Chapter Text
The body wakes in the midst of a loud cracking, sobbing for breath. Within that form, something sparks into existence. A realization of self, making the body no longer a ‘the.’
Belonging to someone. Not merely existing.
The body, its body, his body, her body.
Her...like the Formless One. The Source.
Her body sobs for breath, choking in the surrounding thickness. A limb reaches out to push...at a tender membrane.
Thankfully, that membrane breaks easily.
She tumbles out in a gush of...liquid. Onto a cold stone floor below, onto tender knees.
Sticky. Soaked in red.
She licks her lips. Blood. She’s covered in blood.
That’s not normal. Is it? Some half-recalled memory informs her that it usually is for the just been born.
Perhaps that’s her then.
Just been born.
Seems odd, but who is she to judge?
She has... horns. And some kind of cloak, wrapped around her otherwise naked body.
She traces her new horns gently, from where they lie rooted in her skull to the pointed edges. They curl back over her head, ridged and fairly long. Remind her of goat horns, though she is not completely certain if that’s what they’re supposed to be. Since she cannot see them fully.
Definitely not ram horns, those would curl around entirely on the sides of her head.
Instead of her being able to trace the curve back.
Everything looks so different now. She cannot even place what is different about her sight, only that it is different from her old eyes. Old body.
Is she taller than average? Shorter? Who can tell? Without a comparison at hand, there is no way for her to understand how much she’s changed.
Her back itches. The folded cloak surrounding her form twitches.
Not cloth after all. Something else. Part of her body? Reach out with an arm. Press out of the folds out, into shape.
She turns her head to better see what she’s showing off.
Curious.
A wing? No, not like a bird. An insect wing, but not that of a fly or grasshopper.
Not see through, furry, a moth wing.
A bit brightly colored for one, though. Orange with pink on the edges, from what she can tell if she scrapes some blood off. Not the expected brown or gray for a moth.
Despite these strange add-ons, differences...
This body is far more functional. Easy to tell, since it lacks much of the oddly stretched muscles and layered aches that characterized her last existence.
She can rise to her feet. Stand, even.
She tells a leg to move and it does. Steadily, moving her new body forward as well.
Pleasant enough.
The room is stone. A tomb of sorts, or perhaps a monument. One now given a layer of blood on its surface.
She walks out of it. Into darker halls. Everything is dark here. Dark and dramatic, waiting in presentation. Or for a presentation, as it were.
Not hers, but someone’s. Someone very dramatic indeed.
There are bodies littering around these halls, waiting for something.
Sleeping not dead, something informs her, but she’s not exactly sure what. Only that she knows these bodies are not of the dead.
Only when she comes across her fifth sleeping body does it occur to wonder how those bodies came to be sleeping in the first place.
Is it because of...her?
Curious.
She squats down, enjoying the ease of the motion, to check.
Seems almost a natural sleep, the individual in question snoring gently. Excepting that they are quite literally sprawled out in the center of the tunnel where no one would simply fall asleep.
A lumpy reddish frog-person. Not human, which her mind marks as unusual for some reason.
Odd, how new she has come into existence yet with many opinions in her body already.
Determining what is strange and unnatural. She has horns, what on ground does she have to stand on to say these frog-like people are not supposed to be?
Frog people with horns like herself, though not as large.
Noise behind her. She turns. Ah, the movement of a living soul not trapped by sleep.
An individual dressed in a surgeon’s robes, wearing a mask of white. Yellow gleams through the eyeholes of that same mask.
They bear a mark. The mark of the Formless One.
“Who are you?” she eventually settles on asking.
From behind, they look like a Sanguine Noble. One of the more blessed individuals among them. Robes soaked in red, horns curling out...the form of a blessed Noble in these depths.
But they aren’t. They’re new, blood-covered face turning to watch him with a single scarlet eye. Face unfamiliar and different. Softer.
Varre hadn’t been expecting someone new, after a long fruitless day of luring maidenless Tarnished off the beaten path.
Fruitless because there had been no Tarnished today, a most unusual development. With maidens or lacking them.
No new blood, so to speak.
To alleviate some of that frustration, Varre had contented himself on tracing his steps to his last successful mercy. Recent enough that the blood stains should remain.
There was nothing.
Not a single sign of what he had done, of the mercy he had carried out.
Leaving nothing for White Mask Varre to glory in. Feast off of in memory.
He returned to the Mohgwyn, after that. Used his medal, avoiding the rotting bodies as he muses over what to report to his Lord.
Hopefully just a single day of a dry spell, but the situation in the Lands In Between has been in flux lately...
Something lies in the air. A metaphorical thunderstorm.
And now a stranger in the heart of Mohgwyn, asking who he is!
“I am White Mask Varre, stranger,” he settles on, for introduction. “How newly have you been inducted in our grand dynasty, hmm?”
The stranger hums, turning for Varre to more fully see them. Covered in blood, so fully and completely. Like they must have taken a plunge in a blood pool.
“Not long,” is their answer. Lacking much information, that answer is.
Hm, how did they get here? And...why has no one else come to greet him? Strange things are afoot.
There’s a body at the stranger’s feet. One of the albinaruic.
The stranger seems to notice his sudden wariness. “Ah, do not worry. They are not dead.”
Not dead? Varre almost moves to take a look himself. “Then what has happened to them?”
The stranger huffs. “A mystery.”
...Doesn’t seem very mysterious to Varre, if he has to be honest.
Sounds of something moving in the dark. Varre’s hand falls to his weapon as he turns to face it. Only to see...horns, that eye...
It is his Lord. Come up behind him. Varre falls back.
Luminary Mohg...out and about like this? Truly, change is in the air today.
“Dearest Miquella,” the Lord of Blood calls out. To the stranger. “Did you think nothing of leaving your husband behind?”
Varre’s eyes widen behind his mask. Oh? This is Miquella? The one who will continue the Mohgwyn dynasty, the consort?
With fresh eyes, he can see. Yes, the horns, the robes...yes, this is what they’ve been waiting for.
Miquella rises to his feet, scarlet eyes alighting on the Luminary.
“...my apologies,” he eventually offers. “I...wasn’t thinking. Of much.”
Clearly. To leave the Lord of Blood behind just like that...well, Varre isn’t going to say it. Definitely not.
“Think nothing of it,” his Lord forgives with ease. “Only, do please return with me.”
Miquella bows his head. “As you will.”
The Luminary turns to command Varre. “Wake the rest, dear one.” Gestures to the sleeping albinaruic. The one that Miquella had been examining.
Varre, like always, is more than happy to obey. He bows. “As you command, Luminary Mohg.”
Anything for the Mohgwyn.
The husband is unexpected.
To say the very least about the situation.
She considers, briefly, leaving. She knows in her bones that she has that power, to leave whenever she wishes. No monsters, no guards, not even a husband filled to the brim with the Formless power, could stop her.
Because she has that Formless power too, to lose herself to blood and pain and unshape herself to go through the earth itself should she desire.
Does she desire?
...No. She is curious and wishes to linger in order to satisfy such. To discover exactly what this newcomer thinks what ‘husband’ means.
If it goes too far, she’ll leave. That’s all there is to it.
Decision made, she moves to reach for a clawed hand. Examining the hand’s owner in the process.
He is about her height. But they are both taller than the masked one she ran into, and seemingly bigger than the sleeping forms on the ground. So does that make them tall?
What an interesting fact to mind.
His horns are more knotted and longer than hers, focused on one side of his head mostly. His skin is darker and more scar ridden than hers, of course. More timeworn only makes sense since she barely broke free a short time ago. Not even a day.
There’s a single eye, where the other appears to have been taken out by an ingrown horn. A single eye intent on her.
What was it that masked one called him-? Oh, Mohg.
She likes that name. It suits him. Like the robes he wears.
His hand moves back before she can touch it. Why?
Mohg moves through the halls, expecting that she’ll follow. Which she does, what else does she have to do, to see this place?
He takes her to the room she hatched in. The room is not nearly as bloody as she left it.
The cocoon remains broken apart, but the blood that gushed out from her emergence has disappeared from the floor.
Curious.
Well, if her husband was in here, surely he must have done something with that same blood. If this is their room. Their hall.
“Beloved husband,” Mohg says and it takes a moment for her to realize he’s referring to her. Husband, that is a term one uses for a he/him. Referred to this current existence.
So she becomes he easily.
The other, the name... that is less easily devoured. Adsorbed. No, he is not this Miquella, that does not fit right in this skin.
The name for this one is...Istar. Much like the other knowledge he carries, Istar is unaware of exactly the origins of his own name. Only that is what is.
“You are quite a mess. Don’t you wish to be clean of the blood?”
He tries a smile. Hm, did that look right or not? “Yes.”
A simple bowl full of water is offered. As is a rag, to seemingly wet with that water and to wipe off the dried blood marking Istar’s form.
He does easily, scrubbing off red to reveal golden-tinged skin underneath. Skin flecked with brown scales, here and there. Clawing out gore from pink and orange wings, fully revealed in their brightness.
The horns are the hardest, requiring him to dig his nails into the groves to get everything out and even then, he’s not sure of their cleanliness.
Only that the rag is soaked through, many times, with deep red and brown. Once Istar is done, he sets the rag aside to look at Mohg once more.
“I have robes for you,” the horned man offers.
He nods his acceptance, and reaches out to take what Mohg seemingly pulls out of nowhere.
Clothing of gold and green. Easily slid on and worn, though he does struggle briefly with his wings fitting before Mohg intercedes to run a claw through the back of the robes twice. To create slits for the wings to slide through, with the tearing of cloth.
“This is very...nice.” Istar settles on. Feeling the cloth between his fingers.
Mohg almost seems to glow at the perceived praise. Puffs up.
“Of course...the robes don’t quite match as I’d intended,” Mohg says, single eye examining Istar’s newly clothed form. To the wings on his back.
“Your wings are much brighter in coloring than I would have supposed.”
A clawed hand reaches out and before Istar knows it, he’s slipped his wing out of reach. Away from that touch.
Something flashes in Mohg’s eye and Istar does not know what. Only that he cannot let his wing be touched without payment. Even by his ‘husband.’ So much has gone without being paid for already, Istar must find a way to erase that debt.
Equal returns, he doesn’t know why that’s vital, only that it is.
If Mohg wants to see his wings...
“Do you have wings? I want to see yours if you do,” he blurts out.
Mohg goes still. Very still.
Slowly, he inclines his horned head. “...anything my dear husband desires.”
From behind him, spreads a pair of very wide wings. Different from Istar’s own, batlike instead of insectoid.
He doesn’t hesitate in reaching out in turn.
A velvety feeling to the skin, yet also rough. Cragged and scarred, wings that have been through much of life’s hardships and few of its tenderness.
Trembling. The wings are shaking.
He ends his investigation soon after noticing that. No need to drag this out.
Istar moves to stand in front of Mohg, spreading his wings out in turn. An offering.
“Take a look,” he invites, after a long period of time where the other does nothing.
A deep breath. Then-
Those clawed hands are soft in their touch, barely enough for Istar to tell that they’re brushing against his wings in the first place. When he doesn’t move away, the touches grow bolder, more noticeable.
Almost painful in parts. Tugging at the hairs, the scales.
Istar bites back the cries that threaten to break out in response. Waits for the touching to end.
It doesn’t.
In the end, Istar has to pull himself free before he loses half of the scales covering his lower wing to Mohg’s claws.
He finds his eyes narrowing as he twists around to look in the man’s direction.
A glare. Of sorts.
“You almost tore off my wings,” he accuses.
Mohg raises his hands. “My apologies. I did not know yours were so much...delicate, than mine own.”
Is that really so? Istar scrutinizes him. If there is another truth under that, he cannot tell what it is.
Truth or not, all he can do at the moment is accept that excuse.
“Do not do that again.”
Mohg tries for a winning smile somehow, even lacking lips. “Of course not.”
Hn. Istar folds his wings back into place, allowing them to brush against the ground. Like the cloak they almost seem to resemble, from a distance.
What now?
Mohg observes as his husband runs his fingers through pink and orange hairs. Smoothing out the appearance of moth-like wings.
For whatever came out of that egg of Miquella’s, it was not Miquella.
Oh, he looked like Marika, much like Miquella had in his younger cursed form. Different but close enough to say on sight that one was the child of the other.
Still looked like that golden goddess, even with the addition of Omen-like horns and uniquely colored wings.
But the spark that made Miquella himself...gone.
Seemingly destroyed in the final process of transformation, of shedding his cursed flesh.
A shame.
One he can work with, well enough.
He tests how far this Not-Miquella will let him go. The conclusion?
Until permanent harm is at hand. Not-Miquella is far more permissive than Mohg vaguely recalls Miquella before the egg ever being.
Only time will tell if that permission will linger. Mohg knows it didn’t for either him or Morgott. Not in the world they were forced to participate in, after being barred from that same world for so very long.
Should he allow this Not-Miquella to live?
...What a waste of blood if he kills him, though. And this Not-Miquella did not flinch upon seeing him for the first time, much like Miquella himself.
Mohg narrows his eye in concentration. He needs more information to fully decide what to do about this. More energy, more time.
He barely keeps himself from yawning, at that thought.
What a tiring day. Sleep must be had. Mohg glances about his sanctuary.
Hm, usually he rests himself in the egg...but the egg no longer is.
A mistake to be rectified as soon as possible, but not tonight. Tonight, Mohg will resign himself to settling on the stone.
Much like he did in his youth, alongside Morgott. Only Morgott is no longer by his side.
Mohg breathes out through his nose.
Only for one night, he reminds himself. This will be fixed, and he will only suffer through it for one night.
He sits down, next to the ruins of the egg. Pats the ground like that fix anything.
“What are you doing?” A horned head tilts itself as red eyes fix on his form. Unblinking.
Very different from any Empyrean Mohg has ever interacted with. Any of his so-called family.
(The only family he will ever acknowledge is his twin.)
“Preparing to rest.”
“Hm.” Not-Miquella lets out a gentle hum. A sound almost like a buzz. “Might I join?”
Does he...want to? Mohg swallows. Tries for a stiff nod.
Not-Miquella doesn’t even hesitate. He sits down, scoots over to Mohg to promptly mold his body against his.
His husband seemingly falls asleep as soon as he cuddles into the arc of Mohg’s body. Gentle breathing, curled up like a dead insect.
Leaving Mohg to remain awake as he adjusts.
Because this is different from sleeping with Morgott. The two of them always had to be careful in arranging themselves around each, due to their horns and wings and tail possibly ruining the setup. Accidentally tearing each other open, or having limbs fall asleep in an uncomfortable buzz.
Also, Morgott kicks. Hard.
Not-Miquella isn’t small, like many are in comparison to Mohg. Almost as tall as him, when standing. But he seems much smaller, curled into a ball and head tilted into the center of that ball. Tucking the horns away into his form using that head tilt, as not to poke and scratch.
The wings are large enough to drape over that ball. Almost as a blanket might.
Perfectly well adjusted to one sleeping on their own.
But instead he’s tucked into Mohg. Warm against his middle. Completely trusting him in that tender sleep.
(Has anyone responded to him with such ease before?)
He lets out a heavy breath and in turn, wraps his own body around Not-Miquella’s. Tracing along soft wings with just as soft claws, careful this time.
Mohg only needs an Empyrean to gain what should have always been his.
Does it matter if they’re directly of Marika’s line? Not so much, not as he can tell.
So.
Yes.
He’ll keep this one.