Title: To Raze the Myrrh
AN: Done for a Tales ficathon prompt. Disclaimers hold true.
The Fabre manor rasped, its ancient bones-- a skeleton of drywall and stone clad in off-red and regal green-- rumbling in the silence of late evening. The halls were lonely behind closed doors; their insides a stretch of black, long and enduring as the river styx, with the servants retired and the Lady tucked beneath her blankets, hiding from the nightmare that was her boy's kidnapping. The antechamber stood still and untouched beyond its thick cloak of shadow, and a march of cold fonstones guarded the walls, glaring dull amber as moonlight streaked their carpets.
Men did not roam the threshold after Luna slithered over Baticul's crags and layers, but he was as alien to the house as midnight, young and lanky below the banisters with a blond mess of hair and sharp blue eyes. He came before and would come again-- slipped past his branding as a prisoner and a hireling-- to pay his solitary tribute to the silhouette of an old blade. His habit was born of an oath: 'Gailardia Galan did not die with Hod; he is eternal.' It was not said for him-- not for the boy below the twirl of banister, but for the memory whispering upon its surface. Without a pyre or a grave to pray to, he stood beneath it as a ghost, and let himself drown in hatred-- forget the sting of answering orders, the buzz of Mary's scream in his skull, and the shadows behind Peregynt's eyes, both near blind in his age. Alone, he could be cruel and have his mad fantasies-- imagine the blood painting the marble in macabre and the cool metal of the sword's hilt-- but he felt his stomach turn, and tore his eyes away.
It hung there, opaque and edged in gentle teal, as a sick testament to glory while heavy footsteps whispered from the drawing room.
"You-- Guy," the voice was ruthless and desperate, but he made no effort to reply, "this is not a place for children." Van's visage was serpentine in the dark, and his blue eyes electric.
". . . It's not like you to wander around. Late night strolls sure are getting popular," he said easily, Van's face hardening, "What are you doing?"
"You're arrogant to stop me here," he was bitter as he reared on him, "What I'm doing is my own to know-- or perhaps you would like to share your stories of that sword with me?"
"Sorry," was the little Guy had to offer, left gawking at Van's impatience, "But it's weirder for you to be here than me. Plus, think of the time."
Van tensed as armor growled outside the windows, and gripped his shoulders, "As a confidant . . . And a compatriot, I am asking you grant me the privilege a final time--"
Guy wrenched backwards, and breathed a serious, "Van?! What--?!"
"Gailardia--" His heart clenched at the mention, "Join me in Daath!"
He felt Van's fear prickle through his skin, and shrugged him away, "What kind of request is that? Now? What happened?!"
"I don't have time to explain," he snarled urgently, pulling back the curtain, "Regardless, you cannot be seen with me here. Duke Fabre, that bastard-- his cowardly fool Spinoza sold us out! I have no doubt that this will be the last time we speak; I cannot let you stay, not when he--"
"Spinoza? . . . You," Guy murmured, grappling with the reality, "Van! Does he know who we are--?!"
"Not that," he insisted, grim as his eyes followed the night watch-- the footman slinked into the western halls, "but Luke . . ."
"Luke?" Guy chorused, nervous as Van's regalia-- a tabard colored cloudy gray, with vines of gold blossoming into the Order's seal-- gleamed beneath the lunalight. "But he's . . . I . . . You kidnapped him?"
"What speed. Now that you're aware, will you report me and collect the reward?" He was biting and cynical, lurking in the black, "Spare me, Gailardia. Those damned Dark Wings took him when he ran, calling him an damn orphan!"
"Van . . ." He sputtered, barely coherent, "You were . . . Allied with Duke Fabre?"
"Only for monetary gain, yes," Van affirmed, his arms crossed, "Control of Belkend was invaluable."
His reply was shaky and incoherent, "What did . . . ?"
"My plans for Luke are," Van hesitated, grimacing, "disturbed. I cannot risk these stains to my reputation-- the Fonmaster is only so revered. It is fate, Gailardia-- answer."
"But what about Pere? Can we really go without him?" He shrank from his own cowardice-- throughout years of servitude, fear kept him from slitting the Duke's throat. Guy cringed at the prospect of being soaked in another's blood, despite that his death was precluded by Lorelei, and that he had long wished to have his head on the guillotine in the name of honor. Suicide was too plebeian, and he resented the thought of running from duty.
"Peregynt," Van repeated dryly, "He is no longer the man you knew."
"What?"
"Whatever his prejudices," he dwindled, somber as Guy looked on, "He has no interest in vengeance."
"That," he stammered, considering Van's accusation, "That can't be tr . . ."
"He has cut his ties to Hod," Guy felt the burn of betrayal, but denied Van his resignation-- Peregynt's behavior was unnatural, but not two-faced, "And will not revive his household."
". . . But what about my stuff--" it was a pitiful attempt at an excuse, and something ripped through him when their eyes met.
"Leave everything unimportant, it's a liability," Van stated simply, edging to the doors lining the east wing, "They will expect that you're returning, and my funds are limited-- even you are a hindrance, and I cannot afford for further 'baggage' on my part."
"That's a nice way to say it," Guy mumbled darkly, and Van ignored the pained insinuations.
He was quiet as the house mumbled its complaints, their wispy voices echoing, ". . . I would like this to be your choice." Guy faced a split path, their separate curves leading to a destiny no child could comprehend, and turned on Van. The moon sent light rippling up the Gardios' blade, tempting as a siren in the midst of her ancient song, and he burned like passion and flame.
Dead faces flickered behind his eyes, and everything in him loathed the Fabre House, its walls drenched in blood red for his sister, as he thought of freedom-- of Malkuth, the fatherland from which he was stolen so many years ago, whether by pain or injustice-- and he growled his low, "Fine." A bed in the servant's quarters would be empty when morning seeped into Kimlasca's layers, and the sword missing from its perch, liberated from its secret chains.
- - -
The room was a cave built into the walls of Daath's cathedral, melting easily with shadow while the smell of must hung in the ceiling's skeleton of wood support beams. Fonlight danced across the speckled marble and its whorl of earthy brown and polished gold before dying in the silent maze of hallways, leaving it bleak and forgotten. Bunks beds cluttered its left and right sides, worn from use and the occasional drunken 'accident' that plagued men who came and went, with room enough to keep barrels and surplus that storage hid away.
The desk was something raised for his independence-- he was a soldier with another false name, christened Crizant Cecil, and he let himself have his tabletops. The old wood sagged beneath a layer of metals and cords attached at their sockets, their bodies long since torn apart by curious hands. Books, their bindings fraying where glue ran thin, were opened to pages laden with scribblings of diagrams and annotations while they choked under the chaos. It had no precise order or reason, and that made it painfully familiar-- something that belonged to him alone, like homes or families or ideas. Any footman who knew the room also knew Cecil's desk, and that was at the heart of things.
Guy kept his identity locked away in his memory, and pried apart the steel with a dry enthusiasm suggestive of those who knew they had nothing better to do. He learned the sword near a decade ago, when there was a reason they hung ominously from hooks above his bed and waited for blood to call, but, in Daath, they were left to gag below a thin crust of grim. Here he had no enemies, and no vengeance to chase. Nothing save for the groans of the towers raised at the eastern and western wings, and the recruits who stole behind a nervous grin when they saw an orphan roaming their barracks. He had been robbed of a fixation with killing the Gardios' murderer-- of his purpose.
He fidgeted with the circuitry, a collection of neon colors weaving into slots and conductors, and tuned the strings; it shivered as a low, savage screech tore through its bowels and died. He swore, 'This is supposed to be an easy design . . .' Guy raced through the pages, sifting through his chicken scrawl of equations and musical notes before the door's hinges hissed in the gloom.
"--Van!" He sneered, leaping upright, "Didn't I tell you not to bother me--?!"
"I have something that will interest you," he added coolly, rumbling inside and flashing a smile-- it was brilliant and white, with honesty enough to soften his complaints.
"Something very interesting, Gailardia." The retorts bubbled in his throat, and were made quiet as a contour of shadow rippled past the light bursting from the doorway.
His grip on the cover slipped, and it clattered at his feet. She was pale as sea foam, with eyes a shade of crisp blue behind a thick veil of sandy blonde, and her dress folds were the waves at her heels, swelling and rising to match shaken steps. The glow caressed her like a halo, its shroud of blinding gold torn from wives tales that reminded him he was alive, and that his hovel was not heaven.
"That--that's . . ." it was breathless, and everything in him wanted, so very desperately, to hear it echo, "Mary. . ." She flitted back into the shadows, wide-eyed and at Van's side, but unimagined, and solid. There were no phantoms haunting him, and he managed to drag himself from his desk and back to the clutches of reality. Mary was rosy, with blood pulsing through her, and animate and in no way dead or clasping at his heaving chest while red trickled down his forehead and matted his hair.
"Yes," Van's voice was hazy as he motioned her to his side, and Guy reached to brush her fingers before pain ricocheted through his skull and the memories burned crimson, forcing him away. There was a scent of ash in the fireplace, with gray bricks edged in soot and blood as bodies drowned him before hands snaked their way around his waist. There was an ocean of black smothering Hod like a pearl dropped from the ocean's loving arms.
Battered, his body could not find the courage to love her, and to embrace his sister as the brother he has longed to be, ". . . How?" Guy heard nothing as Van offered his pretenses, and his voice slipped away against his flow of, 'She's alive, alive, alive . . .!' He had not seen her face since the day she was stolen beneath the water, left for dead below a field with fault lines moving like veins up its hills. Siren, ghost, woman-- whatever she was or was not, he saw Mary returned to him. Brought back from the afterlife to bless him again, and see how he has shaped his life as a young count believing in the blood right of the motherland.
- - -
In the three years he wandered Daath's holy places, Guy found no corridor that did not wind; no path that was not lined in doorways, closed and calling to him. He drifted through the west wings, the inner sanctum, and the barracks-- being routine and habitual, they all seemed something faded to gray; monotonous-- when Luna was a shadow in the morning sky hidden between the webs of steel and bright, colored window glass. The bells would explode into deep, thunderous peals outside his quarters, and the soldiers assembled in perfect rows before trudging to the grounds with swords in hand.
Guy thought of Mary, gliding easily through the kitchen with a warm smile as she worked all those pots and pans, and leaned against a stone banister in the cadenscent swirl of a reliquary. She resonated with the same grace and beauty from a decade ago, and carried herself with a voice low and melodious. Her memories had long since hazed to shadows and blank faces, and he told her of Hod, Vandesdelca, and the sea cradling Baticul's countrysides; made stories to paint the world in all different shades. Guy was placid when she struggled to feel the breeze tickling up her spine in Feres, or questioned the soft, gentle grin of their mother while blonde ringlets rippled past her shoulders. Even if she never remembered-- only trailed behind him, and listened with a critical air-- he would cling to her, and not give a damn. Inside the deep, endless navy of her eyes, he saw his sister's soul locked away.
The clergyman stirred, casting glances as he headed to his lonely study, and Guy nodded in polite respect before he swiveled and disappeared. He prayed on mornings he woke up taunted by dreams of her dying-- of blood corroding his mind, smearing her pale face a dirty red-- and did it quietly, on one knee in the midst of lights reflected from stained glass. Van, he thought idly, would be disappointed if he knew. Chastise asking Lorelei for guidance when it was the creature that murdered her so very long ago.
Imaging that cynicism, he made an effort to wait until the chapel emptied for the sake of having no witnesses. Guy did not have faith or belief to turn to, but defying god was condemning himself, and he had been a coward since the day he was born. He weighed in his solitary moments, and thought of Van's war on good and evil-- of the broken bodies and screams that came with choosing to bring death on others. 'Hod died for the entire world, child,' was the religious argument, and he felt the rage boil beneath his skin before his fingers tensed at his sides, and numbness strung up his arms. The kingdoms of Malkuth, Kimlasca, and Daath's republic-- the culmination of a humanity who hid their sins and called themselves pure. They were born in a world where fate and death were convenient! He felt the glare tempt his lips, and recalled Van's prophetic, ". . . the people on that island did not want to die as martyrs in the same way you did not want to live as a survivor."
He retreated back into the cathedral's gloom and meandered, climbing the staircases down to the lower levels hidden somewhere deep below ground. Mary would be there inside his room, all cheerful and curious about his day, and he would feel secure until the sun blushed red and white over the horizon. Van, he finished uneasily, would have to wait-- there was no reason to chase him days before his inauguration as the Commandant. The officials would call it simplistic to speak to an old friend, after all, and Van was a man created of his own charisma and image. He arrived by instinct alone, and let his fingers linger above the brass knob before forcing the stubborn, ancient thing to turn.
"Crizant!" The name ached like an old wound, "What are you doing, coming back so late!"
". . . Sorry, Mary," Guy added warmly, and she put her hands on her hips while heaving a sigh.
She was worried beneath her ironclad surface, "Yes, yes, sorry, is that truly all you can say . . ." He pulled the door shut and collapsed on his cot, staring at the cracks weaving through the bed frame's wood.
"Tired?" He felt the mattress sag, Mary sitting at his side with a trademark smile.
"Not really," Guy murmured offhandedly, and he realized nothing in him wanted to recite the day-to-day antics of his sheltered world. ". . . Maybe."
"Can you not make up your mind," her voice was sing-song and mocking, "There is quite the difference between yes and no."
"Well, I . . . was thinking what it's like to be alive," it rang hollow against the walls, and he narrowed his eyes before he rolled onto his back.
Mary deadpanned a curt, "You certainly aren't dead, are you."
Guy's laugh was contagious and bold, "Nah. But . . ." He had been taught there was nothing more than kill or be killed. Kimlasca did not have compassion for his kind, shown in their work camps and the quiet sense of death and dread lying in Baticul's heart. "I just think about how it should be sometimes."
"Did Van tell you all this? He can be a bit of a snake-- you have too much anxiety," it was sincere, if apathetic, and a scowl tugged at him.
He tasted the words on his tongue, and strung together a shaky, "You don't worry about death, Mary?"
"Not necessarily that," her reply was forced, "but it's unavoidable. Worrying does not change the threat."
". . . Yeah," it was awkward, and he knew he thought of nothing else since Hod was swept under the waves, "But . . . what would you think if people could be . . . revived if they were dead?"
There was a lull of crackling, electric silence as Mary stood upright, fragile as the day she died, and ruffled her skirts, "That wouldn't be possible. There would be no need for it. And for me-- it would be frightening, honestly."
His thoughts were buzzing, clamoring inside his head, and he managed a hushed, "Hm." His eyes closed, and Guy heard the lock slide into place-- it was a faint interruption before all fell to stillness and isolation.
- - -
A week made little difference in Guy's world. Things blurred together, thrashed against one another in melting colors, and he stood outside the door stretching towards the domed ceiling, glossy below the limelight. The corridor reached into the cathedral's silent bowels, a path stringing deep into its heart, and he made his decision.
He pushed the heavy wood aside, and felt the sting of the fonstone's glow, "Van. There's something I have to tell you."
"And that is?" His response was airy as he let the book rest on his desk, hands folded.
"You . . . To Legretta, you said you could bring life to a new Hod," he hesitated, felt the cowardice throb inside his chest, "It's my duty, as your lord, to . . ."
There was a lull of silence, and Van murmured a dignified, "'The Phoenix will be revived where the myrrh grows, and where the snake is left to guard.' If you become a God-General, could you defy the dead. Lorelei itself, Gaillardia."
"I," he let it hang there, "will." In his mind, he is a phoenix, and his creed is to corpses in a world where there is only myrrh to burn.
AN: The Phoenix was his god-general title, if you're curious. Also, Crizant, as a name, means, "a golden flower." As of right now, I actually do want to continue this, so I won't necessarily mark it as "complete" just yet.