#brice

thank you for that

Brice-Javelin

“Why me?” Brice asked.

“Why not you?” Ramza asked.

“I mean, I’ve been training in ninjitsu with Mirabelle and Maddeline and Maddeline was the one who found it, and you and Lord Orlandeau and Beowulf all risked your lives to restore Lady Reis, who has dragoon training herself, I think—”

“I want you to have it.”

Ramza held the Javelin out to him. After a few moments of hesitation, Brice gingerly took the spear. He almost dropped it at first, but not from the weight. It felt light yet sturdy at the same time. He grabbed it with both hands.

“Do you think you can handle it’s weight?” Ramza asked, but there was no doubt in his voice.

“I c-can, my lord.”

“Good! I discussed it with Count Orlandeau and Lady Agrias, and we both agreed you should be the one to wield it.”

As the day passed with practice, evening finally came and with it, the weight of the day, the decision of his commander, and of his agreement to take the weapon. His mother’s voice came to him as he lay in his tent.

“You must go…”

“But—”

“The brigands…they will return…and you are not strong enough to face them.”

His father had died two winters before while in the employ of the Southern Sky. Used as fodder, Brice thought, but he still marveled at his father’s face each time he would return from a mission. What he didn’t understand then, what he comprehends to no end now, is the face wasn’t stoic or strong. It was hopeful. As beleaguered and tired as the face was, it still contained some glimmer in there that the poverty, starvation, lack of secure housing couldn’t destroy. But that face was gone now. And his mother’s body was wracked with some disease that he was sure she could fight if they had enough to eat, but he wasn’t allowed to hunt on the land surrounding their home since Duke Glutton’s decree that all game and crops should be used towards an effort to defend their land against a possible invasion. But that invasion never came, unlike the sell swords and different companies. He was sure it was the head of one of those groups who spent the night at their house—his mother trying to keep the peace in the only way she knew how. He coughed and wheezed in the same way she did now.

“Go…” she tried to yell and be stern, but he could see through her weakness. He wouldn’t leave her for the brigands, and no chemist or White Mage had been through since before his father died.

“I will not.”

Months later, she died in his arms. The brigands never came, maybe scared away by the lack of food in the land or the disease that she inherited from their leader. He stayed up every night, dagger in hand, but he never found cause to use it on another person. It finally served a purpose in helping to upturn the dirt so he could bury her before he left. He watched as the house crumbled in on itself from the fire he set.

“I can’t go back,” he said to himself with each step away from the ash. Day after day, it became a mantra. A spell he was casting. Sometimes he thought he could still see the smoke trail from the road. Eventually, he heard the squawks and beats of what he thought was a stampeded of Chocobos, so he ran to hide off the main road in a ditch.

“Good, ser, do you think you could direct us?”

When Brice finally realized the man was talking to him, he, beet red, crawled out of the ditch, full of mud. “We’re looking for Zeltennia Castle,” the man said.

“W-why do you seek it?” Brice asked.

“We have a group of chemists we’re escorting through. They have rare medicines and potions the merchants have paid us to deliver.”

He thought about it for a while. The chemists and leader of the group just stared at him.

“Your help would be greatly appreciated,” one of the chemists said from atop the Chocobo. Her voice reminded him of a fire.

“If you would take me w-with you, I would gladly help.”

They conversed for a short moment, and the leader agreed. He rode in a carriage pulled by a pair of red Chocobos. He huddled in the back.

“‘Tis brave of you to be out here on your own, young ser,” the old man said.

“There is nothing brave about me,” Brice said.

“Mayhap you’ll find a time when you find otherwise.”

The man’s belief in him did little for him that night, but as the days and nights went on, and he met Ramza, belief became something of value to him. Now, he held the most valuable thing they’d found in their company thus far.

Hi, I'm Brice. Or Bryce. Or anything else. I don't mind. 💕🏋

(He/Him/His or Xey/Xem/Xyrs)

I draw sometimes.

Asks are: Open!! (yeah yeah whatever. Asks/Request details under 🡇)

go my 🐟 fish (Lots about me and my blog-ish under the cut thing.) (VERY not needed.)

Eventful round at the Enrique house in Downtown, where I moved Alexa back in with her parents after graduation and brought Stella Terrano along for the ride as well. The two new housemates go shopping (where Alexa gets to know a reindeer, an animation I'd never seen before), and Alexa (a romance sim) finds out Brice had been unfaithful while they dated at La Fiesta Tech. Kicking him to the curb, she finds a quick rebound with Don (of course). Meanwhile, Stella heads to Lucky Shack on Friday night and runs into Brice, who she is still friendly with.

Looked like a hundred guns held on me

Hunkered by the shed of Detroit General & Company

Calling, "Boy come out, we have you jailed"

Beside the buck-shot door, I stood still

Wondering how the hell the bastards found me in those hills

The Bird in the Cage AU

"Side Character"