Chapter Text
Haydn has been to worse places than Consecrated Snowfields. He has. He definitely has. But when he’s actually there, chilled to the bone by the biting winds and frustrated down to his marrow, it’s difficult to place it above any of the other pits he’s been. Hours spent wandering what feels like the same patch of unidentifiable white plains, tossed and turned by the blizzard. He lifts his helmet-visor to try to navigate better but only ends up half-way to snowblind, the resultant tear-tracks turned to ice as they run down his cheeks. Occasionally lanced by sniper-archers who can see him from miles off even though he can’t see three feet in front of him, and how is that fair?
As though to spite him for spurning the Mountaintop of the Giants and its promised flame, sites of grace seem almost nowhere to be found. Nor is shelter, or rather what he finds is already occupied with albinaurics – the frog-ones, not the people-ones – with whom he attempts diplomacy and gets cartwheeled in the face. Not that the people-albinaurics seem interested in anything except killing him either, apparently gate-keeping the path to the Haligtree, even though Haydn thought it was supposed to be the salvation-place, for everyone, isn’t it? He doesn’t understand, he doesn’t get the chance to parlay, or to recuperate.
The foggy silhouette of a walking mausoleum promises blessed shelter, if he can just get it to fall to the ground. He thus beelines for it, only to beeline away again when the damn thing has an entire artillery barrage it throws at his approach, raining down like a hundred glowing arrows. He wisely flees. He less wisely bumbles straight into a greater runebear. He loses poor Torrent to its claws and scarcely escapes on foot to the nearest semi-safe crevasse. He is by this point mostly blind and deaf from the howling ever-weather and desperate for this ordeal to be over; thus, when his grasping hands find the tombstone-like shape of a magical portal, albeit one that feels strangely tacky to the touch, he doesn’t dwell on it. He just feels the hum of magic and the promise of a new destination and in a split-second decision thinks, fucking fuck this, and teleports away.
He comes to in a dark, still cave. No snow or wind, no cold – stiflingly warm, if anything. For the moment he doesn’t think much of it beyond relief at the reprieve, wipes the swiftly-melting ice off his eyelashes, and tips his visor back down. No enemies rush to him but he’s in a new place so he’ll need to be cautious. He’s half-hoping this was a shortcut to the Haligtree, since it’s still not very clear to him how exactly he’s supposed to get there, but he has to get out of this odd cave first.
He does not find the Haligtree.
“What the heck,” he murmurs as he emerges into not bright daylight, but a violet chasm glittering with false stars, the unmistakable underlands. Before him looms some arching palace of nox origin, but it looks – he almost thinks it’s on fire, until he sees that the fire is embedded into the pale stone itself, like veins of lurid carnelian. This… is completely new to him. Haydn has travelled plenty underground, all along the Siofra and Ainsel Rivers, and he thought he’d trod all the treadable places, but he never found this. He cautiously makes his way down a slope of otherwise familiar underground plant life, hardy shrubs dotted with dewkissed herba in moody blue. The craggy rock faces are inexplicably crimson, until he realises that it’s… liquid. Trickling down the surface like a little water-stream might. Then he realises that his right hand, the glove of his gauntlet, is stained red where he gripped the teleportation portal.
Blood?
It makes no sense – where is it even coming from? The only thing he can think is that they might be near one of those diabolical tunnels with all the giant ants, and the rotten bodies piled up like something between food and mulch. The… liquid runoff would have to go somewhere, maybe. Ugh. That’s his gross but working theory, until he reaches the edge of his descent and sees an entire pool of the stuff; a steady, sloshing swamp of blood.
Somehow he still can’t quite believe it until he’s knee deep in it (not without caution, he thought it would be like the Lake of Rot but there’s no pink-red glow, nor any ill effect when he steps foot there). It definitely is blood, there’s no mistaking the overwhelmingly metallic smell, or the residue it leaves on his armour, but… wouldn’t blood clot, coagulate? This is the same liquid consistency and vivid ruby as though freshly spilled from a vein, but there’s also no obvious source, no giant thing set to bleed eternal. Corpses grimly strung up from makeshift gallow-posts, but long exsanguinated and desiccated. Enemies – more frog-albinaurics, just as uninterested in speaking with him, either hyper-aggressive or lost in some fugue, either way best evaded as he crosses the swamp. The place is eerily quiet. The flow about his legs would almost be peaceful if it weren’t comprised of body fluid. He finds a grace site on the far side and is endlessly thankful that he’s able to clear the blood-residue from the joints of his prostheses.
Although he hasn’t a clue where he is, aside from underground, he does have an inkling whose territory he might have stumbled into, and the presence of sanguine nobles (also only interested in killing him) swiftly confirms it. It’s just that… he sort of thought Mohg was… alright, not normal, he’s obviously not normal, but he didn’t think Mohg lived in a blood swamp with a bunch of weird frog-albinaurics and shambling half-corpses engaged in some primitive worship of him. In an underground palace that appears to be permanently on fire, although the fever-heat he feels while traversing its walls does match how his room had felt when Mohg paid him a midnight visit that one time. Hot and… damp. Like walking inside a beating heart.
Part of him very strongly thinks about spiriting away to the Roundtable and then onto a nicer destination. But ultimately, the only place he’s due to go is back to blizzardland, and his curiosity is sort of winning out. He’s never stumbled across any other means to reach Mohg’s territory, why was there a portal in Consecrated Snowfield of all places? And Mohg is… well, he’s Morgott’s twin. His extremely scary twin, but he was amicable (sort of) when he last spoke to Haydn, and so theoretically Haydn is safe in Mohg’s territory, bloodthirsty sanguine nobles excepted.
He follows the twisting corridors of the burning palace upwards, further and further, until he sneaks past a congregation to access a lift that takes him to the very top, ostensibly where the leader of this lot is likely to be found. Indeed, the final chamber is a grand affair, lined with flame-licked pillars and statues of nox figures that all died some thousand-plus years ago. Unroofed but with no elements to protect from anyway, it opens to the false sky of the cavern, that fearsome orange-red set against a pink-purple nebula. And at the chamber’s centre is a single, enormous cocoon, like something the giant ants would spin. Cracked in its centre, with a withered arm that lifts skywards, hand outstretched, as though reaching for something unattainable.
“…Mohg?” Haydn calls out tentatively. He doesn’t… totally grasp what he’s looking at, only the feeling that he’s maybe not supposed to be looking at it. The whisper-quiet of the chamber only adds to the feeling of treading on consecrated… or maybe desecrated ground. He flinches when the outstretched arm suddenly descends like a puppet with cut strings and runs red with blood. When it gushes and froths from the rift in the cocoon like a regurgitating aorta, spills messily on the stone floors and rushes towards him in an advancing tide, a figure bubbling forth as a kelpie would from seafoam.
It is at this point that Haydn loses his nerve. “Perhaps another time,” he says weakly, and opts for a hasty retreat.
He makes it about two steps before a taloned hand very neatly plucks at the collar of his cuirass and yanks him back. “Knightling,” is cooed in his ear.
Haydn has a moment of very instinctual panic, which seems to be something Mohg always elicits in him, before he takes a breath and reminds himself that this is Morgott’s brother and they have spoken before without Haydn being soundly murdered. “Mohg,” he says, mostly squeaks, but truly he’s proud of himself for getting anything coherent out at all. “Very sorry to bother you. I thought while I was in the vicinity I’d pop by and see you, but I can see you’re busy.”
There’s a low noise that’s somewhere between a chitter and a growl. The hairs on Haydn’s nape rise all at once. “Did Morgott send you?” he hears murmured, but there’s a dangerous riptide to it. “Does he finally tire of me? Send his little lackey to commit his sins for him?”
“Wha – what?” Haydn manages. He twists in place so he can actually see Mohg, who relinquishes him. It’s the same vision of onyx and opulence that he remembers from last time, although the sprawling wings are absent. Still has the horns, fangs and claws though, and a single cloudy-amber eye that is trained intently upon him. His posture says threat, both giving and receiving, as pools of blood churn restlessly at his feet, fingers flexing as though to summon some weapon to his side. Haydn has no idea what he’s done to earn such ire, but he’s keen to amend it: “I’m here by accident, not on purpose. I stumbled through a portal in Consecrated Snowfield, I didn’t know where it would take me. Morgott didn’t send me, he doesn’t know I’m here.”
Mohg stares laserlike at him, as though he might be doing that truth-detecting thing he seems able to do. It’s quite a weighty gaze to be on the receiving end of.
Haydn had wondered about a civil conversation with Mohg but now he’s here and things don’t feel very civil, he decides it’s probably best to just pretend he never set foot here. “I’d be very happy to be on my way if you could point me to the exit,” he lamely offers.
“Exit,” Mohg repeats slowly. He does, after a moment, seem to relax, loosening his weapon-tense fingers and the square set to his great shoulders. “…My apologies, knight. Morgott and I are not on the best terms at present, so I thought you were here to harm me. But that is not the case… is it?”
“No, no, of course not,” Haydn assures him. “I was only trying to get out of the snow and there was a runebear and… it doesn’t really matter. I didn’t mean to stumble in, I can be on my way.”
“Of course,” the Omen says, his whispering voice all the softer, almost airy. “Forgive my – tres – my trespass. You are not my enemy, and very welcome to recuperate here. Perhaps I can arrange some accommodation for you.”
Haydn glances again at the giant, bloodied cocoon. The emerging hand now flopped lax and unmoving from its depths. Something about it sets his teeth on edge. “That’s very kind of you, but I’m mostly recuperated. What’s the best way out of here?”
“It’s a tricky part of the underlands, quite hard to navigate. I shall be glad to show you the exit myself. Duo, knightling, before we do, how is Morgott faring? We have fallen out, but I miss him every day. Is he well?”
Haydn lifts a brow at the odd cough Mohg gave in the middle of that sentence, but he’s sufficiently occupied by the question. “Um, well, we’re still trying to work out what to do about the Erdtree, but he let me go to the mountain. He didn’t come with me because he has to mind Leyndell so I haven’t seen him for a while.” He thinks about mentioning the grace-given seal on his chest as a measure of trust and then thinks better of it. Curious he adds, “Why did you fall out? I thought you spoke a lot.” He infers that Morgott went to Mohg for… well, relationship advice. Haydn can only imagine that Mohg’s advice is dire, but it did push Morgott into asking Haydn to his bed, so he can’t really complain too much about the outcome.
Mohg gives a sharp tch sound. “Never as much as I’d like, but more than at present. However he committed a grave offence, and I am still awaiting my apology. Unus. I may yet have it.”
Haydn frowns, “Why do you keep–” his tongue stills. Maybe it’s a tic or something, he doesn’t want to offend Morgott’s scarier twin. Speaking of, “What grave offence?”
Mohg gives a great, almost wistful sigh. “He took a second Great Rune. And that just won’t do.” He leans towards Haydn, and speaks like one would blow out a candle: “Nihil.”
Fittingly, everything goes black.
-
When he comes to, he’s no longer in the cocoon room, but staring up at a different set of pillars and statues. He vaguely recognises it as the area just before the final chamber and the lift leading up to it, where he’d sneaked past a sanguine noble and sermon’s worth of frog-acolytes, all bowed in silent prayer. Those are all absent now, the place appears to be deserted. Or so he thinks, but then he hears the rustle of feathers, and he looks up.
The focus of this temple-platform is a great statue of an unknown nox scholar, robed and bearded and lost to the ages. Perched atop the serene countenance, with an almost lackadaisical grace contrast to his great bulk, is the Lord of Blood in his winged glory. Bat-corvid feathers a blot against the star-strewn false sky. As effortless and dangerous as any bird of prey.
“You’ll forgive the staging,” he calls down to Haydn. Despite said staging his whispering voice may as well be next to Haydn’s ear, sending a prickle up his nape. “One never knows how a tarnished will react to bad news. I’d rather not be in hitting distance.”
Haydn feels… different. Not hurt, although it does feel like someone maybe drained all the blood from his body and then just as carelessly replenished it, but there’s no pain and no wounds. But something has happened to him, and he doesn’t know what, save that it is indeed bad news. “What have you done to me?” he asks tentatively, climbing to his feet, craning his neck to address the lofty demigod before him.
“A small curse,” Mohg tells him, amicably blunt. “Entirely reversible, purely practical. I’ve no wish to harm you, knightling, but I can’t let you leave just yet. And so, now you cannot.”
Since leaving does seem like a very good idea right about now, Haydn instinctively reaches inwardly for it, the thread of grace that will spirit him away to the Roundtable, demesne that it is, and then onwards to a better destination than this infernal palace. And… nothing happens. It’s as though the string has been, not cut, but neatly plucked from him. That causes a brief note of panic, before he forces himself to think more practically. To address Mohg with far more bravery than he feels. “I’m tarnished, Mohg. I have an exit strategy right there,” he points to the nearest edge, and the plunge into an abyss that offers a swift if somewhat painful way out of most predicaments.
But Mohg only shrugs one massive shoulder, flexing the wing on that side. “Then you’ll return to the last grace you touched, which I assume is the one over there,” he gestures vaguely down the stairs that lead to the temple platform, where a glimmering grace-site waits at the bottom. It is indeed the last one Haydn touched. He has a brief wonder how Mohg knows of any sites – Morgott can only see them because he’s grace-given after all – but then remembers that Mohg does in fact have other tarnished, Bloody Fingers, under his employ. The Omen continues, “But you shan’t be taking any shortcuts out of here, nor any exit physical or portal. The only way you leave is by my benediction. So you had best listen closely.”
He takes a deep breath, unsteadier than he’d like. As tarnished death holds little threat to him, so long as grace sees fit to return him. But entrapment? He doesn’t have a good answer for that one. To that end, cornered animal though he might be, he’s no choice but to grit his teeth and kowtow to his captor. “I’m listening.”
“You gave Morgott a second Great Rune,” Mohg prefaces. “You lack the context of the Shattering, but be assured this was no small gesture, nor was him accepting it from you. My twin and I have an agreement – equality in all things, and no overstepping one’s bounds even if they have the means. That is how we keep our peace. Do you see the issue yet?”
Haydn swallows heavily, “You want a Great Rune.”
“I want a Great Rune,” Mohg echoes. “I sense you have that of Godrick, who was a pathetic wretch. And Rennala’s rebirth, which is an insult to me. But you do have Radahn.” He tilts his ebony head, the tangled horns gleaming under faux-constellations. “Rykard’s brother, the blood of stargazers. So to take that Great Rune would be a fine mirror and message to my beloved, thoughtless kin. Give me Radahn’s Rune, and I will give you freedom. A simple trade.”
Haydn stares at him, his heart in his throat. This is – that – he earned Radahn’s Great Rune fair and square at the war festival, he died and revived countless times in the pursuit of it. But even if he’d demanded Godrick or Rennala’s power, that too would have been unacceptable because Haydn attained everything on his own merit. Rivers of blood, sweat and tears to get to where he is now and Mohg wants to essentially mug him for it? “What if I refuse?” he returns, flat and cold.
“See afore-mentioned lack of freedom,” Mohg replies with infuriating politeness. “I’ve placed no chains on you because I do not need them. You are welcome to scour for an exit, there isn’t one. So you can either wander aimlessly until grace deserts you, in which case you would lose the Great Rune anyway, or I can run out of patience and find a more forceful way to pry your power from you. And neither of us wants that, do we?” At Haydn’s ongoing stricken stare he leans in a little, neck extended in almost reptilian fashion, to match the low roil of his words, “You came into my territory, knightling. I’m afraid you have to play by my rules.”
His fear and frustration boils into a seething mass. It’s all Haydn can do not to fling a spell at him; he does in fact strongly contemplate violence, but it’s pointless. Even if Mohg was in arm’s reach what is he supposed to do, kill him? He settles for a murderous glare under the helmet, and a gauntleted finger jabbed in Mohg’s direction. “I wanted to like you. I really, really did,” He turns on his metal heel and all but stomps off, back towards the grace site, to no further quips from his jailer, only watchful silence.
It does everything a grace is supposed to do in terms of replenishing his vigour and getting the residual grime out of his armour, but he can feel that the curse Mohg inflicted is still there. The gentle glow of gold offers him no means to whisking away from this place either. His chest feels tight, overwhelmed. He tries to breathe through it. Strides back through the mesh of corridors and caves that sprawl through the mausoleum building, retracing the steps he took to get here, slow and methodical. There will be a way out of here. He just has to find it.
-
He doesn’t find it.
Mohg’s territory appears to be a lone island in the chasm-sprawl of the underlands, with no bridge between it and other landmasses. If he squints into the starry gloom he can see the distant fragments of the eternal cities, but he has zero means to get to them. He cannot climb down the sides of the island, though he does try that a few times, but invariably loses his footing, plummets into darkness, and ends up back at the grace site. A glance tells him Mohg has departed from his dramatic perch, ostensibly to give Haydn time to stew, which he certainly does.
It might be hours or days that he spends picking around the palace. Everywhere but the cocoon chamber, which is where he infers Mohg spends all of his time, but Mohg is the last person he wants to see. He scours every other corner, including places that would perhaps be closed to an invading tarnished, but are open to him now: chambers for rest, kitchens for food, though he finds he wants to do neither (and what do they even eat down here, anyway?). Sanguine nobles glimpsed like ghosts, not inclined to speak to him. Everything is so quiet, is what strikes him more than anything else, as though the entire land follows Mohg’s whispering cadence, or that everyone and everything is collectively holding its breath. For what, he doesn’t know.
Beyond the palace, the red wetlands spread as far as the sheer-drop corners of the isolated landmass. Never drying, never clotting, an endless glistening tide. The frog-albinauric denizens of the blood swamp – also nonspeaking, although they’re incapable of it, a cruder form of falseman compared to Haydn’s like – slosh distantly, but like the nobles they go out of their way to avoid him. Even the wildlife, monstrous crows and dogs festered with never-closing wounds, remain placid to him in his wanderings. As though everything the blood touches is Mohg’s, and through that will they all know he’s to be left unharmed. Which is almost funny, because Haydn is contemplating their master’s murder.
He has to hand it to his captor, when he stated he needed no restraints Haydn had thought it was arrogance… but here he is, completely captive. At least being chained and tortured would be something happening, but this desolate tranquillity feels more oppressive than any manacle, moreso that this could be his eternity. The hysteria-laced recollection that he thought he was safe here. Of course he's safe! Safe as can be. Forever and ever.
Slumped against the base of a petrified tree, blood lapping at his heels, Haydn puts his head in his hands and thinks very carefully about whether he is actually going to have to kill Mohg, and whether Morgott would ever forgive him for it.
Surely he’s justified here, but he remembers what Morgott once said, that he would forgive even Mohg’s worst crimes, because in the Shunning Grounds they were all each other had. Maybe he’d accept that Haydn had been driven to violence, that there was no choice. But Haydn would be his brother’s killer evermore, wouldn’t he.
But it’s that or stay here forever. Or, give in to the demands.
He feels a terrible clench in his chest. He doesn’t know if it’s the hidden will of a Great Rune that doesn’t wish to be relinquished, or just his own anguish. It’s not fair. That’s his Great Rune and – and if he gives it up he’s back down to two, which he dimly knows isn’t enough to repair the Elden Ring, which means he has to go and find another one from somewhere. Aren’t Miquella and Malenia the only ones left, after this? The wardens of the Haligtree, salvation-land for the downtrodden, although the ordeal that is Consecrated Snowfield does have Haydn second guessing that part. But not necessarily people he wants to be hunting down for their Great Runes, when he already made it to three.
There comes a clicking noise, “Enough time with your thoughts, knightling?”
He jolts out of his woeful reverie and springs to his feet, looking around wildly. After a moment he spots the shadow leaning around the other side of the tree. “Will you stop that?” he all but screeches as his temper gets the better of him. “This is miserable enough without you creeping on me from all angles!”
“Nothing has harmed you, has it?” Mohg returns patiently, unruffled by the insult. Sans-wings again (he seems to be able to materialise them at will? Odd), he slinks out from his creeping spot and takes a fresh step into the blood-pools, which lap almost lovingly at the hem of his robes. “You yet remain my honoured guest. If I intended misery upon you, I could do much worse.”
“If you want my Great Rune, stop threatening me every other sentence,” he snaps back. “You’re not doing me any favours, and I don’t owe you anything, so stop pretending that I do. Why don’t you just take it from me anyway?”
The Omen tilts his head, “Because that would hurt you. And upset my brother.”
He’s at the same impasse Haydn is, he realises. Neither of them can harm the other one without having Morgott to answer to, and neither or them are willing to do that. If nothing else that counters Mohg’s bodily threats, and gives Haydn something in the way of leverage. “You don’t think he’ll be upset with you regardless? You’re keeping me prisoner.”
“I mean more to him than you do,” Mohg tells him with the delicate precision of a surgeon’s scalpel to the heart. Haydn feels suitably dissected as he continues, “I can justify extorting you; I can even justify hurting you. But I’d rather not. When we last spoke…” he trails through the blood-river, elongated arm outstretched to its surface. The ruby rushes to meet him, twining into flower-like formations before breaking into liquid again, forming and dissipating like a stream of consciousness. “…I permitted you questions. There were many cunning, useful things you could have asked, not the nonsense you did. It was… endearing.” And yet, there’s a certain sharp scrutiny in his one-eyed gaze as he glances Haydn’s way, “Do you like Morgott?”
Haydn exhales through his nose. “Cully, Morgott is the reason you don’t have a knife in your throat already. You could say I like him.”
There’s a kchh-chh sort of chitter that could be a derisive laugh. “Feisty thing, aren’t you? I’d like to see you try. But how about I sweeten our deal: you can ask as many questions about Morgott as you’d like and have your answers, in trade for that Great Rune.”
“I think it’s very telling that you’ll trade Morgott’s privacy away without a thought.” It’s a cut in exchange for the one he was dealt earlier, but he only thinks better of it when he sees Mohg go almost preternaturally motionless. It’s after a moment that he realises the rippling blood has as well, as still and flat as glass.
“You may make precious few missteps with me, Tarnished,” Mohg says very softly. “That was one. Have a care not to repeat it.”
Haydn’s heart is thumping almost painfully in the vicinity of his throat. And yet he thinks, Not wrong though, am I.
He keeps his tongue tucked behind his teeth as he steadily maintains, “I’m not willing to bargain with you.”
That earns him a loftily disdainful look from the towering figure, “You’ll lose the Rune one way or another. You can get something in return, or not. Have a good think about that.”
He disappears with the same eerie swiftness that he arrived, turning the glassy blood-water to an almost frothing mass that barely calms for his absence. Even when he’s gone Haydn doesn’t feel like he can breathe any sigh of relief; it’s all he can do to breathe at all. If his legs weren’t metal he is certain they’d be shaking. But he is made of sterner stuff than that, and able to put one foot in front of the other, as he resumes his search for a way out of this hell.
-
He hears humming.
It’s muted, but stark in the drowning silence of the palace. Though Haydn thinks he only heard it at all because he chose to sleep on a balcony of the building rather than within its walls, not trusting some sanguine noble or even Mohg himself not to be standing over his bed when he awoke. Rather, he stirs from his rough slumber to a gentle song, the meandering lilt of a long-forgotten lullaby. It is delivered in male voice with just a hint of aged rasp, low and soothing.
Curiosity overcomes his weariness; he follows the sound as far as foot will allow, only to realise it emanates from somewhere higher up, some crumbling part of the palace rendered inaccessible by anything but wing, or climbing as the case may be. When he hauls himself up the facade he finds a patch of greenery nestled in the ruins with all the makings of a secret garden. The enclosed space brims with bloodroses, grown not wild from neglect, but carefully tended and nurtured – sprawling up the pale stone walls and arches, wreathing a dried-up fountain. And in the middle of it all, armed only with small secateurs, a man.
“Hmm?” the figure halts his tune and turns at the newcomer’s entrance. He is Haydn’s height, which is unusual when all the sanguine nobles tower over him. Haydn thinks that he must be another noble, for his black robes bear the golden embroidery they all so favour – but it is old-gold, faded, and altogether less ostentatious than his ilk. His dark-metal helm obscures his face, but not the long white beard peeking from underneath it.
“Ah, our guest. A tarnished most righteous, at that.” A short bow. “You are welcome here, but please mind the roses. The thorns are sharp.”
As this is the first person who has uttered any sort of sentence to Haydn, he finds himself caught off-guard. “Who – who are you?” he asks, perhaps rudely, but he isn’t really sure what else to say. He hasn't had a mundane interaction he’s had since he set foot here.
He gets an apologetic laugh, “Forgive me. How often I forget myself. Ansbach, Pureblood Knight.”
Haydn edges his way further into the garden. He can indeed see the long fang-like thorns of the roses, but there are safe parts in which to tread. Ansbach is stood directly in a patch, but he’s either unbothered by the blood-seeking blooms or has the knack for navigating without injury. He’s a strange sort, not quite in line with everything else Haydn has seen here so far. “I’ve heard of Bloody Fingers and Sanguine Nobles, but not Pureblood Knights.”
“I suppose the knights would call themselves Fingers and Nobles now. And truly I am not much of a knight these days, so much as a gardener,” he nods to the space. “Until I am back in His Eminence’s good graces, anyway. But he may not have much use for my like anymore.”
“Good graces?”
The bearded knight gestures as though about to elaborate, but then pauses, “…Well. I shan’t bore you with the details, only that I was rash and foolish, and offended my Lord. An old tale for an old man, that is all, and I am much too old for fighting besides.”
Haydn thinks he looks pretty spry for an old man, but there’s nothing but aged acceptance in his voice. Still, if this is someone who served Mohg but is out of favour, there’s a small chance… “I – I’m looking for a way out of the palace,” he tries, helpless to his own ears. “Do you know of an exit?”
“I believe your exit would directly conflict Lord Mohg’s orders,” Ansbach points out politely. Haydn slumps to hear it; so they do all know that he’s a prisoner here. Unoffended by this, Ansbach resumes his dutiful plant-pruning, and resumes speaking: “Righteous Tarnished, I cannot defy orders, but permit me to advise: your stay here hinges upon Lord Mohg’s benevolence, and so it would not be unwise to nurture it. Although–” he hums, “–perhaps it is the folly of a once-knight, to think chivalry is the answer to every problem.”
Although before he might have dismissed the idea out of hand, now his mind snags upon it. He already knows that he can’t get off this rock without Mohg’s permission, and he’s certain that the Blood-Lord ultimately can take Haydn’s acquired powers by force. Antagonising Mohg until he does just that might save Haydn’s pride, but what would save it even more? Keeping his damned Great Rune.
So if he can endear himself enough to his captor, maybe… and he knows Mohg is reluctant to harm him, a mixed blessing in truth, but it puts him in good stead to try talking his way out of this, and he does need to at least try. It feels dangerous, to become a prisoner that Mohg is fond of, but does he have any other choice at this point?
“How…” he asks carefully, “…how would I go about this chivalry?”
The elderly knight seems surprised that Haydn would take his advice, but he gives it: “Ah, well. The first step would be a gift. I could help you pick out a rose, if you would permit it.”
Haydn’s rather dim current view of Mohg is more inclined to give him a knife than a flower. But perhaps this is a knife of a sort anyway, and a bloodrose is fitting in that regard. So he nods, and Ansbach pours over a few while extolling the virtues of the plant – beautiful and deadly, and prone to cut those who come too close, delicate without the proper care. A few times Haydn wonders whether he’s still talking about the flowers, but it’s no hardship to let the man ramble. He is a slice of normality in what has otherwise been a thoroughly unsettling stay, to the extent that Haydn questions how someone who seems so eminently rational could have ended up serving someone like Mohg.
In any case Ansbach seems warmed to him as a fellow Sane Person in this strange and stifling landscape. “A secret, for your patient ear. His Eminence adores the largest and deepest red roses, that is true. But I recall he has a fondness for ones like this,” he gestures to one of the less obvious roses, small and almost shy from the others. Haydn squints at it, and sees that each petal is oh-so-subtly edged with gold, like the curled pages of a gilded book. “Thus I would say one of these might be your gift and peace offering. What say you?”
One tidy secateurs-snip later, and he hands the prize over to Haydn, painlessly retrieved.
Gilt-Lined Bloodrose, its lore whispers to him. Only one privy to the softest Truths would know of its significance.
An innocuous thing, but special. Haydn cradles the flower carefully. “Thank you for the help,” he says. He does mean it – maybe this is all pointless but it’s at least a strategy to deal with his imprisonment, which is further than he was before. “I’ll let him know you helped me make peace with him.”
“Oh, please don’t trouble yourself,” Ansbach sounds, to Haydn’s ear, entirely wistful, “for I have been nothing but trouble for him. I would be better left forgotten.”
-
So when the Lord of Blood next comes to him, he holds out a gilt-lined bloodrose. Voice steady, “I am sorry for what I said.”
Black-clawed fingers pluck it from his grasp. “Hm.” He holds it up to his cataract-clouded eye, studious. It’s hard to say whether he looks fond – hard to tell much at all on that ridged visage of his. But there is a note of something in his voice as he murmurs, “Curious.”
“Ansbach helped me pick it out,” Haydn offers.
“Who?” Mohg says distantly, before he seems to remember. “Ah, a minor knight. I suppose he has a good eye.”
Haydn wonders how a minor knight would know that Mohg liked aberrant bloodroses – remembering that glimpse of item lore he acquired earlier – but maybe Ansbach is just observant, or as obsessive over his Lord as the likes of White Mask Varré has always been. “It’s a peace offering for my earlier words,” he cautiously ventures. “And… if, stressing the if, I were to give you a Great Rune, I would want to know exactly who I’m giving it to. So perhaps you can tell me about yourself first.”
Still thumbing the glinting flower, Mohg casts what appears to be a dubious eye down at him, “More pertinent for you to ask about Morgott, is it not?”
“I can ask Morgott about Morgott,” he points out. Again, he doesn’t necessarily want all of Morgott’s secrets laid bare before him – it feels intrusive somehow – and he is not really sorry for what he said earlier, because he thinks it was in fact true. But his only aim here is to become endeared enough to Mohg that he can convince the man to set him free. “Why don’t we speak about you? Over dinner or something.”
That earns him a dismissive hand wave, “Not over dinner.”
“No?” Haydn frowns, and then Mohg frowns, but Haydn doesn’t really get why he’s frowning. “Why not?”
“Because – you surely know why,” huffs the Omen, in the sort of tone to suggest that Haydn is broaching a very delicate and offensive topic. When the Tarnished continues to look nonplussed he adds in exasperation, “The same reason you cannot eat with Morgott, knightling.”
Haydn remains no closer to understanding what this is about than he was before, “I have eaten with Morgott.”
There is a pause.
“What?” Mohg says. “When? Regularly?”
“No, just once. We had a picnic.” If you could call some impromptu boiled crab a picnic, but there was food and outdoors, it counts.
“You had a what,” Mohg says again. He sounds somewhere between astonished and cross. “Didn’t he growl? Hiss? Snatch the food away?”
“No?” he answers in equal bafflement. “Should he have done those things?”
Mohg throws his hands up, almost sending his earlier gift into scattering petals, “He can’t eat in front of his twin but he can eat with some boy. Unbelievable. He’s food-aggressive, Tarnished, we both are. That’s what happens when you grow up starving.”
“Oh,” Haydn says, blank with realisation. “Um. He did eat very slowly.” Very slowly. He’d interpreted that as Margit actually not liking boiled crab very much, furthered by Haydn asking if it was okay and getting a terse It is fine, but with hindsight… “He must have been trying really hard,” he murmurs almost more to himself, soft. Before he remembers that he’s not supposed to be dwelling on that as much as he is on how he’s going to get out of here. “Well, I don’t care that you’re food-aggressive.”
“I care,” the Lord replies archly. “Not dinner. We can stroll, if you so need to pretend this isn’t an interrogation. But it will have to wait regardless, I have some business to attend to first. A fine chance for you to think up some better questions than you managed last time.”
This minor snub aside, Haydn certainly does need to think. What to ask, or better yet how to ask, in such a way that earns him favour. How to soften Mohg’s view on him enough that the Omen contemplates releasing Haydn without exacting his toll. Failing that, he just needs to stall for time until some other means of escape becomes apparent to him, or until the vanishing prospect that Morgott figures out he’s been brother-napped and mounts some sort of rescue.
- Ф -
“Scour the plains again, this time counter-clockwise,” Margit the Fell lowly instructs two knights in jagged armour, midnight-black. “Show the scroll to any thou see’st. Report any leads to me before pursuing them. Failing all else, tomorrow night we will move west.”
The pair give a synchronised bow, silent. Muted – night-bound spirits incapable of speech, the better for keeping Margit’s secrets. Loyal beyond the limits of mortality, and his most trusted of servants, but they are hindered. They might only venture out at night, and it is even harder to find a missing person in the dark. Yet, even Margit’s daytime search has proven fruitless.
Tarnished has, for all intents and purposes, disappeared from the Lands Between.
Which is to say that he’s somewhere Morgott cannot scry on him. Morgott does a lot more scrying than he’s really willing to admit, his weak self-justification being that he could not physically accompany Tarnished all the way through the Mountaintop and then the Snowfields, and thus must keep an eye on him. At least once a day, sometimes… sometimes more. But he wasn’t looking when Tarnished fell off the face of the earth, and he hasn’t been able to lock onto him since. Something is blocking his divination, which in some ways is reassuring, because that means he’s somewhere. But he doesn’t know where, and this is very stressful.
The night passes in solemn quietude. His cavalry return with no news, which is bad news, and they fade with the sunrise. And Margit becomes Morgott back in Leyndell, with the rosy dawn creeping beneath the door to his ritual room, in stark contrast to the storm that is made manifest inside his chest.
There are no more enemies for him to be in the clutches of. Rykard is long dead… is he survived by family, recusants? The wretch that took his Tarnished’s legs during that imprisonment, has he made himself known at long last? Has a new enemy come to the fore?
Is Tarnished trapped in some evergaol or demesne that he cannot escape?
Or did Tarnished find a way to block Morgott’s scrying, that he could move unseen… towards the Flame of Ruin?
When the next unbearable night rolls around, Morgott is torn between returning to the Snowfields for another fruitless search, or manifesting Margit at the Mountaintop of the Giants, where he fears to find a Tarnished turned traitor. Yet a third option presents itself: an alarm from Mohg that means meeting now. Preoccupied that he is, Morgott is tempted to dismiss the request, as it will waste his Margit summon and enforce some 12 more hours of waiting before he can resume his search. But Mohg has been giving Morgott the cold shoulder for a time, which is unusual for him, and Morgott has felt… maybe just a little despondent, at the lack of contact. It is more usual for Mohg to break the silence and declare a truce between them, which Morgott assumes is what this is, and so he does go. To the innocuous little chapel in the Shunning Grounds, their neutral meeting ground.
Mohg’s summoned form is already there, without the dramatic bloodied entrance this time. Indeed, he dispenses with all frivolities as soon as Margit manifests in threaded gold, declaring with great exasperation, “I have him, so can you please stop fretting.”
The opener catches him off-guard, “Thou hast what?”
Mohg waves an idle hand, “Your little knight. Is my guest. So cease your panic, you are giving me nightmares.”
“What?” he barks. “What means thou, guest? He is with thee? Where?”
“In my lands, which you shan’t find,” is the brisk reply. Indeed, he’s taken great pains to hide his territory from his kin, which has always struck him as wildly unfair when his own location is unambiguous. He only knows it’s underground, since Mohg detests daylight, and he has the sinking feeling that it must be near the Haligtree. But it is almost impossible to get into the eternal cities these days – or near the Haligtree, for that matter. “He is unharmed and unscathed. But he is my guest, and will remain so until we can come to an agreement. Of giving me one of his Great Runes.”
Morgott stares at him. “Mohg,” he says slowly.
A dismissive scoff, “Cease that maudlin look. I told you, it is unacceptable that you have a second Great Rune. I am only righting things.”
“By kidnapping my knight?” his voice climbs in both volume and incredulous pitch, “After thou bonded him to me?!” After Mohg deliberately, wilfully misled Morgott about the bonding imprint, yet another accursed quirk of the Omen, to foster attachment to the Tarnished – to only further Margit’s agony at his absence—
“I didn’t bond him to you, and I didn’t kidnap him,” his twin hisses back. “He blundered into my lands without caution, I saw an opportunity, and I took it. Which is exactly how you describe the circumstances in which you accepted a proffered Great Rune, was it not? Not planned, not pre-meditated. So here I am, doing the same, because we must be the same, Morgott, that is our agreement, since you seem to have forgotten. You have a kingdom, I have a kingdom; I have followers and you have followers. You have a second Rune, therefore–”
Morgott is incensed, indignant, but not nearly so much as he is upset. “I will give up the Great Rune,” he says at once. It had never been taken with any sort of agenda; Tarnished had offered it to him, and they were working together towards mending the Elden Ring – something Mohg has never shown even the slightest interest in – so of course he didn’t think twice about it. If he had known how much turmoil it would cause, he would have never…
He’d hoped such instant concession would soothe his twin’s ire, but Mohg barely blinks. “Oh you will, will you. Do so then, right now.”
“Obviously I cannot do so now.” This is Margit’s form, which possesses no Runes at all. “I will relinquish it back in my body, if thou wilt free the knight–”
“No, I shalt not,” Mohg snaps at him. “And why, brother-kin, you know very well – graceless tarnished can take and give such power with ease, the divine are afforded no such whimsy. You cannot relinquish the Great Rune, not now it is assimilated. There is no going back.”
“What would’st thou have me do?” he demands in turn, equal parts desperate and exasperated. “How would I address this supposed imbalance? Should I fetter myself? Lop off a limb? What manner of submission would satisfy thee?”
“Submission? I should have to grow roots and leaves, if I wished you to submit,” is sneered, that eye flashing like a slice of sunset, before he seems to remember himself and draws back again. A breath, before he continues, stilted: “I require submission only from the Tarnished. I have no plans to harm him unless he forces my hand. When he cooperates I will return him to you, and you can be as angry at me as you’d like, but we will be square.”
Morgott doesn’t think he can get any angrier than he presently is. It’s worse for its impotence – attacking the man before him achieves nothing but to dissipate a simulacrum, assuming he doesn’t dissipate first. Even if he could physically track Mohg down, he does not stand to win a confrontation, and so his hands are tied. “Square,” he echoes morosely. “Why tell me any of this, unless thou wish’t me to tremble at thy threat?”
“Should I have kept you in the dark? This is an act of love.” Ignoring the shake of Morgott’s head. “As is my mercy towards him. Because he is dear to you, as you are to me, ever and always.”
How often Mohg wounds him and calls it adoration. It feels as though it has only become more prevalent over their centuries apart, since his twin spurned the Erdtree for gods that should have stayed buried. Morgott loathes the Formless Mother with everything he has, and he wishes he could extend that loathing to Mohg as well. But even now, even with this…
“There is another means that you might see your knight.” There is a glitter in Mohg’s gaze, a hunger in his voice, that Morgott doesn’t like one bit. “If you would join him as a guest in my palace.”
He gives him a look equal parts weary and wary at where this is going, “A prisoner, thou mean’st.”
“Is it a prisoner who wants for nothing? Who has everything his heart desires?” Mohg’s tone only gains more fervour, budding like the flames that burn through both their veins. “Aught you asked I would provide, if you would just let me take care of you. You’d live a sanguine prince.”
“I am already a king.”
“You are a slave,” Mohg answers frankly. “Cast aside your illusions and those who would lynch your truth. We can build a new kingdom deserving of you, us. The dynasty beckons, brother.” He draws near, hand outstretched, as though to trace one of Morgott’s horns.
Morgott shoves him away, “It doth not beckon me. Stop, Mohg.”
It’s a conversation they’ve had before, imploring Morgott anything, promising him everything, if Morgott will only join him. For all his disdain of shackles, Morgott has always thought his twin too quick to keep them bound to each other – and yet they will inevitably fight if left in a room together for more than five minutes. It’s clear enough to him: the peaceful co-existence Mohg dreams of amounts to nothing more than keeping Morgott under his heel. But pointing that out only makes them fight more, bitterly so.
Still, he thinks with an unsettled twist in his stomach, each time they tread this ground Mohg seems ever more zealous about it. Even now, when Mohg scoffs and relents and re-paces his distance, Morgott doesn’t feel the subject is at rest. Not quite. He wonders at what point Stop will no longer be enough.
The amber eye lingers on him still, brightly covetous. Tinging his tone with green as he bites out, “Your little Tarnished has another face, you know that? I know that moonstruck fool I met in Leyndell wasn’t an act, I’d have been able to tell. But he can turn it off when it suits him.”
Morgott sends a tired glower his way, “People tend to sour when kept captive.”
But his twin only tilts his head, “More to it than that. One has to wonder who he truly is. Or more importantly, why he is.”
Danger, Morgott’s senses prickle. There’s few things his brother won’t tear through in the pursuit of Truth when his heresy most burns him, and a psyche would be as tissue paper. His fear bleeds into his voice as he rasps, “Mohg, leave him be. Take thy owed Great Rune if it appeases this madness, but leave him unharmed, unscathed and unturned.” A hitched inhale. “Prithee. For my sake.”
He thinks Mohg expected a roar and not a whisper, going by the way his expression shifts – off-guard, and then inscrutable as he draws himself up to imperious heights. “Worried about what I’ll find? But have it your way. I will return him to you when our business is concluded. Until then.”
Morgott saves his anguish for when he’s back in Leyndell, with the dimmed rune circle flickering around him and his back bowed over. Of course, his first action is to wrench free Rykard’s Great Rune… only, it isn’t Rykard’s anymore. It’s Morgott’s now, comfortably interlinked with his own anchor-Rune, and beyond inseparable. Mohg was right, he cannot pry it free. He curses even taking it – he is stronger than he was, yes, but it could not possibly be worth the consequences wrought – but it is done and now beyond undoing.
He bows further still, clasps shaking hands over his head and whispers in shuddering prayer to the Erdtree. Prayers for mercy, and safety, and for Tarnished to be smart enough to just give Mohg what he wants, while he still can.