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agent-cupcake · 4 years

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Anon asked for prompt 22 with Hubert

the read more isn’t working so here we are. thanks Tumblr, you’re Gucci af

22. “I’d never hurt you. Not unless you forced me to.”

The dark parted, pain slipping through in an agonizing stream. Thunderous hooves pounding against the ground, inside your head. Skin sliced apart, all of the insides slopping out onto the outsides. But then the rain engulfed you, ice freezing so cold it burned. You wanted to scream, but when you opened your mouth, water filled your lungs. And it was too much. You drowned.

Life had taught you to be mischievous and curious, to smile through the gloom if only to prove you could. You were the weird one, the strange one. Even at the academy, you never truly became a fighter. It simply wasn’t your nature. But that didn’t matter in the end. Survival became more important than living the day the Empire declared a terrible and bloody war against the Church of Seiros. And so you became something else, someone else. And now that person was broken, shattered into tiny shards of porcelain and scattered far and wide across the Tailtean Plains.

Goddess save you, it hurt. Everything, everywhere it hurt. Punishment, surely, because living through calamity was grotesque, unnatural. You should have died, but you had not. Consciousness wavered in and out. At some point, you opened your eyes to the smeary world around you. Faces flashed across your vision, voices echoed and rang in your ears. You tried to speak, but your tongue was swollen and numb and there was no air. Each labored breath was a stab of pain. There was movement beneath you, around you. Jolting, jostling. Onward, forward. The nauseating scent of the battlefield stuck in your nose, the movement of your world twisting your insides. Vomit choked you. The rain washed over you anew.

Clouds broke to give a reprieve from the oppressive rain, but there was no clarity. You couldn’t understand. The pain was less intense now, but you couldn’t help but whimper, uncomfortable to the very marrow of your bones. A new face appeared. An awful, bitter liquid filled your mouth, giving you no choice but to swallow. In turn, you were swallowed by the sharp maw of darkness.

The world had stopped moving. Your surroundings had changed. The world had finally settled. And through the daze of the drugs they forced you to swallow, you remembered. Your friends were dead. Lost to you. The strength and bravery you had so desperately clung to were lost. In a ragged and hoarse voice, you begged for death. It filled the small, stone cell. You thrashed about so violently that you had to be tied down to the bed lest you injure yourself further. And still, they forced medicine, food, water, and treatment upon you.

Swimming in the daze of herbs administered for pain management and to keep you docile, you wept. Drowning in your tears, hours and hours spent mourning for the country you’d lost and the friends who died while you inexplicably were kept alive.

You couldn’t understand.

But, eventually, when you could cry no more, you realized that you had to try.

So you fought the dark and the monsters that lived there, refusing to give in to the sleep you knew would bring nightmares. The tears had gone, your hitching sobs faded into painful hiccups. The pain was the ache of healing ribs, as it turned out. The crying and thrashing had done little to help.

There, in the dark, you focused. Glazed eyes fixed upon the stone ceiling, sluggish mind moving through memories and thoughts, testing each one to check for value. The sandstone above you was marked with a map of cracks. Your lips moved with whispered words as you attempted to compile some understanding of all that had happened. The whole room was cold stone, indifferent to your pain. Your head ached, but you forced yourself to think.

“I heard them say it,” you muttered, your voice quiet to avoid putting too much pressure on your ribs. “The battle at the Tailtean Plains was a complete loss for the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. For us. King Dimitri is... He’s dead. They’re all dead.” The lack of passion in your voice scared you, but it wasn’t unearned. You had tried to verbalize the reality of everyone’s death a dozen or so times now, each attempt ending in tears.

“But I’m not dead.” Not for a lack of trying, though. Towards the very end, a sword had slashed a gaping wound into your side. You could recall fragments of that moment. Shock, terror. The fall was missing from your memory, but you remembered the agony of hitting the ground. As the dark invited you, the rain cutting beneath your skin and running your blood pink, there was a voice, a set of hands. Someone you clung onto in those final moments. And the call of the abyss.

“The Imperial army spared me,” you said. “I… Don’t know why. The cut was fixed, but there were too many other wounded soldiers to heal me completely.” It wasn’t worth mentioning that your captors probably didn’t want you to be healed, either. An injured, drugged prisoner was a bit more convenient. “Now we’re in Enbarr,” you continued. “I’ve never been to Enbarr. I always hoped I’d get to come and see the opera, Professor Manuela made it sound so...” Your whispers died off with that thought, chapped lips relaxing into a part to make way for your wheezing breaths. It was too much to think of things like that, lost memories from when your life was normal and made sense.

You didn’t want to sleep, but the sudden exhaustion was too much to bear and the sound of rain was pulsing, pounding, undeniable, inescapable.

It was light again, the sun shining outside the tiny slit window of your cell. The priest who visited you on what you assumed to be a daily basis was a stern man with exhausted eyes. He gave you no name and did not as for yours, all the while stoically ignoring all of your questions. Each day he checked on you, he reapplied the Silence that kept your only weapon unusable. There was a servant who managed the lamps, gave you food, and switched out the chamberpot, but she did so without so much as a single word to you. She had never so much as given you a glance. With such intense isolation, it was no wonder you’d begun speaking to yourself so frequently. You worried that if you didn’t, you’d forget how to.

Light, then dark. Another visit from the taciturn Priest. With treatment, your wounds were healing nicely. They no longer plied you with sleeping powders or potions. As badly as you had wished for it before, recovery and control over your own mind was a double edge sword. On the one hand, you were glad. On the other, you feared what would happen now that you were more or less whole. Any day now, your captives would make their intentions for your rescue clear and you didn’t hold out much hope that it was altruistic in nature. They’d question you, maybe. Possibly torture you. You knew many things you shouldn’t, after all. If you were being completely honest, you knew that you would break quite easily under the threat of pain. Your life had never taught you to be strong, and even small pains made your eyes well up with tears. After the questioning, they would kill you. That was the only logical conclusion. There was nothing they could ever do to make you accept Edelgard as your ruler. You could never, ever forgive any of them for what they had done. You’d be a loose end.

Cowardice struck deep and icy into your spine whenever your thoughts began to spiral in that direction. Not tears of mourning, but of self-pity. Pathetically, all you could linger on was that you didn’t want this to happen, any of it. All you had ever wanted was to be with your friends. See the opera in Enbarr, visit the Alliance’s famed capital, and help King Dimitri rebuild Faerghus with all your friends. It wasn’t fair. Why weren’t you dead? Why you and not them? Why did Emperor Edelgard declare war? You knew so many things but understood so little.

But the world didn’t stop for your ignorance.

Minutes. Hours. Days. You had no idea how much time passed between the Priest’s visits. The sound of the door to your cell being unlocked yanked you from a hazy half-sleep. It was expected, and you weren’t entirely awake as you turned on your thin bed to sit up –a motion that still brought alarming amounts of pain to your damaged midsection– and smoothed your hair as a nod to manners you to whom you owed no tribute. You considered what you might say to the Priest, if you would try jokes or threats or anything to distract you from reality and make you feel more human. He had never responded, but you tried anyway. To remind yourself, maybe, of what you were. Or for some easy entertainment. Today you’d go with a joke, you could think of a really good joke, surely-

Those thoughts dissipated like mist burned away by the sun when you recognized the man who entered your cell. Hubert had changed, but not so much that you could be confused as to his identity. The shock of change was the first thing you noticed once the jarring jolt of seeing him enter your cell abated somewhat, the thing your mind grasped onto dearly to keep from panicking. Hubert von Vestra, Emperor Edelgard’s intimidating shadow. Not much of a shadow now, towering over your sitting form with an unreadable look of consideration on his face.

Fear and anxiety threatened to overtake you when you met his stare, but you combatted it with sheer disbelief. You knew quite a bit about Hubert. As far as particular points of intrigue, he was practically a gold mine of secrets and mystery. If that weren’t enough, Hubert was also tied to many of the most fascinating secrets you’d uncovered. You made it a point to keep up with spies and informants that dealt in information about the man in specific. A hobby of yours.

Unfortunately, you knew very little about who had become as a person. None of the reports spoke of the things you couldn’t help but notice now. Hubert retained that aura of malice you remembered, but his manner of presentation had changed dramatically. Not merely the hair and the clothes, or the whetstone of time that sharpened his cutting bone structure into something lethal, but some fundamental piece of his identity. Gone was the borderline awkward line of his stiff shoulders and self-important smirk, replaced by something more natural. Hubert’s posture and expression now belonged to him entirely, worn with all the comfort of a favored coat. Although he had been technically an adult even during the academy days, the person you saw now was a man. Odd how that distinction mattered. Odd how it made your skin crawl, want to scramble off the bed to ease the height disparity and attempt to gain some sort of upper hand.

Five years ago you hadn’t felt afraid of Hubert in the least. But, five years ago you hadn’t been a prisoner of war facing the victor from a position of battered powerlessness. Five years ago you had been an awkward teenage girl who chased secrets without knowing the inherent danger of finding things people would prefer to keep hidden. Five years ago you hadn’t been overpoweringly aware that you were helpless beneath his imposing, masculine presence. Now you understood, and so it was only rational for you to feel afraid.

“I’m glad to see you looking so well, I feared you wouldn’t make it the last time we parted,” Hubert said with a poisonous warmth, sitting on the only other piece of furniture in the cell beside the bed –a chair that the surgeon usually occupied. Like the bed, it was bolted to the floor. As if you were any great combatant. Even if you weren’t injured, the permanent state of Silence imposed on you would have rendered any and all of your combat strength null.

Words jumped to your tongue, but you tempered them. This interaction was not to be taken lightly. So you measured Hubert. The immediate response was to ask him if he was the one to save you, given that the last time you remembered meeting him was five years ago. You couldn’t remember anything following the battle on the plains, especially not him, but after a second you decided that was redundant as the affirmative was the only logical conclusion. Then you considered demanding to know why he had saved you and why you were here, but feared that your fear and weakness would leak through those words.

In your most intimate mind, past the uneasy calm you clung to, you longed to express fire hot rage and claw his eyes out, to damn the consequences and attack him with all your meager strength for what he had done. It wasn’t like you to do that, but maybe just this once you could be that person. It was what he deserved, what your friends deserved.

But you didn’t. Worse, you feared you couldn’t, that your strength would fail you and you’d only be reminded once more of the weakness you had never been able to kick. Instead, you found yourself without a single word to greet a man you hadn’t seen in over five years, your eyes glassy as wrath turned to despairing slush in your veins. Seeing him reminded you of all you had lost. Reminded you of the last time you had seen him, standing against his Imperial troops in defending the monastery. That battle had been the last with all of your friends. They were all dead or traitors now. Thinking of it was like tugging open the ragged skin of an open wound, making you physically recoil away. Weakness, too weak. You did your best to shove those thoughts from your mind, to steady your breathing.

Hubert studied you a moment longer, continuing to wait for you to respond. Finally, he scoffed, a sound at odds with the slight smirk on his face. “Not even a thanks?” he asked. “Well, you always were unforgivably rude. Constantly watching Lady Edelgard and asking questions about things you had no business knowing. I considered killing you a dozen times, you know.”

“How flattering,” you responded, or tried to. The words were meant to be cheeky, to show you weren’t afraid, but your voice was shaking and hoarse from disuse and got garbled up before they even left your mouth. Instead, they set you coughing, a reaction that struck your bandaged ribs and stomach with about as much tenderness as a hammer and stole away any of the power you’d tried to claim. Either the pain or the coughing set your eyes to watering and face flushing red hot, head and chest aching fiercely when you pulled in a final wheezing gasp. The cup of water on the floor at the side of your bed was stale, but welcome in the way it soothed your ragged throat. “How flattering,” you tried again when you had a grip on yourself, grinding the words out to keep them steady.

“Flattering? Hardly. You were an annoyance, nothing more than a pest I considered for extermination,” Hubert said, doing one of the last things you’d expect and passing you a plain white handkerchief with a look of half-concealed disdain. You accepted after only a second of considering your options and, deciding that it was more embarrassing to look a mess than to take his charity, used it to mop up your face. Whatever the small act of kindness meant, you were in no position to turn it down.

That justification didn’t ease the discomfort of the way he smirked at your easy acceptance, watching you in a way you found nearly unbearable. Hubert was smart, smarter than you, maybe. Where you were a hobbyist, he was a professional. Not with people, but with the deconstruction of them.

“Unfortunately, it seems that inviting the ire of those more powerful than yourself wasn’t a habit you managed to rid yourself of,” Hubert continued. He spoke in a tantalizing way, inviting you to ask questions, to give into the blunt shock factor he was trying to encourage. Part of you wanted to give in –those words really did pique your curiosity. You had always been interested in knowing the things you shouldn’t. It was probably the most valuable attribute you’d brought to the war. But you weren’t quite so reckless as you had once been and the other part of your mind just wanted to ask him to say what he wanted outright, annoyed with the pointless posturing.

Unfortunately, you were too afraid of your voice cracking to do either. Hubert waited for you, but it was a fruitless pause, each ticking second wearing away at your raw nerves. He sighed in annoyance when you didn’t rise to the bait which was, in its own way, a bit of a victory.

“You see, before the battle, I was asked to ensure your death. A request on behalf of someone quite important,” Hubert began to explain. “Doesn’t that strike you as odd? You’re laughably unimportant, even among those defending the Church. I understand it as necessary to see to the death of all the kingdom patriots, but why name you in particular?” Hubert waited again as if for an answer, but the gleam in his eyes indicated that it was merely a pause to watch your reaction. His smile was sharp, eyes flashing. “So I began looking into you, wondering if you were the same annoyingly meddlesome girl I remembered from the academy who stuck her nose into things she really ought to have left alone. You’re smarter than you were, but I managed to find evidence of your nosing in the most… Unwanted of places.”

Your heart sank, stomach twisting and sloshing with the water you’d just downed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you said flatly, despondently.

“You can’t lie to me. I’ve been keeping an eye on you for a while. Once we reclaimed the Kingdom capital, it wasn’t difficult to find your notes.” You tensed up, thinking of all the information you’d compiled. So caught up your own tragedy, you’d nearly forgotten. “You needn’t worry, I managed to keep them away from any prying eyes. Although, after studying them for a bit, I think I can understand why they would want you dead. The shadowy cabal you write about, that you’ve taken so much effort to document and study. Those Who Slither in the Dark.”

Your breath caught. The name made you flinch away, such a stupid reaction. Words couldn’t hurt you and yet these ones… They laid heavy in their air. Those Who Slither in the Dark. You had known they were working with the Empire, but hadn’t believed they’d be entrenched in the very heart of the Imperial crown. It made sense, in a way. A sickly, horrifying sort of sense. Hubert was working through them, for them, and they wouldn’t spare you. That was all you could think. Compared to their other crimes, the torture of a single individual wasn’t even that bad. All things being equal, it was practically a mercy. Hubert’s eyes didn’t stop gleaming, flashing, devouring your expressions as they flittered across your face.

“Your friends didn’t believe you about them. Nobody did. They never so much as attempted to understand you, let alone believe what you were saying,” Hubert sounded gleeful in reminding you of that fact. You had no idea how he could have possibly known that, but it hurt too badly to ask. Of course your friends hadn’t believed you, there were far more pressing issues to be dealt with. Only Rhea had given any indication that she knew of who you spoke. But her warpath was waging in one direction, and she didn’t care to consider your conspiracy. Of course, of course-

“They didn’t know,” you said, hating the weak tremor of your voice. You had to be stronger, to redirect the conversation. “But you… Your emperor… You’re are working with them.” Emotion bled into your tone, and you didn’t bother trying to hide it. It was a stronger feeling, anger. His emperor was the one who had lead the deadly assault on your country and kinsmen. Your king, your friends, dead at her orders. Commands supported by those shadowy fiends and their horrifying tactics. Your friends had no reason to believe you about Those Who Slither in the Dark, but there was no way Hubert didn’t know fully what they were and what they had done.

“Using them,” Hubert clarified lightly, clearly unphased by your accusation.

“You used them to destroy Arianrhod?” you asked Hubert. “No survivors. Civilians, soldiers, women, and children all taken out in fell swoop… Emperor Edelgard can only rule when the land has been scorched into submission, is that it?”

A controlled flash of dangerous anger, purified violent intent, crossed his face. “You forget your place,” Hubert said, his voice curling with deadly promise. “Speak of Her Majesty in such a disrespectful manner again and I’ll have your tongue.”

You shied away from him on instinct, flushing with fear. You really had forgotten your place, your circumstances. There was nothing in Hubert’s expression or voice to indicate that he wasn’t willing to follow through with that threat, and you could do nothing to stop him. Defiance was so easy until you remembered the consequences.

“I’m sorry,” you said, speaking without even thinking about it, anything to spare yourself, to soothe the familiar flare of hot tempers.

Hubert looked somewhat surprised by the apology, but that quickly became a smile. “It’s difficult to believe you are the woman he was worried about, so easily giving in to such an inconsequential threat. Truthfully, I expected a bit more fight,” he said. Your shoulders curled inwards as you avoided Hubert’s eyes out of embarrassment, scorning yourself a hundred times over and hoping you never found out what he would consider a consequential threat. Seemingly bored of your silence, he moved on with a more business-like tone, “To answer your question, allow me to ask you this. Did you approve of everything the church did? Or did you see their help merely as a means to an end, a way to defeat the Empire and potentially use in rebuilding Faerghus.”

The question threw you off once more, making you frown. Hubert would understand that type of thinking, you’d seen him employ it a dozen times over with the dubious types he would hire to enact some of his missions. It was practical. Then you thought of Lady Rhea, her rage. Her terrifying, unholy rage. You couldn’t help but shiver. And then there was the matter of their sin, a well-documented lie they hid from the world, banning innovation and information. The Church was corrupt in a deep-seated way, rotten down to its roots. You could understand the argument Hubert was making, it was only logical.

You shook your head in denial of that understanding. “That’s a false equivalence,” you protested. “The Church might have been bad, but the people you’re working with are… Malice incarnate. How could you even think to use them? The pain they caused, the unspeakable things they’ve done.” You let out a breath, focusing on the pain of your ribs to try and avoid getting emotional again. “I just don’t understand.”

“Fortunately, I don’t require your comprehension of such decisions,” Hubert said dismissively, doing nothing to hide his patronizing tone. “Now that the Empire has taken out the corrupt Church of Seiros, it is my duty to wage the shadowy war on Those Who Slither in the Dark. Due to their extreme reach and power, I cannot trust many to join me in this cause. Consider this a professional venture. Help me destroy Those Who Slither in the Dark. In return, I’ll allow you to live.”

“If I don’t?” you asked, an instinctual question. You knew the answer, of course you did.

“I’ll kill you,” Hubert said without pause. His posture was relaxed into the chair, his arms folded and head tilted slightly with a small twist of a smile on his face. Confidence radiated from the man. Curiosity, maybe, to see which path you would take.

You stared at him with parted lips and wide eyes, realizing once again that you were a coward. After waking up, bound and undergoing treatment sustained from trying to take on the Imperial Army, knowing you had lost the battle and everything you held dear, you had begged to be killed. That was the only honorable way of it, to die with your king and country. It’s what Hubert would do, what any of your friends would do.

And yet now that he offered it, death did not sound so appetizing after all.

“Does allowing me to live mean I’ll be free?” you asked, a hedging point for negotiation. You had no leg to stand on in the matter, but you felt as if you had to at least try.

“It means I won’t kill you,” Hubert reiterated bluntly. Meeting his eyes, shadowed by the poor lighting of the room yet soaking up every drop of the yellow spectrum light, you realized once more that you had no power here. He was asking for your aid, but you were not necessary. Convenient, if anything.

And you were a coward. An awful, terrible coward.

“Fine,” you said. For the greater good, you told yourself desperately. For the sake of those who died. For the sake of those who yet lived. To take down the biggest evil, the one King Dimitri was too blind to even consider might exist. Because you could escape, you could liberate Faerghus just as your friends wanted, as Loog did.

Because you didn’t want to die.

Hubert smiled. The smile of the grim reaper himself.

“I suspect you’re ready to be freed of this cage, then? We have an unimaginable amount of work ahead of us. Your wounds seem to be healing nicely.” Without warning, Hubert reached out, taking your chin in hand to tilt your face into the light. It must have been awful, a faded watercolor of bruises, but Hubert looked more intrigued than disgusted. The feeling of his gloved hand on your skin sent a shock through you, your muscles becoming tense and breath catching in fear. He noticed this, too. And it made him smile. “Are you scared of me?” Hubert asked, amused by the idea. “You shouldn’t worry. I’d never hurt you. Not unless you forced me to.”

#hubert von vestra #hubert von vestra x reader #fe hubert #fe hubert x reader #yandere #fire emblem three houses spoilers #FE3H #my writing

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thefifthclown · 4 years

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Part 2, Chapter 4-The Hellish Yard, and “Ma”; Scene 1

Fifth, Pierrot, pages 274-282

Since yesterday and going on today, she had seen death’s door multiple times.

Attacked by Gatt Coulomb, her throat almost slit by Lemy as he was revived over and over, fired into a peculiar space after being caught up in the explosion caused by the red cat, and after all that she was almost eaten by a giant skeleton. The blast from the convergence of power had once again invited Gumillia to a new location, it seemed.

It was a dreary place, with dirt and bedrock as far as she could see. There were a lot of chasms in the ground, and from deeper within them she could see red lava flowing. But, strangely enough she felt no heat.

This place was quite large. The horizon spread out far in all four directions. And the sky was obscured by a surface of black. A black that was unlike that of the night sky or rain clouds.

There looked to be people here. Men and women alike were all naked, and each of them either sat scattered on the ground or stood around in a stupor, looking up at the sky. Gumillia decided to try talking to an old man that was closest to her.

“Excuse me.”

“Hm? What is it, miss?”

“What is this place?”

“…Ah, a new arrival. This place is the Hellish Yard. Where the dead assemble.”

“The Hellish Yard…!?”

Then did that mean that Gumillia had died? Certainly, the shock that she’d received back then had been strong enough to do so.

The old man continued talking.

“You can see the river of lava I assume. Follow it up. Once you do, you’ll come to see a giant door. And once you’ve passed through, then you’ll be able to reach Heaven, safe and sound.”

“Why haven’t you gone?”

“I’ll go eventually. But…I need a bit more courage. I am a man who once killed his wife and abandoned his son. And committed many other misdeeds besides. There are probably a lot of people waiting for me in heaven who despise me. I need to figure out how I should face these people—and so I’m hanging around here a bit longer to put my feelings in order. It’s probably the same sort of situation with all the others here.”

“Even people who have, committed crimes can equally enter Heaven?”

“This…is an abandoned place. Strictly speaking there would probably be a ‘Master of the Hellish Yard’, and that person would decide whether the dead can go to Heaven or Hell. But God didn’t deploy a ‘Master of the Hellish Yard’ to this place. So now this place is just a mere highway, unable to fulfill its established role. –That’s what I’ve heard from the others.”

“I see…Are there any new arrivals here, aside from me?”

“Maybe. You should try heading over to the door. Most of the dead people are probably gathering there.”

Gumillia bowed her head to the old man, and then started walking along the river.

As he’d said, there was an enormous door there. There was a zigzagging bridge over the river of lava, and it looked as though once you crossed it, you’d arrive at the door.

Before the bridge was a single woman—or no, not a woman but a man. The pervert wearing the maid uniform was there, with his foot planted on a mask-like object.

“Behemo…so you died too.”

“Hey, Gumillia. That’s not it. I was just blown down here to the Hellish Yard by the blast. It’s probably the same for you.”

“What’s the mask?”

“Ah…you mean this guy?”

Behemo scooped up the mask and handed it to Gumillia. The mask was a half-mask that only covered the top of someone’s face, with ominous symbols painted on it. And there was no hole to see out of the left eye section.

“—So we meet again, Gumillia.”

Shockingly, the mask could talk. And she recognized the voice.

“You’re…The Demon of Wrath!”

“Yes, this is my true form. A mask with a will—a species that doesn’t exist in this world, but they flourished in the ‘Second Period’, enough to form a country consisting of nothing but the mask race.”

Behemo took the mask from Gumillia’s hand.

“Seems the blast wielded influence even outside of the mental world. The Demon of Gluttony probably opened a hole when she entered. And so this guy got caught up in it as well.”

Upon hearing that, the mask started cackling.

“Goodness, what a blunder...Though it looks like that other person staying in the key escaped.”

“The other person?” Gumillia asked.

“Yeah. There was another being inside the golden key. Apparently he was repelled from the key as well, and wound up being blow somewhere far away. …I have to think that he’s found some other vessel and climbed inside it by now.”

There were no other figures before the bridge. Gumillia looked around them, and then asked Behemo, “Where are Levia, Irina, Eve, and the ‘Demon of Gluttony’—”

“They didn’t come here. As for what happened to them…I don’t know.”

“Is there a way out of here?”

“I don’t know any way up to the ground world. But it looks like we can head to Heaven for now. Held is likely up there. Asking him about it might be the fastest way to find out.”

Behemo started to cross over the bridge, holding the mask. Gumillia followed after him.

The door was closed, but as Behemo grew closer it opened automatically. A dazzling light seeped out. The light was too bright to see what was on the other side.

��Come on, let’s go—to the ‘Heavenly Yard’.”

Behemo started to enter the door, but the mask stopped him.

“Hold it. Leave me here.”

“…? Why?”

“I don’t want to go to the Heavenly Yard. I don’t want to meet all of them there.”

“But if you don’t, you won’t be able to return to the ground world.”

“I don’t care. I’ve gotten tired of that place. And it looks like there are a lot of new sights here in the Hellish Yard. I would like to start some new research here, now.”

“I see…Well, do whatever you want. See ya, Seth.”

Behemo flung the mask down, and then went through the door.

Gumillia moved to follow him, but the moment that the light touched her left arm, she could feel an extreme heat. She immediately pulled it back.

--Her arm was burned black.

If she entered the door, she’d be burned to a crisp.

“What is it? Aren’t you coming?”

She could hear Behemo’s voice from inside the light.

“Too hot to enter.”

“Ah…So that’s it. That’s a problem. The only ones who can enter the ‘Heavenly Yard’ are dead people. You arrived here in the Hellish Yard while still alive…”

“So why are, you alright?”

“I’m a god. Gods are special cases.”

What did that mean? If she couldn’t go to heaven or return to the ground world, did that mean that she had no choice but to spend the rest of eternity here in the Hellish Yard?

“Is there, really no way to go to the ground world from here?” Gumillia asked Behemo.

“Didn’t I tell you? I have no idea. The only person who knows is ‘Master of the Hellish Yard’—but she’s not here right now.”

“Where, are they?”

“…The Master of the Hellish Yard is my sister, Levia. As long as she’s not in the Hellish Yard, you will never get out.”

Lying on the ground, the mask again started cackling. Gumillia stomped on the mask as hard as she could, and said, steadying her resolve, “…Then, I will wait here. Until the day that Levia—that Elluka Clockworker comes to, get me.”

“Haha, what a laughable thing. My sister, come to get you? …Well, that might end up being the case.”

“--? What do you mean?”

“She’s already regained her memories. And our wish—is to destroy the world. If my sister hasn’t forgotten that, then it’ll come to pass sooner or later. As the ground world is destroyed, the barrier between it and the Hellish Yard will be dissolved, and so it may become possible for you to leave and for her to come here.”

Was Behemo still aiming for the destruction of the ground world? Gumillia asked him, and after a moment she heard his reply.

“I’ve…had enough. I’ve slept for so long I’ve stopped caring about all of that. I had wanted to end everything and rebuild the world anew before humans could prosper. But it’s too late. There are a lot of humans in the ground world now, aren’t there? I no longer have enough inclination left in me to reset them.”

“…”

She prayed that he wasn’t lying. At least, it was the only thing Gumillia could do then.

“Gumillia. I don’t mind that you’re waiting here, but…The Hellish Yard has a miasma. It will slowly eat at your mind. It’d be nice if you could hold onto your sanity until my sister gets here.”

“Wha…!?”

“Well then—I’m off. Try to hang in there, kay?”

She could hear footsteps from within the light. The sound was growing steadily farther away.

“—Wait, Behemo!”

Eventually, she was no longer able to hear the footsteps.

The mask continued to laugh, with Gumillia still pressing her foot down on him

“Is this time to be laughing, Seth? At this rate you and I, will be driven mad by the miasma.”

The mask stopped laughing.

“That is a problem… But managing a situation is the duty of a scientist. First I suppose I’ll start researching a way to ward off the miasma.”

So it seemed that all she could do was put her hopes on Seth’s intellect. Gumillia took her foot off the mask.

“However…” the mask murmured with a serious tone, “Unfortunately, I obviously have no arms or legs as I am now. My research cannot commence in this state. So then. I want to put you to work as my limbs.”

“You want me to help you.” Gumillia thought on it for a moment. “—Fine. Seems like the only way I have.”

“If it’s too troublesome to carry me around, then I’d be ever so grateful if you could put me on as a mask. …Relax. I’m not some cursed mask—I won’t take over your body. It’s just that, being on a person’s face is very calming for me, given that I am, after all, a mask.”

“…Don’t trust you.”

“Oh no, you must believe me. I upheld our agreement during the battle with Lemy, didn’t I?”

“…Tch.”

Clicking her tongue, Gumillia picked up the mask and then put it on.

“—The left eye should be covered up, but I can still see just fine.”

“Don’t make light of my functions. While you are wearing the mask, you can see all even in darkness, and be able to read the hearts of other people. –Come, first we should begin by searching for materials and building some tools.”

Gumillia nodded, and began walking away.

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asterinjapan · 6 years

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The Palace Returns - Nagoya part 1

Hello again from - uh, in transit in between Kobe and Himeji at the moment, haha. I'm typing the start of this report on my phone, since it's gonna be late when I get back to the hotel.

This report will be split in two for reasons that will become apparent later, but here’s the ‘general’ report!

I didn't see my friend today, as I had to get an early start. I had a shinkansen ticket burning in my pocket for 7:28 to Nagoya, so after early breakfast, I hopped over to the station. Turns out there's an underground passage that starts pretty nearby our hotel, so that's very convenient as we need to cross several zebra crossings otherwise. Doesn't sound too bad, except the traffic lights in Japan usually keep you waiting for a while, so that can delay you quite a bit. With how annoyingly punctual the shinkansen are, that's not a risk I want to take, haha. All went fine and I was way in time for my train, so I looked around for souvenirs (entirely unsurprisingly, everything is either white peach flavoured or features Momotarou, usually both) and then went to the tracks. It was already quite hot despite the time, so I was glad to get into my seat and settled in for a 2 hour journey.

The trip took me back over Himeji and Shin-Osaka, although I barely noticed since I spent most of the trip getting some eye shut and nibbling on my melon pan, haha. After Kyoto, the next stop was Nagoya, which should be familiar ground, except it's been 3 years and my memory is just - incredibly selective apparently, oops. I met up with my Japanese friend here, and together we had a drink and a snack before destination number one for today. Who wants to take a wild guess? ... yeah, okay, Nagoya castle, haha. I'd been there before, but things are different now. For one, the main keep is no longer accessible and they're planning to take it down next year (nooooo) to rebuild it entirely anew (yaaaay). Two: the adjacent Honmaru palace has undergone serious reconstructions, and they finished that just last June. The screen paintings were already incredible when I only got to see like 20% back in 2015, so this was definitely worth a revisit.

From Nagoya station, it's two subway hops to Nagoya castle. We almost immediately wanted to turn around again once above ground, though. Clear blue skies are a fantastic backdrop for castle pictures, but it's less fantastic that they bring out the sun, and Nagoya was already one of the hottest cities in the country this week (the plastic display of green tea in a shop window had melted, I kid you not, it was on the news and everything). Wehhh. At least the walk to the castle grounds was short and the grounds had plenty of trees providing much needed shades.

One of the turrets came into view first, and upon entering the main grounds, it turned out you could enter it! Since it's an old building made of wood, fire hazard precautions dictate only a select number of people are allowed in at the same time, so we queued for quite a wait (thankfully mostly under the tree covers). The first two floors of the turrets held a lot of information about the building and its ingenuity (they really liked using that word, haha), which was actually very interesting to read and immediately see. The top floor also had information, but stood out the most as it offered a rather amazing view of the main keep and the palace, so I made sure to take some pictures from the window before making it down again down the pretty scary, dark staircases, haha. (So far I have yet to match the ridiculously high stairs of Matsumoto castle, I honestly thought I'd meet my end there back in 2015).

Next stop, the palace! This is actually way more interesting than the inside of a main keep, which might look impressive on the outside, but was mainly meant for defense. If you want the shiny and impressive screen paintings, the palaces are where they're at, since that's where the shogun resided and met his vassals and all, so this had to be impressive.

The Honmaru Goten palace of Nagoya was entirely ruins not too long ago, but they rebuilt it entirely, based on pre-War photos and references. They recreated the paintings as accurately as possible, and boy, shiny and impressive are definitely the words for it. I drained my camera battery trying to catch all the glamour, and the further you got into the higher up rooms, the more impressive they got. Not only the screens, but also the bolts and ceilings are impressively decorated, and we'll worth a close up study.

It is, however, a time sink, as it was almost 2 pm by the time we got out. Oops. I sneaked around the corner to get some pictures of the main keep against a blue sky backdrop as I don't think I'll get that chance again within the next decade, and then we rushed to Sakae district for very belated lunch and main event number 2 of today, and the whole reason Nagoya was today's side trip. My absolute favourite artist KOKIA had chosen today to perform at Nagoya Blue Note, a pretty intimate venue (about 200 people tops), and it was time to cash in on the tickets.

After a trip to find lunch (Nagoya specialty is a dish with eel, but dang it, all places were closed at this hour and wouldn't open again until the concert started), we went to the hall and got chased down like a dozen stairs, haha. I was starting to wonder if the concert was secretly in the southern hemisphere or something (at least it's winter there!), but the venue is just - in the basement. Like a jazz club. I'll save the concert review for a separate post, but needless to say is I'm very happy with today's side trip and I'm the proud owner of an album I already had, but this one is signed! Ahhhhhhh~ (hello I love KOKIA a lot)

After a quick get together with fellow fans, it was time to secure new shinkansen tickets (it turns out a lot of people had come from all over the country for this performance, so everyone was glad with the first performance being in the afternoon instead of in the evening, and also a lot of people had trains to catch).

And that leaves me here! I took the Hikari to Osaka, managed to ignore muscle memory leading me back to the Osaka hotel and caught the Kodama for Okayama instead. The Kodama just pulled up from Aioi, the last stop before Okayama, so I timed this report really well, haha.

Time to close up and find my hotel by night as it's now 10:30 pm (what a wild Saturday night), and tomorrow I'll see my friend over breakfast to catch up again. At least this gives us things to talk about, haha! I sent her a text earlier and received a suspiciously pink photo in return, I wonder if she went train spotting, hmmm...

See you tomorrow!!

#report #japan 2018 #report: japan 2018 #places: nagoya

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hadesburns · 5 years

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a quiet figure, a lonesome shadow, his footfalls nothing but breathless pads against the stone-laden paths leading from one end of the courtyard to another, his form near to weightless, his specific gravity catering only to light, the force of his presence in this place something of a blackhole to absorb any of the surrounding colors he’d always abhorred, despite the tastes of its time. each step is measured and grounded, the rise and fall of his chest a soliloquy to the stars overhead, gleaming like jewels brighter than any vault-prized necklace, ancient like the roots of the earth, like the moon dancing across the sky in a snowy billowing dress, like himself, his skin porcelain and cold, all the edges of him sharpened to destruction, and white, pale, pallid, deathless.

but despite his muted advance, he is nothing subtle, nothing subdued, nothing soft, the silk and velvet tresses cascading from his shoulders deep and dark, flush vanta-black against his sour complexion, only matching to his eyes, his onyx hair pulled back into a short tail, his history scorched, his soul churning, and he has come here not to be silent, not to be forgotten, for that is not in his character, not in his design, the chemical and genealogical makeup of his atoms screaming and raging for a glory seemingly always out of reach. no, he’s here to re-establish himself to the pinnacle of stars who watch with unending patience, eyes unblinking as he moves beneath them, a piece on a chessboard in the midst of a game already begun, already beheld, already thought to have ended.

but haneul has far from ended, only simply biding his time, waiting at the bottom of oceans, coiled like a sea-serpent, composed while all those around him writhe, stoical while his counterparts gnash their teeth and bid for blood, their hunger and greed and loyalties blinding them to strategies that burn ever so clear to his vantage. he comes like winter, like a storm front, raw and frigid and inescapable, comes like the tides of water, currents beating against shorelines and mountainsides, comes like the nighttime blooming in the aftershocks of solar heatwaves, the darkness insurmountable, unconquerable.

this place is nothing but a ghost now, the kaleidoscope of its once-celebrated tapestries and engineering, the ingenuity of culture and perfection, of warfare and policy, now only broken, disjointed shades to be gawked at by strangers, by fools, by hypocrites, tourists wandering in and out of the places he once called home; his bedrooms, his gardens, his refuge. in the daylight hours, his sacred palace becomes a zoo for the curious eye, but here now in midnight’s shroud, he strolls through the stairs and hallways in peace, the tranquility of ruin and rubble etching against the stones of the walls, the pillars, the cobbles, and something in the center of his chest ignites and mourns for this cheapening. all things grow into amorphous silhouettes against the blue horizon, all things except haneul, his kindred, and his legacy.

but he hasn’t been back to this palace in an age, the antiquity of korea spinning and flipping, the royal family’s blood spilling and spreading too thinly across the country, his heritage nothing but a myth now, nothing but stories writ in textbooks and old rhymes, an irritant to his ambitions, for even though he might take pride in their remembrance of him, he will forever starve for a constant glory, once that will blaze eternally– he doesn’t want to be a memory. he wants to be a recurring nightmare, he wants to exist in the forefront of these humans’ minds, praised and worshiped in all the corners of the earth, his name printed across their tongues and their brows, branded into their palms, coursing through their veins. he was not born to stand beneath the heel of another god, not the one he betrayed nor the one he’d betrayed him to. he is not meant to sizzle in someone else’s fire.

the old courtroom sits motionless and dull, shaded by the heaviness of its own ambience, hundreds of years spent elevating kings and princes, administrators and officials, and between one blink and the next, haneul can see them all once again as though born anew like him, see how they lined the room in flawless symmetry, outlaying a straight path from the entrance to the throne, heads bowed, posture drawn taunt at his approach, respectful, revering. his first reign had doused these halls in gold and peace, through war and carnage, and as he strides slowly towards the throne, now marked off-limits by a modern signage, he can recall the way the bell-chimes sang just outside, the metals and jewels on his clothing reverberating through the hushed air; he is nineteen years old and already has the clearest vision for his country, for his life, for his lineage, and most of it has to do with expansion and control.

now, hundreds and hundreds of years later, he once again dons the heart of the room, the mantle, his throne fitting him better than any other ruler in existence, the cold boulder chair stinging against his skin like a homecoming gift, something about the sturdiness and unforgiving texture of the seat a calm and beautiful arrestment for him, and he would be lying if he confessed to never having missed it after so long across the battlefields of the planet. unlike how he’d first streamed into the position before, or the myriad of versions he’s pretended to be since then, this time he slumps down into the creases of the hard structure, his carriage relaxed yet commanding, unknotted yet still iron, still tree roots, still thunder.

he is cut sharp like a blade, all jagged atmosphere and razored eyes, cloaked in long trails of space-hued robes, born for catastrophe, born for crusades, born for aspirations that rival the heavens themselves, and he knows he was made by mountains, by gods, by starlight and insatiable interests, but it’s nigh time for another major shift in the workings of the world, and he owes no one any ounces of blood. if they made him this way, they should ought to expect him this way. he exhales frosted breath into the autumn air and imagines caius’ reign ending in a much different manner than ares had ever been able to manage; not in blood or fire or chaos, but in a singular strike to the throat.

“i will rebuild,” he murmurs to the phantoms in the corners of his sight, his memories only wisps in the darkness. “this time… i will be subservient to no one.”

#bio | you keep what you kill #for unholyempirerpg

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