Chapter Text
Mohg didn't have friends, but he did keep sheep. Wandering spirits, souls denied their rebirth in the cycle. Hearing their feet splash in the water or smelling the source-less dust and death they brought had never unsettled him. They weren't so different from him, these apparitions trapped and forgotten in the gloom, and he couldn't be scared of himself. I understand you, he told the sense of being watched, so sing for me.
He existed at a lower depth of the shunning-grounds than Morgott. Debris accumulates there. Memories wash in, break senselessly upon the Erdtree's roots, and, in their shattering, fester. Mohg gathered the shells of what had once been and lifted them to his ear to listen, and he heard the same stories told again and again: of their lives, those ghosts remember only the moments of their own undoings.
Most got lost on their journeys to the roots and would find their way again, but nearly as many reached the Erdtree and were scorned by its light. Others, the oldest whispers, had the gall to reject the Erdtree themselves; they'd recoiled from it, expecting something else in its place. [1]
Those are the hardest to coax into speaking. If they haven't forgotten most of their words, then they've lost interest in living souls. He needed a more tangible lure to draw them in.
Though ghosts will flock to any of a number of offerings, blood and comfort are the easiest to lose. The air from his lungs is the only other thing similarly easy to replace, but it hurts a fair bit more.
He invited them to scratch his arms and face bloody. (The wounds inevitably got infected, but illness burns out quickly in Omen. At most they swelled for a few days before scarring into a new layer of stony skin.) He hid his winces, made sympathetic noises, and wheedled them into sharing their stories. He only had trouble getting them to stop taking from him once they'd started, until he worked out that he could redirect them to other targets. [2]
(He still needed a pot for that then, but later he would learn how to keep spirits away from himself as a matter of course unless he antagonized them first.)
Eventually, when he'd heard enough from them and understood how much they could enact on the world, he upended a pot of sweetly scented blood over his chain, waited for the wraiths to erode the links, and walked out the door.
---
“I'll skim over what happened after that,” Mohg says, flicking his fingers, “only because I can't skip it entirely. I went down, to the cathedral I'd heard fragments about over the years.” Morgott drags a hand across his face; he can guess where this might go. “It was impressive in a different way back then. Did you ever see it before they buried the Caravan? No? It was only a tomb for lost things. No maintainence.
“I imagine most of your constituents wouldn't have recognized it for what it was, even with the roots crossing the walls. It was all ghosts and bones and slugs and what possessions had been tossed down over generations, and much older things at the bottom before the Flame burned them to dust. It was... more honest that way. A cathedral for creatures like us. But they did remodel it to hide the Caravan. An altar is more likely to go undisturbed than a pile of miscellany.
“Of course I would have seen more of the world if I went up instead, but I had no interest in venturing immediately from one place I was not wanted to another. I've not changed much, have I?”
Morgott doesn't say, More than I have. It's not a competition. “And you knew how to operate the elevator?”
“No, no. Not even slightly. Triggered the pressure plate fully by accident and fled as soon as it began its descent. I ended up climbing down the wall. You may surmise that I did not slip and die.”
One needs to be in a certain state of mind to listen to Mohg describe events. When he's not exaggerating for effect, he's downplaying all of the wrong things. Sometimes Morgott wants to turn a character from his stories into a slab of meat, but it's difficult when the characters in question are either Mohg's newest favorite recruits or a force of nature (frequently gravity) or Mohg himself.
Nothing to be done about the past, in any case. Morgott holds his strained peace and listens.
“Anyway, I – ah, I made it to the bottom, found some... found the Formless Mother – ” Mohg, without seeming to notice, digs his thumbnail into his index finger with force enough to break the hardened skin, and the trace of blood that shows through burns with rose-red sparks “ – grew a pair of wings, flew to the surface – ”
“Who did you get the wings from?” As far as Morgott knows, Mohg needs a blood sacrifice to develop them from their usual malformed state.
“You wouldn't like the explanation.”
“Indulge me.” His lips peel back into what could pass for a grin in worse lighting. “How many people had died by the time you were arrested?”
“Ah, well – keeping count wasn't the first thing on my mind.”
“I'd just like to prepare. I'm not judging,” Morgott says. It was Mohg's first time out; any damage he caused would have been incidental. Besides, he has never owed responsibility to Leyndell, and Morgott would be looking down his nose at Mohg from atop a literal stack of corpses. The Fell Omen's reputation didn't sprout from the ether.
Out of this entire generation of the family, the only member with ostensibly cleaner hands than Mohg is Ranni, who has never done anything wrong in her life. Whatever skeletons she has, she's buried them well. Meanwhile, Morgott, Radahn, Rykard, and Godrick's branch have each caused the deaths of thousands, and Malenia is on track to join them bearing either Miquella's allowance or endorsement. Godwyn, likewise, was a war hero.
In contrast, Mohg has harmed, what, a few dozen? Which is a few dozen too many (Morgott grew up with neither statistics nor large numbers of people and so never learned how to dilute the latter into the former), but Morgott has killed more than that.
Mohg abducts and tortures and exsanguinates and he alone knows what else. It... isn't ideal.
But he has no intention yet of moving against the Erdtree, and, in terms of scale, his negative impact is so negligible that Morgott always has larger problems to curb. Although Morgott sometimes needs to actively discover the larger problems first.
Even if Mohg takes it upon himself to paint the Lands Between dripping red, Morgott will still not loathe his twin as much as he does the rest of the family. He holds no expectations of Mohg, but the other demigods should be better. They have every cause to be better. They had no right to shirk their responsibilities to such an extent that an Omen snatched Leyndell from them.
Mohg closes his eye with a hum, then, after counting on his fingers, looks at Morgott again and says, “At least one. Certainly no more than three. Again, I wasn't paying attention. But! If you'd really like to know, the wings were... essentially free.
“It was a first time gift. I asked for her help in making it to the surface, and she granted it without recompense just that once. It was a clumsy argument, but – she was of the opinion that the unseen veins beneath the skin of the world are the loveliest part of it, and everything that lives inside of them that others have discarded – so I told her I wished to agree with her, but I could not until I saw the outside to compare.”
He pauses, eye fixed on a distant memory. Quietly he continues, “I would have done much for her, after all that she said, even if she didn't humor me on that. But I wished to know if her words were empty.”
So that's why he tried to avoid explaining.
The attempt did little besides draw attention to it. Morgott doesn't care overmuch that only one of them follows a god who answers, but Mohg occasionally shies away from it in a manner that edges too near to pity. As if he doesn't spend his nights tottering about the country making a nuisance of himself while Morgott sleeps in a clean room with access to servants and food and running water. (Or broods over the Elden Throne, as the case may be.)
Mohg's gaze drifts to the side of Morgott's face, then flicks back to the center more quickly. Morgott, eye half-lidded, says, “Keep going. If you would.”
Mohg taps a horn protruding from his cheek. The silence waxes, heavy with possibility and the words he holds caged in his throat. Do not, Morgott thinks. There will be a time and a place for them; the time will never be now, and the place will never be here. The polite omission upon which they've built a relationship is too fragile to suffer speaking aloud.
Eventually Mohg says, “I can tell you what she told me. But I expect you'd prefer if I didn't.”
The truth is this: when Mohg comes to Leyndell, finding Morgott is not his only or primary motive. If Morgott didn't exist, he would come all the same to gauge the states of the Elden Ring and the Flame of Frenzy. The capital is the hub about which the Shattering revolves.
Morgott has no such reason to frequent Siofra. He doesn't need to judge the progress of Mohg's cult: Mohg volunteers the information himself, even if convincing him to explain exactly how he acquired his latest inductees is like pulling teeth. Although he conceals segments of his operation, visiting wouldn't expose them. He knows where Morgott would enter from, having designed the teleportation charm, and keeps nothing truly problematic in sight of that point.
His invitations to visit his home aren't frivolous. He's tailored the circumstances such that, if Morgott goes again, it will be for him alone.
And Mohg is not worth leaving Leyndell for.
Morgott replies, “I expect we'd both prefer if you didn't.”
The sentiment that snared Mohg's loyalty will not do the same for him. Nothing either of them can voice will make the other an ally. He can guess, in any case, what the outer god said.
The first person Morgott met besides Godfrey told him, You are not what anyone would have chosen, but you are necessary.
And the Formless Mother said to Mohg, You are just as you should be, and you are loved.
What else should Mohg have done but believe her? A promise, and wings and blood, and fire and filth.... Morgott understands, sympathy aching as an unhealed wound, and wishes he did not.
Mohg laughs, low and dry. “Probably. In that case, I'll continue.
"I... actually, I'll skip most of this as well, it's nothing interesting. Made it to the surface, one or some people died, I got caught when the sun rose. Then I spent a few days in a prison while our parents came up with something that would hold me – hold us. And you would... know the aftermath already.”
“Some people died,” Morgott repeats.
“I was hungry.”
Morgott chokes.
Mohg doubles over cackling. “I'm joking! I didn't – that is not why I did it. Though that's not not why I did it either.”
“Was that supposed to mean something?”
“Actually,” Mohg says, ignoring him, “one of them screamed when they saw me, and they kept screaming when I asked them to stop. Something only does that if it's expecting help, and I was not meant to be up here, and I thought, what if Father heard? It was largely an accident – I didn't expect people to be so delicate.
“I did eat them, though, after.”
Morgott says, “I hear Rykard's doing that these days.” As if it's not an open secret that Rykard and his officers have taken to eating their enemies' stewed heads.
“I can't guess at why he prefers the brain when the heart exists. I haven't done it since, anyway. Haven't had cause to.” He scratches his cheek, considering. “I believe that's all unless I forgot an event... oh! And I started a fire.” He stands to peer at the city through the courtyard's fence. “You can't see where it was from here.” Then he spins back to face Morgott, spreading his arms. “That would be all.”
Morgott watches him blandly. “We're not mentioning the blood rituals – ”
“You wouldn't like to hear about those.”
“ – or how you were captured – ”
“Lost the wings at a poor time.”
“ – or what Father said to you afterwards.”
“I promised to end us on a lighter note.”
Morgott shrugs. “Then that's all. Thank you for telling me.”
“You need only ever ask.” Too top-heavy to offer a grandiose bow, he conveys the sentiment through tone alone. If he'd only stop coming out with lines like keeping count wasn't the first thing on my mind, he'd fit the image of a king better than Morgott does. Not that that's saying much of anything.