#koiben

They were immediately made aware of this error when they entered the camp to find the company waiting, blades polished and ready, glinting silver in their ink-black eyes. Roiben had stood at the head of the terrible company, while his two best knights flanked him on either side: Dulcamara, who had been sent word of the oncoming ambuscade from a crow enlisted as a spy for the court; Ellebere, who had gathered their army in such short order that Roiben had teased him for being much too earnest to arrange his lord a tryst with Death, and perhaps he had developed his own taste for rule should things go badly. 

Ellebere, in his dour fashion, had over-fretted Roiben’s jest. He swore his oaths remained steadfast until his face very nearly matched the deep red of his hair. Roiben had to halt the entire procession to explain humor was meant to pacify unease, and advised the knight ought to learn some for himself. Ellebere had spent the duration of their journey in embarrassed silence. When the Court of Thistles arrived, however, Roiben caught sight of the feral smile that flickered across the other man’s face.

His court had long hungered for violence. Too long, perhaps, they had been denied and starved. But tonight, they had been prepared a fortuitous banquet, and they were at last permitted to feast. They would ravage and gorge, until naught was left but the indistinct memory of a court too foolhardy to value the gruesome truth from which so many stories are birthed.

With one nod from their king they had descended upon the enemy court. Like rabid animals they swarmed them, steel and teeth and claws. They gnashed, gouged, sliced, and tore their way through the enemy host—their awful, howling laughter carrying over the clash of swords and commingling with the terrified screams of their prey. Some scrambled back in retreat, fell and clambered over one another as they sought haven from the wave of savagery they’d been so ill-prepared for. They were cut down without mercy.

It is here among the fray that Roiben allows himself to be swept up in it. He permits his hands to embrace the familiarity of driving a blade into an advancing foe, submits to the terrible rush of adrenaline in his veins. He channels it into his movements, each swing, slash, and lunge; this dance of death he has studied and memorized, knows more intimately than he would ever dare to admit, step by bloody step.

As often as he rebukes the hellish nature fighting for dominance within him, tonight he concedes to embodying every bit of the dark, bloodthirsty beast all those ballads paint him to be.

Roiben loses count of how many fall on his blade, of how many times he narrowly misses a blow or jab or loosed arrow. Action blurs about him, and he is swept along with it. The dirt and carnage and thick night air cling to his skin and sting his eyes. He takes a moment to wipe the spattered gore from his face, to catch his breath. That would prove his first mistake of the night.

There is a sickening sound of steel penetrating armor and bone. A shocking pain in his back, tearing through him, stealing his breath. His startled cry is lodged in his throat. He looks down, incredulous to find the gleam of a blade protruding from his side, slick with crimson. Someone is speaking against his ear, low and venomous. Roiben thinks the voice is familiar, but the words are distant and distorted and he cannot untangle them. Time itself seems to unravel and stand still. He cannot think, he cannot breathe around the pain. Each attempt to inhale is thwarted, every shallow gasp obstructed by the metal gouging his gut.

A heavy boot presses into his back, leveraging the blade and wrenching it from his insides with excruciating force. And then, Roiben is falling.

The ground is cold and unyielding as he crashes into it, face first. Soil and blood fill his mouth. He sputters and chokes, clutching at the blooming excruciation in his abdomen, and though he has known pain aplenty, this is an altogether incomparable magnitude of sensation. It is an unrelenting deluge of white-hot agony, burning through his body like pitch, thick and scorching, blinding his senses, until he is suffocating with it. And on its heels is something else, entirely foreign and unsettling. Of all the battles he has fought, of all the dangers he has faced and the hairbreadth escapes he has made, he has not known this feeling.

For the first time in his war-wearied existence, Rath Roiben Rye is afraid.

His mortality has never meant much to him. As any warrior, he has known always that his end would not be with a gentle exhale and the closing of aged eyes, but by the brutal edge of a blade. It was never to be kind or warm, but cold steel and isolated darkness—a deserving retribution for the multitude of sins he has committed. 

There had been a time, moons ago, when Roiben had welcomed that inevitability. With little to fight for and less to live for, he had simply endured. He had become reconciled to the possibility, the enticement of death. Back then, he would tempt it nearly every time he left the brugh. Like a hand reaching into the mouth of a beast, daring it to close around him. Every moment in Nicnevin’s servitude he had wished for release, and had it been destined he would have held his arms out and embraced it as he would have a lover.

But then Kaye had found him, and everything Roiben knew or thought he wanted had been turned entirely on its head.

She had stirred within him something latent, something long buried in unfathomable depths, sealed away with all the other parts of himself he had neglected or that could be used against him. It had been as though in an instant, his heart had remembered what it felt like to beat. Roiben found himself wanting to claw his way out of that frozen tomb and into the shell of the man he had been. Wanting to fight again. Wanting to live—and if not for himself, then for Kaye alone.

Every moment since, he has been her barrier, the shield to keep the volatile machinations of his people from reaching her. If he dies tonight, all he has done will unravel. She will be alone, unprotected. If the enemy claims victory here, her blood will spill before the sun rises. Kaye will die, and he will have failed her.

His lungs are scorched and aching, begging for reprieve from the lashing flames each inhale brings. The black leather of his armor glistens in the pearlescence of the moon, wet with his own heartsblood; a river of deep garnet flows from the gaping wound below his ribs and runs over his thigh to pool on the ground at his knees. Creeping shadows blur the edge of his vision. None of this matters: Roiben's resolve is uncompromising. He cannot fall here. He cannot—he will not leave her. 

With gasping effort, Roiben pushes himself to his knees. He buries the point of his blade into the damp earth and clutches the hilt to steady himself. The field before him wavers and slants up to meet him; he sways as he kneels, nearly pitching forward again into the dirt. He grips the handle tighter still and sets his jaw, defiant. He will not cosign Kaye to the cruelty from which he has fought so desperately to spare her.

No grave can hold his body down; he will crawl home to her if he must.

There is movement behind him—the rushing sound of a sword slicing through the air. Then the pause before the strike. With as deep an inhale as he can manage, fingers tightening around the helve of his blade, Roiben hurls himself into a dizzying spin. He throws his weight, every remaining ounce of force into swinging his sword up and out, lurching blindly for the coward that had thought to fell him without facing him. It is not at all a graceful move; his shoulders jar upon impact and it's no small miracle he remains upright and conscious through the but the recognizable sounds of rending leather, yielding of flesh and the splintering of bone tells him he has hit his mark.

As Roiben sways on his knees and wills the world to slowly right itself, the image of his foe before him begins to solidify; a terrible, stricken cry rings in his ears, splitting the air through the violence still roiling around him. He registers only a moment late that the sound has come unbidden from his own mouth.

Standing in the cold gleam of the moon, his golden sword raised for the deathblow and still dripping with Roiben’s blood, is Talathain. The glinting silver of Roiben's blade obtrudes grotesquely from the Seelie knight’s chest, just under his sternum. Roiben does not need to see what he already knows by the lightened weight of his weapon—he has run the other knight clean through.

Pale green eyes are blown wide, locked with Roiben's. Mouth agape, his expression is contorted in a coalescence of incredulity and unhinged fury. How long he must have bided, how careful and dedicated his scheming must have been, to finally cut down the one he believed unworthy of the Seelie crown. To at last avenge his beloved, pitiless queen. How devastating his disappointment must be now, knowing he will not live to see one more deserving take the blood-won throne.

Talathain's gaze drops to the sword impaling his chest as that realization crosses his face, as his own weapon falls from his still-raised hands into the dirt. Roiben withdraws the curved blade, knowing that it would do no good even if he left it there; just as he'd meant to, he has dealt the finishing stroke, and now there is nothing for it. Better Talathain die now, as honorably as any knight should hope to, than to suffer slowly with some illusion of recovery.

Roiben catches Talathain’s arm as he staggers forward, lowering both of them to the ground as gently as he can through the piercing pain of his own wound. The act surprises even himself; all those years ago, Roiben had assumed the role of villain, bearing the weight of his sister’s killing of Silarial, so that she might not be driven to madness by it. Talathain had spat and cursed him rather than Ethine, though she still had not been fully spared from his ire. Roiben had accepted the knight’s scorn, had simply made it an addendum to the overlong chronicle of his transgressions against those he had loved.

Yet, even now, as he lays the man back against the damp earth, that love he had once held comes to the surface in one sorrowful wave.

Talathain’s grasp is desperate, white-knuckled on Roiben’s shoulder. There is something other than rage forming on his face, until it is the only thing left: it is the same sadness aching in Roiben’s chest reflecting through his old companion’s eyes. For a fleeting moment, there on the field of battle, they are brothers again.

The green knight opens his mouth to speak, but only coughs—a wet, gurgling noise, indicative of fluid filling the lungs. Blood spatters Roiben's cheek, and a runnel of ruby flows down the side of Talathain’s mouth to drip onto the dark ground. Roiben reaches up to close his hand around the one still clinging to his shoulder and nods, his jaw set tight enough to hurt. He swallows against the constriction in his throat—he does not trust his voice to speak.

I forgive you, the small squeeze of his hand says instead.

As I hope you will forgive me.

Talathain does not answer.

The grip on Roiben's shoulder goes slack, and there is no more rage, no more hatred or sadness—nothing at all left to gleam in Talathain's eyes. His last breath drifts out of pale parted lips, into the bitter air on a cloud of white vapor. With delicate care, Roiben lowers Talathain's arm, resting it over his chest and crossing it with the other, before closing the man's eyes with a trembling hand.

The moonlight casting across his still face should make him appear peaceful, perhaps as if he is simply asleep. Instead, it only serves as a further, haunting illumination of what has just transpired. It is enough to cause Roiben to shiver and tear his gaze away, but the effect has already been made. He knows, with bitter certitude, that if he does not succumb to his own wounds, this vision will join the multitude of other wraiths that so often saturate his nightmares.

For one, still moment in the midst of the waning onslaught, as profound and painful as the hole in his side, Roiben allows himself to grieve: for the friend he had known, for the knight he had admired—for the brother he had loved and lost. 

As the sky begins to lighten and the first signs of morning crest the ensanguined dale, Roiben sees naught but the wretched darkness closing in about him. Weary with sorrow and loss of blood, he can fight against it no longer. Closing his eyes in exhausted surrender, the Lord of the Court of Termites plunges into the yawning void. 

Through mounting despair his fingers claw through the void. Panic grips his throat in the dark. It coils around him like a serpent constricting its prey and he thrashes violently in its grasp, wild with fear and indignation. Resigned as he has been to the whims of fate in the past, that holds true no longer. He does not want to die. He is not willing to die.

Amidst the struggling, out of the black expanse of his mind there comes a soft rush of air, carrying with it a familiar redolence of blooming honeysuckle and crushed clover. Roiben goes still as it wraps around his senses; it is strange and out of place here, he thinks—too warm and gentle in this lightless wasteland. Yet it is there all the same, tempering his fear, willing him calm. And then, as if heralded by the anomalous breeze, a phantasm begins to take form. 

It is an insubstantial figure, never quite manifesting beyond a silhouetted likeness, but it does not need to: even trapped within a bastille of unreality, Roiben would know her.   

The form wavers as it draws closer, hues of green blending and shifting, from soft moss and bold verdelite to the rich viridity of a forest after rainfall. Warmth emanates from the center of the figure, reaching out to him in the void. Soft light splits the immeasurable tenebrosity until not a single shadow remains untouched, until every inch of cavernous is bathed in the pale glow. Roiben has seen nothing of such transcendent beauty; he is struck by it, wholly overcome with wonderment.

The verdant, smoke-like hand brushes across his cheek, brushes away tears he hadn’t known he shed. A voice calls his name, melodic and warm as the light around him:

“Rath Roiben Rye, I command you to wake up.”  

There is a sharp gasp when Roiben’s eyes open, though he can’t be sure where the sound has come from. As his vision adjusts the apparition fades, and he cannot help lamenting its departure. The warm glow follows after, replaced by the cool, familiar glim indicative of underground illumination: he is back in his chambers, in the Palace of Termites. Somehow, Roiben has made it home. Tangled roots hang in tendrils from the hollow ceiling above. Roiben blinks up at them, willing them into focus with tired effort. Though the blazing pain he felt when Talathain ran him through has been reduced to a mitigated smolder, the rest of his body is stiff with bruising and sorely overtaxed. His fingers cramp at the slightest testing. His lungs tremble with each breath and do not yet feel able to withstand much more than small, calculated inhales. Still, after what had very nearly come to pass, he is grateful for feeling at all.

While he is attempting to solidify his surroundings, the same comforting fragrance that had come to him in the darkness—that soft sweetness of spring in bloom, manifests once more, here in the realm of waking. It is stronger than before, and much closer. Roiben lurches forward suddenly, fully roused from all previous inanition. His heart hammers wildly against his aching chest while renewed pain blossoms just below his ribcage; doubtless the abrupt movement has done no service to his healing, but he is spurred by some apprehensive hope and pays it little mind. 

That hope is rewarded tenfold when he is met with the startled countenance of his consort. His Kaye.

She is there on the edge of their bed, in the same place she had sat the last time Roiben had been wounded. Tidelines of grief and distress streak her face. Her black eyes are swollen, rimmed with mingling red and deep greens, while new tears begin to well and spill down her cheeks. Roiben wonders how long he has been asleep; how long it has been since she slept. He reaches for her with a trembling hand, breath hitching as he cups her face. His thumbs sweep away the forlorn remnants staining her cheeks, exhales in audible relief that she is not the wavering, incorporeal visage from his dark delusion.

"You're real," he whispers. His voice is rough from disuse. Kaye covers his hand with her own. The slightest smile wavers at the corner of her mouth—to comfort him or herself, Roiben isn’t certain. “Yeah, I’m real.” she replies, in that deliberately even voice Roiben has heard so many times before: the one she employs to cloak the storm of emotions just beneath the surface. Only her eyes betray the containment of that tempest. 

Roiben draws their joined hands to his chest. He takes a breath to allow the warmth of her touch to spread through him; to chase away the perpetual, aching chill in his bones only she ever had the power to.

Kaye breaks the momentary silence. “They told me they found you next to Talathain. That he—'' She swallows, as if to brace herself against her own words. “That he brought an army to kill you.” It’s his turn to smile, but it sours at the edges of his mouth as memory returns, unbidden; his boyhood friend, staring with spiritless eyes at a frigid, black sky. “Indeed,” Roiben confirms bitterly, “and he failed.” His gaze drops to their still-joined hands, to the chipped black varnish of Kaye’s fingernails. “Would that his aim had been a hairsbreadth truer—” “Don’t.” Kaye interrupts him with a crushing of her lips against his, and Roiben falls obediently silent. Sore arms wrap around her, holding her slight frame to him with all the diminutive strength he can rally. They are few and far between, the occasions he allows himself to feel such vulnerability, but he allows this singular self-indulgence—if only for a breath.