Chapter Text
Year 1162, 24th of the Blue Sea Moon
Draka’an, Almyra’s capital city
In a land of sand and gold, a woman’s cry breaks the afternoon quiet as the desert’s oppressive heat washes in from a window left open by a distracted palace staff member. A second cry, long and keening, follows the first, the sounds of ardour and effort emanating from a young, beautiful woman prone on a bed, her hair sticking to her head with sweat, attended by a flurry of focused healers and medics. A young Almyran man decked in fine clothes denoting his royal lineage stands tensed with apprehension next to his wife, fretting over her obvious pain and distress from such a prolonged labour, and worried for the safety of the child his love is delivering into the world.
After hours of waiting, the Queen of Almyra sinks back in relief against her pillows as her child is picked up with gentle hands by a nearby medic and gently placed into a shallow bath of warm, lavender scented water, a second medic jumping aside in alarm as the King of Almyra himself dashes to the bath to check on his newborn child.
“Is the baby okay? I can’t hear anything!” The Queen calls to her husband from the bed, alarmed by the silence in the room. As if in answer, a small, warbling wail pierces the air, and the King turns to his wife, beaming, and announces, “Our son has a fine set of lungs!” He takes his son, now swaddled, over to his wife on the bed, placing him with a gentleness some may have claimed he did not have, into his wife’s arms.
Both of them are rapt with joy, the King lovingly caressing the face of their new born son as the Queen looks down at him, eyes of jade meeting eyes of emerald as she whispers, “ Look at you my dashing little boy, you look more like your father than me, that’s okay, as long as you’ve inherited my strength over your father’s softness, I’ll be okay with it.”
The man lets out a short, sharp, cracking laugh as he decries “Softness! The name ‘The Sandstorm of the East’ doesn’t come from my great sand-surfing talent, you know”.
“I know” She replies airily “I’m the greater sand-surfer anyway.”
They both laugh as the continue to trade quips and banter as the woman nurses her newborn. The man lays down next to his wife, and the hand she is not using to hold her child to her chest entwines fingers with the hand of her husband. They hold each other as the King leans down and murmurs, face resting on the top of his wife’s head “I think you should name him.”
“Really? Knowing the strange things Fódlan nobility names their children? I could name him something really ridiculous, you know, like ‘Ferdinand’”
“There is no chance that’s a real name”
“It is indeed, my cousin was a Ferdie.”
“Sun Gods above, it’s lucky I trust you, then”
The Queen smiled and looked from her adoring husband to the face of her son. A secret part of her was overjoyed that her child bore such close resemblance to the man she loved so much, a strong but kind man, she wanted to impart more of that spirit into her son with his name, and with this thought, she realised she knew exactly what she wanted to call the Prince of Almyra.
“I’ve got the perfect name for you, my little treasure, your name is now---”
******
Year 1168, 15th of the Garland Moon
Fetzem, A small fishing village on the coast of Grendaria
“Caylem!” Jeralt watches from a distance as a young girl no older than 9, rushes to the side of her older brother as he sinks to his knees clutching his newly broken nose. The girl’s hair is tied into pigtails with two sage green ribbons that flutter in the air as she bends down to clutch at her brother’s shoulder. Jeralt’s eyes narrow, they are two green ribbons with a strong resemblance to the ones he gifted to his daughter, Violet, to grace her dark green hair only a few days ago. Jeralt’s son, Aster, the uncanny twin to his sister, notices the ribbons too as he steps forward and growls “Give. Them. Back.”
“Aster, don’t worry about it, she can keep them.” Violet says, her voice tinged with the strain of her trying to pull her brother back by his arm. He doesn’t move, whilst he and his sister are both not even 10 years old, they are much stronger and faster than other children their age, with Aster as stubborn as Jeralt and Violet as mature and determined as her mother. Aster pulls his arm free and points a vicious finger at the two village children.
“No. I’m not leaving until she gives the ribbons back to you, and her brother apologises for calling you a liar when you asked him to get them back from her.”
“Punching him was enough, Az they both suck, but we can’t cause trouble for dad, so just leave it.” Aster frowns as Violet says this, knowing in part that his sister is right. The mayor of the last town had retracted Jeralt’s mercenary contract, and therefore his pay, when Violet had sent a thin little whittling knife into the thigh of a villager who had asked her ‘how much your daddy would sell you for, seein’ as he has your brother to continue the Merc business an’ he surely wouldn’t need a little girl tagging along’. The guilt of feeling responsible for a missed payment had left Violet extra vigilant to try and avoid any trouble in the new village. Aster looked at the strain on his sister’s face and relented, grabbing her hand, and turning away from the brats on the ground, thinking of what he was going to tell their dad later. The second the twins began to turn away from the village siblings, the pathetic tearful expression on the girl’s face shifted to an angry sneer as she reached for a stone on the ground and launched it at Aster’s forehead. Violet cried out in shock and fury as rivulets of blood trickled from Aster’s temple, streaming down his stony face like gory tears. She stormed up to the young village girl, and Jeralt launched from where he was observing the fight as his daughter sent a quick, well trained punch to the village brat’s face. He wasn’t worried as much about the punch, he had been training his children in the art of violence for a few years now, but he did worry about the strange green light that enveloped his daughters fist as the punch landed, and the sizzling, meat-in-a-hot-pan sound that came from the village girl’s cheek.
“Cassidy! Are you okay? What did that Merc bitch do to you?!”
“My face! She burnt my face Caylem! Go get mum, GO GET HER RIGHT NOW!”
As the girl – Cassidy, wailed on the ground, clutching her cheek, her brother, with blood on his face now dry and dark, dashed down the path towards a nearby house. Aster looked down at his sisters trembling hand, the only part of her that belied that she was upset, as her face was still and unflinching. He knew that despite his worry over yet another loss of work for his father that his face was a mirror of his sisters. They had been through this many, many times before.
“Shit.” Was all Jeralt said before he stalked over to his children, ushering them away from the curious townsfolk that had begun to gather and the distant sight of an enraged woman in an apron and the broken-nosed boy at her heels. He hated seeing the guarded expression on his children’s faces. Life for a mercenary’s kid was tough enough, but he knew his kids didn’t had a particularly hard time because of that otherness about them that even the most basic town idiot could sense, because of what she had done, that far away woman from a far away place that he chose not to think about.
Cassidy ran after the twins for a few steps as they started to leave with Jeralt, and her screeching could be heard even as they returned to the inn to pack their belongings.
“You-you’re- you’re monsters! Both of you! YOU’RE MONSTERS!”