Chapter 106: Brothers
Lucia narrowed his silver eyes slightly, meticulously scrutinizing the stranger's dark, horn-girded hide, the jagged cluster of vestigial protrusions cutting through his brow, and the heavy black-and-red mantle that bore a striking, chilling resemblance to the ceremonial vestments worn by the Blood Nobles of the future legends. His voice dropped into a steady, un-fused whisper. "Mohg... correct?"
The Omen youth, who appeared to have cleared less than seventeen winters across his subterranean cycle, casually slung the massive cold-iron trident over his armored shoulder plate, letting out a sharp, arrogant snort. "An absolute certainty, dragon cub. My name is locked into the registry!"
Lucia gently pressed his gloved fingers against his temples to soothe a sudden headache, his internal thoughts tracking a wave of absolute amusement. This brat functioned as nothing short of a reckless, un-bound street scoundrel across his adolescence; his presence commands absolute zero of that insidious, deceptively courtly elegance the old monster will deploy down the timeline!
"So," Lucia spoke, his boot pointing toward the two shattered halves of the iron projectile lying on the mud before his slippers, "this defines the precise protocol your house deploys to welcome a guest to your fire?"
"Heh—" Mohg sneered, his clawed fingers tightening against the haft of his trident. "If your shield possesses such a mediocre alignment that your skin can be broken by an entry-level trick of that tier, my tongue calculates you should abdicate your claims to divinity, clear the capital grates, and gallop back to the spires of Farum Azula to inherit your family's ancient lizard business at your absolute earliest watch."
Lucia drew a slow, deep breath into his lungs, a cold, focused nod formatting his features. "My mind archives the ledger. The parameters are clear."
The exact microsecond the terminal syllable cleared his lips, his boot forcefully stomped down against the flagstones. With a deafening, thunderous roar that echoed through the high rafters, the heavy masonry blocks within a radius of several paces violently shattered into a shower of gravel. The dozen iron spears that had been deeply driven into the stone were instantly launched straight up into the air by the immense kinetic displacement!
He extended his right palm across the space, his will surging to ignite the airborne iron with a brilliant, bluish-green current of starlight magic. A microsecond later, a massive, roaring torrent of crimson-gold divine grace erupted from his marrow, completely enveloping the iron shafts to discharge them forward like a volley of ballista bolts!
Sensing the world-ending payload compressing across the distance, Mohg's amber eyes violently contracted. He frantically swung his heavy trident to construct a desperate defensive guard!
BOOOOOOM—!!!!!
Amidst a deafening, metallic shriek of clashing iron, the entire upper tier of the stone platform catastrophically exploded into dust. The junior Children of the Omen patrolling the lower ledges were violently thrown to the ground by the pressure of the shockwave. Mohg himself was forcefully blasted backward through the air, his spine slamming with a sickening thud against the solid stone wall to carve a deep, human-shaped indentation into the ashlar!
"You...!"
Mohg violently ripped his black-and-red mantle free from the wall where two vibrating iron shafts had pinned the cloth, two massive, leathery Omen wings erupting from his shoulder blades with a wet tear. With a single, powerful flap of his pinions, he crashed heavily back down onto the red sand fronting Lucia, his maw un-clamping in a guttural roar. "YOUR BLOOD WILL EXPIRE ACROSS THIS WATCH!"
Radahn, standing directly parallel to Lucia's shoulder, spat a dark glob of saliva onto the sand, his fingers locking around the grip of his starscourge blade as he stepped out from the column. "Permit my steel to handle this delinquent, brother. My mind calculates this specific brat is desperately overdue for an absolute, un-bracketed thrashing!"
Right as the atmospheric tension dividing the two factions was hovering on the literal precipice of a total bloodbath, a low, dry cough suddenly resonated from the deeper shadows of the corridor.
"Mohg... arrest your steel. Abate your wings."
Simultaneously with the command, a sharp, high-velocity whistling sound cut through the damp air. A heavy, gnarled wooden cane wrapped in dark iron bands came whirring out from the gloom, driving straight into the stone floor right between the boots of Radahn and Mohg with a resounding, echoing THUD.
Every eye tracking the perimeter swung instantly toward the source. A tall, imposing silhouette cloaked in a tattered, mud-stained mantle stepped through the mist. Though his physical posture appeared slightly hunched and his pacing seemed deliberately slow, his boots managed to effortlessly clear the distance to dominate the absolute center of the battlefield within a handful of breaths.
"Brother! Their vanguard initiated the strike—ouch!" Mohg's loud protest was violently cut short as a heavy boot caught him squarely across his rear guard without a single watch of warning.
"My own sight functions perfectly, foolish boy!" Morgott spoke, his voice a low, gravelly rumble as he wrenched his gnarled cane free from the flagstones, casting a stern, freezing glare at his younger sibling. "Not only did your hand release a stampede of ravenous sewer beasts to charge down their line, but your tongue cleared its throat to provoke their blades before your intellect even audited their banners. Does that text align with the principles my voice wove into your childhood?"
"My calculations... my mind simulated he defined that Radahn brat whom Commander Ordovis cited across his last dispatch!" Mohg grumbled, rubbing his backside as his wings smoothed back beneath his rags. "The paladin claimed that specific northern cub managed to match the steel of the Carian Dynasty, asserting his raw parameters scored no less than your own height, brother! My thoughts simply reasoned—what grand majesty could an Ancient Dragon hatchling who has walked the surface for less than half a winter truly command? The boy likely hasn't even cleared his cradle milk! I calculated that Radahn entity was merely a useless, over-inflated aristocratic name riding a decorative reputation... which is the precise reason my hand executed a tactical diagnostic—"
"Mohg—!!!" Radahn's baritone erupted with an un-bracketed, volcanic fury before the Omen youth could even finalize his foul-mouthed assessment. His starscourge Greatswords ignited with a blinding surge of gravity mana, his chest heaving. "Across this watch, my steel will personally demonstrate to your marrow the exact definition of a useless, over-inflated aristocratic name!"
"Huh?" Mohg went momentarily still, his eyes blinking in absolute bewilderment as he monitored the gargantuan, steel-clad red-bearded titan opposite his line, who had inexplicably unleashed a mountain-crushing pressure of starlight magic at his name. It required several seconds of static analysis before his brain parsed the architectural error across his calculations.
A thoroughly awkward, pained smile formatted his angular features, his trident lowering an inch. "You... your boots define the personage of Prince Radahn?"
"Enough of your vocabulary! Seal your maw!"
Morgott's patience hit its absolute baseline. He brought the iron crossguard of his cane down sharply against Mohg's skull with a resounding crack, before pivoting his chassis to face Lucia's line, taking a slow step forward as his tattered mantle trailed through the muck. "My house petitions the forgiveness of your vanguard, sovereigns. The environmental variables of this underworld score as exceptionally hostile, and my brother's diet consists almost exclusively of the toxic, Crucible-mutated fauna infesting these deeper pools. It is mathematically inevitable that his tongue registers a foul, un-refined output. My shield guarantees his line harbored zero genuine malice to insult your honor."
Lucia let out a soft, relaxed chuckle, his hand casually sheathing his sword. " Banish the gravity of the apology, Lord Morgott. My own hand returned the payload with an equivalent voltage across the floor; the ledger balances cleanly enough."
He had yet to finalize the pleasantry when his silver eyes fully audited the structural proportions of the hunched Omen prince standing fronting his line. He paused, his focus narrowing as the files clicked into place. "Wait... your stature... you define that specific Omen who deposited a solid gold ingot across the counter of the Flea Street clinic two moons past?"
Morgott went completely rigid at the query. He scrutinized Lucia's physical dimensions, before veering his tracking eyes to check the silhouettes of Kristoff and Tolisha anchoring the rear guard. His jaws opened and closed twice across the silence, before he tentatively articulated a whispered inquiry. "The young physician? The dragon knight?"
"And your silver hair... you define that specific little white-haired brother who anchored the treatment table?"
"Desist from applying the title of Little White-Haired Brother to my signature!"
The query instantly awakened a sequence of highly un-optimized memories regarding his earliest weeks on the surface. Lucia aggressively ripped the mercenary helm from his skull, his fingers pointing to his locks. "Audit the pigment parameters with greater precision, Lord Morgott—this defines a high-purity Silver, not a common white!"
At that exact watch of the clock, listening to Mohg unleash a sudden, gloating burst of raucous laughter from behind his brother's cloak, Lucia processed a profound truth—although these two exiled princes presented an outward dichotomy of one being humble and hyper-cautious while the other scored as arrogant and vain, their un-matched capacity for a sharp, foul-mouthed delivery was undeniably hard-wired into their shared genetic code!
"My errors are absolute; pray, accept the correction," Morgott apologized repeatedly, his gravelly voice softening with a deep, ancestral sincerity. "My house hand-delivers its deepest gratitude to your station for preserving my life-readouts across that winter afternoon. My spirit lacked the data to decode your true identity back then, and my mind certainly never simulated a path that would grant our banners a secondary intersection down here."
He let out a low, weary sigh, his cane tapping the stone. "Yet, it appears your boots completely disregarded the counsel my voice left across the wood. Believe the truth of my words, Prince Luciassax—execute a rapid retreat to separate your line from entities of our defiled classification. Our names carry nothing but absolute misfortune to those who cross our orbit."
"Alright, elder brother! Banish that archaic, self-pitying ledger from your vocabulary; your tongue harps on those identical clichés across every moon!" Mohg interrupted aggressively, stepping out from the shadows of Morgott's shoulder.
"In the final accounting, my intellect records zero structural failure across the power clutched within our marrow. Those surface-dwelling fools pride their lips on cataloging our lineage as the 'cursed blood'—let their accounts write whatever fairy tales please their courts. Even if their ministries despise our horns, their legions possess zero metrics to deny the reality that our raw physical attributes far out-scale their heroes!"
"Furthermore, the guests themselves have logged zero protest regarding our company, yet your mouth continuously insists our campfires will drop a plague of misfortune onto their heads. It makes your stature look exactly like a—" Mohg caught the silent, un-blinking, yet completely terrifying gaze of his older brother locking onto his pupils, and he instantaneously re-aligned his vocabulary mid-sentence. "—it simply looks a minor bit excessive, don't you calculate?"
Having successfully shifted his lines, a brilliant, opportunistic grin broke across his angular face. He bounded across the red sand to approach the trio, completely disregarding the previous friction as his gauntlets aggressively seized Lucia's hand to execute a hyper-enthusiastic, warm handshake, before repeating the movement down the line. "Since your hands hand-delivered a total medical salvation to preserve my brother's vitals, your collective steel registers as true brothers of our camp. Pray, delete the minor rudeness my spears executed minutes past. Let the ledger clear its variables—"
Radahn forcefully wrenched his massive hand back from the Omen's grip, his expression completely flat and un-fused as his greatsword returned to his back. "My shield lacked a presence across the clinic the afternoon his life was preserved, Prince Mohg. Does your trident require a manual, secondary audit to verify whether my Carian line defines a useless, over-inflated good-for-nothing?"
"Hey! The acoustic resonance within these subterranean waterways scores as exceptionally volatile; your ears have clearly mis-mapped the audio data!" Mohg countered with a perfectly straight face, his voice dripping with an artificial, angelic innocence. "How could a warrior commanding a character as profoundly humble, hyper-cautious, and inherently taciturn as my own signature ever articulate such a harsh delivery, right?"
"Be off! Clear my slipstream! Roll out!" Radahn grumbled, thoroughly amused despite himself.
Seeing that the atmospheric friction had completely dissolved into a stable equilibrium, Morgott surveyed the assembled demigods, his cane tracing a slow circle. "Since the threads of destiny have aggregated everyone's boots at this specific coordinate, why not escort your mantles to clear the perimeter of my private quarters? It happens my mind anchors a handful of highly critical matters that require the consultation of your council."
Lucia's primary strategic objective for navigating the grates had been explicitly to forge a secure communication bridge linking his house with the exiled twins. Naturally, his intellect registered an immediate compliance. "Nominal. Lead the line."
Thus, surrounded by a dense, protective escort of heavy-horned Children of the Omen, the six royal youths ventured deeper into the absolute, unbroken darkness of the subterranean empire.
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