Burning Chains

Chapter 5

Mohg tried to slow their descent as best as he could, but he’d completely misjudged how heavy the two of them would be.

“There!” Gareth pointed to one of the coffins protruding from the wall. Mohg could see an opening at the same level. He swung Morgott onto the coffin first, trusting him to land gracefully. His elder twin shook the stone coffin as he landed, but didn’t fall. He let Gareth down next. The empyrean landed a little less gracefully, wincing as he walked through the opening. Then Mohg himself landed on the coffin. As his feet touched the stone he heard a crack and felt the ground fall away beneath his feet. Both Gareth and Morgott quickly reached out and he grabbed their arms. As they pulled him in he watched the coffin fall deeper and deeper into the abyss. He might have had wings, but that wasn’t how he would want to test then.

Gareth looked a little out of it, his eyes glazed over slightly. “We’re close.” The manacles melted off his hands, leaving a puddle of slag on the ground, but he didn’t seem to notice. Somehow it hadn’t burned him. Morgott hung onto Mohg’s arm, clearly wanting to tell him something.

“What is it?” He whispered as Gareth began to walk away in a daze.

“I don’t like this Mohg. You say this boy is an empyrean, yes?”

“Yes.”

“I’m beginning to suspect I know what god he is destined to host.” Mohg was beginning to suspect as well, though he did not want to admit it. “He’s dangerous Mohg.”

“I trust him.” Mohg had to trust him. He had to believe that Garreth would not burn the world, because who else would help him become lord? Who else could love him so easily for who he was? To not trust him, to acknowledge they had met only days ago and that all of this could be nothing but the madness of his first love, would be to abandon hope. Mohg was often bitter, often cynical, but only because he still had hope that things could be better. That hope fed his dissatisfaction, led him to understand that the world as it was was wrong, but that it could be changed. He would not abandon it when he held it in his hands.

“Mohg!” He turned towards the direction of Gareth’s shout.

“Be careful,” Morgott cautioned.

“I will.”

The two of them came out into the very bottom of another massive pit. Gareth sat on top of a pile of rubble near the center. On the opposite end from where they came in was a huge metal door. A three-fingered hand print was melted into it, still glowing red hot with heat as if it had just been made. Mohg had heard tell of the three fingers in whispers. Quiet ghost stories told by the guards of what lay deep below the capital. He’d thought it was a fairy tale, concocted to scare him away from seeking help from the outer gods.

“You’ll be alright here for now.” Gareth stood, putting his hands on his knees. “When you’re ready, there’s a secret passage in that wall,” He pointed. “There will be a chest in there and then a second secret passage behind that. That'll be the way out.”

“What about you?” Mohg asked.

“I have to go in there.” Gareth jerked his head towards the half melted door. “I don’t think you’ll want to see me right away when I get out.” He grimaced.

“Are you trying to skip out on our engagement?”

“You can stay if you’d like.” Gareth’s face reddened. So this is what it felt like to be engaged to someone he actually liked. His heart pounded out of his chest whenever he was reminded that Mohg liked him back. He knew he had a stupid goofy look on his face too but he couldn’t bring himself to make it go away. “Uh, could you, uh, turn around real quick?” Mohg looked at him quizzically. “Voice says I have to be naked.” Morgott very quickly covered his eyes and turned around.

“You don’t want me to see you?” Mohg teased.

“I don’t like how I look.” Gareth crossed his arms over his chest. “I- I don’t really want you to see me like that.”

“Of course.” Mohg nodded, suddenly serious. He didn’t mind the parts of him that the uncreative ascribed to femininity, but he knew how Gareth saw himself in his mind’s eye. He understood why he would feel uncomfortable.

When Mohg turned around Gareth pulled his dress over his head, trying not to look at his body. Doing so had always filled him with revulsion. It wasn’t that he hated tits or anything. He liked them quite a bit when they were on other people. Looking at himself had just always filled him with a feeling of profound wrongness, so strong that it was nauseating. The dress hadn’t made him feel very much better, but at least it hid his body away. Nakedness was absolutely miserable, but if that’s what the voice needed he could force himself to do it. The sharp corners of pieces of rubble on the ground hurt Gareth’s bare feet as he approached the door. He could feel the heat wafting off it from feet away, but somehow when he pushed the door open it didn’t burn.

Inside was a dark room containing nothing but an enormous three fingered hand. It seemed to burn from the inside with yellow flame, every wrinkle of its skin glowing with light. Gareth somehow knew he had to get closer, at least close enough for it to wrap itself around him. His legs moved on their own until he stood within its reach. Then the fingers closed around him. It burned horribly, but he managed to stay standing, though he felt one of his teeth crack with the force with which he clenched his jaw. The hand gripped tighter, burning its imprint onto his skin before it melted into flame. The last tongues of it retreated beneath his skin and he was brought to his knees. He was whole for the first time in sixteencountless thousands of years. His hands moved better than the worshipers he’d possessed over the course of his existencenever possessed his limbs actually obeying his command the first time he wished for them to move. 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“Mohg.” Garreth’s voice sounded weak “help.” The omen turned around immediately. Morgott grabbed his arm.

“Please be careful.” He whispered before Mohg pulled himself away. The smell of burnt flesh grew stronger as Mohg stepped through the open metal door. Gareth laid there in a ball on the floor. A huge burn stretched over most of his back. He looked up at Mohg, tears streaking his cheeks. His eyes had melted in the heat, but small yellow flames burned in their empty sockets.

“Mohg it hurts!” He grabbed at the cloth of Mohg’s dress. “Please!”

“I don’t know any healing incantations,” he admitted. “Morgott!”

“I was never blessed with the ability to cast the meager few I know.” He shouted from outside, not wanting to get closer.

“Well then teach me one!” Mohg shouted back.

Morgott was quiet for a moment before he began, “Repeat after me: Oh, great tree, you who rain blessings upon the land like tears. Console your humble servants in their time of need and restore their bodies to wholeness.” Mohg grit his teeth as he repeated the prayer. He almost hoped it wouldn’t work.

Morgott had prayed for the Erdtree’s blessings for years, long past the time Mohg had given up. Though to his dismay Morgott had only ever excelled at illusion. He was incredible at it, skilled enough that he could even weave light into physical objects, but it wasn’t the kind of magic he wished to be able to use. To use a blessing of the Erdtree in front of him would be needlessly cruel under different circumstances, but he needed to keep Gareth alive.

Of course, to his intense relief and irritation, it worked. Mohg would never call himself blessed, but he was gifted. Were he born human rather than omen he would have likely been considered a prodigy. Of course since he was omen born, instead it was merely “the tainted magic of his curse” that had allowed him to excel.though he found it difficult to grasp the mental gymnastics needed to continue to insist his acumen for performing the miracles of his mother’s order was due only to what she had deemed a blasphemous curse.

The burn on Gareth’s back slowly began to become less irritated, but it didn’t fully heal. The ridges of fingerprints remained as silvery scars criss-crossing his skin. Gareth still kept his grip tight on Mohg’s dress.

“It hurts! Mohg, please!”

“I don’t know what else to do!” Mohg sat on the floor pulling the empyrean closer to him as he sobbed. The boy dug his face into Mohg’s dress and the omen held him, knowing that was all he could do. Eventually, the pain and exhaustion became too much and Gareth fell asleep.

When the boygodflame woke up again he was still in pain. He was beginning to realize that pain would be a constant aspect of his life now. The flame that sat in his empty eye sockets singed the inside of his skull and his head hurt as his human mind tried to sort out which of the two overlapping timelines was actually his memories. His consciousness, unbound from the fragile organ in his skull, knew that both sets were accurate. The pain would recede eventually, once enough of his brain had burned away that his body no longer tried to use it to think. He knew the human part of him would have been frightened by that before he had been made whole. Maybe that in and of itself should have scared him, but he still felt all the parts of him that had been human fully intact. There was just more now, thousands of years worth of information and half glimpses at the world. He could actually interpret most of it now. To the flame all of it had been noise, but now that he was whole, he could understand conversations that had been had in his presence. He knew why he had been sealed here, what those merchants had done to try and escape. He felt their desperation and misery as they invoked him and understood it as a human would understand it.

Mohg had fallen asleep with his arms wrapped around him, his head resting on the boygodflame’s shoulder. For the first time he got a good look at Mohg’s left hand. It looked like his finger was healing well. The healing incantation Mohg had cast over him had helped heal the prince as well. The long claw-like horn that had replaced his finger looked healthy as did the skin that had healed around its base. He shifted himself and took Mohg’s left hand in his before bringing it to his lips. Mohg stirred behind him, blinking awake.

“Thank you for staying with me. I’m sorry you had to see me like that, but having you there was helpful.”

“You’re feeling better then?” Mohg ran his other hand through the boygodflame’s hair.

“No.” He turned to look Mohg in the eyes. Mohg tried to hold his gaze but couldn’t for long, madness beginning to claw at his mind the longer he kept eye contact. “It hurts” his brain short circuited as it tried to reconcile the two thoughts, “more than anything I’ve ever felt” and “I’ve never felt pain before”, eventually managing “I’ve never felt pain like this. Though I’m getting used to it.”

“I’m sorry.” Mohg hung his head. It was partially his fault after all. He had pushed Gareth to do this. This might not even really be Gareth anymore.

“Don’t be. I wanted this too, Mohg. You didn’t push me to do anything.” Mohg looked at him strangely. It was almost as if the empyrean had responded based on his thoughts as well as his words.

“Shit sorry. I forgot I shouldn’t do that anymore. That was rude.” He withdrew himself from Mohg’s mind. Right, he could do that now, but doing it was rude if he didn’t ask. He’d have to make sure to remember that.

“You are Gareth right?” He took a moment to think. Did he want to take a new name? No, he still liked being Gareth. It had taken him so long to come up with the name and for his other half to unite with him, it didn’t make sense to change it now.

“Yes. Though I’m not sure it’s in the way you’re thinking.” He looked at his own hands, familiar and yet completely foreign. “The flame used to refer to me as ‘self’. If it wanted to refer to itself outside of the context of me it would use ‘I’ or ‘me’ or if it wanted to refer to Gareth exclusively it would just call him ‘Gareth’. I’m both I guess, though I don’t feel like I’m two if that makes any sense. I guess the best answer would be, I’m not just Gareth. That, uh, doesn’t change how I feel about you though, if that’s what you were trying to figure out.” Mohg blushed.

“I was more concerned with whether or not you were alright.”

“But it did concern you.” Gareth turned himself fully towards Mohg and kissed his cheek. “I still like you.”
“Your chest!” Gareth looked down. His chest was completely flat. The fingers had literally melted his tits from his body, leaving only a fingerprint shaped scar in their place. Miraculously, Mohg’s healing incantation hadn’t restored them.

“Holy shit!” he ran a hand through his own hair, trying to calm himself down a bit. He didn’t have tits! He could almost cry! “I think I could do you as well if you wanted.”

“I’ll have to respectfully decline.” Mohg said uneasily. “I have no intention of changing anything about my body. That also looks incredibly painful.”

“It was worth it for me, but I get it.”

“Do you think you’re able to move?”

“Can’t wait to get out of this tomb?”

“I’ve waited my whole life.” Mohg smiled. Gareth got to his feet, albeit a little shakily from the pain.

“Well let’s go then. I can't wait to see the look on your brother's face when he sees where we are."