long live life
DISCLAIMER: Yggdra Union © Sting. The ten themes here are from 52_flavours lj.
01. My lord, you called me. I come. What does the king command?
Zilva did not like her orders, but she had them, and an assassin was nothing if she could not follow orders. So she lay in the shadows, quieting her breathing and extending her senses to keep track of her fellows, the other juniors and lesser assassins descending in rank. As her master was assuming point in this task, it was up to Zilva to command the rest.
…She wasn't a superstitious woman, but she didn't like the mission. She'd killed many people, and helped to restrain many prisoners, with minor enough qualms—emotions had no real place in war—but this… just left a bad taste in her mouth. It felt like treason, deep inside the heart she ordinarily shelved at times like this. It felt like blasphemy against the gods.
The air shifted against her face, and Zilva pressed herself flat to the ground, feeling the tremors of pounding steps on the floor as the enemy approached.
The torchlight flickered as the usurper charged through the hall in a whirl of scarlet hair and bronze armor, the bladed haft of his scythe drawing sparks when it scraped against the stone of the walls and floor. He got close enough for Zilva to see the determination in his golden eyes before her master seemed to melt out of nowhere, flinging herself at him silently and with knives in each hand.
The usurper got out a strangled yell and managed to whip his weapon up to block just in time to save himself, but a few strands of his hair fluttered to the ground, barely a few inches away from Zilva's face.
What followed was a series of flashing strikes that moved almost too quickly for Zilva to follow. Despite the length and size of his weapon, the would-be usurper was maneuvering surprisingly well in the cramped corridor; Zilva had only a blink to realize that he was pushing her master back before she heard a soft female cry and dark blood sprayed in an arc, staining the walls and ceiling and his face and chest. And then her master's body fell with a soft thump to the stone floor, leaving Zilva momentarily confused and feeling blank.
The dragon knight lifted his left hand from his scythe to mop the blood off his face, then stared at Zilva's dead master with something akin to shock—as if this had happened a bit too quickly even for him to understand. He shook his head, then slapped his own cheek hard and began to look around warily.
"Gulcasa, what's wrong?" Zilva heard a voice call from further down the hall. "We heard fighting…"
"Assassins," the knight called back, just as the rest of the unit shook off their own stupor and emerged as one with crossbows aimed at him.
The knight, Gulcasa the usurper, took half a step back in shock, then raised his weapon—and smiled tensely, dangerously, daring them to take him on.
"Wait."
Zilva rose from her hiding place and held out an arm, signaling the others to stand down. When she heard the clack of their weapons lowering, she turned calmly to face Gulcasa—the man of whom she'd heard so many rumors since she'd been a little girl. She was sure she knew which were true and which were false, now.
"…We are the first unit of the Imperial assassins, sworn to serve only the Emperor for all our lives. Our absolute loyalty is with the lord of all Bronquia."
Gulcasa had no reaction to her words; Zilva sank down to one knee, putting a hand to her heart and bowing her head.
"Your Majesty. What is your command?"
02. No otherways for pomp and majesty
The Emperor's tall chair is empty at breakfast this morning, and in about thirty minutes the curious whispers will likely turn to worried ones, so Baldus places his silverware to one side of his clean plate and his woven napkin to the other, excuses himself politely, and bows himself out of the hall and towards the stairs.
When he arrives at Gulcasa's chambers, the door is unlocked, and so Baldus lets himself in.
The curtains of the wide four-poster bed are open, but the bed itself is empty; Baldus turns slowly to take in the as-yet-half-redecorated room and its mismatched furnishings—some gaudy, some finely made but Spartan—until he spies the heavy mahogany desk in the corner.
Papers litter the surrounding floor as though a cloud seeped in through the window and dropped them in a flurry, or some similar mischief of the heavens. Stacks—not quite towering, but still rather impressive—sit in even rows along the far corner and side, and are scattered rather more messily everywhere else.
The chair is pushed back hard, and the Emperor sits sprawled in it, leaning forward with his upper body splayed across what space there is. There's a quill pen still held loosely in one hand, and the other is folded over the reading glasses he's had to adopt for paperwork.
His beard will hide his smile, so Baldus reaches forward and places a hand on Gulcasa's shoulder, shaking him softly.
"Majesty, it's time to wake up."
Awareness jolts through Gulcasa's body as a kind of tensing of all his muscles, a reflex most likely ingrained for his own safety. He relaxes again the moment before Baldus lifts his hand; then the Emperor's eyes half-open, and he sits up very stiffly.
Gulcasa does not seem very awake—his hair is disheveled, his clothes are rumpled from such an odd sleeping position, his eyes are still only halfway open, and there's a wide ink smear over his cheek. Still, he pushes the quill and glasses to the side, then gathers up the scattered papers on the desk in businesslike movements, shuffling them into something like a pile and heaving it up to tap the sheets into alignment. This done, he gives Baldus what the old general considers an extremely nonplussed expression and offers the stack.
"It's all done," Gulcasa says, voice flat but not too slurred, considering.
…There's considerable effort involved in not laughing, but Baldus accepts the paperwork with a smile, then reaches out to pat the Emperor's head.
"Your diligence is quite admirable."
Gulcasa tries to duck out from under Baldus' hand with something like a squawk of protest, but not before Baldus sees his pleased (if embarrassed) smile.
03. Oh! Oh! Malediction!
—Twelve years is a long time, but Leon remembers.
It was the transition between summer and autumn, and he was ten and didn't know a goddamn thing about the world. He and his father had been on their way back from the marketplace, Leon carrying the food and his father carrying little Elena pig-a-back. The markets were towards the southwest part of Flarewerk, and their house had been in the northeastern district, within sight of Castle Bronquia. They always passed by the plaza on their way home; when he'd been a kid like that, Leon had liked being able to see the different people that were always there.
That day, there was a crowd, circled around something in the middle of the open flagstones. Leon couldn't see what it was about, but he heard men's raised voices and a boy yelling, and there were so many people that he and his father had to push through to try to get back home.
They wound up getting shoved closer to the center of the commotion, until Leon was standing and staring through a gap between the people.
The shouting men were soldiers, and they were shouting words that Leon would get switched for saying. There were maybe five of them, and enclosed in their tight knot, there was a boy Leon's age—maybe younger—with shabby clothes and long red hair. Between the soldiers, he was pinned to the ground with one man's steel-capped boot pressed against his spine, raised painfully half-off the ground even so as another soldier's hand was tangled in his hair, yanking him up by it. The other soldiers were hitting and kicking him, spitting crude insults and ordering him to just die.
Leon saw the boy's face once. Covered in blood, dirt, and bruises, his features were twisted in an expression of agony and hate that struck something in Leon's heart, even at that naïve age.
Shocked by that look, Leon turned around uneasily, looking at the faces of the crowd. No one seemed to share in the savagery of the soldiers; instead the people looked frightened, guilty.
He glanced up at his father—why is everyone so scared to help, why won't someone help, he wanted to ask, but his father had a grim expression. He shook his head, put a hand on Leon's shoulder, and steered him away.
Late that night they had a talk about the Emperor and the kingdom of Fantasinia, and the ancient dragon god and what a scapegoat was.
—If there's a god of irony, Leon's going to carve out his balls and make the bastard watch while he roasts them and feeds them to the Imperial dragons.
- - -
Most people would've said that you couldn't see that boy in the Emperor now, but Leon disagrees with them. They're so much the same person it almost hurts his eyes to look at. Gulcasa wears his hair incredibly long, and no one will ever drag him by it again; his body ripples with muscle as if daring anyone to try to put him on the ground now. When they'd met again, Leon had recognized all that—and the wild smolder in Gulcasa's eyes that spoke of his rage and humiliation and bloodlust for revenge after twenty years of abuse and misery. He couldn't have begrudged Gulcasa the fact that he was the one who got to wear the previous Emperor's splattered blood across his face and armor like a banner of pride—because they're the same when you get down to it. Leon immersed himself in the hatred more, but Gulcasa knows how it is to bear the pain of that kind of grudge.
It's an easy thing to recognize in someone else.
—Out on the castle ramparts, Leon crosses paths with him. It's probably an hour or so after midnight, and Leon's bored, looking for skulls hung on the wall he hasn't pissed on. Gulcasa just looks tired.
Leon raises a hand in an ironic salute, and Gulcasa replies in kind; the two men pause and lean on the crenels—Leon nonchalantly, the Emperor exhaustedly.
"That stray of yours keepin' you up again, huh?" Leon asks, the words half-grunt.
Gulcasa raises one shoulder and lets it fall, arching his back like a cat and then standing straight up, stretching slowly.
"Hey."
"What?"
"…Can we really trust him? Even you can't look at 'im and not think suspicious, and he still won't say nothin' about where he's from." Leon's words are pointed, and he raises an eyebrow as he stares Gulcasa down.
"True." Gulcasa stretches again. "But all the same—we do need him. And the way he acts—jumping at people coming close, hiding behind me whenever anyone else is around… His attitude. And how he wakes up at midnight screaming nine nights out of ten. He's like us, Leon."
Gulcasa's too soft, Leon can't help but think with a bit of disgust. He should know better than to take in everyone with sad eyes and a sob story—some of them are probably liars or spies or both, and there are precious fucking few people you can trust nowadays.
…But. He wouldn't be the warlord Leon was willing to follow if he wasn't like this. Because Gulcasa hasn't forgotten how it feels to be helpless, or the taste of his own blood, or the feeling of that boot crushing into his back. He'll never forget.
—Yeah, both of them are carrying things they'll never forget.
"Well, keep an eye on him, is all," he says—a gruff halfhearted warning—and shrugs and brushes past Gulcasa, on his way. The Emperor's footsteps resume, and fade away, behind him.
04. An aspiring villain from the start
The village was burning.
She'd been in a state of confusion since she'd awakened to Canaan pounding on her window and the night sky red, choked with black haze. The soldiers—the kingdom's soldiers who'd been here since she was a little girl—were running back and forth, clashing with men and women in Imperial colors.
"We have to find someplace safe—," Canaan yelled as they ran aimlessly, avoiding flames and dodging around scattered pockets of conflict, but she already understood that there probably wasn't anywhere like that. She didn't have to know a thing about why this was happening to know that.
As they ran, she kept seeing discarded weapons lying on the street, beside fallen corpses, and she asked herself over and over why she didn't just make Canaan stop so she could pick one up. She barely knew anything about handling weapons—in the old days perhaps the villages would have been trained in warfare, Bronquia had been a martial state once, after all; the times have changed and any sign of rebellion has to be quashed—but even so.
(but what was this if not a rebellion?)
Monica squinted through smoke and tried not to choke in the heat, clinging to Canaan's hand because his palm and hers were both slippery with sweat. More than from the flames; they were scared. They were helpless, and she knew it and so did he.
Canaan swerved sharply, pulling her along with him into an alleyway and then sliding to a halt as he realized, as she did, that this was a dead end.
"Oi! So that's where you bastards were hiding!"
Monica whirled first, and her heart started racing at double the time as she saw the soldier in blue standing at the neck of the alley.
He thinks we're soldiers. He can't see we don't have weapons. But would it really matter if he could see them? There was chaos in the village and somehow, some way, it would all be blamed on civilians like them in the end. They were going to be killed.
"Get behind me," Canaan murmured, his voice desperate, but Monica couldn't move. It wouldn't even matter, would it? Canaan would die and so would she, and oh god, she didn't want to die, not now, not already, when she'd barely even lived and she'd never been kissed or seen the country outside her own home—
"Come on, boys, I found 'em—" the soldier was saying before he was interrupted by a shout that was more roar than scream. There were the yells of a few men, and the soldier lifted his sword and began to swing at something that Monica couldn't see—
And the crescent of a scythe's blade sliced the soldier nearly in half—there was an explosion of blood as the body fell backwards, and lunging after it, completing that scythe's swing, was a man with long hair—
The man drew up short and looked around, then squinted into the alley, bringing his weapon to rest. He wasn't in blue—rather, he was wearing plain leather armor with the Imperial dragon rampant stamped upon the breastplate in black, with a deep red cloak drawn over his shoulders. His hair was just darker than the flames, and his eyes were piercing gold—
And Monica—Monica remembered the murmurings of the adults, during the moments there weren't soldiers overseeing them, the murmurings of a miracle in Flarewerk. And her heart turned over, and it felt like her blood turned to fairy wine in her veins; she forgot her terror and the smoke and confusion and stood in awe.
"It's alright now—they're dead, you can come out."
Monica didn't think twice—she simply did as she was told. Canaan didn't hesitate either. Up close, the man who'd saved them seemed close to their age; there was blood splattered all over him and his hair was clinging to the sweat on his face, and he wasn't that much taller than Canaan. But there was still that air about him—that air of something more—that kept her stunned into silence.
He turned around and whistled with forefinger and thumb at his lips, an art Monica had always envied in her mother and older sister but never been able to master, a piercing sound. And a riderless red dragon emerged from the smoke, stopping in front of him and nosing his chest with a businesslike whuffing sound.
A hand on the dragon's halter, he murmured to it, then turned back to them as if sizing them up. "You'd better get on," he said at length; "you're civilians, aren't you? She'll take care of you. As long as you're on her back nothing's going to hurt you—this fight's not over yet."
And then the dragon was squatting and Canaan stumbled into the saddle, and between the two of them, Monica found herself sitting there too, Canaan's front pressed to her back and her hands uneasily gripping the pommel.
The rest of the night felt like a lucid dream—she held on, and Canaan held on to her, and she could feel his heart beating almost as fast as hers as the dragon followed its rider around. They met up with a silver-haired woman with a mask and a crossbow, and a shabbily-robed young man in chains who made lightning dance through the air, and the three of them made short work of every soldier that crossed their path. Between all the blood and that lightning, the air stank of iron, and the smoke was so bad that at times Monica could barely breathe, but even as exhausted as she was, she didn't take her eyes off him for a minute—the flashing silver of his scythe was easy to follow.
It must have been hours—though it felt like twenty minutes—but eventually, at long last, the noise began to die down and enemy soldiers stopped approaching them (or they stopped running across them). The smoke was clearing, and the deep blue sky peeked through in places; it must have almost been dawn.
"I believe that should be the last of them, Gulcasa," the mage said breathlessly, and the crossbow-wielding woman nodded silently.
More soldiers in Imperial colors were suddenly everywhere, standing tall but relaxed, sheathing their weapons and looking satisfied.
"Report," the man who'd saved them—Gulcasa—ordered.
"We've routed them, Majesty, and the fire brigade is already splitting into crews to get things under control. Civilian casualties have been minimal, and we've only lost a few men."
Gulcasa nodded, and lifted his weapon high, turning so that he could speak to everyone. Monica's heart was still pounding.
"The village of Bardot is ours again! In two days' time, we march on Ishnad!"
There was a great cheer from all the soldiers. Monica could barely breathe—from where she sat, it felt like the sound was buoying her up, like she could fly all the way to the heavens if it got just a little louder.
In the midst of all that brilliance and sound, Gulcasa turned and patted his dragon's cheek; it crouched down again, and both Monica and Canaan slid off to stand on the earth again. That feeling hadn't changed; the way her legs were shaking made her feel like she'd already been in the sky—like she'd swum miles through it.
"See? You made it through just fine."
He was smiling at her—the Emperor was smiling at her—and it blew all the tension and tiredness and wildness from his young face; it was like staring at the sun. He reached out to clap Canaan's shoulder, and then the palm of his hand was on top of her head, gently, one stroke of her hair.
She could feel her cheeks heat up, and as the last of the smoke cleared so that she could see the glorious pink and gold on the horizon, Monica knew in every part of her: She would follow this man anywhere he asked of her.
05. On purpose to confound this scoundrel's pride
Emilia flew.
Instead of following the usual path back through the air, she hugged the coastline, letting her griffon coast on the thermals and skim dangerously close to the water. She didn't have a choice, none at all—she had to make it back to Flarewerk and fast. Nowhere else in Bronquia would she find the help she really needed.
She shifted the reins between her right hand and her teeth, her left tight around Gulcasa's arm, since his were around her waist only very loosely. He wasn't really all that conscious; her brother's labored breathing had been getting more and more pained as the minutes and hours passed by, but even through all this time he hadn't said a word. If he was awake—more or less—he must have been trying to bear the pain.
It ground at her nerves how slowly this seemed to go—this was her brother's life at stake—but if Emilia drove her griffon too hard she'd founder, and they'd be out of luck.
"Damn idiot," she swore under her breath, wishing she knew worse words. Those were too mild for her anger—at her brother for taking such stupid risks, and at herself for arriving just a little too late. Maybe, if she'd been there earlier, he wouldn't be as bad off as he was now…
Damn idiot, damn idiot, damn idiot. Emilia nibbled her lip, shook her hair out of her face, and pressed her heel into her griffon's flank, urging for a little more speed. She'd treat her mount to some rare cuts of meat after this. She shifted her arm, too, dragging Gulcasa's closer against her waist so that his armored chest pressed to her back, his cheek and the line of his jaw and chin above her ear, his dry lips to her temple.
Her heart thudding to the rhythm of his agonized breath, she squinted for the castle in the distance.
06. Do not raise your voice against me, I am not afraid of your
anthem although the lyrics are still bleeding from the
bark of my sapless heart.
From where she was standing, Eudy couldn't see the little princess' face, but she could see Gulcasa's, and although his voice was almost steady, he looked as terrible as she sounded.
The messenger had told everyone about Emilia after Gulcasa had ordered her out of his room, and Eudy and the twins had collectively convinced everyone to give him some space. It was best that he get the tears and the pain out all at once, right away, so that he wouldn't scare the men by breaking down in the middle of trying to organize them to repel the Royal Army's attack.
It wasn't like that had been a bad thing to do, Eudy thought grimly as she watched him, but everyone had been pressed for time and failed to take into account that the Princess' death was just one more blow on top of all the others—losing Baldus and Zilva, losing Leon, losing Nessiah, all those poor dead civilians. Half of those blows falling while Gulcasa had still been way too shaky and sick to pick up a weapon, let alone ride out and do something about it the way he'd probably wanted to.
Gulcasa's face was badly tearstained and the rage twisting his expression said he was about half a minute away from throwing out all the plans they'd made and heading out to take the Royal Army on right now. Their Emperor was a good kid, Eudy knew—a good kid who cared about everyone he worked with and felt responsible for them all—but it was precisely because of the fact he was a good kid that this was hurting him so much. Everyone had given their all for him, but from the way he was acting…
He's blaming himself for lacking the strength to save everyone. And descendant of a god or no, that's too much weight for anybody to bear. Gulcasa believed in the code of Bronquia more than anyone, so how painful did it have to be to face his own weaknesses? Being a good kid didn't preclude being a reckless idiot, and since he was both, Gulcasa would ignore the fact that nobody knew when his overtaxed body would give out on him again and push himself back to the verge of collapse.
And then there was what he'd already resolved himself to do if the situation got bad enough. Eudy knew about that plan the same way all the ranking officers did, and she hated it. She wasn't particularly religious at any rate, but more than that, faced with the choice of who she wanted to lead Bronquia, their god or their Emperor, she'd choose Gulcasa a thousand times.
She didn't know anything about Brongaa and she could care less about him, no matter how bad that sounded. Gulcasa loved his country and his people, and he was the one she and all the others believed in. He just didn't realize it.
…He really did look like he was about to charge off as he made for the stairs, and Eudy scowled at his back for a few moments before it hit her: He didn't have anybody to hold him back anymore. Nessiah had always done that, and after Nessiah's death Baldus and Emilia had taken over. If Luciana or Aegina ran into him, neither one would stop him—Aegina was too soft on him, and Luciana… well, it was obvious that she'd never go against any decision he made, at least not for long. And if those girls wouldn't do anything, well—
Eudy motioned to her troops to wait for her, and ran after Gulcasa; his back was just disappearing around a bend in the staircase as she got to the top. She nearly tripped down the first few stairs and wound up jumping down the last few, but she was able to catch his arm at the first landing.
"Your Majesty," she began a bit reproachfully, but stopped short at the look on his face. All that rage was gone, making him look lost and entirely too young for all of this.
She stared at him for a moment, then pulled his arm so that he was facing her fully and rested her free hand on his shoulder, smiling a little.
"Take some deep breaths, and make sure you wash your face before you run into the girls. You don't want them to see you like this, do you?" If she appealed to his male pride enough, maybe he'd remember the strength he did have. "Come on, you need to get your armor on and organize the soldiers in the streets. If they get past me somehow, you all have to be ready, now don't you? I'm not turning the cannon towards the city, we can't risk the civilians like that."
Gulcasa bowed his head a little in what was probably supposed to be a nod. Eudy held on to him.
"Don't go haring off on your own, all right? We won't be able to accomplish anything here if we stop thinking." She wouldn't tell him that she knew how he felt—trying to acknowledge his pain right now might make him reject her—but she did pull him close for a few moments.
He held on to her, but let go when she tried to ease him back.
"And don't look so worried, either. We're going to win. We're going to win because we have to win."
"…Eudy."
Gulcasa's voice was quiet and a bit hoarse, but she fell silent at the sound of it.
"…Stay alive."
She gave his shoulder a pat and smiled at him again. "I will."
07. Fitly to themselves most hard to bear
He comes awake with a gasp, his heart stuttering in an uneven staccato against the inside of his ribs, the midnight air rasping his throat. He remembers how to see, and remembering, acts; the threads and strands of magic rearrange inside his shell and the darkness lifts away to display a far-off ceiling of wood and ruffled curtains: the canopy of a bed.
He raises himself carefully, sitting up so as not to dizzy himself, not wanting to strain the spells so early with a drastic change in perspective—in the early days the slightest disturbance would make the delicate veils of magic unravel and snap, breaking and leaving him spinning confused between his body and his sword and the cold cold temple.
(These are not the early days, but his terror of the dark and of that disorientation have conditioned him even so.)
He recognizes the bed and the room after a few moments, and turns slowly to see that a candle is burning on the bedside table, a stubby tower in a pool of wax, bearing a thin tall flame. In its light, he sees the Emperor.
Gulcasa is—probably—asleep, although he's sitting in a high-backed padless chair, the kind his own delicate stature couldn't take for more than three hours at a time. And he's stretched forward, face on his crossed arms, crossed arms indenting the mattress. All in all, it looks so impossibly comfortless that Nessiah must question whether Gulcasa is really and truly asleep.
He is fully clothed: he can feel the shift of his worn robes against his skin—and yet, and yet, the intimacy and vulnerability of the situation makes him feel naked.
Nessiah reaches out softly, the gentlest movement of his right hand, his outstretched fingers. His chains shift—just the slightest whispered tone of cold orihalcon on cold orihalcon—but that sound is enough to make Gulcasa's own shoulders jolt slightly, to make the Emperor's head raise. His dragon's ears are just that much sharper than an ordinary man's, after all.
Gulcasa straightens before Nessiah can think of any words to say, stretches—his muscles tremble minutely with the strain—and closes his eyes to rub them with his knuckles.
"Been up long?" he asks, voice bleary with sleep.
Nessiah could cry. He turns away, covering his face with both hands; he has to hide. He folds his lower lip inward, between his teeth, but does not bite down; too obvious a gesture and Gulcasa will notice.
"Nessiah?" A large hand hovers over his shoulder—he can feel its heat, but it doesn't descend—only the fingertips graze the fabric of his robes. "Nessiah, are you okay?"
…He hates Gulcasa for the greatness of his heart, but he hates himself far more.
08. Rage at the rage unblest
—I wonder when it was that I started to covet that smile.
Luciana couldn't honestly remember, and at this point it hardly mattered at all, didn't it? There was nothing she, or anyone, could do about it anymore.
Gulcasa had always been kind—since they were all children. Miraculously so. Luciana had no idea how he'd managed to not give in to that bitterness forced onto him and let it seep through to his everyday life, the way it had been for her. But no matter how he was forced to bear the former Emperor's hatred and fear and jealousy—he'd always picked himself back up and taken deep breaths and hidden however he felt, then turned back to his family and smiled at them.
(Luciana had asked him about it once and he'd given her some kind of excuse about a king needing to govern himself before he could govern anything else, but since he didn't bother to govern that impulsive spirit of his, she figured he just hated seeing other people feel badly on his behalf.)
He was the same now. Luciana was sure he'd always be that way. Now that he could, he spoiled Emilia and let her have all the pretty clothes she'd ever wanted; he gave Leon companionship no matter how unbearable the knight got, and had even patiently hauled Nessiah out of his shell and made him one of their own. He worked hard to make Baldus proud, and joked with Eudy, and treated Zilva with respect; he ran around doing everything himself and making everyone feel needed.
It hurt.
She hated it—hated being just another person that Gulcasa was equally kind to, just another member of the family. Sometimes she wanted to reach out and grab his hand and scream I'm here, I've always been here, I've watched you longer than anyone and I know you the best. He always smiled at her, but it was the same smile he offered every one of them; she wanted differentiation. She wanted to be looked at as if she were the treasure of them all.
She wanted him to herself. For herself. Had longed for him so hard, since they were so much younger, and even so—
Perhaps it was the fact that they were working and fighting side-by-side that he was unable to realize it. Sitting on the edge of her bed, Luciana sighed and glanced over at the mirror. She was usually fairly unconcerned with her looks, but she supposed she was feminine enough. She had a body muscled as any warrior's and reflexes sharper than her blade—and she was always covered in armor—so maybe Gulcasa just hadn't realized it yet.
When the war is over, I'll wear pretty dresses and put flowers in my hair. I'll learn how to use rouge and color my lips and he'll notice—he'll notice like he's been dreaming all this time that I'm a woman, that I've always been here. That I'm special to him, that I have to be special to him.
"………I truly am a fool."
What difference would that really make, in the grand scheme of things? Gulcasa loved everyone, and as long as everyone was special to him, that was almost the same as no one being special to him at all. And because he had everyone—why would he need any one person special to him at all?
Besides—Luciana knew from her own weakness that she would just wait for him to say something if that were the case. She wouldn't—she couldn't—confess to him how selfish she was, if she hadn't already.
She'd just be here—at his side—trying to support him in a way he'd never realize.
"You're wrong, you know."
Luciana looked up as Aegina sat down beside her, as her twin put an arm around her waist.
"He'll notice. He'll realize. It's because he's our Gulcasa that he's going to find out. Your feelings… are definitely going to reach him."
Ordinarily she wouldn't have admitted to her thoughts or her weakness, but Luciana sighed and rested her head on Aegina's shoulder. They were twins, after all. It was only natural for them to tell each other everything.
"…I just can't see it ever happening."
"It will. It's going to happen even if I have to tell him for you."
She gave Aegina a dirty look. "You wouldn't dare."
"If it were the only way, I would. If it meant you would be happy, I'd gladly tell him and endure you not speaking to me for weeks."
Luciana snorted, but Aegina just smiled and sat up.
She felt her sister's hands in her hair, pulling it back from her face, and looked towards the mirror again; her reflection didn't feel like it was wholly hers. Some pale nymph or sprite seemed to have taken her place in the glass, hair bound up, face unmade.
"Once this war is over—once we can take back what's ours—then we'll make you into a grand lady. The queen you were born to be. And he'll see you in ways he never expected to."
Luciana still didn't reply.
Aegina didn't want revenge as badly as Luciana did—or at least not with as much fervor—and both of them knew it. Aegina only had satisfaction to gain, after all, whereas Luciana could take her rank back, and the crown, and the Gran Centurio.
Moreover, Aegina didn't want it as much as Luciana did. Both of them were happier here in Bronquia, with their family, surrounded by people who loved them and acknowledged them. It hurt Aegina that they'd been abandoned, but her twin had always been better at accepting things than she.
"…I wonder how much sense all of this really makes," she said softly.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, this war. Leon wants the bloodshed and most of the troops feel like it's justice. I want justice, too, and you just want free of the shadows in our past. Gulcasa is… it feels like even instead of Brongaa's creeds, he's just fighting to make us happy sometimes. To protect us."
"That might be true." Aegina let go of Luciana's hair, and it fell back around her shoulders thickly. "But Gulcasa's a man, too, and he wants to test his strength. Besides, this is something that everyone in the country has wanted and needed for a long time, and he wants what's best for all of us. He's not taking on our desires or anything—he wants it all the same as we do."
Luciana closed her eyes. When this war was over, and Gulcasa had proved his strength as being the greatest in the world—the most worthy in the teachings of his ancestors—would she finally be able to seize that silly girl's daydream of ruling at his side?
…Or was it really as hopeless as she'd always suspected?
She sighed again; this was impractical of her, right on the eve of their march on Karona. She couldn't waste her time wishing any longer.
"…At any rate…, it seems that the pretty dresses and the romance are going to have to wait for a while longer. Our hearts are with him," Luciana said softly, looking up; "and right now he needs our swords even more."
09. An ancient game of virgin sacrifice
Gulcasa stares down at Princess Yggdra where she lies on her side in the dirt, glowering up at him with her clothes and hair tangled, her hands tied behind her back. She's still trying to look tough, but she's really little more than a few dozen kinds of pitiful. He himself is having a hard time not feeling slightly sorry for her.
—They're not that different, in some ways. They've both lost everything, they've both had to start over the hard way. The major discrepancy's in how she had everything for seventeen years, while he—
He had a birthright. And he lost it the second he was born.
Yggdra is glaring up at him with fear and hatred wrestling in her eyes. From the look on her face, Gulcasa's sure she expects to be killed, or beaten or raped or something like that. And his instinct is to pity her, so he looks at her hair—the same color as Luciana's and Aegina's—and wonders if she ever had to fear for her life even once before he killed her father. He thinks of his dead soldiers, slain in the name of her justice, forever beyond his reach and probably never to find their own individual graves. He thinks of the families his soldiers will have to bring the news to, back in Bronquia.
He thinks of the fresh earth covering Nessiah's grave and the hurried, painful funeral. His own agony at not even being able to mourn properly, because of her damned army. And he hardens his heart.
Gulcasa kneels down, balanced on the balls of his feet with his left arm carelessly across his thigh, and reaches out to catch the ends of Yggdra's hair in his fingertips, lifting it and letting it fall in a gold cascade. She bristles and flinches away from his touch, freshly scandalized. She looks like she'd dearly love to spit in his face, even though she's too well-bred to.
"Be glad that we need you alive," he tells her blandly, coldly. And he gets up and walks away, swinging her cell door shut with a scream of rusty iron.
10. New splendour to the dead
Gods existed.
Yggdra had spent all her life believing—she'd grown up on tales of Paltina Meria and the blessed phoenix Mulminams, after all, and even though they were just tales, they were so much the basis of her life—but she was in such awe of that confirmation. She'd met, spoken with real angels—both benevolent and malevolent. There really and truly was a heaven, and someone up above their world was watching over them all.
She prayed. She prayed, thinking her hopes and wishes until she was tongue-tied and then hoping the gods could read them straight from her heart when she didn't have words to frame them in. She prayed for herself and her people; she prayed for guidance; she prayed for forgiveness.
And she prayed for the gods to save—to look after—those who had fallen by her own blade.
Now that Yggdra really understood everything, she was less sure than ever that what she'd done was right. She'd forged ahead even after she didn't have the heart to consider the Imperials her enemies anymore; where once she'd looked to the north and hated the people who had ripped her family apart, in the end, with her sword pointed towards Flarewerk, she'd only been able to see one more family she would be tearing asunder with her own hands.
Gulcasa. She hadn't hated him. Couldn't have hated him anymore if she'd tried. Not when she'd seen her own pain on his face. Not once she'd realized the only thing separating them was a line their ancestors had drawn. If the world was a gentler, more perfect place—maybe they could have gotten along well.
In the end, Yggdra hadn't seen anywhere to turn. There was no outcome acceptable to her but to shoulder her responsibilities to the countries orphaned by her war with Gulcasa—to believe in her justice and protect her people, even if she herself would be drenched in blood. It felt like an excuse, even to her. Maybe it was one.
But she felt as though she still had a responsibility to them—to the dead. Yggdra wondered if Kylier would be glad that she wasn't forgetting even one of them, and hoped so. Even if she wasn't worthy, even if it was hypocritical of her…
Gulcasa, Luciana and Aegina, all of them—they'd had their own stories. Yggdra didn't know those stories—she wondered if it was enough to know that those stories had existed. To wish, futilely perhaps, that someone somewhere would remember them.
And so she prayed. Prayed to the gods, hoped that her wish would be heard by someone, granted. Gulcasa and his army weren't villains in a play. They had been people—living, breathing, red-blooded people with hopes and fears who'd loved and hated. They had deserved better than life had given them, and so Yggdra prayed that if only in the afterlife, they would find peace.
Once a year, every year, she gathered everyone for their customary pilgrimage. No one protested—everyone truly understood what she felt. Yggdra was grateful for it. Just like that night on Heaven's Gate, everyone's hearts and minds were as one.
She and Roswell asked Durant and Elena to spread the word, and slowly, everyone would arrive: Pamela and Nietzsche came first this year, Gordon a surprise guest with them, and the others followed in twos and threes. Milanor, an ever-paler shadow of his old self, was last.
They always took their time, journeying across the world. Remembering. Checking up on the people, whether the reception they got was reluctantly welcoming or downright hostile.
When they actually arrived at the Imperial capital, Yggdra brought everyone to a halt at the gates; for a long time, no one spoke. At last Milanor moved forward to lay flowers on the memorial stone, and everyone followed suit one by one.
Yggdra bowed her head—and waited—and then turned the procession in towards the main city. The reconstruction was almost complete by now, and the people who had survived to reclaim their homes here moved away from the army silently. There was no screaming, no cursing, nothing thrown—just coldness, just silence. That was something she—all of them—could accept.
The townspeople took good care of the ruined castle. It would feel pretentious to thank them for it—it was probably as natural as breathing to them—but Yggdra was still grateful.
She moved carefully through the wreckage—more worried that she would damage it further than the possibility of there being rough edges to snag against her skin or her dress—preparing herself for how much it would hurt to see the old stone circle, the black shrine, the fissure in the earth closed over by melted metal and obsidian, and remember the fire and the fear and the pain and the doubt and the edge of her sword sinking at last into flesh—
Yggdra closed her eyes and ducked through the wreckage of the arched doorway, tried to bear the wrenching sensation in her chest and the nausea, and looked up.
"Oh—"
The lonely altar she'd expected was covered in golden flowers, as though a shower of seeds had fallen here out of the sky and erupted into riotous, miraculous bloom wherever they landed. Great garlands of yellow blooms were strung across the pillars like a May Day celebration, with more strewn all across the grass, scattered over the altar, tied in wreaths adorning anything that could support them.
A few flowers were tied in something like a bouquet, resting on the earth right about where Gulcasa had finally fallen. Yggdra couldn't judge the exact spot, but it seemed right.
Had the villagers done this? It seemed impossible, ludicrous, imagining them hauling armfuls of flowers here and decorating the altar in remembrance. The past years, there'd been nothing of this sort—candles and a few flowers, if anything, but nothing so grandiose. And the time it would have taken—surely at this time of year, they wouldn't be able to spare too many people from their work.
Behind her, she heard her friends murmuring; carefully, carefully, Yggdra tucked her scepter under her arm and gathered up her skirts, choosing her steps so as not to tread on any fallen flowers.
"What is all this?" someone murmured. It might have been Milanor, or perhaps Russell.
"It's like some kind of offering, almost. But I've never seen these flowers before. What are they?"
It was a good question, Yggdra realized, and she bent slightly to pick up one of the loose blooms, wanting to give it a closer look. The flower really didn't seem similar to the ones she'd seen all over Bronquia, and it certainly wasn't native to Fantasinia. Its petals had a very strange texture, too.
"…?"
Carefully, Yggdra rubbed one petal between her fingers. It felt… drier than it should, and a little bit rough. The edges were a lot harder and more solid than a normal flower petal, too.
"This is paper," she murmured wonderingly. Very high-quality paper, thick and waxy and soft like vellum, painstakingly folded and arranged into the shape of a flower so that she could barely tell the difference. How much time had this taken? She would have struggled for hours just to complete one.
And someone had gone to the effort of creating what must have been hundreds.
Yggdra looked about, then glanced back at her army, and then down at the yellow flower in her hand. And she smiled a bit sadly; there was no doubt in her mind.
…Because gods existed.
And, after all—there was someone living who knew those stories. Someone who would never forget.