Chapter Text
Felix rises before the sun to the sound of a crier in the street below the window, screaming the morning’s news.
I hate small towns, he thinks. He doesn’t consider himself a snotty noble, but he does like not getting his headlines verbally thrown at him at the crack of dawn every day like a rock through a glass pane.
He cracks his eyes open with effort. It’s still dark, which is odd because criers usually wait until it’s at least light out to begin their rounds. Now though, only the grey touch of pre-dawn spills through the window casement, painting the rumpled sheets and furs of the cramped bed in the washed-out dimness.
Felix sighs, relishing in the trapped warmth of his body heat and the familiar weight beside him. It’s an oddly peaceful moment.
“Imperial soldiers found dead upriver! All signs point to foul play!”
Oh for fucks sake.
Sylvain is sound asleep when Felix looks over to the other side of the bed—‘side’ used liberally here to refer to one half of the single mattress they’d attempted to cram themselves onto comfortably last night.
The chill of the morning is seeping into the room, stinging at any part of Felix’s skin that is exposed from the furs and blankets piled onto the bed. Sylvain, apparently smarter in sleep than in waking, had shifted in the night to hide his entire face under the covers, with only a shock of red hair visible on the pillow.
Felix stares at it for a moment before huffing a strand of his hair out of his face and getting out of bed.
The cold is as immediate as it is annoying, and Felix is already grumbling as he tosses back the covers. He extracts himself as stealthily as he can from Sylvain’s side and shivers only slightly when his bare feet hit the cold, splintered floor.
Not stealthy enough. Something to work on.
“What are you doing?” Sylvain croaks, shifting only a little under the blankets.
Trying to be nice, Felix thinks, but what he says is, “Leaving.”
Sylvain grumbles. “Would it hurt to be quieter?”
Felix rolls his eyes, even though there’s no one conscious enough to appreciate the expression. “Sorry I don’t have as much experience creeping unnoticed out of people’s beds as you,” he whispers.
“Low blow, Fe,” Sylvain mumbles sleepily into the pillow. “Why’re you up?”
“Someone’s been murdered.”
“Mm… okay.”
Felix starts to mentally count backwards from forty as he quietly gets dressed. He tugs on his overshirt and coat and busies himself with tucking and fastening everything to a presentable degree while Sylvain groans himself awake.
“What’s fer breakfast?” he murmurs.
“Not sure,” Felix replies. “Might just be leftovers from last night. I’ll pay if you want.”
“Sounds good… I’ll get lunch…?”
“Alright.”
Twenty-two… twenty-one…
Felix sits back down on the bed to lace up his boots and feels Sylvain shift. He finally casts a glance at his companion. He’s curled himself up against the throes of waking, his face, from what small part of it has been made visible, is scrunched up in annoyance at the new noises.
“You’re such a baby,” Felix mutters.
“M’not a baby,” Sylvain yawns. “M’just smart enough not to get up before the sun’s up.”
Ten… nine…
“Okay well, you can stay in here and take half an hour to do your hair or whatever,” Felix says, grabbing his swords and belts off the bedpost and fastening then around his waist, “but I’m going to go investigate.”
Sylvain rolls over scrubs a hand down his face where the ambient lamp-light from outside is cutting lines down his cheeks. “Yeah, uh, sounds good, I’ll see you in... wait…”
He trails off.
One… zero…
Sylvain shoots bolt upright in bed, casting off blankets and furs in his mad scramble for sudden coherency. He aims a wild stare at Felix, eyes wide, and his hair looking delightfully less like hair and more like the top of a frazzled rooster.
“What do you mean MURDERED ?!” He shouts.
Felix hides a laugh and shuts the door behind him.
It doesn’t take Sylvain half an hour to come downstairs. It only takes three minutes. Felix is leaning against one of the posts on the inn’s front stoop when Sylvain finally stumbles out the door, doing a very passable job of looking like he hadn’t recently been drooling on his pillow.
Felix passes off one of the bread rolls he’d bought inside.
“Thanks,” Sylvain says. “What’s the news?”
Felix nods to the crowd gathering down the street. He’d watched the soldiers drag the cart in—laden down with bloodstained sheets and coverings to hide something undoubtedly grisly beneath. The townsfolk woken by the crier had quickly donned their hats and coats at the promise of something interesting—murmuring incessantly, and predictably, about their elusive local spectre.
“Three imperial soldiers were killed out on the moors last night,” he reports. “Imperials are being hush-hush about it so far but… well, I don’t think I have to tell you who all the locals think did it.”
Sylvain snorts. “Probably not, but is the Empire really stooping to ghost hunting?”
“Not sure. I was waiting for you before I questioned anyone.”
Sylvain brightens at that. Stupid, bright Sylvain.
Felix only looks at his grin for a second before flicking his eyes back to the cart and crowd.
“Shut up.”
“Thank you.”
Felix and Sylvain follow the flow of the crowd easily, weaving down wide dirt roads through the centre of town in a morbid sort of procession as the townsfolk crowd around the imperial soldiers and their cart.
“So… about last night,” Sylvain says. Felix scoffs.
“Never thought I’d get on the other side of a patented Gautier morning-after talk,” he teases. “Do go ahead.”
“Oh, ha-ha,” Sylvain laughs dryly. “Funny. Fuck off. I’m being serious—”
He lowers his voice.
“—now that we’re both willing to admit that Dimitri being alive is something we’re considering… what are your thoughts on this…?”
Felix sighs, blowing a loose strand of hair out of his face.
He’d had spoken the truth last night when he’d told Sylvain he wanted this ghost story to be Dimitri.
As much as his relationship with the prince had been fraught and strained and cruel at times (always his fault, never Dimitri’s) there’d always been a part of him, deep down, that had seen a potential inside Dimitri worth loving. Something worth fighting for.
Storytelling is as much a part of the fabric of Faerghus as snow and steel. But however much a man of Faerghus Felix has become, there are some stories he wishes he hadn’t been told.
Rodrigue tells him Dimitri is dead in the early hours of a winter morning. He summons him to the entry hall, where he clutches a scout’s missive in one hand and wipes tears with the other. He tells Felix in words laden down with useless apologies and wet emotion that Dimitri has been executed.
Stories are always a little bit true. They always come from somewhere—start from something—that’s what Glenn had always told him. He’d always thought that was a good thing, that such fantastic things could contain a touch of reality.
But right now Felix wishes his father was more of a liar, just this once, and that no part of this story carried north on falcon’s wings could possibly be true.
But his father is not a liar, and stories are always a little bit true.
Felix runs out into the grounds, ignoring his father’s protests. The snows bite at him like hungry teeth, but he is from Faerghus, and snow is as much a part of his patchwork as steel and storytelling. He stands there in the freezing morning and screams .
He screams and screams until his voice is gone, until the tears frozen to his face become painful, until every single bird in the trees has alighted in fear. He screams until he’s empty.
It’s hard to let go of a brother—Felix knows that well. But he’s been let down in the past, and he doesn’t want to be let down again. He’s not holding his breath, even if this morning’s violence seems to echo every story he’s chased so far.
“I’ll say what I said last night,” Felix says carefully—he always tries to speak carefully when he’s with Sylvain, because he’s never been as good a speaker as him, and even though Sylvain has never once held that against him he still loathes being on the back foot. “When you want to see someone, you’ll see them. This could be him, it really could, but we have to be rational about it. We can’t write this story the way we want.”
“Alright,” Sylvain says simply.
“I don’t want to be let down,” Felix admits. “I don’t want to see you get let down, either, so… just…”
“Keep my hopes low?” Sylvain suggests wryly.
“Keep your hopes low,” Felix agrees.
The tension bleeds away a little like it’s being chased back by humour in the way the sun chases back shadows. Felix still feels the weight of all their what-ifs and maybes on his heart, but it seems a little lighter now.
“I appreciate all the concern about my hopes,” Sylvain chuckles. “But it’s a little harder to hurt my feelings than you’d think.”
“Oh. I know exactly how hard it is to hurt your feelings,” Felix scoffs. “They’re fragile as hell.”
“Well,” Sylvain says in a low, sultry voice. “Maybe they’re just fragile for you .”
Felix barks out a surprised laugh, and Sylvain grins like he’s won a prize. He spins on his heel so he’s walking backwards and facing Felix, and raises his eyebrows.
“It’s seven in the morning,” Felix says, reaching up to punch Sylvain in the shoulder. “Do you ever turn off?”
“It’s a sickness, baby!” Sylvian croons, clutching his heart. “I’m cursed!”
“Awful,” Felix laughs. “Save it for the guards I’m about to make you sweet talk for me.”
“Ah! My forté! How were you even planning to do this without me here?”
Felix shrugs. “I dunno. Probably threaten people.”
It’s Sylvain’s turn to laugh loudly. It’s boisterous enough that it draws the eye of a few of the townsfolk they’re trailing behind, and Sylvain quickly stifles the sound.
“I’d say we make a good team, then,” he chuckles. “Less bodily harm all around.”
Felix rolls his eyes. “ That I’ll agree with.”
They fall back into easy silence and trail the procession along the river bank until it reaches the imperial base of operations. Felix hadn’t seen it when he’d arrived in town, so he’s a little surprised when it turns out to be a set of simple tents in neat rows near the town’s chapel. He supposes the Empire doesn’t want to waste resources establishing themselves in a town so close to the war front.
Felix keeps his eyes on the procession, namely the cart and the guards. They turn off behind one of the larger tents, while a new set of soldiers emerge and hastily try to set a perimeter to keep Aalhus’s curious citizenry back.
“I’m going to sneak around back and try to get a look at the bodies,” Felix mutters under his breath. He begins to take off his sword belts and passes them to Sylvain. “Put these on.”
“Wha—Why, exactly?”
“I don’t want to jingle while I’m trespassing.”
“Completely understandable.”
Felix shoots him a look. “You go… flirt .”
Sylvain gives him a wink and an “aye, aye, cap’n” and then Felix is gone.
He ducks behind a line of wagons and skirt around the edge of the camp towards the chapel. In the shade cast by the pale building, he sneaks up to the back of the nearest tent and peeks inside.
Empty, thank the Goddess, but not what he’s looking for.
“—like a fucking animal got at them.”
“Isn’t that more likely? You’re not telling me you believe this shit—”
Felix bites back a gasp and dives into the tent as two soldiers walk past. He tracks their shadows against the interior wall of the tent as they meander by, their conversation low enough for the nearby crowds not to hear, but loud enough for Felix to hear everything.
“I don’t know… this place is fucking miserable ,” the first soldier says. “If I were some kind of tortured ghost this would be the exact place I’d show up.”
Felix rolls his eyes, and shifts slightly towards the direction the men had been coming from. He lifts the tent cover and slips outside again. A glance reveals no Imperials, so he takes his time trying to orient himself. How many rows back had the tent been? How tall? How—
He hears a horse whinny.
Or he could just… follow that.
Felix dashes across to the next row of tents, gluing himself to the early-morning shadows. As he rounds yet another corner, he sees a pair of stablehands guiding a pair of horses out of a large tent, emblazoned with an eagle.
Perfect.
After waiting for the coast to clear, Felix slips under the loose flap at the back of the eagle-tent, feeling the rough cotton catch in his hair as he does. He is immediately confronted with the cart, and drops low, skirting around the back as silently as possible.
He balances on his heels and begins to slowly lift the bloodstained covering. As soon as he lifts it even a fraction he’s assaulted by the smell of blood and other, far less savoury human fluids. Choking down a gag, Felix pulls the sheet back in its entirety.
Upon a first impression, Felix would be inclined to label this entire mess as an animal attack. Three bodies—at least he thinks it’s three—lie dead and still in the bottom of the cart. Their clothes, already decorated with imperial reds, are drenched entirely in crimson. Their sparse armour—most of it leather and only bare scraps of mail, typical for a small battalion such as this—is slashed and bent as if it were card paper.
But it’s the bodies themselves that are the foulest.
Viscera cakes their skin and hair like paint. In the low light of the tent, they glisten like freshly skinned meat, and Felix wonders morbidly if they actually might be.
Each of them, from what he can see, appears to be disembowelled. Their lower torso cavities are almost empty, with how little is left inside. If Felix didn’t know better he’d say a bear did this—one of the vicious Faerghan storm bears that only the royals dare wear as mantles—all the ripping, tearing and gouging here is so raw and animalistic…
But…
Felix reaches forward, morbidly glad to be wearing gloves as he reaches into the closest body’s stomach cavity, and tugs.
A spearhead comes loose in his hand, and Felix gags as he turns it over. It’s glistening with blood so completely that the sheen of the metal tip is not visible in the slightest.
These wounds are man-made.
Rational, he thinks. Bandits, thieves… anyone .
But in his mind’s eye, all he can see is blue .
When Felix makes his way back out to rejoin the crowd, he finds that it’s thinned out considerably. The novelty of a brisk morning murder has worn off, which makes it far easier to find Sylvain chatting up a female soldier.
“—But I’ll stand by the fact she looked way too young to be someone’s grandmother,” Sylvain is saying as Felix approaches. The woman he’s talking to looks heartily unimpressed.
“Uh-huh,” she says, and her eyes flicker to the side, seeing Felix come closer. “Can I help you, sir?”
Sylvain brightens. “Ah! This is the friend I was telling you about, Captain—”
Oh good, he’s found a fucking captain.
“—I trust you’d be willing to talk business now? My partner and I are more than willing to lend our services to your investigation.”
Felix raises an eyebrow and receives an almost imperceptible head shake in response. Later , it seems to say. He keeps his mouth shut.
The captain gives Felix a once over that might have made his skin crawl if he was the kind of man to give even a single shit what other people thought of him. He’s privately glad he just spent the last ten minutes crawling around the dirt in her camp; at least now he looks slightly less like someone rich enough to have access to regular bathing supplies, which is probably the cover Sylvain is going for.
He gives her a once over in return. She’s got that fresh sort of pallor all the imperial ex-pats seem to have, the one that comes from a sudden arrival in a country that gets far less sun than they’re used to. Her clothing is a little less piecemeal than her dead comrades’, but still not wealthy by any standard. She’s got a thick fur cloak wrapped around her shoulders, and her dark hair tied only half up—Felix reasons it’s so her neck has a little bit more insulation from the chilled air.
He remembers, for just a moment, the delightful bitching and moaning of the Black Eagles at the academy in the winter; the imperials are always so terrible in the cold.
He tries not to smile.
“My name is Captain Verges, newcomer,” she greets. “I’ve been speaking to your… companion.”
“Or he’s been speaking at you?” This earns him a short laugh.
“Quite accurate,” she says. “He’s been telling me some… colourful stories. He mentioned you two were mercenaries?”
The shape of Sylvain’s plan begins to form in Felix’s mind. He nods.
“We’ve been working in Faerghus our whole lives,” Sylvain says. “We know this terrain—can track across it, read it—you’re going to lose a lot in the weeds here, captain—we can help minimise that.”
Verges looks thoughtful for a moment.
“Names?” She asks.
“Claude,” Sylvain lies easily, and Felix credits only the fact that Sylvain is so good at drawing attention to himself that Verges doesn’t see his jaw clench
She nods towards Felix. “And what about your friend here?”
Felix tries to catch Sylvain’s eye and fails heartily.
“This is Hubert,” Sylvain lies again, and oh, Felix decides, he’s really in for it now. Felix tries to glare him into a fine paste, but Sylvain is too busy being a good liar to pay him any mind. “He’s a bit rude, don’t worry about him.”
Verges frowns. “Sure,” she says, then looks at Felix. “Praytell, Mister Hubert, how can I be sure a pair of Faerghan mercenaries are trustworthy ?”
She’s asking him on purpose, Felix thinks. She’s testing the bounds of Sylvain’s bluff.
“Can’t be sure anyone’s trustworthy these days,” Felix says. “But we’re no crown loyalists if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“That’s not exactly what I’m getting at.” Verges looks between the two of them, tapping her foot. “What I mean to say is that I will not tolerate any questionable local sensibilities muddying this case.”
The boys share a glance. “And what would those be?” Sylvain asks.
“You people called your nation ‘Holy’,” Verges remarks, “but you Faerghans carry strange lore close— pagan lore. No chance denying it with your festival underway.”
“You a pious woman?” Sylvain remarks testily. “Does that bother you?”
“Hardly,” Verges snaps. “I am simply saying that I will not have wanton ghost stories being tossed around regarding my men.”
Felix steps forward, placing a hand on Sylvain’s chest to push him back slightly.
“If you want ghost stories you can ask the bards,” he snaps. “Don’t accuse us of fear-mongering just because of where you perceive us to be from.”
The captain narrows her eyes.
“Oh I know the performers you speak of,” she says, her expression slightly sour. “I’ve received reports from other battalions regarding their… curiosity. Apparently, they have been tracking this ‘highwayman’ character along the front for some time… the one everyone here is so fond of.”
“They’re annoying, if that’s what you mean,” Felix grumbles, remembering the smug expression on the woman’s face at the tavern last evening. “And full of shit.”
“And nosey,” Sylvain adds. “But we’re not them, Captain. We understand how important this is. You have our word we won’t bring in any… personal lore … to your investigation.”
Verges holds their stares for a moment before sighing.
“Fine,” she says. “You may accompany us, on the condition you prove useful. We meet here in an hour.”
She turns on her heel with a snap of her red cape, and then she’s gone.
As soon as Verges is out of sight, Felix reaches up and slaps Sylvain over the back of the head.
“Ow—What?!” Sylvain turns around, mock anguish soured some by the grin on his stupid face. “Upset by my practised and artful lying?”
Felix jabs a finger at him. “Next time you’re Hubert,” he hisses before turning on his heel and walking back into town.
“Are you not going to thank me!?”
“No!”
“Wait, where are we going?” Sylvain shouts, and Felix hears him scramble to catch up with him.
“I’m going to find an actual breakfast! And more alcohol!”
The hike to the scene of the crime is a lot shorter than Felix thought it would be. In all honesty, he’d been expecting it to take well over an hour, but Aalhus is a deceptively small town.
After breakfast, they meet back with Verges and her small squad at their camp. They follow the river for about a half-hour, hopping over low rock walls every so often that mark the boundaries of different farms and pastures. Dawn is fully broken by the time they reach the edge of the farmland and the beginnings of the wild moor in question, and the mist burns off the rolling fields like hot steam as the sun climbs higher above the surrounding hills.
There is no warmth in it though; the air bites with the chill of the late season, and Felix tugs his cloak tighter.
The imperials aren’t chatty by any means, and Verges, in particular, seems entirely focused on retracing the dead squadron’s trail, but a few of the younger soldiers fall back to attempt to make conversation with their new mercenary friends.
“You two must be a bit put out huh?” one of the soldiers says. “All this bloodshed on a holiday. Pyre-night, right?”
“Maybe, but Pyrenatt is all about spooky stories,” Sylvain offers. “Ghosts, mysteries, death… This is might be the one night a year an untimely murder won’t ruin.”
“That’s… uh… dark,” another soldier says.
“That’s Faerghus ,” Felix grumbles.
“Yeah,” Sylvain chuckles. “Sorry if that wasn’t on the brochures when you signed up to serve your lovely Emperor, but—”
Sylvain’s words come to an abrupt stop, as does he. His eyes widen and his smile begins to slip, and Felix is gripped by the sudden instinct not to look around.
But, of course, he does anyway.
Felix turns, following Sylvain’s line of sight and looks down the barrel of a nightmare.
Their path through the heavy grasses has cleared into a small meadow, revealed suddenly by the slowly clearing mist. The most immediately striking feature of the area is a circle of standing stones, about five upright but several more toppled over, arranged in a wide ring. The stones that remain upright are about seven feet tall and are dappled and worn with age.
A few yards from the edge of the stone circle is a burbling stream, and though it is the loudest noise, the icy waters do absolutely nothing to hide the buzzing of flies swarming over the glistening mess of gore strewn about the area.
Blood paints the heath red, still somewhat shimmering and wet, and as Verges begins to send members of her squad out to search a wider area, Felix begins to see the full extent of the chaos.
Guts and entrails are littered throughout the inner circle, up the sides of the standing stones and across the flattened heather underfoot. The mess gleams with a riot of not only sickening crimson, but also swathes of purples and blues as Felix spies entire organs dashed across the site like confetti.
He’s been fighting for a long time, but he doesn’t think he’s been at it quite long enough to have come to terms with bloodshed of this type.
Massacre.
“So here we are,” Verges announces coldly. “This is where the bodies were found this morning. A scouting party encountered them when the stench attracted their hounds.”
“Sweet Serios’s tits,” Sylvain breathes. Felix punches him in the arm.
“ Rational ,” he reminds him, then steps forward, following the imperials into the circle.
There’s a superstition about circles he doesn’t entirely subscribe to, about who should step into them and how one should go about it. Some parts of Faerghus believe them to be portals, while others believe them to be the gravesites of ancient witches and other things blundering travellers shouldn’t mess with.
He doesn’t believe in most of it, but he does knock on the stone three times just to cover his ass. He hears Sylvain do the same.
The lieutenant chosen to remain with Verges stares wide-eyed at the two of them. Felix ignores the stare, but Sylvain laughs.
“It’s polite to knock, don’t you know?” he says. The lieutenant’s eyes flick from the piles of gore on the grass to the stones, before he quietly raises a hand and knocks on one of the stones.
Felix fights down a smile.
“What are these things?” Verges asks, watching the display with only half her attention. “There are several of them in this area, and I know of troops who have encountered them in other regions of the Dukedom.”
“ Menhir ,” Sylvain answers coolly, stepping around what looks like half a liver caught in a patch of flattened bramble. “Standing stones, in more common parlance. They’re rocks.”
Verges frowns, Sylvain grins, and Felix tries not to laugh. He doesn’t want to give Sylvain the satisfaction.
“I can see that they’re rocks,” she drawls. “I meant what are they for ?”
Felix fans out around the inner perimeter of the stones, keeping one ear on the conversation as he does. The blood seems to be sprayed everywhere with no rhyme or reason—it’s almost a wonder there was any left to stain the sheets of the cart.
“No one really knows,” Sylvain offers. “They pre-date what we consider modern civilization in Fódlan.”
There are piercing gouges and slashes everywhere , and seemingly against his will, Felix’s mind fills in each blank with a shadowy figure and an ivory glaive. He can see the scene play out—a cut here, a slash here, a bone-crunching strike there...
Felix knows a lot of things. He knows Dimitri is dead, and he knows while it would be nice if he weren’t and this murderer was him, it’s probably not. It’s probably anything else.
He also knows that ghosts aren’t real, and even if they are , ghosts don’t crack the earth and fling guts and ichor over it like macabre holiday ornaments.
He runs his fingers over a gash in one of the stones. It’s deep, gouged with forward momentum behind it; a piercing blow, not a swinging one, like a drill.
A polearm or sword then, driven with a strength behind it that had been enough to drill into a rock that’s stood here for centuries… millennia, even...
Someone incredibly strong is responsible, that much is clear.
Felix grits his teeth at the name that comes to mind. Impossible is the only word for it, but his considerations are weighed down by what-ifs —desperate what-ifs that only serve to slow him down and cloud his sense of rational judgement.
“I continue to feel like a fool,” he says quietly.
“At least we’re fools together,” Sylvain says in a sombre, kind tone. He’s behind him now, when did that happen? He stands up, and says louder: “What’s your verdict?”
Verges and her lieutenant look over. Right. This shit.
Felix sighs.
“Not an animal,” he replies, loud enough for Verges to hear as she walks over. “It was one man, or perhaps several of the same height and weight, but that’s...”
“Not likely?” Verges asks incredulously.
“ Improbable… ” Felix amends, “The height of the visible slashes are contiguous with one attacker using the same style—if you could even call it that—They had a lance or sword—”
“Lance,” Sylvain says.
Felix shoots him a warning look.
Sylvain shrugs. “Sorry. Continue.”
Felix grits his teeth, looking back out at the mess strung through the brush and stones. Not an animal, but someone who might as well be.
“Whoever did this is inordinately strong,” he says finally, levelling his gaze at Verges. “Not just in skill, but physically, too.”
The lieutenant scoffs. “How strong could one man possibly be?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sylvain drawls, wandering over to one of the standing stones that have been speared. “How about this?”
He raises his leg and delivers a swift, but not particularly forceful, kick to the stone. It’s enough; With an almighty creak, the entire rock separates at the spear incision and begins to topple—slowly, then at speed, crashing through the heather and bramble, and thudding to a stop in the dirt.
The lieutenant goes pale.
“Alright,” Verges sighs. “So we’re looking for an impossible strongman with the battle etiquette of a wild dog. Great.”
Felix drifts over to the northern end of the stone circle. There’s more to this, he thinks. He can feel it; this picture isn’t complete yet.
He crouches down, running his hand over a patch of flattened grass.
“I don’t think this is where they were attacked,” he says suddenly.
“What?”
“What?!”
Felix looks over his shoulder and scowls at the sudden scrutiny levelled at him. Verges and Sylvain stare back with twin looks of confusion, while the lieutenant looks ready to throw up.
“I think they were moved here,” he continues, ignoring Verges’ inquisitive stare and instead focusing on Sylvain’s; the more comfortable of the two.
“I think they were attacked. Maybe incapacitated in some way to prevent them from moving? Then dragged here.”
He points down at the grass, where the grass is flattened.
“Possibly from the north…” he mumbles “...then through into the circle.”
He can almost picture it. A cloaked figure, hulking and strong, dragging behind him the broken, still living bodies of three soldiers. The heather and bramble sticking in their exposed, bleeding skin, the full moon shining down…
“But wh—alright,” Verges sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose, “Presuming this was indeed premeditated and not a random act of violence, why move them here ? Did you not say they had no purpose?”
Felix doesn’t exactly have an answer for that. He looks to Sylvain, who scratches his chin thoughtfully. His eyes flick to the stones, and when they snap back to Felix they hold an eerie light.
Without another word, Sylvain wanders over to one of the upright stones—one of the stones cracked from some kind of piercing attack. He runs his hand over it silently before turning around and beckoning Felix and Verges over. He stands with his back pressed against the stone and smiles.
“Attack me,” he says to Felix.
“What?” Felix and Verges say in unison.
Sylvain ignores them. “With your sword. Make it a thrusting attack, like you’re using a lance.”
Felix sighs and raises his sword. Verges splutters.
“You’re just going to do it?!” she protests. Felix ignores her and readies his stance.
Sylvain’s smile doesn’t crack, but he does make a lifting motion with his hand. “Raise it a bit…” he says. “Try six… no… eight or so centimetres. Go for my core.”
Felix obliges, letting his shoulder roll into the new form.
“This better be worth it,” he mutters, then lunges forward.
The strike is a perfect one. Felix does not doubt he’s not going to hit Sylvain—however self-sacrificial the guy is he’s not going to make Felix the one to kill him—so of course he’s going to give this attack the same polish he gives all of his attacks. He glides forward like a human arrowhead, paying no mind to the shouts of the imperials around him, and aims his blade for Sylvain’s sternum.
At the last second Sylvain side steps, but Felix keeps going.
The point of his sword clangs into the standing stone, carried by the momentum of his forward push, and he feels the awkward grinding of steel against the rough rock.
Felix is strong, but he’s not typically “break rocks with your bare hands” strong—that had always been Dimitri’s job—so it’s a little surprising when he finds he cannot tug his blade out of the stone.
His sword, aiming for Sylvain’s midsection, is perfectly pinned into the crack where the attacker had struck his polearm.
“Now imagine if you will…” Sylvain says in a dark voice, sidling up to Felix but making his voice loud enough for Verges and the others to hear. “You’re one against three… you’ve incapacitated them, but who’s to say they won’t make a desperate strike while your back is turned?”
He reaches out and closes his hand around Felix’s, the one still clutching the blade’s hilt, and helps him tug it out of the gouge in the stone.
“You want them in one place—standing, trapped, watching you tend to the others…”
Felix, his blood running cold, turns to look Sylvain in the eye, and sees none of his earlier mirth.
He almost looks scared .
“...but they need a little help standing up… help staying in one place,” he mutters. “So you take their spears and you do it for them.”
In an instant, the shape of the scene takes place in Felix’s mind, and with it a chasm that opens in his gut, twisting and cold and consuming .
“Goddess above…” Verges mutters into her hand, obviously coming to the same conclusion. “You’ve got to be fucking joking.”
There are three standing stones with those same piercing cracks, and now Felix can recognise that they’re all at the same height; the height he hit. They’re roughly equidistant, so each man pinned to each stone like a butterfly on display would be able to see the other two in clarity. And from each stone spread the heaviest trails of blood and gore. He can picture it now, one man at a time, bowels ripped from their abdomen in the manner a dog tosses dirt aside to make way for a bone. The others left watching, waiting for their turn.
He can see it all. He can see the field of this attack for what it truly is.
Torture.
Slaughter .
Felix clenches his fists so hard he feels the hilt of his sword creak.
Then, Sylvain’s hands, still wrapped around his own, give a reassuring squeeze, and slip away. When Felix looks up he catches the tail end of the concerned glance Sylvain sends his way and tries desperately to drag himself back to reality.
It’s hard—harder than it should be—because this violence is familiar . The shape of this slaughter is like a memory.
Felix sheaths his sword.
“So… This is truly a human’s doing?” Verges asks. Her eyes are wide like she doesn’t know what she wants the answer to be. Felix can’t entirely blame her.
“I think so,” Sylvain says grimly. “So you might want to go get your men, Captain.”
She nods slowly and drags her lieutenant up from where he’s finishing emptying his stomach. They head off to gather their forces without another word, leaving Felix and Sylvain in their wake.
They stand among the violence, as still as the stones surrounding them.
The wind rustles the grasses, a soft hushing thing, like the waves of a sea meeting shore.
“So…” Sylvain sighs. “How rational are we feeling now?”
There is not a single gentle thing behind Dimitri’s eyes.
Felix is young, but he has not many times been afraid—not in battle. Battle is in his blood, in the blood of Faerghus and his own specifically.
Where the common people pass on stories of the hero kings as myth around campfires, the nobles of Faerghus who trace their blood back to the veins of Loog and Kyphon recite the tales as testaments of irreversible identity.
You are the blood of heroes.
You are brave, you are strong, you are free, you are powerful.
There is not a single gentle thing behind Dimitri’s eyes.
They are blue, his eyes. They say the Blaiddyds carry the sea and sky in their veins, and that’s why their eyes are so often blue. Blessings from the goddess and—depending on who you ask—blessings from the old gods, too. To capture the heavens and the raging sea, two forces of nature brimming with life and plenty… they say it is a sign of fortune for the kingdom.
‘They’ have always been a stupid entity, in Felix’s mind. ‘They say’ this and ‘they say’ that. Who are they?
‘They’ are not here right now. Only Felix. Only Dimitri.
There is not a single gentle thing behind Dimitri’s eyes.
Felix has not many times been afraid, but he is afraid now. Dimitri stands above the eviscerated corpses of revolutionaries, his lance so caked in blood that it drips in streams from its glinting tip like rainwater. There is nothing gentle behind his eyes. There is only violence and animal anger.
They are fifteen.
He snaps his blue eyes to Felix, and they contain neither the sea nor the sky. His eyes are dead and cold like ice—like the frost that rains down on their towns in the winters, killing children as they lay in their too-cold beds.
Felix wonders if this is what it feels like to fear dying.
Felix knows a lot of things. He knows that the prince of Faerghus was reportedly executed in the capital a year ago. He knows that he’s on the losing side of a civil war. He knows that ghosts aren’t real.
He also knows the familiar and horrifying shape of this violence. He knows to whom these fingerprints of rabid, decadent slaughter belong.
He knows that Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd is alive.
And he doesn’t know if that’s a good thing.