#arthur coldstone

Tieling’s aides pour his commissioned potion into three wooden goblets on the altar, then hand each of us one. With a nod from their new king, they step away. He takes a deep breath, and for the first time today, I sense an anxiety about the boy. A tense, fearful silence.

He downs the potion quickly - there is not much to drink - and gestures surreptitiously for Arthur and I to drink as well. I take it like a shot, swirling the coppery - bloody - taste in my mouth for an instant before swallowing the disgusting mixture.

Arthur is slow to reach for it. As his lips graze the edge of the goblet, he lets out a pained gasp. I think little of it, for a moment, but the gasp quickly becomes a scream, and more join him, and soon, there is too much noise for me to think.

I fall to my knees, cursing, gripping my ears, trying to halt the cacophony. My skull - no, my brain feels like it’s splitting, like an axe has been buried to the handle in my head. The screams of agony start wailing up from the crowd, children’s screeches piercing through the muffling of my palms. The tree beneath me begins to shake, the Life wailing in hellish notes through my bones, and swathes of broken, brittle wood come pouring down on us, splinters shattering against my head, and all I can think is I’m going to die here.

Tieling Evergreen, you snake-tongued bastard, I’ll take you with me.

As the screams closest to us fade, I’m able to open my eyes slightly, and everything I see is bathed in the furious heat of rage. The unholy prince is the first thing I see, panicked, pouring the last potion down Arthur’s throat, desperation clear as day on his usually calm face.

Through gritted teeth and the worst pain of my life, I rise as well as I can - one knee still firm on the ground, one foot bracing, ready to launch me across the room at this devilish child - and relinquish my grip on my right ear, reaching for a spear one of the guards dropped.

“What... Have you... done?” I can barely hear my own voice, though my throat sears in a pain that tells me I’m screaming harder than I did when birthing my child.

Tieling looks up, eyes wide and full of terror, his rosy skin now as pale as paper and marble and bone and somewhere deep, behind the rage, beneath the fear, at the very core of my being, I know he did not mean to do this.

The excruciating screams down below start dying off as the realization hits, but the tree around us is creaking, dust still raining down on our backs, and further in, a large portion of the ceiling falls. In the seconds it takes me to gain my balance, Tieling has found his feet again, and has started to drag Arthur’s barely-conscious form towards the opening beyond the altar.

He is weak, and as much as I wish to leave him here, beneath the collapsing Godwood, Arthur does not deserve that fate. And he would be devastated if Tieling were left behind.

I leap across the room, grabbing Tieling around the waist in a tackle, and shove him towards the opening. The shock on his face as he stumbles back over the sheer drop is satisfying, for the moment I see it before I turn back to Arthur.

He’s heavier, of course, and wearing thick plated armor. It’s all I can do to heave him over the edge, too, in the hopes that Tieling’s senses have come back to him in time to catch the boy.

I cast one last glance back into the chamber, into the tree, taking note of the corpses that have gone from living, breathing people to decaying skeletons in the last - how long? Minute? It had to be more, it had to be.

It wasn’t.

I take a running leap out into the open air below, and as I fall, I reach for the Life that should be all around - and I find nothing. None of the vines that would have swarmed to my aid, no grasping branches of the trees that would have responded to my call - there is a void around me unlike anything I have ever experienced. There is nothing left to catch me as I fall.

Am I truly to die among the Godtrees, away from my home, away from my people?

I was promised eternity, and this is what I get instead? Betrayal, pain, death - the corpses of my kin strewn everywhere. Every living thing in sight, my Magic, gone.

He said he would stop it.

Tieling Evergreen, I will be wringing your ichor from my hair when I’m done with you.

The silent oath is punctuated by the sudden howling of wind around me, as the boy calls on his Magic - he traded mine to keep his, didn’t he? - too late to catch me.

I land flat-footed on the roof of what was once a guild hall, momentum sending me into a somersault as the bones in my ankle snap and my shoulder hits the shingles with a crunch and I lose consciousness when my back hits the ground below, a final curse on Tieling dying on my lips.

I don’t see the guiding hand of Libin waiting in the darkness. Luma does not shine a gentle light upon my soul. Not even Erra, to whom I have dedicated my very existence, seems to want to help me, for her children do not rise from the soil to bring me home.

Instead, when I open my eyes next, I’m greeted with the sight of the Godtree branch nearest to me crumbling.

I don’t stop to think, to care, about the fact I just landed on my spine, that I dislocated a shoulder, that my ankles can’t carry my weight - I roll to my feet and run. It’s not until minutes later, when Tieling finds me, Arthur hanging from his arm like a child, that I realise I’ve somehow healed from my fall.

When Tieling extends his other hand, I stare at it, and the baby fat that keeps it fleshy still, and the flecks of gold that remain from the potion he forced into Arthur. And I understand.

His face is covered in sawdust and sweat and soot and the paths of tears that still stream from his eyes as he begs me to come with him, to get away. His face, that’s still round with youth and pale with fear.

And a new rage blossoms, one which I cannot ignore, and which will be sated with blood, when the time comes.

“Which one?” My voice rasps with the stick of a dry mouth, and the boy’s confusion grows.

“What? I - please, Queen K’Ron, we need to get to safety.” His voice cracks.

I take his hand. Let him summon the Wind, and whisk us to the cover of the Godtrees that still live. To the outskirts of the city that now burns and collapses and rots in front of our eyes.

We three stand silent, staring, for what feels like hours as Fahrial falls.

Arthur vomits, when the realization hits him. Tieling turns away, tries to leave. Falls to his knees and starts sobbing after a few steps.

I cannot rip my eyes from the destruction. Buildings burn, smoke billowing out from beneath the gargantuan husks of what once were Godwood branches. On the edges of the once-great city, charred bones still reach out from the wave of debris that was unleashed when the tree collapsed. Reach towards us, grasping, frozen in their finite desperation.

At the center of it all, the hollow, rotten bark of the Godtree stands tall and jagged and dead. A single, smoldering shell standing among it’s eternal kin.

Arthur is still heaving, though nothing remains to expel. Tieling has fallen silent, but for his choking breaths. I continue to watch the smoke, even as it begins to die.

The last embers slip away as the evening sun begins to turn golden. As Arthur curls into a ball, holding himself by the knees. As Tieling starts calming himself down.

As I find my voice, finally.

“Which one chose you, Tieling?”

His voice is fragile and hesitant. “Those of Nimia have no names.”

“Do you know her face?” I turn away, at last.

“Yes.” He watches me, eyes hollow, as I step up to Arthur. Knits his brows, when I take the knight’s shield and sword from where they lay beside him. “Why?”

“We will find the nearest town, and bring news of this tragedy. Send a portion of their guard to search for survivors. Recover as much of our wits as possible.” I tighten the shield to my arm with a tug.

The long answer is a little more dark/sad. For quick reference, the three monarchs are Tieling Evergreen, Veratrum K’Ron, and Arthur Coldstone.

The whole reason Tieling wanted to be immortal in the first place was so that he would have time to meet the requests of the Goddesses, who were preparing to get rid of magic, unless he could prove to them that it could be used for things other than violence and cruelty. And he had this plan for a while, to unite the Ehlves as a show of control over the magic they have, but he knew it would take a long time, and he didn’t want to do it only for it to fall apart once he died. So, he asked them to grant a way for him to last long enough to see his work through.

Veratrum wanted immortality for more self-centered reasons: she didn’t want to give up her throne, and she certainly didn’t want her people to fall into the hands of a relative who had already attempted her assassination a few times. And Arthur didn’t want immortality, but he was willing to become immortal, if it made Tieling happy.

The important part of this all is that the Goddesses did grant them a way to become immortal, but they had to discover it for themselves. The world was granted the magic of Alchemy (like potions, not transmutation), and Arthur helped to figure out the mixture that would, in theory, grant immortality. But they couldn’t exactly test it on anyone other than themselves.

So when they took it, as a group, they had no idea what the side effects would be. And so when every living thing in the city they were in started decaying around them, they thought they got it wrong. But tens of thousands of people died that day, as well as a Godtree, which were always thought to be... fixed points? Like, they weren’t ever seen growing, or dying, or disappearing. They just Were.

And now the Three are eternal, like the Godtree was supposed to be. And it cost so much more than they expected, and none of them ever meant to hurt anyone. And they all carry that weight with them, all blaming themselves for what happened, and their involvement.

I have a snippet of the event, from Veratrum’s POV, if you’d like to read it!

[id:

The slide is titled "tell me more about these 'Eternal Three'...". Directly to the left, in a very light font, is text that reads "repost my art and you'll die by my hands i swear to god. hasn't happened yet but this is insurance.". Below the title, there is a note that says "i'll get more detailed in a proper intro down the line, but for now:". 

The middle stretch of the slide has three portraits aligned in a row, each labeled with the subject's name, title, and a small caption of important information.

The image on the left is a square portrait of a white human man in his late forties, with blond hair and beard that is starting to go grey. His eyes are a deep brown, and his nose appears to have been broken and healed incorrectly. He wears a simple wooden circlet on his head and a blue cape. There is a cobbled stone wall behind him, with a window that looks out onto the night sky. This portrait is labelled "King of the Mae Humans" and the caption reads "This is Arthur Coldstone. What you should know: 1) he didn't want to be immortal. 2) actually a p chill dude, would die for his people but cant anymore. 3) wasn't gonna be king but then the king died and he was suddenly immortal and he's still mad about it". 

The middle image is slightly taller than the other two, and features an androgynous man with long, vaguely round ears that stick out past his shoulders. His hair is a dark teal that fades to a bright cyan and then to a cool grey at the tips. He is wearing a maroon robe with a pale magenta collar, a translucent golden capelet, and an ornate metal crown with a yellow jewel embedded into the center. His expression is carefully neutral, with an air of condescension. He is standing in front of a large window of blue stained glass, which is embedded into a wall that looks to be built into the side of a tree. This portrait is labelled "King of the Mae Ehlves" and the caption reads: "This is Tieling Evergreen. What you should know: 1) he's technically the villain. 2) rolled a nat 20 to persuade the coddesses to keep magic around until he could fulfill their requests. 3) he was Chosen at, like, 13 and it really fucked him up. still a Bastard tho."

The portrait on the right is a square of the same size as the portrait on the left, and it features a brown-skinned woman in her early fifties. Her ears are shaped like cresting waves, and stick out from her head. She has freckles on her exposed shoulders, on the tips of her ears, and a few on her cheekbones. Her hair is a deep, velvety purple with streaks of grey. She wears an ornate crown of woven vines and wood that has streaks of blue along the bark. Leaves, feathers, and large claws stick out from the crown to frame a large red jewel at the center. A similar, smaller jewel hangs from her necklace, strung with teeth and claws. She stands in a swampland, with vines hanging from branches behind her. This portrait is titled "Queen of the Rill Ehlves" and the caption reads: "This is Veratrum K'Ron. What you shuold know: 1) she uses immortality to learn as much as possible about everything. 2) has a direct line of descendents because she had a kid before all this. 3) duels ppl before they're allowed an audience to keep shit interesting."

/End slide one.

/Start slide two.

The slide is titled "ok, cool, so what's happening??" with two question marks. The subtitle is in a dark magenta font, and reads "big picture? a lot of stuff at once, really." The body of the text reads: "the Goddesses asked Tieling to prove that magic could be controlled, that people would stop getting hurt. He had been told all his life that his task would be to unite the Ehlves, so that's how he's trying to go about fulfilling their request. Things have gone downhill about 8 years before the due date, though…" and what follows is a bulletted list, with accompanying text boxes.

The list reads: "1) the Ehlves in Deltierin have broken away from his control, so he needs to get them back." The accompanying box reads: "his solution: war." "2) Veratrum's heir, who's required to have a high seat in his council in order to keep her as an ally, has gotten on the bad side of Vera herself. 2a) also, she disowned and banished her OWN heirs." The accompanying box reads: "his solution: do his best to keep from pissing Vera AND her heir off when they're both v important in these last few years of prep." "3) the Ehlves in Emarye don't have any central government anymore, so he has to convince all of them to unite somehow." The accompanying box reads: "his solution: beg the current governments over there to enter a compact with him."

The fourth bullet is circled in red and labelled "this is the big one". The bullet reads: "someone has started a fucking rebellion among the people he already rules" and the accompanying box reads: "his solution: quell the insurgents ASAP".

The fifth bullet is back to the usual format, and overshadowed by the circle above it. It reads: "and, the one that hurts most for him right now: Arthur stopped talking to him for valid reasons." The accompanying box reads: "his solution: cry".

The top right of the slide is on a slightly darker shade than the rest of the slide, to draw attention to it. The text within reads: "too long, didnt read: Tieling's starting a war, the people are angry about it, there's a rebellion ramping up. Almost every ally he had has abandoned him in the last five years (approximately), and most of them are now helping the rebels.

/end slide two