born for this.

his unit is infrequently placed on guard duty. his preference is for the field, taking charge at the head of a unit of magitek troopers so that he can be put to use winning battles and maintaining holds on territories. but guard rotations must be made, and loqi doesn’t hold himself above the responsibility. 

------ watching the oracle work is a discomforting thing. the empire allows her to do her duty, all while aiming to kill the gods she serves. it’s an uncomfortable position for loqi, though he masks it to the best of his ability, behind defaulting to his duty and orders. he cannot deny a certain fascination, childlike in a way, though, as she marches through town after town in a single day, healing from dawn to dusk and well into the night as well. 

‘ if you want it done, tell me to do it. you can’t spare the team of six men that dave wants you to send out there for it. you can’t lose that many men on one mission. ’ he’s hissing, trying to keep hushed and failing: he hates this darkness, hates the company it forces him to keep, but he’ll be damned if he lets groups of hunters get themselves killed when the same jobs could be done by him, alone, and either succeed with equal rewards or failed with less losses. 

what did anyone care of the former general was killed in action now, of all times? not that loqi tummelt has any plans of dying. not anytime soon. he’s clawed his way through hell before, he does it every day he stays around people in lestallum. every breath and action here is watched, he’s tested, he’s watched for any sign of intent to harm a civilian. like every damn hunter and ex-crownsguard here is just aching to fill him full of knife wounds. but he takes it. he’ll continue to take it. he’s survived worse. he’s put himself through worse. 

he hates cor leonis with every fiber of his being, but he respects him more than he’s ever respected another person in his entire life. if cor tells him to get a job done, he’ll do it.

‘ such easy faith. ’ years ago, loqi would have spoken such words in a scoff: words sharpened to the same edge as his katana and as boisterously loud as the explosives packed into his heaping metal magitek armor. now, with years of darkness looming over his back, an empire in ruins, and gralean refugees to stand for, he’s sharp in a different way. the bravado is gone, leaving behind a tired soldier- but one no less willing to fight, because it’s all he’s ever known. 

lestallum is a small, singular safe haven in a crumbling world. gralean refugees deserve a place here, even as their lucian counterparts spit in their faces and urge them to leave. loqi lives for their safety, their protection- as he has always done. he finds faith in a prince that wasn’t his own difficult to grip with. 

Oh, Cor keeps moving, he’s fast for his age, and he knows what those missiles can do. He’s known the general long enough that it’s obvious when he’s lining his shots perfectly to fuck with him, to really hurt him. “I would most likely wait for him to spawn a child. No fun to just end the line.” Cor huffed, spitting blood. He doesn’t care. He’s heard the treason allegation a dozen times, from Mors, Regis, even Noctis. All the people he believed in never cared for him back. That was just the way the world worked. That didn’t stop him. If it did, that meant anything could stop him.

‘ you’d leave the heir fatherless? ’ he snorts into his mic, maintaining his bravado through every ounce of pain he feels. his head is killing him. his ears are already ringing. he’s going to drift off sooner rather than later and he can feel it bone deep- there’s a reason only specially trained individuals and mindless magitek troopers are allowed to pilot these mechs. they’re hell on the human body. he sits inside an echo chamber for every explosion he releases and lets his ears and head take the brunt of all that noise. he ignores it. he can’t think about it. he’ll let the ringing, temporary deafness wash over him after he’s raked his claws into cor leonis’ body and torn him to shreds. only then. only then. loqi can’t let himself fall apart before then, not ever-

------ another wave of missiles fly from the mech, landing closer and closer to the marshal, leaving him less and less room to dodge and roll as they explode in their order of landing. 

@brigadierd​

  Lestallum was too often made example of, a neck bared upon Niflheim’s chopping block with a blade shining in menace above, keen and watching. As was Lucis’ king who seemed filled with nothing but vengeance since reclaiming Insomnia. Outlying territories were still under Niflheim’s retention, something Noctis was stringent to see freed–but not quite yet, it would seem. And he believed himself safe, the Brigadier-General. With a face tight in disdain and a hissing mockery for Lucians, it seemed just, it seemed fair. Fair not for him, but to one interested solely in one he knew. This was a vigilantist’s cause and he did not need the fall of night to disguise his intentions. Teleporting from on high, in a swift motion was his Engine Blade gored through the first MT, then legs dexterously broke the neck of the second, finishing with Nyx’s Kukri menaced at the base of his spine, where neck met skull and vulnerability lay. 

  Disregarding a helm had been a foolish thing.

  “One sound, and you’re dead, got it?” Noctis spat acerbically, words frothing with hate.

from the time of his birth to this very moment, loqi has been many things. he’s been a child, darting around a lawn between his mothers legs whilst she tries to best him in a game of tag. he’s been a child, clad in white mourning attire, standing silent and stiff upper lipped at the age of five whilst watching two bodies get carried into a family tomb. he’s been a teen, top of his class at his academy, knuckles bloodied from day after day proving his place and only after months upon months of proving it, finally earning the mentorship he’d longed for for years. he’s been a man, prone to hearing a ringing in his ears like a whisper that isn’t truly there, prone to talking aloud after months alone on deployment (because he is alone, after all; MTs are not conversationalists, they do not offer small talk, they do not laugh, they do not respond to his words in any verbal manner). 

but above all these things, he has been something far simpler and easier to hold tight to when doubt and fear dare to cross his mind: he has been the empire’s. so simple a descriptor. he is the empire’s, and does what it needs of him.

“Not at all. I merely offered words of caution born out of experience. Do not allow it to go to your head, as so many before you have done. The world has a need for pure-hearted soldiers still.”

see other headcanons here.

in regards to the countries & territories the niflheim empire has annexed, loqi treats their people as he would any other people of the empire: with respect. once they are brought under the umbrella of the empire, as far as loqi is concerned, they are citizens and deserve the full protection and safety that can be offered by the army.

@brigadierd

“Glory to the Empire, was it? What a lofty goal, that one. Be cautious that your arrogance does not become your undoing.”