Here's the next chapter. Just three more to go until I (finally) finish this ongoing. I honestly thought the latter part would be better... but I am genuinely pleased with how the first couple of bits turned out. Azel's narrative about his father turned out almost perfectly/exactly as I wanted in my opinion, something that is VERY difficult to achieve. It's something I've wanted to write on for QUITE some time. As always, comments are appreciated. I hope that you guys enjoy.
In their younger years, they never thought that they would become a part of the old cliché, that childhood friends with opposing personalities would become lovers with time. If someone had told Azel and Tailtu in their younger years that they would work as a romantic couple, they would not have believed the one who told them. But work they did, in the end. But first, they had to work their way through some very deep emotional scars.
They entered into their exile in Silesse in very different states of mind. Azel was growing to accept the fact that he would never have his long idolized Lady Adean. He was watching her come together with the man whom she truly loved and... he found that he didn't begrudge him her love. He eventually accepted it with a quiet grace, even volunteering to be the best man at their wedding.
Azel had always been melancholy at his best, emotionally fragile at worst. But his time away from home had taught him how to temper those emotions and live a more stable life. He was still reserved, but it was less of the "shy" sort of reserved, and more of the "always thoughtful" sort of reserved.
The man whom Tailtu encountered in northern Augustria was not the man whom she had been expecting to find, the boy whom she had grown up with. He did not respond to her teasing like he used to. When she brought up his crush on Lady Adean, instead of blushing furiously and denying it, he simply shook his head and said "our relationship is not like that, Tailtu. And it never will be." This caught her off guard, so she tried following up on it with similar comments that used to rile him up. Instead of getting upset, he simply gave her a look, shook his head, and continued his business. This became a recurring trend, not a one time deal, so she soon realized that this was a permanent change.
She didn't like it. She had always teased him for acting childish, but now... here he was acting like a proper adult, while she maintained the same behavior that she had always displayed. It made her uncomfortable. It made her feel like she was the childish one. So she increased her attempts to try and get Father Claud's attention. But he simply was not interested in her, that became clear rather quickly, and over time, she had to watch as his interest was captured by a dancer even younger than her.
The revelation of what Duke Reptor had done and of how he had used her flight of fancy to fuel his false narrative in order to discredit Father Claud only served to fuel her self-pity and self-disparaging behavior. It made her even more critical of her own actions and view them as childish.
After settling in Silesse, she stopped hanging around Claud, and she started wallowing around Azel instead. She began to appreciate how much he had grown, and she began to remember all of the positive storybook romantic clichés about childhood friends and people with opposite personalities, and she began to wonder if they could work for her. Thus, in an attempt to stave off her guilt and loneliness, and in an attempt to make herself look like an "adult", she began to make advances on Azel.
Azel... had mixed feelings about that. He surprised himself when he realized that he didn't outright view it as unpleasant or as something that needed to be stopped immediately. He had always liked her despite her bullying tendencies, but he had never considered that he liked her this way... It was a bit hard for him to swallow that he was open to this kind of relationship with his childhood friend. Especially since, despite the fact he had loved Lady Adean for many years... he had never been able to imagine himself in an intimate relationship with her, yet now he was discovering that he WAS able to imagine such a relationship with Tailtu. It was a rather... disconcerting thing to discover about oneself, to say the least.
How he felt, however, didn't matter, because no matter how conflicted he felt about the idea, there was one thing about the whole thing that he felt for certain. That he couldn't act on it. Azel was smart enough to realize why Tailtu had been behaving in that manner. He couldn't take advantage of her like that. There were several reasons why, some of them were personal.
But how to explain this to her? He'd seen how Lachesis had reacted when Finn had tried to turn her down firmly but gently. That had not turned out well at ALL. He didn't want to cause a similar situation with Tailtu. He didn't want to send her running to... say, Alec. So, he held his tongue for the time being and he allowed her to exhaust herself with her flirtations.
One day, he was heading towards Silesse (the city), on an errand. Tailtu decided to tag along. On their way, they had to spend the night in a small cave. It was cold and she wasn't dressed warmly enough, so she tried snuggling up to him for warmth. He reacted a bit more harshly than he really should've. This finally caused her to snap. She started to shout at him and flail her arms around. During the ensuing shouting spree, she ended up accidentally launching a thunderbolt at the cave entrance, sealing them in.
Since they were now trapped together for the foreseeable future, they were now forced to be in close quarters and talk things over. Of course, things got worse before they got better. After they were trapped for a couple hours, Tailtu was absolutely desperate for heat, and she outright tried to force herself on him just so she could get some body heat. He had to physically throw her off. After that, her demeanor grew cold and she looked away from him. "So... you'd let me freeze, then. No, it's more than that, you'd do this even if we weren't in this situation, you've made that clear. Why? Am I just not good enough for you? Is that it? You don't... you don't want to dirty yourself with the girl who ruined everyone's lives, do you? That's it, isn't it? I didn't mean too..." she said quietly, teardrops dripping down her cheeks.
"I just... I just didn't realize how far reaching my father's jealousy was, and the lengths that he would go to. How was I supposed to know? If I know I wouldn't have run after... I mean, I wouldn't have offered... oh, it was just an infatuation, it should've been harmless! How was I supposed to know that by chasing Father Claud that I'd be ruining our last chance of settling things peacefully? Why would I ever think that?" she moaned. Now she was visibly trembling, and tears were flowing freely.
"Oh gods... I've been denying it this whole time, but... after all these years calling YOU childish, it turns out that I'm the childish one. Now I'm trying to take the easy route to look like an adult. No wonder you hate me." she said, curling up into a fetal position.
Finally, Azel reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. "None of that is the reason that I keep rejecting your advances, Tailtu. I keep turning you down because of... personal reasons. Emotional reasons."
She ceased her crying and stared at him. He sighed and elaborated. "At first... I was taken off guard by the fact that you had taken a sudden interest in me. I had never considered that we could ever HAVE that sort of relationship. But... I have considered it now, and... I'll be honest with you, I've realized that I'm actually open to it. I think that something between us COULD work. BUT. It can't work now. Not while you are like this, not while you're in your current state of mind." explained Azel.
He sighed "You've given me the impression that it's not actually a relationship that you're looking for, but an escape. You intend to hide from your problems by using a lover's arms as a shield. I can understand that mentality, but I refuse to be used in that way, and well... if I go with it, knowing that, I feel like I'd just be using you. And after all we've been through together, out of all the crummy things that we've done to one another. I think that going along with what you want now while knowing what's truly going on would be the worst thing that I've ever done to you. It would be the worst thing we've ever done to one another. We would be no better than our fathers."
"Our fathers?" whispered Tailtu.
Azel studied her for a few moments, then closed his eyes. Then he took a deep breath and opened them again. Tailtu, I don't need to tell you what's wrong with your father, I'm sure that you've done nothing but angst over his actions since we left Augustria. But... have you ever considered how I feel about my father?" he looked at her. She was quiet, but she had stopped crying, and she was staring at him, and it was clear that he had her full attention.
"Victor... was an utterly selfish, despicable man who happily used woman for his own ends. You know this, but I'm going to reiterate it because it's important. He conceived me when he raped his wife's favorite maid while he was drunk, then tried to have us thrown out in order to avoid responsibility. That shadow... that demon, has always loomed over my head. It has always been my life's goal to be nothing like him. If I were ever lucky enough to find a wife, she would be the one and only woman I ever had, and we'd only be intimate after we were married. Any children that I had, would under no circumstances, would be considered a bastard. I don't want to make another me, there are to many of me in the world as it is..." he said quietly.
"You say that you want a relationship, but you CLEARLY aren't in your right state of mind. If I take advantage of that. If I put aside my morals, even for one night and, heaven forbid I become a father because of that... then I'll have failed at my only goal in life. I'll be just like Victor, except I would have a better excuse. Mental instability brought on by trauma rather than liquor."
"...Why didn't you ever tell me?" Tailtu managed to gasp out.
"I was afraid." admitted Azel. "That's not an easy thing to admit. Besides, I witnessed a... similar situation go horribly wrong relatively recently. Lady Lachesis was... steadily falling in love with Lord Quan's knight, Finn. Then, her brother died and, in her grief... she tried to seduce Finn. She was trying to escape from her misery, as you are. But like me, he refused to take the bait, because he could read the warning signs and he knew that she wasn't in her proper state of mind. But... he refused her outright. Firmly, and he spelled out his reasons. In public too. She reacted... violently... and terminated their relationship. She... You've seen her as she is now, she is now awaiting the birth of another man's child. A man that I know for certain that she doesn't truly love. That's why I never responded to your advances. I didn't want to cause a repeat."
"...Do you really think that I would pull the same stunt?" she asked. She wasn't angry, it was in the tone of a genuine question, like she didn't actually know the answer to it.
"You've been trying to get into my bed, haven't you?" responded Azel. Tailtu curled up and contemplated what she had just been told. Azel sat next to her and put his arms around her, and used a passive ability inherent to those with Velthomer blood to try to keep her warm while she thought.
It took another two and a half days for them to be located and rescued. When they returned, everyone noticed a change in the air between them. Upon learning of the conditions that they had been trapped in, Lex took a guess at their survival method and began to prod Azel about it. "You lucky bastard. Here I was thinking that you'd never have the spine to get yourself a girl, but look at you, you actually managed to get it on with one before I did. I never would've thought that it would've turned out this way you lucky DOG you!" he declared, rubbing Azel's hair.
All this did was set him off "Lex! What the HELL are you getting on about? There is nothing exciting about this scenario at all!" Azel snapped angrily. Lex jolted back in shock. "For starters, you don't even know for certain if I 'got it on' with Tailtu. I'm a Velthomer, I have ways of producing excess body heat for warmth that, oh, I don't know? DON'T INCLUDE ME BREAKING THE VOW THAT I MADE AND HAVE KEPT SINCE CHILDHOOD?!"
Lex froze, then covered his face. "Oh... shit. How the hell could I forget about something like that? I'm so sorry about that, buddy." apologized Lex. "That was... really, REALLY insensitive of me. I... I don't know what got into me. I feel like I'm my dad or Danan." he sighed and rubbed his face. "So... what really happened?"
Afterwards, Tailtu and Azel started a proper romance, which ended up being a sort of whirlwind romance. They courted for a couple of months, then decided that it worked, and so they were married. Arthur arrived at about the time their Silessean exile ended and it was time to confront the true usurpers. Initially, Tailtu insisted on coming along, despite having just given birth, especially since Azel was leaving. He reluctantly allowed her to come along while they left Arthur in the care of a friend in Zaxon. (They were already planning on moving to Silesse on a permanent basis. To many bad memories in other countries). But as soon as Azel realized just how bad the fighting was going to be after they took Phinora, he convinced her to return to Zaxon and Arthur. Fierce fighting and hunting down her father? No, he wasn't going to involve her in that.
Azel got lucky. Thanks to Dew's foresight, he survived Belhalla. He didn't even hesitate to make his escape. In the "battle"s aftermath, they moved to a village in northern Silesse. They were both exhausted; physically, mentally, and emotionally. Yet, in that state of exhaustion... they somehow managed to have and care for Teeny. Having to take care of her and her brother proved to be the distraction that their parents needed for the time being.
But over time, reality reared its ugly head once again and made things difficult for everyone involved. They had been resisting the changes that Arvis was bringing about on principal, but doing so... proved unpopular at the time. They soon found it harder and harder to make a living. Fearing that it might lead to an arrest, a "shoot first, ask questions later" situation, or an even worse exile, Azel decided that it was in their best interests for him to travel to Belhalla in order for him to confront his brother and try to sort things out.
The road from northern Silesse to Belhalla, however, is a long one. And during his long treck, the Loptyr sect was alerted to his presence. They knew that Arvis would be lenient on him, and would likely make certain concessions on his behalf, and maybe even make certain investigations that could not be allowed. So, they decided that something had to be done about him.
They lost track of him on the road, but since they knew his final destination, they decided to lay their trap outside of Belhalla and wait for his arrival. They shifted the schedule of an old servant from Velthomer whom Azel knew and trusted, so that he would constantly have his daily shifts outside of the castle grounds. The man had no idea that he was involved in a trap for his old master.
Azel encountered him "by chance" just outside of Belhalla, and they talked for a bit, and Azel gave him a general idea of where he had been living. The Sect was lying in wait nearby, listening in and gathering their ambush party.
They were just finishing their conversation when the ambush struck, a team involving a baker's dozen dark mages. The old servant was struck down in the ensuing onslaught, but Azel managed to kill half the squad in retaliation. Realizing that they were somehow losing, they decided to utilize their trump card, the stone spell. It was fired and it hit him directly, but Azel refused to go quietly.
As his body was in the midst of turning into stone, he turned and poured all of his strength into one final fireball. He launched it at one of the remaining dark mages. The spell left his fingertips just prior to the spell finishing its work and reducing him to granite. The fireball streaked towards the head of one of the remaining dark mages, and he couldn't quite dodge in time, and it grazed the left side of his face. The mage fell to the ground. "Mordred!" one of his companions cried out, running to his aid.
They pulled off Mordred's hood, only to discover that he was still alive, but he now had a third degree burn covering the entirety of the left side of his face. While most of the mages were tending to him, one of them inspected Azel's statue. "So... what are we going to do with him?" he asked
"Shove him in some dark corner of Belhalla's basement. Let the bastard collect dust." growled another one of the mages. "I'm sure that the archbishop would love that bit of irony. The Emperor living away his life of luxury, never realizing that he's doing all over the remains of his beloved little brother."
"And what about his family? What are we going to do about him?" asked the first mage.
"Why do you care, Skrucha? We'll inform Blume of where his sister is hiding, then we'll have him go get her. Simple." said the second mage.
"Not without me, he won't." growled Mordred "I want to be in the party that brings her in. I owe this bastard for this." he said, while holding his hand of his burn.
"Fine. We'll inform Lord Blume once you've had some time to recover.
They hadn't known ahead of time how long Azel should be gone, but due to Mordred's recovery period being thrown into the mix, Tailtu was given enough time to start to sense that something was amiss. She started to drill Arthur on survival techniques, and she began to pick up practice with her thunder tome once more.
Blume's men came for her one day while Arthur was out playing. This was both a curse and a blessing. This meant that she only needed to defend Teeny, and Arthur couldn't be caught in the crossfire or be used as a hostage. So, she held Teeny tightly to her chest and started firing thunderbolts everywhere. She took down a lot of Blume's men, but the battle ended shortly after Morderd got the drop on her. But not because he had captured her. He snuck up on her and grabbed her from behind. She lashed out fearfully, and struck the right side of his face with a thunderbolt at point blank range. As he shrieked and dropped to the floor, clutching at the injury, she froze and stared at him in horrified fascination.
This proved to be enough of a distraction for Freege soldiers to swoop in and pin her down. All the while, Mordred was writhing on the floor screaming "You bitch! You'll pay for this! You'll pay in blood!" Mordred would survive his injuries, but they would both leave prominent facial scars, leading him to be given the nickname "Skaro", and be referred to almost exclusively by that name. He hated this family for what they had done to him, but he couldn't exact his vengeance on the parents, as Hilda was busy using her on brand of torment on Tailtu, and Azel was untouchable for now. So he would go on to take his wrath out on the son, trying to make his life as miserable as possible. His grudge even became personal in that regard when Arthur ended up being tied to the deaths of all four of Mordred's brothers in a single day, but that is an entirely different story.
Tailtu and Teeny were brought to Blume's territory in the Manster district, where Tailtu would live out her remaining days in agony, thanks to the sheer brutality of her psychotic sister-in-law. When it all finally caught up with her and caused her to expire all to soon, her remains were placed in a frozen casket in the Freege family crypt. She still looked as beautiful as she always had. Her body still relatively intact, looking almost like someday life could somehow be restored to those stiffened limbs...