Written for a prompt on the ROTG Kink Meme:
Tsar Lunanoff is a powerful ruler, but he is not a beloved one. He is twisted and unkind, and he takes what he wants, whenever he wants. The people of the Constellations have had e-fucking-nough, and lead by an unseen leader, the foundation of the Lunar Empire is chipped away, stone by stone, leaving its Tsar angry and paranoid.
When the people of the Constellation show up at the Lunar Palace to take down the Tsar, he has only one choice left: He asks his only friend and ally, General Kozmotis Pitchiner, to counter attack.
Boy is he surprised when Kozmotis turns the attack on him!
+ Kozmotis is the leader of the revolution, with his secret identity being "Pitch Black."
+ The reason he worked against Tsar Lunanoff, is because the Tsar did something to him in the past (something that hurt his family, be it his parents/siblings/wife/daughter/other)
+ being an utter bastard, the Tsar didn't care at that point. He still doesn't. After all, he's the bloody Tsar, he has a right to do whatever he likes!
+ Kozmotis is a better man than the Tsar and willing to simply send the man into exile
+ his wife and unborn child are free to go. In fact, the Tsarina is a trusted ally of the revolution as well.
+ The Tsar is either killed because he fights back or he is dragged off to be exiled
+ The people have decided. They want Kozmotis as the new Tsar.
+ Kozmotis is reluctant to accept, but he gives in. He leads the Constellations into a new Golden Age.
+++ Twisted bonus! The shadows and fearlings work *with* Kozmotis in some way for whatever reason.
Didn't quite hit everything as requested, but I gave it my best shot.
"It's not treason if you win."
- Lisa Shearin
Kozmotis Pitchiner was born minor nobility, only slighter more wealthy and of higher standing than the peasantry that tilled his family's lands. Life was often difficult for both his family and their vassals, so he spent his early life no stranger to sacrifice and hard work. He had cousins though, of higher station, and spent most of his later youth in their households receiving his formal education. When the time came, he chose to pursue the military for a number of reasons. Firstly, because he was third born and would not stand to inherit, and therefore was not required to remain at home to oversee their township. Secondly, because the war was stretching on, growing longer and bloodier every fortnight, and he felt a compulsive call to duty as a soldier. Lastly, he had always excelled most with a sword in hand, and truly felt no more at ease then when he heat of battle overtook him.
So Kozmotis left home at the age of fourteen, the age that manhood came upon a boy, and he travelled many long days to the Capitol City to submit himself into the Tsar's army.
The youth did not know it, but this single action alone was going to alter the course of the future.
~+K+~
By sixteen, Kozmotis's determination, gift with strategy and skill with a blade had earned him the rank of Captain. It had also won him the heart of a young lady, a girl a year his junior, lovely and delicate as apple-skin, the daughter of an Earl. They were wed on a fine spring morning, a hint of dew clinging to the greenery, her blonde eyelashes like stardust on her pale cheeks as she closed her eyes to kiss him. Her hands were like delicate little butterflies flitting nervously over his shoulders and down his back as they tumbled together naked for the first time, and after he held her close, certain that no other woman could ever complete him so.
At sixteen, Kozmotis met his King, his Tsar, for the first time upon his promotion to Corporal. The man is sharp, intense, and Kozmotis and easily see how many of the whispered rumours of the man's ruthlessness and cunning came to be. The man is also genial and welcoming, and Kozmotis leaves their audience feeling that, perhaps, there are a great many untruths being spoken about the man they call king. It was not until many, many years later, that he recognized that there had been a glint of madness in the man's dark eyes.
~+K+~
Kozmotis was eighteen when his daughter was born; pale, fragile Seraphina, with her mother's slight build and thankfully without her father's unfortunate nose. She grows quickly, and while she is surely her mother's daughter in countenance and grace, she is all her father within; spitfire and stubborn resolve to the very core. Kozmotis is gone longer, travelling farther now, his military talent bringing victories home from all fronts, the men beneath his command slowly turning the tide of the war. He speaks with the Tsar and his high court often, rubs elbows with the finest men and women of the kingdom, and his lovely wife is much-adored for her manners and charity. Even his sweet Sera does well among the painted peacocks of the court, her tomboyish ways looked upon as charming and she learns quickly how to work an audience until she is the darling of every room she enters. While the frontlines remain an exercise in atrocity, Kozmotis is staid and resolute in his mission to see his people to peaceful times. He was a new world to shape, for his wife and child, and the goal is in sight, his eyes cannot be strayed.
It is this conviction, this single-mindedness that is his undoing, for while he looks ever forward, he misses the glances sidelong, covetous and wicked, toward what he holds most dear.
~+K+~
Kozmotis is twenty three when the Tsar rapes and murders his wife.
~+K+~
There is no evidence, of course. The Tsar is just that, the Tsar, and there are none that will defy him enough to speak out; not the handmaidens that found the body, defiled, strangled violently and dumped carelessly in a disused corridor, not the guards who saw her ushered, white-lipped and terrified into the Tsar's personal rooms. There is only one who will speak of the incident to Kozmotis, although many offer him their condolences, their shuttered eyes telling him everything he needs to know about their full understanding of the situation.
The Tsarina sits with him in his quarters, kept in the more privileged neighbourhoods of the Capitol where all Military officers were housed. She serves them both tea with steady hands, but Kozmotis's own shake so badly he does not trust himself to hold the cup. His wife is gone, his love, his perfect other half, and her loss cuts him deeply, keenly. Seraphina herself is inconsolable, and has not left her room since her mother's funeral two days prior. The Tsarina is a somber, capable woman only a couple years older them himself and many decades younger than her mad husband. The strain must wear on her, Kozmotis cannot help but think, for her eyes are tired and her mouth tight as she speaks.
I'm sorry, she says.
Your wife was too beautiful, too tempting, she says.
She was not the first, nor likely the last, she says.
I'm sorry I could not help her more, could not have prevented this tragedy for you, she says, laying a cool hand briefly on the back of Kozmotis's own. The action causes her to lean forward a bit, and Kozmotis cannot stop himself from noticing the blue bruises smudged at her throat just below the edge of her collar, and on her wrist where the cuff has shifted. The Tsarina's other hand rests on the gentle swell on her stomach, barely noticeable beneath her heavy formal gown, and Kozmotis is more than clever enough to deduce her fear of her husband is for her unborn child, more so than herself.
Monster, Kozmotis thinks. Betrayer.
There must be a way to end this.
There is, the Tsarina assures him, if he lets her show him the way. Then she speaks, of a man that Kozmotis had not known, had been too blind to see, away as often as he was and too absorbed in his family when he returned. Of a man who grew fat on overtaxing his people, while the poorest families starved. Of a man who thought nothing of he lives he was meant to lead, to guide, believing them only cattle fed for the slaughter. Of a man who's violent tastes ran towards the perverse; that took unwilling women to his bed and sent only corpses away.
Kozmotis listens to her tale, and when she finishes, he agrees without hesitation.
There is a Tsar to topple, and Kozmotis is a man of action; he will not allow himself to wait patiently on the sidelines.
~+K+~
Kozmotis is twenty four when the Tsar; ever smiling-and jovial to Kozmotis's face, viperfish and wrathful behind his back, names Kozmotis General of the entire Celestial army. Kozmotis behaves exactly as he should; he thanks his king, he speaks his vows of loyalty and honour and duty, and dons his dress uniform to be paraded among the nobility like a prized warhorse. Inwardly though, his soul seethes and festers, as he stares his wife's murderer in the face with a bland smile.
And so, Kozmotis Pitchiner becomes Golden General, the hero of the people
~+K+~
Kozmotis is twenty four when the underground resistance movement, shepherded by the Tsarina and Kozmotis himself, grows large enough that they begin to properly organize, no longer just a hint of a rumour but a real, tangible thing, an armed force soon capable of bringing a corrupt monarch to his knees and into exile.
They vote, and unanimously demand that Kozmotis become their official leader, claiming his military experience makes him the perfect candidate. He is not sure he deserves such an honour, but what else can he do when he cannot argue the logic but accept?
And so, Kozmotis Pitchiner becomes Pitch Black, the shadow of a shadow that will creep undetected into the Tsar's palace of ruin and blot out his false sun.
~+K+~
The war ends, finally, when Kozmotis is twenty seven. His Sera is a fine young lady now, raised among the women of the court and kept carefully out of the Tsar's sight as much as possible, for she has inherited all her mother's fine-boned beauty and none of the court ladies are stupid enough to think the Tsar would spare her for her young age alone, should the fancy strike him. She plays often with the little Tsarevitch, whom the Tsar barely spares a thought for, save the occasional check in to ensure his 'bitch of a wife' isn't spoiling the boy for the throne. With the shadows defeated; sent careening back to the edges of elsewhere from whence they came, Kozmotis is able to turn his eyes to the silent war brewing steadily beneath the surface of Capitol City. With the men returned from the far reaches, their numbers swell until his once-modest resistance soon includes a son from nearly every Noble family, all endorsed by their clan elders, and more peasantry then Kozmotis can count. Many are trained soldiers, veterans, but many are also simple folk, armed with hoes and pitchforks and malcontent. There are enough though, that Kozmotis knows the revolution is at hand.
At sunrise, one crisp fall day, the resistance storms the castle.
It is laughably easy, mostly because the guards that see them coming do naught but open the gates, and join their fellows for victory.
~+K+~
The Revolution, in the end, is virtually bloodless. Only a handful of men are loyal enough to the mad Tsar to fight back, and they are easily subdued. The Tsar himself is pitiful, forced to his knees by two of his former Guards, snarling and spitting his rage at Kozmotis's feet.
You were my General, he bellows, red-faced and eyes rolling madly. You were my General, my right hand.
No, says Kozmotis, I was the left hand with the knife in the dark. If my wife were alive, she'd send her condolences for your misfortune, surely.
You will never be king, the fallen Tsar screeches as he's taken bodily from the room.
I have been the King of your Nightmares, have I not? Kozmotis replies, watching as the madman is removed to the holding cell where he will sleep his last night in the castle, for a long escorted trek into exile is all that awaits him at the dawn.
Or would have awaited him, had he not hung himself from the rafters by his bed sheets during the night. Kozmotis would like to blame the guards, for they surely had seen enough to have stopped him, but in the end he feels it is not worth it. He had not asked for the death, his hands were clean of assassination, and the world was short one more horror.
~+K+~
Kozmotis does not expect to be named Tsar. Truly, it had never been an aspiration of his, but with most of the Capitol on their knees before him and a kingdom full of wrongs to make right, he finds himself unable to refuse. He is a better, wiser monarch then the one before, for he immediately appoints a council of trusted individuals, designed to aid him through delegation, and of course, to hold him accountable for his actions in a way that the former Tsar never had to fear. He will not allow himself to succumb to the lure of power and be swayed by it, trusting his peers to keep him in check. At the council's head he appoints the former Tsarina as High Advisor.
It is a bold, gutsy move, placing a woman in such a position. But the Tsarina is a clever, witty woman; having proven herself to him during the long years of planning a coup beneath her late husband's nose, and she easily holds her own amongst the male chauvinists of the court. Her advice is impeccable, her decisions concise, and there is little fault anyone can find with her. Certainly Kozmotis is grateful for her wisdom and company. She and her son are delightful, and Kozmotis finds himself warming to them both in ways he hadn't felt in years; the chill of sleeping alone for so long with only his wife's ghost slowly seeping from his veins. It is not until Sera mistakenly refers to her as 'Mama' during a conversation, the word falling innocently from young lips that do not even realize their slip, that things finally crystallize for Kozmotis.
Oh, he thinks, and goes to find his future wife.
~+K+~
They are married on a cool fall day when Kozmotis is twenty eight; the sunshine through the reddened leaves washes the royal gardens in hues of crimson and amber. The Tsarina is radiant, her smile unfettered by the constraints of her past. Kozmotis, dressed in his finest kingly garb thinks she looks nothing like his first wife, but that is okay. The Tsarina is a beauty all her own; and where his first love was a delicate porcelain statuette, this is more of a wrought iron sculpture, both fantastic and lovely but ever different in their construct. They kiss, and the kingdom cheers, their children smiling happily at their sides.
~+K+~
Four years later, there is a third child playing in the royal gardens, and another on the way. Kozmotis watches them against the backdrop of a prospering kingdom, a world marching forward into a brilliant Golden Age. Their Tsar is to thank, they people will say if you ask, a man of both Shadow and Light, who banished evil and brought peace and bounty to a land on the brink of collapse.
For Kozmotis at age thirty two, watching his children frolic with his arm tucked around his wife and hand resting on her pregnant stomach, there is only serenity, and joy.
In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
- Alexis de Tocqueville