LET DEATH TAKE ME WITH A CROWN ON MY HEAD [PK]

[Toffee 2843]

 

And how long, pray tell, will you be Vandalore?

Until I die, of course. Let death take me with a crown on my head and spear in my hand. Abdication is for the soft of heart.

Adalfriede’s nerves sparkled with electric awareness—the veil scratching her ears, the stiffness of her gloves, the golden circlet tight around her temples. And that blackthorn grip most of all, the dirk’s handle moulded to her hand after fifty years.

 

“It must have been a difficult day for you, with your mother's funeral.” Adalfriede sidled around the edge of the well, her blade hidden behind her back. “You seem tired, Sir Otto. We wished to bring you food and good cheer.”

 

What an easy thing it had been, convincing that softheaded barmaid to trot dutifully behind her to Stroheim Manor, carrying a plate of food for the poor, grieving knight. He really did look tired, deep purple shadows under his eyes. Shadows he had had for years… years of walking amongst her people, her children, her grandchildren, all the while holding fast to his dark and terrible secret. Anger surged through Adalfriede, burning and unfamiliar to she who was constructed of iron-will and pipeleaf smoke. Untethered and wild and reckless. Get ahold of yourself. She squeezed the handle of her dirk even tighter.

 

“Danke schön, Fürstin.” Sir Otto’s gaze darted to her, a barely perceptible twitch under his eye as Adalfriede stalked closer. Barely perceptible… except to her. Adalfriede had spent hours in front of the looking glass perfecting every smile, every glower, until she could control each muscle in her face with half a thought. This man could hide nothing from her. Not anymore. She came close enough to see herself reflected in his eyes—Johanna’s eyes, she realised with a start.

 

Johanna Stroheim, the woman she had left to die at the hands of those Frankish warriors some forty-five years ago. Perhaps Adalfriede should have put an arrow through Johanna’s throat herself. That way, she wouldn’t have borne Sir Otto, and none of this would have happened.

 

Sir Otto pursed his lips, looking down at the plate the barmaid had brought, piled high with roast turkey and potatoes. What was her name? Ah, yes. Annaleisa. “Inside?” He nodded to the doors of Stroheim Manor behind them.

 

Oh, no, no. Adalfriede would not be a corpse in some forgotten, windowless room. She drew the dirk from behind her back and pressed its point against the vulnerable softness beneath Sir Otto’s chin. “Out here is fine, sir.” His neck already bore wounds and marks; the harsh, burning line of a garrote or rope across his throat. Curious.

 

Sir Otto dropped the plate of food, sending it shattering to the gravel as he jerked back. He raised shaking hands between them, and Adalfriede gauged how far they were from the sword sheathed at his side. It would take time for him to draw it, time where she could dart in and stab up into his skull. Ser Malcolm had taught her that. For a moment she was back in that manor house in Whitespire, going through the motions with him, learning to fight in her long skirts.

 

Sir Otto backed away a few steps, but his words failed him, lips opening and closing like a fish. Adalfriede stalked after him, sunlight glinting wickedly from the edge of her blade. Smashed ceramic and turkey bones splintered beneath her boots.  “You were seen,” she hissed, that carefully controlled ember of fury sparking to life in her breast. Calm, calm, she told herself. A killing calm. “At my grandson's wedding. You have looked me in my face and worn that cross on your chest knowing all the while that you…” She could not even say it, her upper lip curling in contempt. “You bring shame onto the name of Saint Tylos.”

 

“You have yet to kill me,” Sir Otto breathed, his hands still held in the air. His fingers trembled.

 

“I should.” Adalfriede jabbed the tip of her dagger against his armoured chest, right by the cross of Saint Tylos. “By GOTT I should spill your lifesblood here in front of your family's manor.” She brought her blade up close to his throat, the leather of her gloves creaking with the force of her grip. “How did this happen? How did you become this?”

 

Sir Otto lifted his chin, his eyes dark and haunted. He made no move to back away or knock aside her blade. “I did not ask for it. Can’t you see?” His gaze turned pleading, a deep furrow between his brows speaking of pain and keening sorrow. Not enough to melt Adalfriede’s stony heart. “It is a curse. There is no cure, trust me I've tried. It's… It's…” Words evaded him. The whites of his eyes showed now, wide and terrified as Adalfriede’s blade drew a small bead of blood.

 

“... Otto?” came Annaleisa’s voice, small and afraid. Adalfriede had forgotten about her entirely. She fiddled anxiously with her long blonde braid, looking between them both. “Otto, what is she talking about?”

 

“There is a cure.” Closing her eyes, Adalfriede took a deep breath in through her nose. That rage subsided, spiralling deep down into her. Down and down that bottomless well until there was nothing left of it, only a smooth, emotionless calm. “May your soul be redeemed in the Seven Skies, Sir Otto.” With that sombre prayer, she angled the tip of her blade beneath his chin and opened his throat from ear to ear, as smooth and clean as breaking the wax on a scroll.

 

Annaleisa let out a high, piercing scream. Sir Otto jerked back, blood spewing from the gash in his throat and staining the gravel crimson. Annaleisa rushed forwards, pressing her hands over his throat to stem the bleeding, but it ran through her fingers in thick rivulets. Adalfriede heard the screams as if from far away. Nothing could touch her, no sadness nor regret. She bowed her head.

 

O’ the one who defeats the enemy and the heretic, the guardian of the guardians, the shadow of God on this Earth. O’ Exalted Owyn, I pray to thee, guide this wayward soul before the Lord and cleanse his soul of wickedness.

 

Sir Otto’s dying words came out in a gurgle… until it turned into a muted scream. A growl rumbled out of him, loud snaps echoing out from beneath his armour. The metal bulged unnaturally, Sir Otto’s limbs cracking out at unsightly angles, and he fell to his knees as the armour peeled off of him like dead leaves. Crimson dripped from the edge of Adalfriede’s blade and onto her boot. Blood thundered in her ears.

 

“Get away,” she barked at Annaleisa, but she couldn’t even hear her own voice. “He's going to, he's… he's transforming.”

 

“Into what?”

 

Sir Otto’s screams rose to a crescendo then fell quiet. Unnervingly so. His legs lengthened, bending in the way of a dog’s, and his arms grew long and wiry thin, topped with long claws growing from his knuckles. In eerie silence the sinister being rose, towering far above Adalfriede, a thin thread of saliva dripping from its half-open maw. Blood matted the fur around its throat but the deathwound seemed little more than a scratch against its leathery skin. Amber eyes looked directly at her, pupils shrunk to rageful pinpricks. Adalfriede stood, transfixed, her dagger a steak knife next to those claws. She clenched her hand around the blackthorn grip and brought it up between them anyway. Sunlight glinted off the bloodied metal, still as sharp as the day Ser Malcolm gave it to her.

 

Impossibly fast, a confusion of black and grey fur knocked her on her back. Hot breath on her face, stinking of gore. At first, she felt nothing. The creature’s head plunged towards her neck and she heard the wet squelch of teeth ripping into flesh, saw the spray of blood, but there was no pain. Everything, numb. Clouds scudded through the sky far overhead, blurry, mixing with the golden light of an afternoon sun. The barmaid screamed again, distant and distorted.

 

I cannot die, Adalfriede thought dumbly. I have no spear in my hand.

 

The pain rushed in like wildfire, screaming over the flesh of her neck and shoulder, burrowing right down to the bone. The werewolf’s teeth scraped against her clavicle but still it bit down. It would keep biting until her bones shattered under the pressure. Then they did, with a wet crack. Darkness crept in at the edges of Adalfriede’s vision but she would not let it swallow her whole. 

 

“Get… help…” she wheezed to Annaleisa. Stupid girl, she might have added, but that darkness pressed in, swirling and thick like the fog during her Trial of Spirit.

 

She had stared at a reflection of herself in that dark river, avarice coiling around her like serpents, ambition morphed into twisted trees taking root in the deepest recesses of her soul. Theoderic watched on from over her shoulder, masked and expressionless.

 

I do what I must to survive. She struck her palm against the water, shattering the twisted face of her worse half. You were there, you saw what they did to our family when we showed a flicker of weakness. It may be ugly, but in this world there are necessary evils.

 

If you only tapped into me out of necessity, why am I here, embedded in the very fabric of your world?

 

Because we are in a constant state of survival. We are not safe.

 

Do you think of me only as prey? Must I always run away, survive, survive, survive? What of living?

 

I do not know what that is.

 

To survive, you suppress me. To live, I suppress you. If we were at peace with one another, we could do both.

 

Peace…

 

Peace looked like smoking in the gardens with Adelmar, a filmy haze around them as the day faded to purple night. It looked like games of Ur against Leon, even though he always won. Perhaps she let him win, just to see that smile, dimpled like the young man she had married. Sitting in the fields of heather with Frederica as a girl, then a young woman, then a princess. Riding with Isolde. Carving runestones with Estmund. Her family, these bright lights shining around her like so many stars, what had begun as a way to secure her place as princess becoming so much more.

 

The wolf reared back, sending a bite down towards her throat, but Adalfriede brought up her good hand and held one of those long canines, keeping the beast’s heavy head away from her. She would not die today. There were yet more runestones to build. Estmund’s honour must be avenged. She had the Waldenic Diet, the Reinmaren Moot. Trials of the Stallion to oversee, kings to topple. Lukas von Kretzen languished in a cell; he could not emerge a year from now and find her dead. No, no, I am the Lawspeaker, I will see justice done.

 

Her hand may well have been made from parchment. The creature took off two fingers and broke every other bone with the force of its bite. Those fangs came down on her throat and ripped it out with one savage shake of its head, but as her blood coated its tongue, the werewolf recoiled as if burned. Its weight lifted off of her. So, so light… she could float right up into the clear blue sky. Hot blood pumped from the ruin of her throat, soaking her veil. It’s already red. It will wash out. Breath rattled in her chest.

 

A gruesome cracking of bones sounded out, snarls turning to screams, then whimpers. A beast no longer, Sir Otto lay beside her, his throat once again bleeding where she had slashed it. He gurgled and coughed, his body convulsing. In killing the beast, Sir Otto was an unfortunate casualty. Adalfriede feebly patted the gravel, searching out Sir Otto’s hand with her own mangled one. She didn’t feel pain anymore. It was like she was floating, half in, half out of her body. The sky called to her. Or was that Caius Primus? Her good fingers found Sir Otto’s hand, and he opened his palm for her, interlacing what he could of their fingers.

 

“Mother?” he gasped out through ruined vocal chords.

 

Adalfriede’s head lolled towards him. A faint, hopeful smile pulled at his lips, still wet with her blood. A single tear rolled down the side of his face, cutting through the gore, and dripped to the ground. Distantly, shouts. Shadows moving in the courtyard, hands pressing over the red ruin of her neck. She gurgled wordlessly, squeezing his hand. Yes, your mother is here. She did not burn on the funeral pyre. I did not leave her to die. The smile remained, even as the light faded from Sir Otto’s eyes.

 

The blood from her ravaged throat spilled slower now, more of a seeping trickle. Good, good. Soon, I will sleep, and wake up next to Leon in our chambers. Adalfriede excelled at lying, even to herself, but this lie unravelled quickly. Numbness crept up her legs. Princess, Vandalore, Lawspeaker… none of it without him. No life without him. There was a strange relief in knowing she would go first.

 

Josefina… watch over your father.

 

---

 

 

1941–2003

[BuilderBagel 1203]

The widowed Prince of Minitz wept over the still form of Adalfriede, her body draped upon the sofa in their parlor. "She met the end she sought," he murmured, his voice thick with grief. "She came to me not as a Reinmaren, but she departed from me as one.. Will you take her Gelimar, Theoderic?" He pleaded hopelessly, as his hands maintained their hold on her lifeless digits.

[Random 1697]

Adalwin cursed at himself. He had done what he could when the pleading barmaid arrived at the doorsteps of the Ehrenwalds. He had rung the bell of Kretzen to rally for support. 
But he had failed to be there when it actually mattered. Had he not been caught up in Estmund’s nonsense, as he believed it to be, and continued his walk around the area - perhaps he could have done… something.

But that’s not how things turned out. Adalwin would not even know of Otto’s and Adalfriede’s passing until the sun rose the next day.

 

”Very well.”, he told himself, angrily. “those werebeasts will pay the price for disrupting life in Reinmar.”

 

Spoiler

Curse you Hugo for dying before making me a squire aaaaah

 

Edited November 18, 2024 by Dr Random K.

[alienescence 1415]

1 hour ago, Toffee said:

Josefina… watch over your father.

Josefina, the daughter to the once Princess and Vandalore, and to the elderly Prince Leon, the second of his name.

 

Josefina thought about her last encounter with Adalfriede, ever since she had been escorted home from Numendil and the news had been broken to her by her brother-in-law, Bernhardt, who was unable to calm her.

Adalfriede arrived at the Barony of Wesenburg and had asked Josefina if the dinner she hosted had gone well. Josefina explained how it was attacked by a Frank loyalist and then mentioned, "She arrived. And left early. Otto tried to make her leave from the start."

"And it did not occur to you to prevent that from happening?"

The Princess's words, filled with disbelief, rang in Josefina's ears as her shoulders were squeezed unbearably tight by her. But Adalfriede wasn't one to stay mad forever.

"It was a nice feast, either way!" Josefina tried to reason after she had told Adalfriede that Sir Otto, was one of the afflicted.

"Thank you for hosting this feast, Josefina. I am sure it was lovely, before all this unpleasantness."

The temporary relief Josefina felt, her simple mind thought that was the end of it, and that all would be dealt with better next time.

There was no next time, Josefina realized as she stood in front of her mother's corpse, inconsolable, embracing her father, Leon, tightly.

[Ninjay 1197]

 

Somewhere on the roofs of Kretzen, Jay sat on a ledge, legs dangling while his head hung and eyes stared below. 

A few minutes earlier, slightly different timing, I could have. . .

He shook his head some, forcing such thoughts away. He sat there with a silent mind for some time, until some different ones came about.

Seems I can ask no more favors nor make more wagers with you, my friend.

I hope, in some way, you are proud of how it went. You rid us of a deathly threat.

. . . And here I thought I might go first! Ha!

. . .

As he smiled ever so slightly, some drops of rain fell onto the streets below.

But when he looked up, he saw no clouds.

[Plausifraunz 379]

Rosalyn cursed and screamed. In her rage, she nearly destroyed her desk in the room she held in the Ehrenwald manor. For now, it seemed that the lady of the house would lock herself away in her room, sorrowfully crying to herself over the news of her mother's passing in a mess she would only later clean and fix.

"How can this happen?!" Her cries would be met through the night unable to be quelled. 

[DogWithABanana 100]

Frozen, Estmund could only slowly close the door in the face of the messenger. As he turned around with shock-open eyes. His lips were left ajar, then trembling. He clutches his mouth to muffle his sobs as he crumples against the door.

He soon had to tell Rosalyn the news himself.

[framalam 837]

Lukas von Kretzen languished, languished still. Leon had blooded him, but it was Adalfriede who heeded the Shugo’s call for aid, she who had shielded Calliopeburg, and, of course, she who had imprisoned him. He smiled, a wicked, wrinkled smile from what it was a decade and a half ago. Adelmar would surely not come lash him while her corpse lay unburnt.

[Morphine 823]

Oswald von Wesenburg, having just seen his grandmother within his baronial walls not too long before, barred his bedroom door and took to channeling his grief through poetry.

While no one may ever read it, it was his only way of coping.

It is not at the end for which we mourn,
But for the abrupt cold silence that sweeps over such a noblewomen as she.
Your life and deeds are your own Grandmother,
And your legacy forever carved in stone shall stand stark a monument for me. 

[juliaINC 592]

„I know I intend on living to at least a hundred.”

„Oh, so do I. At the very least.”

„Should neither of us fall in battle, we will be old women together.”

„Verily. Either we die together- spears in hand, or that.”

 

Weakly did fall the shoulders of the tall, bulky shieldmaiden, the image and sound of the two women laughing over a shared alehorn fading from her mind. Isolde’s eyes, once bright and curious, had long since dimmed. Those same eyes had met Adalfriede’s dark and watchful gaze on the day she had given her schwur to yield her own life ere her Fürstin should give hers. Now, they were sunken and weary.

 

“I should have been there, a shield to my Fürstin. A friend to Adalfriede.”

And in that weak moment, Isolde felt herself to be a shield to none, and a friend to but few.

[crazedpudding 2512]

Frederica stood vigil in that same parlor where Adalfriede’s, her mother’s, mangled body had come to rest, viscera dripping down the upholstery she’d chosen so many years ago when such things seemed to matter so very much.

 

Leon wept at the side of his wife, and Frederica found she had already moved to brace him with an arm about his shoulders. Rage filled her chest for one incandescent moment, and orders flew from her mouth as they never had before. Demands to know what had become of this woman who had raised her sounded foreign in her ears, high with shock and cold with fury.

 

She had never demanded anything of anyone.

 

What need was there? People would do as she asked, or they would not. It made no difference to her, her own hands could work fields and wood as well as any other pair. All it would take was time, the one thing she had so little of. It mattered little, it was Erwin’s land she worked, Erwin’s reign she built foundations for, all for Erwin.

 

She had become a strange creature now, wobbling knees propping up her son as he held so tightly to her, arms that felt like hers and yet not at all wrapped around him as though he were still the tiny babe she’d sworn to be strong for decades ago. And yet, Frederica had never been without Adalfriede.

 

She hardly remembered the scant few years she’d lived in her childhood without the woman who’d become her mother. Adalfriede had been the roots she grew from, the solid wall between her still-soft heart and the bitter winter of the world. 
 

Her shoulders were strong, they had to be to support her young son and his new wife. To share the weight of Leon’s grief so the only father she had left wouldn’t splinter under it. But Adalfriede’s strength had allowed her to keep her softness, even closely tucked into and hidden in her heart as it was. 
 

There was no Adalfriede to protect her now. 

[MunaZaldrizoti 8037]

Milena received word of the Fursten's demise within the Karodur, sat behind her great palatial desk. It was strange, to have seen the late-Princess so recently and to now learn she had made her final stand against such a ravenous foe. The dour princess did not weep, but there was a certain weight to this particular loss. The reminder of wager between two powerful Highlander women...never to be fulfilled. Advice and perhaps comradery, that was now relegated to missed opportunity.

 

The Palatine felt more alone in the world now than she had the day before. She had become, now, a dying breed.

[Mady 3771]

 

The cold eyes of Adalfriede would forever be ingrained into the young gir;’s memory, their intensity born to strike fear and inspiration into those to witness them. That same fear had lingered in the heart of  for only a short amount of time before the girl quickly opened her heart to the woman she’d call Grandmother. 

 

That late night, when the red walls of the Lesanov echoed nothing but wind, a solemn handmaid would deliver the news of the Reinmaren Princess’s demise. All the young girl could do was slip beneath her covers once more, crying herself into a dreamless sleep

 

[Frawlic 1602]

Dima Kovachev had only recalled two were-beasts in the flames on that recent wedding day. Perhaps she had never imagined a beast could live quietly and in peace within those walls. Yet that woman, ever so observant, had found it and her end in tandem. Maybe they were alike in more ways than one.

You will survive.

Why didn't she?

[MadOne 4945]

Adelmar, now an aged man himself reminisced of the first days that they had met in Whitespire. It all seemed so long ago, washed away with the tides of time, ever ebbing and flowing. She had been who she was; covetous, sharp and perhaps even scared, and he had been aloof, unwise and full of ambition.

 

He laboured there beneath the great chasm of the Ferdenwald that night, chipping at stone, etching with a chisel to make a forever-mark of the Princess that had been. His thoughts wandered to moments of rivalry shared, goblets that clashed, gifts shared and then the friendship that blossomed within. Grasping ahold of the dirt beneath, he raised it as a tribute to the wayward Princess that came to embody the Reinmaren spirit more than he ever could. “Here she was, and here shall she remain.” He muttered, as the earth began to slip away from his clasp. 
 

He did not shed any tears, nor offer his grieving wife any lamentations, but that night upon the knoll, surrounded by the golden stalks of his life’s work, he opened a wineskin for the departed friend, kindred in spirit. Fate goes ever as it must.