LONG LIVE / THE KING.

𝑡𝘩𝑒 𝑐𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑎𝑙𝑙  just  behind  the  training  dummy  gives  her  plenty  to  think  about  when  it  came  to  formulating  a  plan  in  order  to  best  dimitri.    what  strength  he  has———    was  it  from  his  crest ?   ❝     you  completely  broke  through  the  stone,   dimitri.   ❞   she  does  not  sugarcoat,   but  she’s  not  harsh  either.   ❝    do  you  do  this  often ?    i  can’t  imagine  of  such  unfortunate  circumstances.  ❞

          briefly, he weighed the merits of providing confirmation that he was indeed at odds with his own strength. that it took great focus to keep from destroying everything he touched, splintering every weapon that was placed in his hands. it felt like a harmless question, but he could not help feeling that there was some other angle to it. ❛ yes, ❜ he finally said, eyes trailing from the wreckage of the dummy to the the wall that had cracked and had begun to fall apart from the force of the impact. it was not usually this bad; dimitri could only equate it to stress. ( or maybe it had been her presence ? ). he cleared his throat as his gaze returned to edelgard.

          ❛ i know these words aren’t enough but ... i am sorry. for everything. ❜

          ❛ she is lucky to have you, if i may say so. ❜

Sabine had heard the stories.

A one man army.

A storm that rode upon the winds of death.

A blood lusted beast.

She had heard it all from the dying breaths of soldiers she had gotten to too late, the fear clear in the last light of their eyes. Sabine’s heart ached for each life lost, but her heart ached most for the one that did this to them, how broken they must be.

Despite how ever dangerous it could be, Sabine decided to follow any clues that would lead her to this…this beast as they called them. And it was the sounds of battle and screaming and the scent of blood in the air that sent her running, toward the tree line as she came to a stop, her worn, battered spellbook clutched to her chest as she watched with wide eyes.

She recognized this man. Fleeting memories back to her days at the academy. Sabine didn’t know him well, nor did she come to know anyone that well back then, but she knew of him. And according to what she’s heard, he was supposed to be dead. Why he wasn’t, Sabine wasn’t quite sure, but she could see him now with her own eyes, cutting men down like they were simply training dummies. Sabine also noted then that the soldiers hailed from the Empire, though the red of their uniforms were camouflaged by the blood staining their bodies.

Sabine’s nose stung with the acrid smell of blood and she felt her feet carrying her forward, out of the protection of the trees and towards the nearly ended battle ahead of her.

@ikhrov

          he is a tempest, a beast let loose into the wilds. primal fury personified tears through legions of soldiers. in his rage, he cannot discern friend or foe --- there’s only those that stand in his way. between him and edelgard, her head on a pike, her lifeless eyes, her body thrown from the walls of her base --- it isn’t long until the carnage builds & builds & builds, & he becomes bathed in blood. it colors him red, it stains his hands, his armor, his clothing --- fangs & lips dyed crimson. blades barely left a mark upon him, arrows grazed his skin; the few that became lodged were ignored or reckless ripped out & thrown aside.

          he was a one - man army. he required no healing, no assistance --- nothing. his enemies fall before him & it is not long before he is left alone in the clearing. areadbhar remains in hand, blood dripping from its point; he wipes away the entrails from when he’d run through a mage who’d gotten far too close, who’d thought he’d been safe, upon the grass. that is when senses trained from five years in isolation hear another creep from the forest. he whirls to face them, a snarl upon his lips, a wild look in his eyes.

          the girl steps forth. the lion roars. another lamb fit for slaughter. vaguely familiar, she was, and that’s the only reason he does not kill her on the spot.

          ❛ it ... is not as bad as it appears, right ? ❜

          blood splatters the ground surrounding him & there’s a sickening squelch, a pained noise, a thump, & dimitri briefly wonders if he’d finally been properly run through, another wound to accompany the first. but in his acceptance of such a fate, his head raises & he finds that this was no out - of - body experience at the cessation of his heart’s beating. that girl, she --- that girl ---

          he sees red, but it is not a tint placed upon his vision. it is blood on a sword, blood on his hands ( it won’t go away, it won’t go away, it won’t --- ), blood pooling from a body --- but who is it, who is it --- black hair, a sword slipping from his grip --- not a shield, not a shield ---

          not a shield ?  

          glenn --- not again, not again --- 

          but this was not glenn. this was not some hallucination played on repeat in his mind, as he slept, as he stood vigilant. the utterance of the name, either way, his lips betray. he knows he is not glenn. but the scene, it sends him back; the scene, it simultaneously roots him in the moment. a limbo, the presentation of an anachronism. he is not glenn. he is felix hugo fraldarius. he is not glenn. he is not, he is, he is not, he is --- 

          ❛ FELIX ! ❜ his cursed weapon is left at the wayside as the wayward king forgets himself. he does not spare that girl a glance as the byleth ends her life. he does not hear her dying scream, a sound that may have once brought him joy if not for the state of the one before him. his childhood friend, his constant critic --- glenn’s little brother. he is not, he is not, he is not --- he cradles felix as close to him as he can manage. too close, maybe, for all he’d done, but he would not want for his loneliness now.

          ❛ heh ... look at me now. going and dying like a knight ... how foolish. ❜

          ❛ y - you fool, you ... ❜ dimitri feels something within him break for, perhaps, the fourth time in his life at felix’s words, at his beaten & battered visage, at the blood that flowed & flowed & flowed --- ❛ you’re not supposed to be my shield ... ! ❜ that was not the fate he’d sought, it was not the fate that dimitri had wanted for him. that was rodrigue’s role in this, if dimitri should relinquish it to anyone. not felix’s. never felix’s. he’d lost too much.

          speak of the devil --- the swordsman’s father was upon them now. dimitri wonders, had it been his wails that had drawn him here or the silence that soon followed. the choking of the king --- no, the beast --- upon the bones of his loved ones ? the tremor in his voice, the shattering of the world around him ?

          ❛ felix, just hold on. i’ll call for a healer, i’ll --- ❜ the rightful king snaps his head up & around & he searches & searches & searches. ❛ WHERE ARE THE DAMNED HEALERS ?! rodrigue ! send for one --- we must --- ! ❜ but there’s something about rodrigue’s expression that silences him. the utter defeat of it, the resignation. NO ! he would not give in yet. he would not give up on felix. and then there is a hand on his, & he does not speak, & there’s a look in felix’s eyes, & dimitri can still hear the words as if they’d been spoken aloud --- shut up, you boar.

          ❛ no, no, no, NO ! ❜ it was so easy to give in to anger like a mad beast. the pain was made manageable in the rampage, never in the quiet when there was nothing to cover it up & he would break, break, break --- ❛ i can’t lose you, felix ! ❜ as he’s about to turn to them, the professor steps forth to try, but their healing magic was not made for this & it only drains the hope from dimitri’s being. someone else was going to die & it was his fault.

          his fault, his fault, his fault, his ---

          ❛ i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i’m ... ❜ ire gives way to true sadness. it washes over his face, drags down his bones, & turns his entire being limp as if their roles were reversed & it was him bleeding out. distant & forgotten memories make their way to the surface. the four of them --- sylvain, ingrid, felix, & dimitri --- together, inseparable, carefully watched over by the dutiful glenn. felix had been so carefree, stumbling along behind the others, & now, instead, he lay in the dirt, just as his brother before him, any inch of innocence died --- dyed red long ago. what was he going to say to sylvain & ingrid ? how could they forgive him ? how could his father, rodrigue ? another fraldarius, dead in service to his king. this time it was not the shield. it was the sword’s breathing that grew shallow & began to ease into the silence.

          ❛ felix, i’m sorry ... ❜

     @ikhrov   /   starter call.

                                  ❝   you   …   YOU   —   ❞                                                ❝   why are you alive   ?!   ❞

           there’s disbelief in that maddened voice   —   no, no more than that, it’s   HORROR .   terror that echoes in her roar   ;   dread as she stands before a ghost, dressed in furs and the stench of blood.   ❝   you   BEAST   –   fooling us all   …   was that your plan   ?!   making so many souls mourn you   ?!   you   …   you   !   ❞   but beyond the disbelief, there’s simply confusion   ;   and the reason for which she never once raises her sword, even as she screams.   ❝   wha   —   what happened to you   ?   ❞   what   HAPPENED   to the boy known once as dimitri   ?

          ❛ silence. ❜ eyes of startling blue flash at the woman. now dulled, but they’d still not lost their edge --- their intensity. he’d no use for theatrics & hysterics, he’d more pressing matters to attend to. specifically, those that ended with edelgard’s head upon his lance & gracing the walls of the monastery. a monument to her hypocrisy, her final resting place would be the place she both cherished & despised.

@ikhrov: i diagnose you with baby

i diagnose you with “shut the hell up boar or ur gonna catch some of these”

                         War didn’t merely claim LIVES. It ravaged the land and swallowed whole all in its wake. Felix had never seen anything like it; the rebellion he helped suppress seven years ago PALED in comparison. After rain washed the fields of Gronder like tears, he solemnly observed the damage from the scorched remains of the central hill.

                         As trickles of sunlight pierced through the morning mist, he took note of the scars. Muddy pools filled with rainwater where fighting soldiers tore the grass. Patches of blackened earth, charred brush. Weapons littering the battlefield without their masters.

                         Felix’s grip TENSED around the hilt of his sword. So this was it. The reality of war his late father often spoke of. He still tasted iron on his tongue, his throat raw from howling commands.

                         He didn’t turn when he heard footsteps behind him. The enormous, lumbering shadow the creature cast could only belong to one person.

                         “Boar prince. Tell me something,” Felix demanded. “How many people have to die so that you may live?”

@ikhrov | a spot o’ angst.

          he bleeds. he has not ceased since the fall of the shield of faerghus, since being found, since his step - sister’s betrayal, since --- since at the young age of fourteen when a boy became a man, baptized by the blood of his loved ones as they fell around him. their screams the background track of his dreams, their remains painting a wretched picture of gore. darkness had crept into his heart like a malady, an infection that there was no cure for, no matter his reasons for the carnage that lined the path he’d paved for himself. first, innocently, for the sake of virtue --- & then, to cut down the woman that had started all of this needless bloodshed five years prior.

          ( correction: he was no man; he was a beast. a boar. a newborn king of all things wild & all that feasted on the bones of mortals. he was not human. humans may bleed & so did beasts, but a human had a heart, a beating heart, while a monster relied on instinct & reveled in the sensation of licking a corpse clean )

          dimitri knows that if he should give in now, all that he had lost & that his people had given up for him, would be for naught. but he knows that he deserves nothing in his newfound lucidity, that he does not want edelgard to bleed out at the end of his lance any longer.

          ❛ ... no more, ❜ he says. he says & he wishes to say more, to fall to his knees & beg for forgiveness from the son of the man his lust for destruction had sent asunder, to cry for the man that he’d always considered to be a second father. but he knows that he cannot --- should not --- that it would only bring forth felix’s ire. then again ... when did he not ? felix had been right; dimitri had died with glenn & all that stood before them was a specter. haunting, haunting, haunting. until all those around him died or succumbed to similar madness.

non - sexual acts of dominance // not accepting

          ❛ i did not ask for your opinion, i gave you an order. ❜ it’s worse today, the perpetual pressure behind his eyes, the ache in his bones, the weight of sleepless nights upon him. it smothers him, turns him angrier than normal & draws his brows together. his forehead remained in a nigh permanent crease. he was almost certain that that was the reason his ... friend had spoken upon. he probably thought him inadequate to lead in his current state. he would not be the first, as proven by the specters that haunted him each and every moment. 

          sylvain had always been a nuisance in one way or another. if it wasn’t women, it was giving dimitri a hard time. sometimes, it was an awful conglomeration of both. especially now. loyalty to his friends, most defined it as. to dimitri, it was just another obstacle in his path. an obstacle that he would remove if it proved to be too great.