Chapter Text
Morgott, son of a god and her golden consort, shared his childhood with sewer rats.
The dark and the damp and the filth encompassed his early years, the skittering of pests and the snuffling of rodents, the clink of the chain around his neck and the familiar worn grooves his fingers traced in the stonework. The world turned by laws he did not comprehend. When a brick he could once spread both splayed hands upon became too small for him to do so without careful angling, he understood not that he had grown, but that his surroundings had shrunk.
He didn't yet know what he would do if the room became too small to hold him. There seemed few options. He might leave, he supposed.
His father, after all, must have come from somewhere.
At some point following the Shattering, he will reason that Godfrey must have met him before, or else Morgott would not have understood language. But for much of his life, the first he remembers of Godfrey is his voice, deep and slow, and his fingers against Morgott's neck. The steel collar had begun to cling too snugly, and Godfrey on one of his regular visits took measurements for a replacement.
Morgott suffered the contact with minimal hissing since Godfrey had brought an apple and the threat of a shorter stay should Morgott bite him. Although Morgott could survive without his company, he made for a more interesting climbing exercise than the walls.
Godfrey talked all the while, primarily of court gossip and administrative business. On these visits he never spoke of subjects he actually enjoyed, and the names Godwyn and Mohg avoided all mention. Morgott knew that Marika was Godfrey's wife and he her consort, but not that this meant she was Morgott's mother as well. His father strove to give him no reason to care about the world outside.
So Godfrey was caught rather off guard when Morgott, currently scaling the vast expanse of his back, interrupted his story to say, “That's a different name.”
“Which name?”
“The countess's husband. He was someone else before.”
“Who was he before?” Once Morgott answered, Godfrey rumbled, “She remarried three weeks ago. So you remember it that far back.”
Obviously. “I'm not as stupid as you.”
“If you say that again, I won't bring anything next time.”
“Why not?” Morgott demanded. “It's true.”
He tightened his grip on the coat as his handholds rose and fell with Godfrey's sigh. “It is not, I don't appreciate it, and you are considerably smaller than I am. Do as you're told.”
Morgott snarled, but the annoyance didn't linger. He clambered onto Godfrey's shoulder, draped himself over it, and set to playing with his father's pale beard. Years of accumulated grime smeared across the strands. Once he'd done appropriate damage to the braid, he tugged it up and shoved into his mouth what little would fit.
Godfrey made a disgusted noise and started to lift an arm, but he paused midway through the motion and in the end didn't stop Morgott.
Through a mouthful of hair, Morgott asked, “What are the names like?”
“Which names?”
Morgott listed them, each member of the court and each of Godfrey's aides and each of their scandalous partners –
“Do you need to breathe at all?” said Godfrey. Morgott paused, inhaled, and made to continue, but Godfrey spoke first. “What do you want to know about them?”
Morgott bit the hairs harder. Then he spat them out, pushing the stray strands along with his tongue, and snapped, “What are they like?”
“I can't tell what you're asking about.”
“Are they like the rats? Are they like you? Are they like – ”
“That's how it's been for you. I didn't realize.” Godfrey ran a hand down his newly freed beard, gave it up for a lost cause, and set to undoing the plait. “The names belong to people, not rats.”
“People? Like we're people?”
“Well,” said Godfrey, “not so much like you, Morgott.”
---
Morgott speaks to his younger kindred for the first time on the battlefield.
His brother's get Godrick, that spineless boy clawing for the golden leaves far above his station. Radahn, who imagines that halting the course of the stars and the fate of his mother Rennala means he has strength enough too to claim the Elden Ring. Rykard, who loses sight of what he fights for until any amount of sacrifice becomes a paltry stepping stone. Malenia and Miquella offer no war but rather the promise of one, a vow that Malenia will return to depose him once she has assurance the Erdtree will admit Miquella. And Ranni, that sinister creature with no army at her back, watches from on high and works in the shadows and offers no word where he might hear.
Undeserving down to the last.
He bars the gates to them all, as the Erdtree has. His siblings' forces break on Leyndell's walls, their commanders fall to the Fell Omen's stave, and, inside the city that they cannot breach, sickness ravages the populace Morgott protects. Ash and rubble pile high enough to drown the lower streets, dust in such quantities as to scour the lungs of those who breathe it.
Some nights, Mohg arrives to drift between the dead and dying like an ill wind. Morgott can prevent his entries into the city as well, but Mohg is the most inoffensive of his family. He's heretical, yes. Overwrought, of course. Graceless, bombastic, loud, contact-starved, murderous, sneaked into the rafters of an opera once and fashioned his entire personality around it... but inoffensive. The worst Morgott can say of him is that his timing has ever been impossibly inconvenient.
The surgeon scrambles back when the blood pooled around Morgott's feet parts to admit a horned head, a black iron trident, a hulking figure outfitted in robes that would look pretentious on a king. Morgott spares him a glance, scowling. “Come back later.”
“How terribly cold, brother!” He makes to drape his arm over Morgott's shoulders, but Morgott has already formed a fence between them with his tail. Mohg puts on an offended expression. He leans in to peer at the appendage instead, patting it idly. “Did you come by these injuries from Radahn? I heard his army has called a full retreat to Caelid. Congratulations. Although next time you might consider not facing a demigod unarmored.”
“I won't hear that from you.”
Mohg smiles. It's a meaningless gripe; Mohg, after all, is not the king of a city besieged. He doesn't need armor when his enemies don't know where to find him.
“What do you want?” says Morgott.
Mohg waves the surgeon away. She doesn't move, and Morgott doesn't tell her to. “I can take care of this.”
“With heresy.”
“Of course,” Mohg agrees, “and meanwhile your surgeon can attend to the others in need. You've acquired a number of those.”
Morgott sighs and gestures for her to go. Mohg waits until the tent flap settles, then turns to Morgott, raises the trident, and slams the dull end once upon the ground. The blood soaked into the floor and the over-sized cot and Morgott's rags rises into the air, gathering into a perfect liquid sphere before Mohg.
Morgott braces. Mohg laughs and waits for his nod before bringing the trident down a second time.
The sphere scatters outwards. Morgott's breath catches as each droplet of blood lands unerringly in an open wound, and he grits his teeth and hunches, forcing himself still as his injuries both inside and out seal shut.
“Was that so terrible?” says Mohg, nudging Morgott's tail aside and taking a seat on the cot beside him.
A phantom ache lingers in every place touched by Mohg's curse. It won't clear for hours. “Thank you.”
“I'll have you know that you are the one who never visits me unless you need a favor. We should both agree that I am the better sibling.”
“You live in a lake of bloody shit,” Morgott replies.
“It lends a nostalgic fragrance.”
That's the problem.
“Would you visit me if I moved, then?”
“Would you?”
Mohg says, predictably, “Hypothetically.”
One day Mohg will get himself killed doing something incredibly idiotic, and Morgott can't say anything about it because he's in the same boat.
“You would come if grace led you.”
He doesn't bother replying to that. “Should I get you something since you traveled all this way? Food? Drink?”
“Your company is more than enough, dear brother.” Mohg pauses. “Since you've mentioned it, however, there is a matter we should work through. I stumbled across an artifact earlier that will undoubtedly be of interest to you. You might prefer to get off of the bed before I reveal it.”
Morgott frowns. “Why?”
“A simple precaution.”
“What did you find?”
“Off of the cot, please.”
Slowly, gaze locked on Mohg, Morgott rises and steps away. “That looks far enough,” Mohg says quietly. He looks almost apologetic as he retrieves from the folds of his robes something small enough to conceal in his hand. Without further preamble, he leans forwards and presses it against the ground.
Leaden weight drags Morgott to his hands and knees. The shock of it pulls a cry from him, and he forgets how to move, how to breathe, how to think, his world condensed to the golden anchor seal illuminating the floor.
Memory returns before reason does. He raises an arm, as he watched Radagon do not so long ago, and brings his fist down. The tent shakes; the seal shatters.
He lunges at Mohg, who's already gotten to his feet, pushed Morgott's staff out of reach behind him, and raised the trident to block. “That's hardly ideal,” Mohg says. He grimaces as Morgott's tail slams into his side, then snarls from the back of his throat and forces Morgott to the ground by dint of the superior weight the trident affords him, pressing the weapon crosswise against Morgott's chest to keep him there. “I'm sorry, brother, you would not have let me test it if I told you.”
“Did you consider why?” Morgott hisses, nails catching on Mohg's sleeves.
“Yes, I'm sorry. Calm yourself and I will hand over the shackle.”
Mohg holds him down for the ten minutes it takes for him to stop attempting fratricide. More than a few guards and passers-by attempt to check on the commotion; Morgott orders them each away in turn.
“Are you finished?” Mohg says.
Morgott bares his teeth. “Get off.”
Mohg rises and steps back. When Morgott sits up, seething but quiescent, Mohg settles onto the bed again and tosses him the rune-etched stone. Morgott doesn't realize until after he's already caught it that he can't bear to hold it. He drops it as if scalded.
“Can you not touch it?” Mohg asks.
“I can,” says Morgott and makes no move to do so. “Where did you retrieve it from?”
“Where else.”
The sewers. “You went there?”
Mohg smiles with a touch of wariness that didn't exist before Morgott's outburst. “I had a pet crayfish for a time. I thought I might check on its family.” He flaps a hand. “Of course, my crayfish is dead. It grew large enough that I began to look appetizing, so Father tore its head off. And then left it there.”
“I kept rats.” Morgott's aware that Mohg's derailed them, but he can always return them to the original subject later, after they finish complaining about their father. “For meals, not as pets. But Father stepped on Gilda when she came near to biting him.”
“He had no right.”
Morgott considers Mohg. “Is that the only reason you went into the sewers?”
“I also left a gift.” Mohg sets his elbows on his legs, leaning the trident against his shoulder. “A further layer of protection against Chaos.”
Morgott snorts and pushes himself to his feet. He doesn't lose awareness of the shackle's location; it hovers at the edge of the sight, the rune seeming brighter than he knows it to shine. Worse because, thanks to Mohg, he knows it still functions. “I survived the day after all. Your effort was needless.”
“You shouldn't speak like that. You've little idea how much I welcomed the surprise of your victory.” Mohg lifts his chin. “What's done is done. Should you ever fall, and your seals with you, a precaution exists.”
One singular precaution. Excellent.
Mohg nods at the shackle. “Have you any thought on how to dispose of that?”
Morgott's lip curls as he looks at it. “A weighted chest in the moat.”
“Are you certain that would service? I would drop it off of the edge of Nokron, or over Mount Gelmir.”
Not Nokron, not when nobody has any idea what might live at the bottom of the abyss. The volcano, however, might prove more secure than the moat approach. Even if something fishes it from the lava, the rune's glow can pass for simple heat at a glance.
There's only the small matter of Rykard's army occupying the roads from Leyndell to Gelmir.
“You wouldn't have business at Mount Gelmir,” says Morgott.
“No, but for you I can make some.” Mohg stands and heads over to pick up the shackle. Morgott swallows his reaction, turns his back with an effort, and goes to retrieve his staff where Mohg left it. As he reaches for it, Mohg says, “Brother?”
“Yes?”
“I would never expect you to go looking. But if you should come across any of my old keepsakes....”
“Keepsakes,” Morgott says, derisive. “I will contact you if I do.”
“Don't contact, visit! You never give me a chance to act the host. Will you come if I clean the lake?”
“Do that anyway.”
Mohg makes a show of mulling it over. “No.”