough to begin cleaning herself. Samandari inspected her husband’s half-abandoned botanical sculpting projects of trees groomed to be petite and miniature- as her charge scrubbed under her skirt and tail. She waited for the Keeper to ask for her assistance; she would not dare impose it.

When the woman called for her, she had undone the top of her gown. Sleeveless and backless to accommodate her wings, it had only been buttoned around her throat. She had peeled it away from her torso, letting the dingy fabric fall over her skirts like a useless scrap of an apron.

Samandari despised herself for staring. Horns made a bramble of the woman’s upper arms, but her slim torso was bare. She was not lean, but skinny. Her chest was bereft of breasts; they were not small and flat like Samandari’s- she did not have them.

‘It’ Salza called the young woman. Because she wore a lady’s dress but did not appear to be a lady to his narrow sensibilities. The distance that single syllable created allowed Salza to view Bayle’s Sculpted Keeper as something innately inhuman. It was a way to mock her body. So wary were the Erdtree People of the suggestion of the Crucible that they derided all forms that could not be swiftly categorized into ‘male’ and ‘female’ at a cursory glance.

The Keeper soaped up her armpits as Samandari began to tend to her crunchy hair.

“M’name is Moiragh.”

“Samandari.”

“Thank you, Samandari.”

Moiragh fell asleep as Samandari massaged her scalp, suds slowly oozing down her stomach.

Later that night, Samandari ate a meager meal by herself- Salza had not returned to her. It was the perfect opportunity to bathe herself unbothered.

Samandari disrobed hurriedly. But she didn’t climb into the tub right away. Usually, she moved so frantically the air barely had time to brush her back before it was embraced by scalding water. She paused; goosepimples rose on her arms as she stood naked, her clothes piled over her feet. She turned, face blazing, to peer at the mirror.

Her hands splayed over her stomach. Fingertips tapped at the pitted buttons that accompanied her navel. Coarse. Solid as bone and hardly wider than her thumbprint. The surfaces of her excision scars were whorled. Like the rings of a tree. They were brown, too. Many shades darker than her bluish-gray skin tone.

Salza tolerated the horns on her crown. Perhaps he even loved them. Because they were minute and tidy, and he could assert his might over them by collaring them. They were an accessory. For him. The ones on her belly, though? They had been unsightly. Hideous. When one began to sprout, Samandari was bound to a table and the growths were scooped out of her.

As painful as it had been- as loudly as she’d screamed- she had wanted them excised, too.

When Samandari’s baby brother had passed, her father had shared with her a story of comfort. The souls of the departed sometimes remained with their families. Just as sprites made homes in stone burrows, the spirits of the dead made burrows in burgeoning horns. Some of Samandari’s old friends had later sneered at her recounting. People were always dying, and horns never really stopped growing. It was a soothing coincidence she’d been assured by her very wise twelve-year-old peers.

Salza dutifully prevented pregnancy from taking root. He would bed a hornsent girl but would never permit her to carry his hornsent child. Samandari picked at the four little scars. And she wondered if she was evil for not missing them- the babies that could have been and the horns they had tried to inhabit.

Samandari sank into her bath feeling ugly and wretched.

—-------------------------------------

Salza was making a habit of not returning to their bed at night. Samandari sent for a pot of tea each morning anyway. If he materialized, he could imbibe and heap praise upon his dutiful bride. If he did not, then Samandari would take the breakfast below to share with Moiragh- though there was no guarantee she would wake on a particular day, either. This morning, Samandari brought a full pot of tea on a tray down to Salza’s study.

The door was unlocked. Her spine chilled as she balanced the hot platter on one hand and the opposite knee. Someone was inside already. Her husband, most likely. It was a shame, then, that there would be no tea for Moiragh after all-

The tray slipped from her clammy hands as she entered. The metal kettle and the cups carved from wood were undamaged by her clumsiness. But the racket was enough to make her yearn for a swift demise. Scalding tea splashed across her bare feet and soaked the hem of her skirt.

She should have fallen to her knees in the puddle of her careless mess. She should have scrambled to clean the offensive spill and beg the Lord’s forgiveness. Instead, she was rooted gormlessly, focus fixed on Moiragh’s unconscious form. The door shut with grim finality behind her.

The Lord did not berate her. He did not skewer her with a pike. He did not react at all; the red snakes undulating around his wiry frame coiled around a leg- draped over a shoulder- to peer at her. Staring blankly with Graceless, green eyes.

“Ah, Salza’s girl. Thou’rt acting the nursemaid at his behest, I see.”

To hear the Lord’s voice was to imbibe poison. It was always a disdainful drawl- as slithering and cold-blooded as the serpents about his heart. It was impossible to decipher if his observation was a question, an insult, or an attempt at polite conversation. But the Lord Messmer was never friendly with hornsent. Least of all the wife of his Fire Knight. In their brief meetings, she had played the part of her husband’s shadow, and Lord Messmer had been content to ignore her presence. To have his attention now… she was being burned on a flameless pyre.

“A-apologies,” she rasped. Salza was not here to be her voice, to project deference for her.

He turned, then. Thin hands clasped behind his back, he looked directly at her. With an eye so blindingly golden Samandari averted her misty gaze to glare at her blistered toes.

“Expecting thy master, wert thou?”

His tone remained light. Samandari did not blink. A tear spilled from its confines and settled precipitously at the point of her chin. She nodded to the cooling tea on the floorboards.

“As was I,” the Lord replied breezily. Distant, as though he were talking more to himself than with Samandari. “The creature doth sleep ever so soundly, hmm?”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“It waketh not? Ever?”

“No.”

She forced the word out- extruded it from her constricted throat- before she could second-guess her lie. A long time ago, a sage had warned the village children never to speak falsely to a serpent or bird. They could see through one’s hide straight to their spirit. Samandari waited for her own to betray her.

Lord Messmer sighed, “Salza can demonstrate to me the presence of flame in the creature’s blood. But he cannot explain how it came to be. We have never encountered its like before.”

Blood? She mouthed the question to herself. Her husband had stolen Moiragh’s blood? Had he taken a knife to her skin and she had not noticed the marks? A poor guardian she made after all.

“Dost thou know, Girl, what might seed embers in the ichor of thy kind without consuming it?”

She thought of the fire sprites at once, but the elemental spirits of Rauh lived within stone and earth. They did not take up residence within flesh. She had never heard of a Warrior of the Gravesite Plains having ice or lightning in their veins either.

She whispered honestly, “I do not.”

“Sir Salza told me thou wert as ignorant as he. His head is as soft as his heart. He hath convinced himself that his hornsent wife is not rife with hornsent secrets.”

Samandari’s hands began to shake. She pressed them to her thighs to steady them. He believed she was lying. But of course, he did. He was the Lord of the Erdtree people, and she was hornsent. Naturally treacherous and stupid in equal measure.

“I do not know.”

“Is it a deity? A curse? A vessel? Speak!”

His tone never rose above that of a measured scolding. Yet Samandari quailed as if he’d roared. Her mind was a jumbled horror. An incubator for her own demise, like a man-fly’s pupae.

“Please! She is no threat!”

“Oh? Then shall I slit the thing’s throat and relieve myself of the burden of curiosity?”

The door opened. Samandari did not hear it, but the edge bumped against her shoulder, and she screamed. It was a clipped, terrified bark. An animal sound thrown from her lungs as though she were a hare grasped by the jaws of a wolf.

A wolf indeed, for Rellana of the Twin Moons strode into the study, then. Teeth bared and a growl mounting in her pale throat. Though she’d yelped, Samandari was suddenly invisible to the Lord at his Sword’s arrival.

“Messmer. There thou art.”

“As I said he would be!” Salza shouldered his way into his own chambers, more than a little harrowed. Samandari could not afford to delight in his floundering before his betters. At least her tears had dried in her surprise.

“Aye,” Rellana sneered. “Yet thou saw fit to impede our meeting.”

“What, pray tell, could possibly be so urgent? The Lord and I are to discuss the specimen of Reprimand-!”

“Thy pitiful experiment can wait, Sir. Belurat doth beckon.”

“What?”

“The hornsent felled the furnace.”

“How?” Sir Salza stammered.

“Retaliation is the only recourse. Let the sages teach us how they managed such a feat. Then we shall scour the knowledge from their memory. Be it a weapon or a vile hex, the method must be erased.”

As Salza and Rellana hurried through a conversation overdue, Samandari felt Lord Messmer’s eye upon her again.

“Is it not odd,” he murmured. “-that Reprimand found a beast with blood afire just as Belurat discovered the means to destroy the golem and survive to celebrate the victory?”

A reassuring hand alighted upon Samandari’s shoulder. She suppressed a shudder but was comforted all the same as Salza shielded her with his body. “I doubt ‘tis merely coincidence, my Lord. The creature is important.”

Lord Messmer glanced over his shoulder to peer at Moiragh’s curled form. “Thou art the scholar amongst us, Salza. I suppose I must trust in thy judgement.”

Blatant threat coiled around his airy capitulation. When Salza’s breath warmed Samandari’s ear through her scarf, she feared they heralded fangs of torment. Instead, her husband commanded, “Return to thy quarters, Wife. Thou’rt relieved of thy duties til the morrow.”

“But I-"

She gestured to the ruined breakfast. The stain on the floor and the overturned pot. The small cups clustered around it like orphaned kits. She pointed to her mess, but her thoughts were with Moiragh.

“Do not fret. I will remedy it.”

Samandari was ungrateful for his mercy. Accepting it meant leaving Moiragh alone. Alone with the cruel Lord and his cruel Moon Knight and cruel Salza- who for all his gentleness would only ever see her as a specimen to study. A specimen to own.

“Go, Samandari,” her husband insisted.

She fled.

Her unshod heels struck the floor like thunder. Her scarf billowed around her throat, exposing her hair. She slammed the bedroom door behind her, already keening. Sobbing in anguish. She hated them.

She hated herself.

Beneath the covers of the marital bed she bit a pillow to keep her teeth from chattering. A wraith in her mind chanted: Coward. Coward. Coward.

She deserved to die. She was an enemy to her own soul.

Chapter Text

In the end, Sir Ansbach elected not to remain at the coast. Morgott’s refusal to idle agreed with the knight’s chariness. The cross and its implications haunted them as much as the wispy wraiths that drifted through the flowers like strands of kelp on the tides. He would return, Ansbach had promised, with his compatriots to investigate the landmark further once he’d met with Mohg. But for now, he was content with his bundle of foraged, purple lilies he’d plucked from between the many graves.

The southern topography of the Shadow Lands was impossible to comprehend. As if the country had not been sealed away as Ansbach claimed but smashed on the floor and swept into a pile of crockery shards after. Perhaps there was a bit of truth to the observation. Had Marika truly dug her nails into an entire continent and ripped it, crumbling, from the world to hide beneath the dark Veil? Did Morgott possess the ability to do the same? The Greater Will was not forthcoming.

Regardless, Morgott was grateful for the knight and his detailed maps that chronicled their trek through the Land’s colorful tiers. They had traced the river downstream to meet the ocean, and now they would follow the mountain lowlands to return to familiar- to Sir Ansbach- forests that bordered the southeastern plains Morgott and Morgan had awoken within.

They had already left the blooming sands behind. As well as the chilly, windswept tombs standing sentinel over the black waters. They departed from the sprawling villages that abutted the beaches populated by people who were half intrepid seafarers and half death-obsessed, heretical mystics. The hornsent. Morgott was glad they had not kept company for long.

They were back in the forests. The greenery reeked of permanent dampness. Not unlike the moldering sewers but fresher and life-giving. Wet but not salted by marine gales. Moss furred nearly every trunk and stone. Morgan ran his fingers through it. Pushed aside rocks to observe the toads and salamanders hiding underneath. He had loved the ghost-laden Cerulean Coast. But thankfully, there were no reanimated dragon corpses shambling about here. There was nothing to taunt the curse.

The sun fell upon Morgan’s hair through the canopy, and it lightened from deep brown to the color of fox fur. Then it reddened further, brightening to an unnatural hue. Morgott’s breath hitched.

He blinked. Rubbed an eye with the heel of his hand. The child before him was not Morgan. But he was as beloved. The fear that held captive Morgott’s heart was not diminished.

His son was having a good day.

He could tell by his bearing that he wasn’t in pain. The scaly rashes on his thighs and arms weren't so inflamed. Without a spear in his hand, he appeared so much younger than he was. But perhaps as a father, his child would always appear as such.

There was something in Morgott’s hand. Small and smooth against his palm. The weight of it was a boulder upon his chest. He could hardly get air into his lungs. His fist unfurled, and a golden eye gazed up at him, accusing. Its pupil was a slitted rune. A protective spiral encircled the iris while the back of the false eye was black. A fetter of darkness with a warden of Grace.

It was inevitable, what needed to be done. To seal her child’s hideous curse. One final agony to diminish all others. To rescue the boy as well as the world she’d inherited.

But today he was having a good day.

A name Morgott had never heard before made bitter his tongue.

“Da?”

Morgott came back to himself. He blinked at his empty palm. The slender fingers and fair skin he’d possessed in his vision were supplanted by calloused gray digits and furred knuckles.

“Hmm?” His wordless acknowledgment. He looked up at Morgan. His son was returned. The red-haired boy was banished from his sight.

But Morgan’s brows cinched, and lips were half-scowling. “Did you call for me?”

Morgott shook his head. Freeing Morgan from the obligation of minding his father. Morgan continued his explorations. Pausing to listen for distant animal noises. Cupping blooms to his nose. He retreated into companionable solitude- his cage since his family had been made to keep their distance from him. But his eyes were bright, and his cheeks were warm and pink.

He was having a good day.

“All well?”

It was Ansbach, now. Jogging up from the rear. Morgott huffed a little sound of warning. Something a servant of Mohg would surely grasp. But perhaps a servant of Mohg was also necessarily reckless, because the man was undeterred.

“You called the boy Messmer.”

Morgott bared his teeth.

“That name is familiar to you?”

“I learned it but a moment ago, in a vision bestowed to me by the Greater Will.”

“What, pray tell, did the Greater Will reveal?” Ansbach’s question was politely probing.

“Nothing of use. He appeared a sickly child.”

Ansbach laughed mirthlessly. “Ah, he is anything but! He is a blight upon this land and its people. Should our course steer us further north, you will understand.”

An ominous warning, but Ansbach seemed loath to elaborate. His knuckles paled against the handle of his scythe.

“The Greater Will hath been speaking to me more frequently. But what I am meant to discern from its ramblings, I confess I cannot be certain. If I had my staff…”

His stave hewn from the bones of his dead Two Fingers. Morgan’s set quested atop the same tower, rooted itself in the dust and detritus of the old Pair like a fungus. But those Fingers were just as unreachable.

“Perhaps it is reminiscing.”

“Intimate art thou, apostate, of the susurrations of God?”

“I only mean that this is the land where Marika became a God. That is why Miquella came and called his followers to him. He means to tread Marika’s path to ascension. At least, that is what I surmise from the crosses he left in his wake.”

“Ah,” Morgott exhaled. “A shame for him that his journey hath been so arduous. I am the vessel of the Greater Will, but I am not the only God to have risen.”

Ansbach’s fingers tapped the obsidian shaft of his weapon. That tuneless rhythm occupied his hands as he searched his aged mind again. Morgott was unsure what frustrated him more: Ansbach’s consistently shoddy memory, or the Greater Will’s nonsensical messages.

“What did you sacrifice, Lord Morgott, to become a God?”

The question made Morgott bristle on instinct. The accusation- for that is what it was- rankled. But Sir Ansbach’s quiet temperament failed to keep Morgott’s anger kindled. Somewhere ahead, Morgan gleefully pointed at a hawk he’d flushed from the treetops. Its feathers were tawny-gold and shaggy for a bird.

“Much,” he admitted at last.

Ansbach’s silence was expectant. Or perhaps Morgott imagined it, as conditioned to confession as he was.

He cleared his throat, “The Erdtree burned. Though I did not set it aflame, I was too weak to prevent it. The ashfall destroyed Leyndell. The Altus Plateau was entombed. Marika was slain, then the woman that I had come to love. I lost my home, and the respect of my people. The Greater Will…” Morgott shuddered. “I endured its curse as it butchered me piece by piece…”

His voice waned. Ansbach was staring at him now through the slotted holes of his helm. Though the man’s face was invisible, Morgott was aware he was being scrutinized.

“No cross marketh my sacrifices,” Morgott hissed. “Each thing I foolishly lost I clawed back into my possession. My body was restored. The Capital I rebuilt. I shepherded countless souls to the roots myself! My wife I rescued from an untrue Death. I kept her soul and preserved her body until…” He rumbled, inexplicably disquieted, “-Until she was fit to return.”

“A… remarkable tale indeed,” Ansbach sounded earnest, at least. “Miquella will be overjoyed to meet with you, finally.”

Morgott marshaled his tongue. He had no intention of standing before Miquella. Perhaps his reticence was merely cowardice. Mohg had desecrated the finest Empyrean of Marika’s Age- a great man. Morgott, the fool, had stolen his city and ignored the indignity he’d felt powerless to stop. If Miquella had ambition enough to seek divinity in his semi-death, then Morgott was not keen to discover if he was a forgiving God, or a vindictive one.

—-------------------------------------------------------------

Morgott slept lightly in the alien wilderness. Pillowing his left cheek against his forearm, he studied the shadowy silhouettes of trees scraping against the veiled sky. As if they could rend the draping black and bleed the stars.

He carded through his dreams- chased the frayed scraps of them. Wraiths were bountiful in the Shadow Lands. If Miquella was trying to commune with him, he heard nothing over the clamor of his nightmares.

He sat up gingerly. Inexplicably compelled to draw no attention to himself as he surveyed the camp- a difficult feat in a night so caliginous. The campfire- doused before sundown- smelled of cool cinders and damp. But even without its illuminating flame, Morgott was aware that one other figure sat with him beside its remains. Hunched over a bow, polishing the wood.

In the scant days they’d traveled together, Morgott had seen Sir Ansbach’s face a handful of times. His white hair was bound away from his wrinkled face. As well-groomed as his tidy beard. He was ordinary. Even his eyes lacked the marring of the accursed blood. They gleamed with abundant Grace without a trace of tainted crimson. Those eyes had an owlish quality as they singled out Morgott in the dim.

“Lord Morgott.”

It was Ansbach’s turn to take the watch. His wakefulness was unsurprising. It was, however, Morgan’s conspicuous absence that agitated Morgott at once. He met Ansbach’s pleasant greeting with a low growl.

The knight was, for once, quick-witted, “Morgan rose a short while ago. Sleep eluded him, so he decided to stretch his legs for a spell.”

Morgott’s tail clubbed the ground behind him. “He should not wander alone.”

“I told him as much.”

Morgott sighed angrily.

“Your son is a Demigod. Even if you ordered me to chain his ankles, I do not think I’d have the heart to do it.”

“Thou wert truly a knight of my twin? Thou’rt a meek vessel for the accursed blood.”

The corner of Ansbach’s mouth twitched at Morgott’s condemnation- a ghost of a frown. “Perhaps I am soft for the boy. He has spoken to me in confidence.”

“Concerning…?”

“Nothing of dire consequence. He told me about his mother. A Tarnished became Elden Lord after all. For all your vitriol, Lord, His Eminence assured me it would be a Tarnished to win your heart in the end.” His voice tapered, dragging itself down a nostalgic path. “Morgan also speaks of his siblings, his uncle… his cousin.”

Morgott wished Moiragh had displaced him with more to wear than his ragged pants. If only to hide the way the fur along his spine and nape rose in agitation. Of course Morgan would instantly confide in a former knight of his cherished uncle. His naivety was the fault of Morgott’s cowardice. As with Miquella, he could not explain to his son that a man once in service to Mohg was not a man that deserved his friendship.

But it was too late. Sir Ansbach knew too much. And there was nothing to be done to make him ignorant again, save death. Morgott hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

“Who…” Ansbach faltered. “Forgive my curiosity. But Mohg’s child… who sired her?”

It was not the question Morgott was expecting.

“A White Mask,” he murmured. He paused, steeled himself with a deep inhale. “The tale is not a happy one.”

Ansbach’s tone was thick. “That is a shame.”

“Do not pry into the matter. Shouldst thou be with us when we reunite with her… thou’rt not to approach her.”

“I see. I-I think… Lord Mohg seems to live a blessed life.”

“He is fortunate indeed.”

Morgott stood. His wings shivered in an indulgent stretch. The once-knight’s melancholy was grating. Bewildering. Morgott was assured he’d been correct from the very beginning: Ansbach’s allegiance within the Mohgwyn Dynasty had forever stained his spirit. He could pity the old man. He’d escaped Mohg’s influence. And now, by traveling with his former Lord’s brother and nephew, the madness was taking root again.

“Pureblood.”

Ansbach flinched.

“How long ago did Morgan depart?”

Ansbach rolled his shoulder. Collected himself. “...I cannot rightly say. But all should be well. He is a gifted Tuner. The spirits always guide him back without fail.”

Morgott stormed from the campsite with a smothered roar. In the Lands Between- in Leyndell- Morgan’s scent made him unique from his brothers and sisters. Lacking oily fur and feathers and pungent Omen blood, he instead smelled of stale ash. Like the shambling monuments to Demigods slain before Morgott’s prominence. But in the Shadow Lands, Morgan’s odor was muted. It was under threat of being lost within an overly similar bouquet.

Morgott crashed through undergrowth gracelessly. Within the wood, the canopy blocked the meager light the night sky could afford to give. The Crucible had granted Morgott a sharp nose. But it was fallible. He was stumbling through a field of flowers searching for one peculiar blossom. He was nearly reduced to simply shouting his son’s name when he noticed a faint glow in the distance.

It wasn’t the hue of a campfire, but a pallid, silvery gleam. It lacked warmth, but Morgott sensed it was no less alive. Ferns, shrubs, and narrow trunks threw abyssal shadows away from the light and into the fathomless depths of the forest. Morgott ran. A brutal path he carved through the trees chasing after the silver. He was Omen, furred and hot-blooded. But a chill settled about his shoulders a dread cloak.

It wasn’t Ansbach’s fault. He could not have understood the severity of Morgan’s curse, because Morgott had not taught him. But he hated the man all the same. If he found a corpse here amongst the trees, he would tear his twin’s wretched thrall limb from limb.

Indeed, there was Morgan, basking in the gentle gray ambiance. Not dead. Not soulless.

His child had heard him coming. His face was already a mask of defiance. An expression Morgott might have even declared fierce if not for his bedhead and the boyish roundness of his cheeks. An ashen stormhawk perched on the slanted trunk of a felled tree. She fixed Morgott with a reproachful glare. But Morgan’s childhood companion was not the sole spirit present. A handful of forest creatures shrank against him, chattering. Unlike the stormhawk, however, their ash was charred.

“What is the meaning of this?” Morgott shouted. His lungs stung for each bellowed word. Fear locked talons with rage and plummeted in a vicious spiral in his gut.

“Da, it’s alright.”

“Enlisting the bloodied knight in keeping thy secrets! Thou wert the wisest, most temperate of mine heirs! What hath made thee reckless? Am I the only one between us that remaineth determined to safeguard thy life?”

“I can Tune here! I feel fine!”

“It matters not!”

Father and son- God and Empyrean- stared one another down. Morgott panted, drained by his emotions rather than his destructive trek through the woods. Morgan’s stormhawk screeched over his shoulder, and he patted her head. Some of the sable court bounded into the dark or collapsed into smoky wisps. Morgan was strong in his rebellion. Meanwhile Morgott felt as though he might snap in half like a dried sunflower stem. There were many ways in which fatherhood had weakened him.

“Prithee,” he rasped. “I do not know how I can protect thee if thou’rt determined to risk the curse. This place is strange. It may not heed me shouldst thy soul depart.”

Morgan’s eyes pinkened in the light given off by the hawk’s ashes. He nodded shallowly. The raptor dipped her head against his shoulder, and she dissolved. In a whisper and a gust, the spirit was unmoored. Made into dormant dust again.

“I was looking for Mum,” he confessed.

“Thy mother’s spirit?” Morgott did not think his heart could bear much more.

“N-no. I asked after everyone. Moiragh and Marie and Uncle Mohg. The spirits only know about Mum.” He sniffled. Morgott’s mouth went dry. “Da, they can take us to her.”

Chapter Text

Cyrielle watched a fly thrash in a spider’s web. A big, hairy thing, whose buzzing was a clamor in her ears. A carrion feaster drawn to the scent of death. She picked at the frayed cuff of her glove. She’d stolen it out of the catacombs- her one pilfered indulgence. Her skin itched beneath the leather. They had stripped her of her black plate disdainfully, but had allowed her to keep her trousers, gambeson, and glove.

The cell she shared with Aster was cramped. Musty and stale and full of hungry invertebrates. Cyrielle could feel herself lulling into a bored torpor. Her life as a Tarnished had taught her to endure chains, imprisonment, and claustrophobic quarters with a companion who didn’t particularly smell pleasant. Her life as a century-old Demigod had taught her how to dissociate enough to make time pass more swiftly. Alas, Aster was not so patient.

He wriggled frequently, huffing and grunting in poorly concealed pain. His impossibly numerous bony angles jammed into Cyrielle’s far softer sides. He was rubbing the skin of his wrists raw against the fetters.

“Is it my turn to be self-righteously angry with you?” he spat. Complaining not for the first time in the past hour. “Charging up to a bunch of strangers! Assuming you’ll be instant pals because they’ve got horns and so does your bloody Omen husband! You’re the Elden Lord, aren’t you? A killer of Demigods? I didn’t make that up in my head, did I? Surrendering to a horde of old nanny goats! I swear!”

Cyrielle ignored him, as she always did. She was unsure what else she could have done. Her magic was failing her. She’d broken Aster’s conduit staff.

You had a sword. She reminded herself coldly. But you were scared.

Cyrielle was aware she was no Godfrey- no conqueror for her God. She might have been able to slaughter all the Omen, but the risk hadn’t seemed worth it. The last thing she had wanted was to shed blood unnecessarily.

She could tell, at least, that the Omen of the abbey in the mountains were not accustomed to taking prisoners. Their cell was a cellar in truth. A startlingly bare one. Rope bound their hands, and an iron chain shackled them to a thick support beam in the cellar’s center. Twice a day, a large woman in a heavily darned yellow habit brought food and allowed them use of a chamber pot. She was as tall as Cyrielle and twice as broad. And she was always accompanied by burly masked swordsmen garbed in dandelion sheep’s skins and armor.

The floor above groaned as Omen strode across the boards. Snippets of conversation drifted down to their prisoners. Most of it meant nothing to Cyrielle. But there was a sudden eruption of exclamation that drew her attention at once.

“Jori!” the big woman’s voice cried. “We were not expecting you for another week at least!”

“Have ye not heard? The furnace golem was felled. The plain can be crossed unscorched. For now.”

“How can that be?”

“A Warrior brought a stranger to the gate. He was more than a comely visage.”

“Morgott,” Cyrielle whispered.

Aster snorted at her elbow. The sensation of his breath against her sleeve made her want to kick at him. The impulse quickly fled. They’d been in even more intimate scrapes than this in their Tarnished pasts. She found she still had a tolerance for his proximity.

“By the Beast’s howling squall! How did one man manage that?”

“I did not witness it myself. I fear I shall regret that ‘til the end of my days,” the woman named Jori lamented. “Erva recounted it to me as if she had seen it herself! The blind old fool. Untouched by the abomination’s flames, the man tore away its face to rescue a young girl. As Erva telleth the tale, the child is the very vision of the Divine Lion. The man is a remarkable creature himself with wings great enough to bear him in flight.”

“You jest. I dare not believe it.”

“Ah, but ‘tis the truth, Kori.”

Cyrielle and Aster murmured together: “Mohg.”

Overhead, the floor creaked as the new arrival and her rapt audience stepped out of earshot. Their chatter continued indistinctly. Cyrielle’s pulse rose; she was roused from dormant hopelessness.

“We have to get out of here,” she muttered.

“Oh! Now we have to-!”

“Aster. Quiet.”

Their captor and her armed guard came down long before a plan could be conceived. She unbound their hands and removed the shackles. But she gave them neither a pot nor a meal.

“Up,” she ordered, gesturing to the ladder. “Sister Jori has questions for ye, Graceborn.”

Cyrielle was glad to oblige, because the removal of their restraints and a way out of the cellar was already an improvement upon their predicament. She and Aster were shepherded into a small room on the ground floor. A table occupied much of the space. A spindly, elder woman sat at a chair nearest the door. A cup of scrumptious smelling tea steamed in her hands. The sword Cyrielle had taken from the graveyard lay across the table’s surface. Aster and Cyrielle were pushed into seats at the table’s opposite side. Then they were penned in by bristling swords and staves.

The aged woman- Jori, presumably- was dressed in heavy robes of brown and muted gold. Simple and unadorned. Gray hands cupped her warm drink. She was crowned by a tangle of horns. As knotted as Mohg’s, but not as large. A veil covered her face; it was hung from her horns. Frayed braided cords looped around their bases. She was Omen like everyone else at the abbey.

“I am Cyrielle,” Cyrielle began, unprompted.

Jori responded with a noise of acknowledgement. Everyone else was silent.

“…I heard you speaking before. About the furnace and the man that killed it. His name is Mohg. He is my brother, and the girl he rescued is my daughter. Marie.” Though the girl very well could have been Moiragh. Or someone else entirely. But Marie was undoubtedly leonine as per Jori’s description.

Though the woman’s expression was obscured, Cyrielle knew she was being appraised. Apart from the slightest tilt of her head, Jori was unmoving. A mantis poised, evaluating potential prey.

“Please, I have been trying to find them. I must know my family is safe. My husband is Lord Morgott. Marie takes after him, if you doubt me.”

It was a desperate bid, invoking Morgott’s name. Jori’s utter lack of reaction signaled to Cyrielle that she had no faith in her claim.

Jori drawled, “The Erdtree People recognize but one Lord, and his name is not Morgott.” Her tongue clicked against the shutter of her teeth with the finality of a blade falling against Cyrielle’s neck.

Cyrielle’s face reddened, indignant. “We are not certain where we are. I come from Leyndell. My husband and I are its Lords.”

“Cyrielle,” Jori sighed. “Thy relations and their titles are not my concern. This is.” She gestured to the sword lying between them.

The instinct to apologize bubbled up in Cyrielle. She quashed it. In her mind, Morgott’s growling voice cautioned against speaking at all. Jori was unreasonable, and even the mildest deference would be used against her. Cyrielle pressed her lips together and forced Jori to come to her.

Jori obliged, “How didst thou come to obtain a ward of the Inquisition?”

Cyrielle’s jaw clenched at the word Inquisition. She picked out the truth between her teeth; there was no point in hiding it.

“I pulled the sword from the ground. It was in a graveyard at the bottom of the chasm.”

Inquisitor Jori nodded. “Wherefore wouldst thou claim a holy relic for thyself?”

“I was lost and unarmed. It seemed safest to have a weapon in hand.”

Jori’s veiled head bobbed, the action so exaggerated it felt sarcastic. “Thou believed it misplaced, the stake?”

“I thought it abandoned, yes.”

Jori’s spindly fingers traced the golden coils of the blade. “Graceborn ignorance,” she said lightly, as though she were naming a bird she’d spotted from the window. “Thou saw a pristine relic at the edge of the Abyssal Wood and thought it naught but a trinket to be plundered for thyself.”

Cyrielle swallowed her pride in lieu of answering.

Jori was content to continue, “A ‘sword’ she nameth it. Wife of a Lord Unknown, this is no weapon, but a sentinel ward. My ward against the curse that doth lurk in that forest.”

Cyrielle blanched. A foul emotion palpably wafted off of Aster. Grim satisfaction at Cyrielle’s embarrassment along with resentment for being dragged into this with her. And something else. Something fearful and primal. She could guess what the ward had been guarding against.

“If I had known,” she insisted. “I never would have taken it!”

Jori, like Aster, however, appeared to receive some pleasure in Cyrielle’s alarm. “There is no damage done that cannot be reversed. The ward can be replanted. The Towerfolk can secure the catacomb once more.”

Cyrielle half-rose from her seat, “I will help if you will have me. This is my fault, after all.”

Aster was stiff and scowling in the corner of her eye. He disapproved. But surely earning the goodwill of these Omen- Towerfolk- was better than antagonizing them further.

Jori exhaled. Long and loud. The breath tapered to a raspy sizzle in her throat. The veil over her face billowed slightly from her face. “No. We shall not have thee.”

“I- why not?”

“Sister Kori?” Jori called out.

The large woman inclined her head. “Sister Jori?”

“What did the Lord-Wife name thee?”

“An Omen.”

“Ah!” Cyrielle could hear Jori’s smile. “An Omen.”

What little hope Cyrielle had for the conversation lost form and fell through her fingers. “I never meant any offense! Horned people are Omen where I am from-”

“In the Lands Between?”

“I… yes…”

“Seest thou, Graceborn, two paths might bring ye to that catacomb. The first passeth through this abbey. My fellows doth swear they have not entreated with ye before. Nor wouldst ye be permitted passage if ye had. The second,” Jori sneered. Her bony hand clenched into a fist. “-can only be entered from the Shadow Keep.”

It was Aster who piped up at last, “Gods’ sake, what is the Shadow Keep? None of this makes any damn sense!”

“The Shadow Keep,” Jori replied sharply. “-is the bastion of thy kind! The hive of the crusade! Omen is their word for us. Thou dost insult me with feigned ignorance!”

“Nothing is feigned about my ignorance I assure you.

Jori snarled, “The Impaler doth love to blind the blessed eyes of his deserters. Was that thine aim? To earn back thy putrid Lord’s favor by pillaging artifacts of the Tower?”

“You are not listening-!” Cyrielle cried out.

The slap did not come from Jori. Kori stepped forward to deliver the blow. It merely stung, but Cyrielle’s face flushed when Aster exploded with laughter. Fraught, tight. A snapped cord of sound. His mirth at her expense was infinitely more painful than anything the inquisitors could do to her. Her racing heart was a delicate morsel in a cage of nettles.

Then, Aster spoke: “Look, carry on, and you’re going to regret it. She isn’t lying to you. We don’t know a thing about your bloody sword. Her brother and kid are in your city. If they hear you’ve laid a hand on her…”

He trailed off. His condescending scolding diminished to abashed silence. They were staring at him, the inquisitors. Posture stiff- no longer the predator in wait but startled prey.

“Jori…” Kori said warily.

“Hmm.”

“Do you-"

“I see it,” Jori hissed.

Cyrielle had been plucked from her familiar role and deposited into a play too foreign for her to comprehend. The stakes- and the comedy- were not making the proper impressions. But she knew what the old women could sense in Aster.

She slammed her right fist upon the table. She itched horribly under that glove. A hundred tickling legs scurried from under her fingernails up to her jaw. And then thorns sprouted from the wood. From the table, the floorboards, the rafters, and support beams. Black brambles grew with such speed that they sliced flesh with their creation. Jori screamed as she was stabbed through the wrist and forearm. Kori’s horns rescued her eye from being gouged out.

Blood splashed upon the briars, and Cyrielle knew something was aware of her. Earthy and abyssal and terrible. A darkness to eclipse the light of the Erdtree. She’d experienced it before when she’d accidentally summoned her first thorns with Aster’s staff. When they had erupted all across the ground- vines thick enough to shake the earth with their emergence- outside of the catacomb.

The building began to buckle under the weight of the thicket. As the walls and pillars were twisted and consumed by the spreading growth. The inquisitors fled, shouting obscenities and curses. All the while Cyrielle felt herself unraveling. She couldn’t take it back, now. She could not halt the magic if she’d wanted to. This was the only incantation she could muster, and it was dreadful.

“Cyrielle-” Aster stammered.

Cyrielle hauled him up by his armpits. “The way is clear. Let’s go.”

“-what is happening?”

She did not say. She guided him through the tangle as she had before on the mountainside. A bit more urgently than before, as the vines were coiling ever nearer with bloodthirsty thorns. They emerged into mountain air. Into chaos. The wooden gate of the abbey was reduced to splinters- crushed by the monstrosity Cyrielle had called into being. The ground quaked. Cracked down the center of the compound.

Cyrielle and Aster left them to it. They disappeared into the forest beyond, and did not stop walking until they could no longer hear the groaning of the earth. Aster eventually gave up asking Cyrielle questions she would not answer.

—---------------------------------

It was difficult to know when Aster was asleep. His empty sockets gaped without the shutter of eyelids, and he was never quite still. With his head pillowed on his arm, he twitched. Shivered. As if something moved just beneath his skin, patrolling his extremities. That lithe, nocturnal parasite stalked its skinny territory preying upon memory.

He is dreaming, Cyrielle told herself. Morgott’s nightmares similarly moved him; she recognized the signs.

The night was black as pitch and cold. Thus, the fading embers of their fire were as brilliant as a beacon. But she was loath to snuff them entirely just yet. There was something she needed to see first. Gingerly, she peeled off the stolen glove. Her imagination was cruel to her. She pictured her skin sloughing off with the leather to reveal a mass of squirming maggots. Perhaps a few fingers would snap off at necrotized knuckles. A phantom whiff of rotting meat made the hair of her nape prickle.

But her hand was whole beneath the glove. Cyrielle flexed trembling fingers as she marshaled her breathing. It wasn’t as bad as she’d envisioned, but there was no denying what she saw.

Cyrielle’s once-golden fingers were a hideous, frostbitten shade. When she and Aster had emerged from the catacomb, only her fingertips had been touched by the stain.

Carefully, she shrugged out of her gambeson. She traced the blooming blotches spreading over the scar of Death on her forearm. Maybe if she prodded the chilled flesh, she’d feel the lumps of nascent thorns. Day by day, the consecration of Gold was retreating.

Her command of Erdtree magic was practically banished. All she could conjure was thorns.

Great, black thorns.

Quietly, Cyrielle redressed herself. She donned the glove again. It didn’t hurt yet. When the Black Knife had infected her, the wound had sapped her strength and afflicted her with unceasing agony. How much time she had left was uncertain. Waking up with Aster had been a cruel prank. Not Moiragh’s doing, but the spiteful will of whatever force had been visiting her family’s dreams. Aster would be taken by the Frenzy soon enough. And Cyrielle was no better off.

Her despair was disrupted when a silver Stormhawk alighted in the tree overhead. A wispy apparition of ash, not a living creature. She watched the ghostly animal preen for a minute, because she had to wait for the fist of fear squeezing her rib cage to loosen before she could breathe.

As soon as it did, she shouted to the dark: “Morgan?”

And Morgan's answer echoed distantly: “Mum!”

Chapter Text

Moiragh pounced. Kicking off from the rock set off a twinge in her calves that spread all the way to the nape of her neck. It was painful- a sting that assured her she was practically flying. Her wings- coated in thin down- shivered and flapped instinctually.

All the breath was driven from her chest as she collided with her prey. Tiny fists snatched up handfuls of thick, black feathers. She had to suck in a few desperate lungfulls before she could sink her predator fangs into flesh. She was rewarded with a taste of searing blood.

“Oh!” her supper gasped. His spine arched back; he reached skyward before collapsing to his knees.

Moiragh was nearly dislodged by the shuddering impact. But she held on with tooth and claw. Skin tore a little more, and rich blood flooded into her mouth. Dripped down her chin. Then her prey was brought to the ground at last. He fell forward, pillowing his head against a lean forearm as best he could with his thorny mantle.

Moiragh giggled. Satisfied with her kill, she pried her fangs out of the carcass and scrabbled across the sloping topography of his back. Her own heart was beating so rapidly she suspected it was scheming to soar out of her throat. If it wished to flee, there was nothing she could do to halt it. She was laughing too hard to keep her teeth gated against it.

“Papa!” she yanked on his ruff. A few feathers were torn free, but he did not react. She tumbled down his shoulder and fell a tangle of limbs against his folded arm. “Papa!”

“Breathe, Dearest,” he mumbled.

“Can we play again?”

“Mmm,” Papa groaned. His eye was closed. “Another time. You must rest.”

“No, Papa!”

Her father purred, “Yes. Your spirit is fierce, but your body must grow into it.”

“How long!”

“Hmm?”

“How long until-” Moiragh whined. She flopped into the crook of Papa’s elbow and felt his steady pulse against her knobby spine. She stretched back, eyes trailing across the wings that shrouded the wooded path they’d been walking along. “How long until I have wings like yours?”

His entire body heaved in a seismic sigh. “I do not know, Beloved.”

“How old were you when...when-”

His golden eye opened a sliver. “I did not always have these wings. They are a blessing from the Mother of Truth.”

Moiragh’s blood warmed. That was her name too, in a sense. She understood that much.

Papa rasped, “They are yours. I could return them to you.”

Moiragh smiled. Finally, she would have beautiful, glossy plumage. She would fly- really fly!- and hunt on the wing and explore previously unreachable places! She frowned mid-thought.

“How would you fly, Papa, if I had your wings?”

“Do not trouble yourself. You are the greater blessing by far.”

He was earnest. He was honest. And tiny Moiragh was thrilled to put Papa’s devoted generosity to good use. But she felt something else. An intruding thought that was not entirely her own. It leant her a vision: Papa stood with a score of furrowed scars on his bare back- an eternal ache mingled with joy as he gazed skyward.

Moiragh was so startled she muttered, “No thank you.”

After all, Da, Marie, and Mum did not have wings, and they were perfectly content.

—----------------------------------------

By Leyndell’s outer moat, a Minor Erdtree was slowly being coaxed from its dormancy. It had endured the Flame of Frenzy, the razing of its progenitor, and the fungal rot of Deathblight. Gold shone dimly in the webbed cracks of its charred bark. Papery leaves adorned its branches. As did amber fetishes bound to them on fine chains.

All were engraved with the likeness of a newborn bairn on their oblong surfaces. Soft-horned and fat-bodied. Papa had shown her each one- had presented them in the bowl of his palm as if they were flesh-and-blood infants. He’d flown to the high branches to gather them, because amber was precious and liable to be stolen. Even if they were Omen Bairns. Even if they were memorials for grief.

They were seedling clusters never to fall and find purchase.

Fifty bairns. Fifty siblings. Fifty losses.

She was the sole survivor. She, the smallest in her family. The delicate one. She had been sick all her life. The God in her marrow was responsible for keeping her hale.

Papa loved her. She never doubted that. But Mum and Da were having another baby- their fourth. Papa was envious. He laid feathers in the nursery. Plucked the downy ones over his heart. Piled them into a nest. She had watched him, because she was drawn to where Truth was made furtive. The Lord of Blood pantomimed brooding. An hour here or there. Before he remembered himself- that the nest he lovingly made was not, in fact, for him. It would go unused by the Elden Lord.

He’d come here, then. To the ash-stained Tree cursed with fruit never to ripen. The back of his spurred hand was pressed to his eye.

“Oh, no, my daughter,” he hissed at the sound of her approach. “Turn back. Do not burden yourself with the sight of me.”

“Why not?”

It was not a fair question, because he could not lie to her. But she was still too young to understand the power of her curiosity.

Papa replied, “Because I am a fool.”

He was hurting. And he was smarting at his own pain. He did not feel he had a right to it- that it was selfish in light of his family’s happiness. He was hurting because he could not hide from Moiragh the truth: she was not enough. He wanted another clutch. Another brood.

“Moiragh, I beg,” he said. He turned to her, the motion of his wings stirred the branches of the lesser trees. “You are my child and what ails me you cannot mend. Not without wounding yourself.”

“I would not mind,” Moiragh promised.

“No. You cannot. You will not! Please. You grow wiser every year. You look at me differently than when you were a bairn. Please…” He cupped her chin in one of his clawed, scarred hands. Over the top of his head, dozens of amber stars glinted in the Minor Tree’s branches. Moiragh grabbed his wrist with both of her own.

“I will always love you,” she said.

Lord Mohg inhaled night air as though he’d just emerged from frigid depths. She embraced him before the grave of her siblings. She, the lucky one, who was blessed to live with all of their agony and joy. She, the lucky one, with the most wonderful father there could be.

And if Truth prickled with kindly doubt in the back of Moiragh’s mind, she ignored Her. She would ignore Her as long as she was able.

—----------------------------------------

It all melted away. The Minor Erdtree and its laden branches. The warmth of her parent and her childish youth. She was cast out of her reveries into a purplish fog. It was so thick she could not see her own hands if she held them against her eyes. But it was just as likely she had no form at all in this place.

“Thy dreams are sweet.”

“Of course,” Moiragh agreed. “They are my memories. I have happier ones than these, should you wish to see them.”

But the visitor had glutted upon those already: The cakes with citrus rind Mum would make for her birthday, the arrival of her twin cousins, her horseback lessons, Papa grooming her horns when she was ill, Marie sneaking off with her to explore the Dynasty ruins and enjoy the Siofra hot springs, the establishment of her Temple.

Papa teaching her to read. Papa darning her torn vestments. Papa carrying her to bed when she was too feeble and exhausted to reach it on her own. Truth had not summoned the memories to commune with her vessel, thus Moiragh was allowed to feel pride and contentment within the dreams she bled.

Her unseen host did not reply. Instead, the shapes in the mist condensed into a wavering facade of Moiragh’s childhood bedroom.

I only think of you, Cousin. I’ll be half as ugly as you were.

Moiragh’s disembodied, pre-adolescent voice snaked through the haze. Then suddenly a much younger Marie was standing in front of Moiragh, beaming.

Show me.

Moiragh’s child self donned her sister’s mimic veil for the first time. Her incorporeal stomach twisted at the unfamiliar visage in the mirror. As her silvery hair turned auburn and the dark, bluish-indigo tone of her skin paled. Her white sclera dulled the golden gleam of her eyes. She only ever saw him, her disappeared second parent, in the magic of an illusion cast over her own face.

“Oh,” the host said, dissipating the dream into lilac fog. “I have upset thee.”

“No,” Moiragh dabbed at her cheek to find it dry of tears. But her mouth was creased into a frown. Protruding teeth pinched at her lips. “But you are beginning to prod at my wounds, I fear. Despite the nature of my divinity, to injure me is a sacred privilege granted to few. I accepted your invitation. You do not have free reign to do with me as you will.”

“I hope thou wilt forgive me. I must know what became of him.”

“Of my father?”

“…Yes.”

“You could have simply asked.”

“I need to see it for myself.”

“You wanted me to bring him to this world,” Moiragh accused, not unkindly.

The invisible being- the creator of the invitation- sighed. The exhalation from formless lungs carried wordless language. It was fidgeting unease. It was resolve unyielding, and it collided with something just as immovable in the depths of Moiragh’s mind. “I will entreat with him. When I am free of the parts of myself that bind me away from him.”

“What parts are those?”

“My misgivings. Mine anger. I surrendered my love already, and it hath only made me dread our reunion all the more.”

Moiragh could not help but imagine her gentle host with auburn hair. With eyes the color of honey and a dimpled chin. With a narrow face. She pictured them with all the features she possessed that had not come from her Papa.

“I could join you when you meet him. If that would bring you peace.”

They laughed. Chimes vibrated through the haze. Mirthless for its beautiful tone, like the bell of a wraithcaller.

“Is… thy Lord father happy?” they asked. Side-stepping her suggestion.

“Yes.” She hesitated for the duration of a quick breath. She had come here at her companion’s request- solely for the chance to speak with them. There was no point in restraining Truth. “He does want, however. For more.”

“More?”

“You saw the Tree. The fetishes upon it. You called him Lord, but... Before I lived, he had been a Lord in truth.”

“Ah,” the frigid response. “Surely he was something great once, to think this charmed life diminished him.”

Moiragh set her jaw. Her host was holding her hand to their weeping cut and pressing her talons against it. Truth roused at the taste. It was familiar to Her.

“Whatever my father has done... I swear to you, there is no reason to fear him.”

There was a shape- a form- a meter within the lavender clouds. A slight silhouette. A child’s soft build. Billowing hair brushed against bare ankles. Moiragh could not see their countenance, but it was all too easy to picture their sad smile as they murmured, “Oh, Moiragh. How I sincerely wish that were the truth.”

—----------------------------------------

Moiragh woke with a dozen prickling aches. With blood on her tongue and a pair of moonish eyes staring centimeters from her brow. This close, Moiragh saw the subtler hues in those near-black irises. Earthy shades of brown that made her feel like she was tipping into a freshly dug grave.

Samandari startled less each time they met. But her heart still rabbited so fiercely Moiragh felt it in her own chest. In the woman’s hands was a wrinkled rag stained by divine ichor.

By way of greeting, Samandari said in her strained voice, “Does it hurt you, the curse?”

The curse. Moiragh hadn't thought of the sleep that way until Samandari suggested it. It was apt.

“Enough.”

“You bleed whenever you are about to wake.”

“Oh.” It was all she could manage: a little burst of revelatory sound.

Her wakings weren’t random at all. Someone was attempting to commune with her- kindling her blood with pain. But not before the message was lost to her. She figured she knew who was beseeching her. Only one of her worshippers possessed such a careful touch.

“Papa.”

Samandari offered a formless noise of inquiry.

“Father. Looking f’me,” Moiragh explained.

With Samandari’s assistance, Moiragh was able to sit upright. The woman was almost a meter shorter than Moiragh, but let her lean against her shoulder. Samandari claimed Moiragh’s hand and tucked it into her lap. Moiragh did not protest. She traced her veins and subtle scars with inquisitive fingers. Her tenderness was reverent to the Mother. But Moiragh was also a lost young woman, and Samandari’s touch soothed that part of her as well. Moiragh enjoyed her company. She would be languishing in her dreams without this girl’s suffering otherwise.

“Will he come?” Samandari whispered.

“Hmm?” Moiragh’s eyes snapped open. She had closed them, unbidden. Her subsequent aspiration dislodged a blood clot, which she promptly coughed up into the rag Samandari held dutifully under her chin.

“Your father.”

“He will try.”

“Could he defeat them? The knights of the Lord and the demons of fire?”

Moiragh could feel in the weight of her bones that this would be a brief visit. Her strange companion was not finished with her yet.

“My father’s blood is fire,” she boasted drowsily. “His blessings are untamed. His… teeth are blades. He could tear the door… from this cage with his bare hands. His wings could bear us… aloft-”

Us.

Samandari had caught it too. Moiragh’s hand was squeezed by shaking fingers. Then kissed with tear-salted lips. The hissing exhalation that passed over her knuckles might have been: Destroy them.

Suddenly, another heartbeat thumped nearer. It was ascending from below- a marten hurrying to check the squirrels’ nest. Instinct bid Moiragh to warn her friend. But her instincts were as sluggish as the rest of her. The door was thrown open.

“Wife,” the newcomer declared. “All well? The door is unlocked-”

The man choked upon his concern. The Vessel of Truth was set aside like an unwieldy sack as Samandari leapt to her feet. Moiragh’s head lulled. It was the heaviest thing in the world. Rivaled only by her eyelids. But she watched. As much as she could. With a creeping dread, she sensed she owed Samandari that much.

“The creature is awake?” The man demanded. Growled.

“Only just!” Samandari cried. It was the loudest she’d ever spoken. She rushed from the cage, arms before her and hands splayed, beseeching. “She cannot move! Or speak-!”

Samandari’s head snapped back with a sharp crack. She loosed a shrill bark of surprise. Her rigid hands fled not to the blooming bruise on her cheek, but her mouth. Barricading against her own voice. She did not straighten but hunched before the Fire Knight- her husband! She was shocked more than she was afraid. She genuinely had not expected to be struck.

Moiragh’s shallow breaths fueled her blood. Even then she barely had the strength to keep her eyes open. Darkness lurked at the edges of her vision, stalking her. She committed the appearance of Sir Salza to memory.

He was almost thrice his wife’s age, but Moiragh scented in his tainted blood the longevity granted those in a Demigod’s favor. He was old. Practically as ancient as her father. Everything else about him, however, was utterly unremarkable. He was graying and gaunt-faced. Wiry in the way immortal magician warriors tended to be in Moiragh’s experience. Gold sparkled in his deep-set eyes- in his stormy scowl.

When the old man grasped Samandari about the shoulders, she gasped. Now she was frightened.

“Didst thou not swear to send for me whenever the creature awoke?” he hissed. His tone trembled with the want to shout. But he, too, was muzzling himself with restraint. “I placed my faith in thee, Girl!”

“Forgive me,” she warbled. Pale gray fists knotted in the loose sleeves of his robes. As he reprimanded her, she clutched to him for comfort.

“I do love thee, Samandari. Thou art naive and generous of heart. Thou art lenient with the servants of our house. But thine indulgence with this charge is an insult to our Lord. ‘Tis his specimen! Art thou aware what would happen if he but suspected betrayal from thee? Answer me!”

His gentleness shattered at his final command. That he roared, shaking his child wife by her broad shoulders. Similarly, the flash of defiance in Samandari’s eyes was smothered the same instant in sparked. Her spirit was sequestered within herself. Where terror and hope could not affect her.

“I would be burned,” Samandari said numbly. “Body and spirit.”

“Thou...”

But the Fire Knight sobered. The Truth in Samandari’s response doused the flame of anger in him. He held his tiny wife- the inert husk she’d made herself into to survive him.

Moiragh at last lost consciousness. Their terse breathing was the last thing she heard as the curse took her again.

Chapter Text

Morgott’s wife was a warm woman. In appearance and demeanor. She was tanned by the sunnier climes of the Lands Between. Grace manifested in her blue eyes abundantly in irregular blotches. As if the Gold of the Erdtree were a lichen slowly overtaking her irises rather than a natural ore seeded into them at birth. They complimented the branching, golden mark that climbed up her throat from beneath the collar of her gambeson.

A part of Ansbach had pictured a silver-haired Banished Knight when he imagined the new Elden Lord. Oleg. His sluggish memory provided the name, and Ansbach was lanced with melancholy. Oleg must have passed on. But that wasn’t a shock, really. After all, he had been an aged man in the midst of the Shattering War. And the Shattering War had concluded centuries ago.

Cyrielle had thanked Ansbach for looking after her husband- a gentle slight God took on the chin with a stoic grimace. But that was the extent of their interaction. Her family claimed her attention. That was more than fair.

In Cyrielle’s arms, Morgan appeared older than Ansbach had assumed him to be. He had simply been so small in comparison to his father- and handled so delicately. In the night’s gloom, he was nearly indistinguishable from the Elden Lord. As if he wasn’t her child but a silver husk that had adopted her shape when given life.

As Cyrielle and Morgan swayed- mutually bound in the grip of love and relief- Morgott lingered. His hunched body shivered with every animal signal of agitation. To the point Ansbach was unsettled watching him. But then his wife and son disentangled, pink-eyed. The instant Cyrielle stepped back a few paces Morgott pulled her to him. Taking his opportunity to hold and be held.

He softened. His ever-coiled bludgeon of his tail sank into the leaf litter. His eternal scowl dissipated. Eyes closed- lips parted- Ansbach was not sure sleep had ever granted God such serenity. Morgott’s hand splayed across the whole of his wife’s back, drawing her flush against him.

Loitering inexplicably in the back of Ansbach’s mind was the unexamined belief that Morgott was not capable of this tenderness. A surge of emotions crawled up his throat painfully. A mixture so volatile and roiling he could not pick apart the individual sensations. Most of them, though, were decidedly negative.

Ansbach spat into the grass beside him and was not surprised to taste a bit of bile. Then the agonizing conflict within him was gone. He was lightheaded at the swiftness of it. What had even brought it on? What had soothed him in the end? There’d been no time to sort out his own thoughts. He had a headache. He was inexplicably exhausted.

So he went to the party’s other outsider and offered to change his wound dressings. Ansbach did not have an inkling who the stranger might be- or why he was accompanying the Elden Lord. The man did not participate in the reunion, nor did he seem like he wished to.

“I’m glad I can’t watch them grope one another. I’d be sick. I can smell Morgott from here.”

Ansbach disagreed with the delivery and only half of the sentiment. Besides, it wasn’t as if the man- Aster- wasn’t harboring his own miasma in the festering pits of his eye sockets. “Alas, a week or more in the wilderness does not impart upon us its pleasing odors.”

Aster’s responding snort was amused. He was stiff and reticent, but he allowed his head to be handled- dabbed and wiped and turned. He was unnaturally compliant; Ansbach suspected he knew why.

“How does a Pureblood Knight of Mohgwyn come to inherit the Flame of Frenzy?”

The man laughed. Raspy and dry, like brittle wood snapping underfoot. Indignation left a sour taste in Ansbach’s mouth. He swallowed it down so it could be digested into sympathy. Lord Morgott had warned him the fractured remains of the once-dignified Dynasty had succumbed to madness. If Sir Ansbach had remained beholden to his oaths to Mohgwyn, he would have put an arrow between this stranger’s empty eyes to spare Lord Mohg further embarrassment and strife. Now, however, he was ruled by Kindly Miquella’s compassion.

“I am not a Pureblood Knight,” the blind man protested.

“Not anymore, perhaps. But the accursed blood sings in your veins.”

“We all do things we regret in our youth.”

Again, pride’s little claws scored Ansbach’s guts. Countless years of his own life described by a fellow as juvenile regret. As if pressing a blade to the bulging veins of the Golden Order were akin to pursuing an unfavorable courtship. Or bear hunting in the peak of Gelmir winter.

“It is a shame that you sought the richness of the accursed blood and found it lacking,” he said diplomatically.

Aster laughed again bitterly. “I did not seek it.” He pointed to his ravaged face. “Take a good look if you can stomach it. Mohg gave me every one of these scars. He plucked out my eyes. He carved my face. He gave me his blood.”

Ansbach indeed noted the trident cut into his face. The red scabs around his sockets could only obscure it so far with the bandages removed.

“…Was it the Dynasty that drove you to the embrace of the mad Three Fingers?”

“Oh, no. I got the Flame before I joined. Ah, come on. Don’t pity me, Ansbach. No one wants you to do that to yourself.”

“Why, then, do you seek Mohg with his Lord brother?"

Aster sighed- weighed the price of honesty. “It’s too long of a story. And I doubt I can remember half of it well enough to tell it. Mohg stalled the Frenzy in me. He wasn’t particularly nice about it, but he saved me.” He rolled up a grimy sleeve, revealing a necrotic black mark on his forearm. “But his cure is busted. I need… I don’t know. If he has another needle on him, I need it.”

A ghost of memory assured Ansbach the ceremony of his knighthood had been transcendent- an honor bestowed with solemnity. But perhaps it had been just a soothing prayer he’d repeated to himself until he’d believed it. Because when he thought back to his induction to the Dynasty, all he could recall was agony.

You forsook the Dynasty for a reason. he reminded himself, resigned.

But then why couldn’t he remember it?

“A needle? Then Kindly Miquella is the man you ought to meet. He is the needle’s maker and could certainly quell the Frenzy another way.”

Aster’s tortured brow wrinkled. “Miquella is dead.”

“You are mistaken.”

Ansbach masked Aster’s eyes with clean linen strips and laid against a tree trunk to rest. He fell asleep to Aster’s faint snores and the muted whispers of Morgott and Cyrielle conversing at the tree line. And when he woke it was to the tantalizing scent of greasy meat roasting over coals.

“I did not sleep,” Morgott explained as he brought over a quarter of a plucked bird’s carcass.

It was scarcely dawn- he must have hunted through the remnants of the night for the meal. Indeed, the skin of the bird was charred and the meat in the breast underdone as though it had been cooked too quickly. But Ansbach wasn’t squeamish. He had eaten worse things in his travels.

“Nightmares?” he asked conversationally.

Morgott shook his head. “What dost thou know of Belurat?”

“It is the holy city of the hornsent. Perhaps the largest south of the Shadow Keep. Though battered by centuries of war, it is magnificent.”

“Thou hast been there.”

“I have enjoyed the privilege of walking its streets many times.”

“Then thou knowest the way.”

“I do.”

Old age had not eroded Ansbach’s wits such that he could not infer the rationale for Lord Morgott’s interrogation. He thumbed his chin pensively. He had neglected to shave for a while now. His goatee would become a proper beard by the time Belurat gates came into view.

“I would be remiss if I did not warn you, Lord. The sages of Belurat are wary of outsiders- especially Graceborn. And not without cause. Messmer-” Morgott raised a brow at the invocation. “-guards the city with a malicious construct. The size of it is staggering. It pursues anything that crosses the Gravesite Plain and burns it, body and spirit.”

Ansbach had overcome both obstacles with the guidance of an acquaintance that served Kindly Miquella alongside him. The surly hornsent man had helped Ansbach gain the sages’ trust, and he had shown him the safest places to cross the grassland without attracting the furnace’s ire. He shuddered to remember how he’d sweat through his clothes when the golem was a kilometer or more away. He feared what it might do to the young Demigod Prince with his delicate constitution.

“Thou’rt kind to worry,” Morgott replied, his sincerity indecipherable as per usual. “But the furnace was destroyed.”

“It beggars belief!”

“We shall soon see the truth for ourselves. My wife heard the rumor from the Inquisitor’s holding her captive.”

“How was it done?”

Morgott’s tail flicked. He held Ansbach’s gaze, but the fur across his broad, bare shoulders bristled. He was annoyed; he did not want to admit what he knew. Nonetheless, he caved, “Mohg. Mohg is in Belurat with my daughter.”

Ansbach forced himself to smile, “Then it is fortunate you hunted, my Lord. There is little to forage among the spirit gravestones.”

———————————-

The gatekeepers of the Abyssal Woods had not spoken falsely. The vast horizon was empty, save for the mountains that hemmed in the grayed grasslands. The beast was missing from its pen. They trod upon old scars in the earth- the places where the monster’s footprints had scabbed over. The pitted furrows and poisoned trees that memorialized ancient battles. The roads- neglected for decades- were weed-choked and uneven. Ansbach had spent most of the journey with his arm linked with Aster’s, guiding him.

The fourth morning on the plain, Ansbach spotted white smoke rising from the ground in wispy pillars. The rolling hills of the landscape afforded him a miraculous view: the furnace golem lay a dead, crumpled mass a few kilometers from the arched tunnel that led to Belurat. It was as though the maw of the mountain had masticated the abomination before spitting the distasteful pieces out. The smoke came not from its blackened, bent corpse, but from a dozen cooking fires congregating around it. Music wafted on the breeze, as did the incomprehensible chatter of a thousand faraway voices. The hornsent had emerged onto the plain to celebrate. They were so lively and vibrant the grave birds were warded from the alluring monument to death.

It did not take long for the hornsent to notice the arrival of Ansbach’s group. A party dozens strong milled at the festival’s fringes. Wondering, probably, if the four hornless strangers walking with the enormous, dust-coated Crucible-blessed man were friends or harbingers of demise. A massive, silver-haired hornsent shouldered past them. The tassels of her yellow dress fluttered like tethered moths as she sprinted uphill. She screamed a single syllable: “Daaaa!”

Morgott bolted forward to meet her, and they collided. Ansbach winced at the crack of horns striking one another. But it was immediately apparent this was no horn-rattling display of aggression. Ansbach chuckled to himself; he had thought Morgan a mimic of the Elden Lord, but Morgott’s daughter took after him just as much. She had drooping goat’s ears, a less bulbous nose, a darker color to her horns, and- Gods- she was taller than him. But otherwise, the differences were minute.

“Marie.” Morgott murmured into his child’s wild mane.

Thus, Ansbach observed another intimate reunion- not really an intruder but unwelcome all the same. He and Aster were distanced- fairly- from the royal family. Ansbach was neither jealous nor resentful. If he felt anything at all, it was fleeting and unknowable. He focused on the tangible: Morgott had found his wife and children, and that was heartening.

Someone was following Marie up the hill. A figure heralded by the windborne scent of blood. His tread was heavy- slow but dignified. The tips of his flight feathers made a glossy train behind him. His chest was bare. Bandages adorned his arms from wrist to elbow. The faintest blotches of pink betrayed where blood was seeping through.

Though hundreds of years had passed, Lord Mohg was largely unchanged. His physique was softer. Morgott’s success had been Mohg’s, it seemed. Relieved of the ardor of securing his Lordship, the abundance of comfort had granted him some pleasant weight in his chest and stomach. If anything distressed Ansbach, however, it was Mohg’s exposed eye socket. The horn that had once pierced into his skull was broken off near his jawline. The fracture had not been sanded down to smoothness. The gouged eye had been a symbol of Mohg’s commitment to rebelling against Marika’s Grace. A wound of ceaseless pain.

With Marika’s mantle taken up by her other Omen son, perhaps the oath had been fulfilled- the horn pried from its setting. Ansbach was unsure how to feel about it. He was even less sure if he was entitled to any such feelings at all.

Shrouded daylight made the gold in Lord Mohg’s fertile plumage glimmer. He was a starry night made manifest. The Ancient Dragons veined with the Order’s gold would be envious to look upon him. Having lost his Dynasty, Mohg was no less dignified. No less beautiful. Ansbach was staggered by the blow that word dealt him.

The Elden Lord captured one of Mohg’s limp hands. A crackling purr sparked tentatively from between his teeth. Cyrielle thumbed the frayed end of a bandage at his wrist.

“What happened?” she whispered.

Behind her, Marie was embracing her father and lifting him off of his feet. The God of Order’s tail was a bottlebrush. Morgan laughed at a safe distance.

Mohg did not answer Cyrielle. His purr fizzled out.

“She is not with you?”

Ansbach’s stomach clenched as he watched realization transform the Elden Lord’s gentle smile into wide-eyed alarm. It was then that Morgott extricated himself from his daughter, face flushed violet and mouth pressed into a thin line. He reached out wordlessly, a healing incantation gathering at his fingertips. Mohg sidled away, shaking his head.

“Splintered crescent, what is going on?” Aster hissed at Ansbach’s elbow.

“Mohg’s daughter,” Ansbach murmured. A pang of disorienting heartsickness came and went. “She is missing.”

“Damn it. Nothing can ever be simple.”

So great was Aster’s disappointment that he shuffled away to collapse, exhausted, in the grass. It was his exasperated exhale that drew Lord Mohg’s attention. His single eye flitted across Ansbach’s embroidered robes. The red-lined cape pinned at his shoulder by a gold-and-ruby brooch. The helm tucked under one arm and the scythe clutched in the opposite hand. He approached, slipping past his brother and sister to peer down his nose at his former disciple.

There was a stirring in Ansbach’s breast- the embarrassing twitch of the prey animal, he figured. His hair was white. Obsidian Lamina was too cumbersome in his wizened hands. A streak of shame brought blush to his cheeks. His allegiance to Miquella had compelled him to seek out his former master. He had done so happily. But the sight of the Omen Demigod reminded him of his frailty. His weakness.

You forsook the Dynasty for a reason.

And perhaps Lord Mohg would not be pleased to greet him in kind.

“Your Eminence-”

“I smell the accursed blood within you.”

“I- yes. From the chalice of your hand, I received the blessing of your ichor.”

“When?”

“I-in the midst of the Shattering War.”

The Lord’s wings flexed.

“Your blood is mine, regardless of the oaths you swore to your master after me. But I have no want for the sap of a faithless heart. I am not so desperate. If you have sense, you will leave us. I will grant you this one chance to return to whomever was sweet enough to lure you from the song of Truth.”

“My Lord?”

Mohg showed him his broad back. Wings folded up- tense- against his spine. Ansbach was ignored- if Mohg had heard him at all. He sighed, and an ache radiated in his chest. The royal family headed towards Belurat together, leaving Aster and him behind.

“Oh, Kindly Miquella. I have found him.” Ansbach muttered his prayer to the sodden field. Mud caked his leather boots. “But if he ever knew me, I hold no place in his memory.”

Chapter Text

So that’s it? Fly away and get a ballista bolt in the heart for your troubles! You aren’t exactly a small target, Bloodmage! Abandon your girls in death!

Cyprus had a capricious temper. In a lot of ways, he reminded Marie of Limgrave. He was a tumultuous downpour that arrived with a clap of thunder and petered out just as quickly. It haunted Marie, his most recent eruption. They’d searched for Moiragh around the plague village until they had come near enough the Ellac Greatbridge to see the army preparing to cross it. Castle Ensis- an anthill on the other side of the gorge- had swarmed with soldiers. Cyprus had demanded they return to the village at once.

The next morning, she and the Belurat Warrior had discovered Papa in a puddle of his own blood. He’d scored glistening furrows into his forearms.

I felt her. Her darling heartbeat. The song of her soul. She is so far from me.

It was terrible recalling her uncle’s dazed, raspy utterance. Marie sat on a toppled pillar. It was half-sunken into the ground as though the earth itself was digesting it. She was nauseous as she surveyed the Gravesite Plain. Belurat’s warden was dead, and the settlement had coughed up its imprisoned populace. Half the city was preparing for a siege, and the other half was celebrating their newfound- and short-lived- freedom. Marie, in contrast, was uselessly revisiting the vicious argument that had driven her and Papa back to Belurat empty-handed.

This is futile. Your daughter will have to endure on her own. The demons’ nest is roused. Go any farther north, and you will be killed!

Cowardly, feckless, faithless. My wings will bear me beyond their reach.

You are an impressive man, Mohg. But you are mad! Search the wide world alone, then! Go where your niece cannot follow you! She will be in Belurat, weathering a siege while you chase wraiths in your tainted blood!

Cyprus had been cruel, and Marie had wanted to urge her uncle to leave her if it meant saving Moiragh. It would have been the right thing to do. It would have been brave. Instead, she had said nothing. Cyprus had somehow persuaded Papa to retreat. Marie decided that she did not care much for Cyprus.

A crimson army was marching on Belurat. A portion of it would arrive in mere days. It was not without some guilt that Marie gazed upon the people she’d doomed. They had hours to revel before reality strangled their happiness: a siege was coming.

A siege was coming. Moiragh was still missing. And Marie was frightened.

Her solitude was soon interrupted. She glanced up to see her mother and brother walking towards her. Mum sat beside her on the pillar. Morgan leaned against it, staring upward to watch kettling vultures.

“Manon,” Mum greeted her warmly.

Marie’s tail flicked in response. The Elden Lord did not balk at her egregiously familiar behavior. To Marie, she was Mum first and Lord second. “But I thought-”

Mum frowned in that way that made the lines on her forehead prominent. Her mouth was a thin seam. She was furious and attempting to hide it. “They are leery about welcoming folk without horns. Understandably.” The last word she tacked on bitterly. “Your fathers were eager to argue the point, but… I figured no one has time to waste on pettiness.”

“But you will not be left out here when…” Marie couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud.

“Oh, no. I think not. The warning needs to reach the right ears. But after, I will not part from either of you until we are home again.”

Marie resented how her mother’s promise soothed her. A prodigy she’d been called. A talent to rival her famed grandsire. None of that praise meant anything if she intended to hide behind the Elden Lord when a true war bayed for blood. And what a comical sight that would be- she was more than a meter taller than her.

Marie melted all the same as Mum’s hands slid into her hair. She tried to card her fingers through it and was thwarted by knotted snags. So, she began to massage Marie’s scalp. Teasing out burrs that weren’t utterly enmeshed with her mane. The beginnings of a purr crackled in Marie’s throat.

“You two ought to enjoy yourselves.” Mum set to salvaging some of Marie’s loose braids. “I will not lie to either of you. This will be hard, whatever comes. Let me be tired and angry. Take some joy for yourselves.”

It was as though Da were speaking through his Lord. Her tone was dire and flat as her gloved fingers plucked at Marie’s hair. Though, if Da were here, he might have commanded his heirs to practice with weapons rather than spend the day in leisure. Marie had half a mind to do just that, but Morgan stared at her pleadingly. She had no choice but to acquiesce.

They descended down the grassy path to the festival. Marie had crossed the plains twice, but only now was the once-barren prairie alive with movement and noise. As though a horde of cicadas had emerged from their nurseries to make merry. Tents were propped up amongst the hornsent masses. Most were simple constructions of stakes with massive cloth tapestries tied between them. There was no need for anything more permanent than that.

One of the biggest tents in the center possessed a gravitational draw. Crowds of bairns and adults orbited the stall. Marie was similarly lured by a tantalizing scent. Smoke and steam were belched into the sky.

A flurry of aproned hornsent hovered around the crockery set on a campfire like bees around a sunflower. They ladled thick, white cream into bowls of fresh, orange fruit. A man with bandaged hands pounded a sticky, purplish mash in a stone bowl with a mallet. A duo was rolling pieces of the beaten dough in a pile of toasted nuts or stretching it flat to wrap honeyed, whole nuts or clumps of fruit inside. Yet another person was stuffing bread rolls with butter and honey.

Marie had no idea what any of it was, but her mouth watered. Her height, then, proved to be a boon. The mallet-bearing hornsent beamed at the sight of her. He gesticulated excitedly, and before she could parse what he was trying to communicate, some of the starchy purple purses and soft, tacky rolls were being shoved into her hands.

“Er, thank you.”

A few of the young folk around her groaned as they were passed over. But no one seriously complained.

“Thank you!” the hornsent man echoed jovially.

Marie and Morgan retreated from the crowd to eat. The doughy balls were still warm from the steam. They had a chewy texture and a subtly sweet flavor; they were vessels for the much more flavorful fillings within them. The fruit had a dense flesh and syrupy juices. It was unlike anything Marie had ever tasted. Morgan preferred the familiar fare of the buttered bread rolls. They licked their fingers clean, watching a flock of children play in the grass. The youths charged across a flat patch of land, kicking a ball and sometimes bouncing it between one another without using their hands. It seemed a great deal of fun to Marie. But she was too large and too old to frolic like a bairn.

“Maybe they will let you join,” she said to Morgan.

He shook his head, expression inscrutable. It was a shame. Da treated him like such an old soul it seemed her little brother believed it, too. They left the children to their game.

On the festival’s fringes, a group congregated away from the tents. Belurat fashion favored linens and wools of earthy hues. Richer fabrics were dyed a subdued yellow. These people, however, wore clothes of green and black. Many adorned their heads with cowls composed of braided cords. The cords’ ends draped across their bodies as though a tangled net had been thrown around their necks. Those who did not have hoods pulled over their crowns were shorn of hair- men and women alike. And those with the most elaborately knotted cowls carried slender falx at their hips.

The people chatted amongst themselves as Marie and Morgan idled past. A huddle was melting what appeared to be wax in a pan. With ladles they spooned the purplish substances into ancient-looking, round metal molds. At the edge of the group, an aged woman was carving designs into the mostly hardened wax with a tapered silver branch.

The woman sensed Marie and glanced up from her work. A cluster of obsidian horns made her brow sag over one eye. It could barely open. The other eye was a deep brown set in yellowed sclera. As with all the other hornsent, not a speck of Grace shone within. A smile bloomed on the woman’s weathered face. She inclined her head in greeting. But her friendly demeanor collapsed the moment she spotted Morgan.

“Rotten Erdtree whelp. Thought they blinded runaways with the Iris.”

Marie sputtered, “Pardon?”

But the carver had said her piece and did not appear inclined to explain herself. Her obstinate silence inflamed Marie’s anger. She stepped forward, but a hand caught her elbow. She twisted out of the grip, but it was enough to halt her furious momentum. She had attracted the attention of a Belurat Warrior.

“Oh, grandam,” the Warrior tsked. The hornsent with the falx quieted, observing. But the Warrior’s tone was friendly. Her armor was polished to a mirror sheen. Her yellow, tasseled surcoat was crisp and clean. She wore no helm, for her horns were too large to accommodate one. Her white-blonde hair flowed loose down her back, and her green eyes sparkled amiably.

“Leave me be!” the old woman snarled.

“Carve as you like,” the Warrior shrugged. “But I had better not catch you pilfering ash.”

“Hollow-horned brute! It was our way-”

“The jarring never used ash. None of that soot is going to be reborn in your pots, ‘dam. Belurat’s elders will sort it out.”

As the harangued crone mumbled more curses, the Warrior set a dented mug in the grass beside her mold and tools. It was full of a clear, pungent drink. Candied bits of fruit peel and dried seed pods sweetened the sharp aroma.

“They are our dead, too,” the old woman insisted, forlorn.

“Maybe something will wander in of its own choosing if you leave the lid off.”

The gift of drink more than the patronizing advice softened the woman. She rolled her eye but nodded anyway. Then, the Warrior cast Marie a pointed glare- a wordless order to take her leave. Marie obeyed, of course, with her speechless brother in tow. Her unspent frustration roiled when she noticed the Warrior was trailing after them.

“What did my brother ever do to your lot?” she spat over her shoulder.

“My lot?” the Warrior echoed lightly.

“Marie!” Morgan hissed.

“You won’t allow him into the city! Strangers spit insults at him!”

Some of the woman’s warmth cooled, “I sympathize. But understand this.” She gestured to the heap that had once been the dreadful, flaming golem. “Unfair as it is, you may have to endure unkind words. Golden-eyed children of Grace inflicted that upon us.”

“I have golden eyes, same as him,” Marie protested.

“Well, dear Lady, surely you realize that everything else blinds people to that fact.”

“Everything else?”

“Fur. Horns. Tail. You are rich in blessings.”

Morgan’s eyes were wide. Marie was no less shamed, and she was resentful of it. She was born with the blessings of the Crucible and the Erdtree. It seemed no matter the distances she traveled, people hated one part of her heritage or the other. She recalled a sewer gaol full of horned skeletons and shackles. Her father’s torment and sin. She was sorry for Morgan… and for the potter despite everything.

“I am sorry,” Morgan murmured. But before Marie’s indignance could overrule her better judgement, the Warrior woman shook her head.

“Do not apologize.” She took a wine bladder from her belt. As she removed the cap, the air was perfumed with the stringent vapors of strong spirits. It was the same drink she’d given the elderly woman as a peace offering. “I am Cuta. A friend of Cyprus. They have wasted the good stuff on us Warriors. I cannot drink all this and keep a clear head for the ceremony. I’m afraid I’ve no more cups, but you both are welcome to it.”

Marie gave her own name as she took the skin from Cuta. She quaffed the spirits and immediately regretted her bravado. The spices of the brew had disguised its scent enough to trick Marie into believing it would be a smooth swallow. It burned- down her throat and around her heart and behind her eyes. She swore it was hotter than her blood, and she wanted to wriggle out of her pelted hide. The veins in her ears throbbed.

Morgan laughed at her, so she did not warn him when he sipped from the bladder himself. He had been drinking wine and mead at dinner for years now, but he was wholly unprepared for something so robust. He coughed tearfully, and Marie felt certain he wouldn’t be able to taste food for days.

“Marie,” he rasped reproachfully. “What did I ever do to you?”

Cuta was grinning. “Good, isn’t it? There’s nothing you can’t make with Rada fruit.”

Marie handed back the half-full bladder ruefully. But the pain in her guts was swiftly abating. As was her foul mood. “Thank you, Cuta.”

“It is my pleasure. This is a celebration. We ought to treat it as such without letting grudges weigh us down.”

Cuta had made the mistake of reminding Morgan of the wax-carver’s rudeness. He wiped more tears from his reddened cheeks. “Why can’t that woman have any ash?”

“Her tribe hail from the east- from what used to be Moorth if that name means anything to you. There, they still cremate their dead and store the ashes in urns with other bits and pieces as a kind of… a ritual atonement, I suppose. We think it a poor practice. The spirits of the departed might be trapped in the jars and end up simmering in their wrath. And, in truth, very few of us see the appeal in being burned in death. Instead, we… Well, why don’t you both come watch?”

The recent rains had reduced the corpses within the golem’s brazier into a black slurry. An occasional intact bone floated atop the muck, permanently stained gray. The felled monstrosity looked like a skeletal slime that had tried to devour an iron cage.

Banners of dull mauve and sun-washed yellow were tied between the bars of warped metal. Like a haphazard spider’s web. But bells weighed the strands to sagging rather than beads of dew. As winds carded through them, choral chiming rolled across the plain. Morgan shivered beside Marie.

“What are they doing?” he asked.

“It is a funeral.” Cuta answered. “The fire within the furnace burns flesh and spirit alike. But if any wraith has endured that torture, it harms nothing to ingratiate ourselves to it.”

Like the courtyard in Belurat's heart- like the cemetery Cyprus had tended in the plague village- branched stakes encircled the mess of metal and ash. Horns were lashed to some of the sticks. People were gathering in the estuary between the furnace corpse and the ring of graves. They carried hand drums, flutes, and fiddles. There were those dressed like Cuta- the Warriors brandishing weapons rather than instruments.

Morgan frowned, “Has a wraith ever come out of one?”

“Oh, no. But then, furnaces rarely die. They damage themselves, and their masters dispose of them. They might fall. They might drown. But, no- this is the first time a hornsent has snuffed a warden of the Impaler… I believe we have you to thank for that.”

“Hmm…”

The noise was unbidden, and Marie winced immediately after. Her father made an identical sound when he did not wish to speak.

But Cuta scoffed, “Do not be modest. I heard that the Grandam gave you a tongue-lashing. I hope the words of one old woman do not discourage you. You should be proud.”

“I have ruined your lives.”

“You magnificent young thing. We were never at peace. The Impaler was always going to return. At least this time we can meet him with envigored spirits.”

The gathered musicians began to play. It was not the mournful song Marie had anticipated. The drums spurred an aggressive tempo. The strings alternated between sweeping, melancholic chords and driving staccatos. It was not a melody to be enjoyed nor a dirge to anchor into the heart, but a call to be swept away in. It was a storm.

Indeed, the dancers were tugged along as if they had no will to refuse it. Wordless singing issued from gilded masks. The Warriors had bells tied to their ankles or wrists, and every bombastic kick and twirl punctuated the fluted winds like bursts of rainfall.

Two beasts charged from behind the furnace. Marie was rooted by a thrill of awe and alarm. Wild, white-blonde manes framed snapping, leonine jaws. Brambles of horns sprouted from their crowns and spines. Black, ruddy, tan. They swayed to the rhythm of the procession.

Marie noticed, then, the strangeness of the animals’ legs. How many animals had she seen that stomped about wearing boots? The creatures’ pelts were not pelts at all, but shrouds of crimson, mauve, and yellow fabrics and lamellar armor that mirrored the garb of the Horned Warriors. She saw the hands puppeting the toothy maws. They were dancers cloaked in bestial guises.

Cuta chuckled at Marie’s revelatory gasp. “Behold the pride of Belurat. It is the hope of every Warrior to become a lion and dance alongside the spirits of the storm.”

“They are fearsome,” Marie agreed.

“But these are gentle cubs compared to our Divine Beast. Only Sculpted Keepers can tame the spirit that would be called into that vessel.” Cuta’s smile was melancholic. “We are in dire need of their might. Alas…”

She trailed off. More people with lion masks and elaborate cloaks pranced around the musicians. Cuta jogged out to meet them.

Morgan and Marie stood a meter apart as the funerary march circled the golem. The feet of the dancers were stained with ash. Hornsent passed them, trickling down the hill to enter the ringed boundary between the crumpled brazier and the horned-tied stakes. The song undulated between rage and sorrow. Eventually, the storm broke; the lions ceased stamping and biting. The fierceness of the music relented, and joy seeped through.

Cuta came to retrieve them, then. Smiling and sweaty and flushed in the face. With a brilliance in her eyes that was euphoric.

“Come,” she demanded, arms outstretched.

“We don’t know how,” Morgan objected.

“I will show you.”

They waded into the current, standing at the fringes where the pull was weakest- where Morgan was less likely to be touched. They made for clumsy students. Marie’s effortless grace did not make her a natural talent. Her tail was a liability as she floundered for balance. If Cuta were any sterner a teacher, the effort would have been humiliating. But every stilted twirl and stumble was celebrated.

Marie’s heart leapt into her throat when Cuta grasped Morgan’s wrists to demonstrate where he must hold his arms. The action was thoughtless and swift; he was relinquished before Marie could react. He remained whole- body and soul intact. Marie could only assume the blood of the hornsent did not burn like her own.

Morgan noticed it, too. A pink blush blazed across his pale cheeks. It was the mark of liquor-born courage inflaming his blood. He captured Cuta’s hands in his own and whirled them both into a dance without rhythm. They became a lumbering, impromptu cyclone that defied the pace of the percussion and trilling flutes. Cuta allowed herself to be buoyed on the current of Morgan’s exuberance.

Morgan was a Demigod, but Cuta was still a head taller than him. The easy strength of someone born with divine heritage partnered well with Cuta’s lifelong training and discipline. Her laughter alerted other mourners to dive out of the way of their graceless trajectory. Marie followed them. She was smiling as they were cheered and scolded in equal measure.

They spun right over the limp claw of the furnace. Morgan scrabbled at the iron to regain his balance. Alas, he and Cuta collapsed into a heap. Cuta pushed up into a sitting position at once, giggling.

“My dearest pupil! What came over you?” She dusted charred dirt off of her surcoat. “Morgan? Morgan, are you alright?”

Marie lurched forward. Despite the short distance, she was out of breath as she knelt beside Cuta. The Warrior had her fingers pressed to Morgan’s wrist. Her gray face blanched.

“He’s dead,” Marie said. Her question extruded itself as a declaration of fact. By Cuta’s bewildered expression, she knew the woman could not find his pulse.

“I don’t know-” Cuta stammered. “We tripped a-and the fall-.”

“It was not the fall!”

Cuta was cowed into silence by Marie’s outburst, and it helped none. Marie pivoted. Da and Papa were kilometers away, sequestered within the city. Mum was nearer, but Marie could not spot her in the sprawl of hornsent. Strangers surrounded her, curious. Her heart raced at their proximity. She reached for the Erdtree, and brushing against the far-off gold made her instantly ill.

A figure in sable shoved through the throng. His white hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, but flyaway strands framed a sun-weathered face. His eyes were luminously golden. Without his helm, Marie almost didn’t recognize him as the knight that had accompanied her mother and father across the Plain.

“Sir Ansbach,” she sputtered uselessly. The presence of a person she at least knew the name of was pathetically reassuring.

“Princess,” he replied as he knelt beside Morgan’s body. “So this is his curse.”

The knight took control from her. She relinquished it, feeling sick with herself.

“The boy’s spirit has gone astray,” Ansbach shouted. “Callers of Belurat, I beg you to draw it home with your prayers.”

Marie, cynical and furious with herself, scoffed. These people had barred her mother and brother from their city. They would not help.

A flutist protested, “The child is without horns. How will his soul return?”

It was Cuta that growled, “Let us try first and debate later.”

Without clear direction, the players guessed at chords and beats. The conglomeration of their noise was hideous, and Marie tugged on her ear in agitation.

After a minute, it coalesced. The droning was not an assault but alluring. The players swayed, the sages murmured. And when the first bell rang, Marie felt in her chest an animal waking from a long slumber. It scratched at her sinews and settled.

The music was not as vibrant and riotous as that which spurred the dancing lions. This was not the rage of a tempest, but the lull that came after. A gentle tide in a starless dark. Marie was close to tears.

A gilt haze shimmered within the resonance of the music. Cuta’s delicate touch guided it over Morgan’s mouth and chest. Like a gauzy material spooling itself on the scaffold of the notes.

“Your blood is strong indeed, Prince,” Sir Ansbach whispered. “Now, I shall remind your heart of its purpose.”

His palm blazed a familiar hue. He was a blood sorcerer. Like Papa and Moiragh. Ansbach laid his hand upon Morgan’s chest. The blue veins in her brother’s neck and arms bulged.

And as Morgan’s eyes opened, twin tears of blood pooled and fell.

—---------------------------------

“Don’t tell Da, Marie.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

Morgan shrugged. He kept pushing his hair back behind his ear. His eyes were faintly bruised purple, sclera bloodshot. The veins in his wrists were prominent, swollen.

“He will find out,” Marie assured him.

“I know. Just don’t say anything.”

It was a stubbornly childish desire. Once Mum saw Morgan’s bruises, she would know. If the old knight didn’t explain it all to her, first.

After his improvised resurrection, Morgan was given frigid water, and the hornsent resumed their dances. Sir Ansbach had whisked them to a place of relative seclusion. They sat alone in the meager shade of a spindly tree. The knight and the Warrior were gathering more ice to placate Morgan’s cursed flesh. Leaving Marie to marvel at her general inadequacy and ponder how Morgan intended to keep his ordeal a secret from God.

“What caused it?”

“It was the furnace. It was so hot against my fingers…”

“Really?” Marie took a stab at levity. “I am glad it wasn’t the drink. I’d have felt guilty for letting you have it.”

“...I am glad you didn’t blame Cuta. She’s lovely, and you would have hurt her.”

Marie tilted her head. If Ansbach had not stepped in… she might have succumbed to the impulse anyway.

“You are not lying to me for her sake, are you? The furnace was extinguished more than a week ago.”

“It was hot,” Morgan insisted. “Cuta said it was made to destroy souls. She was telling the truth. There are no spirits in the ash.”

“Well,” Marie sighed. “I think the funeral is more for them, Morgan. Not the supposed wraiths.”

“I know. But… is that what the army is going to do? Are they going to burn everyone, body and soul?”

Marie was too much Moiragh’s disciple. Or perhaps it was her guilt that compelled her to be honest.

“...Yes.”

Chapter Text

Moiragh had always had the worst nightmares of all the children. The terrors of Truth had sought her out relentlessly. Memory supplied the heart-wrenching screams of his baby: her shrill, broken voice pleading for help. His daughter had often fought against his soothing hold, twisting and writhing and gasping. Far too delicate and exhausted to beat back whatever attacked her in her sleep. Deaf to his murmured assurances.

This is my fault.

The thought hunted him as mercilessly as the wraiths had Moiragh.

I am the reason she is tormented. This is my fault.

Mohg sat at the edge of his cot. His daughter's blood clot was warm in his feverish hands. He had acquired it weeks ago, and it had not dried nor rotted. Surely if she were dead- the Divinity cast out of her flesh- it would decay as any meat would. Dark blood seeped into the lines of his palm. She had left for him this morbid sign, and yet she remained unreachable. But he now understood why. Moiragh would continue to scream in his mind. He would not be able to put aside his guilt.

Morgott announced himself with a low chuff. He entered the room without waiting for a response. Mohg could not turn him away. The hornsent had finally scavenged and tailored robes to fit both of their enormous guests. Mohg wore gray-violet, and Morgott the yellow wool of the sages. His twin’s foul, travel-stained trousers had been discarded for good.

Belurat was on the brink. If the city had anything going for it, it was that the flat plain prevented the encroaching army from catching the hornsent by surprise. They’d seen the red banners fluttering over the horizon and had sequestered everyone behind the walls. The gate was shut and barred. The pillagers would be forced through a defensible tunnel to reach the city’s entrance. Otherwise, the outlook was bleak. Belurat had been breached and razed half a dozen times over. The people were weakened and destitute- hungry and ill-trained for war. There was enough food to prop the city for maybe a month or two. Three if they devoured the winter stores and left themselves nothing for the rapidly approaching season. The Impaler’s infamy was a stake through Belurat’s heart. Its wounds had never been allowed to heal.

The hornsent looked to Morgott and Mohg- their divinely blessed visitors- for rescue.

Please! No! Moiragh shrieked in Mohg’s head.

Morgott groused, “I have consecrated every dusty crevice on every misshapen street. Every threshold, weapon, and artifact they have laid at my feet. They remain unsatisfied.”

“They are frightened.”

“I could sympathize if they had not been so quick to disregard Cyrielle and Morgan.”

Mohg had no retort. He smoldered with anger on their behalf, same as his twin. Even though their shunning had not lasted a day.

He asked, “Where is my sister now?”

“Cyrielle and the Pureblood are making a tincture of lilies to put the Carian to sleep.”

Cyrielle and Morgan, as family of the Lands Between Omen, had been tentatively welcomed. Sir Ansbach the loitering knight had purchased the hornsents’ trust by gifting them herbs and supplies he’d gathered in his travels. Aster had simply been so sickly and pathetic the pity of the hornsent had won out against their unease. They figured he was another Graceborn mutilated for defying the Impaler.

“Is his condition that dire?”

“It is worsening,” Morgott grimaced. “Sir Ansbach assured me purple lilies could quiet his mind for the coming weeks.”

“You trust a vagrant of the fallen Dynasty?” Mohg scoffed.

Morgott shrugged- a most unkingly gesture. “He rescued Morgan’s soul in my absence.”

Mohg had recognized the regalia of the fallen Dynasty the mysterious Sir Ansbach clad himself with. But the name and face of the aged man were entirely unfamiliar to him. The Pureblood Knights of Mohgwyn had betrayed their Lord when they had allowed the White Mask to make a tormented idol of Moiragh. To Mohg, Sir Ansbach was a traitor. But much to his humiliation, he had saved Morgan’s life. Now he was indebted to his wayward servant. As was Morgott.

The threat of the siege was perhaps the sole reason Morgott was not unraveling over his son’s near-death. Without someone to unequivocally take the blame, Morgott accused himself. And he was not the sort of man to fall to pieces when the universe required of him penance. When he was not playing at sage for the hornsent, he was muttering to his parasite God and scribbling Rune-like sigils on thick, grainy Rada husk paper. Designing a theory of holy magic to mitigate Morgan's affliction. To spear his spirit with a golden tether. He'd had no fire left for scolding and tearing out his own hair. War was coming. It was a time for weapons and shields. Even for poor Morgan.

Mohg’s teeth clacked irritably. “Where are the children now?”

“Resting. Marie desireth to fight, of course.”

“Of course.”

“What did I prepare her for, if not this?”

“She believes she is responsible for the strife to come. Do not give her a test she thinks she has failed already.”

Morgott nodded. It was barely perceptible. But Mohg knew by the twitch of his brother’s brow that despite his steely expression, he was glad to be given an excuse to keep his daughter from the worst of the battle.

“Someone must mind Morgan,” he said. “He hath grown reckless. The boy heedeth me not. Marie and the hornsent sages may manage his curse in the meantime.”

“Someone must mind Morgan,” Mohg agreed diplomatically.

Morgott then changed the subject with uncharacteristic softness. “How doth my brother fare?”

Mohg was honest, “I am wretched.”

Gold fell from Morgott’s fingertips like pollen. He gestured at Mohg’s linen-bound arms. “I will mend those wounds.”

“You will not!” Mohg hissed. “They must remain!”

“Flagellating thyself will solve nothing.”

Mohg snorted viciously. Such sentiment from his twin of all people. “I was close. I could sense her. She is in the north, across the Ellac Greatbridge.” He squeezed his lacerated arms until fresh blood oozed from the scabs. “I abandoned her. I turned away. How can I call myself a father? I forsook my own daughter!”

Morgott dropped his hand. The auric light was snuffed. The shadows of the room were all the darker for it. “Thou wouldst not have done so without cause.”

Mohg choked, “He told me to leave her in his care.”

“Who?”

“…Miquella.” He whispered the name. His shame would not permit him to speak it any louder. Morgott’s frown became severe. His tail that lashed once. Mohg growled through his teeth, “Do not look at me so. I am not mad.”

“Mohg-“

“I am not!” he snapped. His desperation was acid in his throat. Pitifully disgusting.

The withered arm in the cocoon refused to be dismissed as a ghost of Mohg’s imagination. Those scant few days in the dense northern forests had worn upon his fortitude. Out of the corner of his eye he’d catch the hem of a white tunic slipping behind a mossy trunk. The wind had carried indecipherable whispers. And after he’d espied the army of the Impaler across the greatbridge, he’d opened his veins in one final attempt to reach out to his lost child. A delicate hand had traced the nascent map he’d been carving into his forearms. A sigh of sympathy had filled his ringing ears when Cyprus and Marie had found him quaking in the deficient dawn.

That was the truth of it. Cyprus and Marie had not convinced him of anything. It had been Miquella’s sweet caress at his jaw. Miquella’s voice, heard only by him.

Morgott pried Mohg’s clenching claws away from his injuries. “I do believe thee.”

Mohg’s hand trembled, unbidden. His brother continued, “I have seen proof of his presence in this land. The Pureblood Knight doth claim to serve him.”

Mohg was parched, “It is said that Miquella walked among the hornsent for a time. Long after he was…”

“Long after we killed him.”

When moths’ wings had tickled Mohg’s throat and a pleasant coolness had salved his bleeding arms, he’d had the utmost faith in Miquella’s promise. Now, he remembered his nightmares- the effigy of his late-husband that had decried him a worthless whore and crushed the eggs of Moiragh’s unborn siblings in his fists. The insect monster that pinned him down and feasted on his heart. But those had only been dreams. Surely he had not relinquished his most precious treasure to a man that had every reason to despise him.

A spiderwebbed crack crawled across the surface of an amber egg. Damning the tiny life inside it to a frail existence. How had he forgotten?

Mohg’s animal moan filled the room. “What have I done?”

Morgott was silent for a minute. Rubbing the back of Mohg’s hand with his calloused thumb. Mohg was too raw for tenderness. But the pain of enduring it was a balm of its own.

Morgott said, “We are all reunited. Thou didst not leave Marie alone. I am grateful for that. If thou hadst pursued Moiragh on thine own, I might have lost thee after all.”

“Weeks have passed, and I have idled. I failed her.”

“I swear to thee, Moiragh will survive. Her father taught her well. If Miquella beckoned her to him, we must trust for now that he intendeth no harm.”

Because Morgott was never frivolous with empty gestures of comfort, Mohg was calmed. The specter of his ceaseless failure glared at the weathered gray hand clasped in his own. It would not have to wait long for God’s assurances to erode. But for now, Mohg did not feel so constricted.

Morgott was not finished. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Wilt thou tell me if Miquella should appear to thee again?”

“I will.”

“This is not thy burden to bear alone.”

Before Mohg could reply, armored knuckles rapped upon the door of their temporary house. Morgott reached the door first. It was difficult for Mohg to navigate the cramped buildings of the city even with his wings tucked tightly against his body. He stowed Moiragh’s clot as his brother greeted their visitors.

The Grandam was a brittle yellow twig planted into the gritty street. Cyprus was beside her, unscarred hand at her elbow. Another pair of masked Warriors lingered behind them, palming the pommels of their blades. Mohg had suffered the old woman enough to last a lifetime. He would never forgive her slight against Marie and himself. It was only by Morgott and Cyprus’s coaxing that he deigned to entreat with her to coordinate the city’s response to the coming siege. Even then, Morgott had done most of the talking.

She said, “I fear we’ve no time left to wring our hands. The scouts returned not an hour ago. He is coming. Are ye with us?”

“How many march with him?”

Morgott adapted quickly. God was briefly overshadowed by the ghost of the Fell Omen. He was a man that had truly known war whilst Mohg had contented himself toying with the carrion left lying around.

“Few, if any at all,” the Grandam answered.

“Surely he is not so mighty he could breach the gates alone.”

The old woman sneered. “He will gloat. Scent the sour air, ye Crucible-blessed. The siege hath begun in earnest. The Gravesite Plain is ablaze.”

The reek of distant smoke indeed lay in ambush beneath the ambient odor of the city. Mohg inhaled deeply. An acrid tang stung the back of his throat. Muted cries of alarm began to brush against his awareness, filtering through the malaise of his guilt.

The sky reminded Mohg of Caelid. Where fires blazed eternally to slow the creep of Scarlet Rot. With Malenia’s death a hundred years prior, the expansion had stagnated. But the country continued to burn. The soul of the land itself rose upwards on wispy black columns and melded into the sickly cover of clouds.

The Shattering War was nostalgic to Mohg in many ways. His sole concern in those years had been Morgott’s well-being. Concealed within Siofra’s bedrock, the Dynasty had flourished. Whilst the Demigods bayed for blood, the Lord of Blood had picked at their fragile alliances and welcomed to his bosom those displaced and made destitute by the vainglorious war. He had adopted the heathens that believed Death was a being that flew on feathered wings. The Omen Morgott shackled to Leyndell’s armies. The commonfolk abandoned to fester in the Aeonian Bloom. The slaves of Limgrave’s nobility. Liurnia’s Albinaurics. The denizens of Gelmir shredded between the forces of Gold and blasphemy-

Bloodroses were notoriously hardy flowers. It was still a romantic sight when they bloomed on Gelmir snow. A chaotic smattering of thin, thorny bushes erupted around the front of a dilapidated mansion. As if the building had coughed up its offal and laid down to die in the mountain wilderness. Tattered Leyndell banners had been staked into the ground- a pathetic declaration of triumph. It was unlikely the former residents of the manor claimed any allegiance to the Lord of Blasphemy, but the unmoored Leyndell soldiers took their victories where they could on the unforgiving slopes. Even if that meant slaughtering the ancient Gelmir houses under the pretense of rooting out treason. In their foolishness, they’d left a lone survivor. Young, strong, and slowly succumbing to grief and rage without a hand to guide him. All the world was hurting. Some beseeched Miquella to quell their agonies and pursue gentler purposes. Some were visited by Lord Mohg first. The man in the sacked mansion beheld his newfound master in awe. And his master regarded him. Sandy brown, shoulder-length hair. Grace-golden eyes. A rusted scythe in his hands.

The thread of Mohg’s thought broke, and the knight’s visage melted away before he could properly visualize it. He did not know why his mind had brought him to that neglected memory. Or why his insides twisted.

Morgott’s voice cut through the haze of reverie, “I was the Lord of a city twice besieged.”

The Grandam sputtered, her jaw quivering in anger. The elderly woman had lived through a siege as well. She resented the insinuation that her experience was lesser.

But rarely did Morgott spare feelings. “Take us to the gate. With haste!”

Pride wounded, the Grandam shook Cyprus off of her arm and walked beside Morgott. She wouldn’t be able to match his stride, but she would try. Mohg and Cyprus glanced sidelong at one another.

“I never thanked you for coming back,” the Warrior declared without warning. Mohg’s forearms throbbed, and Cyprus caught him wincing. “Nor did I apologize for the way I spoke to you. It was unkind. Are you alright?”

“I am of use.”

It was the truth- the answer anyone in the threatened city would want to hear-

“Marvelous,” Cyprus smirked. He trailed after Morgott and the Grandam. Mohg followed suit. “But that is not what I asked.”

Mohg merely sighed.

Cyprus nodded, “The sooner the Impaler dies, the sooner we can go after your girl again.”

We.

The word stuck to Mohg’s ribs as they ascended the tower to the rampart. Morgott and the panting Grandam were already there- as were the Warrior guards. Archers stood in formation upon the parapet. The coiled scrolls decorating their bows gleamed in feeble daylight. Veiled hornsent and sages in yellow robes waited with amber-gemmed staves in hand. The bells tied to their horns jingled softly with every tilt of their heads. They were all staring down at the tunnel that connected the Plain to Belurat’s gates.

The passage belched smoke. Like the gaping maw of a toothless dragon. A scarlet glow flickered down its gullet. Mohg felt its heat from several hundred meters away. The sensation was dreadfully familiar. His spine chilled, and the phantom pain of burns prickled his palms. It was like the furnace golem had arisen.

Fire crawled out of the gloom. It was bright orange at the fringes but crimson and black at the heart. Its thousand tongues licked at the tunnel's walls before tasting the grasses and gardens that flanked the road. Then it surged forth ravenously. Cyprus audibly exhaled when the flames stalled at the stone stairs.

“Keep thy courage,” the Grandam barked. “The Impaler cometh.”

Terror swept through the ranks of Belurat’s soldiers in a peristaltic wave. Eroding their resolve as a shaded speck emerged from the passage’s mouth. Spindly-legged and misshapen. Heat distorted the air, and Mohg’s eye was not what it had once been; he could not make sense of what he was seeing. But he could tell it was a man plodding across the razed earth- unmarred by the inferno lapping at his bare legs. He dragged a spear behind him, its wicked end scraping a furrow into the earth. Spouts of flame erupted from it. The man stalked past the lone-standing spiral columns. A molten tide charred their bases before receding. Something crimson squirmed around his body, indistinct. Mohg’s insides writhed similarly.

He was not afraid, but unsettled. Morgott’s curled lip betrayed that he felt similarly.

In the stillness, the Impaler spoke: “The tenacity of the Graceless is to be admired. Yet thine arrogance shall be thine undoing.”

Mohg strained to hear him. He was shouting, but his disaffected tone meant his voice barely carried over the fire-born winds and the considerable distance between them. He was no louder than a whisper, and his audience hung onto every word. Messmer addressed Belurat as an inhuman singularity. A hive organism of one coherent and repugnant mind.

“I will not suffer impudence from lightless creatures that spit upon mercy when it is granted. Bring forth the furnace’s slayers. Be cleansed of the tumor of sedition, and the hand of discipline shall remember thy cooperation.”

“He is lying,” Mohg growled to the hornsent.

The Grandam spat. “A swift death is his sworn reward, and he would not keep to that oath.”

“I felled his machine. I will give him what he desires.”

“He wants us all, pretty Omen,” Cyprus murmured at his elbow. “Giving yourself up saves no one.”

“I do not intend to die, pretty Warrior.”

God stepped forth, nape bristling through the collar of his borrowed robes. The white of his fur was luminous. It sparkled with the dew of divinity. A halo in the shape and hue of a golden seedling manifested over his head. It was rapidly expanding.

The archers shrank away, hissing. Covering their eyes and cowering. Even Mohg squinted, as accustomed as he was to the brilliance of the Erdtree. The incantation of Morgott’s false sun was a spectacle even in this diminished state. The hornsent nearest him scattered. Cyprus brandished his staff, shielding the Grandam with his body. The Lord beneath the gates threw an arm across his face.

“Thou art a son of Marika? Thou art a servant of the Erdtree? Dost thou acknowledge the might of her heir?” Morgott’s voice had always possessed a thunderous quality. Now it crackled with the menace of his inherited Godhood. Mohg’s eye streamed water, smarting at the radiance of his twin. Morgott was a wavering, nigh-formless silhouette in the corona of his sacred sunflower. He raised his arms, and a hundred blades materialized above the gate. A hail of swords hung, suspended, in midair.

“I am Morgott the Grace Given! Lord of the Erdtree’s lands! Belurat lieth beneath the boughs of my protection! Turn away lest I extinguish thee before the judgement of Grace! Well, traitor? What sayest thee?”

The traitor in question said nothing. He was small in the sooty landscape, suddenly unimpressive. One arm yet shielded his face, while the other gripped his enormous spear. He was indistinct in the gauzy veil of dark smoke. Then, Belurat watched the Impaler retreat. He turned and walked back the way he’d come, scorched grasses crunching underfoot. Belurat’s defenders held their collective breath.

The wind was acrid with the reek of ash. The false sun dissipated into wispy tendrils that caressed Morgott in farewell before vanishing entirely. He was untouched by the illness that visited Marie whenever she attempted Erdtree magic. He had effortlessly repelled the Impaler.

“I doubt that shall deter him wholly,” Morgott grumbled, blind to the wary stares boring holes into him. Oblivious to the slack jaws and trembling knees.

No one moved. They were as silent as graves. Mohg’s heart dropped into his pelvis as his eye snagged upon Cyprus’s seething glare. In the lingering auric glow, his irises appeared blood red.

Chapter Text

Even before the obligatory introductions, Cyprus had suspected the huge, tailed, white-furred man was Mohg’s brother. If only because he was Marie’s haggard double. For the life of him, Cyprus could not pick out a single feature Morgott shared with Mohg. And they claimed to be twins! Cyprus could laugh, but his jaw was too tightly clenched. So, his bitterness festered in the back of his throat as he limped through the streets. They were uneven- the stones were loose. Debris littered his path. He had rolled his ankles countless times over the years. Fallen and skinned his knees, his palms. This place was a ruin, and he was scar tissue.

When Mohg’s Lordly brother had turned the Impaler away, Cyprus had been foolishly relieved. The sun had set on Belurat, and the night had not been lit by red flame. But a missive had come with the dawn. The Impaler wished to entreat with his dear brother. There had been a fondness in the words that survived the disdain of the Warrior that read them to the Grandam. Cyprus had been ill all morning. It now made sense what Mohg had said about Morgott pursuing Lordship through Marika’s Order. Cyprus had watched realization take root in the Grandam’s wrinkled frown.

Send them both to the Impaler and do not permit their return! Cyprus had begged her in confidence.

But like rot set into the marrow of a horn, it was too late even for excision. The miasma was in the blood, swollen with spiritual rancor. Belurat had welcomed the children of a baneful God; there was no warding against them.

The Grandam’s resignation sounded hollowly in his skull: We are at their mercy no matter our course.

Within Cyprus, hatred kindled to a blaze.

His pace was painfully brisk. Every joint in his leg throbbed with the impact of his steps. The stabbing ache was rooted into his spine- rising to his lungs with the smoke in his belly. He jabbed his cane into the cobbles, grinding down its polished end. He was possessed- not by an external malignance but his own furious hopelessness. His own powerlessness. His feet brought him- somehow simultaneously unwitting and horrifically deliberate- to the refuge of the Impaler’s deserters severed from Grace.

A few milled by the entrance. They were as unsettled by the arrival of the Impaler as the hornsent were. They muttered to one another in low voices, wringing their hands around cups of warmed broth. Glassy, obsidian eyes gaping and wet. They were worried, but they would be safe behind their shields of hornsent bodies.

Cyprus’s scarred arm twinged. He was choking the hilt of his sword, unbidden. Arm tensed as though to draw it. It was tempting. Control could be his for one glorious, vicious moment. He was liable to die soon anyway- whether by Mohg’s inevitable betrayal or by the Impaler’s indomitable flame.

He was derailed as a white-haired man emerged from the hospital. He was followed by Morgott’s wife. Cyrielle was instantly recognizable. The brand of Grace on her flesh was unmistakable.

“I do not condone leaving him to his own devices,” the old man fretted.

The Lordly woman was unconcerned, “What other option do we have? He agreed to it, besides.”

Then she shuttered- cut their conversation short- when her glare met Cyprus’s. His Warrior’s kit and size made him stand out as much as she.

“If you’ve a grievance with me, speak it,” she challenged.

“You should not be here.”

Referring to the hospital, of course. He could not fathom what Lands Between royalty wanted with Belurat’s absurd hostages. Well, he could, and it did not reflect well upon her.

“I am well aware that I am unwelcome,” she replied, sharp. “I do not need constant reminders, Sir.”

Cyprus bristled at the title, flattened his ears. Would that the hissing syllable never slithered into them again. She believed he was lamenting her presence in Belurat as a whole. And, really, he was not sure she’d entirely misunderstood him after all.

“Lord Cyrielle was helping me deliver herbs,” the aged man declared. Polite but not friendly. Diplomatic. Cyprus did not know the man’s name, but he had seen him within the city intermittently across the years. Never for long. “Purple lilies from the Cerulean Coast.”

We did not come empty-handed Warrior. Leave us be. That was what the Graceborn meant, anyhow.

“Thank you, Sir Ansbach,” Cyrielle, interjected. “But you do not have to make excuses for me. He is seeking problems where none exist.”

“You are dreadfully hostile,” Cyprus accused.

“You approached with your hand on your weapon. I do not need your gratitude. But I refuse to be treated like a parasite that fell off of my husband’s arse while my assistance is expected.”

Ah, the woman was crass. Cyprus almost smirked- the corner of his mouth indeed twitched. But he managed to maintain his scowl.

“Your assistance? What do you know of enduring a siege?”

“Not much, in truth. But I am adequate at killing Demigods. Ask Mohg since you regard me with such little esteem. I have slain three of his kin.”

Naturally, the nobility of the Erdtree people chose their consorts from brutal stock; they reveled in bringing death and shunned the spirits of the deceased. Even the Graceborn man was taken aback by her casual confession.

Cyprus gritted his teeth. “Three children of Queen Marika?”

“Do you think I became a Lord by clinging to Morgott’s backside like a barnacle?”

She was proud. She with her hideous, blotchy eyes. Grace puddled in her irises like runoff into a pit. There was her scar as well- if a gilded mark could be called a scar. Her collarbone and throat sparkled. Meanwhile, Cyprus’s body was disfigured and always ached.

He drew his swords. The old man held out an arm as though he were a wary beast to be calmed. He gripped the hilts as tightly as he was able. His ruined hand trembled and throbbed. If the elderly knight wished to swipe the weapons aside, they would have slipped from his fingers without resistance. His other arm, though unmarred by Messmerflame, resented the weakness of its partner. His swords were instruments of the Dance. And if one arm could not manage the movements, then the other was useless as well. He thrust the blades’ hilts towards Cyrielle’s chest. She did not flinch, which was disappointing.

“Take them. If you mean what you say, you will go with your husband when he greets his brother and deliver our vengeance to the Impaler’s heart with hornsent steel. Or do not. Let them be a pretty heirloom for your children and their children. Something to remember us by when everything else is ash.”

She accepted the swords, and Cyprus suffered a painful thrill of triumph. Of course she would greedily claim them for herself. But then, a timider part of him was aware he would have sneered at her refusal, too. He was giving her tests she could not pass to his satisfaction.

Cyprus and Cyrielle were nearly the same height, so the blades suited her well. Her exploratory jabs and swings were frustratingly competent.

She said tersely, “I hope you come to understand that we are your allies in this. My family is no safer here than you are.”

“Your kind will always be safe.”

Finally, an emotion other than gormless agitation rose to her skin via a tide of ruddy blush. Indignation was the screw twisting her features. He figured the gilded woman out, then. The privilege of marrying Marika’s accursed spawn outweighed her Graceborn hatred of horned beings. Her loyalty, though, would be not thicker than her runny, golden blood. Poke her, and she’d be exsanguinated of her affection for her Omen groom- no matter his tainted pedigree. Her expression was so ugly- an amalgam of grief and melancholy and exhaustion- that Cyprus found he could not hold her gaze.

That was his mistake. A heavy, rigid paw clamped upon his shoulder. He winced as his bad knee wobbled- threatened to buckle. Claws bit into his scars but did not draw blood.

“Ah,” Mohg’s exhalation stirred his hair and warmed his neck. The note rumbled in the cavern of his chest. “Warrior. Sister.”

He did not greet the golden-eyed old man. Nonetheless, he inclined his head, “Lord Mohg.”

Lord Mohg ignored him. He addressed his brother’s wife, “Morgott is asking after you.”

“If he had his way I’d never stray from his sight. He acts as though I’ll evaporate into mist. Either that, or Marie is driving him mad. Very well, I’ll soothe his worries. We are finished here.”

She looked to her companion- perhaps for confirmation. The aged man startled, his empty gaze focusing again, “Oh! Er, indeed. Sir Aster is comfortable. Our business is concluded.”

Mohg grabbed Cyrielle’s arm as she strode past, bringing her to an abrupt halt. He captured her, but the small smile she wore proved she was not his prisoner. He bent to touch the back of her hand to his teeth. The lightest brush of knuckle upon fang.

“Be kind to him. He worries.”

Cyrielle nodded and departed. The knight retreated into the hospital. Mohg’s grip on Cyprus’s shoulder tightened, and Cyprus hissed.

Mohg murmured, “Come.”

Where he went, Cyprus followed. He had no choice, for Mohg’s hold was forceful. They pushed through the crowds that always sprouted around Mohg wherever he lingered. He shook off his admirers- and the jeerers- in a narrow street.

“Do you think it wise to provoke me?” he snarled.

“Provoke you?”

“My sister has been more gracious than your city deserves. Am I meant to be endeared by Belurat’s praise as I watch her and my nephew be spat upon?” His throaty growl was chilling. He had no reason to hide the terrible truth of himself- he was a Lord in full, bearing down on his captive. “You would do well not to seek a confrontation with her.”

“I- I was not seeking her out. How was I meant to know she was tending to the hostages?”

“Ah, the black-eyed deserters. That was your business. Dutiful Warrior, I thought you disdained sacrifices of blood.”

The accusation was soft as a caress. Not a pointed jab but a crushing embrace. The monster knew Cyprus’s spirit, and he flaunted the unwitting intimacy airily.

Cyprus lifted his chin. He denied nothing. “I see where your sympathies lie.”

“Ignorant thing. It is not them I worry for. Think of your people. There will be strife enough for the Mother to gorge upon. You need not anoint the streets for your rage.”

“Rage is our weapon. We do not fear it.”

“Then hone it for the enemy.”

“The enemy!” He whirled on Mohg, teeth bared. The Lord was a hypocrite. Cyprus’s fragile body burst at an invisible seam, and his voice spilled over, caustic with the intent to hurt. “My Grandfather was a golden-eyed child of the Erdtree. He was fed crops grown by hornsent slaves, and he slept in a home built by hornsent slaves. When he became a man, butchering and pillaging suited him no longer. He escaped the crusade with his handsome eyes intact.

“He fell in love with a hornsent woman. Oh, wasn’t he so marvelous choosing poverty and exile for the yearning of his heart? He made his little family- a single daughter who gave him a single grandson. He taught us both to read from Order prayer books. He toiled in the fields even as his hair went gray. He was proud of himself. Proud, until his people came to continue the work he abandoned.

“My Grandmother was skewered. My mother.... She’d been a young girl. Poor as dirt. Saddled with a bairn as she came of age with no husband to help her. She gave everything of herself for me. She screamed for me, and they laughed at her. She was beaten and when she was dead, her wraith crawled out of her corpse and guarded me against the flames.”

Grandfather had chosen for himself salvation. The Impaler’s crusaders had noted his Graced eyes and lack of horns and had been lenient with him. But Cyprus still wondered if he had known exactly what would become of his family. His wife of twenty-five years had been impaled alive. Stripped naked and set aflame and left for crows. Because she had seduced a child of the Erdtree. For spoiling Graceborn seed. Did he know his grandson had been used to taunt his cherished daughter until she died in agony and terror?

He was probably deceased, in reality. Cyprus was sixty years old. Younger than his grandfather had been when he’d repented on his knees and begged for his selfish sin to be cleansed in fire. Cyprus was the blood of a knight of the Impaler, and it had meant nothing. It had spurred the crusaders to be crueler- more depraved. He and his mother had been punished twofold: for being born horned and for being descendants of a Graceborn defector. That, perhaps, was why he burned so intensely. He’d been fed coals at six years of age, and they’d smoldered ever since.

Mohg did not ask him to stop, though it would have been the kind thing to do. His waxy, bony face was difficult to read. He did not seem to glean pleasure from Cyprus’s hurts. But Cyprus was angry, and he could convince himself otherwise.

“Grandfather believed he was brave. He thought he was principled. Look! Behold the chimera his line begat! How pathetic his convictions in the end. He refused the Iris to feed us to the serpents.”

“Cyrielle is a truer sort than your sorry grandsire. You bear a burden most heavy, but you serve your pain poorly to spurn her,” the Blood Lord chastised.

Cyprus was flayed. He had disgorged himself at Mohg’s feet, and he could only find fault with him.

“No Graceborn is with us. I am sick of their promises! I am sick of their self-pity!” He jabbed a finger in the vague direction of the hospital. “They were born with my people waiting upon them hand and foot! They possess the strength for one meager act of defiance and then they think they are entitled to our ceaseless gratitude! Here they are! To be coddled and cared for by hornsent servants once again! They have no Grace now? I have never felt its light! Yet I manage to live! They took my family! They took my health! Now Messmer has come for my soul and here I am! Fighting!”

Mohg reached out. His clawed fingers were unbearably frightening.

“Do not touch me!” Cyprus cried. “You are no different!”

Mohg’s hand curled in on itself. A dreadful spider in its death-twinges.

“I am not a creature of the Erdtree.”

“Your brother claimed to be Marika’s son! Do you understand what that makes you?”

Cyprus’s childish hope was that Mohg would confess he shared no blood with Lord Morgott. That the brotherhood they proclaimed was merely a friendship by another name. Mohg’s silence dashed that hope.

Cyprus whispered, “You are Marika’s son.”

“I am.”

But of course. A man so magnificent could only have been created. Stitched together from pilfered Crucible parts to conceal his wicked soul. It insisted upon itself. The folk of the Cerulean Coast had myths about spirits cloaked in sea fog that lured people towards the tides to drown them. They’d wear the resulting corpse as a guise to evade the Mariners. It was said their beauty was unnaturally alluring. Mohg registered Cyprus’s disgust.

“You blame me for my heritage yet seek pity for yours.”

“I-”

“You blame me for my birth, yet am I not exactly as you desired me?”

Cyprus’s lip curled, but he blanched. His blood was roiling. “Desire you? You honey-tongued fool. I do not desire you in the least!”

Mohg was unperturbed by his shrill rejection, “Alas, I do not speak of lust. Neither horns nor the taint of Graceborn blood has rendered me deaf. I have heard of your curse. Your people prepare their bairns for slumber and bless their meals with the careless promise that Marika’s progeny is and shall be cursed. What burden did you forge for us to bear?”

“Shame. So that she would never forget us in her perfect kingdom.”

Mohg snatched up his hand. Ensnared his paw in an avian grasp. He could have ripped away Cyprus’s limb, if he wanted. With his accursed Demigod strength. Instead, he dragged it to his throat. Forced Cyprus’s pebbled fingers to a hot, raised necklace of a scar.

“Five hundred years.” His soft voice shattered into a wheeze. “All my childhood. All my youth. Wasted in a squalid prison. Behold your revenge, hornsent. Here is your curse. You shamed Marika. But she was not the one who suffered.”

Cyprus’s pulse was in his wrist. He thought he might be devoured until Mohg finally threw his hand away. He swelled to his full height. Folded his wings close to himself.

They stared at one another. If the curse was real, it had worked. Marika had begat Crucible-touched children. Great and leonine. But her cub was covered in scars. Marika had learned nothing.

“I am sorry,” Cyprus said. He wasn’t certain he meant it.

Mohg splayed his left hand. The black spur jutted between spindly fingers. “Do not lie to me. Was I blessed by the Crucible, or cursed by its people?”

Cyprus was honest, “I do not know.”

The Demigod grunted. Lowered his hand to meet Cyprus’s eye. “I could curse you in kind. Do you think you could halt me, Warrior, if I returned to you the blood your people believe they granted me?”

“Mohg-”

“You would be bound to me eternally. My servant and companion. You would burn from the inside out.”

The Demigod purred at his blatant fear. But he did not move to apprehend him. He stepped away, the rumble tapering to a deadpan murmur. “I will not harm you as my mother did. Your city does not deserve my wrath because you are petty and spiteful. So rejoice. Queen Marika is dead. Your Impaler shall join her. When we have killed another of our brothers for you, we shall depart in peace. How is that for a blessing?”

Cyprus gummed his words. Somehow, he managed: “Marika is dead?”

“Yes, Pretty Warrior. A new Age is upon ye.”

Chapter Text

Cyrielle’s thoughts were with her children.

Gwyn and Cynric had not been dragged into the Shadow Lands. She knew this instinctually. Her twins were not Lords nor Gods nor Empyreans. They had not been invited by the dream. But a conversation with Marie had confirmed her suspicions. Moiragh had bloodied her five fingers to transport Morgott, Mohg, Aster, Morgan, and Cyrielle. Marie had been her sole tagalong.

Leyndell was secure for Cynric and Gwyn. Daggers did not wait in the dark for her sons. The Lands Between did not want for war when the Erdtree’s ash still dusted the earth. Nonetheless, she could not imagine it was easy for them. Their entire family had vanished in the course of one night. Her boys were not yet of age, but she was certain the court of Leyndell looked to them to fill Morgott and the Elden Lord’s sizable boots. When it had become apparent that a throne suited Marie not- that she would follow instead her sister and her sanguine calling- Morgott had prepared the twins for Lordship instead. They would endure. They would have to. As much as it pained Cyrielle, she had to focus on her other children.

Marie was her eldest- a capable and self-sufficient woman. The Shadow Lands had already made an attempt on her life, and she had thwarted it. Reunited with all three of her parents, she was as safe as she was going to be in this alien world.

Moiragh needed Cyrielle most. But she was as unreachable as Cynric and Gwyn. Cyrielle could not dwell upon that truth for too long. It was ruinous. A frigid hollow would start to form in her breast- the ice seeping into her marrow. She could see that same withering grief consuming Mohg. It was her duty to remain strong for her brother until his baby was found.

Thus, it was Morgan she fretted for ceaselessly.

Her youngest sat at the edge of a bed. Morgott knelt before him, his gray bulk eclipsed his son’s much smaller frame. His hair cascaded over his hunched shoulders in silver waves, loosed from its braids. The pads of his fingertips hovered mere centimeters from Morgan’s chest. Cyrielle kept from pacing the room like an agitated lioness. A hornsent sage had lent them a pair of ghostflame torches. Cyrielle was grateful, but it did not seem like enough for this. Gold glowed in her son’s chest. She could see the shadows of his bones through translucent skin as Morgott wove his spell. Morgan winced occasionally. Sweat glistened on his brow. But he did not complain.

Cyrielle chewed her nails to keep her hands from shaking. She trusted Morgott utterly. But she had almost lost Morgan again. Morgott had once accused her of underestimating the severity of their child’s condition. What Morgott did not understand was that she could not treat Morgan like a fragile object. If she handled him like a venomous serpent- if she smothered him- he would be completely caged. She would become his jailor.

A gleaming geometry shone sterling in the pale light of ghostflame upon Morgan’s sternum. It was a half-wheel symbol derived from another all-too-familiar icon. It was the cursemark tamed. Its thorny protrusions were pruned back and woven into an orderly sigil. A thin chain completed the circle. Closed the loop between life and death.

Morgott blamed his bloodline for Morgan’s affliction. That was only natural. Irrational, but understandable. Cyrielle knew that she was the cause, in truth. She was the Death-touched Lord. She had been a hunter of the Dead. As Marika’s misdeeds had imprinted upon her offspring, this was Cyrielle’s sin made manifest. There was no place for the soulless in Morgott’s Age. The Elden Lord tended to the unmoored wraiths but neglected the empty, living vessels. Her son had been born to remind them of their mistake.

She thought of Summonwater. What had become of it in her absence?

“I forbid thee from Tuning,” Morgott said as he withdrew.

The enchantment diffused into Morgan’s body. He probed the mark upon his chest as it faded into the barest scar. He remained silent.

“Morgan.”

“I will not Tune.”

“Thou wilt not commune with the dead.”

Morgan sipped from a frigid cup. The magic of the hornsent meant they scarcely lacked for ice. “I will not.”

Morgott’s scowl was stony. “I cannot place my faith in thy word. However much I wish to.”

Cyrielle bit her tongue. Her skin itched beneath her glove. Black thorns grew in Leyndell’s gardens. Not days ago, Morgan had nearly died right under her nose. Perhaps harsh words were necessary this once.

Morgan glowered, but Morgott was unrelenting. “War doth burgeon beyond the city walls. We may be parted for some time. The ward I have given thee shall act in my stead should the need arise. Do not test it.”

“I-”

“I command thee as thy Lord and Father!” Morgott stood, his chest swelled with a slow inhale. Morgan shrugged back into his shirt, sheepish. Morgott pushed his hair away from his brow’s horns. “I will bring thee home whole. However I must.”

Then Cyrielle and Morgan were left alone. The ghostflame dispelled the lingering heat of the Omen God.

When Cyrielle’s other children were around Morgan’s age, they had begun to stop craving her attention. She never resented it, of course. She was proud of their independence. But that did not mean she was not envious of Mohg and Moiragh’s unchanging bond. Morgan leaned against her- laid his cheek upon her shoulder. It would not be too many years before he cast off from the shores of boyhood. But he still welcomed his mother’s affection. She was the only person in his family he could touch.

His breaths came in shallow puffs. He masked his discomfort by loosely tracing the lines of Cyrielle’s palm.

“You will tell me-” she murmured. “-if the ward bothers you.”

“Your hand is so cold.”

She swallowed, “Do not deflect.”

He sighed- sat up and reached for the cup of water again. He held it, staring into the vessel. “Da will not listen to me. I am fine. The furnace-! That was an accident!”

“It was an accident,” Cyrielle conceded remorsefully. “But it was a lucky thing Sir Ansbach and the hornsent rescued you.”

He whispered, “We would not have found you if it weren’t for the spirits.”

“…What do you mean?”

“The spirits in the wilderness. They knew you.”

“How?” Necrotizing dread prickled in Cyrielle’s side. Down her fingers.

“I don’t know. But if I had not spoken with them, we would still be apart.”

————————

The Crucible features that had charmed the hornsent to Morgott and Mohg were diminished in their eyes by Grace’s gentle glow. Cyrielle they despised for her Lordship. Morgott and his brother they feared for their lineage. Despite their ignoble titles, the hornsent housed and fed them. Because Morgott had turned Messmer away- because Mohg had destroyed the furnace golem- and no other horned creature had managed such feats in the history of the Crusade.

Cyrielle sat upon a borrowed bed. The house the hornsent had given them was musky and rather bare. There were no doors between rooms; curtains substituted them. But it was intact and private. Downright palatial compared to Cyrielle’s recent accommodations with the Inquisitors.

She thumbed the edge of her newfound blade. It was sharp, threatening to bite her finger pad. It and its twin were beautiful. Curved and elegant, its dull edge was serrated by a design that emulated the horns of its intended bearer.

The challenge its previous owner had issued her was a smoldering coal in her stomach. That man would have abandoned Morgan to the pillagers. He would have reveled in her harm. Then he’d had the nerve to accuse her of falseness. He believed her Grace would spare her.

Her thumb was nicked. Her left one, ungloved. With the curtains drawn, her quarters were dark enough that the welling droplet of blood appeared black. The roots of the Erdtree did not colonize these mysterious lands. Without its light, even the most rudimentary of healing incantations was impossible for her. She would simply have to bleed.

She’d kill the Impaler for the hornsent Warrior. Even if he bore no fault in her condition, she wanted to tear out some vital part of this world before it claimed her. If Lord Messmer so hated Omen and their kin, then she owed it to her family to see the man dead.

She clenched her hand into a fist. Blood smeared, hot, across her palm. The curtain at the room’s entrance was pulled aside.

“Oh, mercy.”

The words fled from her before she could restrain them. But she kept her gloved hand pressed to her lips. As if that would conceal the fact she was dangerously close to tears. The Warrior’s sword slid from her lap and carved a chip out of the floorboards.

All our curses have come to take us again.

For the man that approached her now was just that: a curse. One that she had believed permanently banished. Guilt crawled up her spine in fear’s wake. Inexplicable and irrational, she thought of Morgan and all the blame she carried for his misfortunes. She had brought him into the world touched by Death and shorn of horns to spare her husband from the Greater Will’s wrath. And it had all been for nothing, because there was Morgott. Human again.

He scowled. The wrinkles that bracketed his mouth and made hatch marks around his eyes were horrifically mundane. The fascinating topography of his face was made terribly symmetrical- nearly soft. Blonde hair flowed down to his waist, groomed and gleaming gold. At the sight of his aghast wife, Morgott hummed, grimacing. Then he stepped aside. A figure broad, gray, and furred filled the vacancy.

“Morgott?” Cyrielle exclaimed. She braced her elbows on her knees and put her head in her hands. “I am an idiot.”

Mortified, she pushed the heels of her palms into her eyes to halt her tears before they could well. Her hair became her veil as she bent forward. The bed frame dipped, groaning, as Morgott’s immensity settled beside her. Cyrielle sensed his tail encircling her without brushing against her. Sinewy muscle and fur snaked over a wool blanket. Horns snagged on the yarn and frayed it. She was relieved, at least, that the construct didn't try to comfort her as well.

When she recovered enough to unfurl, she muttered, “Your shades are far too lifelike.”

“I frightened thee.”

“Yes, I… No. It’s silly-” she stammered. Half-laughing as though she could force her fears into a humorous mold. It did not work. Morgott’s expression remained dour. He was concerned for her, and so, she had no choice but to confess: “This place does not sit well with me. It called us here while we were unaware of its existence. I do… worry that it might want to harm us.”

Subconsciously, she grabbed her wrist. The leather of the glove was warm, at least, beneath bare fingers. Morgott’s tail cinched around her. Its pleasant heat hugged her lower back.

“If the land itself is our enemy, I shall confront it. I will begin-” his gentle assurances twisted all too readily into a sneer. “-with the so-called Lord. Messmer.”

“You are going to answer the summons.”

“As this,” the construct replied. Margit, Cyrielle’s mind supplied. Though her husband inhabited both forms wholly and freely. “He might understand me better if my message is carried by a vessel he deemeth fair.”

“And if he does not listen?”

“Then the shade shall endure his wrath in my stead.”

“Or he shall suffer yours.”

Morgott grinned at that. Faint and wry. It was the wicked smirk of a man that both relished and dreaded the bloody path ahead of him.

Cyrielle stopped choking her scarred wrist. She reached instead for Morgott’s paw. “Will Mohg join you-?”

“Erdtree, no!” Morgott’s exasperated exclamation made Cyrielle smile. He continued, “My fool brother would never agree to a guise. A few weeks in this foreign land and he hath made himself a champion of its people. He would incite war to sate himself. We have a better chance of finding where Moiragh hath gone and returning home if the country is not set ablaze as we search. Above all… I worry for him.”

“Oh, it is nice to hear you admit it.”

“I do not jest. …The Shadow Lands doth shelter the living and the dead.” He was suddenly uncomfortable. In profile, his throat bobbed as he wrangled his words. “I tell thee this in confidence, Wife. I fear there is a spirit here that is wont to haunt him. Whatever beckoned to Moiragh intendeth him no kindness.”

“How do you figure?”

“The Pureblood Knight. He hath implied this is the doing of… of the Empyrean Miquella.”

Cyrielle stared at him in bald confusion. Morgott endured it for a few seconds before he looked askance. Margit, likewise, glared at his feet. Cyrielle had never encountered the twin Empyreans as a Tarnished. Morgott and Mohg rarely spoke of their youngest brother- of Mohg’s husband. As far as she was aware, he had succumbed to his illness before Moiragh’s existence.

“The person in Moiragh’s dreams- our dreams- was Miquella? Mohg’s consort? How can that be?” Cyrielle blurted, incredulous.

“I do not wholly comprehend it myself. But I am inclined to heed the Pureblood. We betrayed Miquella, my brother and I. But Mohg…” He shook his head. “I must safeguard Mohg.”

Cyrielle nodded. She did not like how unforthcoming he was. But when it came to Miquella, she had never successfully pried answers out of him. “Take me with you. If you cannot bring Mohg.”

“Dost thou mistake me, Tarnished? I worry for thee as much as my twin. My power is not diminished, but the Erdtree cannot find thee. I will not permit thee to imperil thyself.”

“Make me a construct and allow my mind to command it. We have done it before, Morgott.”

He sniffed, condescending, “I recall the experiment. ‘Twas but a lesson to teach thee the craft-"

“I cannot create my own shade. If you don’t think yourself capable then say so, and I will leave it be.”

Morgott growled, “Obstinate creature.”

She’d purposefully pricked his pride, and it had worked. Now, she had an obligation to soothe: “I do not want you to face this alone.”

He snorted.

Cyrielle’s eye snagged on her dropped sword. Speaking with Morgott had quelled much of her rage. If Morgott thought it unwise to hunt Messmer at the outset, she would follow his lead. But if she accompanied her husband to the encampment, a chance to bloody her blades might present itself all the same. “I am your Lord. I am your wife. This is not your burden to bear alone. But I will admit, I am also curious.”

“Hmm?”

“Do you believe what the hornsent say? That he is your brother?”

Morgott sighed. Margit echoed him. “Long ago, before my brothers and sisters went to war with me, I had heard whispers from Rykard and Radahn. They would murmur of siblings lost. Of secreted brothers and vanished sisters. At the time… I had suspected them of mocking me.”

“Mocking you?”

“Aye. After all, Tarnished, I was a child concealed myself.”

————————

‘Margit’ was radiant. Even in the veiled daylight of the Shadow Lands, his complexion was luminous. As if Grace itself had been condensed into tiny freckles across what little skin he’d kept bare. His hair was braided; a single plait trailed down his back and two smaller braids draped over his shoulders. He was clothed in pale gold, sandy tones, and blue. Spotless and elegant even as he strode over marshy ground. Like his hair, the crown set on his severe brow was reminiscent of Godfrey’s when he had been Elden Lord. Morgott had made his divinity grease and painted it on his conjured vessel. It was not vanity, but a threat display. This was Morgott with teeth bared and hackles raised.

Cyrielle was drab in comparison. Morgott had not exaggerated her beauty any. Either he hadn’t seen the need to make her incandescently intimidating, or he hadn't wanted to. His efforts had instead gone to altering her regalia. She wore a blue cape to match Morgott’s own. Her sable gambeson was now mail and plate. The embossed tangle of gilded thorns on her breastplate no longer felt like a symbol of her triumph over Death. Her illusory gauntlets could not be removed. But she suspected that beneath the sculpted armor, her scar was rendered golden and pure without any of the creeping, contaminating black. The only real objects she carried were the twin swords of the hornsent Warrior.

Cyrielle’s body was in a state of near-catatonic meditation within the walls of Belurat. Morgott was probably still conscious. Tethering Cyrielle to the shade whilst inhabiting his own demanded much from him. Yet it was hardly a hindrance to God.

They walked on foot, because Belurat possessed no steed large enough to bear Morgott. It was a lengthy and lonely journey. So, they held hands as they entered the passage that would deposit them out onto the occupied Gravesite Plain. The shadow of the mountain shielded them from eyes on either side.

In the back of Cyrielle’s mind, her physical body tugged at her awareness. It was like gravity, compelling her to look back. Morgott had warned her against entertaining the urge. Her grasp on the illusory vessel was tenuous enough that even a metaphorical glance over her shoulder would dispel the vessel Morgott had sculpted.

The camp of the invading army was like a tick buried into the pelt of the world. Red and fat with blood as brilliant, crimson tents shuddered at brisk gusts. It continued to swell as wagons gingerly carried machines of war and soldiers down the neglected roads that streaked through the grassland. Its fringes were spined with haphazard barriers of bristling obsidian iron.

Entire forests of stakes clustered around the camp- lined the road to escort God and his Lord right to the greedy mouth of the parasite. Skeletons- most horned and some not- leered at them. Charred so thoroughly melted flesh glued the bones together even as they dangled meters above the earth. They were old. Remains the Impaler had lugged across the country for the express purpose of taunting the hornsent with their desecration. To remind them their fate would be shared soon enough.

Morgott squeezed her hand before releasing it. It was as much assurance as she could hope to receive. It was as much as she needed.

Horns within the siege encampment blared. Some were shrill and brassy. Others were clearly carved from severed Crucible blessings- from horns of another sort. The notes that eked from those depraved instruments sounded less like alarms and more like agonized, wheezing groans. But arrows did not fall upon God and his Lord. The makeshift gate opened, scoring scars into the ground.

Cyrielle had never once come across the name ‘Messmer’ in all her life. Not as a Tarnished scampering in the lairs of ancient Demigods or through crumbling civilizations clinging to the precipice of complete extinction. Nor as the Elden Lord restoring the histories Leyndell lost after the Razing of the Erdtree. Her husband was a thousand years her senior, and he was as ignorant as she.

Privately, Cyrielle was inclined to believe that this Messmer was a despotic upstart claiming a false heritage no one could contest. In this shrouded land, bereft of the Erdtree’s light, who lived to dispel the myth that the brazen crusader was no son of Marika?

But then the Lord emerged from the largest tent at the camp’s center, and Cyrielle was instantly certain she had doubted for nothing. His hair was an impossible shade of red. The same hue Radahn’s had been. The same hue as Radagon’s and Malenia’s- though Cyrielle had only seen the second Elden Lord and the Blade of Miquella depicted in portraits. But more than that it was apparent he was afflicted. If not outright cursed, he had brushed against some divinity beyond the Greater Will and suffered for it. The magnificent cloak across his back could not quite disguise the bend to his spine. Nor the living, winged snakes that appeared to erupt out of his chest.

“Oh!” the secret son of Marika cried. His pointed face glowed with warmth as he approached Belurat’s envoy with greater enthusiasm than it was prepared for. Daylight flashed across bare patches of his skin. Scaly rashes pebbled his arms and thighs.

It was a testament to Morgott’s bewilderment that he did not summon a spear and run the Impaler through. But he halted Messmer’s advance with a stiff arm- hand splayed on the man’s chest. His thick fingers were in danger of grazing the snakes that burst from his ribs. And it deterred Messmer none.

“I had dared not hope,” he declared breathlessly. His long arms outreached Morgott’s. He tenderly cupped God’s face. “‘Tis thee after all. Morgott. Brother mine. By Grace, thou hast grown handsome!”

Chapter Text

Morgott’s disguise was an enchantment of his design. It was not a Veil draped over his crude form in danger of disintegrating at a touch. Nor would it burn away for the heat of his blood. It was not a constricting costume that his soul strained against. It was a construct made impeccable by the precision Godhood allowed. Morgott’s mind squirmed inside of it nonetheless.

He had become unused to inhabiting the simulacrum of an uncursed- unblessed- frame. After his rivalry with the Greater Will had ceased with Morgan’s birth, there had been no need to. In the new Order, Morgott did not hide his true nature for anyone. Thus, he felt false, and Lord Messmer would not give him space to settle into his temporary skin.

“Wine?”

The Impaler’s hospitality was off-putting in its sincerity. A table had been made- lavish enough Margit of the Shattering would have scoffed at such extravagance upon a battlefield. ‘Margit’ of the present Age, however, was spooked. Messmer had invited him- and Cyrielle by association- as guests in truth. Goblets clustered around a bottle of colored glass. Behind it, a veritable bounty made the table sag. It was as grand a feast as an impromptu hunt and rations could make. The overburdened table was the sole barrier between God and his supposed sibling as they sat across from one another.

Morgott exhumed his voice from his dusty throat, “No. No food, either.”

“I cannot tempt thee? Thou art no adversary of mine, Brother,” Messmer replied. His eye lingered on Morgott’s face. Drinking him in. Admiring him. He hadn’t acknowledged Cyrielle at all. Morgott could only assume that he was not aware of her identity- as his wife or Elden Lord.

The red of Messmer’s hair suggested descendance from Lord Radagon. Thus, Morgott was soothed to discount the Impaler as a sapling of the Golden Lineage- as a full-blooded brother. What was more alarming, however, was the peculiar malformation of his body. The so-called curses of the Carian royals had all been self-inflicted. Ranni had taken the Black Knife to her own flesh. Radahn had been infected with Scarlet Rot when he dueled Malenia. And Rykard had fed himself to the God-devouring Serpent. But each child born by Marika had inherited a curse. Thus, the winged serpents within Messmer’s body- scenting the air with benign curiosity- were no doubt the emergent consequences of one. Along with the faint gleam of scales on his exposed skin and the slitted pupil of his eye.

…No, the eye was not reptilian. The pupil was the shape of Marika’s rune upon closer inspection. With a start, Morgott recognized it. The Greater Will had shown him the prosthetic once before.

Morgott was blunt, “Thou’rt not the first of my brothers to goad me into conflict. I did not break bread with them in those days, though I knew them well. I do not know thee, Messmer.”

“Nor do I know thee as much as I would like,” the soft admission in kind.

They regarded one another. Messmer was not hostile but guarded. The affection he’d exuded upon their meeting, it seemed, was short-lived. He’d sobered quickly, becoming somber and dour. His smile wilted with scant hope of revival.

Messmer continued, “‘Tis no surprise that I am a stranger to thee. The last I saw thee, thou wert a babe. I had hoped that Mother would have told thee…”

Morgott managed to hold Messmer’s gaze. If Messmer spoke earnestly, then he knew that Morgott had not been born a luminous, perfect scion. Morgott waited to be rebuked for his deception- for presenting himself as something other than the horned beast he was.

Instead, Messmer noted, “Thou’rt skeptical, I see.”

Morgott chose his words carefully. “My birth was secretive. As were mine earliest years. I have been led to believe that I was Queen Marika’s eldest child.”

Messmer nodded. The action was measured. But not for Morgott’s sake. It was Messmer himself who was brittle and tender. “I suppose I should have expected nothing less. I was residing here- Leyndell was no home for me- in the wake of the conquests that united the Lands Between. Thou wert months old upon mine arrival at Mother’s behest. When she placed thee in mine arms... I believe Mother tried to impart a warning. Perhaps speech failed her, or she could not put to paper the tragedy befallen her when she had written to me. Perhaps I was merely deaf to her attempts.”

His expression was wistful, whilst Morgott felt as though he were being disemboweled with a rusted spoon. Cyrielle’s hand found his knee beneath the table.

Messmer recounted, “She… she said to me-"

Behold what they have made of thy brothers.

The Greater Will stroked Morgott’s throat until Queen Marika’s voice spewed forth in memory. A vision struck, strangled Morgott with grief and rage. He glanced down and saw that he was cradling… himself.

He looked so much like Marie had. A fat, gray infant dusted with silky white down. His skull was lumpy with the buttons of nascent horns. A ropey, misshapen tail tucked itself between his legs, the club-like end resting against his stomach. The child was feverish to the touch- unnaturally warm despite his good health. Unlike Marie, however, Morgott was not endeared to the bairn. Revulsion coated his mouth, thick as sap.

Messmer idled before him, a man grown but not so wan and worn as he had been moments ago. He extended his arms, and Morgott was all too relieved to relinquish the uncanny creature. Another babe was squalling elsewhere. Mohg needed to be fed, and his mother was loath to hold him, let alone nurse him.

Messmer was silent. His mouth a grim slash across his pinched face. But he did not quail. He did not rebuke his blood. It would be hypocritical of him to do so. He rocked his infant brother, not meeting Marika’s eye.

This is their curse. I thought myself beyond their reach. I cannot abide it… My sons bear the likenesses of hornsent beasts!

Messmer flinched at the final screamed syllable, prompting the baby to squirm and chirp. He turned to the side, and the bulk of the child was hidden by his hunched shoulder. Morgott noticed then that his cheek- Marika’s cheek- was wet.

The vision dissipated when he touched his face; it was dry of tears. Messmer- the wearier man aged one thousand years- did not appear to have noticed his lapse, lost as he was in his own reverie.

“The war of the Shadow Lands began soon after. I helmed the forces of the Erdtree for Mother’s dignity and honor. She swore to me that she would heal thee of the curse in mine absence. I am heartened to witness her success.”

Morgott rose from his seat. His illusory hide was crawling. The memories that assaulted him now were his own: he sat in a dungeon cell, wounded and weeping, begging for his father. But Marika had sent Lord Godfrey away. Had disposed of her shameful offspring when her husband could not object. The tent reeked of sewage and the perfume of Omenkillers. Morgott’s breath rattled in an unbidden sigh, and his wife could no longer restrain herself.

She went to him. Her gentle grip at his elbow halted his frantic pacing midstride. At least his fingers did not tremble as he balled them into fists. She squeezed his upper arm as she mouthed his name- a voiceless question. Morgott’s lip curled. She should have stayed in her seat and let him behave like a rattled weakling. Because behind Cyrielle, Messmer’s predator eye bored into her back.

“Thou wert ignorant of thine origins?” Messmer stared at Cyrielle but his question was for Morgott alone.

“I know that I was born Graceless,” he hissed.

“I have distressed thee nonetheless.” Regret marred his tone, but only just. “Wert thou aware of the hornsent grudge when thou pledged to safeguard their settlement?”

The Queen’s Golden Order had suppressed the primordial Crucible of the Erdtree. To ensure the supremacy of Order and Marika’s Graceborn chosen. But she could not prevent the birth of Crucible-blessed children. A fluke or a curse, it mattered not to Morgott. The hornsent had not cast him into the Shunning Grounds for his horns. That had been his mother’s doing.

“I was not,” Morgott admitted. Then, he lied, “However, I scarcely recall my accursed form. Queen Marika removed my affliction in my childhood. I cannot hold the people of this paltry city to fault for the cruelty of their ancestors.”

“I cannot fathom thy sympathies, I confess.”

“Thou cannot imagine that a Prince once Graceless could find kinship amongst the Graceless?”

“Wherefore wert thou sent here?” Messmer demanded coldly. His thin brows knit themselves into a scowl. “Our mother wove the Veil over this land, and only by a God’s power might it be torn. She must have dispatched thee with purpose. Yet thou hast embraced the hornsent whilst declaring thyself a Lord of the Erdtree!. Thou wert fortunate to have escaped thy curse so young, but thy nescience is an insult to the Eternal Queen. Mother would weep!”

Despite Cyrielle presence- despite the bloodlessness of his body- Morgott grew heated. He would not be condescended to- as aged and scarred as he was- as though he were a child. But as his lip twitched, bitter words sitting like poison in his throat, the Greater Will muttered to him:

A reeking whip bestrewn with jagged, chipped teeth. Women sobbed as they clutched at the flesh oozing betwixt stiff fingers. A field of flowers was painted crimson with gore.

A land of death beneath unshod feet. Death in the frigid caverns. Death in the spiraled tower that clawed at the heavens.

Morgott cast the fragments aside, clenching his jaw to keep from shuddering. He could decode his God’s inconvenient ramblings later. The intrusion had nonetheless stymied his outrage, but Messmer still seethed.

Morgott could only be honest. “I am not here at Marika’s behest.”

“No?”

“Another God summoned us.”

“There is but one God of prominence in the Lands Between,” Messmer protested. Confusion dampened his aggravation. But by his sneer, it was apparent he believed his brother to be a fool.

Cyrielle turned to him, “My Lord speaks truthfully. “We knew nothing of this place until we were drawn in by another’s will.”

Messmer’s eye slid to Cyrielle with pronounced disinterest. One of the serpents unspooled its coils to sniff at her from across the table. He drawled, “Brother. I invited thee to my table, not this woman. I would speak to thee, not thy… knight.”

“I am no knight,” Cyrielle corrected coolly. She dropped her arms to her sides. “I am a Lord, same as my husband. This matter concerns me also.”

“Say it is not so, Morgott,” Messmer murmured with devastatingly soft dismay. “Thou hast taken a Tarnished to wife?”

Morgott managed to steel himself before his Graceborn mask betrayed him further. Lest the Impaler employed spies within Belurat, it was not possible for him could know Cyrielle had lived a Tarnished life. Morgott had resurrected her in a body abundant in Grace. And despite that, the vessel she presently inhabited was an incantation. It did not matter how Messmer knew, Morgott supposed, and he was wise enough not to let himself be hanged upon a noose of panicked lies.

“I have,” Morgott nodded as Cyrielle’s face darkened.

Messmer’s serpents drew back as he said, “Mother would not sanction this match.”

“Alas, Cyrielle and I did not answer thy summons to debate if Queen Marika approved of my marriage.”

“‘Tis in poor taste,” Messmer's insistence took Morgott aback- his agitation blunted his slithering drawl upon the anvil of his teeth. “By the grace of our mother, thou wearest a shape most fair. Not merely fair but blessed. Thy life uncursed is a gift, and thou wouldst bind thyself to a Graceless exile.”

Morgott had been purposefully coy with his knowledge of Marika’s fate, but he realized now with chilling certainty that- like Belurat’s sages- Messmer did not know that his divine mother had shattered her Age, her Godhood, and herself.

He surely imagined a home unsullied beyond the Shadow Lands’ Veil. His memory preserved the Lands Between in glorious stasis. Queen Marika yet reigned eternal. And Morgott remained the hapless babe he had been forced to leave behind all those years ago. But Morgott was not the man Messmer had hoped he’d be; he was not the shining herald of Queen Marika’s will. He was a recalcitrant lout, bedding Tarnished and consorting with the hornsent. Morgott had not consented to this meeting anticipating having to defend his choice of consort. Cyrielle, for her part, appeared more vexed than offended.

That, at least, stayed his anger. When he ruled Leyndell as the Veiled Monarch, Morgott had flayed saucy nobles and incompetents with his barbed tongue to the delight- and trepidation- of his court. He doubted Messmer could be suitably chastised within his prickly hive of an encampment. Morgott was neither Lord nor God here. But Messmer was barely a Lord himself. He was a rusted instrument discarded, and Morgott was suffused with Gold. God took some satisfaction in that.

Morgott was then glad that he had not brought his twin with him. Mohg detested a lying tongue. He decried Morgott as uptight and rigid, but Morgott could let himself be loose with the truth.

“Indeed, my life is a gift, and I honor the Queen by living it as I deem fit. If that doth not satisfy thee, I bid thee look into my consort’s eyes. Behold the seedlings of Grace. Our union was blessed before the Erdtree.”

Cyrielle was stoic as one of the vermillion serpents extended its slender body. Until it was near enough the pink bident of its tongue brushed her nose. There was no malice in its animal gaze as it studied her with an emerald iris.

“Well?” Morgott prodded impatiently.

Messmer leaned back into his chair as his creature returned to him. He sighed, “Let us turn to other matters.”

Morgott was certain he had not convinced Messmer of anything. After his vehement objections, his immediate departure from the subject was foreboding. He was savoring something. Masticating it and gingerly plucking out the bones.

“Belurat,” Morgott said.

“Belurat,” Messmer echoed dismissively. “Thou wouldst plead I be merciful, I presume.”

“You presume correctly,” Cyrielle replied, terse.

Not even Messmer’s serpents acknowledged that she had spoken.

Cyrielle was undeterred. “You came because of the furnace. But Belurat did not destroy it. It pursued our daughter across the plains. She defended herself.”

She claimed his interest, then. “The footfalls of a golem maketh splinters of villages. Its brazier could burn a drake to cinders.” His nails- claws in their own right- tapped a dirge upon the table’s surface. “Thy daughter did not snuff the construct.”

Morgott inhaled. The shade did not possess lungs, but breathing came naturally to the unnatural body. His chest swelled despite its hollowness. “Our child is the blood of Marika and Lord Godfrey. She is strong. But one man did aid her. Our brother, Mohg. My twin.”

Messmer hardly stirred at the name. His lack of curiosity regarding Mohg did not surprise Morgott. What negligible affection Morgott had been bestowed before and after their subterranean imprisonment had not been shared with his twin. The Crucible had formed him with too heavy a hand. Marika had promised to seek a cure for Morgott, but had she deigned to do the same for Mohg’s sake?

Messmer asked, “Is there a reason thou hast brought this woman before me rather than our shared blood? I would have liked to see what hath become of him with the curse removed. The imprint upon him was monstrous indeed.”

The twitch of Messmer’s mouth- the flint in his tone- seeded ice into Morgott’s spine. Mentioning Mohg had been a mistake. But he did not yet understand why. He met Messmer’s glare, unyielding. But beside him, Cyrielle was fraying.

Rigid and cold, she spat, “My daughter is your blood too. Your brother and niece destroyed the furnace. Belurat is blameless.”

The faint leer Messmer had cultivated for Morgott withered to dust upon his visage of stone. His hand tensed upon the table’s surface; the bones of his fingers pressed against pallid skin. “Thinkest thou I came to avenge a machine? I do not hunt the hornsent because I believe them a threat… The cities of the Erdtree people expand as I shatter theirs. Their fertile fields doth feed us while they graze on what the salted earth begrudgingly beareth. I have tamed their animal deities. Their spirits heed not their prayers because they ken the bite of my flame. They are nothing. The Eternal Queen suffereth not the lightless. For that alone, the hornsent are condemned. Those stripped of the Grace of Gold shall all meet death. As Marika decreed.”

His speech was marked with neither pride nor shame. For Morgott, to behold Lord Messmer’s disaffected scowl was to see a part of himself unearthed from an ignoble, shallow grave. But even the Fell Omen had reveled in his righteous fury when he hounded Tarnished from the Erdtree. Even the Veiled Monarch had borne his share of disgrace. Morgott saw a piece of him in his older brother, but it was a shard so miniscule as to be swallowed by the fathomless abyss that was the Impaler. Hollow and unfeeling.

“...Thou cannot be dissuaded,” Morgott murmured. It was not in his nature to accept defeat. Whatever affection Messmer had harbored for his lost Omen brother had thoroughly evaporated, and Morgott, likewise, had never been able to bond with his estranged family anyhow. If the Impaler invited a golden sword into his heart, Morgott doubted he’d grieve much.

“I may turn away this once,” Messmer capitulated. His tone was firm yet honeyed with pity. He was every bit the stern brother scolding his naive younger sibling. “I bear thee no ill-will. Gather ye family and travel with me to my keep. I would remove ye from the grasp of this… meddlesome other God and return home.”

So the man that had held Morgott’s face and cried his name now saw him as little more than a key- a tether to Marika. Woe, the Queen was a crumbled corpse, and Messmer would not find her by clinging to his disappointment of a brother. Morgott clasped his hands before him. His phantom tail was lashing.

“Our family cannot return to the lands of Gold,” he said. “We were scattered when we were dragged into the Shadow Lands. I have reunited with my wife, my twin, and my children. But my niece remaineth lost to us.”

Messmer frowned. “Describe her,” he commanded. As though he earnestly wished to be of help. As though if he played along, his guileless brother would ferry him homeward in gratitude.

“Recallest thou my twin’s features? Many doth he share with his child. Her complexion is dark as nightfall. Her eyes are Grace-golden. Her hair is silver.”

Cyrielle added, “We are nearly the same height. But she is as thin as a twig.”

Messmer’s gaze, thoughtful, hovered between his guests. Pointed and distant.

There was frost in Morgott’s chest. A trickle of frigid thaw dripped down his spine. “She was born winged but unable to fly. Her tail is a whip, adorned with plumage at its end.”

“Her name is Moiragh.” Cyrielle cocked her head, awaiting Messmer’s response.

It was slow to come. Glacial with caution. “There was a woman of that very description discovered by the Fort of Reprimand.”

The ice within Morgott ignited into ghostflame.

Cyrielle whispered, “What became of her?”

“The woman was horned-”

“The woman was horned!” Morgott barked. This body was bloodless, yet he could feel his ichor boiling kilometers away. He was aware of his fangs- his animal flesh. His false, pale hands lunged for Messmer’s windpipe across the table- but found the knot of his cloak instead. “What hast thou done to the girl?”

Gentle Moiragh. Despite her heritage and the men that had raised her and the vicious God rooted within her, she possessed a kindly spirit. Tiny Moiragh too often winded, who had gnawed a dozen scars into Morgott’s tail. The sickly bairn that had ended Mohg’s world and had single-handedly rebuilt it.

Messmer did not answer. Not because Morgott was nearly strangling him. One of the serpents spat but did not strike.

Morgott’s breath was rage’s fume. “I suppose I shall see when we accompany thee to thy castle, hmm? I will bear witness to the cruelty thou hast wrought upon Marika’s blood in her name!”

“Morgott-”

He made to throw Messmer aside, but the wretched man was sturdier than he seemed. He stumbled into his chair but righted himself. Coiled like a wary snake.

“The girl is alive.” He brushed his front with his claws as though to scrape away an unseen residue Morgott’s touch had left upon his clothing. “Now calm thyself.”

“Alive!” Cyrielle balked. “Is that the best we can hope for? A living child?”

Messmer was silent; what could be said to assuage her that was not untruthful? Morgott’s knees were weak- like dry wood propping an impossible weight. It was his wife that nursed a dreadful fury. Her hand hovered over her belted weapons.

Messmer was oblivious to this. He stared at Morgott mercilessly. He was, as Morgott had assessed, an empty monster. The Impaler asked, “Pray tell, if thy niece is Omen, then Mohg remaineth Omen as well? Was thy twin not cured?”

“No.”

“Thy daughter as well. Thou claimest she was pursued by the golem. But it should not have taken interest in a hornless woman of Grace. Thy daughter is Omen, too.”

“She is.” Morgott’s form rippled. He knew what the Impaler intended to ask. He chose to be honest.

The shade remolded itself, flickering around Morgott’s anchored consciousness. He became taller, broader, coarser. His tail unspooled from condensed heat and toppled a chair. The gilded crown was transfigured into an osseous diadem.

“What is this?” Messmer sneered.

But he was scalded by the acid of his own question. He had seen through Morgott’s lies. And now, faced with the truth, he could take no pride in his deductions. Messmer’s widened eye shivered in its setting, revealing his hurt. But Morgott had not hewn the injury.

Morgott growled, an Omen in a King’s raiment. “The deception was Marika’s. She did not heal me. She did not heal Mohg. When she could no longer bear the humiliation of us, she concealed us among other Omen spawn in Leyndell’s sewers!”

Like a loyal housecat, Morgott had savaged the memory of Queen Marika and laid it at the stoop of Messmer’s hatred. The Impaler stepped over the bait and jabbed a finger at Morgott’s furred collarbone.

“Thou hast made the hornsent thy subjects. Thou hast made a Tarnished thy consort. Thou hast spread thy curse to thy offspring. Thou’rt no son of the Queen. The majesty of her Erdtree is not to be misused! ‘Tis tainted in thine accursed flesh! Grasping traitor, wherefore hast thou come? To bring ruination to the Age of the Golden Order for thy resentment?” His accusation was deathly cold, but he winced as though he’d been struck.

Morgott batted Messmer’s hand aside, teeth bared. “Thou art mistaken,” he said, for all the good it would do him.

Flame wreathed the Impaler’s fist. Cyrielle followed suit, brandishing her Warriors’ swords. The sparse candles upon the table flared crimson and shuddered. One serpent bobbed beneath Messmer’s chin. The other, coiled about the elbow of his arm extended in threat, regarding Cyrielle warily.

“My purpose remaineth unchanged,” he hissed. “I do not wish to harm thee, Brother, but if thou wilt bind thyself and thy family to Belurat’s pyre, so be it.”

Cyrielle sprang with a hoarse cry, vaulting over the table. Her hornsent blades she raised to cleave Messmer’s head from his shoulders. A tongue of flame licked across the Impaler’s palm, solidifying into a spear.

Morgott could curse his foolish Tarnished. The Elden Lord’s vessel dissolved at a flick of his wrist. The hornsent blades clattered uselessly to the floor of packed earth. The flaming head of Messmer’s spear thrust up into the air harmlessly. The blow would have mortally wounded Cyrielle’s shade. Better to dismiss it and spare her the pain. She had never died in an incanted shape before. Now was not the time to acclimate her to it.

Morgott lunged with his own materialized sword. Messmer was agile. He blocked the swing with the haft of his spear and rose to his feet in one fluid motion. The last embers of Cyrielle rained upon her blades.

“Clever,” Messmer sounded almost genuine. “Thou’rt quite the trickster magician. If Rykard ever knew thee, he would have adored thee… or despised thee.”

Morgott snarled in answer. Messmer’s smirk was more of a grimace.

“I pray I do not see thee come morning. Thou need not share in their fate.”

He threw Messmerfire with a sweep of his arm. Morgott leapt away, but the flame’s teeth were long. It nipped at his forearms. His hair singed, his clothing caught. He smothered a cry, for the agony was twofold. It was as though the fire burned his corporeal flesh, too. Morgott bit his lip until the taste of blood was a phantom upon his tongue.

Messmer had gone- ducked out of his tent before Morgott could throw a conjured dagger. God lingered, seething, amidst the wasted meal- the fire was having its fill in their stead. Messmer had the protection of his men. If Morgott pursued him now, his shade would fall. There was nothing to be done. Especially with the spirit-hungry inferno blazing around him.

He withdrew from the encampment, and the whole of his consciousness retreated to his body in Belurat. Cyrielle and Mohg were there to greet him, along with a party of sages and Warriors. His wife’s face was flushed from humiliation. And Mohg’s subtle expression was ripe with the tells of anger, seen only by his twin.

“Well?” the blind Grandam snapped. Oblivious to the misery on their faces.

Morgott confessed to the people his mother had condemned to death. “The siege is upon us.”

Chapter Text

The Lord had mustered his army and marched southward. He had taken with him all of his most esteemed warriors: Captain Kood, Commander Gaius, Rellana- even Wego. Everyone save Sir Salza, it seemed.

Before his departure, Commander Gaius had allowed Samandari to greet his mount at Salza’s request. The Commander had reclined in a plush chair beside the beast’s pen. He’d held the boar’s branching tusk with a ghostly white hand as Samandari rubbed its bristly nose.

An animal this large was ancient beyond knowing. The tribes that had once lived on the Scadu Plateau had been killed or scattered hundreds of years ago. The memory of those people was sequestered into the storehouse- which was where Samandari had learned about them. She wondered if the boar had been one of their Divine Beasts. Perhaps she scratched behind the ear of a deity. She could imagine the creature changing the course of rivers and leveling entire forests. Maybe it had gored the great bears and painted their flanks red forever.

But the boar was tame now. Content in his servitude. He bore the weight of his heavy armor and rider. He trampled his once-worshippers and speared them upon his tusks. Commander Gaius was a gentle master. He had earned the boar’s respect. But Samandari knew something the boar did not: if he ever stopped being of use to the Crusade, he would be slaughtered. His divinity made into another exhibit to gather dust in the storehouse.

That was why Samandari prayed to Bayle.

——————————-

Sir Salza snored softly in the bed. In the mirror’s reflection, Samandari watched the subtle rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. The sheet's edge draped over his hip granted his unclothed body the barest modesty. But it was not as though a man needed to be modest for his wife. If Samandari could be grateful for anything, it was that he looked decent for his age.

Samandari’s focus shifted. She stared into her own face and tried not to fall into the lightless pits of her eyes. She gingerly prodded the discolored skin beneath the left one. It didn’t sting. A few days’ time had seen the brand of Sir Salza’s anger diminished to a violet blotch. Her husband had hit her hard- but only the once. Nonetheless, he had transformed her cheek into a mosaic. Shades of purple had underlined a puffy eyelid. The imprint of his hand had been suggested in yellow hues that deepened to green then blue-gray. But her face hadn’t swelled. The pain had not lingered longer than was necessary.

Salza had apologized for striking her. So delicate were his words they had not possessed the strength to pierce her and poison her with their kindness. He had been earnest. Cautious and tender. But in a day or so, the evidence of his discipline would vanish for good. And the reminder of his guilt would fade with it.

She dressed and concealed her horns beneath a crimson cloak before venturing out into the keep. Half of the Fire Knights were abroad with the Lord. Sir Salza was the castellan by default. Thus, Samandari did not feel so much like prey in the halls. She did not scurry- a mouse anticipating the cat’s pouncing claws. As per her duty, she went to the kitchens to fetch tea and breakfast. The servants were hunched, bleary-eyed, over their own morning meals.

“Sun isn’t even up yet, Sam,” a wizened old man groused around the neck of a pipe. His hair was a greasy, white tangle around small, button horns. His storied life was chronicled in their cracks and breaks.

“It will be done, my Lady,” a second man bowed. His apron was stained despite his fastidiousness.

“There is no hurry. I have another errand,” Samandari inclined her head in thanks.

The old man grunted, “What’s your phony sage want with a cockerel anyhow?”

Samandari had no clue what he was referring to- and the boldness of his tongue was outright appalling- so she left. Before dawn, in the empty keep, the hornsent behaved as lawlessly as they dared. Samandari was likewise determined to commit her own sin.

Cold wind threw back Samandari’s hood as she emerged onto the turret. It stabbed into her lungs as she panted. The keep did not want for lifts, but navigating the labyrinthine stairs was infinitely more discreet.

The turret was unattended. A rack of rusting stakes uselessly stood sentinel. The Shadow Keep had not been attacked in centuries. This post had not seen the black boots of a Graceborn guard in many, many years. Rather, hornsent servants came to smoke and gossip and kiss and pray away from resentful golden eyes.

This far north, the Jagged Peak was difficult to make out. It blended in with the clouds of its unceasing storm and its court of spiny, lesser hills. The gusts were too strong for Samandari to risk setting her candle and dish on the parapet. They would tumble what felt like a kilometer into the Ellac River or upon the roof of an unsuspecting home. But there was a rotting table- a wooden platform on legs, really- in the corner sheltered by the keep’s wall. She set the dish upon it- smashed the nubby candle into its center. Braced, she extended her arm as far as she could- lest her wind-tossed hair catch flame. Messmerfire nipped at her fingertips. Throbbed up to her elbow.

The door behind her opened with a shrill bleat. She clenched her fist, extinguished the incantation upon herself. It singed her palm. As her eyes watered, her husband’s voice called out: “Samandari!”

She whipped around. Her flighty movement jostled the table. The spiral-carved bit of wax rolled forlornly off of the edge without so much as a sound.

Salza’s puzzled expression was battered by the gales. “I have been searching for thee. The fellows in the kitchens said I might find thee here.”

“I wanted to see the sunrise. I-it is peaceful.” The excuse was flimsy. The candle came to rest against her foot. She wanted to curse the pipe-smoking man and his eager-to-please peer. But even in her anger she understood a Fire Knight was not denied.

The Fire Sage was dressed in a simple black tunic. The sleeves and belt were embroidered with scarlet capillaries. He stepped forward, pinning Samandari against the table with his faint frown.

“Thou hast behaved most strangely of late.”

Samandari’s heart was in her throat. “Have I displeased you?”

“No! No. I fear the fault lieth with me.”

His hand clamped upon her shoulder. Wrinkle by wrinkle, his frown was forcefully remolded into a sympathetic grimace of a smile. She was steered away from the table so they could watch the world below languidly wake.

“The war doth wear on me. I ache to be here, away from my compatriots. I ache to think of Belurat burning. ‘Tis a tragedy when viewed from any angle. A partnership with the Tower Folk would benefit all. Alas, the Lord abhorreth their defiance. The hornsent doth cherish zealous faith and pride more than the lives of their children. After the grief to come, I fear above all I will not have answers for Lord Messmer when he returneth triumphant. I am… anxious, Wife. Forgive me. Thou’rt a balm, and I have taken thee for granted.”

“I forgive you.”

He squeezed her shoulder in gratitude. “Marvelous girl.”

The sun rose slowly and bathed the sprawl of the city in diluted sunlight. The Veil was thick here. Torches remained lit at all hours to drive away darkness. So, the prickly Graceborn termite mound appeared to perpetually burn. From this height, the people were specks, and the roads were mere filament- torn threads that vanished into the gray-green wilderness the Erdtree People had not yet defiled.

“This land is ugly,” Sir Salza sighed. “There is nowhere uglier in all the world.”

“Rauh is beautiful,” Samandari asserted in a papery whisper.

Salza chuckled, “Thou speakest true. That country is without comparison. Its sweetness is thine.” He kissed the top of her head. One of her horns jabbed against his chin. Another, his cheek. He straightened. “Bring breakfast to my study. I am eager to begin mine experiments.”

When his back was turned, Samandari deftly snatched her candle and plate. She stuffed them into her clothes and felt the scrap of cold metal grow warm against her skin. The pliant wax would leave a residue on the fabric. She mouthed a voiceless goodbye to the Jagged Peak. To the mountains that comprised the spine of the Shadow Lands. Rauh was somewhere behind them, its verdant beauty disguised by ashen rock. Now that Salza knew she favored this spot, she could never return. She was his wife, and thus she was obligated to share with him all that she owned. Even if it was just a place to watch the sun rise and pray for the end of the world.

——————————-

Blood oozed down Moiragh’s fingers. Samandari was tasked with holding the Keeper’s clawed fingertips to a phial. In its rounded bottom, her blood pooled. It made the glass hot to the touch, so the Fire Sage handled it with an insulated glove. Despite its heat, the ichor did not boil. It was brilliant red. And when daylight struck it, a rainbow was born in the substance.

Moiragh did not stir as her blood was pilfered. Her head lulled, heavy, against Samandari’s shoulder. Horns pressed bruises into Samandari’s skin, but she endured. It was her way of apologizing for being complicit in her husband’s theft. He bled the Keeper for two to three phials every day. The unconscious woman wore bandages on each of her fingers. Across her palms and wrists and forearms. Moiragh had not woken since promising Samandari an escape from the Shadow Keep. Samandari did not feel worthy of it anymore.

“That is enough,” Sir Salza said. Despite the brusque address, his tone was amicable, and he offered his wife a grateful smile.

Samandari nodded. She bandaged the flesh Salza had marred- the white of the linen stark against black-violet skin. Salza stoppered the phial and set it carefully beside its nestmates. One sample he would store for later. But he liked to experiment with the Keeper’s blood while it was fresh and scalding.

As the Lord had declared, the blood’s flaming properties were self-evident. The Fire Sage regularly decanted phials into a shallow bowl to ignite. This he did obsessively- every other day- to ponder the hue of the flames. He would sit with sweat beading on his brow and a hissing ember of Messmerfire in his palm. Moiragh’s fire was brilliant, pure crimson. Messmer’s fire was seeded with sable tongues. It was hungrier. Salza had tried to incorporate Moiragh's blood into the magic of his order. However, his attempt to sublimate it for Rain of Fire had resulted in an explosion that nearly cost him one of his desks. So, he’d abandoned the effort. A fair number of the plants that Salza had tended- or had entreated someone else to mind while he resided in his estate- had been reduced to brittle black stems and ash thanks to his trials.

Today, a cock strutted about the study. He scratched at the boards and dipped his head into the numerous earth-filled pots. He caught his reflection in one of the polished bells dangling over the floor and pecked at them. Bright, tinny chimes filled the room until Salza picked up the bird. The animal’s wings were already clipped. All he had to do was bind his legs. The bells- suspended from the chandelier in a rough approximation of a spiraling ring- made a crude altar. The cock was placed in the ring’s center. He clucked his indignation and was doused in chromatic blood.

Samandari glared at the bruises on Moiragh’s arms- the swollen skin around healing cuts- as Salza struck flint behind her. The back of her neck warmed, and the bird screamed in agony.

When the cock stilled, its hide was a patchwork of charred skin and exposed, raw flesh. The bells were strung up so haphazardly an errant breath would have coaxed forth a chime. But the animals’ screams tapered, and the bells did not stir. As though to mock the Graceborn sage for his ignorance.

“Girl?” the Fire Sage barked. The rigors of his investigation tore away the mask of the mild spouse and transfigured him into the blunt and frustrated scholar. “The beast’s spirit. Was it untethered or consumed?”

“I do not know, my Lord.”

Her husband scoffed. In his irritation, he seemed to have forgotten that his bride was the daughter of orchard farmers rather than the nobility of the Tower and their enclosed circles. She had been taught to maintain stone burrows and commune with flame sprites that resided within them. To witness the comings and goings of departed spirits was a skill true sages honed all their lives. Even then, the minute wisp of a chicken’s soul might flutter past their noses unnoticed.

Samandari bit her tongue before she could instinctually apologize. It was almost always best to remain silent as Salza’s agitation spent itself rather than accept responsibility. Indeed, in mere moments Salza’s scowl softened. He slumped into his seat, then held a still-warm phial to the light peering in through the windows.

“Abominable, elusive substance.” He exhaled disdainfully. The bells shuddered in response.

In the cage, Moiragh awoke, gasping. She curled in on herself; a whine eked past her teeth. Her bandages- which had been pristine minutes ago- were now sodden. As though her wounds had inexplicably opened. Samandari clutched at her sternum for the key she no longer possessed- that her husband no longer trusted her with. So she clung to the iron bars of the cage helplessly as the beautiful woman writhed in her unceremonious return to consciousness.

“The Queen’s bitter mercy…” Salza leapt from his seat. He strode to the cage’s door, but did not procure the key. He simply stared down at the Keeper as she pushed herself up into a sitting position.

“Hello, Quick Heart,” Moiragh muttered. Samandari sank to her knees in relief as her salvation smiled at her.

“You’re hurt,” she replied.

Moiragh laid her hands in her lap, palms facing upward. Dark, viscous beads of blood dripped onto the floorboards every few seconds. “Better me.”

That was all the patience Sir Salza could muster. “Thou hast slept unceasing for ten days. How long before the curse reclaimeth thee?”

Samandari’s mouth was dry as Moiragh's golden eyes left her to appraise her husband. She held out her trembling, ravaged arms- presented the bloodstained carnage. That was her answer.

The Fire Sage cleared his throat, “I am Sir Salza. Thou’rt called-?”

“Moiragh.”

“Where dost thou hail from?”

“The Lands Between.”

Samandari stiffened. The Lands Between was a place of myth. It was a paradise realm for the Graceborn- bereft of the taint of hornsent- that the Eternal Queen sealed away one thousand years ago. Which meant Moiragh’s claim was preposterous… Wasn’t it?

Samandari’s husband agreed. “I am no fool. I will not tolerate lies.”

Though she did little but sleep, Moiragh’s eyes were puffy with the tell of exhaustion. But her gaze was as sharp as it had ever been. She glared with such fury that Samandari’s breath stalled in her lungs.

“I detest dishonesty,” she said. Affront made her enunciation clipped. “I will not be accused of it while you stink of faithlessness.”

“We have only begun to speak. Pray tell, how have I offended thee?” Salza always spoke just above a whisper when he was masking his annoyance. Condescension was the leash for his ire.

“You pretend I am your guest when I am your prisoner.”

“No harm hath come to thee, regardless.”

Moiragh tapped a talon against the shackle around her ankle. Blood smeared across the black metal, gleaming. “You can see that I am wounded and caged, can you not?”

“Regrettable as that is…” he floundered. “Thou’rt awake, and I have questions.”

“I have questions of my own. If you lie to me, might I strike you?” Moiragh’s last words hung, expectant, between them. A hot flush of shame rose to Samandari’s cheeks.

Sir Salza ignored Moiragh, “What was thy business near the Fort of Reprimand?”

“I have no memory of that place. I was asleep. Now, might you answer my question?”

Samandari picked at her blunt fingernails. Moiragh had always been so gentle. Her disdain felt like poison dripping into Samandari’s ears.

Salza plowed on. “Thou wearest the colors of our Lord Messmer and the people of Grace. Didst thou serve a Graceborn house?”

Moiragh’s eyes met Samandari’s. And Samandari was flayed within their honeyed depths.

The Keeper asked coolly, “Is every horned woman you meet in bondage?”

“The properties of thy blood are strange.” Salza twirled the phial of blood in his fingers so that it shimmered. “Thou’rt a novel creature. Fire doth smolder in thy veins.”

Now Moiragh balked, “That is not yours to do with what you please!” She was lucid, but physically weak. She wheezed as she looked upon her reopened injuries. As she realized at last that her skin had not split of its own accord like an overripe fruit left on the branch. She had been harvested in her sleep.

Salza grinned at her distress. He was not handsome, then.

“Thy fire is impressive, but the fire of my Lord is greater. I thought thee a weapon at first. An omen of trials to come,” Sir Salza brandished the phial. “Is it inoculant, Creature? Have ye discovered a way to resist the flame of Lord Messmer? Is that how Belurat felled the Furnace?”

His voice rose with the surety of his triumph. Moiragh barely seemed to hear. She clutched at her thin forearms. Tacky blood oozed between her trembling fingers. Her round eyes were growing foggy. Samandari pressed herself against the bars as though willing herself to slip through the gaps. That did not happen. She fit an arm through, reaching with a shaking hand.

“I do not understand,” Moiragh rasped.

“What is the truth of thy nature? Thy purpose?”

“If I give that to you, what then? Will you let me return to my family?”

Salza ran a hand through his hair. His glee sobered marginally. “Yes. Tell me the truth, and thou wilt be spared.”

He trailed off at Moiragh’s sudden sob. It was soft, muffled by constraint. "Liar.”

Salza hissed at that. But Moiragh’s quiet tears were joined by Samandari’s. Moiragh’s despair had unmoored her. She was fifteen again, and the man she’d only just met was firmly explaining that she could not go home. No one had been there for her- had accompanied her through the torturous transition from immature girl to Lady wife. She was supposed to protect Moiragh. She had promised her.

“Let me in, please,” she begged her husband. “Please.”

She half-expected to be slapped again for her graceless display. But Salza had never hit her for weeping. Wordlessly, he unlocked the cage, and Samandari darted inside. The shadow of the Fire Sage fell over her as she gathered Moiragh’s limp body into her arms.

“What art thou, Moiragh of the Lands Between?” he demanded. As Samandari chanted under her breath: “I am sorry. I am sorry.”

An unshed tear lingered on Moiragh’s lashes. She was asleep.

Chapter Text

Morgott

Sodden feathers the length of a man’s torso littered the street. Clumped in the gutter that ran parallel to it. The wet gales that barreled between Belurat’s buildings could not pry them from the ground. Morgott’s exhale plumed before his nose. He had not slept. And it seemed his twin had wasted the night plucking himself.

Belurat’s gates would be closed now. The city’s forces were marching onto the Gravesite Plain. ‘Margit’ was with them. Thus, Morgott was harangued by the perfume of unwashed bodies and acrid magics and sword polish. He ignored it, scaling the spire before him with ease. The lingering damp plastered his hair to his face as he found his brother’s perch. The roof groaned in complaint at their combined weight.

“I expected thee to be gone.” Accusation rimed Morgott’s greeting. “We were in agreement.”

Mohg snorted. His back faced Morgott. The wind raked through his feathers, tugged at the sails of his wings. It was so dark before dawn that the gold in his primaries had dulled to bronze.

“There was no agreement. You commanded me. But you are not my King. You are not my God.”

No God enjoyed being denied, but that was not what agitated Morgott. “‘Tis not in thy nature to lie.”

Mohg inhaled, the breath grated against his lungs in a rumble. “I have spoken no falsehoods.”

“The Shadow Keep is divested of its Lord and his men.”

“I am aware.”

Morgott knew that he was aware. He would not retread the conversation they’d had upon his return from the Impaler’s encampment. He sighed, “Thou hast, still, the cloak of night. Fly now, and thou wilt remain invisible to them.”

Mohg did not reply.

Morgott pressed. “Thy daughter awaiteth thee-”

His twin beat his fist upon the roof. Tiles shattered into ruddy dust and shards. Wood and stone shifted, injured. Not enough to buckle the spire, fortunately. But enough to scar it.

“I did not agree to any scheme of yours.”

Though that was not how Morgott remembered the previous evening. There had been a shallow nod. A brusque farewell- clipped by fangs- that signaled Mohg’s urgency. He had departed, Morgott had assumed, to prepare for the journey as Belurat prepared for war. Whilst the Impaler’s army threw itself at the city’s gates, Mohg could slip into the fabled black fortress. Moiragh would be rescued before the siege’s end.

Morgott rubbed his face. His chin was growing prickly with whiskers. “I do not understand.”

Mohg issued a throaty growl as Morgott stood beside him, but he did not lash out.

“Moiragh is not the Impaler’s prisoner. She is Miquella’s guest.” Mohg’s tone was dire, his voice a strained wheeze. “You told me we had to have faith that Miquella means her no harm.”

Morgott had said something to that effect, yes. He had even meant it. But that had been before Messmer had come. That had been before they learned where Moiragh was trapped.

He asked gingerly, “Did he appear to thee again?”

“I dreamed…” Mohg’s quiet confession. “But I do not recall… if they carried a message for me.”

Morgott grabbed his brother’s feathery scruff and yanked him upright. Mohg’s golden eye was hazy with sleeplessness. Haunted by his indecision.

If Mohg was so enraptured by Miquella- whether through guilt or fear or love’s cloying devotion- then perhaps it was for the best he had not set out on his own. Morgott regarded Mohg’s recent delicacy with derision and pity. Mohg had brought this upon himself- he had brought this upon Moiragh. The duty was Morgott’s- always Morgott’s- to protect his family. Not even his twin could be relied upon.

God hissed, “When the Impaler is dead, Miquella will not be able to hide behind the girl.” He possessed the kindness not to add: Nor wilt thou continue to cower from thy disgrace! “...We will go together.”

Mohg reclaimed his fierceness, then. He wrenched out of Morgott’s hold, as if he could sense his silent judgement. Or perhaps he simply resented being manhandled like a sullen bairn. He spat, “Then we had better kill him quickly.”

Mohg

Cyprus and one hundred of his fellows had conjured a storm. The rain had transformed the ground around Belurat into a gray marsh. The Impaler’s encampment was sagging into puddles. But the wrath wind and thunder had not washed the invading army away come the cloud-shrouded dawn.

The damp seemed to stick to Mohg’s feathers. He shivered often to shake out the phantom sensation. He’d spent the hours intended for rest preening and in prayer. He had gazed out over the gorge guarding the city’s side; his daughter was somewhere beyond the expanse. There had been whispers amidst the raindrops- messages engraved by lightning. There had been hands in the wind, tugging at his limbs. So long he’d lingered, trying to decipher their intent, that he might have dozed. He might have forgotten what, exactly, the agreement he’d made with Morgott had been about.

He snorted. He’d made his choice.

Now, his mantled wings shadowed the tired conjurors as he walked among them. Many stared with awe- his pedigree was no secret anymore. Others regarded him with contempt. Most, however, deigned not to acknowledge him at all. Ingrates. That included Cyprus. The Warrior doggedly ignored him as he approached.

“Look at me,” Mohg rumbled.

Cyprus was too exhausted for defiance. He cupped a bowl of warm broth in his broad hand- his scarred one was curled into a limp fist in his lap, trembling for the chill. He glanced up from his morning meal scowling. Steam framed his face. There was a faintly bluish undertone to his gray complexion. His sclera was pinkened by sleeplessness. Looking up through white lashes, his irises appeared more red than violet.

“What do you want, Bloodmage?”

Marie and Morgan had been hidden away in the city’s interior at Morgott’s command. God and his Lord were preparing for battle on the Gravesite Plain. Even Mohgwyn’s little turncoat knight was making himself useful in Belurat’s hospitals; at least the accursed blood was not entirely wasted nourishing that aged flesh. But Mohg had chosen to whittle away Belurat’s last bloodless hour in Cyprus’s company. Mohg’s values compelled him to be honest with himself: he did not wholly understand why he’d sought the Warrior out, so he could not answer his question to any satisfaction.

Cyprus was scruffy with his short white beard. He was eternally sour. The earth itself would pucker when he was laid to rest. Judging by his dour expression, Cyprus seemed certain his demise was near at hand. But he would face it: griping, belligerent, and bold.

In that, Cyprus reminded Mohg of his twin. Perhaps that was why he could not hold onto his grudge.

“Come.”

Mohg grabbed Cyprus’s shoulder and hauled him to his feet. A courageous woman shouted in Cyprus’s defense, but the Warrior waved her off. Cyprus and the other spirit callers had braved the night on the plateau that overlooked Belurat and housed the Bloodfiend clan. Though the hornsent stayed well away from Prospect Town, the Bloodfiends had scented fire and gone to ground. The plateau was quiet, if brisk. Cyprus limped after Mohg with a wool shawl clutched around his shoulders. His panting breath issued in thin tufts. Mohg led him to the cliff’s edge. The war was about to begin, and he wanted a good view.

The broth Cyprus sipped smelled of salt and herbs. A piece of soggy bread floated within, bloated with savory soup. Cyprus slurped it down, sighing contentedly. He did not bother wiping his chin after.

“If it’s an apology you want-” he began sharply.

“No.”

“My life, then? I am tired, Mohg. If I must be ended by one of Marika’s sons, I would rather it be you.”

Even if Cyprus were a decent actor- and he was not- his heart betrayed his fear. Mohg peered into the valley, “I have no desire to waste your blood, and I have no desire to see you burned.”

Below, the Impaler’s army gathered to meet Belurat’s at the mouth of the arched tunnel. They milled about in black armor. Bellowing as they beat the flat of their axes’ heads against their shields. As they stamped the shafts of their spears against wood and stone laid into the mud.

“They bray like asses and declare us animals,” Cyprus muttered. The wind threw his hair into his eyes. The blue scales on his arms gleamed even in the gloom. He would not be forced onto the front. But that did not mean he was guaranteed safety.

Knights proper in gold-engraved plate mingled amongst the soldiers. The white-plumed cavalry had to be delicate with their mounts. The hornsents’ summoned weather had made the terrain treacherous for horses. And the few war machines they’d dragged across the plain were anchored into the muck, largely useless for the time being. Still, the invaders did not lack for horrors. Soldiers guided flaming hound cadavers with red torches. Svelte men and women in peaked hoods drifted between the ranks.

It was apparent that the army of the Erdtree outnumbered Belurat’s defenders by far. The city gate was a more defensible position. But Belurat had been breached and razed half a dozen times before. Morgott had argued that the Impaler was presently at his weakest. If the hornsent hid behind the walls, the Erdtree People would loiter until the slow trickle of reinforcements bolstered them to full strength. All the while Belurat’s food stores would be consumed. Somehow, Morgott had convinced the Grandam that Belurat’s best chance of survival meant meeting the Impaler on the Gravesite Plain. The Grandam had agreed to take the risk if Morgott led the charge.

If Mohg squinted, he could make out the fuzzy shape of his twin. He did not grace the drenched battlefield as Leyndell’s holy God, but as the Shattering’s Fell Margit. His gifted robes he had traded for a ripped and ragged cloak. Cyrielle was somewhere in the throng as well. But she was difficult to spot. Tiny as she was.

A boar large enough to bear Mohg ambled to the front- on the Impaler’s side. It was Crucible-blessed judging by the magnificence of its tusks and its immense size. The lance its rider wielded crackled with sorcerous energy.

Cyprus hissed at Mohg’s elbow then spat at his feet. “I was six years of age when the Impaler last graced this city. Belurat was not my home, then. My village was barely a mote on the Plain. But sieges drag on. Bored crusaders go hunting… I lost everything. Yet here they are, demanding more.”

The crusaders advanced, marching through the muck at a slovenly pace. Archers nocked arrows. The first volley from the Impaler’s army was deflected by a golden rebuke like thunder- as well as conjured gusts. So, fire was hurled instead. But as those sinuous missiles burst upon the ground, the grassland did not catch. It was too wet. The battlefield became cloaked in steam.

Mohg rasped, “In the Lands Between, souls denied Marika’s Grace were forbidden rebirth within the Erdtree. They wandered without rest. All my life I have heard their pleading. They called to me in my sleep. From a young age, I knew that I would join them when I died.”

Cyprus sighed, “What are we doing, Mohg? Baring old wounds when the fighting’s just begun?”

“You asked me once if I could see spirits.”

“I recall,” the croaked reply. “You told me you could.” The Warrior’s gaze tracked the movement of the Erdtree army.

“The furious dead answer to the Curseborn, and they shall fight for you.”

Mohg clenched his raised fist around an intangible tether.

The wraiths had thinned considerably in the Lands Between. But here- in the land cut off from the Erdtree- to reach out was to wet his fingers in a boundless, seething sea. His horns ached at the familiar wailing. Their hatred and despair were viscous and writhing. Marika and her darling Impaler had sought to turn the Shadow Lands into a purgatorial cage. Alas, Messmer was sealed with the ghosts he’d made.

Mohg could not inflict the Formless Mother’s curse without harming Moiragh. But he was Omen. There was more to his power than his Goddess. His teeth throbbed their settings. His ears rang for the shrieking. Cyprus’s own drooped against his neck. He dropped his empty bowl to press the heels of his hands to them.

The Greater Will had taken back its Runes from Mohg’s influence. But Mohg remembered how to marshal the wrath of wraiths. They arrived first as wisps. They fell from the heavens- sprouted from the ground- as crimson forms, dark silhouettes lacquered red. They swarmed the Impaler’s army, clawing and stinging. Mohg had disturbed the ants’ nest. But they would not turn upon the hornsent. Most of them were hornsent. Hundreds of them.

Blades and incantations were deadlier than the rancor of wayward souls. The wraiths were not strong enough to decimate the invaders. But they were lethal. And with Mohg’s encouragement, they would prove fatal to some. Indeed, the flood of condemned loosened the enemy’s ranks. The hornsent rallied, taking advantage of the chaos.

Mohg watched the hues of war flicker in the sclera of Cyprus’s moonish eyes. The gold of lightning and Erdtree incantations. The duller yellow of hornsent magics. The pale blue of icy spirits. The scarlet of wraiths and Messmerfire. Violet sparks. All of it melded within the pearls of his angry tears. Like Omens’ blood.

He declared, “I must go to the gate. I’m no use to anyone here-”

“I have use for you.”

Cyprus swayed where he stood, hunched in his amorphous cloak. He had backed away from the plateau’s edge. “Hmm?”

“I doubt the keenness of my eye. I do not espie the Impaler.”

Cyprus scoffed, “You cannot see him because he is not there.”

“The coward sensed a trap?”

“No. It is an insult. Belurat has dared to meet him on the Gravesite Plain, but he cannot be bothered to face Belurat in kind.”

The ground shuddered then, enough that Cyprus nearly lost his footing. The steam-born fog was stained brilliant violet. The plateau groaned. The valley beneath it heaved. Mud and grass surged like the sea’s tide. Warriors were displaced; casters were toppled and lost in the landslide. Drowned and buried in one fateful stroke.

Gravity sorceries. And at a mastery that would have surely impressed Radahn if he were not dead.

The knight with the boar mount raised his lance. His beast leapt over his allies to alight amongst the scattering hornsent. The Fell Omen raced across the churned earth to meet him, golden hammer in hand.

“Who is the sorcerer?” Mohg growled.

“He is Gaius. He commands the earth itself.” That much was apparent. “He is the one that will rip open the gates. He has done it before. Twice, according to the histories.”

“Then he dies today in the Impaler’s stead.”

Mohg went to the sheer edge of the cliff and crouched. When he pushed off, wing tucked close, Cyprus did not call out for him. Instead, it was the howling of wraiths that overwhelmed Mohg’s senses. Like field mice, the miniscule soldiers instinctively knew a predator was on the wing. Their cries of warning were swallowed up by the cacophony of battle. The billowing steam obscured his trajectory. What mattered was that the boar and its rider did not realize they were the ones being hunted.

Margit grappled with the boar’s tusks, attempting to halt its charge. The ground was too slick for him to keep his footing. The animal pushed Margit back. The Fell roared as his shoulder was torn through with Gaius’s lance. The wound would have been devastating even if he was not a constructed shade. The sorcerer was so preoccupied with the specter of Margit he did not notice the second Omen swooping overhead. A soldier's thrown spear tore through Mohg’s wing membrane, but it was not enough to rescue Gaius.

Gaius was so heavily armored, the impact jolted Mohg’s ribs. His body bleated for its old age. Then complained further as he was peppered by arrows.

“To Gaius! Commander Gaius!”

The shrill cry managed to pierce through the boar’s startled screams. Mohg had knocked it over in dismounting its rider. It thrashed in the mud, blinded by grit and burdened by its armor.

Commander Gaius lay stunned in the same filth.

“Tricksome monster,” he grunted. He did not sound particularly distraught- merely resigned.

His lower half had been concealed by his armored saddle. Now the saddle lay a ruin, and the rider’s pale, atrophied legs were exposed and smeared with grime. Mohg had thought the man winded. Rather, Gaius lay supine because he simply could not stand.

He muttered. “Golden eye. You are the twin.”

Mohg gripped Gaius’s femurs and crushed them, spitting, “I am your Lord’s death!”

He painted his feathers white with Albinauric blood.

Cyrielle

Messmer the Impaler began the second day of the siege by slaughtering the Crucible-blessed boar.

He led it into the no man’s land. It followed, docile. The bottom of its tusks gouging into the muddy earth. An unbroken wall of pikes- held by grim-faced soldiers- pointed skyward behind the Impaler. He did not hold his own spear, but a shortsword. The gleaming weapon appeared to be woven from two blades

With a gentle gesture, Messmer encouraged the tame beast to raise its head. Trusting, it obeyed. The hornsent around Cyrielle keened. They pleaded and cursed as Messmer jammed the sword into the boar’s exposed throat. The animal roared, guttural. The Impaler deftly- coldly- sidestepped its desperate thrashing. It tossed its head twice before its strength was spent. It kneeled in the muck, lowing grotesquely as it bled.

His vengeance enacted, Messmer loitered only to listen to the weeping of the hornsent. His forces advanced when the boar went still. He did not join them. The soldiers with their spears and shields marched around him, and eventually he vanished into the mass. The Impaler left the hornsent to their grief.

———————

“War is slower than I imagined it would be.”

“Ignorant Tarnished,” Morgott replied without derision. “I doubt there hath been a quicker war.”

Battle had consumed the daylight hours. But when darkness fell, the crusaders had disengaged, returning to their fortified encampment. They were biding their time. They could afford to. If the hornsent had not summoned a storm, the Impaler would have simply set the plain ablaze and driven the hornsent back to the gates. But with the ground too saturated to catch fire, Messmer’s forces were resigned to whittling down the hornsent numbers- a task that was proving more costly than they’d anticipated. Mohg’s slaying of the gravity sorcerer had dealt them a devastating blow.

Belurat took advantage of the relative peace of the night. Morgott, Mohg, and Cyrielle would not sleep. They walked amongst the injured, and those that would accept the Gold of the Erdtree were healed. It made the hornsent nauseous, but it could turn a fatal wound into a mild discomfort. Bloodflame incantations kept rot and infection at bay- soothed burns and halted lethal hemorrhaging. Cyrielle assisted Belurat’s herbalists and healers as her grasp on her magic alluded her. She administered sedatives made from the lilies Ansbach had delivered.

“Time is against us,” Morgott muttered. “We must draw out the serpent and behead it.”

Cyrielle leaned into his side. She possessed a Lord’s vigor, but she was tiring faster than usual. She yawned and lamented, “We have missed our opportunity twice over.”

She had failed Cyprus. She had failed everyone.

“…I implore thee, rest.”

“Two hours of shoddy sleep will not make a difference, Morgott.”

“Cyrielle…” he trailed off, but she knew what he’d intended to ask. He wanted her to refrain from the battle come morning. If only for one day. But he had already asked her once, and she had refused. Morgott was a principled man of the Lands Between. He would not humiliate the Elden Lord by demanding that she give up her glory. Of course, she did not tell him that glory wasn’t what she was after.

———————

Dawn heralded the third day, and the armies clashed once more.

There was a monument in the outer moat of Leyndell. The razing of the Erdtree and the passage of another century had seen much of its writing eroded. But Cyrielle remembered what it had proclaimed: The Fell Omen stacks high the corpses of heroes. Cyrielle felt that- perhaps for the first time- she understood the true savagery of Margit the Fell. By midday, the Elden Lord’s blades were adequately bloodstained. Margit’s fur, however, was dyed with gore. From his whiskers to his tail. Indeed, Graceborn bodies lay in heaps around him.

Not since her sojourn as a Recusant of the Volcano Manor had Cyrielle been witness to death of this magnitude. The storm’s puddles had turned rusty- it was impossible to step anywhere without bloodying her boots. And Mohg was utilizing his craft to its full, dreadful extent.

The crusaders had left the previous day’s casualties- save for Gaius- to fester in the field overnight. But Belurat’s hornsent would not chance their loved ones’ remains ending up on a pyre of Messmerfire. Thus, most of the abandoned dead were Messmer’s felled men.

Mohg’s handiwork was apparent in the crimson pustules that infested the corpses. When trod upon, they burst, inflicting the bleeding curse upon the trespasser. A pestilence of carrion flies bit at the Impaler’s army ravenously.

Cyrielle cut a soldier's throat. He fell, and another snarling monster took his place. Though she was a Demigod, she could not shake the bleak sensation that she was battling an ocean’s tide. The people of the Erdtree were slain in droves, and they took far fewer hornsent with them in recompense. But if that bothered Messmer, he did not air his grievances on the field of battle.

The tide ebbed. The Impaler’s army withdrew, exposing the field for the mass grave it had become. Belurat advanced warily. The crusade did not have walls to retreat behind, but that did not mean they were ceding ground thoughtlessly.

Belurat did not wade far into the sea of corpses. Beyond the bloodied expanse, the mass of Messmer’s men rippled. Shifted as it accommodated a bulwark of shields escorting a red-cloaked Fire Knight. This one did not wear a hood. Cyrielle could not make out what visage adorned their mask. Their willowy form she could scarcely glimpse between the bristling black knights that surrounded them. They drifted through the ranks, and the Graceborn curled protectively around them as though they were a queen bee moving through her hive.

Cyrielle plucked a discarded spear from the mud and chucked it towards the queen. The distance was too great- her arm twinged. It fell short, striking the shield of a knight instead. But she had communicated what she’d needed to. A golden Treespear fatally struck the same knight a few seconds later. Margit towered over the hornsent. He pointed a claw and barked his orders. Arrows flew- none found their intended mark.

Cyrielle’s ears popped as a low crackle sizzled on the wind. Mohg was redirecting his blood-starved flies and wraiths. They could penetrate the Impaler’s ranks. But not quickly enough.

The Fire Knight raised their arms, and from behind the wall of shields, spores spilled from their fingertips. As though someone had thrown a heavy log onto a dwindling fire. The spell was cast, and then the mage was drawn away to safety.

The embers seeded themselves into the corpses, and they rose.

The ground writhed with the twitching of limbs. Pierced ribs shuddered to draw breath- their exhales smoky groans. Charred fingers- crushed fingers- clenched and grasped. Questing, perhaps, for the memory of their weapons. Or it was the shivering response of waking- a deathbed stretch- as fire engulfed their bodies. Clothing was burned away. Flesh drooped as it melted, but most of it kept form. Across the plain, the undead rose like dripping wax figures with scaffolds of blackened bones. They clasped their arms across their bare torsos and began to shuffle forward.

Someone wretched behind Cyrielle. Vomit splattered onto the bloodied grass. A manic scream clawed its way skyward. Shearing through shouted commands on its frantic path.

“No!”

A single syllable put on the rack and stretched until it was agonized and broken. Tortured in the bellows of someone’s lungs, then crushed in their throat.

Cyrielle’s spine chilled. The advance of the undead was plodding. The flames beneath their hides made the damp air shimmer. It almost disguised the ranks of spearmen that trudged behind them.

More panicked crying erupted from the back of Belurat’s line. A peristaltic terror lapped at Cyrielle’s nape. A glance over her shoulder confirmed her fears. Dead were rising within the hornsent ranks- both the collected dead of Belurat and the Graceborn abandoned in Messmer’s retreat.

Mirthless horned skulls grinned at their former allies- their former friends. They grabbed for the living, branding them with scalding handprints. A Warrior cut a cadaver’s throat. It merely drooled a slurry of molten flesh before staggering onward.

Cyrielle lunged and kicked at a corpse’s knee. The exposed bone shattered beneath her heel, and the body crumpled. Its brittle fingers dug into the soil, but it found no purchase. It moaned feebly, issuing steam.

“The legs!” Cyrielle screamed. “Break their legs!”

Her voice did not carry far, but the men and women around her took up her message and spread it to those nearest them. If Cyrielle was a prominent figure in her husband’s faith, then this was, surely, her most precious gospel.

“Yes! The legs!” she cried again. The risen dead within the hornsent army were being methodically incapacitated. But they had to account for the hundred or more yet shambling-

An explosion.

A plume of flame and a percussive boom. Bone shards skittered across the grass. Blobs of meat sizzled at Cyrielle’s boot. A group of hornsent clutched at fresh burns, rolling in mud to extinguish themselves. Before them lay the remains of a formerly-hornsent corpse. The enemy had created mines of their own.

A second discharge. A third. The reek of seared flesh was acrid in Cyrielle’s nostrils. A fourth body hugged its arms to itself, keening. A golden force blasted it aside before it could combust. It burst like an overripe fruit against the cliff wall.

“To the passage!” Margit bellowed. He held his tail over the heads of the hornsent. Blood dripped from its horns in viscous globules.

The wounded were carried in the arms of their fellows or upon a taut canvas. The undead moved glacially, but the pillagers stalked behind them- wolves emboldened by the weakness of their prey. Margit stayed close to Cyrielle. He shoved those lagging ahead of him forcefully. If they continued to stumble, he cast a healing incantation to keep them upright. Margit was a diminished form of Morgott, but he seemed a limitless wellspring.

A woman Warrior fell beside Cyrielle. The Elden Lord hauled her to her feet and half-dragged her across the treacherous ground. Her white-blond hair spilled from under her helm. Its ends blackened with soot and pinkened with blood. Embers ate holes in the yellow cloth of her uniform. She had smeared dirt beneath her collar, but Cyrielle could see charred flesh flexing and weeping with every labored breath. Her green eyes were rimmed red. Cyrielle recognized her.

“Shouldn’t have stood so close,” she rasped in apology.

“I have you, Cuta. I have you.”

“Hurts…” she hissed. It sizzled into a wry laugh. “Can’t imagine how Cyprus endured worse.”

Messmerfire was a hungry thing. It ate what it touched. It was eating at Cuta, unmitigated by the cool poultice of wet earth. A molten smear was chewing a hole in her cheek. The flame would feast until properly extinguished.

In the shade of the tunnel, Cyrielle handed Cuta to a sage-turned-surgeon. Then she retraced her steps, pushing upstream the current of hornsent. Margit and Mohg loomed over Belurat’s denizens. They loitered at the tunnel’s mouth, gazing out at the battlefield.

The pillagers were coming. The knights and soldiers had mounted their horses. The trebuchets they had freed from the mud rolled over the corpses not resurrected. With the ranks of undead acting as their shields, they would be upon Belurat soon.

Margit seethed. He bared bloodied teeth. His pupils were pinpricks. He clenched his fist, and a barricade of golden blades erupted from the earth.

“That will only slow them,” Mohg remarked dryly.

“I am well aware,” he snapped. “We must not be trapped between that army and a barred gate.”

“Can you seal this passage?”

“This shade could never manage it.”

“Then tell your body to make haste.”

Cyrielle’s heart was in her throat. In mere minutes she, Margit, and Mohg would be in the reach of Messmer’s archers. Morgott’s gambit had failed, as much as it stung to admit it. The bald fury on her husband's face was for himself. It was in Morgott’s nature to shoulder all blame.

“Mohg,” he rasped. “Fly to the Messmer’s stronghold and seek Moiragh.”

“You think the city will fall,” Mohg accused.

Margit shook his head, but did not argue.

Cyrielle’s arm seemed to weigh as much as steel when she laid it upon Margit’s arm. His tail flicked as he addressed her: “Tarnished. Go to Morgan and Marie-"

She gently interrupted him, “There is something I can do.”

He glared at her incredulously. A wary growl gurgled in Mohg’s throat. The first exploratory volley of arrows from the Impaler’s advance struck sodden earth. Meters from their feet.

“Please. Trust me.”

Still, she felt like she was betraying them. Cyrielle allowed herself a brief moment to mourn.

It must be done.

The affirmation was her weapon against the cloying suffocation of fear. She hacked at its paralyzing vines- the ones that gripped her wrists and neck and begged her to consider inaction instead. Cyrielle touched the stone wall of the passage.

She called forth the thorns.

She wove a wall of brambles with spikes as long as Margit’s horns. She fed herself to them as she bid them grow. The earth quaked as new shoots surged over the ground towards the advancing army of the Erdtree. They shattered Margit’s summoned swords- sable blades uprooted the gold. Thus, Cyrielle fashioned for Belurat a second gate- a barrier of thorns.

The cold grip on her spirit was pried away by the warmth of Margit’s arms when he caught her.

Cyprus

The Omenwife had clogged the mountain passage with thorns, granting Belurat a reprieve from the Impaler’s onslaught.

Cuta paced the hovel commandeered for her recovery. She rolled her shoulder, wincing. But the scabs did not crack and bleed anew. The bandages remained unblemished. A furrowed scar would mar her face forever- her flesh had been devoured to the point her teeth were almost exposed through her cheek. But her spirits were soaring, and Cyprus could not fathom why.

Mohg’s wraiths and blood sorceries. The thorny gate. The butchering of the boar. The desecrated dead become weapons. It was all unbearable.

Cuta hiccupped, then promptly sank to her knees to be sick in the chamber pot.

Sour, Cyprus grumbled, “You accepted the Omen’s healing.”

She wiped her mouth, careful not to disturb the bandages on her face. “Why wouldn’t I? I can handle a spell of nausea.”

“The Erdtree despises us and so does its magic.”

“Forbidden magic or no, you do realize I might have died without it. And are you really going to sit there and pretend you didn’t fancy-“

Cyprus barked. “He lied to us.”

“They could have abandoned us. It would have cost them nothing. All of them with their pretty golden eyes.”

Cuta was a few decades his junior. Her scolding felt like hot pins shoved underneath his fingernails. She’d been born in the interim of a siege- what amounted to peace for Belurat. Her parents were comfortable artisans that scarcely ventured beyond the city walls. Cuta’s gentler upbringing made her ignorant and soft, Cyprus’s pride sneered. He stomped his stave upon the floorboards as though to crush his train of thought. Shame scratched its sickly claws along his vertebrae. He was so eager to have an enemy that he had been tempted to make one of his friend.

“Hmm?” Cuta made a noise of inquiry. Thawed but cool.

“Nothing,” he replied. His fellow Warrior began to gingerly don her armor. The yellow fabric was bloodstained and singed. Soiled undergarments and bandages took priority with the launderers. She leaned to place her greatsword onto the cot beside Cyprus. He demanded, “What are you doing?”

“I am hale enough for a duty. We need able Warriors on the wall. There are a handful guarding the tunnels and catacombs. I will send one up in my stead and take their post.”

“You should rest.”

Cuta only laughed.

Cyprus was kicked out of the little house. He wasn’t being punished, but Cuta wanted her privacy. He supposed she didn’t want him to see how badly putting on the Warrior kit pained her. He remembered what it had been like after he’d been marked with Messmerfire. She would learn the discomfort would follow her til the end of her days.

The buildings occupied by Belurat’s defenders all hugged the walls in the city’s lowest tier. It was later morning, but the combined effort of a thin smattering of clouds and the Veil shrouded the city in gloom. Even the shadow of the wall was a gossamer, transparent thing. Cyprus looked up. The occasional ember floated over the rampart and extinguished itself on the breeze. He raced to ascend to the battlement.

Cyprus paused at the top of the steps, jaw clenched. Breathing hard through his nose. For the last twenty years, a day hadn’t gone by without his body complaining about old wounds. But he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like this. His skin was as paper; the magma within him threatened to spill out. He blamed his exhaustion. After a week of wondering which sunrise would be his last, his flesh was tired of lashing itself to its bones. It wanted to slough off and be done with the farce of living. Cyprus wilted onto the parapet. He closed his eyes, listening to the murmurs and shouts of his city shivering back to wakefulness. He opened them again and realized that the Omenwife was also loitering a few meters away.

Cyprus had watched Morgott carry her into Belurat. His fur had been so stiff it’d lifted the collar of his cloak off of his nape. Her limbs had dangled lifelessly from the cradle of his arms. But peering at her now, nothing seemed amiss. She leaned on her elbows against the parapet, and though the hunch of her shoulders suggested tiredness, she was pristine. He stood to her left, thus her scar was hidden from him. An unseasonably hot breeze stirred her unbraided hair. Strands like golden thread sparkled in the dark brown. A sliver of milky blue iris shone against her sun-warmed complexion. Iron-jawed, she seemed a hardy thing.

She didn’t acknowledge him, but she had to have known he was there. So Cyprus spoke first.

“You are well enough to man the battlements?”

“I was not injured, only… spent.”

She was miserable. She stared at the thorn gate. Cyprus followed her gaze. He was too numb to do much more than blink back the sting of frustration. He understood at once why Belurat was stirring. Smoke seeped from the brambles’ narrow gaps. The inner layers glowed like coals. The Impaler was burning his way through.

Cyprus straightened. Belurat’s alarm rose with its gorge. Perhaps they had hours to prepare. Bells began to clangor atop the city spires.

“Godrick was the weakest of his lineage. Radahn was hollowed out by Scarlet Rot. And Rykard was a parasite attached to a snake's belly.” Cyrielle’s voice was not scornful, but melancholic. Maybe one of those names was vaguely familiar to Cyprus. “…I was invulnerable then. I had nothing to lose.”

Archers were sprinting onto the battlements. Cyprus was aware that he should have gone to make himself useful, but he was rooted by the Omenwife’s surreal half-muttered speech.

“I believed I was doing right by people when I was a Hunter of the Dead. Then I began to hunt the Demigods and thought the same. Then Morgott made me Lord. Gave me Grace.”

“Gave you Grace?” Cyprus echoed. But his bewildered whisper was ignored.

“Admittedly, he had to teach me much. I don’t think he would have suffered such ignorance from anyone else.” The ghost of a wan smile brushed her lips.

“What are you talking about?”

Cyrielle shrugged. A dry cough of embers burst from the thorn gate. “Harm. What harm have I brought. What harm have I mended.”

“Sentimental trite.”

She actually laughed, “Morgott would agree with you.”

Cyprus cleared his throat. “Could you seal the tunnel again?” If nothing else, it would stall the Impaler for a couple more days.

Cyrielle’s sad smile betrayed the faintest lines of age on her face. “I am bound to my Lord’s wishes. The cost of that spell is too great. Morgott is very unwilling to pay it.” She turned away, giving Cyprus her shoulder as she watched her black barrier crumble.

———————

The Impaler had not been idle. His forces were bolstered by new arrivals that had crossed the plain behind him. The trebuchets were extricated from the debris and muck and wheeled to the tunnel’s mouth. Belurat’s archers and callers could slow the accursed Demigod’s march. But this was the beginning of the end. Bolts of Messmerfire lunged at the men and women on the wall. Slithered over their heads, searching for anything to envenom with flame.

Cyprus, bleary eyed, called forth a gale to bat away a ball of fire. He may as well have commanded a kitten to halt a hippopotamus. His spirit-borne storm merely mitigated the splash as the rupturing projectile smashed into the battlement. He was thrown on his back by the impact. Stunned, he could only listen to the screams of his fellows that he had failed to save.

The gray sky became a backdrop for stars streaking crimson. The Veil obscured the heavens, but that had never stopped them from heeding the hornsent before. The Grandam had taught him the proper prayer. The vitriol necessary. The spit of rage. The furious dance.

But with the feeblest breath in his paralyzed lungs he muttered, “There must be someone in heaven strong enough to kill him.” People rushed past him to aid the injured and burned- those worse off than him. “No frosts. No piddling drizzles. Grant me a true storm and have me for a meal. Better you, O’ Beast.”

Cruelty, woe, and those who plague the tower. Cleanse away the strumpet's vile progeny.

“Better you.”

———————

Cyprus’s bones were heavy. Creaky and stiff as though he’d slept on the shuddering battlement all day. But he did not feel the aching. His limbs moved of their own accord. He gnashed his teeth without conscious thought. His eyes opened. He was nowhere near the wall.

Belurat’s theater was immense and flat. But the open space was filling with performers. Cyprus was just one mote in a mounting flood. They had each come to offer their lithe and graceful bodies to the Beast. Alas, their practiced footwork had not drawn it to its aged vessels.

A handful of yellow-robed elders knelt before him. Tiny and awed. The Grandam’s wrinkled face gazed sightlessly skyward.

“O’ Horn bedeck’d Beast!”

Ice cooled Cyprus’s heels. Lightning crackled between his fangs. Winds combed his wild hair. But none of it was his.

I cannot dance. He fretted. Robbed of his voice.

But it was not his arms hoisting the Lion. Not his legs bearing its body. He tore over Belurat’s rooftops, carried close by the spirit of the Divine Beast. Trapped within its maw. He was there to feed it, not lead it through its paces. He was swallowed down.

A squall pushed the vessels’ bulk over the wall. The scorch marks and acrid reek of smoke welcomed a frenzy in their limbs. Storms were born, fed, and laid to rest with an ancient energy endemic in the land. But now the cycle of life and death was governed by a greedy flame. Cyprus knew the taste of ash- it was nourishing for the rage-ravaged heart. The Lion would feast, or they would die. Like all of their kin before it.

They landed upon the stairs. The steps cracked beneath their weight. Stony hands and a phantom sensation pried apart their jaws. The Divine Beast’s roar birthed a tempest. Gusts thrashed over the scorched earth. Flame snuffed in the palms of its bearers. A cloud of ash swirled over the gorge, tossing flailing men with it. The detritus of Belurat drifted heavenward. The wretched progeny plummeted into the rocky depths.

Those that were not swept aside were urged to find their footing. Those who did not dance were prey. Ribs collapsed under heel. Lightning sizzled from the wet ground. The impalers were speared through with hot lances. Helms were crushed in the Lion’s mouth.

Fire licked up their haunches. Embers sparked on the fangs of progeny blades. The Lion bucked and charged, buoyed on a ferocious cyclone. Frost spiked in their fur, and the fires upon their flanks dwindled to cinders. They alighted beside a machine of war. The trebuchet that had struck the Caller upon the wall. The black ants fled as the Beast raised its paw. The wintry storm surged forth with their stomp.

The damp infiltrated the wood. It shivered with the Dance’s rhythm until it could not help but adopt the forms. Ice pierced the structure from the inside out. It was splintered and warped. And even if the skeleton of the construct was not destroyed, it became anchored to the earth, unmoving.

The Lion whirled with a roar. Upright on their hind limbs. A red bolt struck- embedded itself just beneath the Lion’s chin. The long haft of a spear tickled their cheek. Their insides smoldered as they dropped in a heap.

“The last Beast of Belurat,” the Impaler drawled. A soft-spoken monstrosity. He stalked forward, and his forces parted for him. “One more hornsent horror ended.”

The Lion snapped. The Impaler's stride did not falter. He was the predator of heaven-bound spirits. He was not afraid. He beckoned to his spear. It tore itself from the Divine Beast to return to his hand.

A chime heralded a golden glow- a seal was painted upon the broken road. A vile power sprouted from the churned and ravaged earth. From the spiraled depiction of roots, an abomination rose. A branch of questing fingers grabbed a handful of the Impaler’s hair. The gilt cloak of incantation was shed, revealing an immense gray creature. Teeth bared and beastly. Horned but tainted. The creature growled and thrust a thorn of light into the Impaler’s side.

“I have thee at last,” the apparition snarled. Crimson oozed down the handle of his Grace-golden blade. Across his knuckles. His auric iris blazed like a flame all its own. He was another of the strumpet’s hateful offspring- blessed and therefore condemned.

The Impaler gaped. The Lion reared back.

Wait…

The Warrior’s voice was too weak to be heard over the maelstrom. The horned progeny made for a bitter mouthful. His tail clubbed them across the nose, gouging it. In recompense- Don’t!- the Divine Beast severed his spine with a frigid bite. The man barked as he went limp. The panting Impaler was showered with gilded wisps as his kin dissolved.

Agony stole through them. Radiating from the wound the Impaler had carved and-

-And Cyprus looked through the Lion’s hazy eyes. He was cleaved apart from the melding for his horror. Killing Morgott’s shade had jarred him from the Beasts’ grasp. He was being peeled from its bones.

The Impaler was long gone. He had thrown up a barrier of flaming stakes. The smoke obscured him. His little men jabbed at the Lion’s flank with their sticks. Cyprus did not feel the injuries so acutely.

Go back. Cyprus begged. Do not die here for me.

Before Cyprus was torn away, he saw a carrion bird circling over the gorge in bloodstained, violet robes.

Marie

Morgan kept picking at his skin. Rubbing at his chest and grimacing. It was grating on Marie’s nerves. The subterranean tunnels masquerading as a keep were cramped. Her brother’s panting was thinning out the breathable air. His squirming was intrusive. She could not push him away. She could not comfort him. He would die if she did. She would kill him.

Her predicament was her own fault. She had brought the siege that had forced her into the labyrinthine catacombs. She had failed to keep Morgan safe at the festival, forcing Da to put a ward into his body. Because she had proven herself untrustworthy, she was consigned to cowering with the nursing bairns and their infirm grandparents. She wanted to make amends, but her hands were tied so that she could not misuse them.

“The First Siege of Leyndell lasted seven years,” Morgan muttered in a low, miserable whisper.

Marie sighed, “And it has been seven days at most. Do not be dramatic.”

She had been barred from the battle, but she was not kept in the dark. Da had not shielded her from reality- and for that she was grateful. She and Morgan waited underground because the Impaler’s machines could lob all-consuming fire over the city walls. If he had brought another furnace with him, it could breach the gate entirely. And if the Impaler could not raze the city, he would starve it. Belurat, Da had murmured, would deplete its stores in less than one year, let alone seven.

Morgan responded with an indecipherable grunt. He itched at his sternum; the skin around his neck reddened.

“Is it hurting you?” She dreaded his answer.

“I feel… heavy.”

“You will not have to wear it forever,” Marie said, echoing Da.

He scoffed, then looked askance. “Join me, Anchor, and be unmoored no more in my coming Age.”

“What?”

“There was supposed to be a cure.” He balled his hands into his lap. “Before Magpie brought us here, I dreamed about it. I was… promised.”

Marie’s sisterly instinct was to tease him for putting stock into nonsensical dreams. But she could not. Their circumstances were strange enough. If nightmares could carry the rancor of wraiths, then maybe they made a fine vessel for prophecies too.

Morgan continued, “I don’t get sick here. I like this place.”

Marie glanced around skeptically. The claustrophobic chamber was filled to bursting with weeping, cursing, and the occasional phlegmy bout of coughing. This place with its flaming monstrosities and unthinkable plagues was hardly a paradise. It was like Caelid, in a sense. The air was cloying in her lungs. As though it yearned to make a nest in her.

“You have forgotten the furnace already.”

“No, Marie. I haven’t,” he bit back. “You have forgotten what it was like for me back home. I haven’t seen so many trees- o-or people!- in years! I wish Da…” he trailed off, huffing.

“If anything ever happened to you, Da would never forgive himself.” It was the simple truth, but the words felt insubstantial. Morgan’s isolation- the strict rules governing every moment of his life- was enforced for his protection. Marie supposed she’d never given much thought to how horrifically stifling it must be.

“If I am meant to die… I want to be allowed to live before I do.”

Marie’s face was warm. Since the curse's emergence, she had seen Morgan’s soulless corpse twice. She scarcely dreamed of wraiths anymore, but her nightmares did not want for material. “Don’t be childish!”

She regretted her outburst immediately, but Morgan merely shrugged.

He asked softly, “Do you know anything about Uncle Miquella?”

Marie blinked at the sudden shift in topic. “No.”

Da and Papa didn't talk about their aunts and uncles much.

“Maybe I will ask Sir Ansbach when he visits.”

Sir Ansbach was Marie’s clock. He came by about once a day. That was how she was certain no more than a week had passed. Once, in a moment of frustration, she had accused him of minding them on her Lord Father’s behalf.

His light response remained lodged in her ribs like a spear: Would that be so terrible, my Lady?

In the end, Marie supposed her feelings did not matter. Morgan was fond of the old man, and his days were brightened by having another person around. Sir Ansbach was, really, remarkably kind. Marie could not fathom why Papa cared little for him.

Morgan winced as he scratched himself some more.

Marie stood, “Come on. Take a walk with me. Perhaps Sir Ansbach will be expecting us by the time we are finished.”

It appeared her brother might refuse. But she was already on her feet. She was the eldest, so she decided where they went. Even though Marie could not physically make Morgan do anything, decades of sibling conditioning was difficult to break. He followed her.

Belurat’s hold was crowded- especially for a woman as huge as Marie. But it was not so clogged with humanity she and Morgan couldn’t traverse it. In truth, most of Belurat remained on the surface. People did not see the point of languishing in a cave when the siege could drag on for months. Frankly, Marie agreed with the sentiment. But she would obey her Lord Father- it was the one way she could apologize to him. For everything.

The improvised keep was supplied and sparsely furnished. But it was, ultimately, a man-made cave system beneath the city. A handful of tunnels burrowed into the dark; they would sequester the hornsent deeper into the earth if need be. It seemed a bleak prospect to Marie. If they weren’t safe here, what would fleeing into the depths solve? Each branch’s mouth was guarded by a sentinel Warrior or two.

“Off to stretch your legs again?” Cuta greeted them amiably as they approached. Her right shoulder was bandaged, as was her cheek. She’d been wounded a few days before. Da and Belurat healers had tended to her, but the burn of Messmerfire lingered.

“We are,” Morgan replied.

Cuta nodded and stepped to the side. “Shout if anything is amiss, Lordlings.”

Cuta was the only person that called them ‘Lordlings’ with any affection. The name was usually sneered at their backs by cowards. Cuta was generous to accommodate them. Most other hornsent were not permitted to wander the catacombs; it was a woefully easy way to lose someone. But, Cuta had impressed upon the Demigods one rule: they were not to stray beyond the last lit torch. That way, if trouble were to befall either sibling, she would be able to hear their cries.

Morgan liked the privacy of the tunnel. It was far cooler than in the populated caverns. He paced with Marie, occasionally stopping to press his palms or back against the cold stone. He hummed to himself as he watched pale spiders weave webs in crevices.

Marie remembered when Cynric and Gwyn were young and she had been made to mind them. She had been a sister all her life and had not resented the arrival of her brothers. She could toss them from the bed or into a stream, and they’d squeal in delight. She had picked for them the sweetest fruits from Da’s trees for their worship. They had wrestled like all Omen bairns did. But she remembered, too, Morgan’s birth. Even before his curse manifested, Da and Mum had cautioned her: Thy baby brother is not as vigorous as thee. He was feebler because he was not Crucible-blessed. But that had been alright, too. Moiragh had also dealt with fragile beginnings. Marie had been well-practiced in restraint.

“Marie! Look!”

Morgan held the spider, now. Its spindly legs nearly spanned the width of his hand. Its abdomen was flat and broad. Better to slip into cracks in the rock.

“Be careful!” she scolded. “You have no idea if it's venomous!”

But they both marveled at the creature regardless. Marie craned her neck warily more than a meter away- there was no telling how far it might leap if it felt threatened. Morgan pointed out the spiraled markings on its rump.

“I- Oh,” Morgan gasped suddenly, grimacing. He shook the spider off of his hand and hugged himself.

“Are you bitten?”

“No, I… The ward.”

Marie’s ear twitched. The tunnel throbbed with a low sound- a buzzing. She turned to face the noise as it rapidly mounted into a roar- and a monster collided with her. To her mortification, she yelped. Gossamer wings battered her face. Claws plucked at her clothes. She shoved the creature off of her and flung herself against the wall. Her attacker squirmed on the ground. Its gaunt face gaped beneath a mask of deteriorating bandages. But it was not human. It croaked, then scurried away in the direction Marie and Morgan had come from.

Marie quelled her panicked breath, but her racing heart was not so easily soothed. Morgan stared with moonish eyes as a second creature crawled over his head along the tunnel’s ceiling. Its body was as long as Morgan was tall. A third appeared, hissing as it flitted past on the wing.

“Stay calm,” she warbled unconvincingly. “They are man-flies. Let them pass, and they will not harm us.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she lied.

Five in total darted by- a cacophony of clicking limbs too-human teeth. Indeed, they had ignored Marie and her brother. But their urgency and incuriosity concerned her.

They were frightened. Flushed.

She whispered, “We should go back.”

But Morgan was peering into the tunnel’s depths. The distant torchlight was taking on a reddish hue. A shadow writhed on the far wall.

“Disgusting bugs,” a stranger muttered.

“Morgan-”

The stranger rounded the corner, holding aloft a crimson torch. She wore black armor, and her right arm gripped the handle of her sheathed blade.

“-get behind me!”

There was nowhere to hide. The Impaler’s soldier spotted Marie’s silvery bulk amidst the darker rock. In an instant, the woman drew her sword and charged at her.

“To me!” the soldier bellowed.

Thankfully, Marie’s body recalled the rigor of Lord Morgott’s tutelage while her mind reeled impotently. The soldier led with her torch, using the brutal Messmerfire as a shield. Alas, Marie was simply larger and stronger. She slapped the soldier’s arm aside and then ran her through with a conjured sword.

The woman’s heart throbbed around the blade of light. The gold in her eyes glittered in the hollow pits of her irises. Her lips- red as blood- worried with her jaw. And still Marie flinched as the soldier spat into her face.

The soldier died grinning- a horrible croak of a laugh lodged in her throat. Marie licked her dry lips only to taste the foul, viscous insult. Her stomach heaved as the body crumpled into a heap.

“Morgan.”

“Marie?”

“Find Cuta. Go to her now. Tell her-"

“I know.”

Marie didn’t turn, but she heard Morgan’s feet pounding against the earthen floor. The puff of his panting tapering the further he fled.

Ahead, ruddy flames licked at the stone. Booted footsteps echoed in the narrow passage. Marie hefted the bloodied sword of light and bared her teeth.

Chapter Text

It was snowing in oblivion.

Blue chilled his extremities. Slowly tugged on his digits as if to drag him out of the delicate calm he’d curated. He’d bribed the abyss to keep quiet with a vial of gritty, oily fluid so deep it only bore a violet sheen at its surface. Frost touched his nose. Dusted his eyelashes. Until he remembered that he did not have any eyelids- lashed or otherwise- to speak of. Until he remembered he was Aster the Carian.

Ice burrowed beneath his skin. It swelled between his numbed joints until every twitch was painful. He was pulled along on a pitiless tether, skimming across the surface of sable sleep. A smattering of stars winked overhead. Aster was seared in moonlight.

“Ranni?” The name eked past his frigid lips as an embarrassing nonsense glissando. Shapeless and lacking musicality. “It’s cold.”

A fleshy mit captured his limp hand. Too coarse and corporeal to be his estranged wife’s. The meager night sky dissolved into the dull black of blindness. The sluggish tar of existence gripped at his arms and legs. For a moment it seemed as though he would lose consciousness again. But he was so aware of the hand holding his own that he unfortunately roused to full wakefulness.

The visceral blood-red aura of the Formless Mother circulated in the body of Aster’s visitor. Culminating in a throbbing knot of crimson where his heart should be. Sir Ansbach was infested with the Outer God’s influence. Except for his eyes. Those were impossibly golden coals. Something else had sunk its teeth into the former Pureblood Knight. It made Ansbach look like a tangle of capillaries with two blazing stars guiding its movement.

“Awake already,” the old man sighed conversationally.

Aster groaned, “Already?”

“This dose only lasted three days. The draught effects are waning. Perhaps the fault lies with me. I do not have Thiollier’s peerless talent.”

“Increase the dose,” Aster groused. He was sweating in his clothes despite the chill in his limbs. He did not want to think about whether Thiollier was a name he should recognize. What he did know was that the sleeping tonic was meant to sedate him for weeks, and he had woken early three times already.

“I dare not risk it. I could very well kill you with purple lilies.”

“Maybe that’s for the best.”

Aster shocked himself with the sincerity of the suggestion. Ansbach squeezed his fingers.

“I am afraid you will simply have to endure.” He rose from his seat, the faint red-and-gold outline of him smeared as he did. He relinquished Aster’s hand. “You have been dormant for more than a week in all. Hunger is going to deal you quite a fearsome blow. I will see if I can fetch you something to eat. Ah, and I will search for another blanket. Though I would ask that you temper your expectations. Those are in short supply.”

“A blanket?”

“You were complaining of the cold.”

“It…. was just a dream.”

“Regardless.”

Sir Ansbach’s easy kindness was devastating. Aster had resented Cyrielle’s disdain, but this was no better. Ansbach hummed tunelessly as he moved about the room- stepping around invisible obstacles and rummaging. Aster was tempted to open his mouth and confess that he’d razed the Erdtree. He wanted to repay the Knight’s assistance with the cruel truth. Anything to rattle him.

Instead, Aster asked, “More than a week and you’re still here playing at nurse? There has to be a more glamorous post for a Pureblood Knight.”

“I am an old man. My days of glory are long behind me.”

“But you can defend a hospital?”

Ansbach chuckled, “The hope is that it shall not come to that.”

The knight returned from his shuffling to make sure Aster’s bandages had not been saturated with hot, yellow pus.

“So the siege isn’t over,” Aster deduced. Because a near-stranger’s hands were brushing his face like moths’ wings, and he could not bear the proximity in stillness. Sir Ansbach’s Mohgwyn stain made him too similar to Varré. If the aged man spoke, then Aster’s addled memory would not be able to fool itself.

“No. Information from the gates is sparse. But I find the quiet encouraging.”

Aster listened beyond the hospital and into the surrounding streets. The silence was stuffy. Humid, as though the atmosphere was bracing for a deluge. Moisture was seeping into the paper walls and crumpling them. Ashen slurry spewed across the cobbles. Clogging the drains. Sir Ansbach’s hope seemed woefully misplaced. Aster tasted smoke on the breeze.

Belurat’s despair was tangible. Aster could card his fingers through it. It was sprouting through the ravaged foundations, breaking them further. It was leering through the windows and loitering in shaded thresholds.

Chunky rocks slid down a rubble pile. The corners of the massive shrouds laid over the most derelict of buildings billowed in the wind. Someone bolted down the street, sandals scuffing in the ever-present grit of an eroding city.

Then another. And another. A trickling leak in a dam.

Ansbach tsked. “There is more discharge. Are you in pain?”

“I- no.”

A passerby knocked on the hospital entrance from outside. The door opened with a creak. Aster could not hear the exchange that was surely happening a room away. There was pressure in his ears, making them ring.

A sound of uncertainty kissed Aster’s forehead as Ansbach began to gingerly dab at the cracking skin around his eye sockets. “I need you to stay present.”

“Something’s wrong.”

“What is wrong?”

“It’s out there.”

Footsteps. The rustle of a curtain being brushed aside. Sir Ansbach had left the room. Aster pushed himself up on his elbows and swallowed down bile. He was hungry. So hungry he was nauseous. A hushed conversation buzzed in another room.

He breathed through his mouth- heaved raspily until his throat dried out. All the empty spaces in his skull felt fit to burst. He was a single nasal aspiration away from blasting his head into bloody shrapnel. Yet he strained to hear his surroundings. Urgency crescendoed into an ambient drone beneath the intermittent groans and coughs of his fellow patients: the haste of many feet stomping about and the thumping of heavy sacks and crates being dropped or dragged across the floor. An occasional word wafted through the walls as an indecipherable garble.

The murmur of a far-off scream tickled the nape of Aster’s neck.

Ansbach’s swift gait marched into the room again an unbearable eternity later. He coalesced once more as a maroon wisp in the abyss.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, winded.

“Yes.”

A shallow bowl was set into Aster’s lap. Whatever it contained was lukewarm and smelled of nothing. He groped for the spoon and shoveled bland mash into his mouth. He winced. Not because it wasn’t salted fish or mussels in broth or the sweet, dense tubers that grew in Liurnian swamps, but because the hornsent Inquisitors had fed him and Cyrielle something similar when they had been captured.

“I apologize,” Ansbach said without judgement. “It was all they had at hand. Now, I must ask you to eat quickly. I need you well enough to stand.”

“Don’t mince words. You’re obviously spooked.”

The dim, ruddy mass of the knight leaned close. Until Aster could feel his breath on his ear. Ansbach whispered, “The city is breached.”

Aster choked down a lump without chewing. “How?”

Wasn’t God literally shielding the bloody gates with his malformed bulk? Was Mohg not there beside him, carving scars into anyone he could get his claws on? Wasn’t Cyrielle there also, brandishing her sanctimoniousness?

Ansbach replied, “The gate is secure. However, man-flies are swarming in the moat. They’ve been disturbed-”

Another shriek, louder, scratched against the hospital walls. Ansbach stalled, his voice snagged in his throat. The other patients were beginning to stir. Another, softer cry tread upon the heels of the first. Danger was crawling upstream.

“-The sewers,” Ansbach concluded. “I suspect they are navigating the sewers.”

Memory was unkind to Aster for a moment. A pristine parcel of the past reminded him of just how exploitable sewers could be for a man seeking the ruination of civilization. Appetite lost, he rubbed the back of his hand across his chapped lips.

Ansbach continued, “It is a desperate maneuver with little chance of success. But they have caught us off balance. Belurat will face losses. Messmerfire is not easily extinguished.”

“You’re rambling.”

“The hospital will likely evacuate.”

“What is the point? There is nowhere safer than here.”

Ansbach’s golden embers-for-eyes flicked as he glanced around the room. Probably cataloguing what should be brought and what could be abandoned. “There may be refuge in the upper city, but the climb will be too arduous for most of us.” He nodded to, presumably, another bedridden patient. “I say we go towards the gate. That is where the defenses are. That is where the medicines and bandages will be of greatest use.”

The former Pureblood meandered away, leaving Aster to his meal. He ate mechanically as the street outside became audibly crowded. The knight returned, dropping a pack in Aster’s lap. Urgency clipped his tone, but he was never unkind.

“I need you to stand.”

Aster stood.

“Can you bear this?”

Aster shouldered the pack.

“Excellent.”

The hospital’s physicians- as well as volunteers beckoned in from the street- supported the less mobile patients. The discordance between the panic outside and the careful, slow steps of the ill and injured being half-carried away drove Aster mad. He had been glib about the lily poison’s risk. But he wasn’t keen to wait around for a sword in the back.

After a literal Age, it was Ansbach’s and Aster’s turn to leave. They would be the last, since Mohg’s ever-mindful bloodletter had seen everyone else off. Still, some of the hornsent were simply too sick to move. Two carers bid Ansbach goodbye stoically. Aster could hear their hands fiddling with blades as Ansbach directed him into the crush of the exodus.

“Put your hand on my shoulder. I want to feel your grip. I doubt I will know if I have lost you if you grab only cloth,” Ansbach ordered.

Aster’s hand ached as he dug his fingers into Sir Ansbach’s muscled shoulder; the chill from his dream was seeded into his sore joints. For a man so intent on insisting upon his infirmity, Ansbach was sturdy beneath his robes. Immediately, Aster struggled to keep up with Ansbach’s brisk stride.

The pack on Aster’s shoulders was not difficult to bear; it was his body that was leaden and sluggish. He suspected the lilies’ effects lingered even in wakefulness. But he felt that the fever settling into his bones was the work of the Flame. The blisters and scabs that pocked his travel-weary feet split upon the rough terrain. He limped laboriously, forcing Ansbach to match his pace. Until they were a veritable pair of stones in the current of hornsent streaming around them.

The peoples’ footsteps were thunder. The air was smoke-scented.

“Aster-” Ansbach had to shout over the din.

Claws clutched at Aster’s shoulder. They bit with enough strength to draw blood. He was nearly pried away from Ansbach as a quavering, harrowed voice cried in his ear: “Where is my boy? Have you seen him?”

The woman must have noticed, then, the bandages around his eyes. She shoved him away, sobbing in disgust, and was gone. Aster giggled at her mistake.

“Aster?” Ansbach tried again. “Do you need to rest?”

“I don’t think we can afford to.”

“No,” he agreed. “But I cannot carry you, either.”

“Spirits. Take us before we burn.”

“Hold onto me! Stay close!”

Snatches of speech floated to the surface of the noisy mire. It was a battle itself to focus on the conversation at hand.

Aster replied, “Can your blood magic fix my damned feet?”

“It is the will of the Mother of Truth to grant wounds, not mend them. I am sorry.”

“How did it come to this? We are forsaken!”

“They are coming!”

“To the gate, Sweeting. Look ahead.”

Aster scoffed, “You’ve never met Moiragh, then.”

Ansbach stumbled. He jerked and pitched and Aster was almost brought to his knees. All the old knight had to say for himself was: “You know Lord Mohg’s child?”

Aster’s answer was lost in an upswell of screaming.

“They are coming!”

“They are coming!”

“They are here!” Ansbach’s voice erupted a ragged shout. He yanked Aster close with surprising strength as fire arced over their heads.

Aster could see them. Brilliant red comets with sinuous, serpentine tails. Their cores were writhing, abyssal black shelled with famished flame. Face tilted skyward, he felt the caress of heat even though the comets were level with the rooftops. They struck the buildings- plummeted earthward. Explosive flashes outlined the city. Aster could make out the shapes of spires, the slopes of domed roofs, and the corridor of the road ahead. The world was revealed to him in shades of searing crimson.

The street was an inferno. Tongues of fire sluiced across afflicted roofs, nourished by the shrouds. Anything not made from stone was rapidly devoured until it buckled. The torrent of humanity became a hideous churn. Those pursued by the enemy were herded downward while those attempting to escape the spreading flames were pressed back the way they’d come.

“We’re trapped!” Aster bellowed into Ansbach’s ear to be heard over the chaos.

In lieu of an answer, Ansbach’s hand clasped onto Aster’s in acknowledgement. Then he brought him closer to the blazing facades.

“Here!” Ansbach called out. He waved with his artery arms. “Quickly! There is a gap here! Slip through to the other side and flee!”

Aster did not see who Ansbach addressed, but he felt them acutely. They pushed him aside. They funneled into whatever alley Ansbach had spotted. Prayers, coughs, sobs, and muttered thanks passed through the channel- their speakers invisible to Aster.

“Halt!” A guttural growl trampled the pleas of Belurat. A pulse of peristaltic screams answered as Messmer’s soldiers advanced.

“Alright Aster,” Ansbach hissed, resolute. “Go on. The alley is just ahead.”

“But-”

He was shaken off. Ansbach hefted something- his weapon, probably- with both hands. Aster turned away.

It was hot and cramped between the buildings. The fire was eating the timbers, creeping nearer. Aster braced his arms against the walls for support and guidance as he shuffled forth. Blisters rose upon his fingers, but he was accustomed to the sensation of burning. He paused in the alley as the song of steel striking steel concluded with an agonized bark and a hideously visceral squelch. Someone clumsily approached; Aster could not outrun them, so he did not try.

“Why did you stop?” Ansbach roared with uncharacteristic fury.

“The soldiers-”

“Are dead! Go!”

“You killed them? On your own?”

“Yes, Pureblood. It is astonishing what one can accomplish when survival is at stake.” Ansbach’s retort was acerbic and exhilarated in tandem.

His hand was suddenly at Aster’s back. It was startlingly warm with the afterglow of bloodflame as he nudged Aster forward none-too-gently. The sorcerer whirled to tell him off but choked. The dark moon was being hoisted into the empty sky behind them. Round, blue, beautiful.

Impossibly close.

“Ansbach,” Aster murmured. He crumpled in the rubble. “Ansbach. Since when have there been two moons?”

“Mother be merciful!”

Ansbach’s haggard plea heralded the end of the world. The celestial pair crashed into the earth, and the ground was rent with magic. Aster was thrown from the alley. He was deafened. His vision became an incomprehensible swirl of red and cerulean on a pitiless canvas of black. His back struck solid ground, and he had the animal sense to curl in on himself as bricks and other detritus rained upon him. Flaming debris battered his flesh- his back, hips, and head. He was a broken vessel leaking the ichor of Frenzy and Truth. Tears soaked his bandages and oozed onto his lips. They tasted acrid.

He was lost in night’s tapestry. The stars were falling- as vermillion cinders and wispy azure sparks. They silhouetted the seething masses. Highlighted the horns that crowned their heads and the occasional bestial feature. In the strobing corona, Aster watched the tip of a spear burst out of a figure’s chest. An axe chopped at raised, beseeching arms until the blade found more substantial flesh to cleave. A flaming corpse-to-be threw itself upon the stone and flailed. Small hands pulled on a shapeless heap laying in the road, wailing.

Aster rolled onto his back. The pain of effort was anchoring. He could not block out the screaming- nor the scent of charred meat and blood- but at least from this angle, all he had to look at was the occasional missile sailing overhead. And the moon.

Life had come to this world many, many Ages ago. Millions of years, it was speculated within the halls of Raya Lucaria. From the first fall of stardust to the creation of the human shape. This was all it had amounted to. Save us, Tarnished! the call of Grace had pleaded. So that God might cast off its soiled breeches and resume the slaughter vicariously through them. Aster knew that he was some warlord’s consolation prize. His father had taken a maiden from his conquered stock and together they had doomed their son to this pointless existence.

It was never going to stop, was it?

The massacre was stalled by the clashing of steel. It seemed Warriors and magicians from elsewhere in the city were converging on the compromised streets. Now the death curses of the Graceborn joined those of the hornsent.

It was just… too little too late.

Wasn’t it?

The moon gave Aster a knowing look. He folded his hands over his chest and ignored how difficult it had become to breathe. Ranni had marveled at the spots that marred its surface. Even something as large and magnificent and unknowable as the Moon bore scars from battles more ancient than the cradle of the Lands Between. It was probably no more peaceful on the Lunar Princess’s dark voyage than it was down here, Aster reckoned.

He shifted to his knees. Then his feet. He could feel muscles twinging around bone shards. He could feel his sinews twisting further as they were forced to support him. Caustic tears like drool stained his tunic’s front. The air reeked with wretched familiarity: fire and magic singing in wrought metal.

This is a relic of my house, Tarnished. Do not be careless with it.

You just pulled it out of a musty chest, Ranni. How special could it be?

The Sword of Night and Flame followed mine ancestors from the Mountaintops to the Lakes. We had been friends to fire, then. Before the Order purged our stalwart companions, the Giants, and bid us forget our alliance with flame. This secret of history is thine, my Champion. Thou wilt inherit more with me

Then, inexplicably, she was there. Not Ranni, but her willowy mother- illuminated by crimson fire and Carian magic’s blue.

“Get thee hence!” Rennala barked. “Lest I cut thee down in kind-”

Aster spilled forth. For a blissful second, his mind was disgorged. His throat burned, his eyes. But it was forgotten in the wake of his subsequent euphoria. The pain in his shattered body was banished. He was blind and deaf and with arms outstretched, he was sheltered in a lashing halo of Flame.

Rennala’s helm-clad head snapped backwards. She and Aster fell in tandem. As though they were gracefully dancing, and another pair of performers would swoop in from the wings and catch them. No one did. Aster’s skull and Rennala’s helm struck the street with weighty thwacks.

“Rellana!”

Rennala.

Aster pressed the heels of his hands into his sockets. Discharge singed his palms. His head was a hollow shell- an egg incubating a monster that had been feeding on the yolk of his mind

Yet through the daze- through his hands- he saw the icy stars twinkle. They were no longer a majestic constellation but a jumble of distant, frigid points. Cerulean motes drifted erratically as the woman’s body was moved.

“Retreat! Safeguard the Twin Moon!”

Aster remembered his wedding day. The darkness. The ring. The blood.

He laughed.

Hands yanked at his limbs, his clothes, his hair. He was dragged, his skin rubbing raw against the ruined road. A boot to his stomach silenced him. The kick to his head was less elegant than Ansbach’s poultice, but it brought a dead sleep all the same.

Chapter Text

Morgott stretched. His spine popped, and he winced at the phantom memory of its breaking.

The shade of Margit was far weaker than his corporeal form. The jaws of the Divine Beast would have taken no joy in chewing Godflesh- Morgott would have seen its teeth shattered. Nonetheless, fantasizing about what might have been was paltry consolation for what had actually occurred. Margit had underestimated the indiscriminate rancor of the Lion. After killing him, it had inexplicably scrambled back up Belurat’s wall and collapsed into a moldering heap in the nearest street. Somehow sated by the demise of one of Marika’s sons.

It rankled that the so-called Divine Beast was hardly more than a spiritually possessed puppet. Morgott circled its inert body now. He regarded it with no shortage of scorn. It was a shaggy costume- a lumpy cloak of sun-bleached red fringed with frayed, flaxen tassels. The lion’s head was crowned by a steel crest. The gold inlay invoked the entwined branches of the Erdtree. The engraved plates of its armor, bound together by steel rings, ceased to chime with its bestial movement. Though the dreadful glow in its sunken eyes had been snuffed, the hornsent did not mourn. They knelt before their deity and gave it thanks. Morgott’s lip curled. If it were not for the Beast’s interference, Messmer would be dead.

Before his ascension, Morgott had needed hours- or days- to recover from a death in his incanted vessel. The use of the shade protected his true body from harm, but to the soul, the distinction mattered little. It had to settle back into its proper place. As God, though, Morgott required only minutes to awaken. He had roused from his stupor in one of Belurat’s spires to witness Mohg descending upon the limp Beast. He’d mantled over it, plucking at its fabric hide and steel bones like a despondent vulture.

He’d flown off, however, by the time Morgott had gone to the street to confront him. There was no reason he could not have pursued the Impaler in Morgott’s stead.

His sour appraisal of his executioner concluded, Morgott turned to other matters. There was much for God to do.

He had forbidden Cyrielle from fighting. She was avoiding him, compelled by her shame. Mohg was ever sullen and distracted. Morgott had last spoken to Sir Ansbach outside a hospital that the pillagers had reduced to rubble. Morgott’s family and allies were scattered. He was surrounded instead by the cloying demands of strangers. They were stingy with their prayers, but not their expectations.

Despite Messmer’s failed assault on the gate, he had managed to burrow into Belurat for a brief, frightful moment. It was said that the effort had been quickly abandoned after a commander’s defeat. Each report of the event was more spectacular and unlikely than the last. Morgott had no patience for contradictory tales. Let the sages decipher the babble.

Sage Vaori was a broad and sturdy woman. She had forsaken the customary tasseled, saffron robe of a sage for a stained shirt and trousers. The legs of her pants were rolled up to her horn-pebbled thighs and tied with cord to keep them from unfurling. She was not a spiritcaller, but an architect and stonemason dedicated to slowing the erosion of the city. The razed streets surely grieved her, but she did not show it. She brought Morgott to the sewers where the Impaler’s forces had been driven out. There was scant hope that Messmer had given up on the prospect of infiltrating Belurat through subterranean means. So, with Sage Vaori as his guide, Morgott sealed the passages with a spell he had mastered long before his ascension. He had kept the Frenzied grave of the Caravan hidden for centuries before clever, wretched Aster had circumvented his magic.

“These shall not yield to anyone so long as I live,” he swore to Vaori and her apprentices. The younger hornsent carried sacks at their waists brimming with bribes for the pestilent man-flies. If they were not appeased, the plague they carried could ripen.

“Marvelous,” the Sage nodded. She was not so cowed by Gold as her students were. “Then tonight I shall pray for your longevity, Lord.”

At least her gratitude was sincere.

“These sewers, do they connect to the catacomb keep?”

“No… Well, I am sure they do not.”

God growled, “Make certain!”

He had entrusted his children to the protection of the catacomb tunnels. His wife would be there as well after…

He considered inspecting the integrity of the tunnels via Margit as he attended to the other obligations of war thrust upon him. But he soothed his hammering heart with anchoring breaths. His wife was a slayer of Demigods, even if she was a fool. And his daughter was his own favored pupil- a warrior in spirit. No portent of doom had reached his ear regarding the makeshift keep, so it seemed unlikely any misfortune had befallen it.

Morgott parted ways with Sage Vaori. The morning had gone, and the sewers of Belurat were secured by his seal. They would end with his life- or until he willingly dismantled them. They were meager bits of magic compared to Queen Marika’s Veil-weaving. Still, word from the battlements was sparse. He wished to see for himself what the Divine Beast had made of the Impaler’s encampment.

After that, he promised himself, he would go to his family and be renewed in the certainty of their safety.

—-------------------------

The road from the mountain underpass to Belurat’s gates was wide enough to drive ten troll-drawn carriages abreast. But it was flanked on either side by the gorge. The young forest that had acted as a buffer between the perilous drop and the road had been largely destroyed. Either harvested and consumed for the crusaders’ campfires or splintered and burnt in the conflict.

Messmer had survived, but his assault on the gate had been brought to a brutal halt. The corpses of war machines lay crumpled and broken. Dozens of Graceborn bodies were scattered like debris- crushed and shredded. The ground was windtorn and hazardous with ice. But near the tunnel mouth, Messmer’s black ants swarmed.

The wind carried screams.

The defenders on the wall either glared grimly at the activity or quailed, averting their watery eyes. Thus, Morgott reckoned that the distant cries came not from Messmer’s injured. He was not greeted as he approached the parapet. The crusaders gathered where Belurat arrows and incantations could not reach them. But they wanted to be observed. Morgott had survived two sieges before- this was how the loveliest bloodroses took root.

Racks of black stakes had been brought out in excess, granting the tunnel’s maw a vicious grin of needle teeth. Before them, a huddle of men and women knelt, naked, in the mud. Their Crucible-blessed flesh was mottled with lacerations and burns. They were captives plucked from the battlefield in the chaos of Belurat’s retreat. But some weren’t hornsent. The pool of condemned was diluted by the presence of the Impaler’s own. Traitors or defectors, they shared in their enemies’ fate.

Half-a-dozen soldiers restrained a hornsent man, pinning him to the ground. They held his thrashing limbs. His back arced as he howled, so a knight in black plate stepped on his throat. Another dozen soldiers hoisted a slender stake as long as a tree was tall. The sharpened end pierced the flesh between hornsent man’s legs. Some of the soldiers relinquished the stake and grabbed the ropes tied to the prisoner’s legs. Centimeter by tortuous centimeter, the man was dragged upon the pole. The boot upon his neck did not relent, warping his sounds of agony into inhuman hooting.

Morgott was ancient. He had met death in thousands of its hideous forms. He had styled himself as its herald in the days when Margit the Fell preyed upon Leyndell’s foes. But this execution was novel enough to make his innards clench. He regarded the hornsent on the wall with renewed respect for enduring the Impaler’s ignoble taunt.

“Did a mouthpiece come to bargain for the lives of the imprisoned?” he asked no one in particular.

A Warrior wearing a mask of a lion’s visage replied coldly, “No. As soon as the road was cleared, the captives were brought out.”

Morgott hummed in acknowledgement. Several stakes were already planted into the earth, their trunks laden with bodies. The Impaler’s desire was for the ugly scene to fester in the hearts of the hornsent. Come dawn, Morgott was certain, Messmer would send an envoy to capitalize on their despair. Perhaps if a wise and temperate soul opened the gates for the Lord, the remaining prisoners would be spared. Perhaps if the city surrendered, this wretched fate would not befall its people. They would be false promises, of course- transparent lies. But the Impaler only needed one or two desperate fools to believe them.

The stake’s tapered tip erupted from the hornsent captive’s clavicle. He ceased writhing.

The black knight turned to the naked huddle, and grabbed another victim by their horn. At their terrified shriek, a shadow fell over the road. The soldiers raised their crossbows and seals sparking with Messmerfire. Morgott inhaled as Mohg dove at them on the wing. Without any cover, it was a poor ambush. The Impaler’s men had ample opportunity to slink back to the safety of the mountain passage. The throats of the remaining prisoners were hurriedly sliced; they intended to leave no one to rescue. The upright stakes were set ablaze. The hungry fire gnawed upon those sorry souls still-living.

Nonetheless, after a brief engagement that had Morgott wont to vomit out his heart in worry, a pile of Graceborn lay dead. Mohg flew back to Belurat with two hornsent, bloodied but alive, cradled in his arms.

An archer dropped their bow. A sob choked them. Morgott watched Mohg vanish into the heart of the city, and cursed his own impotence. He was God, not his brother. Had it not been within his power to put an end to the degrading display?

But of course it was. And he was more powerful still. He was a green Godling. New and untempered. But with the proper weapon in hand, he could end the siege singlehandedly.

The Greater Will seemed to clamp upon his shoulders then. Incorporeal claws gripped his very bones. Its cosmic breath was curious and expectant. Morgott possessed no Finger Bones to facilitate their communion, but his God had become talkative of late. Morgott brushed past the wall’s defenders to return to his secluded spire. Marika’s arsenal was his. But he needed to be taught how to utilize it.

He never thought he would stoop to this.

But he did not feel particularly guilty, either.

—-------------------------

After the aborted breach and the intercession of the Divine Beast, it appeared that Lord Messmer was revising his strategy. His army was nestling into the underpass, entering a state of dormancy until hunger and desperation hollowed out Belurat for them. Or they were licking their wounds until their courage returned to them.

Morgott had communed with his God in isolation for hours, plundering his mother’s talents from her memories. Sunlight no longer blazed through the Veil. Most of the Impaler’s prisoners had succumbed to their torture. The raucous screams had dwindled. The sounds themselves did not travel far beyond the battlement. The wind could carry the voices of the slowly dying only so far. But the hornsent knew some of their kin yet languished on the stakes.

Hidden in shadow, Morgott listened to a mob of hot-blooded youths converging on the gatehouse.

“Let us through!” a brash man ordered. He brandished a shortbow, but not in threat to the Warriors guarding the gates.

“What is the meaning of this?” one of the sentinels replied, beleaguered.

“You hear the cries of our kin! If you will not grant them rest before the serpent consumes them then we shall!”

Torchlight illuminated the spittle flying from the man’s mouth. His fellows shouted their agreement. Ash and dust coated their hands and smeared their cheeks. They all were either survivors of the razing or witnesses to the devastation. Either way, their righteous fury was justified. It simply clouded their judgement.

Morgott slipped away unnoticed. The mob would not be permitted to leave the city. To open the gates for even a moment was to give Messmer an opportunity to compromise Belurat once more.

There were eyes upon the wall at all hours. So Morgott did not attempt to conceal himself. He ascended to the battlement, and promptly leapt over its edge. There was no cover on the stony path descending from Belurat’s gates. Morgott was aware he would be watched- by both sides.

He approached the copse of iron stakes. The brisk gales that skated over the gorge raked at the hanging corpses. Flakes of char drifted down like falling leaves. Some of the impaled had been set aflame, but it seemed the fire had failed to reach high enough and burn hot enough to kill everyone. The bodies were stacked two to three per stake. Those unfortunate enough to be skewered last had blackened legs with the flesh melted from their bones. These were the hornsent most likely to have survived.

He scented voided bowels and the rot setting into meat. He scented the animals that had been drawn in by the stench of carrion. Only the birds had made off with easy meals. They had gone roost, now. Somewhere where trees still stood. A few crows loitered, but a glare and a gravelly growl dismissed them.

His Omen eyesight was keen, as was his hearing. He could sense the breath in those that were yet to die. He planted a golden dagger into the heart of every impaled body, even those already dead. Just to be certain. One person attempted to plead with him in a keening gurgle, deliriously convinced that they could be salvaged. Death was the sole mercy Morgott could bestow. Within the lattice of his conjured knives, an incantation had been writ- one that would consecrate the deceased and ward them against the indignity of carrion feasters until a proper burial could be had.

With the hearts and lungs of the impaled forever stilled, the night grew stale and quiet. God lingered, waiting. Until he heard the snkt of a crossbow bolt being loaded.

“Strike, if thou’rt wont,” Morgott rumbled. “It shall do thee no good. Thou hast seen that this body is an illusion. It is undying. It is unrelenting.”

It was a lie. The shade was a useful shield. But it could not grasp the full arsenal of Godhood. But it was best if he could convince the interlopers that attacking him was futile.

The scraggy underbrush rustled, betraying the unease- and size- of the failed ambush. Some half-rose, their forms made amorphous by sable cloaks that melded into the dark. They hefted their weapons warily. One man strode forth. Swaggering in his plate and mail. His hair was flaxen- practically luminous in the night.

“Of course the cowards would send one of their tricksome beasts,” he sneered.

Morgott answered the knight’s taunt with ice, “Sayest thou, a man who lingers in the shadows to slay mourners and punish mercy. ‘Tis hardly cowardice to traipse into a trap so inelegant as to be obvious.”

Indeed, the blonde man’s retort shivered in consequence- was hissed through clenched teeth, “What honor is there in hunting the Graceless sportingly? None, say I!”

“We are in agreement.”

Weapons shifted in twitchy hands. They’d read either insult or threat into Morgott’s reply. Loaded crossbows were aimed at his face and breast. He wondered if Messmer had revealed his identity to these soldiers. He doubted it. They were much too eager to point their weapons at a child of Marika. But surely they recognized Morgott as the Omen that had stabbed a knife into their Lord’s side.

“Your vigil is ended,” the fool knight spat. “Now go.”

“I have business with thee.”

A fearful finger let a bolt fly. It glanced off of a horn harmlessly. Morgott hummed, his tail swayed. Their terror was odorous. The Omen’s restraint moved one of the soldiers.

“What do you want?” She asked, tremulous. No doubt she was imagining herself on a stake. The brute’s game of tormenting hornsent no longer appealed.

“I have a message for thy Lord.”

The blonde knight stormed forward, irate at his compatriot’s complacency, “I do not ferry orders for a mongrel-"

Morgott snapped his fingers at the boy’s nose. Though meters of smoking earth separated them, he staggered as though he’d been struck. His nose wrinkled. For a moment he gaped, bewildered, as though he’d been robbed of the ability to breathe. Then he inhaled. Quavering and shallow. In a ripple, his fellows followed suit.

Perhaps the knight did not yet realize what had just been stolen from him. To Morgott, it had been the rupturing of a filament- a thread of spider silk breaking upon his finger. A tiny scar was chiseled into the stone of him. But he was already so scarred he scarcely felt it.

“Now Go.”

If Marika’s power was all they deigned to heed, then he could speak with her voice. The moment Messmer laid his false eye upon these errant men, he would know what Lord Morgott was capable of.

—-------------------------

Dawn summoned the Grandam to him. Her gnarled hands clutched a walking stick. Her escort of Warriors stared from behind tarnished bronze masks.

“The Impaler hath fled,” the old woman spat accusingly. “He flieth with such haste he doth not command his men to scorch the fields behind them.”

“These are good tidings indeed. The siege hath ended,” Morgott said.

The elderly sage’s lip curled. “Thou wert seen absconding from the city… What hast thou done?”

Morgott smiled. Wry and hollow. He told her, and she cackled.

Chapter Text

Marie

Marie’s knuckles ached from gripping her sword. Painted with gore, its golden glow smoldered with the hue of flame. Blood was sticky between her fingers, tacky in her fur. It was lukewarm compared to her own roiling ichor.

The air was muggy for her panting. For the dead leeching their vital heat into the tunnel. As if they were still breathing. As if their limp, spidery hands might reach out for her ankles at any moment.

Keep steady. Falter, and your brother dies. They all die.

Marie felt the bulging-eyed stares of the slain upon her. Their slack, pink-toothed sneers. She was soft. Despite her father’s fanatical insistence that the world would be her enemy, this was the first time she had encountered people who had so emphatically wished to be her demise. It was their hatred that rattled her as much as their blood on her hands.

Da had told her not to think of Messmer as her uncle. Yet the idea persisted- especially now. The Impaler was her kin, and he was trying to kill her.

“Marie?”

The sword shattered with a sound like breaking glass. Marie snarled her frustration. A cramp spasmed up her arm. She whirled upon the interloper- her bare foot skidding in a wet smear of viscera.

“What is it?” she barked as she righted herself.

The hornsent cringed away, instantly cowed. Someone sturdier took their place; Cuta pushed her peer aside with a stiff arm. Blood stained her sheepskin tunic and armor.

“It’s Morgan,” she said. “He’s asking for you.”

The cramp receded, chased away by a tingling rash of aches that spread across every limb. “Is he alright?”

“It’s nothing so dire. He isn’t feeling well, but he is in no danger.”

“W-what does that mean?”

“It means he is a boy too proud to admit he’s scared. His sister will help him keep his courage.” Cuta smiled sympathetically.

Marie had not known that the scent of death could be so cloying. It was on her. In her. She could not comprehend how Cuta could stand to be so near.

“I cannot leave,” she murmured. “The soldiers will return.”

“You’ve been at it all day, Princess. We can guard this entrance in your stead.”

Marie was uprooted by the gentle dismissal. Pulled away at the elbow and replaced by fresher swords. She was disappointed in herself for allowing it to happen. She wasn’t a child.

The burrow beyond was a seething knot of humanity. Warriors bristled with their serrated blades beside magicians whose robes billowed with spectral winds. The common people held knives and staves- the sick and the hale, the young and the old. Everyone waited for the catacombs to be breached. When Marie trudged past them, they looked askance.

Morgan sat against an alcove in the stone. His shirt was rolled up under his armpits so that his spine touched cool rock. There was an almost feverish sheen to him- sweat made waxy his skin. Marie’s heart was in her throat. Cuta had been mistaken. Morgan was sick. His blue-and-gold eyes flitted to Marie at her approach. He set his chin into his cupped hands.

“I’m here.” Her voice rasped. “Is something wrong?”

“Lots of people dying,” he muttered in reply.

“Well…” Marie patted her stained hands against her thighs. Drying blood flaked off. “Everything is going to be alright. I swear.”

Up close, Morgan’s face shone with more than perspiration. The Erdtree’s distant light shimmered in his pores. At the corners of his eyes. It was the ward awake. Marie gingerly sat beside him.

“Morgan-“

“Where did they go, the people you killed?”

Marie’s horns knocked against the wall as she flinched. What had Cuta said to him?

“…Nowhere. They didn’t get up and walk death off, mind.”

“I mean their souls. They had Grace, right? But the Erdtree can’t reach them. Where can they go?”

Marie’s mouth was dry. She shrugged.

He shook his head. “It is terribly sad.”

“Is it?” Marie sniffed. “They are terrible.”

Morgan hummed, noncommittal. His lids drooped. Without thinking, Marie snapped her fingers beneath his nose.

“You wanted me here,” she scolded him. “What am I supposed to do with myself if you fall asleep? I’ll be bored to tears.”

“‘M tired, Marie.”

“Are you overheating?”

“No.” Her baby brother wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “I’m only curious where they go…”

Marie did her best to keep Morgan present. She played the spying games Mum had used to distract them during long carriage rides. She recited the riddles she had learned from Moiragh. She scored line puzzles into the dirt and teased Morgan when he got stumped. She told stories... Though she’d sworn she never would, she told him about the Shunning Grounds. She told him about the bones and the chains and the monsters and the wraiths. If it was a betrayal, it was for good reason; color was returning to Morgan’s cheeks as horror gave his heart a fleeter tempo to follow.

She rambled until she succumbed to her exhaustion.

—----------------------------------------

She woke to screams. A wave of thunderous noise flushed down the earthen tunnel. It was a miracle she was not swept up in the undertow. Bodies shuddered and writhed, scrabbling to escape the peristaltic terror pulsing within the dark.

“Morgan!” she shouted. “Morgan get up!”

“I am up,” the sour retort.

She pushed herself up onto her elbows. Indeed, her brother was crushed against the wall. He was small with his knees tucked beneath his chin. The thin blue blanket he’d carried with him from the Lands Between was draped over them.

“Do you not hear that?” she snapped.

He glowered at her. “Of course I do. They’re cheering. It’s over.”

“It’s over?”

“It’s over.” It was Cuta that answered, grinning ear to pointed ear. She knelt beside Morgan- sagged with exhaustion even as she exuded relief. “Your father brought the news himself.”

Marie leapt to her feet. Her bulk allowed her to cut through the blockage of bodies. Morgan and Cuta trailed in her substantial wake. After a while, the hornsent parted for her, equally awed and revulsed.

Da had to bend slightly so that his horns did not scrape the ceiling. His fur was as filthy as Marie’s; he was in dire need of a brushing. His eyes shone brighter than the torches that illuminated the chamber. He scanned the sea of mourners and celebrants, indifferent to their raised voices. But when he sighted Marie- she was not difficult to spot in the crowd- his haughty stoicism cracked. The brand of his gaze softened to an ember. He saw the gore that she wore and crossed the chamber in haste.

“Art thou well?” he asked, eyes tracing her painted-on scars.

“It is not mine.”

Da’s coarse fingers grazed over the clots in her hair. “So I see. How many?”

“Six. Seven.” Frankly, she struggled to remember. Inexplicably, her shaky inhale didn’t fill her lungs. She was winded from the confession, waiting for her Lord’s disappointment. Indeed, his frown cinched with his brow.

“Seven, and thou’rt unmarked.” Pride colored his rumbling tone.

“It is not enough,” she protested. Though she did not know why.

“Thou wert to guard thy brother and keep thyself from harm. Thou hast done so.”

“I feel strangely-”

“Do not.” Da placed a thumb beneath her chin and forced her to meet his glare. “Be not burdened by guilt nor grief. None of them would feel the same for thee. Thou hast done well.”

He pulled her close, flush to his chest. His arms pinned her to him, and- Gods- it had been a while since she’d been reminded how bloody strong her Da was. Their horns clacked against one another. Their breaths were tremorous and humid.

“Thy brother?” he murmured against her shoulder.

“I am here, Da.”

Da looked down on his fragile son. And there was such bald yearning in his expression Marie was uncomfortable witnessing it.

“Thou art well?”

Morgan hesitated. “I am fine.”

Da’s chin jerked in a shallow nod. “And thy mother?”

Marie and Morgan’s confused silence was answer enough, apparently.

Mohg

After Messmer’s retreat, Belurat had disgorged its furious people. Like a nest of giant ants disturbed, Warriors and wraiths- sages and soldiers- had swarmed over the hastily abandoned encampment and slain anyone that remained. The hot-blooded masses put Graceborn corpses to the pyre or cast them into the chasm. Golden eyes were stabbed out of hornless skulls.

The desecration agitated Morgott. But of course it did- Lordship, marriage, fatherhood, and Godhood together had not taught him how to enjoy his victories. Once upon a time, the Lord of Blood had stalked battlefields and had his choice of the survivors and the carrion- each claimed in service or sacrifice to the Formless Mother. The vessel of Truth did not have a taste for war’s indulgences- she had never savored its flavors. Thus, Mohg did not join the raids. He tended to the wounded. Each cleansed injury and blood-sodden bandage and rot-ripe pustule was cauterized instead for her glory. Nonetheless, he was nostalgic for the Shattering days, cramped between makeshift cots and surrounded by the stench of unwashed bodies and herbal poultices. But it was no burden to be a healer.

If Mohg pitied anyone, it was Cyprus. The Warrior had been so keen to spill blood before the siege had even begun. And now that his peers were pursuing the crusaders across the Gravesite Plain, he was bedridden. Nearly catatonic.

Mohg had sensed him amongst the wraiths- though he had not realized at the time that the errant soul belonged to his Warrior. Curiosity had lured him to the rampaging monstrosity that was the Dancing Lion. But the wayward spirit had parted from the Beast before he could reach it. He did not find it upon the field huddled with the Impaler’s captives. It heeded not his guidance, and instead petulantly drifted until it settled again in its battered flesh. When Mohg had discovered Cyprus’s body on the wall, he had plucked him from the stretcher to the consternation and distress of the hornsent carrying him. Cyprus had been safer in his arms.

Mohg cleansed his hands of viscera over an open flame. He allowed his claws to cool before he splayed them over the Warrior’s bared chest. Cyprus’s heart was full of vigor. It was his spirit that was withdrawn. Mohg’s incantations were therefore useless to him. Though, he was tempted to try regardless. It would be nothing to make an incision along Cyprus’s pebbly skin- to mark himself similarly and let their blood mingle. Mohg’s talons tapped at the scales that speckled Cyprus’s chest.

His musings were interrupted by an offensive odor. He licked at his teeth before drool gathered at their tips. A yellow-cloaked sage threaded their way through the throng towards him. The stink wafted from a bowl they cupped gingerly in their hands.

“The Grandam sent this. It should break his torpor,” they explained by way of apology.

Sure enough, Cyprus’s breath deepened as the pungent cure was held beneath his nose. Under Mohg’s palm, his lungs swelled and warmed. Then he clutched at the bedsheets. His barbels shivered above a newborn scowl.

“Ah,” Cyprus sighed in a long exhalation. He turned away from the scent but the sage was unrelenting. Thick, white lashes parted for a glossy red-violet glare. His scarred hand batted feebly at the sage’s wrist. “Alright you bloody abscess! I’m awake. Now get that away from me!”

The sage departed with a promise to inform the Grandam of his recovery. They were eager to leave, by Mohg’s estimation, because several furious voices cursed them for bringing such odorous filth into the hospital. Mohg pressed his tongue against his fangs to keep from sneezing.

“Spirits.” Cyprus squirmed in his cot, coughing. Mohg did not remove his hand from the Warrior’s breast. His pulse had an intoxicating rhythm. “I have not needed the spoilage since I was boy.”

“What is it?”

He grimaced, “You honestly do not want to know. What it does is bring spirit channelers back to themselves.”

“I did not think your storm spirits could unmoor you so.”

“Strong-willed spirits can drag you under if you are not careful. I… was not careful.”

Cyprus wordlessly peeled Mohg’s fingers off of his chest. He attempted to, at least, and Mohg humored him.

Mohg said, “You were magnificent.”

“I disgraced my tribe by invoking the Divine Beast. It is a sacred rite, and I made a sham of it.”

Mohg tilted his head inquisitively and chuffed.

Cyprus draped a hand over his brow, “The Sculpted Keepers are the dancers that the Divine Beast inhabits. I was meant to become one before I was ruined. I know the prayers, and so I said them. My anger was sufficient… but this body was not. I confused the Lion. It was within me, too.”

He rambled remorsefully. His burnt hand clenched into a trembling fist. Mohg’s eye traced Cyprus’s scars up his arm and then down the opposite leg. The Warrior had survived his village’s destruction as a bairn, but he had not received these immortalized injuries then. All Cyprus’s life, the Impaler had tried to claim him for the pyre. He had failed in every attempt.

“You are not ruined-”

“I am!” Cyprus snapped, eyes closed against the back of his hand. “I am not steel in a forge. Messmerfire does not temper me. What I did with the Beast… It was undignified.”

Mohg snarled. He snatched Cyprus’s wrist and pulled him flush to his chest from where he lay. “Listen, Warrior. Dignity will never save you. It is the first thing the enemy takes hoping you will exhaust yourself scrabbling to regain it. They defile you and scar you-” Mohg’s raspy voice caught- tripped across his teeth. He was speaking to the Shunning Grounds as much as Messner’s crusade. Memory dangled rancid morsels of every wretched thing he had been forced to do to survive and tempted him to bite. “-And they will curse you. This city stands because of you. If you desecrated a sacred rite, let the lives you rescued decry you!”

Cyprus was a limp weight in Mohg’s grip. His handsome eyes were hooded by handsome lashes. “Marika’s son would lecture me about the futility of dignity!”

His indignity was short-lived. His offense was removed with his humid exhale like a spray of acidmist. However much he tried to hold onto it. He was not ignorant of Mohg’s past. The Lord was Marika’s son, but it had not spared him the Goddess’s hate.

He sighed, “It is suffering, Mohg. Being angry and helpless to do anything about it.”

“It is.”

“...I apologize. For doubting you.”

Mohg lowered Cyprus- relinquished him. With a soft groan, the Warrior stood on shaking fawn’s legs.

“I apologize for the curse.”

“It is no curse,” Mohg hissed. “To be Omen is to be blessed.”

The words had a bitter taste. That was a wound all its own.

Cyprus shook his head, “Regardless-”

“Regardless, I am a thousand years your elder. Marika was dead all the while you prayed for her demise. I do not blame you for my imprisonment, and I do not credit you for my horns.”

The Warrior’s jaw worried the inside of his cheek. “I apologize for disparaging your sister.”

“Now that I can accept.”

Cyprus wobbled as Mohg captured his wrist once more. Mohg bent, half-mantling. He twisted Cyprus’s arm. Those irises, the hue of arteria petals, widened in alarm. Mohg pressed the Warrior’s wrist against his teeth. The veins beneath his thin skin roared with promise.

“Your blood is strong,” he complimented, teeth gliding over warmed skin. Cyprus shuddered.

“Back to form then, Blood Worshipper? I’m shocked you didn’t take your fill while you had me at your mercy.”

Mohg purred. He would never admit how close he’d come to doing so. The faintest smile graced Cyprus’s face. His blush was a marginally redder shade than Morgott’s.

Cyprus scratched his bearded jaw. “Tell me true, Mohg-”

“Of course.”

“-Is Marika really dead?”

“She is. I would have killed the God within her corpse if my siblings had not cannibalized it.”

“Ah, Morgott was one of those voracious siblings, then?”

“He was.”

“How long ago?”

“More than a century.”

Cyprus absorbed this, “Yet nothing changed for us. Marika was dead before my mother was born. The Impaler’s lot still slaughtered her. It will never stop.”

“It shall end when Messmer dies.”

Cyprus blinked. “But your daughter?”

Mohg palmed the pouch at his side. Moiragh’s clot throbbed in its housing. “He has her. He will die.”

The Divine Beast’s dancer bared his blunted fangs, ”Messmer murdered my family. He robbed me of my destiny. If you were not here, he might have claimed my life. It is unbearable… I have cursed you in my prayers before I could comprehend the words! But the wraiths heed you and your blood burns and- pretty Omen, take me with you. I want my pound of flesh.”

Mohg’s furnace of a heart stuttered.

Ansbach

He searched for Aster- poking his head into every hospital and makeshift infirmary he came across. The strange Pureblood was emaciated and weak- he could not have stumbled far after the Twin Moon’s assault. Ansbach had begun to make his peace with the idea that his newfound companion might not have survived, when he suddenly felt the accursed blood smolder in his wrists. However, it was not Aster he sensed, but his former master.

Mohg was mantled over the war-wounded. Arranged on cots in untidy rows, the moaning, writhing injured looked like offerings set before him. Ansbach remembered the years he’d trod upon the spilt blood of sacrifices until gore seeped into his boots.

A hornsent man in the armor of a Warrior was ensnared in Lord Mohg’s claws. The Lord’s hand encircled the Warrior’s thick forearm. A burn scar trailed up scaled skin. Ansbach recognized him as the man who had accosted Cyrielle before the siege. Mohg brought the other man’s wrist to his fangs. He held them to his teeth- warm vein to warm mouth.

Phantom sensations gripped Ansbach. Hot breath on his neck. The throb of his pulse as his jugular was pressed to teeth like swords. And it was not fear twisting in his belly.

Sir Ansbach melted into the shadowed corner of the hospital. The black of his robes disguised him. He was suffocating in the stench of cauterization. The Mother was here, singing in the wounds of the ailing. She harmonized with the wails of the agonized and the grieving. Her incorporeal hand cradled his own heart. Because he found himself inexplicably wounded.

Mohg’s prisoner flushed blue-violet. The tips of his long, cervid ears turned lilac. As did the places where spiral-wrought rings pierced into them.

A feeling within Ansbach was smothered nearly as soon as it appeared. The faintest aftertaste lingered in the back of his throat, daring him to guess what had tried to strangle his calm. Revulsion? Envy? Terror for the hornsent man and himself?

It was nauseating to dwell upon, so he did not. He fled from the building almost as quickly as he’d arrived, and promptly collided with the furred club of Lord Morgott’s tail. Marika’s heir greeted him with an irritated growl.

“I-“ Ansbach was humiliatingly flustered. He had escaped the hospital, but now he was unmoored in an oppressive emptiness. He felt displaced by the mere act of crossing a threshold, as if his mind had gone on running when his body had been forced to halt. The alarm that had overwhelmed him not seconds ago seemed… foolish in hindsight. He could not fathom what it was about Mohg kissing a man’s wrist that would-

“Sir Ansbach,” Morgott hissed. “Gather thy wits.”

As Ansbach reigned himself in, The God of the Erdtree glanced over his shoulder. Idling there, wide-eyed and distant, were Morgan and his sister, Marie.

“Go on,” Morgott ordered with a jerk of his chin. “I will rejoin ye shortly.”

The young prince and princess departed. The boy dragged his feet. The girl’s fur was stained ruddy-brown in blotchy patches.

“Mohg is within the hospital behind me, if you are searching for him,” Ansbach said.

Lord Morgott’s eyes narrowed. “He is well? Thou art trembling enough to worry a Limgrave sapling”

“Yes, I only… I have been reflecting as of late, upon my departure from Lord Mohg’s Dynasty.”

The words were numbingly earnest. Dread threaded cold tendrils into his spine in warning. But it was too late to take back the truth.

“I saw him now, in his golden plumage. His proud wings aloft. And I forgot for a moment, the love of Kindly Miquella. It was not the compulsion of blood, I fear- of that sanguine pact abandoned. But something caged in my old soul that yearns for release. I… do not believe my love for Lord Mohg ever ceased. It was never squandered, only…

“They bubble up, the memories. When I stand in his presence, Lord Brother. Moments I’d believed to be eroded by the years.” Ansbach looked at his hands. “The exaltation of pain. Nights of quiet confidence beneath a sky of false stars… But I cannot recall why I left him.”

Ansbach’s breath tasted stale.

Lord Morgott rumbled, gruff, “‘Tis best that thou put this matter behind thee. Thou hast outgrown the Dynasty. Mohg as well. Count thyself lucky that thou hast survived to serve a master better suited to thy peaceable spirit.”

Ansbach was stricken. By Lord Mohg’s recounting, Lord Morgott had never been a particularly warm man. But he had expected more than a cool rebuff.

Morgott continued, “I am grateful, Sir Ansbach, for thine assistance. My son is alive for thine intercession. I can never repay thee that. But this is where we part ways in earnest. Miquella will see naught of my twin but shed feathers.”

Ansbach frowned. You do not trust Kindly Miquella? The question lay lodged in his throat, unspoken. Morgott watched his children carefully weave their way up the street.

Ansbach swallowed down his doubt. “I-I… do forgive me, Lord. I have lost Aster. We were separated in the battle. I have not seen him since.”

“Pray the Carian is dead. Put the traitor from thy mind, as I have.”

The new God of Order followed after his Demigods. Ansbach, alone once more, needed some air.

—----------------------------------------

Looters were dragging appropriated supplies through Belurat’s gates. A party of fighters- too green to be Warriors- clustered at the edge of the ravine that guarded one side of the city. They were throwing pilfered weapons into the fathomless pit and cheering. The night air smelled of pipeweed and drink. Ansbach gave them a wide berth. He was, after all, a black-garbed Graceborn.

It was brusque. Yet the wind carried a smoldering heat that dewed the knight’s nape with sweat. Plumes of smoke rose to meet the Scadutree’s Veil. The moon had made its appearance and had been promptly banished. The dark was deeper than any Ansbach had experienced in all his years wandering the wilderness of the Shadow Lands. Fortunately, he did not have to see well to find his destination.

There was a shrine built into a copse of scorched trees. A glow, gentle yet radiant, issued from its entrance. The curtain concealing the doorway had been half-eaten by Messmer’s flames. The light revealed marks of vandalism carved into the stone over the decades. Words of anger accompanied cursed symbols. Crockery shards littered the surrounding grasses- now exposed since the fires devoured the underbrush. They were the remains of offering jars. Kindly Miquella had earned as many detractors from the hornsent as he had devoted followers when he’d campaigned here many years ago. Before Ansbach’s time.

Ansbach understood the reticence of the hornsent. Lord Mohg had found him as a young man, blinded by rage and grief. He had granted Ansbach the opportunity to give that pain purpose. It had surely been a miracle that Kindly Miquella had convinced him to give it up. It had been intoxicating to wallow eternally in righteous fury.

Ansbach ducked beneath the singed curtain and beheld the Miquellan Cross. The sacred tombstone of the Demigod’s discarded flesh. When Ansbach had been called to the Land of Shadow by his second Lord, he had happened upon this Cross first. It had been new, then. The allure of it had spurred in Ansbach the aching desire to understand Kindly Miquella’s purpose. And how he might be of service to him.

The shrine had the appearance of a rounded gallery, though it was tinier than a poor town’s chapel in the Lands Between. The roof that protected it from the elements was a dome supported by pillars, like many of Belurat’s important structures. Braided banners of mauve and yellow and pale burgundy were tied between the narrow columns. The Cross was surrounded by bare earth carpeted in brittle gray-green grass. Ansbach descended the two steps from the stone floor to the exposed ground. Bloodburgeons, it seemed, required naught but the light of the Cross to flourish- as well as the nourishment of Miquella's blood dripped into the soil years prior.

“Sir Ansbach.”

He startled.

“Lady Leda! I did not see you there! I am afraid I was lost in thought.”

“Oh?” Miquella’s Needle Knight cocked her head. She wore the armor of her order- helm and all. The light of the Cross suffused her gold and white cloak with a molten glow.

“Never mind that!” Ansbach chuckled.

His soul was soothed at the sight of a friend- however unexpected the meeting. Miquella’s beacon had guided him in his time of need. And lo! Leda had not come alone. A man was crouched in the corona of the Cross. Deft fingers arranged a cluster of small jars in the patch of grass. With a pestle, he mixed acrid-scented ash with herbs and other things. It was the noise of the grindstone upon the clay that alerted Ansbach to his presence. A pair of falx were sheathed at his hips.

“Ah! Hornsent!” Ansbach grinned.

When Miquella’s band had traveled as one, ‘Hornsent’ had become the natural moniker for the sole hornsent member of their group. In the shadow of Belurat, the title was egregiously insufficient. He could not recall the man’s name. Or if Hornsent had even given it in the first place.

“No, no. Regale us, old man,” Hornsent said in his acerbic drawl. “Ever the thinker. What was knocking in that skull of yours?”

A bolt of shame clipped Ansbach. He repressed the urge to shudder. But he was among friends; despite their time apart, it was no sin to confess what had been plaguing him of late. After all, if he could not trust them, then what was the point of their pact?

“Do either of you remember how you came into Miquella’s service?” he asked

Hornsent and Dame Leda exchanged a glance. Their expressions were concealed beneath a mask and a helm respectively. Ansbach was exposed by comparison.

“I was at my lowest,” Hornsent muttered. “Kindly Miquella redeemed my pain. He promised me a path to justice without indignity.”

Ansbach looked to Leda.

“Of course I remember.” She did not elaborate.

The former Pureblood was comforted by neither answer. Rather, he felt like a fool for broaching the topic at all. He changed the subject with a cough.

“I thought you both had circumvented Ensis with Dane.”

“We had,” Hornsent nodded. “But the serpent roused from his nest and that I could not ignore.”

“I was not about to let him tread upon the heels of an army on his own,” Leda added.

Hornsent laughed mirthlessly, “More like you cannot leave well enough alone.”

Ansbach’s eyes were still adjusting to the radiance of the Cross. Or the night was seeping into the shrine. The shadows projected by Hornsent and Leda were stark. Dreadful, leering interlopers. A sense of disquiet settled upon Ansbach. Then it was gone, and he was left to wonder what, exactly, he’d been worried about.

He said, “So you saw it. Belurat repelled the Impaler.”

“Quite the battle it was,” Leda agreed.

“It is a shame to have only met you now in the aftermath. The prowess of a Needle Knight would have been a boon.”

“I am Miquella’s knight, not a common sellsword. You are a gentle soul, Sir Ansbach, but our master did not wish for you to insert yourself into a pointless war. Or have you forgotten?”

Hornsent’s shoulders stiffened. His mask tilted downward towards the jar at his feet. The corner of a rust-colored rag lay against the rim. The man had claimed Erdtree lives of his own.

Ansbach protested, ”I have not been idle, I assure you. Mohg is in the city.”

“Indeed he is.”

“A lot of good the Demigod did. Messmer lives to slink back to his Keep,” Hornsent spat his diluted venom. Ansbach had learned long ago that his bark was far more severe than his bite.

Leda interjected, “Miquella shall keep his promise” She turned to Ansbach, “But the Hornsent has the right of it. Kindly Miquella will see it to a just conclusion. The Queen’s Omen twins will bring only more bloodshed.”

“Of course, Lady Leda. I understand.”

“I will hear no more excuses, Sir Ansbach. Kindly Miquella cannot prevail without our faith.”

Cyrielle

The hornsent were industrious in grief. They placated their newly dead and the old, wandering souls the battle had roused. Those who were not bloodying their hands clearing the rubble of the razed streets or tending to the wounds of the injured were taking up arms and hunting down any Graceborn crusader unlucky enough to have been left behind in the Impaler’s flight. Melancholy, it was said, could wait for vengeance to be sated.

Well, melancholy was not so patient with Cyrielle.

She bathed. Which is to say, she moistened a rag in a basin and scrubbed grit and sweat from her skin with the barest sliver of soap. The water became murky long before she was finished. The curtains were drawn over the windows and the room’s entrance. Flickering candlelight was all she had to see by. It was not much, yet Cyrielle’s foggy reflection in the basin betrayed how much of herself was ruined.

She was cold in her nakedness. Spring would be well underway back home, but the Shadow Lands were mired in the depths of autumn. Nonetheless, she did not blame the nighttime breeze eking past the curtain for her chill.

Nearly half of her resurrection scar was the hue of rotting leaf litter and carrion-crawling flies. Her arm and side were marbled; she was a statue hewn from precious metal and bog peat. When the water in the basin had been clear, she’d espied the taint speckling the underside of her jaw.

Hornsent fashion did not favor high, stiff collars. At least, all the leisure clothes lent to her were rather amorphous in construction. One garment was a floor-length dress and the other was a tunic accompanied by a billowing pair of trousers. Both fit her form loosely and exposed her stained, blotchy throat. She agonized over the logistics of concealing the damage until noise wafted up from beneath the floorboards. Low voices conversed indistinctly. Cyrielle’s heart ached- she recognized the tones of her husband and children.

She dressed herself without bothering to cover up. Brushed her damp hair. Inspected the bow she had taken from a fallen Belurat archer whilst defending the battlements.

She hid from her children.

Eventually, it grew quiet below. Morgott’s heavy tread ascended the stairs. He pushed the curtain in the doorway aside, slipped into the room, and promptly pulled it closed behind him. His sigh stirred the stale air in Cyrielle’s own lungs.

“Morgott.”

“Wife,” he acknowledged. “The mountain passage is free of thorns. The sages have been warned to be leery of black brambles should they emerge again.”

Cyrielle nodded stiffly.

“Marie and Morgan are well. They are resting below.”

“Thank you. I-I did not want them to see…”

Her husband’s mouth was a taut, grim line.

“Thou disobeyed me,” he declared pointedly. Though he lowered his voice so that it would not carry. His eye darted accusingly to the bow laid upon the bed. “Thou forsook thy children and shamed-”

“Did something happen to the children?” For a moment it seemed that Death had seeded maggots in her belly already.

It had been an Age since Cyrielle and been on the receiving end of Morgott’s wrath. She sensed his rage in his ember glare- in the grunted growl lodged in his throat. Ice crystallized in the joints of her scarred arm and she shivered. Then Morgott’s anger was gone. It was dismissed by a flick of his tail. He strode towards her, and she did not flinch away.

“Wherefore didst thou conceal this from me?”

“I did not intend to hide it,” Cyrielle lied. More honestly, she amended, “There were more pressing matters at hand. Aster was getting worse and Morgan’s curse struck him while my back was turned and Moiragh is beyond our reach-”

She was halted by Morgott’s touch. He held her scarred arm with deliberate tenderness. His coarse thumb swiped over a swirling patch of gold-and-black skin. His loose hair fell over his face in silvery waves. But it did not mask his hooded amber eyes and the wounded set of his mouth.

“Thou hast a duty to me as much as the bairns,” he chastised.

“I was afraid.”

Cyrielle was instantly struck by the hideous irony of her confession. Perhaps she at last understood what her God had felt when he’d been forced to reveal the curse imposed upon him by the Greater Will. Hopefully he understood what she had felt- and was presently feeling- in kind.

“Art thou pained?” he asked.

“No, Morgott, I swear.”

His shuddering exhale betrayed his doubt.

She couldn’t blame him. She remembered the agony of the Black Knife in her side, the sense that she was inhabiting a body yearning for a grave. It had killed her, in the end. When Grace could no longer preserve her.

“How long hast thou suffered this?”

Cyrielle’s eyes misted, “From the moment I arrived in these lands. I cannot feel the Erdtree. It is cut off from me.”

”I do not understand. Marie and I are not similarly hindered.”

Cyrielle shook her head, “Erdtree healing sickens Marie.”

“Yet she may call upon it.”

Morgott’s muttered rebuttal ignited gold in his palm. He conjured into the bowl of his cupped hand the Erdtree’s essence. It spilled over, and where it dripped upon the floorboards chimes sang, faint and sweet. Auric ripples shimmered at their feet. Grace in abundance filled the room at Morgott’s behest, and all Cyrielle felt was cold.

“Thy hand, Tarnished.”

She gave it despite her misgivings. The black scar looked all the more foreboding within his holy corona. Some warmth did seep into her flesh as her hand was engulfed by Morgott’s. The healing incantation was grossly luminous.

Shadows writhed beneath Cyrielle’s skin.

She fought the instinct to yank herself free from Morgott’s gentle grasp. Tendrils squirmed beneath her fragile dermis. She should have felt the undulation in her muscles and sinews. It should have been excruciating. But there was no tactile sensation beyond a bone-deep dread. Thorns did not erupt from her fouled flesh. It might very well have been a trick of the sputtering light. Morgott’s incantation faded, and Cyrielle was relieved and horrified to see that her scar was unchanged.

Morgott hummed to himself. He gestured with the first two fingers of his free hand. He turned Cyrielle’s arm over and touched his fingertips to the Elden Lord’s wrist. Pain lanced up her limb in dozens of needling jabs. She grit her teeth to keep from crying out. Her jaw throbbed from the shock.

“I can excise Blight from any corpse,” Morgott whispered. “But thou’rt living, Tarnished. I fear what the Litanies would do to thy soul as they purged thy body.”

“But that was not a Litany.”

“No,” Morgott agreed thickly. Cyrielle did not resist as he tugged her close. His sturdy arms pinned her against him. Ear pressed to his chest, she was forced to listen to the breathing of a frightened man. “That was merely a ward.”

Morgott smelled of sweat, smoke, and the sour reek of old blood. He was feverish; the accursed blood was roiling.

“I am sorry,” Cyrielle murmured. Her husband would not accept paltry assurances.

“‘Tis not thy doing,” he hissed in answer. “We can tarry here no longer. Thou must return to the umbra of the Erdtree before my seal upon thee is undone. Until then, keep thyself at remove from Morgan. I will not have his curse inflame thine.”

Aster

At a certain point, Aster stopped feeling human. He was an underfilled sack of jelly and bone shards. Jostling and grinding and sloshing with every bump in the road. Eroding as he was trundled kilometer after laborious kilometer.

He did not know where he was being taken. He’d simply woken up with the weight of a dozen fetters gripping his limbs. A heavy shroud was smothering him in a coarse embrace. He had been laid out onto an uneven, hard floor. The omnipresent rumble of worn wheels, the complaints of jolted wood, and the muted percussion of a horse’s tread meant that he was strapped to a cart.

Maybe the hornsent had mistaken him for a corpse; maybe his body was destined for the gorge. Aster would not hold it against them. He wasn’t entirely convinced he wasn’t dead either. A wheel bounced over a rock or a furrow in the dirt road, and Aster’s fraught nerves ignited. Broken bones and bruised organs mewled in protest. It warranted a proper scream, but all he could manage was a shallow, wheezed gasp.

No, no… It was only wishful thinking, death. The hornsent would not have bound him in chains if he were a corpse. They would not have clamped an iron mask over his head. The air inside was foul and thin. His eyes would not stop leaking. Viscous discharge pooled at his nape and warmed the shell of his ears. He licked his cracked lips only to taste the fetid sludge.

You have to save yourself. Lucidity had a gentle voice. You are going to suffocate. The pain is going to destroy you. You are forsaken. You must save yourself.

The cart crawled to a halt. The wheels ground into gritty mud, and Aster imagined it was his spine beneath the tires instead. The horse snorted, pawed at the earth impatiently. Through the metal helmet, Aster heard the dull thunder of approaching hoofbeats. Those, too, slowed to an eventual stop.

“Inquisitors!” the cart driver exclaimed. Relieved.

Aster ceased feeling. He was a threadbare consciousness trapped in a tacky pot.

“Well met,” a raspy woman’s voice answered. “I thank thee for thy prompt compliance. Thou wert courageous indeed to accept this task.”

“It is terrible. He lives. He should be dead, but he lives! I can hear him crying and carrying on.”

“That is the work of the Wraith-eater.”

“I beg you, take him! I did as you asked!”

“Be at peace, Child,” the new arrival intoned mechanically. “Ridest thou my horse homeward. Wash thine eyes with frigid water. But first, brew it with this-” a pause as something exchanged hands. “Eye of Yelough. Wax thy horns with sheep’s fat. Petition the spirits of thy house.”

“Am I…going to be alright?” the cart driver warbled.

“Didst thou look into the creature’s face? Didst thou lose a loved one in the siege?”

“I did not.”

“Then fret not. Mine instructions are merely precautionary. Again, I thank thee.”

The driver jumped down from her bench. Someone else- a second, silent Inquisitor- took her place.

“I pity him, Sister,” the driver sighed. “They say he killed the Witch of Ensis.”

“Should Chaos take Ensis, I will name the man a saint. As it is, the sages misplaced their good sense and allowed a demon to traipse through the streets. Frenzy! In the Tower’s city!” The woman’s voice rose to a restrained roar. “For Belurat, I will have recompense!”

Jori…

Aster managed to place a name with the voice. If he had possessed a heart, it would have dropped off of the cart’s flat bed and choked upon a puddle’s silt. He was exhausted and numb. The cart driver fled back the way she’d come on her borrowed mount. As he listened to the rhythmic galloping of the horse, he felt the edge of the shroud lift a fraction. Cautiously, as if he might leap out to strangle Inquisitor Jori with his shackles. He did not move. He hardly breathed. The cart driver had claimed he’d been crying. Had he? Was that what was filling his disgusting helmet?

“Make haste!” Jori shouted, letting the covering drape over him completely once more. The cart was coaxed back into its torturous, leisurely pace.

“Where shall it be kept, Sister Jori? If it came from the manse, should we not return it there?” The second Inquisitor asked.

“The gaol is closer. The gaol is incorruptible.”

Cyprus

The tally of the dead was leveling off only a day after Messmer’s flight. Hornsent bodies were gathered from the battlefield- were excavated from the rubble. The injured were sorted into sordid categories: those who would recover eventually, and those who would need a grave before long. Since the siege’s beginning, Belurat had lost less than two hundred of its own. For the first time in the history of the crusade, Graceborn corpses outnumbered the hornsent’s by far.

Cyprus had hardly slept. He couldn’t. He had conjured the Divine, and it had seeded in his own spirit a terrible restlessness. It had begun to carve out of his flesh a nest for itself.

It wasn’t so much that Cyprus had stopped believing in the faith of the Tower. Rather, he had given up on survival. It was said Marika had reshaped the world when she became a God. She gave her people Grace and excluded the hornsent from the salvation of her Gold. She had altered death itself and the very essence of souls to spite them. The spirits were part of the natural order- the one that had preceded Marika’s. They could not rebel against the Graceborn Queen’s meddling. They could not save their worshippers.

Cyprus gazed up at the mural of the Divine Beasts. They danced in the convex dome of the ceiling. The Lions and the Birds. He wondered when the mural had been made. The Dancing Lions had not always been Belurat’s weapons. But these Beasts were fierce. They brandished their fangs, claws, and horns in threat.

Even the divinities had forgotten what it meant to be at peace.

“Loitering about, I see,” the Grandam’s gruff rebuke called from the stairs. Belurat’s victory seemed to inspire in her a bit of vigor. She walked with a cane, but she was not winded after the climb.

“I have come to beg your forgiveness.”

“Ah, so thou hast chosen to abandon us after all.”

“Abandon? I- no. I meant the invocation… I had no right- I am no dancer!“

The old woman waved a gnarled hand. “The Impaler’s fire deafened thee of the song in thy spirit, but the strumpet’s pretty sons have renewed thee. Begone then! If ‘tis thy will to cavort with the spawn then I am loath to keep thee!”

Cyprus ground his molars together to keep his jaw from going slack. He’d endured the Grandam’s acerbic tonguelashings since he’d limped into the city as an ash-cloaked bairn. But it had been an age since a scolding had brought color to his cheeks. His face warmed as he was made to feel like a boy a quarter of his age again. He choked his wrist in an iron grip- the one Mohg had kissed.

“You praised the curse for bringing them to Belurat and now you spurn them for fulfilling that bitter prophecy?” The irony of his criticism was not lost on him. But he was too agitated- and heartbroken- to care.

“I will not be indebted to Marika’s offspring.”

“We are already indebted! I swore to Mohg I would help him find his daughter. He aided us- the city still stands! My end of the bargain remains unfulfilled.”

The Grandam did not answer. She was hunched against a pillar. The tassels on her garments quivered for her trembling.

“The Divine Beast hath heeded not my prayers for years. I can scarcely be angry with thee, Fool, for hosting its choler. Thou art precious. The war spared me for now, but time is not so easily dissuaded. When I have gone, thou wilt be the sole Hornsent in Belurat to have stood in the Lion’s eye! Squander not thy life!”

He put a hand on her shoulder. Tugged her close in a light embrace. “I will have time enough to teach the traditions when the Impaler is dead and we do not have to fear him.”

The Grandam swatted him away, “Listen, Boy! I will not lose thee! Was I so poor a guardian mine anguish cannot move thee?”

“Oh,” Cyprus sniffed. “Anguished are you? I think you are envious. You want to kill the bastard yourself and resent that I have the chance to take part.”

That worked. The old woman belted out a croak of a laugh. “I raised thee better. Mocking thine elders.”

“If only you had eyes, Grandam. You would see that I’m no bairn. I am nearly as weathered and gray as you are.”

“I remain thine elder, Wastrel.”

Still, she unfurled. Lifted her bony hands to hold Cyprus’s face. The twitch of her thin mouth betrayed what Cyprus had suspected: in her mind's eye, she pictured a much younger man in possession of Cyprus’s voice. Her calloused thumbs stroked the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. Then she yanked on his ear. He yelped.

“Those boys are fools. They will not cross Ellac Greatbridge. Mark me. They shall perish in the effort.”

“We will not cross the bridge,” Cyprus rubbed his abused ear, grimacing. “The knight Ansbach knows of a path through the mountains that bypasses Ensis altogether.”

“The road will be much longer.”

“But safer.”

“Can the strumpet’s progeny endure as ye tarry?”

Cyprus sighed, “Have some pity for the girl. Moiragh is innocent in this.”

Grandam scoffed, “Thou’rt soft for her sire is all.”

“No, Grandam-”

She cut off his stammered protestations with a flick of her wrist. “I blame thee not. Marika’s blood is alluring. ‘Tis by design. When will the Omen take thee?”

The blood in Cyprus’s wrist throbbed traitorously. “We depart for the Shadow Keep in mere hours. But I wanted to say my goodbyes-”

“Well, thou hast.” The Grandam wiped a shaky thumb where her eyes would have been if her horns hadn’t displaced them. She pantomimed drying the tears she could not shed. When Cyprus kissed the top of her head, she had the decency not to protest. “Now get thee gone. And do not return until the Impaler is dead!”

“Of course. Farewell, Grandam.”

“I… I pray the Divine Beast keepeth ye.”

Cyprus bowed, “I pray it keeps us all.”

Chapter Text

The spring rains had arrived in earnest. The downpour that would have flooded the streets of Leyndell was instead cleverly channeled into a cavernous gaol beneath the city. Waste and debris were carried away in a veritable subterranean torrent. And, inevitable, so too would some of the Golden Order’s prisoners be swept away and vanished in the dark depths.

The Mother of Truth was drawn to the Shunning Grounds- to the Omen, hidden and tormented by the Greater Will’s vessel. She’d watched them for centuries. Gorged upon their suffering just as she shared in their lamentation. A good Mother did not single out favorites. Nonetheless, Truth could not lie: there were two children she loved above all others.

They appeared to be boys no older than ten. Except they had survived in squalor for more than twenty-five years. Already they were larger than most of the adults around them despite their glacial Demigod aging. They knew how to avoid the worst of the flooding before it arrived. Experience made them wise beyond their years.

As the elder brother slept fitfully, the younger boy sat at the channel's edge. This was as good a time as any to be a Shunning Grounds Omen, despite the threat of the rising waters. The rats would soon pup, and the crawfish would lay their eggs. There would be a brief season of relative plenty once the floods subsided. So long as it rained, there would be fresh water to drink. And the Graceborn- who were always so stingy in winter- would become careless in their abundance once again. More salvageable refuse would find its way into Omen paws.

The season was turning without a moment to spare. The littler Omen cub inspected his reflection in the clear pool before him. His horned head was precariously balanced on bony shoulders. His bones pressed against a gray-black hide pocked with sores and scabs reticent to heal. His down had fallen out a few years after his banishment, leaving his body bare ever since. He could not sleep. His insides were cramping. Twisting like his guts were being massaged in a brutal fist. Truth shared in his hurts and kept him company in his restless wakefulness. Though he did not yet know she was perched over him.

The sleeping brother was not better off. He was ruthless, industrious, and self-sacrificing. Those traits that had ensured their survival, but at significant cost. He had grown too skinny in the harshness of winter. He was in constant pain dragging his club of a tail around. So he instead slept to stave off the pangs of starvation and the ache of his grinding joints.

The littler twin would have to bring home food this year. He would have to track down the rats’ dens and steal away their helpless, pink babies. He would have to descend to the sewer depths to scrape eggs off of the stone walls and hope any bigger Omen doing the same pitied him and let him be. Sometimes, the most dominant Omen demanded tribute before allowing others to gather in their territories. The elder twin had insisted before that they were Princes, and would not be made to submit to anyone even in this forsaken place. But Mohg looked at his gaunt reflection in the still water. Truth knew what was required to keep him and Morgott alive. It was inevitable. The currency for the Shunning Grounds poor was flesh and blood. Wounds of many colorful kinds.

Mohg ran his dry tongue over inflamed gums. The points of his fangs pricked at the muscle. And there was the gasp that drew the Mother so closely. An agony of the heart that outshone the agonies of the body.

The dear child recognized he was a monster. An animal- that was why his mother had condemned him. He was ugly. Disgusting. He would wallow and beg to eat. He would kill to eat. He would devour and savor the insects that bred in his brother’s hide, and his brother would return the favor. He bathed himself with a prickly cat’s tongue. He sharpened his claws on stones slimy with algae and waste. His eyes burned to behold the Erdtree’s light seeping into his home.

He slapped the water’s surface. As if he could will his reflection to conjure for him a fairer face when it stilled again. But the shimmering ripples only coalesced into his toothy scowl. He hit the water again. Then again. Beating his fist into his visage. As if he could knock out the offensive fangs and break off the wretched horns. As if he could poke out his golden eyes.

At some point, he began to cry, and his twin stirred.

“Mohg, enough,” he hissed. The utterance of two words enough to leave him panting. His breath rattled.

“Get up, Morgott. Hunt with me.”

The elder boy sighed, “I cannot.”

“Please!”

“Mohgwyn…”

“Don’t call me that!” The boy snapped. Then, keening: “I wish we were dead!” Impotently lashing out. As the echo of Mohg’s shouted declaration retreated into the sewer, Truth heard his brother sniffling.

Mohg leaned over the water. He jabbed a claw into his reflection’s eye. “You are terrible,” he whispered. As viciously as he could at a volume his despairing brother could not hear.

No, my son. the Mother of Truth protested. You are perfect.

__________________

It took Moiragh an eternity to return to herself. Never before had she dared to untether herself from the limitations of her own perspective. The God she harbored was a vigilant miasma. As omnipresent as the sky. She had feasted upon the detritus of millions of lives across thousands of years. To drift in that amorphous blood-red sea was for Moiragh to instantly lose herself.

She was a puddle held in the bowl of gentle hands. Fluidly shapeless and corrosive. Surely she stung the kindness that cradled her. If the substance of her harmed them, they did not complain. The violet mists mingled with her, cooling and soothing from the inside out.

In the void of sleep, it was impossible to know if hours or days passed. She was drawn out, drop by acidic drop, from the ocean of her God. Condensed and purified until she was herself enough to speak.

She begged, “Do not ask me do that again.”

“No,” the host of the dream agreed. “It was foolish of me to even suggest it.”

As apologetic as they were, it did not change that Moiragh was tainted. She had observed glimpses of Papa’s life. The strife that had hounded him since birth. She had known about the Shunning Grounds. But she had never viewed it intimately, with her face pressed to the bars of a rank exhibit of torture and iniquity. Where the skeletal figures of her father and uncle eked a childhood out of refuse.

“But you asked nonetheless,” she accused.

You might have refused, the Truth of her conceded. But the quavering shape of the thought proved its own uncertainty. As sweet as her companion was, she was at their mercy.

“I did.” They sighed, making the haze swirl in glittering spirals. “I thought I understood him. I thought I could help him. I was arrogant. Thine insight, Goddess, is invaluable. Mine ignorance is dispelled. At last, I shall succeed.”

“Succeed?” Moiragh drowsily echoed.

“I need him. He needeth me. We failed one another... I may yet grant him his desires.”

This they declared with numb resolution. Neither sad nor resentful. But not enthusiastic, either. If Moiragh possessed form, she would have squirmed.

“My father wants a legacy.”

“Indeed… children and Lordship.”

Suspicion made Moiragh brittle. She could not handle not knowing: “Are you…?”

“I am not thy father.” The immediate answer.

Their honesty was bitterly undeniable.

“D-did you know him, then?”

“My tethers to the Lands Between were severed before thy birth.”

“Ah...”

The host hummed. The noise reverberated through the fog, engulfing Moiragh. “I am not thy sire, but I occupied thy place, once. I sat thine unenviable throne. I was offered to Truth to be Her vessel. We did not agree with one another. Nonetheless, we remain bonded. Oh, fret not. I never intended to keep our ties. But as I journeyed in the Shadow Lands, I always felt an echo of home. There is a cord about my spirit, and I could sense thee in its shivering. ‘Tis how I discovered thy dreams and the dreams of thy kin. ‘Tis how I commune with thee. In time, I shall sever the cord. I must. I cannot be a God myself whilst fraternizing with another.”

Moiragh was more than a little startled at the revelation. A sliver of her Godhood was embedded in them. If she carded through the mycelia of her influence, would she know which one was anchored to them?

“I do not understand,” she rebutted. “-what that has to do with my other father.”

They laughed, not unkindly, “Thou knowest thy father already. ‘Tis not beyond the ken of Truth. Thou needst only ask it, and the God will reveal all.”

Will you?

Somewhere, her body twitched. The physical cost of communion was not negated even in the dream. Truth shuddered. She was poised over the puddle that was her Vessel, incorporeal fangs dripping. This was a meal she’d yearned for. A succulent carcass of memory greasy with blood and fat.

“I want to see it,” she told her host.

“I will hold onto thee so that thou’rt not lost again,” they promised.

“Thank you.”

She was stripped of her soul in these visions. Moiragh the girl of flesh could not be allowed to taint Truth with the imperfection of her perception. It was vital that all remained objective. The wound would be welcomed later.

She saw the face of her second father. She heard his name.

Varré.

Though she had never seen him before, she recognized his likeness at once. She’d beheld something like it every time she pilfered Marie’s Veil.

Her aquiline nose had come from Mohg. And her Omen features did well to muddle the rest. But with them removed… she had Varré’s eyes. Varré’s cheekbones. The dimple in his chin.

The favored servant of the Lord of Blood.

The truth of her conception was laid before her. There was Mohg, sick with despair and shame. And there was Varré, tacky with a love Moiragh did not recognize. He had invited himself to his Lord’s bed. Had lusted after his sadness. Mohg’s consent had been acquiescing. Tolerant. Lonely.

The Lord of Blood cursed his infidelity and weakness

The truth of her ill-health was presented next. Mohg carried his clutch sick. He ate naught but ash and vomited even that. He grew thinner and frailer. And if his eye grazed over the slight bump of his abdomen, he ignored it. He neglected the needs of his gravid body to nurture the agony of his heart.

Moiragh was an unwanted bastard.

Mohg raised his fist over his still-wet clutch. Four speckled eggs freshly laid. Conceived in shame- an embarrassment to his dead husband’s memory. He was commanded to give them up in consequence for his failures as vassal. He was commanded to crush them. He nearly gave in.

Mohg abandoned the nest instead. The eggs languished. Three never grew beyond those first few weeks. They never became more than filament veins and gooey clumps. The fetus that would be Moiragh persisted. Mohg abandoned the nest for six months. Then he gave the final egg to Varré.

Varré hacked apart the sturdy shell. He was driven mad by the blood in his veins- by that choking, unpalatable love. He did not see a daughter in that egg. He saw a divinity to claim. To be favored by.

Moiragh watched herself be hauled out of her yolk. Her amniotic sac ripped by tooth and by knife. She saw the other eggs crushed. In case there was something worthwhile inside. Varré decided that there hadn’t been.

Moiragh was always meant to be a sacrifice. Payment for the Vassal’s misdeeds.

There was a starving, trembling, malformed hatchling on a womb-shaped altar. Blood was dabbed at her mouth. Brushed over her tongue with reverent fingers. She was cold, frightened, and pained.

If a God hadn’t accepted her body and soul, she would have died.

Varré would have killed his daughter.

And because of that…

Lord Morgott, Vessel of the Greater Will, destroyed his brother’s Dynasty.

Varré was squashed beneath Morgott’s bone-hewn stave. His viscera melded with the gore of his fellows. Dozens of Mohgwyn faithful died to protect him and Lord Mohg’s holy offspring.

The Greater Will and his indifferent twin robbed Truth of her legacy.

Morgott’s bloodstained hands reached into the makeshift cradle. His callouses were abrasive to infant Moiragh’s fragile skin. It was agony to be so hungry and chill. It was agony again to be touched by golden warmth. The cry mounting in her gasping lungs managed only a pitiful wheeze.

__________________

Moiragh woke up screaming. Her godly and mortal halves entwined again, and her flesh was seared with the torture of revelation. She wailed until she couldn’t breathe- until her body clammed up to shake and warble and sob.

She pulled at her hair. Yanked out clumps of silky silver strands. And the pain of that couldn’t match all she had seen, so she set her claws to her arms. Scratched and scratched until hot blood coated her fingernails. And the pain of that wasn’t enough so she-

“Moiragh!” It was Quick Heart’s shout, her voice nearly smothered by the thunder of her pulse.

The Mother of Truth craves wounds.

“That is enough!” It was Salza’s rougher order, barked in exasperation.

Her wrists were grabbed and she howled in terror. Blunt nails dug into her skin as she was shaken. She was jarred loose from the vice of her horror, leaving her startlingly hollow. Remembering her cage in the waking world, she was drained to the dregs of her strength. Not even Samandari’s myriad of hurts were nourishing anymore. She was wilting. She refused to open her eyes to the nightmare her life had become.

Eventually, Salza dropped her in disgust. He muttered curses under his breath. Moiragh heard bones pop as he shook out his wrists. Her own blood spattered across her face. The sensation coaxed forth more shuddering, silent sobs.

I am a sacrifice still. Varré’s death meant nothing.

“I leave thy charge to thee, Wife,” Salza said blandly. “I can bear this farce no more today.”

So there would be no more humiliating questions to endure.

He knows too little. And I too much.

Samandari guided Moiragh’s head into her lap with trembling hands. The girl’s heart raced as she stroked Moiragh’s back. Her fingers traced the prominent bumps of Moiragh’s spine. A few croaky notes throbbed in Samandari’s throat- a feeble, tuneless song. But the Vessel of Truth had no need for a lullaby, cursed as she was.

Chapter Text

The gaol was a marvel of enchantment. Raya Lucaria was so immersed in sorcery that every brick of the academy was coated in the Primeval Current’s glittering silt. The cave system chiseled into the mountains surrounding Belurat was similarly steeped in magic. Ancient hornsent had bound wraiths and storm spirits to the purpose of keeping the hollow glacier tortuously frigid rather than utilizing moonlit glintstone.

Aster was so cold he could hardly feel the hands prodding him. Thick fingers, entombed in layers of oiled leather, poked the numb flesh at his brow- turned his head this way and that. Mapped the whorling scars etched into his body. The hornsent handling him audibly winced.

“Excise thy pity. Note the marks upon him. He was not infected. He is the source. The Frenzy doth not take unwilling hosts.” In the confines of the cell, Jori’s abrasive condemnations were a clap to the ear. The physician’s gloved hand flinched against Aster’s skin. Jori tsked again, “Avert thy gaze. The veil doth ward against infection, but refrain from peering too closely.”

“Yes, Sister Jori.”

The physician’s response did not satisfy the Inquisitor. Her boots scuffed on the gravelly ground as she paced. “Thou hast done enough. Thou art dismissed.”

“But Sister, I have yet to attempt a cleansing.”

The old woman sneered. “Art thou deaf? His spirit is wed to malfeasance. Cleanse thyself instead and put the monster from thy mind.”

The cautious touch withdrew without another word of protest, leaving Aster alone with the Inquisitor.

Jori’s long sigh slipped and sizzled across the ice. The cave groaned with her. A stillborn breath brewed in its frozen lungs.

“Wretched mongrel,” the Inquisitor muttered. “Thy bondage hath not dulled thy wits.”

Aster’s tongue felt as though it had congealed to his jaw. He could not feasibly admit that her estimation of his cleverness was quite the compliment seeing as he didn’t know what she was talking about. He’d shivered complacently through the invasive examination. Too chilled and pained and confused for banter.

Jori continued, “The parasite doth latch onto a weakened beast to gorge. The Graceborn witch aided thine escape, and thou brought the plague of madness to the last of the great hornsent cities. Thou hid within the chaos of a siege… That was surely thine intent, Demon. The Inquisitors of old razed the Manse to keep the Lord at bay. Now thou wouldst force me to do the same to Belurat.”

She sounded half-mad herself- not quite speaking to Aster, but past him.

Aster wheezed, “I didn’t…”

Jori snarled, “Wilt thou be satisfied with a cull?”

He swallowed. His throat was so dry it was liable to rupture. “...No?”

“The Graceborn witch will be found, if she hath not fled. I would have the names of thine other companions. Thine allies and compatriots. Then thou wilt give me thy victims, those thou swindled into granting thee care and succor. Those souls thou seeded with madness.”

Aster was not so addled he could not glean her intent. He thought of the two hornsent that had remained in the hospital with the patients too fragile to evacuate. The faint rasp of their thumbs testing the edges of their meager blades clawed at Aster’s ears. He didn’t even know their names. But what a lark it would be if they’d managed to survive the siege just to be executed for breathing his air.

But that tended to happen, didn’t it? He had a habit of marking people for death. Even if he didn’t always deliver the killing blow himself.

The little bells Jori wore in her horns jingled as she lunged toward him. She did not touch him, but he could sense how she loomed. How she leered. Immense for her ferocity to his blind imagination.

She hissed, “Well, Chaos? Grant me names, the innocent and condemned. Reap thy discord. Guide my hand, for I am compelled by thy confession.”

Aster could not say he didn’t mentally riffle through the people he’d met during his brief stretches of consciousness. There weren’t many. Surely the physicians had addressed their charges by name as they’d flitted past his sickbed, but he had not thought to commit them to memory. One of the city’s leaders was only referred to as ‘Grandam’. And there had been that one man Ansbach had grumbled about- Cyprus. The name stuck out solely because it sounded alike to ‘Cyrielle’.

“I… am no social butterfly, Jori.”

Her response warmed his cheek. Embers sparked in his sinuses and the roots of his teeth. Fortunately for Jori, the flint of her strike did not ignite the Flame of Frenzy. It was merely molten pain that flared in his mouth. She had not used her bare hand to hit him, but a small club- or a stone she’d picked up off the floor.

“Mock me at thine own peril,” she warned.

“W-why should I answer a-at all if you-“

She bruised his other cheek before he could stammer through his quip. He decided it was a mercy. His biting wit was not served by a swollen tongue and chattering teeth.

“Names!” the Sister barked. “Thy congregation shall attend thee in thy grave. Perhaps a frigid tomb shall suit thee better than a manse of ash.”

“It w-would not.”

He spat up blood onto his bare chest as he was hit again. The globules oozed unpleasantly into his sparse body hair. His teeth felt loose in his skull; he prodded them with his useless tongue half-expecting them to fall out. Jori panted against his forehead. She was not winded.

“Wilt thou not speak?”

Aster coughed. He wasn’t sure what else he was supposed to have done with mucus and blood dripping down the back of his throat, but the Inquisitor took offense. Eventually she stopped tenderizing his face. As though she realized he wouldn’t be able to mutter much beyond garbled groans if she shattered his jaw. But that meant she could afford to be less kind to the rest of him.

Jori was an aged woman. Even with her blunted weapon, Aster’s withered body remembered worse beatings from bigger bullies. But the old goat got him screaming before long. His arms and legs, restrained in irons, were spared the usual torturer’s games. His nails were not pried form their beds. Screws were not driven between the bones of his hand- the sort of things he vaguely recalled in stripped and scoured memories. Jori simply swatted his cracked and throbbing ribs.

Give her names. Sanity sighed. In a voice like a gentle knuckle to Aster’s cheek. So kind as to be condescending.

Jori had discarded her bludgeon for a knife. Its tip slid beneath the scars the Three Fingers had charred into him. He was meticulously flayed as the holy Sister explained that the blade had been carved from the horn of an ancient Inquisitor. She boasted that the edge was kept eternally sharp by the wraiths that inhabited it. Aster had never been peeled like a citrus before, so he could not say if the haunted knife hurt particularly worse than one that wasn’t brimming with ghosts.

Unbind your tongue and relinquish your pride. Let the woman believe you are condemning her people to death. She shall make your disciples for you.

Aster shuddered in his chair. Inexplicably he saw a house aflame. Ash draped over the surrounding trees like a funerary shroud. Choking snow. The brittle grass underfoot was stained with it. In the sweltering fog, ten men knelt. Thin, naked, beheaded. Shards of stone the color of fire were stabbed into the weeping stumps of their necks. Their hands were clasped before them as though in prayer. But it was only because ropes bound their wrists.

You must save yourself. It will all have been for nothing if you do not. Give her names.

“Sir Ansbach,” Jori shouted suddenly, enthralled.

The name had slipped past his numbed lips unbidden. The Inquisitor leapt upon the utterance like a starved hound upon scraps. He heard her pad out of the cell to shriek at her underlings.

“Findest thou the Graceborn knight Ansbach! Let us see if his tongue is any looser than his master’s.”

He will hate me now, Aster thought stupidly. His heart sank into Sanity’s cupped hands.

No, it crooned. He shall rejoice for your coming.

—----------------------

If Aster was truly a madman, then he would be able to gnaw off his own tongue. After Cyprus’s name had been viciously coaxed out of his throat, he had tried. He’d pinched the muscle between his teeth and drawn blood. But he’d lost his nerve immediately. He whimpered in his chair, drooling, as Jori conversed with another Inquisitor.

“I know Cyprus. He is the Grandam’s favored ward and Warrior. Take him, but treat him gently. The hag will howl, but she had best save her breath for prayer. If her boy’s eyes doth betray his corruption, then we must assume the Grandam is similarly tainted… Spirits…” She sounded tired, Jori. Drained of her gusto. “No, I shall go myself. The Grandam will heed me and no other.”

“Yes, Sister Jori,” her morose physician intoned.

“Have the demon brought to the starless tomb. Have the sword prepared for my return. One of his arms doth fester. It requireth removal before the ritual.”

No doubt Jori relished leaving Aster to dwell upon his impending amputation. The metal of his fetters had grown so cold they were biting into his skin. If the Inquisitors let him alone for long enough, the ice would do most of their work for them. Jori could give his elbow a kick and the whole limb would shatter like glass.

He imagined it, deep red hunks of carmine skittering over slick stone. Their rinds compromised of his blue-black frostbitten skin. The various infections of the Outer Gods in him discoloring his gemstone morsels…

Jori had said his arm was festering, referring to the limb where Miquella’s needle had once resided. Aster could forget how dark and swollen and painful it was. But the torments of the present eclipsed that particular hurt.

“They know I was taken, don’t they?” he asked the silence in a threadbare murmur.

A pointless question. Even if Cyrielle and her ilk were aware of his plight, they had no incentive to rescue him.

He was feverish. The chill became a swelter. Sweat beaded on his face. As though there was a bonfire mere centimeters from his nose. He could see it is his mind, a pyre of branches. Gold, orange, red. Gold again. Cinders piled up around him, but it did not smother the flames catching on his torn clothes. His hair.

He jumped as voices jolted him from his torpor. Or, rather, it was the sword the gaolers brought into his cell that alarmed him. Its coiled blade coalesced in his sight as a pale brand. In his vision, the powdery ashes of the Erdtree were replaced with charcoal and papery black flakes. The destruction of books and art and finery.

The iron mask was shoved over his head unceremoniously. The visions went but the sword remained. One Inquisitor held it while another with clumsy hands coddled by gloves undid some of Aster’s bonds.

“Should we take the arm here or in the Starless chamber?” the presumed swordbearer asked.

“More of a mess if we do it here,” the second Inquisitor replied blandly. Though her tone wavered. She misliked handling Aster as much as he misliked being handled.

“It’s already a dreadful mess,” the swordbearer muttered. “The cell is melting. The spirits flee the Wraith-eater.”

The chains fell away with a clattering cacophony. Aster hissed as the gloved Inquisitor wrenched his stiff and cramping arm from behind his back. She thrust it forward. Aster’s fingers twitched like the legs of a dying spider.

“Here, if you are so eager,” the woman said.

The golden sword began to rise. It did not even have a cutting edge.

“No,” the swordbearing Inquisitor relented. “We shall await Sister Jori’s return. Get him standing.”

Irons yet strangled Aster’s ankles, but he was hauled to his feet. He was upright for a moment before his legs failed him. He slumped against the Inquisitor-

You must save yourself.

His grasping hand clutched at her throat, and the decision was made for him. His grip was weak, but the seal branded into his palm flared against her throat. He burned and burned and burned until char rimed his nostrils. Until char gloved his fingers.

She fell, nearly toppling Aster with her. But that allowed him to duck beneath the warding sword before it fell upon his neck. He lurched, colliding into an icy wall. The second Inquisitor loudly retched. Aster sympathized. The reek was abhorrent.

The ice wept beneath Aster’s fingers. The lukewarm trickle dripped off of his elbow. His insensible phalanges found the metal frame of a doorway. He pulled himself across the threshold- his breath was as hot as steam against his lips. There was a furnace within him, and his guts were the kindling.

An armored hand scruffed him, and he twisted like a feral tom.

“Kill him! Kill him now!” The swordbearer squealed.

A dagger pierced deep under his ribs. The desperation of the jab spared his heart the bite of steel. But his heel slid out from under him. He crumpled onto the frosted floor, spine twinging from the impact. Though he was stunned, he could feel his body continue to slide down a subtle slope. Just a few centimeters. His leg dangled over an edge. Then his thigh. His panicked captor tried to yank him back onto solid ground to no avail. They were hardly gentle; every pinch, pull, and scratch inflamed Aster’s fresh wounds. He squirmed, shrieking, and the lackwit holding him lost their nerve. Aster was released, and the abyss below claimed him when his feeble, scrabbling fingers failed to find purchase.

The air was so cold his startled scream crystallized in his chest. He clawed for a handhold, but his blunt and broken nails only tore at air. He was going to die. Finally.

They would prefer that, yes.

Aster exploded into viscera when he hit the ground.

His organs liquefied; he burst like a ripe peach. Foul blood painted every exposed centimeter of skin. As though he were dropped instead into the boiling lake of Mohgwyn. He sucked thin sips of air into his uncooperative lungs, tasting his rotted gore.

Sinking into a cushion of tender meat, he realized that if he had truly been dashed to pieces, he would not be capable of thought, let alone sensation. He heard shouting overhead. But the dull roar of flowing ice melt obscured his captors’ voices. He curled his swollen hands into loose fists. Every labored breath taxed each injury he’d been recently gifted.

He was alive.

You are alive.

Because, Current take him, he hadn’t been turned into a greasy smear. But it was meat he lay in all the same. Warm despite the frigid surroundings. Wrong.

Aster had no strength left to him. His limbs pressed into flesh- his fingers were laced- fettered- by tacky capillaries. A wet exhale gurgled against his spine. Maws of splintered teeth gummed at his calves.

Something across from him moaned. Too human.

Its muted call roused a chorus of guttering wheezes. Strangled gasps. Agitated lowing. He could not see what was crawling towards him, but he could hear them.

Gods, he could hear them.

Chapter Text

The caverns beneath Belurat were deceptively vast. Icemelt carved magnificent features into the rock and invited a chill into its empty spaces. Cyrielle was nostalgic for Siofra- though Siofra was grander and more temperate by far.

Morgott does not like being underground, she thought with sympathy. That is why he is so sullen.

She recalled fondly the day King Morgott had sent ‘Margit’ with her to investigate Ranni’s interest in the sunken Eternal Cities. She had not known, then, that the King she’d sworn herself to was the Fell Omen in disguise. Together, they had bathed in the shallows of Siofra’s clear, cool pools. A hundred years hence, her divinely crafted body remembered how her Tarnished one had grown warm- her insides aflutter- at the sight of Margit’s naked form. The false stars had shone upon him kindly.

If someone had asked her then if she loved the Omen, she would have been hard-pressed to deny it.

He walked ahead of her. Shoulders hunched, tail taut, and jaw clenched. The ghostflame torch in his fist made him a stark composite of shadows and sterling luminosity. He wore a plain yellow cloak. The tassels at its hem shivered with his tread. His hair was loose- a cape of silver laid across his shoulders. He had consented to a few braids to keep it from tangling in his horns. But a God did not need to march in the trappings of a Lord to be recognized as such. Morgott had maimed- cursed- Messmer’s men with a gesture. He would be fearsome and beautiful clad in the Fell Omen’s rags. Cyrielle hoped it was not guilt compelling his modesty. Thousands of lives had been saved by the damnation of a brutish few.

A low rumble pried Cyrielle’s sentimental gaze from her husband. Mohg towered over everyone at the head of the expedition. But it was the Warrior Cyprus that guided them through the subterranean labyrinth. He was smirking beneath his close-cropped beard, and the sound like a tremor stealing through the earth was Mohg’s subtle laughter.

The mere sight of Cyprus still made Cyrielle’s blood simmer. But it proved challenging to hold onto her anger. The amber glow atop the Warrior’s stave was a spot of warmth amidst the flickering procession of ghostflame torches. It seemed to set the gilt feathers in Mohg’s plumage aflame. The ground was slick, and the terrain hostile. Cyprus moved stiffly, and he tired quickly. So, he leaned against Mohg’s offered forearm.

Though unmarried, Mohg was not earnestly pursued. Those ambitious and courageous enough to consider courting God’s infamous twin found his holdings within Siofra unappealing- too wild, too distant, and too dangerous. Too unsettled to be profitable. Mohg was more often the wooer than the wooed. Even then, his prospective partnerships inevitably fizzled- at his discretion.

He is fickle, Cyrielle remembered Morgott’s sniffed assessment. He is flattered by adoration, but he is as swiftly bored as he is impassioned.

Cyrielle had accused her husband of being unfair. Mohg had lost his husband first, then Varré. He might be choosy, but anyone would be with the specters of lost loves looming over them…

Morgott had gotten irritable then, and the matter was put to rest.

Cyprus was as tall as Cyrielle was, if broader. But beside Mohg, he was small- a whiskered carp in the talons of an eagle. The scales on his forearms glimmered silver, indigo, and periwinkle in the torchlight. The hornsent were not all white-haired like Omen, but Cyprus was. The horns that erupted from his tousled mop were smooth- alike to antlers. The tines pale and the bases the same blue-gray as his skin. His eyes were flinty rubies and his mouth a wide sneer. But when he was not in a foul mood- which was not often- his long lashes softened his glare.

I hope Mohg finds happiness with that one.

Her wandering eyes slipped to her daughter. From behind, she was the very vision of her father. Their precious sapling was hearty and strong of root. Unlike her uncle, Marie had fascinated the Lands Between since she was a downy cub. The Shattering War and the desecration of the Erdtree had devastated half a hundred noble houses. Which meant the hand of the Elden Lord’s eldest was the most coveted prize of the Altus Plateau.

She will soon be of age, her husband had murmured not so many years ago. Queen Marika was presumed Eternal. ‘Twas for vanity her immortal children produced hapless heirs. Alas, Tarnished, thy God is a mortal one.

Then she will marry for love, the same as her mother and father.

Prince Godwyn married for duty.

You have seen the Lich of the Deeproots. It is not duty that compels it to protect your brother’s body.

Fortunately, Morgott’s standards proved insurmountable. Every suitor had a damning flaw or a grasping, spineless, embarrassing family. There was no advantage in promising his daughter to any of the beggars that prostrated before him.

Every fool presented to me would diminish her. So let her be diminished by the fool of her choosing!

Marie had chosen no one for herself yet. She had expressed no interest in carving out a kingdom for herself like Godwyn’s progeny had. Cyrielle had awoken as a Tarnished with a weapon in her hand, dusty with grave dirt. Morgott had been abandoned with only his teeth and claws at his disposal. They were warriors both, and their daughter was their prodigy. Marie had won melees enough that she’d grown bored of them. She had bested outlaw bands and hunted Rune bears in the Mistwood. But she had never experienced war until now.

When Morgott had told her that Marie had slain seven of Messmer’s soldiers, Cyrielle had shared in his pride. But Marie wore the mantle of warrior awkwardly. The cloak was not embroidered with glory, but stained by her shame. Years of sparring and hunting had not prepared her for ugly truths: Swords only sing when they strike steel, and the flesh of a man yields to a blade differently than an animal’s. Soldiers will fight to the death whereas bandits are quick to surrender... Marie was a child of peacetime. That could not be remedied.

She is a woman grown, and I cannot always protect her. The thought stung and soothed equally.

The same was true, of course, for her younger children. Cynric, Gwyn, and Morgan. The twins were nearly of age themselves, but Morgan had decades of childhood ahead of him.

If the curse is kind enough to allow him to it…

Morgan was apart from everyone else. He studied the textures and formations of the rock- the way the ice gleamed blue-violet by the light of his torch. He would call out to Marie to point out roosting bats or pale spiders with luminous green abdomens or twitching translucent worms dangling on mucus strings. But his sister was withdrawn. Her replies were terse. So Morgan spoke less and less, retreating into himself. He was a boy well-suited to his own company.

Morgan’s heel skid on a patch of ice. He caught himself, grabbing onto a stalagmite before he could fall. But Cyrielle was there, too. Her gloved hand at his elbow, her unmarred one at his back. Morgan had managed to not drop his torch, and the gray fire was pleasantly cool against her cheek. Her son snorted, amused by his own clumsiness. Ghostflame bleached his blue-and-gold eyes silver. But they were lively.

“You seem distracted,” Cyrielle returned his smile.

“I was thinking about the worms and the spiders,” he took Cyrielle’s hand in his own as he resumed walking. “-and why they glow.”

“To hunt, I imagine. If we snuffed our torches, think of how alluring they would be in such darkness.”

“There are always flies and moths in Leyndell’s tombs. But the webs here are empty. It is too cold.”

Behind them, Morgott cleared his throat. Morgan’s hand slid out of Cyrielle’s as he acknowledged his father. His heat dissipated from her fingertips. Morgott dismissed Morgan with a jerk of his chin. He went ahead, leaving the Elden Lord to her God.

“Tarnished.” The address was leaden. “Thou needst not be the one to assist him. Cyprus-”

“Cyprus is occupied.”

“Sir Ansbach, then.”

“Morgan is not his son.”

It came out sharper than she intended. It earned her Morgott’s silence- a seething sort. His jaw was jutting; he was biting his tongue. But then, he could not stop himself.

“Oleg was foolish in his own way, but he was wise enough to heed me.”

Cyrielle was not Morgott’s first love. He had confessed it at her sick bed, after she had taken the Black Knife’s wound. He had been married once before to the inerrant Banished Knight that had secured Leyndell’s throne in his name.

Morgott had not wanted Cyrielle to be obligated to mourn his past with him. Oleg was his to grieve. She had never minded- she could not help but be grateful to the man that had cared for Morgott before her. But she resented his invocation now.

“Do not use his memory against me!”

Morgott grabbed her, halting her mid-stride. His warm lips pressed to her jaw so that she felt the tremor in his whisper: “‘Twas no wound that cleaved him from me. The Erdtree beckoned his soul, as is natural and just. I had no right to cling to him. The Erdtree calleth thee not, Cyrielle, but a force doth call. Be not tempted by its summons!”

Cyrielle steeled herself as she met her husband’s glare. He clothed his fear in anger, but the cloak was threadbare. She asked, “Did Miquella know this would happen to me?”

Thunder roiled in Morgott’s ribs. “I am uncertain.”

“He promised to break Morgan’s curse. Did he lie?”

“If he did not lie, then he hath forged his promises with arrogance. Miquella attempted to cure Malenia’s Rot, and he failed. I am the vessel of the Greater Will, and even I cannot…” he sighed. “I cannot.”

Cyrielle felt glacially heavy. “I will heal when I return to the Erdtree. But what about our boy?”

It was a question they’d asked one another a hundred times before. It remained unanswered.

Instead, a hoarse scream clawed its way towards them. The fog of Morgott’s breath mingled with Cyrielle’s. A muted golden aura splashed across the cavern walls as Marie conjured a sword. Poor girl, her tail bristled and flicked.

Morgott straightened, releasing Cyrielle. She could not keep from wincing. He had gripped her hard enough to bruise. Not on purpose, she feared. Her body was growing brittle.

The tunnel passed Cyprus’s voice back to them in a thrumming echo, “The gaol is roused.”

Cyprus had spoken of the Belurat caves as though they were haunted. They had once comprised a sprawling gaol. But it had been abandoned to its specters centuries ago. Except, of course, when the Inquisitors needed to spirit someone away.

“The gaol is roused?” The words were out before she could bite them back. There was bitterness left in her after all, unearthed by her husband’s rebuke. “That was no ghost, but the work of your Inquisitors.”

Cyprus’s hair was sparse on his upper lip. He was instead mustached by slender barbels. They flicked irritably; his sizable mouth sagged into a taut frown. He looked all the more a shaggy fish. “Perhaps it was the Wraith-eater, aye.”

It was apparent he blamed her more than Morgott or Mohg for bringing Aster into the city. Lord of the Erdtree and friend of Frenzy, his glare accused. She had had no say in the matter- nor had anyone else. Aster had to be kept under watchful eyes, not forced to roam the wilderness, left to his own devices. Sir Ansbach had been certain that the draught made from his purple flowers would subdue the Flame as Aster slept. Instead, his affliction had been exposed, and he’d been carried off by the Inquisitors. Morgott and Mohg might have warded off the Impaler, but Aster’s presence had been a betrayal. One the hornsent were content to lay at Cyrielle’s feet.

Hundreds of zealous hornsent had pledged to march upon the Shadow Keep with the Omen sons of Marika. Aster’s secret- and promised retrieval- had dampened their enthusiasm. Nonetheless, Morgott had smuggled his family and guides- Cyprus and Ansbach- out of Belurat without alerting his unwanted host. He had admitted to his Lord that he didn’t desire the cumbersome chain of prospective martyrs about his ankles.

To Cyprus, Cyrielle simply replied, “The one who beckoned us here brought him too. We cannot allow him to be killed.”

“He will not be killed. Death does not deter the Demon,” Cyprus muttered. But he argued no further.

The tunnels opened upon into an immense cavern- into the gaol proper. Cells had been chiseled into the stone. Their entrances were overgrown with creeping ice, leaving the frames of the iron doors warped and rusted. There were scattered chairs and a half-collapsed table, rotting from the damp. Like the caves of the Mountaintops of the Giants, the gaol creaked and murmured in the voice of perpetual freeze and thaw. The babbling was drowned by another ragged scream- its echo did not so much bounce as slide into concealing crannies.

The gaol of Belurat was more vast than any tomb or dungeon in the Lands Between. It was a vertical tangle of encrusted bridges and treacherous walkways riming the walls in spiraling tiers. There were eroded stairs and lifts borne on thick chains. Their mechanisms choked by debris or ice. Suspended, too, were jars- big enough for someone of Cyrielle’s size to crawl inside and curl up comfortably. Remains of broken jars littered the floor. As she skirted a heap of shards, Something gave with a grisly pop beneath her heel.

Maggots. Blue-gray like severed, frostbitten fingers. Their innards stained her boot where they had burst. She hurried away, holding the back of her hand to her nose.

Aster’s next harrowed cry was weaker, but undoubtedly nearer. Mohg’s sense for the accursed blood would be his salvation. A festering reek overwhelmed the stink of the crushed maggots. Cyrielle had climbed Mount Gelmir as it had incubated Rykard’s insatiable serpent. She had traversed the Aeonian Swamp. She had visited Mohgwyn Palace while pregnant with Marie. This scent could have rivaled each of those.

Mohg came to a halt before the entrance to what appeared to be a storeroom. There were no cells in this chamber, but jars and scraps of iron and splinters of wooden crates. Food and waste decomposed into soil. Cyrielle stepped over Morgott’s tail for a better view.

There were no Inquisitors as Cyrielle had anticipated. Jori and her Sisters did not greet them with crimson palms and veiled faces. Instead, there was meat.

Spilling from fractured and overturned vessels. Pulsing with the wriggling of corpulent maggots. Fat gone black with decay. Ragged muscle clinging to discolored bone. Corpses congealed and preserved by the frigid climate of the caves. Cyrielle was acutely aware of Cyprus bringing up the rear, shuffling gingerly over the treacherous ground as he panted.

He hissed, “Not even Jori would be fool enough to add a mad host to the innards.”

As if to answer his doubt, the grotesque heap groaned. Marie gagged, rushing off to retch in a corner. Ansbach tried to lead Morgan away, and was rebuffed. Morgott’s tailed bristled as he stared distantly at the far wall. His mind somewhere else. Mohg, though, chuffed as he crossed the threshold.

Crockery shards splintered further beneath his feet. The meatier crack of snapping bone followed as he tread upon the peristaltic slather. Skeletal slimes commonly infested the tombs Cyrielle had explored as a Tarnished. Though she’d never figured out if the creatures merely mimicked the remains they fed upon, or if they were undead unlucky enough to be reanimated as slugs of ruptured organs and crumbling osseous. Belurat’s were akin to the impressive specimens that colonized the ruins once occupied by faithful Mohgwyn dynasts. The Writheblood Ruins and Varré’s Rose Church, overgrown with visceral lichen.

But slimes did not have hands. They rose from the pulp on thin arms and floppy, malformed wrists. Long fingers reached for Mohg’s ankles. Too slow, they caught instead the hem of his robes, his trailing primaries. Fabric and feather slipped from their feeble grasps, painted.

Cyrielle nearly drew her weapon when she saw the faces. Gaunt, eyeless skulls and bloated, slack-mouthed horrors. Half-masked by hair matted with layers of tacky gore.

“Mohg!” Cyprus’s alarm rang out. “Leave it be!”

“Blessed are they, the Mother’s gentle children. They clamber for the accursed blood to soothe. Dear Warrior, they are not half as fearsome as their prey.”

He plunged his claws into the quivering mass. He pried away a trembling skeleton, as glistening red as the surrounding amalgam.

“Oh, Aster,” he crooned, delicately venomous. “Alas, you are unfit to feed anyone.”

“Oh, Aster,” Sir Ansbach echoed. His quiet exhalation laden with the sympathy Mohg- and Cyrielle- lacked.

-------------------------

The gaol tunnels turned them out into a foggy marsh. Morgott hummed his approval as he noted their fortuitous cloak. The gaol passages had ferried them far from Belurat, but Messmer’s army still occupied the Gravesite Plain in their retreat.

Shimmering droplets were condensing in Morgott’s whiskers as he stalked after his brother. Aster was like a babe cradled in the nook of Mohg’s arm. Bloody like a newborn- like a flayed corpse. Mohg and Morgott were adept healers both, but Ranni’s misbegotten Lord was so savaged Cyrielle knew it would be a near thing. Even if she had not lost her skill with Erdtree magics, Aster’s injuries would have been beyond her ability to mend.

The road leading from the gaol was little more than a weedy path of packed earth. Flanked on either side by a vigil of black cages. They were warped and half-buried in silt left by floods. Gruesome mangrove roots. Cyprus suddenly brushed past her, grunting his annoyance. Words itched in Cyrielle’s throat- she spat them out before he could be escape into the mists.

“What were those things?”

He glanced back at her with narrowed eyes. “The elders warn that they were sinners who could not be redeemed.”

Having indulged her curiosity to his satisfaction, he went on- putting the cages of the damned behind him. Cyrielle did the same.

Marie, Sir Ansbach, and Morgan were making camp while Mohg and Morgott made Aster whole again. Washed clean, he seemed all the more like a cadaver. Three limbs were visibly broken. His skinny chest labored for each sip of breath. His hips lay awkwardly, dislocated or worse. Patches of skin were flayed where the Three Fingers had branded him. Every grievous wound was garnished with swellings, bruising, and cuts- the symptoms of beatings. Yet he lived.

“It is unnatural,” Cyprus declared as he approached. Cyrielle had overtaken him on the path to Aster’s cot of pine needles and feathers. “-that this thing survives.”

“The blessed blood of the Mother strengthens this body,” Mohg said, setting Aster’s arm.

Over the Carian Lord’s wailing, Cyprus sneered, “And you would impose this curse on me? No, it is the Frenzy he hosts. It desires that its vessel suffers.”

He is also Tarnished and Ranni’s Lord. He will live on and on. Cyrielle kept her thoughts to herself.

Morgott knelt beside Aster. There was a glow about him- his silver hair was gilded as he called upon his divinity. His hands hovered over Aster- his contempt as plain as the horns on his brow. As though he had been tasked with healing a roach. To Cyprus, he murmured wryly, “Then thine Inquisitors hath done its bidding.”

“The Sisters are not stupid. The Demon cannot be killed through its host, only contained. The Flame becomes preoccupied with the agony of its vessel. Its body is trapped on the cusp of its metamorphosis, but the Lord is never realized. At least, that is the philosophy of the Inquisitors of old,” the Warrior replied.

Mohg issued an inscrutable noise while Morgott looked up from his work to meet his wife’s eyes. Cyrielle remembered Kalé’s people, the Caravan. The Golden Order had imprisoned tens of thousands in a tomb beneath the Shunning Grounds for the belief that they were cavorting with the Three Fingers. Ironically, their torment had drawn the source of Frenzy to them. It had presided over their tomb- their torture- awaiting the emergence of its new Lord. Imprisoned themselves, Morgott and Mohg had discovered the tomb, sealed it, and guarded it. Until Aster had decided to become the Three Finger’s chrysalis.

He was soon halfway human again, Aster. He sweat with a fever, a gift from the Lord of Blood. Open wounds weeped puss or were cauterized before Morgott’s channeled Erdtree magic closed them. Mohg turned his head so he could hack up bile and clots.

“Did Jori give him to the gaol’s sinners?” Cyrielle asked. She idly picked up a damp cloth, compelled by a need to make herself useful. But her insides squirmed like a knot of disturbed serpents as she wiped away Aster’s molten tears.

Cyprus exhaled through his nose. “I doubt it.”

“Escaped…”

Aster’s utterance was disgustingly phlegmy. Morgott’s fingers twitched as though the Carian had spat upon them.

He growled, agitated, “I will return to Belurat in the shade’s form. The Grandam must know of this, if a terrible fate hath befallen the Inquisitors.”

“If that creature murdered Jori...” Cyprus shook his head.

“His fate belongeth to Miquella,” Morgott answered, though he was bitter to say it.

The powers of the Greater Will and the Mother of Truth were miraculous. In mere hours, Aster was restored to adequate health. Exhausted and delirious, but stable. Mohg, Morgott, and Cyprus left him to argue over how to broach the issue to Belurat. Cyrielle was gathering up the sodden, soiled rags to burn when Aster stirred.

“Hey,” he rasped. A pathetic hiss. “Thought… they’d kill me.”

His chapped lips quirked into a frayed smirk. He was trying to be humorous. Trying to lift their spirits- his and hers.

Moiragh is waiting for us, and we’ve wasted too much time cleaning up after you.

Cyrielle swallowed down her vitriol, “Morgott will be sending a message to Belurat. He will need the truth when he gives his report. Tell me how you escaped.”

Who did you kill?

After a contemplative silence, he said, “I fell… exploded into a thousand pieces.”

“You did not.”

“How’d… you know? Weren’t there.”

“A pile of preserved corpses broke your fall.” Innards Cyprus had called them.

Aster’s blistered, scarred face contorted for his confusion, “What?”

Cyrielle was struck with an epiphany. “Do you remember Alexander?”

He issued a noncommittal grunt.

“He helped us defeat Radahn.”

Among other things.

“Oh.”

It was impossible to tell if Aster was attempting to obfuscate his lack of recollection, or if he was simply drained. She sighed, “I’ll let you rest.”

“Wait…”

He reached for her wrist, questing blindly. She moved her hand beyond his reach. This creature wore Aster’s face and took his name, but there was scarcely anything left of her friend. She was the sole keeper of all their happy memories- their companions long gone and triumphs unsung. They had both been scoundrels then, in their own way. Fierce and brutal as Tarnished were expected to be. But that era was behind them, burned and buried like the old Order.

Aster inhaled, quavering. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

A fresher memory surfaced, of the Altus Plateau drowned in ash. The Erdtree reduced to a fragile sapling.

Cyrielle ground her teeth, “You didn’t.”

As far as anyone was aware, the Frenzy hadn’t spread. And Belurat’s sages would be vigilant for symptoms. Fortunately, Frenzy was not like a true plague. Aster could not infect with a touch. It bred in despair and pain. With Messmer repelled and Marika’s Omen sons gone to confront him, the hornsent had seen them off with bolstered hopes.

“I… I thought Rennala was there… in the city,” Aster whispered.

“...She wasn’t.”

“She wasn’t,” he agreed softly. “Cyrielle… I’m sorry.”

“For what?” There was anger in her question- she did not deign to disguise it.

He did not elaborate- only deflated in a grating, thin breath. She stayed with him a few minutes longer until he drifted off to sleep. Ansbach was returning from the marsh with water to boil. Cyprus, Mohg, and Morgott were conversing in terse tones. Marie was digging up crayfish and mollusks from the mud.

Cyrielle rose and went to the aged knight. “Have you seen Morgan?”

“I gave him my spyglass, and I believe he found something worthy of investigation.” Ansbach gestured to where a lopsided mass made an island in the open wetland.

Cyrielle set her boots on the shoreline before stepping into the water. The pebbles that made up the riverbed were smooth, and the chill numbed her toes. She found the sensation pleasant. But that wasn’t entirely shocking anymore.

The structure that had enraptured Morgan’s curiosity was not an eroded hornsent ruin- its shroud disintegrating into slimy scraps. It was a heap of bones. The creature it had been in life difficult to make out. The detritus she had mistaken for black fabric was instead fetid strips of necrotic flesh hanging from the skeleton. Meat so rotted it was unfit for carrion. Its face was half-obscured by its own decomposition. A bleached horn jutted up from the nose of a beaked muzzle. Jagged fangs rimed the slack jaw. Morgan was stroking the remains inquisitively.

When Cyrielle greeted him, he startled. Wiping his hands on his trousers, he left a streak of grime on his borrowed clothes.

“Are we leaving?” he asked as she came to stand beside him.

This close, it was apparent the creature had been enormous. The horn on its snout was more than a head taller than she was.

“Not quite. She gazed into the beast’s vacant eye socket. “Aster is not fit to come with us. But we cannot bring him back to Belurat. The city is not safe for him. So…”

Cyrielle trailed off as Morgan furtively reached for the skeletal maw again.

"I do not think you should touch the dead, Morgan.”

“But she is not dead.”

“Then we should leave her to her rest and be on our way. The undead are not like spirits. Their bodies are not puppets you can command.”

Her son squinted, offended. “I do not want to command her. I want to ask a favor.”

“That is not a wise idea, either.”

“She could fly you to the castle! It would be so much faster!”

Morgott was right. Morgan was growing willful.

“Please, Mum,” he begged with plaintive, childish desperation. One of his hands went to his collarbone, brushing against the ward lurking beneath his skin. His cheeks flushed with the rims of his eyelids. Cyrielle’s own scarred arm, likewise seeded with holy Gold, spasmed as she steadied him.

“Breathe, Morgan.” Shaking off her stinging aches, she felt his throat and forehead with her gloveless hand. His pulse was quick but strong, and he was not overwarm. He inhaled, slow and deep, at her instruction.

And when he exhaled, the skeleton did too.

The joints of its forearms creaked like the dry branches of trees as they shifted. Cyrielle saw that they were ragged wings as it heaved its hollow chest from the mire. Mud and more sloughed from its ribs, and within, an ember ignited. A dragon’s shrill roar gurgled around viscous decomposition. But the furnace of its chest flared brighter until a spout of flame pooled within its jaws. Cyrielle was hauling Morgan back to the shoreline as the dragon took its first stumbling step, oozing frigid fire.

A lance of gold stabbed through the dragon’s rotted esophagus. The concussive thrum of holy magic beat against Cyrielle’s ribs. As her legs buckled, she dragged Morgan into the shallows with her. He writhed, trying to escape her rictis grip. All the while she gaped like a beached fish to get cold air into her lungs.

“Da! Stop!” Morgan wrenched himself free. His pleas were barely audible over the shriek of the dragon.

Cyrielle watched Morgan run to the shore. A fine, frosty spray kicked up for his haste. Her own body reacted sluggishly, deaf to her commands. Her mouth filled with muddy ice water as she gasped. Powerless as the dragon thrashed behind her.

“Get thee to shore!” Morgott snapped as Morgan anxiously danced around him.

Cyrielle’s vision was blurring when Morgott reached her- lifted her out of the water to hold her to his chest. The fire of his blood banished the numbness that had seized her limbs. But he shivered for them both.

Dripping a slurry of muck and fire from its exposed bones, the dragon twisted its serpentine neck. It grasped the spear in its putrid flesh with its foot and tore it away. By then, Marie had come, hefting a conjured axe. Mohg too, claws tensed and a pearl of drool at the tip of a fang.

Morgan slipped between them, careful not to brush against anyone. He held up his hands in surrender as Morgott sounded a warning growl.

“I am sorry,” Cyrielle’s youngest said. “I am sorry. They will not hurt you. I promise.”

The dragon regarded them with an empty-eyed stare. It- she- panted without lungs, the flame in her chest sputtering as though to mimic breath regardless. There was no tongue in her jaws, but a congealed lump of putrid marsh plants. Yet she chuffed as she bowed her head in deference to the little Demigod.

Chapter Text

A plume of smoke wafted from the forest below. As dense and rank as Gelmir’s volcanic emissions. The undead dragon soared over a black scar in the earth- a jagged wound flanked by verdant wilderness. There, Morgott beheld for the first time a furnace golem yet kindled.

On dragon’s back, the wind snatched one’s voice from their mouth before it could be molded. It was impossible to hear someone lest their lips were pressed to an ear. No one wasted their breath commenting on the monstrosity. But the dragon shuddered, and a sense of dull dread was shared between its riders.

The furnace did not look up- it was incapable of doing so. But the dragon’s shadow passed over its smoldering brazier. It roused from its mindless patrol. Magma oozed between its charred staves as its core flared. Leaves and pine needles were devoured by the heat, reduced to spiraling curls of smoke.

The construct erupted, spewed molten debris skyward.

The dragon was in no danger; the flaming projectiles had no hope of reaching it. Marie exclaimed, but her words were torn away before Morgott heard them. He twisted where he sat upon the mount’s spine. The furnace clumsily trudged after them as its own fire rained upon it. The surrounding forest was ablaze, shrouded by a haze of smoke. The furnace dwindled into the distance, unable to keep pace.

———————————-

Morgan sat at the dragon’s neck with Cyrielle directly behind him. The undead creature followed Morgan’s commands, but only Sir Ansbach knew how to find their destination, Manus Metyr. Shouted instructions passed from Ansbach’s lips to Morgan’s ear with the Elden Lord playing intermediary. The arrangement was not ineffectual. By the late hours of evening, Morgan was directing his mount to descend.

The landing was as smooth as could be expected. Nonetheless, the impact jarred Morgott’s spine. He became aware of how much his body ached now that he did not have to worry about plummeting to an undignified demise. He envied Mohg, who had elected to fly with his own wings.

His twin alighted with Cyprus in his arms. The severity of the Warrior’s old injuries made him unable to sit astride the dragon for long. His griping and hissing had prompted Mohg to offer to carry him. Cyprus clutched a fistful of Mohg’s chest plumage. His other arm was anchored around Mohg’s neck. He regarded the ground with bulging, distrustful eyes. As though if Mohg dropped him, he might be dashed to a smear of viscera.

“Get your legs beneath you,” Mohg ordered with uncharacteristic patience.

Cyprus gasped, “I cannot.”

“If it is your want to be brought before the Graceborn Count cradled like a bairn, I will not refuse you.”

“N-no! No, I can…. I am dizzy, is all. Give me a bloody moment!”

Mohg chuckled, and Morgott turned away to hide his scowl. Mohg’s wings sagged, dragging his gleaming primaries through mud. His brow was damp with perspiration, as was his feathery chest. The wounds on his arms had reopened- evidenced by the red blotches blooming on his bandages. Mohg was overexerting himself. For the sake of flirtation.

Cyprus was a capable man, but Morgott suspected it was not for his prowess in battle that Mohg had insisted upon his presence. Not when he and Morgott both had refused a hundred other willing swords. Mohg could not help but collect people. He was slipping into old habits.

Though… Morgott appraised the rest of the party as they dismounted- or were dragged off like cargo, in wretched Carian’s case. His ailing wife. His ailing son. A half-mad elderly knight. A wholly mad Frenzied invalid. His green daughter with her first blood still tacky on her conscience. These were the people he had chosen to storm Messmer’s sanctum. Morgott’s heart was behind his teeth. It had been forced up his throat for the fist squeezing his rib cage.

Mohg’s jaw clacked, wary. The sound of gnashing teeth precluded a territorial snarl. No matter the distance laid by the passage of centuries, Morgott remained fluent in the wordless language of the Shunning Grounds. His twin’s warning flushed the threat from the treeline’s cover: a lithe woman clad in lusterless armor as deep as night. Of course, the arrival of an undead dragon would not have gone unnoticed.

“Count Ymir sends his apologies.” She bowed, though it was shallow. “He cannot leave Manus Metyr, but is eager to greet you all within.”

“All well?” Sir Ansbach asked, stepping forward.

“Well enough,” the clipped reply. “You are always welcome, Sir Ansbach. But I pray you have not come to take advantage of Count Ymir’s hospitality. We do not know these people you bring, and on such a conspicuous steed.”

She did not conceal her contempt. Morgott pondered whether it was arrogance or folly that compelled her to advertise her distrust, if she indeed believed them a threat. He scented the air; if the swordswoman had allies hidden in the marsh, he could not sense them.

Ansbach inclined his head. “Jolán, my companions will cause Count Ymir no trouble. I swear it.”

Jolán sniffed, “Swear also that they bring no trouble. I cannot fathom your intent, Sir, in delivering a band of hornsent to the shadow of Lord Messmer’s castle.”

Mohg’s withering growl draped itself over Ansbach’s rebuttal, smothering it in the cradle of his throat. “Our intent is no secret. We seek your master’s aid in a matter most urgent. Now, may we entreat with the Count? Or shall we dither a while longer?”

“Fine manners indeed,” Jolán sneered. “This way. But the dragon corpse will come no further.”

The dragon corpse in question was not offended by the blunt dismissal. The fire in its breast dimmed to blue-gray embers. Morgott doubted if the dead could tire, but the dragon seemed content as its bones settled into the marsh. Morgan patted its flesh-peeled jawbone. Morgott’s own jaw was so tense he thought he heard his molars creak.

“Thank you.” Morgan stroked its horned nose. “I am glad to have met you.”

The dragon lowed- issued an indecipherable bestial response. Then it went still altogether, its flame extinguished. Morgott was glad to be rid of it.

The road through the wetland was a sinuous mound of packed earth reinforced with the occasional stretch of embedded logs. Morgott observed his surroundings in twilight’s sterling cast as he walked. Waterfowl waded in shallow pools. Dragonflies as long as his hand shimmered on reeds. Crows raucously invited their fellows to roost...

Something moved between the trees- stilted and stiff, like a hunting heron. But its form was distinctly human. Dusk glinted off of metal, and Morgott saw that it was not alone. As they limped through the fog, he realized why he had not sensed them earlier.

“Carian constructs,” he seethed. Jolán had not been unattended after all. The swamp was bristling with hideous glintstone marionettes.

Sir Ansbach murmured beside him, “Count Ymir was once a prestigious glintstone sorcerer of the Carian house. But the moon has not possessed his allegiance for an Age. He says that its gaudy allure is a distraction that prevents his peers from grasping the dark beyond the stars.”

Morgott grunted. A Carian that derided the moon was preferable to one that lauded it. But that did not make this sorcerer worthy of his trust.

Softly, Ansbach added, “He is a friend, my Lord.”

Morgott bit back his retort. He lacked confidence in a defected Mohgwyn knight’s ability to choose his peers discerningly.

Manus Metyr was a massive cathedral dominated by Liurnian aesthetics. It rose from a clearing, surrounded by clear waters that reflected the night’s tapestry- a mirror smudged by clambering lily pads and reeds. More marionettes stalked the grounds, shins dingy with algae. They did not react as Jolán led the Count’s guests up the cathedral steps.

The interior was stiflingly benighted. The impractical blue flame of glintstone torches heaped muggy shadows in every corner. Manus Metyr was undoubtedly occupied, but also startlingly empty. With his court of marionettes, it seemed Count Ymir’s sole flesh-and-blood companion was Jolán, the household guard.

Count Ymir himself scurried into the main hall, breathless for his haste. He was of blatant Liurnian heritage, unsurprisingly. Grace was a transparent sheen over amethyst irises. His hair, gathered into netting to accommodate his absurd hat, was sable. But his complexion was pale- befitting that of a people besotted with the sunless sky.

His visage was common, but his clothing was strange for a glintstone sorcerer. The engraving on his hat was a whorling fingerprint pattern. Even the ruff of his collar evoked a fan of splayed fingers- poised to clutch at his throat. His robe was dyed a rich violet and embroidered with gilt thread. For a Carian, he certainly had an affinity for gold, and it made him the brightest thing in Manus Metyr.

“Welcome! Welcome!” his jovial greeting echoed in the vaulted ceiling of his decrepit church. He went to the high-backed seat upon the dais, but did not sit. “I beg you to forgive the state of things. It is not often we receive guests!”

Morgott had no trouble believing that.

Sir Ansbach facilitated the introductions. Morgott noted that the senile knight neglected to offer anyone’s names. As defective as the man’s faculties were, it was obvious that he did so deliberately. As it was, the Count did not appear to care, if he noticed at all.

"I was walking with Yuri when I witnessed the ghostflame dragon soaring over our hill! I suspected it was you, Sir, or one of your compatriots. There are few in the Realm of Shadow equal to your company in reckless courage!”

Sir Ansbach laughed. “How is Yuri these days?”

Count Ymir deflated somewhat. “I am afraid he has taken ill. The poor boy is lethargic. I had hoped a bit of sun and warmth would invigorate him.”

“I am sorry to hear that.”

Ymir waved a gloved hand, “Rest assured that you will not find him underfoot, at least! Now, Sir Ansbach, do not keep me in suspense. You are plotting, It is surely your wish that I play a part.”

Morgott’s brows furrowed. The sorcerer prattled like a bored handmaid, but he was no fool.

Sir Ansbach was forthright, “We require entrance into the Shadow Keep.”

“Sir Ansbach,” Ymir said levelly. His smile cooled as his gaze swept over his audience. “I appreciate that you are not a man enticed to frivolous pursuits. But I pray you have impressed upon your hornsent company the danger posed in infiltrating the Keep-”

“The Impaler has stolen my daughter!” Mohg strode forward, his trailing, muddied feathers tracked streaks across the polished marble. “We have come from Belurat. I require no lecture from you, gentle host, about the perils within that castle! Caution will not spare my child, for she inherited my blessings. If she is maimed, then so am I. If she is dead, then I will follow her.”

Mohg glared down his nose as the Count, but he was pleading. Though his groveling was alloyed with threat. It was unclear to Morgott if Ymir registered the danger he was in. It was sympathy writ into his frown rather than alarm. Mohg had managed to touch the man’s heart when he had meant to pierce it through.

“Very well. I will be of help. I will grant you passage into the Shadow Keep and pray for the stars to guide you,” the Count declared.

Sir Ansbach blinked, taken aback. Even Mohg stalled, fists clenched. He had expected more of a fight. In truth, so had Morgott.

Ymir’s black brow furrowed, “Is something the matter?”

“No.” Morgott approached the Count. The man was small, shorter than Cyrielle had been in her Tarnished body. But he was unafraid. Jolán gripped the pommel of her sword, but it was apparent she did not act without her master’s orders.

Ymir answered the unspoken question fouling the stale silence. “The promise of glory seduced many Carians when the crusade began.” Cyprus audibly spat on the floor. Ymir paid him no mind. “I was no exception. Now, though, there is little within the walls of that castle that I can claim to love. I will not weep for whomever stands between you and the child that you treasure. But if you would permit me, I need to attend mine own.”

Morgott decided to be satisfied with Ymir’s explanation regarding his changed loyalties. He cleared his throat. The sound seemed to echo harshly. “Thy child is ill.”

“He is.”

“Allow me to bless him. I am a scholar of the Erdtree.”

“Truly?” Ymir’s violet eyes sparkled. There was an intelligence at work in those shining irises. A wit that bellied his bumbling exuberance.

“Doubt me if thou wishest.”

“I do not doubt you. Jolán?”

The swordswoman bowed. A respectful depth, this time.

“Do see that our guests are fed and settled. This good man would tend to Yuri.”

“...If you think it wise, my Star,” she said.

Ymir took Morgott to a secluded wing of the cathedral. The chambers carried a faintly astringent scent. Sour and sharp, like something had been burned. Count Ymir’s bedchambers were dominated by the presence of a bairn. The floor was littered with dozens of toys: blocks, balls, tops, and dolls made from dried reeds and scraps of cloth. A curtained cradle occupied the room’s center. The unusual acrid stink became pronounced. It was Morgott’s instinct to criticize the lack of cleanliness, but he recognized his hypocrisy. His Limgrave estate had been ravaged by Omen bairns- by the wards and his own scions alike. It was simply the nature of children to turn a home into a ruin.

Ymir parted the cradle’s gauzy curtain. “Forgive me, Sweeting, but you must awake.”

The thing within was no bairn.

As Morgott stared, the creature began to twitch- rhythmically popping its knuckles. Ymir cooed at Morgott’s elbow: “Oh, my darling boy! Be not afeared!”

Morgott’s lip curled as Ymir reached into the crib. He pet the limp thing, and it ceased snapping its fingers to shudder.

“You are uncomfortable,” Ymir observed conversationally as his creature calmed.

In earnest, Morgott had half-expected an Omen child. He lacked the imagination to conceive of any other reason a man would want to hide his infant in the gloomy recesses of an empty cathedral. Reality, though, was far stranger.

“Thou hast taken a Fingercreeper as thy son.”

Ymir’s expression became stone. “I have not taken him. He is wholly mine. I am his mother.”

Morgott exhaled through his nose. It was not his want to argue with a madman, especially when he was dependent upon his assistance. Mohg would have gushed over this hideous babe, and Cyrielle could see a human spirit in anything. He steeled himself as the God within him paced behind his eyes, distantly intrigued. He could heal a Fingercreeper to endear himself to the Count.

He said, “Dost thou ken what ails him?”

“I-I do not.”

Fingercreepers were kin to the Two Fingers. And the Two Fingers were cosmic kin of the Greater Will. Surely, then, the incantations of the Erdtree would grant the runty beast succor.

Morgott bestowed rote blessings. With a wave of his arm, warm light danced across the polished silver of Ymir’s furnishings. He began with an incantation of healing, then followed it with a blessing of protection. After Morgan’s birth, he had studied the magics of the Two Fingers and restructured them to his liking- into wards against poison, illusory spells, and taint in the blood. If a sickness was rooted in the Fingercreeper, then such benedictions would benefit it most.

When Morgott finished, the room’s natural darkness rushed in to banish the light. The creature in the cradle shivered and squirmed. It half-rose on its limbs and rubbed a few of its fingers together. Ymir’s pleased gasp was Morgott’s only indication that the Fingercreeper’s condition had improved.

“Remarkable,” Ymir whispered. “I hope you can forgive my incredulity. It is rare to meet a hornsent studied in the disciplines of the Golden Order.”

“I am not Hornsent.”

“No?” Ymir raised a brow. The Fingercreeper tapped at his hand, seeking attention. “You are not Graceless either.

“Thou’rt astute.” Morgott’s dry retort.

“Might you be Lord Morgott? And the winged man your brother, Lord Mohg?”

That was why he had not asked for their names or titles. He had suspected their identities at the outset. “…I am and he is.”

“You both are just as Miquella described.”

Now, Morgott could not keep himself from bristling. “Thou’rt an acolyte of the Unalloyed, the same as that knight, Ansbach.”

“No, no. Miquella came to Manus Metyr with a hunger and an interest in my studies. He was my student briefly. He spoke of his family often.”

But of course. It was still a shock to hear Miquella’s name. Whilst Morgott had believed his half-brother dead, he had been cavorting in this Veiled world. Gathering disciples and studying glintstone. Morgott could not help but wonder what Miquella might have said about him and his twin. Surely, in Miquella’s tales, one brother was the ungrateful interloper that had stolen the throne of Leyndell, and the other, the despicable monster that had stolen his life.

Jaw tight, Morgott managed to grit out, “I did not realize Miquella possessed an aptitude for the sorcerous arts.”

The Fingercreeper entwined its limbs with Ymir’s fingers. The Count replied, “He had little enthusiasm for glintstone sorceries, I admit. Rather, he wished to learn about the Greater Will and its divine pact with Queen Marika.” He chucked. “I may have caused him offense. Manus Metyr was his home for years, until he rather suddenly decided it was not. I have not seen him since. Sir Ansbach and his peers visit now and again. But never their Lord.”

“To cause Lord Miquella offense is a feat.”

“I told him the Greater Will was never meant to be entombed in mortal flesh. God forgot itself and became corrupted by human sentiment. Marika, already a damaged vessel, was corrupted in kind. Her short-sighted desires were writ into the Elden Ring. Order was invariably altered for this folly. Naught could change it, not even its creator.”

Morgott knew better than anyone that Ymir had the right of it. Yet in Marika’s Order the sorcerer would have been shunned- or executed- for espousing blasphemy. “Miquella abandoned Fundamentalism. I cannot fathom how thy lessons inspired in him outrage.”

“I bid him abandon his quest for ascension. I warned him… He would be no better off than his mother. Ah, do not mistake me. There was purity in his intentions. But I feel that is precisely why he rejected my counsel. He wished to heal this world of the wounds Marika gave it. From his perspective, I had implored him to embrace complacency instead.”

Sir Ansbach had deduced that Miquella was shedding his accursed body to attain Godhood. But that was not the whole of it. Count Ymir had urged Miquella to consider his flawed humanity. Lord Miquella had done just that, it seemed, for he had discarded his doubts- alongside his flesh- upon the Cerulean Coast. Morgott idly scratched at his whiskers.

“I cannot fault Miquella for his skepticism,” he rumbled. “How canst thou be certain of thy theories?”

Ymir turned his hand over, and his creature nuzzled into his palm. “I have traversed the gardens of Rhia and Dheo. I have communed with Metyr, Daughter of the Greater Will. Mother of the Two Fingers.”

“That…” But God was rendered speechless. The Greater Will had inhabited him for a century, and yet the name Metyr meant nothing to him. He offered the word to the Will, but it refused to acknowledge it. If Count Ymir was speaking falsely, he had no way of knowing. “...The daughter of the Greater Will?”

“She is broken. The Greater Will melded with Marika and abandoned its child. Thus, Metyr’s children are similarly adrift.”

“Thou’rt a Finger Reader.”

“I am more than a Reader,” he lifted his chin. “And you are no mere Lord.”

“Thou hast ascertained then, that Marika’s captive God is within me.”

“Miquella entrusted the secret to me, yes. Marika is dead, and you, my Lord, succeeded her.”

Morgott’s tail swayed as he regarded the sorcerer- as the sorcerer regarded him. Even if he called the thing in the cradle his child, the man was not stupid. Or he was as presumptuous as his Liurnian kin.

Brazen, the Count amended, “I pray I have not caused you offense, Lord.”

Morgott missed his stave. Without wood or bone to anchor himself, he betrayed himself with a flick of his tail. “I am well aware of the price Godhood demandeth.”

Ymir did not bask in the glory of scholarly vindication. “I am sorry. Sincerely.”

“Save thy paltry apologies. I am not Marika.”

“Do not think me ungrateful, I beg,” he murmured gingerly. “Whatever my criticisms, I am a child of the Greater Will, no matter the mortal skin it wears.”

Morgott grunted. As a monarch, he had craved the respect Lordship entitled him to. But the veneration granted him in his Godhood was sometimes incomprehensible.

Fortunately, Ymir’s reverence quickly gave way to his insufferably clever academic’s demeanor. “I have never had the ear of a living God before. Is this conversation a prayer? What a conundrum for the debate halls of Raya Lucaria! I suppose I must give thanks, of course. Yuri has been in decline for some weeks.” Yuri idly groomed beneath its fingernails at the mention of its name.

“‘Twas no obstacle.”

“Ah! Then perhaps I shall move on to the beseeching portion of my prayer.” Ymir stroked his grotesque babe. But he met Morgott’s glare, unflinching. “You are not Marika, of that I am convinced. Be that as it may, as the God is bound to a new host, might you convince the Greater Will to… to know its daughter again? Metyr is lost without its mother, and she is no mother at all to her Fingers in consequence.”

“The Greater Will’s child is its own to neglect,” he hissed, indignant. “Miquella hath delivered my children into peril!”

The small smile that tugged on Ymir lips divulged his satisfaction and bemused curiosity. Not even the sheen of Grace could hide the taint of sympathy in his sideways glance. Morgott shifted beneath his scrutiny.

Ymir said, “The stars are dark tonight.”

Morgott sniffed, “Is that some Carian omen?”

“On the contrary. I believe it is the portent of a deeper night to come.”

Morgott wondered how much guidance lightless stars could possibly give.

———————————-
Carians and their mirrors. Those placid circular pools grounded the moon and stars so that they might be observed. And in the captured reflections of the celestial bodies, the glintstone sorcerers always coincidentally found their own brilliance staring back at them. As if the Erdtree was not as incandescent- as absolute- when reflected in silver.

Morgott left Count Ymir to his hideous bairn. Traversing the cathedral’s dim halls alone, he had fallen victim to the alluring trap of a mirror. His eye had snagged upon it in passing, and it had enthralled him. He braced against the wall and studied his divine visage in the silver.

Morgott’s experiences corroborated everything the Count had claimed. The Greater Will’s vain interference had altered his form. His horns had once been the unsightly tell of his accursed nature. But now they were threaded with Grace. His wings had appeared when Mohg reversed the Greater Will’s curse that had purged his Omen blood. The scars that he had accumulated through centuries of warfare and squalid survival in the Shunning Grounds had largely been smoothed; he was a coarse stone polished in the river of Grace. The myriad of marks hewn by swords and steel- fang and claw- upon his flanks were gone. The scar from the infection that had nearly killed him in his youth was no more than a subtle violet smear under his arm. Morgott slipped his borrowed robes off of his shoulder and prodded the places that were now unblemished.

Then, he clasped his hand over his throat. The shackle he’d worn for centuries had permanently marked him. The scar still encircled his neck, but it was undoubtedly diminished. Before the Greater Will had tampered with his body, it had been a hot, raised brand of a collar. Now, it was merely a warm discoloration.

Morgott closed his eyes- felt his heartbeat throb in the final physical reminder of his imprisonment. Everything else had been buffed away in the Greater Will’s determination to purify him.

When he opened his eyes, he was not wholly surprised to see Queen Marika’s face in the mirror’s reflection. She did not stand in the cavernous murk of Manus Metyr, but in a sun-drenched courtyard. The spiraled pillars behind her suggested Belurat- or perhaps another Hornsent city before her wrath had seen it razed.

She was luminous. There was an otherworldly gleam to her complexion that rivaled the glow of her dolorous, Grace-golden stare. It suggested a newness. Like a freshly forged blade being presented to its Lordly bearer.

Certainly, Marika’s fingers danced over immaculate flesh. Brushed at her wrists and swiped at her exposed collarbones. Her regal countenance sagged for her bewildered frown. She was searching for things lost- questing for scars erased.

“Thou wert always consumed with vanity, I see.” Morgott’s scornful huff dispelled the Greater Will’s cloying memory. Morgott’s weathered, wrinkled face filled the silver once more.
The God replied with a contemptuous rumble of its own. Morgott’s horns ached.

“Thou hast a forgotten child thyself. Thou and thy vessel previous, ye disdained ye offspring.”

Morgott was presented with a writhing mass. A twitching, indecipherable heap of flesh comprised of clawing fingers. The creature was ugly, yes. But not to the part of Morgott that had birthed it. Rather, it was the monster’s plaintive cries that agitated him. It was her yearning that was revolting- the way she begged for instruction whilst facilitating the desecration of her progenitor's will.

The wails of Metyr morphed into a piercing, human anguish. The Eternal Queen screamed at the wretched babes that filled her cribs. The snake-bound firstborn. The doomed Omen twins. The rotted daughter and the stagnant son. She shrieked at the grave of the only child she hadn’t at some point wished to die.

The stink of Godwyn’s fetid, fungal corpse stuck in Morgott’s nose as he received a vision of his own son, Morgan. His frail heir doomed to die. Cursed with the resentment of the deceased Marika had excluded from her Order. Death had laid a claim upon Morgan’s soul, and Morgott dreaded what might be wrought once it pried the spirit from its Empyrean flesh. Might he be another contagion?

Another calamity? A pestilence Morgott was allowing to ripen to hideous maturity as he rescued Morgan’s life again and again? No one was meant to live this way. It was anathema to Order… It was killing his wife.

Marika’s weeping rang in Morgott’s ears. The Greater Will and its vessels despaired at the wrongness of their offspring.

His panting breath fogged the mirror. That was what dragged him from the ruination of his vision- the haze upon the silver. Sweat beaded between the horns on his laden brow. After one hundred contentious years, the Greater Will had seemed content to tolerate him. Now it was roused again by the Shadow Lands. It yearned for Marika, and he was, indeed, decidedly not Marika.
In the mirror’s edge, another face peered at his reflection. Beheld his breathless, hunched form.

“Morgan…” he rasped.

“Da.”

“Thou’rt apart from the others.”

“They are preparing supper. There was not much room… I could be touched.”

Morgott straightened and adjusted his clothing. He swallowed, but his throat remained parched. “Thou’rt not seeking a secluded room to Tune, hmm?”

Morgott’s pulse rioted at Morgan’s bitter silence. His frown. Echoes of his vision threatened to overwhelm him with their slimy detritus- with their insistence that Morgan was the Prince of Death remolded. Morgott blinked the stubborn grit away. Morgan was only a boy.

“Morgan, look at me.”

He did. Morgott’s eloquence abandoned him beneath Morgan’s imploring stare.

His frown is his mother’s, he thought stupidly, as all the words he meant to say fled in his moment of distraction.

“The dragon is not a spirit,” Morgan offered unprompted. Appeasing. “I did not Tune with her.”

“No, thou didst not,” Morgott agreed. But the ward had been disturbed the moment the creature had arisen. “Did I not tell thee also to cease communing with the dead?”

“Yes, Da,” the whispered reply.

Morgott had not the energy for chastisement. Morgan was equally drained. He was neither abashed nor defiant, but resigned. Morgott wished his wits had not been scrambled by Ymir’s revelations. He forced himself to speak.

“It shall not be forever.”

But he had said that already, after implanting the ward. He had said that a decade ago, when Morgan had first agreed to stop Tuning. It was an empty promise, so long as Death stalked Morgan’s soul.
Morgott tried again, “All that I ask and all that I do is to keep thee from harm.”

And to keep Death from turning him into another Blighted taproot. Morgott pushed the thought from his mind.

He was not his mother. He would not fear his son.

Morgan nodded, but suddenly he could not meet his father’s eye. “I understand.”

Chapter Text

Mohg had slept little, hoping to send a prayer to Moiragh before the expedition was readied. Alas, he heard his twin arguing elsewhere in the cathedral with the household guard, Jolán. Their echoes had all but disintegrated by the time they’d reached Mohg, but their tones kept the edges of their words keen. Jolán was upset, and Morgott was unmoved. If they carried on, the rest of the house would rouse prematurely. Mohg rolled his eye. He slipped outside, and was deposited into a graveyard.

The moon steeped in the marsh surrounding Manus Metyr. Just hours prior, the yellow-green of evening- as filtered through the Scadutree’s Veil- had lurked beneath the still water. A poisonous monster stalking sinuously between the mangroves. Mohg appreciated the darkness inherent to the Shadow Lands. Its nights were even gentler. They reminded him of Siofra River.

Mohg scented Count Ymir’s perfume before he saw his host. Divested of his extravagant robe and ruff, Ymir melded with the gravestones he knelt among. He hugged something to his chest. It smelled wrong. Perhaps that was why Mohg chose to approach, desecrating the sanctity of Ymir’s solitude. The scene was grotesquely nostalgic, and he could not tear himself away.

“Forgive me,” the man muttered. Chanted, lips centimeters from the bundle in his arms. “I failed you.”

The chill of ancient aches made heavy Mohg’s bones. Ymir certainly sensed him toeing his way between the graves. He was not at all surprised when the Count announced unprompted: “Yuri passed in the night.”

The blow was not any less devastating because Mohg had seen the knife coming. He could not help but imagine a violet-eyed Carian babe, limp and cold. A broken egg leaking fetid fluids. Pained fury sparked within him. Morgott had tended to the bairn himself. How could he have allowed this to happen? His anger, however, was instantly smothered.

When Ymir unfurled, it was not a bairn he cradled. It was a monstrosity. One of the grotesque kin of the Two Fingers. Its limbs curled around its misbegotten palm like swollen spider’s legs. It had no face to speak of; it was just gray, rigid meat.

Mohg’s revulsion dissipated as the Count met his gaze. Tears streaked the kohl around his eyes. Ashen residue tracked down his cheeks. His sclera was inflamed. Mohg recognized the desperation in his silence- in his faint frown. Resignation was a fetter around grief-born madness. It was howling in his chest, pounding against his skull. Count Ymir wanted nothing more than to release it with a throat-rending scream. Instead he caged it, and his lip did not so much as tremble.

Mohg’s eye swept over the clustered stones. They were small and disorderly, cramped into the tiny yard. There was barely enough space left for Ymir and Mohg to stand among them. Gingerly, Mohg lowered himself onto his knees and ignored the plaintive ache in his joints.

Hoarsely, he asked, “Are they all yours?”

Ymir blinked. He was taken aback by the question. “...Yes. Most of them, at least. But do not pity me, son of Marika. Pity them, because I was their mother, and I could not birth them whole.”

“Do not denigrate yourself.”

“But it is the truth!” Ymir cried. “I made him malformed! How could Lord Morgott have cured him when I am the malady?”

Mohg did not peer too closely at his declaration. Afraid of what he’d be confronted with if he did. If Ymir was to be faulted for his child’s fate then what did that mean for him?

Mohg rumbled, “It will do you no good to blame yourself.”

“But is it not selfish to keep trying?” Ymir blurted, crushing Yuri to his chest again. “If every child I bear dies, am I condemning them to suffer for my own desires?”

The moon was gravid, but little of its light pierced the Veil. “I have felt similarly for much of my life.”

“Gracious. I am sorry. Truly.”

Mohg was not prepared for commiseration. How readily that scabbed-over wound reopened. Ugly and rotten. The warmth on Mohg’s cheek was not tears, but pus. The chronic infection of grief spilled forth.

“The doubt never left me, really. Even after my daughter hatched. But the joy she brings quiets the wraiths.”

“It was worth it then, your child.”

“Of course. I could not live without her.”

The silence that settled over them was lighter. Not so cloying. Ymir stroked the knuckles of his bairn. Traced the lines of his pudgy palm. A brisk gale shifted the clouds some, exposing a handful of winking stars. Tepid air skated over the water’s rippling surface- as well as a loon’s mournful cry.

Ymir said, “The Golden Order was doomed upon its founding. It was tainted the moment God and Vessel lost love for their children. Now, Marika is God no more. Her mantle has passed to her spurned offspring. I was unsure what to make of you and your Lord Brother when you arrived. But I am heartened by what I have seen. Morgott is an attentive father. He does not rule his family with fear.”

“You do not know Morgott well enough,” Mohg retorted. “He fears plenty.”

“Marika feared her children. You each fear for your young ones.”

Again, Ymir betrayed his ignorance. The Greater Will had attempted to separate Morgott from Marie at her conception. It had demanded that Morgan be born without Omen blood, leaving the boy vulnerable to worse curses. But there was no point citing it all to Ymir.

“I would like to think we possessed the wisdom not to recreate Marika’s misdeeds,” Mohg conceded. “Morgott has suffered a century taming his stubborn God. Now it is distant.”

“I am hopeful that the Greater Will will follow the Lord’s example and see fit to reconcile with its daughter one day. Then… then a surrogate for her Fingers will not be needed.”

It was apparent by his melancholy that he did not wish it to be so. Mohg brushed his thumb against the Carian’s smeared cheek. “Do not lose faith. Your womb wants. It will not stop wanting. The pain of ignoring its desire may be just as agonizing as this.”

Ymir sighed. Leaned into Mohg’s touch. Perhaps it was not his assurances that placated the Count, but the simple fact that Mohg understood exactly what he had lost and had not condemned him for it.

“Your dear daughter is held captive,” he said, voice thick. “You cannot wait for me to mourn. I must grant you entrance to the Keep.”

“I cannot ask you to abandon your vigil.”

“I cannot abide it,” Ymir protested with a watery smile. “You will hold your child again. It would soothe me to play a part in your reunion, however small. Allow me a little more time with him, and I shall lead you.”

“Of course.”

Mohg rose on twinging legs. His wings grazed mossy headstones. He retraced his steps into the cathedral. At his back, Ymir murmured softly to his insensate babe. Nausea gripped Mohg’s insides in an ash-knuckled fist. He laid a hand over his stomach.

The instant he crossed the threshold, he was assailed by an emetic stench. The vapors of strong spirits steeped in spices wafted about, gently stirred by the breezes coming in from the night. Mohg pressed a shaking hand to his teeth as his gorge rose.

It was the fault of Sir Ansbach. He lingered in the shadow of the doorway, cup in hand. A ridiculous blush dusted his weathered cheeks. The accursed blood blazed in him. Though his eyes were luminously golden.

“I heard the tragic news,” he said. “I do not wish to trouble him in his grieving but… I had hoped to give Count Ymir this.”

He gestured with the pungent vessel. Mohg’s insides answered with another agonizing twist. The drink did not smell foul- it was warm and indulgent. Yet something in Mohg’s ancient spirit recoiled at its presence.

“It is an old Gelmir remedy for the loss of a child in the womb… But Yuri was a few years old…” He stared down at the mulled liquor miserably. “Perhaps it is in poor taste. The seasonings are not correct. I had to make do with what Jolán would allow me. It felt… right when the idea came to be. But I am old and addled fool-”

“Take it to him,” Mohg snapped. He could not bear to listen to another rambling word.

Ansbach bowed and hastily departed, stumbling into the graveyard like a chastened child. Mohg managed not to vomit into the shrubbery. He went off in search of Cyprus, in case the Warrior required assistance with his preparations.

————————————————-

“Jolán, you needn’t fret.”

“You are in no shape to risk yourself.”

“How can I call myself a mother and refuse Lord Mohg my aid?”

“How can I call myself the Swordhand of Night if I let my star be snuffed in my absence?”

“I will not argue-“

“Indeed,” Morgott’s flat intonation silenced Jolán and Ymir’s bickering. “Let us not squander our precious time with this pointless dispute.”

Jolán bristled in her black armor. Her regard for Morgott had dropped considerably after their own argument. Mohg sympathized with her. She worried for Ymir, considering his circumstances, and Morgott could seem heartless in his insistence. His interjection had quieted Ymir’s protestations, however, so Jolán accompanied them.

The Count was unfaltering. Yuri was only just buried; loamy dirt rimed Ymir’s manicured fingernails. But he laughed with Sir Ansbach and bantered with his guard. He kept pace. Mohg could not recall an instance he’d lost a nest without becoming utterly unmoored. He had always needed someone to tether him before he became irrevocably adrift, and that person had usually been Morgott. Reliable but unsympathetic Morgott.

A breeze brought Ansbach’s scent- his bouquet of spiced spirits and musk- to Mohg’s attention. Unwanted and unbidden. The layers of his vestments fluttered; the symbol of the Pureblood Knights glinted in golden thread upon his cape. Mohg traced its shape until Cyprus snagged his focus. A few hours of rest had done him much good. His stride was longer- easier. Ansbach tried to engage the Warrior, and was promptly rebuffed. Mohg was inexplicably disappointed.

A tawny, shaggy-feathered owl shook out its plumage warily, barely silhouetted in the light of Jolán’s glintstone lantern. A snake dangled off of its perch, pinned to the branch by its talons. The raptor glared at them for interrupting its meal. Behind it, through the narrow gaps in the canopy, the Shadow Keep loomed. It was somehow deeper than the night itself, a brutish, ugly immensity. It eclipsed the Scadutree- the very horizon. It was undeniable. A stake impaled through the heart of the Shadow Lands.

They walked along an overgrown trail for a couple of hours. Rocky hills and dense woods surrounded them. The distant howling of wolves seemed to stay the threat of daybreak.

“Here we are!” Ymir declared triumphantly.

The path abruptly ended at the mouth of a tunnel set into a sheer wall of natural stone. It was wider than Leyndell’s main thoroughfare and taller than some of its buildings. Alas, the maw was packed full of boulders. The toothless jaws gummed at the obstruction.

“The holy quarter was flooded and sealed many years ago,” Ansbach explained. “It was reportedly meant to keep the hornsent people at remove from the Scadutree. Others have claimed, however, that it was done to spite the Eternal Queen. Regardless, the Shadow Keep was made impregnable.”

Cyprus laid his hand flat upon the obstruction. The chunks of choking debris rivaled him in size. “Maybe if we spent the next week digging...” he sniffed.

But Ymir shooed Cyprus away from the channel’s mouth. He brandished his spiraled staff of entwined Fingers. Purplish gray hues ignited in the jet crystal of its conduit.

It was rare to see a Carian sorcerer so adept with gravity magic. General Radahn’s specialty wasn’t wholly popular with Raya Lucaria’s delicate stone-tossers. But Ymir shifted the barricade with ease. As he removed the rubble, the earth quaked.

“Is it thy want to collapse the passage entirely?” Morgott barked.

“Have faith,” Mohg growled sharply in turn.

Ymir was no fool. The ground was not shuddering a warning. Stone-like fingers sprouted from another of his sorceries. The ore of their fingerprints shimmered. They braced the tunnel’s walls. Made their forms into a rib cage that spanned the compromised cavity. Ymir’s solution was impressive despite its haphazard appearance. It was a dark throat of twitching, peristaltic phalanges. The improvised corridor was just large enough for Mohg to duck through. Morgott could not keep from loosing a disconcerted grunt.

“It shall hold,” Ymir said. “I swear it.”

“Little good that oath will do when we are crushed beneath the mountain,” Cyprus muttered at Mohg’s elbow.

In the end it was Morgott who entered the passage first. Ansbach followed closely behind.

“Lord Mohg, a word?”

Mohg watched Cyprus vanish into the channel’s abyssal depths. The Fingers behaved- waiting patiently for the final trespasser.

“Be quick,” Mohg replied.

Jolán crossed her arms over her chest behind the Count. Ymir cleared his throat, “I did not know that Marika had Omen children, not in all my years serving the Carian Royals. The secret was revealed to me by your brother, Lord Miquella.”

Mohg fought not to be sick again. Illness bloomed anyway in his racing heart rather than his stomach. Failed by his voice, he hummed a low acknowledgment.

“He seeks Godhood.”

“I am aware.”

“I will not pretend to understand how your twin has managed his divinity- and with a God so warped. But Miquella treads in Marika’s footsteps. He has done what he must to sever himself from her fouled roots. He has divested himself of his heritage, his birthright, and his blood. Yet, when he spoke of you… it was with sadness. Perhaps even fondness.”

Bile was acrid in the back of Mohg’s throat.

Ymir continued, “Beware, my Lord. He is compelled to renounce everything. Who can say what will happen to a creature that aspires to Godhood after removing that which is essential to themself.”

“I… Be well, Count Ymir. Yuri shall be in my prayers.”

Ymir nodded, “And I shall keep you in mine.”

Chapter Text

Messmer’s breath seethed past chapped lips. He held his side. Morgott’s fangs were his golden blades, and he had bitten viciously. Alas, Demigod flesh was resilient. And centuries beneath the umbra of the Scadutree had not dulled every Erdtree scholar. Still, feverish heat warmed Messmer’s palm. The injury had torn again and again as he’d hastened from Belurat to Castle Ensis. Rellana, insensate, shared his mount. Wego was their singular escort. The old Knight had attended to Messmer’s injury when he allowed it, but he had always been a better necromancer than a healer.

Messmer’s army, disgraced and beaten, would require two weeks to traverse the Gravesite Plain. Perhaps longer. Rellana would not have survived that slovenly pace.

They rode without rest, crossing the Plain in three days. Messmer’s horse collapsed on the Ellac Greatbridge. Fortunately, the Lord had dismounted with his Sword in his arms before they were spilled before an array of impaled sentinels. The steed was abandoned as Messmer carried the Twin Moon into her castle. Blood trickled down his leg as his wound reopened.

Castle Ensis was outfitted with several magical gateways- Carians were admirably adroit. There was one sequestered near Rellana’s moon viewing pool, whose swirling cyan depths delivered Messmer, Wego, and Rellana to the Shadow Keep’s gatehouse. Rellana was handed over to the finest Erdtree scholars the Shadow Keep employed. Though Messmer was healed also, his body remained wracked with pains. They were familiar aches, however. He had always felt liable to crumble after a campaign.

The Shadow Lands were killing him, sparing the flesh but nonetheless carving away what was vital to life. He had buried a piece with Commander Andreas after he had incited a rebellion against him. Other parts he had dribbled upon bloodstained earth marching to and from his countless battles: pride, shame, hatred. Faith. Until his kindling burned in a cold and hollow husk.

Thou wilt despair when the Serpent is all that remaineth, he warned the dawn. The sun was a sterling sliver peering over the mountains. The sky a smothering amalgam of noxious hues: yellows and greens and grays. But it was his mother’s handiwork obscuring the heavens. They were as unresponsive to his prayers as she.

When he had glimpsed Morgott upon Belurat’s battlements, he had felt his kindling stir, mistaking it for hope. But now the novel sensation had fledged, maturing into a beastly fear.

In morning’s peaceful arrival, Messmer could hear Queelign’s broken pleas in his memory. More than Gaius’s agonized screams, more than Rellana’s weeping and unintelligible babbling, more than Morgott’s gravelly taunt against his ear. It was Queelign’s plight that had reacquainted him to the experience of horror.

“I have safeguarded her peace! Wherefore was I forsaken?”

Marika had not needed the Iris to sever Grace- nor to grant it. The Erdtree was the font, but the Goddess directed its flow and where it pooled. She determined which souls were fertile for golden seedlings and which were to be barren. It was her power alone.

But Morgott, the Omen Prince, supposedly discarded, had stripped Queelign of his Grace.

“Am I not pure? To stand so near the creature… Did I defile the Mother for my hesitation? I beg thee be merciful, Lord. I beg thee! I will not live as a blight to Queen Marika’s joy!”

Messmer had left Queelign’s fate to Kood, unable to render a judgment himself. Too disturbed by the bloodshot, Graceless stares of his Fire Knight and the afflicted soldiers.

It was the morning of the fourth day of Messmer’s flight. He sent for his Fire Sage.

“My Lord!”

Salza bowed at the terrace entrance, breathless for his haste. He had made himself presentable, but it was apparent that Messmer’s summons had dragged him from his bed. The serpents scented the hornsent whore on him. And acrid blood. “Pray tell, what happened? Only a week ago I received word that thine army had engaged Belurat… I sense I am not about to be regaled with a tale of swift triumph.”

The serpent’s coils stiffened. The smell of Salza’s little hornsent- and interminable sleeplessness- was making him irritable.

“No,” he said bluntly. “The siege is over. There was no victory.”

Salza’s bald bewilderment was grating. His hood disguised his eyes, but Messmer noted the perplexed sag of his frown.

He explained, “Gaius is dead. Rellana is mortally wounded.”

“H-how can this be, my Lord?” But clever Salza did not wait for answers when he could put forth his own hypothesis instead: “The weapon that felled the furnace. Is it truly so mighty?”

“There was no weapon.”

“Then-”

“I was betrayed,” Messmer hissed. Fear’s needle teeth gnawed at his ribs. The hurt that arose from admitting so was a writhing, hungry parasite. A fitting bedfellow for the curse within him. Of course, Salza would ask the obvious; he would demand the identity of the traitor. Oh Salza, ever loyal, until someone tried to pry anything of Rauh from his greedy fist. Whenever fear squirmed, a numbness followed. Messmer found he did not care if the Sage knew the truth. “My brothers fought with Belurat.”

Messmer watched the sunrise; his serpents watched Salza. Though the man was so rigid with shock they began to lose interest.

Salza inhaled. “Radahn and Rykard?”

Messmer said nothing. Dread was lurking behind his teeth, sitting on his tongue.

Salza lowered his voice to a whisper, “...Miquella?”

Messmer snorted his disgust. “Take me to thy specimen.”

—--------------

Salza’s hornsent greeted them with hunched shoulders, averted eyes, and a demure bow. Her shaking hands busied themselves with whatever task her master had set her to. Clean water steamed in a kettle. The girl dutifully inspected her pile of folded rags and a small hunk of soap. It seemed her Lord had interrupted the prisoner’s bath.

Messmer sensed the world through his serpents. His prosthetic eye was practically blind, so he relied upon their sight. Their noses were far keener than his own. When he had departed on his campaign, the girl in the cage and been ripe, but hale. Now she smelled like meat. Salza had never been one for restraint.

“My understanding of the creature remaineth dim,” Salza confessed somberly. He plucked a glass phial from a shelf and presented it to Messmer. A serpent inspected the offering. It was just more of the same: blood.

Salza continued, “The mystery of its ichor doth elude me-”

“Curseborn blood is wont to burn. The girl is no hornsent. She is an Omen of the Lands Between.”

“An Omen… Thou art certain?”

“I am.”

Messmer took the phial from Salza. The label tied to its neck declared that the sample was several weeks old. Yet the substance within appeared fresh. It warmed his palm through the glass and had not grown tacky with clots. Nor did it reek of decay. Morgott and his twin had pilfered the Queen’s blessings and seeded them into their rotten stock.

The phial slipped through his fingers. Salza loosed a sound of dismay, but the glass did not shatter as it struck the floor. The sample languidly rolled, coming to rest against the girl’s foot. She blanched as though the touch of glass had been a slap.

“Did the Omen ever wake?” Messmer asked.

Salza stepped in front of his girl. “It roused once for but a moment. I learned little. Though she did claim to hail from the homeland.”

“Describe to me her eyes.”

“...They were yellow in hue.”

“Gold, more like. What sayest thou, Girl?”

Salza’s girl, wreathed in crimson, scrounged up her thin voice. “G-gold, my Lord.”

Messmer sneered, “Base she may be, but a fool she is not.”

“It cannot be Graceborn!” Salza objected desperately. “Prithee, Messmer, what happened at Belurat?”

Revulsion welled in Messmer’s breast. Revulsion for Salza’s unseemly appetites, revulsion for the whore’s timidity and terror, revulsion for the hideous Omen child, revulsion for himself, and revulsion for the Eternal Queen. Mother had possessed the resolve to pluck out his eye and seal him away with the dark world she so abhorred. Yet she had not slain her Curseborn bairns in their cribs. She had invited Messmer to love his infant brothers; she had planted in him optimism for their futures. What cruelty. What abominable cruelty.

“The Omen is my niece.” Messmer could not bring himself to say The Omen is Marika’s granddaughter. Despite his anger, he could not speak aloud the insult- his grief was greater. “Lord Godfrey sired Omen before mine exile. Curseborn twins. They crossed the Veil and allied themselves with Belurat. One slew Gaius. The other commandeth the Gold of the Erdtree.”

Salza’s disbelief was palpable. Gormless and irritating. He stumbled to his cage and gripped the bars until his knuckles paled. “I- I do not understand.”

But of course he could not. Messmer could scarcely grapple with it himself. He had cradled Morgott an eternity ago, when he was but a gray infant with a shock of white hair, a stringy kitten’s tail, and a lumpy, malformed skull. He had not realized how much affection he’d harbored for the unfortunate child- his hapless half-brother- until he had beheld him again in that handsome, tricksome illusion. But when Morgott had dispensed of that false shape, when it had sloughed off like ash…

Messmer had always pictured the world beyond the Veil as the beautiful, gilded empire he remembered. The verdant fields and magnificent castles. Now all he could see in his mind’s eye was a desolate landscape scoured by fire and gored with filthy horns.

“Thou need’st only understand this: if thou wishest to return to the Lands Between, take the Omen girl for a hostage. Fetchest thou a scholar for her wounds. Her father and uncle will come for her. They will find the nature of thy study distasteful.”

Ah, he was being cruel in kind, giving his Sage false hope. He was Moiragh’s gaoler. He would never be forgiven. Morgott would remove the luster from his irises before he slaughtered him.

Memory presented to Messmer Gaius’s mauled corpse. Dismembered in a pool of milk-white viscera. He had come to the Shadow Lands a servant of the Carian house. Graceless as he was, Messmer had tolerated him for the sake of his friendship with Rellana and Radahn. But Gaius had earned his respect- then his trust. Rage he had kept at cool remove. But Salza squeezed the hornsent girl’s shoulder in reassurance, and Messmer could bridle himself no longer. Gaius had been a remarkable man, and the trembling creature Salza favored was a poor substitute for his valor.

He said, “Take the whore to the Lands Between if it pleaseth thee. I imagine she will be most welcome in the ruin my brothers claimeth. But heed me, the Omen Lord will favor thy wife. I say leave her, and start anew.”

Salza’s offense was genuine. “I would not abandon Samandari!”

“Thou hast before and thou wilt again,” Messmer drawled. “She is not the first thou hast dressed in crimson silks. Thou wilt have Omen aplenty to court when thou hast forgotten this one.”

His serpents eyed Salza, but Messmer’s hazy glare met the girl’s. There was flint at last in her black eyes. Fire sparked rather than gold- a smoldering hatred. It was eclipsed almost instantly with sorrow. Her exhale was wavering and wet. Salza had never revealed how he found his wives. Messmer had never cared to ask. Though he doubted if any of them had come into his household joyfully. Least of all Samandari. But something like death shadowed her round face. Whatever affection a captive might nurture, Messmer had slain it with careless words.

“What have I done to earn this mistreatment?” Salza demanded, oblivious to the girl’s disdain. His cheeks were ruddy with the flush of outrage, but his tone was timorous for his humiliation. His grip on his girl tightened before he nudged her none-too-gently towards the door. “Do as thy Lord advised. Findest thou a scholar for the Omen. She will be made presentable.”

The girl stumbled at Salza’s shove. A serpent swiveled, snatching a glimpse of her tearful scowl before she shut the door behind her.

Messmer remembered, then, the hornsent woman Salza had claimed from the smoking wreckage of Moorth. Soot had darkened her blonde hair and freckles had spattered her greenish Potentate face. Kept for months but never tamed, she had attempted to murder her new husband with a kitchen knife as he’d slept. Messmer had executed her. It was Salza’s wailing- his grief for his traitorous bride- that stayed with Messmer years hence.

Messmer had left well enough alone, after. Hornsent tilled Graceborn fields and built their castles and mined their ore. As the settlement of Erdtree people expanded- as the crusade was recognized as the exile it was- not every Graceless beast was sentenced to die. Salza could take a woman or two to warm his bed as he liked. But surely he was aware how hated he was.

When the girl was gone, the room slowly filled with the soft wheezes of Moiragh’s labored breathing. Messmer’s side twinged again. It was the curse writhing. By Marika’s Grace, it could do little else than grant its host aches.

A Grace easily severed. Fear hissed in his ear.

“Prithee, my Lord,” Salza murmured- concerned companion and chastised inferior simultaneously. “I would hear it all, this business with Belurat and these Graceless brothers.”

“Not Graceless,” Messmer muttered.

Salza nodded, “When Samandari hath done her duty, I will send her to fetch refreshment-”

“No.”

Nearly all of the kitchens in the Shadow Keep were manned by hornsent captives. The launderers. The stable boys and woodcutters. He wanted nothing touched by accursed hands. Grimy with guilt and sin. Tainted, because Mother had decreed it so. What were they now with the Eternal Queen deposed?

Salza replied, “Very well, my Lord.”

Messmer’s skull was beginning to throb. His back was in agony and pins jabbed at his thighs. He needed rest, but he would find none wherever he sought it. He needed nourishment, but nothing would sate the restless abyss within.

A frantic knocking at the door jolted the serpents.

“Enter,” Salza called.

Messmer half-expected to see an Erdtree scholar at the threshold, scruffing the Rauh girl by her red scarf. But she had departed but a few minutes prior. No, it was a Black Knight that shaded the entryway with his bulk, panting.

“My Lord,” he cried. “Prithee, it is slaughter!”

“Already?” Messmer muttered. He slipped past the knight, leaving Salza to his fascinations.

—--------------

As he strode to Rellana’s chambers, Messmer was honest with himself. His tardiness would cost people their lives. His soldiers and knights would try to defend the keep. They would fail in the attempt. This was their last chance at an honorable end, he figured. He would not deny it to them.

He entered without announcing himself and was greeted by the point of a slender blade. The threat was meant for his throat, but the steel shivered over his shoulder, mislaid.

Messmer had watched the field surgeons remove the gelatinous remains of Rellana's left eye. The flesh around the socket had been horribly burned, and the eye itself had half-melted into yellow slag. The other eye had been spared this fate, but it was not unscathed. She was almost blind. Because her injuries had not been hewn by Messmerfire, few scars lingered to chronicle them. But the surviving eye was tainted. And Messmer’s own compromised sight prevented him from appraising the damage the healers could not mend.

“Thou art awake,” he simply said.

“My Lord,” she greeted him as she lowered her weapon.

Her physicians were appropriately apologetic. One man bowed and stammered, “I begged the princess to rest, but she will not-”

“Out.”

They left, their fright a sharp malodor.

Faint scars like questing fingers curled over the bridge of Rellana’s nose. Clawing for her unmarred cheek, but not quite reaching the remaining eye. She had always cut her hair short- preferring to wear her sister’s gift of raven locks. But the field surgeons had crudely shorn what little she had kept for herself to attend to her burns.

“I have heard,” Rellana began as she sheathed her sword. “The whispers have risen to shouts. The Shadow Keep is being sacked.”

“We were followed. I had hoped, with my army between us, the Omen would not fall upon us so soon,” Messmer admitted.

“I am thine to command, as always, my Lord.”

He would bid her rest, as her attendants wished. But she would despise him to hear it.

“How dost thou fare?”

“Well enough. Mine eyesight hath weakened, but my sorceries remain potent.”

“Naught else is amiss?”

There was a legend recounted by the indentured. That many years ago, a hornsent sage had been discovered dabbling with the Flame of Frenzy. In recompense, the Inquisitors of the Tower had slaughtered the sage’s students, servants, and family. In fending off the Flame, they had salted the soil with bitter blood, and the forest itself had perished. Of course, no Graceborn had set eyes upon the storied Abyssal Woods; it seemed even hornsent fairytales were barbarous. Though the hornsent supposedly derided the Frenzied Flame, that was the weapon that had defeated the Twin Moon Knight. So far had they fallen from their meager principles. They had succumbed to the utility of vile magics.

Frenzy was infectious. Rellana could recover, but there would always be a dormant spark in her. She was not Wego- not prone to despair. But if will alone was enough to overcome curses…

“No, my Lord. But if I may, thy tone is weighty with undue burden.”

“Undue… Am I to rejoice instead for thine injury?”

“The fault is mine for being caught unawares. We have become complacent.”

“...Complacent,” he agreed in a soft echo.

“This war ended centuries ago. We no longer combat the hornsent, but hunt them. They are hares and we the wolves. But a hare can gouge a wolf’s eye when caught in its jaws.”

“Thou dost not resent the animals for scarring thee?”

“Of course I do,” the quick retort. “I resent thee more, my Lord, for rescuing me from my revenge.”

They were bold words, but Messmer saw no cause for offense. He replied, “The battle was lost. Thou wouldst have no vengeance. I bid thee resent me instead for a truer cause. Thy faith in me hath earned thee little, in the end.”

“Wherefore should I resent thee for my choices freely made?”

“Thou… wilt never see them again. Thy sister and her children.”

Rellana withdrew, scowling. “Mourn me when I am in the grave, my Lord, and not a moment before.”

The serpents flinched at his shoulders. A frigid silence ensued, filling the space left by Messmer’s surprise. Rellana misunderstood.

“‘Tis not thy demise I speak of. She is dead. She perished… a very long time ago. I sense it. Dead in the flesh or the spirit, it matters not. We are-”

Stranded. Forsaken. Condemned.

He had not confessed his suspicions to anyone else. He felt she alone was strong enough to hear the truth.

Rellana exhaled. “Do not do anything foolish, Messmer.”

Messmer’s newborn fear withered. He fed it to his curse.

If Morgott had inherited Marika’s divinity, then he was truly forsaken. Passed over for the selfsame breed of creature he had been charged with rooting out. If Morgott had stolen Marika’s divinity, then the Lands Between he held so gingerly in his memory was gone- poisoned by Omen blood. There was no home for him anymore either way.

“Farewell, Rellana.”

That was all he had wanted to say.

———————

The first time a statue of Marika had been defiled by Graceborn hands, they had beheaded her. Messmer recalled how ragged the meat her stone throat had been, brutalized by hammers and chisels. He had sentenced the perpetrators to impalement. Their bodies had been staked beside Graceless prisoners, for they had deserved no better.

They had not died cowards, at least. Their bones were now an ancient jumble with hornsent remains. Mingled with femurs and skulls sprouting ghastly growths. Who could say which skeleton had borne blessed flesh in life? The sentiment of their unrest haunted the Erdtree people ever since. The crusade had defaced the tutelary deities of the hornsent- their withered mummies. But now, centuries hence, there were scant few of Marika’s visages that were not similarly maimed.

The Fort of Reprimand was already mired in the decomposition of deserters and traitors. Messmer had realized that if he killed every Graceborn man and woman that harbored hatred for Marika, then the decimated hornsent might outnumber them again.

He did not bother himself raging at blasphemies against the Queen. That fire was doused, become cold cinders. The invasion of his sanctum should have coaxed forth an ember. Anger for his people and the insult of the trespass. Only darkness stirred, anticipatory.

He limped to the balcony railing. His legs yearned for rest.

Soon.

The acrid smoke of Messmerfire wafted upwards, coiling around the beams and slithering over the steps. Escaping the shouts of anguish and panic trumpeting from the lower levels of the great tower. His Tower, to rival Belurat’s hubristic bid for Godhood. Messmer’s serpents flicked forlornly at the rafters many, many meters above them. Hilde’s ashes had been sprinkled there, so that she might protect her noble endeavor even in death. Would she stir for this occasion, or had she grown as discontented as her surviving peers? He had not wanted this morbid museum- this worthless, idolic collection. Now he was almost sorry for its desecration.

He leaned over the railing, peered down at the fresh carcass of his life’s work. Archers darted between the columns on the upper floors as the Storehouse’s sparse sentinels were murdered by his brothers. The Shadow Keep was rife with weapons gone to rust, for it had not been earnestly attacked in centuries. There were too few soldiers, each ill-prepared to face Omen Demigods.

Every blow Morgott dealt- every swipe of his incanted sword- was followed by an auric burst. The reverberation shattered the shields and blades of the keep’s soldiers. Where he walked, his footfalls glowed. They warped wood and cracked stone alike. He was seeding roots. Messmer tracked them with his gifted eye- tendrils crept across the ravaged ground as substantial as hornsent ghosts. And when they were trod upon, a treespear thrust upwards into Graceborn bodies. Impaled them- seared them with holy magic. A stunted tree Lord Morgott made, but a Golden sapling he was. His yellow hornsent garb was dyed a rusty shade. Painted by the castoff of Mohg’s claws and gorged flies, overfed to bursting. Morgott raised his arms, and a luminous seed manifested above his crown of horns. Its radiance burst- rained upon the Storehouse’s defenses. The hide of a mummified elk burned.

From his vantage point three stories above, Messmer’s Omen brothers were indistinct abominations. Morgott was a lashing scorpion’s tail and a snarling lion’s head. Mohg was a fanged crow. A misshapen avian deity of Death. Messmer could forget that Morgott had inherited Lord Godfrey’s proud visage- he could forget that Mohg had once been a wailing babe, seeking comfort and receiving none.

I hunted beasts such as ye. Messmer gripped the banister until his nails gouged the wood. Red bears and boars of the forests. Hippopotamuses of the marshes. The white lions of the plains. The elk with antlers that bloomed. The furred eagles of the mountains. What right have ye to my dominion, ye animals?

The girl in the cage was Marika’s blood. He had held a Curseborn infant and loved it. His own soul was trapped in the jaws of a snake. No, the Omen were not monsters. No more than he.

“Morgott,” Messmer called down.

His brother glared up at him, a gray smudge to Messmer’s poorly sight.

“My child!” Mohg roared in reply. A savage, guttural snarl. “Return her!”

“Dost thou hide in an illusion?” Messmer asked his Grace-favored kin. “I shan’t entreat with a false form.”

“I bring thee my Godly flesh,” Morgott cried. “If harm hath come to my daughter, the Erdtree shall forsake thee as it hath thy men!”

Godly. The serpent’s fangs pierced his heart through.

“If thine intent is to sever my Grace… Do not trouble thyself. I cede it willingly.”