+ Fallacy, a 100themes Challenge +
Sarehptar
Theme: 41, Teamwork
Characters: Kharl, Kaistern
Pairing: None
Warnings: Things die. It's not pretty.
Need to Know Info: Bet you thought this collection would never get updated, didn't you? Yeah, for a while so did I. Fell back in love with Dragon Knights pretty hardcore though, so I thought I'd ease back into writing for this fandom with a few shorter pieces. My style has changed so much the early themes sort of me make cringe. Ugh. Here, after almost four years, have something new (but not necessarily something better; progress in writing comes so slowly to me...).
Title Provider: Hello (Martin Solveig and Dragonette)
I Could Stick Around and Get Along With You
Some time between desperately pounding on the Dragon Queen's door and searching for a pulse in the White Officer's cold wrist—some time after the eighth (the ninth, the tenth) demon launches itself at him, eying his empty hands, singing victory cries about easy prey which he cuts short with a swift dose of Death Seed—Kharl realizes he is fighting. On his enemy's side.
The thought doesn't make him pause exactly, and the irony that he should get his own hands dirty now, of all times (in a false human body, in the service of those he swore to kill, against an army he might have easily raised on his own), is worth one dry laugh or two and little else. It's not like any of this is for them; it's always that everything he does is done for Rath.
Rath, dead. Gone. On the brink of resurrection. So many glittering lights and incompatible pieces.
I will not let you disappear.
When he is reborn (no, it's still out of Kharl's hands: if he is reborn and isn't that the cruelest irony of all?), Rath will be weak. He will need peace.
Kharl intends to give him that if it must be won by spilling an ocean's depth of demon blood. Tonight, somehow beyond comprehension, his singular desire to see the boy whole and safe aligns itself exactly to the Dragon Tribe's own wishes, all of them fighting first for a lord whose love of Rath has brought an entire kingdom to death's doorstep. No one believes the knight is gone; everyone battles on bated breath. A temporary alliance then, he promises, and nothing more.
The next demon who makes the mistake of choosing Avis Rara as its target is less fortunate than its kin—he's run out of Death Seed and never one for swords or staves, his hands will have to do. The ash disguise has mostly kept him hidden so far, keeps his claws invisible beneath the illusion of human nails, so it's no surprise the demon falls back still gurgling alarm, its eyes bulged out in unmistakable disbelief, the arteries in its neck severed and gushing.
His lip curls of its own volition. There are some kinds of messes he can tolerate and others that he can't. A swift flick of his fingers spatters the dark blood along the nearest wall, one more minute stain to match the rivers already there. Kharl is momentarily thankful he left his cloaks at home; this graveyard of broken swords and staffs, of legs and arms and wings and fangs is an accident waiting to happen. He doesn't have time to slow down.
He can feel every shattered piece of Rath's soul gathering there. He has to reach that place in time, even if all he does is wait outside the door to feel the exact moment the wind witch stitches his child together again.
Master, his mind repeats in an infinite loop. He kills another nameless, faceless demon and maybe the Dragon Fighter it was chewing on is still alive, if that look of desperate confusion is a fresh stare meant for him and not etched on by death. It occurs to him that his focus is slipping uncontrollably; there's no way his disguise is unaffected, and maybe the Dragon Fighter was staring because his physician turned into a demon and demon killer before him, all at once. Kharl can't even bring himself to care. After tonight, Avis Rara will be meaningless. The Dragon Tribe will need more coroners than doctors.
He presses forward and down into the heart of the castle, all his world narrowed to one goal, to one moment. His claws flex in anticipation. His fangs cut his lip.
Later he will blame that single-mindedness for their encounter; later he will whisper half-mindless prayers of gratitude that he wanted to see Rath more than he wanted revenge. If he had been thinking clearly, he might he have found another route, left that man to die—or he might have killed the man himself, and destroyed Rath's only chance of resurrection with his own two hands.
Kharl is halfway down the corridor toward the next pack of Nadil's minions before he feels the suffocated presence, the flare of Dragon magic buried amongst the writhing crush of demon bodies.
He would have known that power in his sleep—had felt it every night his dreams conjured up a snowy mountain.
Kaistern.
The Blue Officer is struggling against a massive number of enemies. He might have handled them efficiently at full strength, but Ruwalk's concerns drift back to Kharl.
Did you inspect his left arm?
Alone and injured, he stands no chance. More importantly, they are blocking Kharl's way.
The demon hoard is focused on their weakened prey; the monsters closest to Kharl begin to fall without ever turning to look at him. He's cut a narrow swath into the churning siege before any of them notice, and then, by the time they have noticed, he has pierced the inner circle and is standing face to face with one of the men he loathes most deeply.
This man took everything from me again, when at last I had the chance to set it right. This man held Rath like he was holding his own child, Kharl thinks.
Kaistern stares back him, scowling, breathing raggedly, and the air itself seems to crackle between them with some invisible current of mutual rage. It's too much to say the world stands still, but for a moment the fierce clashing of their power gives the demon army cause to freeze, to shiver back a step and stay their claws.
"You..." Kaistern breathes, the word stirring blood at the corner of his mouth. His sword jerks in his hand as if he wishes to swing it but can't find the strength. It is blatantly obvious he believes Kharl has appeared in the castle to fight on the demons' side—Just like them, the officer's stare says. You have bled out of my nightmares to become real and solid at the worst moment, to get your revenge like the rest of this trash in my last hour and I will not let you have him. Not now. Not ever.
For a moment, Kharl itches in agony to do just that, to pay Kaistern back for every blow traded that day on the mountain, to make the man suffer for every pain that recollection brings.
Maybe it's the look itself that stops him, something sick and terrible in being equated to the brainless masses of Nadil's army (as if Kharl were no better than them, indiscriminate animals). Or maybe it's something else entirely, suddenly discovered in the memory of Kaistern's hand around Rath's shoulder, in the ferocity with which he fought to get Rath back.
Long before he ever plans it, Kharl reaches to his right and, opening his hand, forces space to contort over the nearest demon's chest, reducing the monster's heart to a pithy hole. It drops dead beside him without a noise.
"Now is really not the time to be doubting me, Kaistern."
The Blue Officer has enough time to blink but not long enough to decide whether Kharl is foe or ally at the moment before all the demons are upon them again, a shrieking wall of wing, tooth, weaponry.
Kaistern is not discriminating in his blows; more than once Kharl shifts to avoid the poisoned blade very clearly meant for his heart—his own attacks are no less purposeful: Kaistern is slower to dodge and earns shallow wounds for it. Kharl tries not to be smug, but smug is a pleasant feeling when what it displaces is despair and desperation.
And then, of course, they are back to back, shoulders half-brushing, facing down the faster, smarter minority of the hoard. The demon posturing before Kharl glares at him in utter disgust, nothing so contemptible in its eyes as a blood traitor. He smiles up at its distorted snapping turtle face, a meter or two outside even his impressive reach. Its skin is horrendously hard, shell or armor, and already his usual tricks have bounced right off it. Time to resort to teamwork, he supposes.
"If I may borrow your sword—" He does not even wait for inflection to make his words into a question; when Kaistern sweeps his sword back from a glancing blow on his own opponent, Kharl turns, reaches out a hand, and impales his palm on the blade, the narrow alternate dimension blossoming open in his grasp to whisk the weapon off to where he needs it.
"Oi!" Kaistern's protests fall on deaf ears; he has to kick his wolf-like opponent to prevent its attack, his hand anchored to the hilt of his sword.
"Stab please," Kharl commands, and only the strangeness of the situation causes Kaistern to obey, against his better judgment. He puts his remaining strength behind the gesture, slashing forward even though the blade itself has vanished into the miniature portal—and just as during their battle long ago, he watches a matching vortex open in front of the turtle demon's face. Off-time to his movement but with all his same momentum, his sword pierces the demon's eye and everything behind it. It crumples to the corpse-filled floor.
"Thank the lord they can't all do that," Kaistern mutters to himself, although it makes Kharl laugh too. The moment of distraction that causes (he sounds like Rath, just like Rath, Kaistern thinks) costs him; his ignored opponent chooses that second to wisely dart in, landing a heavy blow that knocks him flat on his back over the pile of older bodies. Kharl, quite naturally, does nothing to help him.
And then it is only the two of them left alive. Kharl watches as Kaistern stumbles where he stands, clutching at his left wrist, the fingers of his right hand clenching and unclenching over the sleeve of his jacket. He grits his teeth, seems almost ready to fall. His glare dares Kharl to take another step, demands to know what he is doing there, what he intends to do with Rath.
Kaistern only looks away for a split second, down the hall toward the hidden sanctuary where Rath is gathering. He can feel it, Kharl thinks, a little bit in wonder. Even with no knowledge of the soul, this man can feel Rath as surely as Kharl himself can, and now that the alchemist is trying he can smell death on the man, a creeping rot. Very sharply, he wishes he could have time to dissect the creature before him, to learn what strange power ties him so deeply to Rath and how he might cleanly break it before dying goes and turns Kaistern into a martyr and chains the boy even more irrevocably to the Dragon Tribe.
There is no time. Cesia will be struggling even now to bring Rath back. The Blue Officer is down to his last breaths. He is trying to reach the boy just as desperately... Almost before thinking, Kharl realizes exactly what Kaistern intends to do, and in that half-second he hates the man more deeply than he has ever hated—and loves him with the certain degree of awe reserved for the best proprietors of selfless sacrifice.
Kaistern adores Rath. Kaistern loves his creation—his master—as surely and completely as Kharl does and now he will die to prove it, to protect it.
That's cruel too.
Even when they are allies, Kharl will still somehow lose. They can resurrect Rath thousand times, and he will never come back to Arinas, will he?
"Before he was yours, he was mine," Kharl hears himself murmur, surrender. "Remember that, at least."
Theme 42: Standing Still
He also does a lot of sitting around, and drinking tea, and reading harlequin romance novels from Dusis that he makes Garfakcy buy.