Mohg was fading. The longer the stalemate dragged on, the more he felt his strength bleeding away. He feinted wide with a sweeping bloodflame burst, forcing Arthur to juke aside—then his body splashed into a sheet of blood and vanished.
He reappeared a heartbeat later behind Arthur, rising from a smear of crimson he'd left on the stone.
"You fell for it!" Mohg roared, spear crashing down.
Arthur "froze" for a blink—then his hand flipped, Lusat's Glintstone Staff dissolving into his palm as he drew his yew wand instead. He triggered the bound weapon art—Bloodhound Step—and skipped like a phantom to Mohg's back.
His left hand turned into a claw and punched straight through Mohg's chest, gripping his heart.
"The one who fell for it… is you," Arthur said. "Perfect. I needed a test case for my new trick."
He willed it—and drank.
Heat like blood. Cold like curse. Two strands of power streamed from Mohg into Arthur's veins, while the fire threaded through it failed to take hold. Of course it didn't—Arthur's fire resistance had long since been pushed to absurdity; mere flame couldn't impress his body anymore. Mohg's core, in truth, was blood; flame and curse were only its echoes. Blood and curse were both special energies—and those, Arthur could now absorb.
Mohg thrashed, horrified. The strength left his limbs; even flight felt heavy; his life itself ebbed as if tapped by a leech.
Ten-odd minutes later, the flow dwindled to nothing. Arthur withdrew his hand.
Mohg collapsed, barely clinging to consciousness, a husk with a cracked soul. The Great Rune he'd carried slid into Arthur's keeping. Mohg stretched a trembling hand toward the cocoon at the temple's end and whispered:
"No… my Miquella… our dynasty… Mohgwyn…"
Arthur stared, face curving into something between pity and disbelief. For a man with that many horns, Mohg had awfully tender taste. "So you were that into guys, huh," he muttered. "News to me."
Whether mockery or epitaph, Mohg didn't hear it. He'd already slipped into the dark.
Arthur stepped to the cocoon. A thin, withered hand—a boy's—dangled from the split seam. Arthur clasped it and tried to draw power.
Energy flowed willingly.
He blinked. Helping me? Why? Miquella's power was "pure" and persuasive; if this was an attempt to charm him, it was wasted—Arthur's mind was ironclad.
Truth was, the Empyrean was nearly spent. He'd poured himself into the Haligtree, then endured Mohg's long, parasitic stay. There wasn't much left to take. The transfer ended quickly.
"So," Arthur asked the cocoon, "what are you after?"
"Please don't misunderstand. I mean you no harm."
A soul stepped out—golden hair, clear eyes, a face that could only be called beautiful. Young. Definitely a boy. Gods, do Empyreans just spawn pretty?
"I have a request," said Miquella. "Bring me back to my sister."
Arthur lifted a brow. "You may not have heard, but your sister and I… have history—"
"I know," Miquella said gently. "After Mohg left me, I began to wake. I heard your talk with him."
"And you're still asking me?"
"I don't have a choice. Mohg ravaged this body; that's why I've abandoned it to appear in soul. But a soul can't linger bare. Please—take me to Malenia. As payment, I'll convince her to share her power with you."
Ah. There was another layer: Miquella had noticed Arthur absorbing Mohg without losing himself. If Arthur could draw out the Scarlet Rot without shattering Malenia… that was salvation for her. Losing power? Secondary. Ranni lived on in a doll's chassis and did just fine.
Arthur weighed it. He was bound for the Haligtree anyway. Bringing a soul along wasn't hard—and if Miquella soothed Malenia, he could skip a war he didn't need.
"Fine. Give me a moment."
He turned back to Mohg, traced a tight sorcerous array with a fistful of reagents, and lit it. Mohg's drained body sublimed into a deep blue soul crystal.
"Careful," Miquella murmured. "His body's empty, but his soul remains."
"On it."
Arthur performed the rite again on the cocooned remains—this time crafting a vessel for Miquella's soul.
"Rest in this," he said, lifting the gentler crystal. "I'll call you out at the Haligtree."
Miquella nodded and slid inside, choosing sleep to knit back a little strength.
Arthur pocketed both crystals, then spread his hands and pulled.
The blood of the Mohgwyn Palace answered—mist in the air, lake in the basin, veins in the rock—rushing toward him and condensing into a fist-sized blood-red crystal.
He didn't intend to drink it; the energy was too patchwork to be worth his core. But as fertilizer for the Erdtree sapling in his Zen Garden? Oh, that would sing. Huh. If I master Scarlet, could I strip every last rot out of Caelid and pour it into the tree? A question for later.
For now: a promise to keep. Leyndell awaited, and Melina had already been promised a trip to the roots. No more delays.
…
June rolled in. Hogwarts buzzed with the itch of summer. At the End-of-Term Feast, Dumbledore announced the House Cup—Gryffindor, again. Lockhart announced his resignation, adding, with a beaming smile, that he'd be applying at Wizarding Weekly. His fan club was gutted. Everyone else was thrilled—none more than Harry, who'd dodged exams and the Dursleys' snide remarks in one shot.
Arthur caught Helena Ravenclaw after and quietly asked about the Albanian Forest. He planned to poke around over summer—her old hideout might be a clue. With any luck he'd also bump into their truant alumnus, Tom Riddle—the fragment who fled in first year and, years later, crawled back a hairless noseless sorcerer with a curse for every occasion, including the one that doomed the Defense post. Arthur suspected Riddle had spent those two decades learning in Albania—and maybe learned more than Britain knew. Some of Snape's black-mist flight looked suspiciously like something one might dig out there.
Plenty of reasons to go. None of them urgent. First, a real holiday.
Armed with Helena's directions, Arthur yawned his way toward the Gryffindor dorms—only to spot a very out-of-place figure lurking at the common room door.
"Draco? What are you doing here?"
Draco Malfoy was hovering like a thief, torn between knocking and bolting. He grabbed Arthur's sleeve the moment he saw him. "Arthur! Why are you even out—never mind. Come on! My dragon's hatching!"
He hauled Arthur straight down to the Slytherin commons and into his single.
A watermelon-sized egg sat proud on the bedside table, its shell a web of fractures, every line quivering.
"So… why did this take so long?" Arthur asked. "By rights, your hatch date was a month ago."
Draco pulled a face. "Don't ask. It only incubates while I'm holding it. The moment I put it down, it stops. I've been hugging this stupid egg every minute I'm not eating or in class."
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