Hi guys! I know, this one came out a little faster than before, but that's because I'm starting NaNo tomorrow and probably won't be updating much for a while. Sorry! (not that my updates were all that frequent to begin with, but that's besides the point) In any case... we have yaoi in this chapter. All right, it's toned down yaoi. Hardly really fits the yaoi description at all, actually, it's very light, not particularly graphic. So this shouldn't make too many of you run away screaming. Although... dude. If you don't like this stuff, and you've read this far... I pity you and point you towards that logo in the upper-left-hand corner, which will promptly take you back to this site's home screen and away from this monstrous fanfic. That's a much more efficient use of energy than composing a lengthy flame, yes?
All right. All standard disclaimers apply, and many, many kudos to my lovely beta extraordinaire The Tears of Ages. For those of you still here (and p.s. ghost readers, I would love to know who you are so I can decide whether you're analyzing my writing for blackmail purposes or are actually entertained by this) enjoy!
The pendant floated upwards a little, straining against the chain—as if seeking to reach something. When it flared bright as the shining sun, Ganondorf grimaced and gritted his teeth—it was not intolerable, but it was rather irritating. The ReDeads, though, shrieked and dissipated into smoke—with a scowl he decided he would have to remake them later. Perhaps when the accursed necklace this body wore stopped shining—he couldn't take it off, for it burned his fingers when he tried. One might even call it a miniature sun—and then he heard it.
"Come find me, Roy. I need you now more than ever."
Ah. So this was the young man for whom his current host had thrown away even his own freedom. "I doubt you shall be helping him any time soon, though," he told the boy calmly, amusement dark in his voice. The boy—Roy, was it?—cursed him from the confines of his own mind, only prompting further laughter. After all, it was funny—this was one battle that the general couldn't win. And he was so young… just how many battles could the boy have possibly fought, let alone won? Pitiful, really, that he was Altea's commanding general. "Your prince might have done better to choose a more experienced general," the warlock commented, offhandedly. "Most worth the fingernails on His Highness' fingers would know better than to give themselves over to someone who at best is not their ally and at worst is their enemy."
The general was silent, refusing to respond to Ganondorf's last barb. Almost too silent, really… and there it was, that niggling ache in his host's head that signified his host was trying to take back control. Squashing the attempt as easily as trampling a daisy, Roy was banished to his corner and the King of Evil was left alone to scheme. There was no Triforce for the taking here, but… perhaps there was something else, some other dark power he could tap. He could feel it, pulsing faintly in the direction of the capitol city—and there was something else, unsettlingly familiar points of light almost imperceptible amidst the waves of darkness.
"Them," he snarled. Before he knew it, the boy general's sword was in his hands and transformed into the long broadsword he preferred. Swinging it in a broad arc, he shouted arcane words, and tendrils of dark energy erupted from the earth and raced away in all directions before burrowing into the ground. Each tendril cut a wide swathe of further ruin and desolation, until there was nothing but wasteland for nearly a mile. Bringing the sword to rest, he smiled grimly. "Let them deal with that… I have a force to destroy." Summoning a vortex, he stepped into it and vanished.
My prince… I would come to you if I could, but I too find myself in dire straits.
A single white petal from a winter-blooming flower that had somehow escaped being ravaged by dark magic came to rest on a print that the general's boots had left on the dried earth.
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And what of the prince's army, who knew only that their beloved general could no longer be trusted and nothing of what had befallen their young sovereign?
Serge and Raphael marched wearily behind Jeanne, whose eyes were bright with a mixture of tired energy and grief. She was alone at the vanguard of the armed force, her former partner's horse carrying the young woman's body near the rear.
They had encountered no rebel forces, and had been forced to participate in no skirmishes. Some of the greener soldiers were itching for battle, and yet each time they talked of longing for it any more experienced in combat promptly cuffed them upside the head for yearning for such a thing. Indeed, they all remembered—having trained under the young general at some point or another—that one of Roy's more well known sayings was, "Battles may bring one glory, perhaps—survival, though, is the prerequisite, and if there never comes a time of peace there will never come a time when you may simply just sit back and relish the glory you've won. And then you must think about all the things you must leave behind when you step onto the battlefield. Your family, your friends, your lover…"
It was always at that point that he got a sort of sad smile on his face, and then promptly reprimanded, "That's why you fight your hardest when on the battlefield. If you find yourself overcome and know that it is inevitable you leave this world, you fight to your last breath. When you know you are winning, you keep on going until you know the battle is won. Either way, you will know you did your best to protect those you love. Sometimes that's all that really matters."
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"Company, halt!" Jeanne barked out. "Scouts A, D, F, K—spread out, search for traps and enemy soldiers, and report back promptly if you find anything. Sweep the standard area, and send an all-clear signal if we can camp here safely." Once the appointed Pegasus knights had taken off, she inspected the group she appeared to now have charge of. Seeing some of the new recruits relax a little, the corner of her mouth twitched up slightly. "Did I say you could relax, soldiers?"
"No, ma'am!" the company promptly responded. Serge hid a smile behind a gloved hand, while Raphael couldn't really help but let his snicker escape. From a ways back, Caleb called out, "But you didn't say we couldn't, either, ma'am!" earning a few chuckles.
"Then stay sharp, don't let your guard down! Your mama wouldn't want to hear that her kid got skewered by a rebel lance just because they weren't paying attention!" She paused and looked Caleb in the eye. "As for you, bucko, you can set up the Sixth Unit tents alone. You've got half an hour after the scouts report an all-clear."
"Awww, Jeanne!" the Sixth Unit member teased. "You're such a slavedriver!"
"That's 'Ma'am' to you, Caleb!" Jeanne couldn't help but smile, though. The banter helped ease the weight of the grief, and even though a part of her mind insisted that it wasn't right she be able to smile so easily after Belle's death she ignored the little voice. After all, her rational side argued, would it really do Belle's memory any credit to simply torture herself forever?
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The Pegasus knights reported nothing amiss, and so Jeanne joined Caleb in setting up tents. It wasn't until a full ten minutes after she'd begun helping that he questioned what she was doing.
"I thought you assigned me tent duty alone, Jeanne." His tone was jovial, and he grinned good-naturedly to show that he was only joking.
"We need all the man-power we have. No sense in wearing one soldier to death to do something as trivial as setting up tents." She elbowed him playfully when he put on an expression of mock astonishment.
"… What happened to the general, Jeanne?" Caleb suddenly sobered, though his hands never stopped moving. "I… I know you saw him last. Belle's dead, that's proof enough for me that things went wrong, but… what happened? He was a good kid, he… he just wouldn't do something like that! I... I really don't understand."
Jeanne smiled wryly at the man calling their General Roy a kid, but quickly sobered. "You sound old, to be calling him a kid… but to tell the truth I don't know what happened either. All I know is that he was acting a little oddly after he assigned the watches, and… when our watch was almost up he surprised her. She didn't think anyone but the enemy would be skulking around in the bushes like that, so when it was the general she was absolutely appalled that she'd fired an arrow at him… and then he killed her."
Caleb stood up, having finished hammering in a tent stake, and tugged idly on his eartails, as if to prove a point. The female guard could see a few strands of grey among the fairly well-groomed masses of black. "Gods, I feel old Jeanne. When I hold back on my punches… well, it'd be a disgrace to call them punches anymore. I was planning to see if I could retire in a couple years. For the matter, when I gave the general a taste of my right hook for being an idiot, I bet he hardly felt it. And I don't think I held back that much, either…"
She cut him off. "Wait… you punched him? What the hell?"
"It was after that nasty incident with the pint-sized rapist who I hear threw knives like nobody's business. When the general went off somewhere to beat himself up about not being able to prevent anything happening to the prince, well… we went after him once Prince Marth had been properly delivered to the healers' bay. Poor kid, he'd been crying. I guess he thought nobody would notice.
"But in any case… yeah. I punched the general because he was harping on about how he wasn't worth the spit on a soldier's boots and how he didn't deserve to see the prince. I wonder if love somehow has an ability to turn minds to mush?"
"You're rather pitiless, aren't you Caleb?" Jeanne smiled faintly, somewhat humorlessly. "You might be able to say that. I hadn't even thought about why the general would kill one of his own, only that he'd killed her and that I'd never forgive him for it."
Caleb shook his head. "I think in your case the rage you've felt is probably one of the only logical reactions. The other would be to break down completely and sob until one is completely drained of energy, but you don't seem the type. Belle was a…" he paused "somewhat insane girl… but we'll miss her. All of us, but it seems you especially."
Jeanne raised a brow. "Insane?"
"What can I say? She was good with everything—archery, swordplay, fighting with a lance, with an axe—heck, I wouldn't have been surprised if she picked up a little magic in the process. Quite scary if you were on the wrong side, to tell the truth. And she liked training a little too much that I mentally dubbed her 'the insane one' and left it as that." Caleb grinned cheekily. "Oh, and you've gotten me monologuing. I guess this is the impromptu funeral, then… We'll have a proper one when we get back." He made a shooing motion. "Go on, you've got other things to deal with. I spy two recruits who probably want to talk to you about some dispute—and I've got the tents under control."
As she walked away, the man added, "And I've always dubbed you the Second Hot-head—second only to our dear general!" Jeanne mock-scowled at him and went to see how things were going with the rest of the camp.
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The first thing he felt was the darkness. He opened his eyes and sat up, and found himself chained to the floor. The next thing he realized was that his normal blue and silver garb was gone—it had been replaced by a pair of rather scandalously tiny underthings that would have made Roy blush (if only he'd been here to see this), and a collar. The chains ran down from the shackles on his wrists and ankles and from where one had been attached to the collar, and as he tugged at them experimentally they chafed.
But the darkness pressed in all around him. Except for a weird, almost stomach-churning ambient light that radiated weakly from his person and from the chains, there was nothing but the dark in every direction—and then a female figure that almost resembled a column of melting wax floated towards him. The exact color of Roy's skin, it even seemed to have some of his scars and marks.
This figure too radiated a sort of ambient light… but it was even weaker, if possible, than his own. In addition, shadows played over it in gut-twisting patterns that he could not look at for very long before the bile rose in his throat and he had to suppress the urge to throw up. "What… what are you?" he croaked.
Immediately the melting-candle-woman (what else could he call it?) slashed at him viciously with a length of her melting-wax material that she'd suddenly separated from the rest of her body. "Speak only when you're spoken to, mortal," the thing snarled, smiling nastily as he muffled a yelp and shifted to the side just in time to avoid being struck. "I am the Night Mare's sister. I sense the hearts that hunger for your death, and I have come to fulfill that request. Undoubtedly I will be able to gorge myself upon their hearts soon—they will be delicious, so full of vindictiveness and hate they are—but for now I shall have to settle with you." It—no, she—slashed the melting-wax-whip at him again, and a freshly made cut on his face bled sluggishly. "I have no name—not that you may address me, mortal But you know me as the stuff of bad dreams—there is a little of me in everything that you fear that most, and for everyone it is a little different. Not that I can bring myself to care—how could I? There is no need."
Not caring that it would likely get him whipped again, he tugged at his chains and forced himself to look at her. "Then why do you have me chained like this? Why dress me like a love-slave when my only purpose to you is to die and thus secure you a rather sickening meal?"
The melting-wax-woman did not crack her whip, did not simply kill him at that moment. Instead, she laughed. "Because, dear mortal, you are to entertain me. The gods cannot save you where you are here—this is old magic, boy. Old magic obeys no one but beings of old magic—I was here long before any of those pansy chime-tinkling gods and goddesses. My sister and I dreamed up the gods in our own nightmares. And… it was what one heart in particular wanted the most from you. For you to be her pretty blue-haired love-slave, once she broke you properly in any case. I wonder… did you tire of women who lust after your body and your pretty face? Is that why you choose instead to bring men to your bed?"
"I was never much inclined to like women in that way from the very beginning," he replied tersely. "And I do not usually partake of casual affairs. I love him, and if it were not for you I would be out there trying to find him!"
"To do what?" the melting-wax-woman asked. "To kill him? To try to exorcise what has him possessed only to have him kill you? To die together with him because you cannot live without him? Your choices are limited, poor foolish mortal." She yawned, or made some gesture that appeared to be the equivalent of a yawn. "You seem such a hopelessly romantic fool that I think I'll just indulge you for a little while. Maybe it will entertain me more than just hurting you will." She didn't seem to notice how he flinched at the words, so carelessly flung at him like a pail full of cold water.
Snapping melting-wax fingers, a figure slowly materialized—a young man, in a white, almost-sheer robe. Then the prince recognized the messy red hair, and the blue and gold headband… and then the young man opened his eyes, and the clear blue eyes he knew so well stared back at him. They were cold, though… empty. There was no soul behind his eyes, Marth realized, and the momentary surprise was replaced by something quite akin to… despair? It was less despair and more a sort of hopeless indifference, now that he thought about it.
"Well, whether you think it's your lover or not, there's really only one thing that's going to happen now," the melting-wax-woman told him, and the false Roy removed his robe and pushed the prince onto his back. Feeling nimble fingers callused exactly like the real general's undo the strings of his one article of clothing, Marth closed his eyes and tried to pretend that it really was Roy who was nipping him here and there, laving sensitive nipples with his tongue and kissing him sweetly until he was lightheaded with pleasant sensation. With the fake knowing where to caress and rub and squeeze (and oh gods, he appeared to have no gag reflex) the prince soon lost himself in the heat of the moment.
Wrapping his arms around the redhead, he moaned softly and arched his back. "Ahh… Roy!" If the fake took any notice that the prince's eyes had been closed almost the entire time, he did not deign to say anything, merely tightening his grip slightly on the cobalt-haired swordsman's hips in order to thrust deeper.
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As the prince fell asleep curled up on the darkness that served as the floor of the place, the man who had taken him gazed down at him in a mixture of longing and pity. Draping his robe over Marth's sleeping form like a blanket, he glared at the melting-wax-woman.
"Don't complain. You liked it, didn't you?"
The false Roy's eyes flickered with something unidentifiable for a moment, before the man turned to look back at the prince. "… You have a talent for destroying what's beautiful, Dark Mother."
"What was that, boy? Was that just an ungrateful statement out of your mouth? Don't forget—I created you, I can just as easily destroy you." The melting-wax-woman seemed irritated, now that her new toy was unconscious.
"He's beautiful, Dark Mother. If you keep him here you'll destroy him. He's too beautiful to destroy, and even you should know that for all the time you've spent blind and wandering in the wake of your siblings." Taking the tub of hot water and the towels that the melting-wax-woman conjured for him, the fake cleaned himself off. About to start on Marth, he decided against it… no sense in waking him. Maybe the prince would dream of a better place than this, he thought. Gently washing the blood off of the prince's face with a fresh towel, he sighed as the young man stirred a little.
"Mm…" Seeing that the prince had not woken, the false Roy planted a light kiss on his cheek, taking care to avoid the cut the melting-wax-woman had given him.
"Sweet dreams, Marth." Sitting down a little distance from where the prince slept, he drew his knees close to him and too fell asleep using his arms propped on his knees as a pillow.
A/N: And that, friends, is the end of chapter 12. I may have to extend the story again, although we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Loved it, hated it, wanted to chuck something rotten and somewhat putrid-smelling at me because you think it's crap? (Please don't.) The review button is where it always is. Constructive criticism is always welcome. Oh, and if you feel that this thing is getting too long and you would rather me just write a sequel to wrap up the loose ends, please tell me. Otherwise this is going to probably just keep extending until I can finally say, "THERE! That's where the epilogue fits! THE END!" and we all can sigh in relief because FINALLY the darn thing will stop spamming your inbox with alerts.
