PENANCE

[pkdon 1978]

 

 

 

 

——— ✠ ———

The heavy air of the goldleaf valley was fraught with the scent of sulfur and pulverised stone, entwined by the raucous jeers of the soldiery who had grown restless as they awaited orders. The Crown Prince stood amidst the entrenched siege lines, his jaw stroked contemplatively as that sole eye looked out over the dwarven hold of Kal’Baraz. For many of the legionnaires that scrambled around him, he stood as a beacon. A man of honour,  ever ready to breach the capital right besides those of lesser blood. 

Yet beneath the steel of his cuirass, Marcus felt only the profound weight of imperial destiny. There was a grim necessity to this slaughter that the prince understood all too well - a method to the madness. The deafening roar of artillery fire was not a sound of ruin, but the brutal engine of progress. For mankind to reach its potential, untethered by the woes of stagnancy and infighting, humanity had to lord over all. It was a bloody transaction, yet one he had accepted nonetheless.

CRASH.

A sudden blast shattered his distraction. A dwarven cannonball tore through the earth mere yards away, reducing a pikeman to a mess of shattered plate and ichor. The prince did not hesitate, forsaking the safety of the command trench as he rushed to the wounded man’s aid. Out stretched his hands, reaching for those of his fallen comrade.

He never heard the heavy thrum of that ballista string - the dwarves were famed for their engineering, after all. The ferrum-tipped bolt pierced his shoulder with a sickening, ungodly crunch. The impact lifted the Imperial from his feet, tearing through the Lodenland plate and bone with an utter indifference. His lone eye was forced heavensward, the grey skies made greyer by the billows of smoke that ascended. The chaos of the siege faded to a hum, and the choking grey dissolved to absolute darkness.

 

——— ✠ ———

At times, he held lucidity in the dark, yet few they were. Most often, the prince was a captive to his own past. That putrid stench of war had lifted, so too had the burdens of duty. It was Marcus’ eighteenth nameday, spent in the tonic air of the southern vales. Not merely a reckless, drunken night, but a stolen season. 

There, in the tavern, she stood. That lowborn girl held about her a gentle mannerism as she swept through from table to table, collecting the tankards unladen of their contents in honour of the prince. It was alien to him, compared to that cold formality of the capital. Her smile bore an unwavering warmth that cut- no, unravelled the man’s isolation. Over those few weeks spent wandering the sun-kissed fields, an unsettingly quiet peace had taken hold of him. He stared to her eyes of amber, as she did to his of verdant; yet she had not seen a prince, nor the crown would weigh upon his head - his privilege of dragonsblood meant naught. She saw only a man. And in her humble company, to that he was willingly reduced.

——— ✠ ———

The prince however, could not be granted so great a freedom. His destiny resided not in some stray hamlet, but at the heart of the Empire. He was soon recalled to the walls of Rittersburg, where he was then betrothed to Princess Valentina by his father - and the memory of Veronika was suffocated by the crown once more. Inevitably, the circumstances of time brought the consequence of that night to his door. Those summer fields hardened to the cold stone walls of his imperial solar. The boy, Friedel, sat before him, a ragged petitioner with the mud of his long trek still caked upon his boots.

You are my son.

The words had tasted like ash within the Heir’s mouth. The youth stood before him, a living breathing monument to a selfish sin. Every look that verdant hue mustered upon the boy’s face was a mirror of his own hypocrisy. The gentle woman of the fields to the unforgiving frontier. The sacred union with his wife, his dearest childhood friend, built upon a foundation of quiet deceit. A dual failure of the honour and virtue that he purported to uphold, and he the sole architect.

——— ✠ ———

The vision shifted once more, and once more the Prince was swept away by his black steed to the southern vales. He rode hard to those hinterlands, desperate to find the sickly woman before the illness would take her. The heir had promised that bastard boy that he would visit, a meagre redemption in the face of his transgression - but the modest farmstead offered no reunion. He found only a cold hearth, and a still, pale blue body, with none to weep for her. There Marcus stood, in the stifling silence, drowning in the echoes of his own sins. 

I failed you.

I will not fail him.

That whispered vow hung fragile in the cold air, offering no warmth to the desolate room. He sank to his knees, clattering harshly against the timber floorboards beneath. A trembling hand, masked by his leather glove, reached out to smooth a stray lock of light hair from her frozen cheek. It was a final mercy, yet thoroughly useless. He lingered there in the gloom, a broken man paying a bitter penance to a ghost of his youth, till at last the cobbled walls of the farmstead dissolved to darkness.

——— ✠ ———

The prince woke to a wretched, hollow agony. The heavy canvas of a medical tent fluttered in the ash-choked wind. A grim-faced chirurgeon hovered nearby, eyes narrowed in a mix of pity and dread. Marcus tried to push himself upwards, yet the left side of his body possessed a disturbing, weightless quality to it. He looked down. Where once there was an arm, only a heavily bandaged stump remained.

A silence descended upon the tent. His lonely eye traced that blood-soaked linen, and in the shadows echoed the whispers of his father.

To become Emperor, one must give a part of themselves, my son.

A rite of passage, honoured by time. The prince dared not refuse. To satisfy that grim requirement, he had severed his own index finger, an agonising surgery of which his father’s dagger was the instrument. A willing sacrifice - proof of his devotion.

He looked again to the absentee arm. That was no voluntary tithe. Was it not enough? Was it divine retribution? Did the Father of Flame look upon him as a fraud? It must be, he thought. But was the Lord done with him - had his tithe been paid? How much more would he have to give - how much more was even left? His woes were agonising, and amidst them he had settled upon a truth. 

The Prince must atone.

 

Spoiler

wow narrative post, dont metagame type shi

 

[Riot 743]

Spoiler

I can respect this one. Good post.

 

[xo31 3979]

Spoiler

4 of swords symbolism goes hard in the image. i hope it was intentional