Chapter 109: Shackles
Following the weight of those terminal words, Morgott fell into an exceptionally long, heavy silence.
Mohg, who was maintaining a stationary watch beside his flank, had already entered a state of profound, boiling rage. His calloused knuckles ground against one another with a raw, restless friction as his muscles tightened; his maw un-clamped to release a torrent of frustration, yet he forcefully arrested his own vocabulary the exact watch his eyes audited his elder brother's deep, iron-like expression.
Both princes decoded the strategic equation with absolute clarity—even if the two brothers wove their blades together into a single defensive front, their যৌথ prowess would suffer a grueling, catastrophic gridlock against a master combatant who could effortlessly shatter Morgott's guard within ten brief exchanges. Most critically, across the chaotic, un-monitored bloodbath formatting the upcoming Battle Festival, if Rolo were to unleash the un-bracketed zenith of his defiled aromatics, the thousands of Omen-Born quarantined inside the sewer labyrinth with zero avenues of retreat would inevitably face nothing short of a total, systematic butchery.
Following what felt like an eternity of static quiet, Morgott finally let out a long, ragged breath, followed by a wet, hollow cough that made his lungs resonate like an ancient, broken bellows filtering winter wind.
He lowered his broad, horn-scored shoulders by a microscopic fraction, his gravelly voice emerging in a low, hoarse whisper. "Consequently... your vanguard has cleared the surface explicitly to extend a shield to protect our people?"
Radahn's chest swelled as he prepared to voice their compliance, but tracking the data point that Lucia had desisted from opening his mouth, the red-haired prince could only swallow his words back into his throat, his expression thoroughly puzzled by the delay.
"The source code behind this failure does not trace back to your lineage," Lucia spoke after a measured watch of silence, his silver hair catching the amber firelight. Yet, the framing of the sentence left both Radahn and Mohg completely baffled by the logic.
Instead, Morgott's hunched chassis suffered a sudden, sharp start. He snapped his weathered skull upward, his amber eyes locking with an intense, un-blinking focus onto the silver-haired youth standing before his line, quietly awaiting the continuation of the brief.
"My networks harvested the records long past, asserting that the outcasts who populate these deep warrens fanatically worship your mantle as their undisputed Sovereign. Your own lips have permanently refused to validate the title of a King, yet your shield has consistently protected their lives with the absolute devotion of a true Monarch. Greedy, manipulative noble houses... ignorant, small-minded surface citizens... common gladiators obsessed with the acquisition of shallow vanity and cheap gold... mutated, predatory beasts of the dark... and those fanatical zealots who systematically mis-mapped the true essence of the Golden Order to launch extermination crusades against your children—your vanguard has permanently chosen to anchor its lines fronting the threat to keep them all at bay. Even if the terrain stretching behind your heels comprises nothing more than a damp, freezing, and foul-smelling drainage ditch, it defines the solitary pure sanctuary your hands have preserved to shelter your younger brother and the collective mass of the Omen-Born."
"Your governance has fulfilled every solitary duty a true Sovereign is conformed to execute across his reign. Whether your thoughts turn to the twelve outriders brutally slaughtered before your eyes two moons past, or the grim reality that your empty reservoirs lack the voltage to safely match Rolo across this upcoming hunt... absolute zero of these failures register as your fault," Lucia articulated, his voice ringing with an un-yielding, absolute authority.
"Your character is neither humble nor weak, and your spirit possesses zero requirements to belittle its own majesty simply because the board demands your hand to accept our cooperation. Banish the simulation stating you define an incompetent ruler who lacks the capacity to safeguard his lineage."
"In the final accounting, what specific majesty does an entity like Rolo truly command?"
A cold, mocking scoff escaped Lucia's teeth. "He represents nothing more than a short-sighted moron who stands out with greater clarity among the already foolish, barbaric surface populace of this capital. He defines a blinkered fanatic who has thoroughly mis-read the foundational laws of the Golden Order to track a path of absolute extremism. He is a pathetic weakling who can only steal a temporary semblance of power by consuming forbidden chemical toxins—a mad dog who has systematically expunged his own humanity to fill the void with the instincts of a brutal, bloodthirsty beast!"
"His current martial output may score superior to your present alignment... out-registering my own blade, out-scaling the strength of Radahn, and out-matching the muscle of Mohg. He may stand above the collective height of our council across this specificwatch of the clock, but by what logic does that variable alter our long-term calculus?"
Lucia's boot executed a sharp, decisive tap against the flagstones, his expression completely flat and indifferent. "The absolute ceiling of his evolution is anchored right here. Perhaps across the span of five winters, three winters, or even a single cycle of the sun, his capabilities will fail to register at a tier worthy to carry the boots of your house!"
"Of course, the threads of fate guarantee the monster will lack the chronological runway to survive until that dawn," a freezing, ruthless smile formatted the dragon prince's lips. "Since his hand desires to manifest as a permanent, bone-chilling nightmare targeting the Children of the Omen, our vanguard will systematically put an end to this ridiculous nightmare right here and now."
Within the dim, shifting firelight illuminating the masonry warehouse, an ugly, horn-choked youth encased in a tattered burlap mantle stood frozen, staring blankly across the space at the dazzling, silver-haired silhouette commanding the floor. The two figures presented an absolute antithesis of light and shadow, yet as the silence stretched, their physical auras gradually began to broadcast an identical, world-shattering majesty.
Lucia's vocabulary operated exactly like a monumental war-hammer striking directly against the iron bands encasing Morgott's long-sealed chest. The blow shattered a deep, permanent fracture across the hard, defensive shell that had historically armored his sensitive, fragile heart—permitting a solitary, brilliant beam of un-filtered light to pierce the dark, stagnant lake of his soul that had been shrouded in absolute cosmic darkness since his childhood.
"Then your house..."
Following a massive watch of silence, Morgott appeared desperately desiring to articulate a grander response, but in the final accounting, he simply shook his weathered head. A faint, near-invisible smile touched the corners of his mouth, his gravelly voice dropping into a quiet murmur. "My lineage places the board... in your custody."
The assembled demigods immediately re-aligned their positions around the table, entering a focused, hour-long strategic consultation to map out their operational parameters for the remaining month leading to the launch of the tournament. Having smoothly locked every tactical assignment into the log, Lucia and his three companions bid their farewells to the Morgott brothers, turning their boots backward to retrace their tracking lines along the identical subterranean route leading back to the surface.
Even long after the crunch of their mercenary boots had dissolved into the wind of the tunnels, Morgott maintained his stationary position atop the high stone platform, his amber eyes staring blankly into the pitch-black corridor where their silhouettes had evaporated. He remained entirely anchored to the spot, his consciousness unable to return to its default equilibrium for a vast watch of the clock.
Mohg held his station directly parallel to his brother's flank, his amber eyes executing a rapid, diagnostic scan of Morgott's profile every few minutes, yet his tongue consistently desisted from releasing a single syllable to disrupt the quiet.
His internal processing centers logged an undeniable shift formatting his elder brother's presence—it appeared as if the ancient, suffocating iron shackles that had forcefully locked his throat for more than a dozen winters had finally suffered a catastrophic, structural fracture. What followed across his silhouette was an unprecedented, liberating aura of an entity who had finally reclaimed the capacity to draw breath entirely free of restraint.
Mohg's intellect possessed an absolute comprehension of the reality proving his elder brother commanded a dormant reservoir of pure Crucible energy that far out-scaled his own baseline voltage. Yet, historically, Morgott had permanently evaluated that primordial vitality as a mark of supreme spiritual disgrace, completely ignoring his natural divine compatibility to forcefully channel the most orthodox, un-yielding prayers of the Erdtree ministries. Even the chronic, deep-seated lung strain that had rattled his chest for winters emerged strictly from his will manually suppressing the raw growth of his Crucible blood. If his spirit could simply find the resolve to fully unleash his latent genetic potential and untamed martial talent, a drug-crazed mortal like Rolo would mathematically fail to stand as a viable match against his shield.
By what twist of destiny had this monumental transformation—an enterprise his own younger brotherhood had desperately desired to execute for seasons, yet permanently lacked the vocabulary to achieve—been hand-delivered across a single afternoon by an Ancient Dragon prince whom their eyes had barely met?
"The alignment of our world... will reasonably score vastly superior down the timeline, correct?" Mohg murmured into the dark, a low breath of relief escaping his fangs as his heart hoped for the premier outcome.
Concurrently, across the high slate roof of the Flea Street clinic, Radahn lay stretched flat against the stone tiles, his thick arms interlaced behind his skull to cradle his head. His dark eyes remained fixed onto the magnificent full moon and the trailing black moon, both celestial bodies completely bathed beneath the suffocating golden glare of the Erdtree. He let out a soft, long-hidden sigh into the winter wind. "Lucia... following our return from the grates on this night, my intellect has finally decoded the absolute, un-veiled target your strategy is chasing."
"Your vanguard is conformed to turn over the math with extreme precision, brother. The layout encloses an immense network of structural troubles, tracking across both the internal ministries of this capital and the sovereign factions patrolling our outer borders. Does your calculation truly simulate that a blueprint of this density can achieve a stable completion?"
"Which is the precise reason my mouth asserted that the outcome cannot be realized across a single watch of the clock," Lucia replied smoothly, his frame likewise resting flat against the parallel tiles as his silver hair shifted across the stone. "My own steel commands the capability to neutralize the external obstacles blocking the path, but the absolute, ultimate bottleneck emerges from their own psychological alignment. Fortunately... the tallies prove our vanguard has secured an exceptionally strong opening play across this sun."
"The evaluation is text-perfect," Radahn agreed, his baritone softening. "Across the opening movements of the brief, my intellect failed to grasp the source code behind the specific phrases your tongue directed toward Morgott's station, but as the dials turned, the logic cleared my eyes. That Omen prince shares an identical baseline configuration with my own character, omitting the variable that his shoulders carry an immense, crushing mass of ancestral burdens that should have never been written into his ledger. Those structural weights lack the voltage to destroy his internal will, yet they permanently castrate his active power and choke out the evolution of his future."
"He represents nothing short of a majestic lion trapped within an absolute network of iron chains, and the solitary mandate my strategy recognizes is to systematically tear those chains from his flesh," Lucia spoke, his eyes reflecting the golden light of the sky.
Retracing the ancient scrolls of un-altered history, Morgott had historically broken free from his un-monitored subterranean prison strictly when the catastrophic fires of the Shattering War had violently detonated across the continent—the watch when the disparate demigod heirs had initiated their bloody, fratricidal rebellions to claim the sovereign shards of the Great Rune. It was strictly across that hour of total structural collapse that his boots had cleared the grates to officially assume the administrative reins of the leaderless Golden Capital, completely crushing the royal coalitions of his siblings across the two legendary defenses of Leyndell.
Yet, even commanding the absolute apex of imperial military dominance, his character had maintained a tragic, self-flagellating restraint—manually restricting his martial execution to the deployment of standard Erdtree prayers, until the terminal hour he was driven to the absolute precipice of his life reservoir by the arrival of the first Tarnished champions. It was only at that final checkpoint that his will violently released the un-bracketed fury of the Crucible energy festering within his marrow, all while his dying breath recorded a sense of absolute shame for "tainting the sacred throne" with his horns.
Parallel to his trajectory, his younger brother Mohg had become increasingly, destructively obsessed with the dark capabilities clutched within his innate accursed bloodline following his fateful subterranean intersection with the cosmic Formless Mother. In the final accounting, his intellect had steadily, completely lost its tracking lines within the desperate pursuit of hidden divinity and absolute territorial authority, transmuting his identity into the single most depraved, blood-soaked monster logged across the demigod census.
But from this exact watch of the clock, the grand river of imperial history had violently crashed head-on into a monumental, un-mapped reef that should have mathematically never existed across the grid—and the currents were consequently being guided toward an entirely uncharted, magnificent destination.
Lucia's internal engine registered an identical, burning eagerness to monitor the board—desiring to witness what specific, world-shaking heights an un-shackled Morgott, completely freed from his self-imposed iron chains, and a focused Mohg, who had desisted from losing his path to the dark, would grow to achieve when their steel finally cleared the shadows of the under-realm to claim the light of the sun.
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