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Despite all the pain, the noise, the scheming and the the general great big mess of it all, Percival has to admit that deep down there is a small part of him that enjoys battle. It's something to do with the rush in his blood; the electricity that rushes through his veins like the flames that curl effortlessly from his blade.
He cuts down another monster. His sword shears through flesh, a heated knife carving through butter.
Before he can spin to slice through the myconid leaping towards his back, a blade whirs past, embedding itself in the beast's chest and staining the frost on its surface red. Percival stifles a smile as he steps aside, allowing Lancelot to retrieve his sword as he rushes past, twin blades flashing in a wicked dance as he charges back into the frontline.
Their eyes meet across the battlefield a while later, in one of those pockets of stillness that occur when there are no longer enemies to fight. Lancelot grins. It's a weak, puny little thing, so pained Percival would rather label it a grimace. Lancelot never was good at smiling when he didn't feel like it. Unless he did it unconsciously, which was when his eyes would light up, like the light that swept through the darkened battlefield after a grueling fight; a light that would illuminate even the most darkened of skies, a ray of hope and beauty and joy. Percival would even call it beautiful, if he were someone more sentimental.
He'd never admit it, but Percival's glad to see that, painful grin aside, there's still a sparkle in his fellow knight's eyes, that almost reminds him of -
A blade through flesh. Enchanted, punching past armour and crunching through bone.
Hot knife through butter. Melting into red. Sand slipping through his fingertips.
Lancelot's eyes go dull.
His body drops to the floor, strings severed by the lance that has cut into his back. Oh, the irony.
Red
his colour, the scarlet of his standards, his armour, his sword, his colour
seeps slowly into the ground.
There is a moment of stillness, a disbelieving silence as the world pauses to witness itself shift. A flame creeps down the hilt of Percival's sword, fizzling out before it reaches the blade.
Percival burns.
He doesn't remember much of what happens next; only the heat of his flames, the swiftness of his sword, the screams of those burning alive, the smell of charred bone, the blackened corpses of trees, crushed banners and weapons snapped like twigs crunching beneath his feet, the howls and screams of the battle around him. Or was it himself?
He only knows that it is too late too late, you're always too late, look what you've done again when he reaches Lancelot, too late to do more than cradle something broken, a feeble laugh, a rival, a friend, a partner, a comrade, a- in his arms, and stroke a cold cold cold, as cold as the ice that coats his blades cheek with dark, ash stained hands.
Their eyes meet. Lancelot grins. It's a weak, puny little thing, so pained Percival would rather label it a grimace. Percival has never hated the colour red as much as he does in that moment. It covers his hands as they desperately fight a battle against an enemy he knows he cannot win against, seeping deeper into his skin until he knows no amount of scrubbing will ever remove it. If he could, he would tear them off, rend them apart so that the red, the growing scarlet that he can't stop, would disappear forever.
In his desperation he calls upon the flames, pressing them to the wound in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Sizzling, boiling, blood, screams - from him or Lancelot? It hurts it hurts it hurts Percival IT HURTS It's not working, red seeping through and hissing as it cools-
He soon gives up.
And as the last light leaves the darkened sky, he stands, falling tears evaporating into nothing before they reach the ground. He readies his sword, his flames roaring into life and doing what he cannot as they howl misery into the charred air. He will fight. He will take everything down with him. And when it is all over, there will be nothing left but ashes -
the remains of what could have been.