Ignatz was born with the hands of an artist, more suited for painting a canvas crimson instead of the ground.
And yet.
His hands tremble, bow gripped tightly between white knuckles. The string still resonates with the twang of the shot he just loosed, vibrating the entire length of his arm. He feels the hit in his teeth, in his bones, in his soul.
Artists are supposed to kill people with their passion and eye for detail, not sharpened arrows fletched with the tailfeathers of the birds they scavenge for their threadbare dinners. Artists are supposed to daydream about the melding of colors, and brushes and paints, not living every day as though it may be their last.
Ignatz did not want to die so his target lay sprawled across the ground instead, seeping vermillion into the grass. Red and green are complementary colors everywhere else except here, where blood is a stark contrast against the earthen ground, slick and coppery.
He stares at it. Ignatz cannot stop looking, despite the way that he tenses or how his glasses slip down his sweaty nose. He is sick, queasy at the sight of death, at the feeling of loss from his fingertips, at knowing just what he's done to this man.
Ignatz wonders just who is the victim here. Is it the man on the ground, who is a no-good bandit but likely didn't deserve death? Or is it himself with the gentle artist's heart, unaccustomed to the way that a fresh kill might feel?
"You will be a good knight," said his father once, ever optimistic when it came to Ignatz's nature.
Ignatz's brother laughed, knowing him better than he knows himself. "Tell me, do they know just how soft you are?"
It wasn't a dig or jest, his brother just stated a fact, and there wasn't a point in denying it. Ignatz has always loved that he looks at the world through a softhearted lens. The stark contrast of his current life is something that he could paint about if he ever found the courage to.
They are on the precipice of war. Ignatz isn't stupid. He saw it coming from miles away, their enemies marching towards them like dark dots in the distance. This man might just be a bandit, but he is only the beginning. This year has been bitter-long in the absence of their professor and Edelgard drives a hard force right back.
It will only get worse.
Ignatz's heart skips a beat in his chest. It thuds, his blood boiling in his veins, thrumming in his neck, and he wonders just how it is that the others do this so easily.
He asked once—asked Sylvain. Sylvain just looked at him, laughed bitterly, and told him the hard truth: "Who said it's supposed to be easy?"
But it was, it was—and that's the most startling part. There wasn't a moment of hesitation when Ignatz saw the man running. He knocked an arrow, pulled the string taut, let the bolt fly, and moments later the man was dead on the ground.
And what Ignatz feels isn't pain for what he's done, it's pain for how natural it felt. His heart aches because it came so easily, so automatically. Ignatz has always told himself he'd make a terrible knight but classroom days of playing little tin soldiers on chessboards have trained what seems to be a well-oiled machine.
Disturbing. Suddenly, Ignatz doesn't see the world in hues of lilac and honey, he only sees gray, and the red ochre of the blood that stains the ground.
There is a shout from behind and his attention snaps too. Ignatz lifts his head and finds another man barreling towards him, an axe held aloft, the blade glinting and sharp.
Ignatz moves without thinking, yanking an arrow from his quiver, and nocking it with well-practiced fingers. His biceps bulge as he pulls the string taut and aims. The arrow flies, tearing through the air before sinking into the man's throat, choking off whatever breath he has left.
A second one down. Dull grayness sweeps through Ignatz as he feels so little.
"So this is war," he muses.
He thought it'd be more colorful.