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The Rose War began with a man who lost himself to a lust for power.
Ryan had always been about using technology to better himself, to better his people, and to better the land. It had even been part of his Vow , it was so important to the king. It was a noble goal, really, and Geoff had begun to understand where Ryan had been coming from when the younger man had asked for a kingdom to call his own, but even the most noble goals can become obscured and corrupted.
As Geoff stared down at the letter, King Ray and King Michael already having a hushed discussion about it with Prince Gavin off to the side.
“I can’t believe it…” Jack muttered next to him, “Ryan’s finally lost his fucking marbles.”
“I mean, I can believe it,” Geoff replied, leaning forward onto the table with a sigh, “I just can’t believe he actually drafted a letter telling us to surrender before we even start fighting.”
“It’s because he knows we have to,” Michael butted in, “There’s no way in hell we’d win against him.”
“Excuse you! My military--”
“Has nothing on Ryan’s cyborg army , Geoff,” Michael was pissed , even more than usual, and Geoff had a feeling that it wasn’t only because of the letter. “Your army is too basic, my army is non-existent right now, and Ray’s army--”
“Is honestly ready to go whenever.” Ray finished, though Geoff got the idea that it wasn’t what Michael was going to say, “Michael, c’mon man, don’t sell me short.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s not selling you short, X-Ray,” Gavin said quietly, evidently as unhappy with Ray as Michael was, “He’s selling Ryan long.”
“I don’t think that’s a saying, Vav.”
“ You’re not a saying.”
“Guys, please ,” Geoff cut in with a sigh, “Ray, if you’re saying what I think you’re saying--”
“I am.”
“--Then you gotta know how dangerous this is. Ryan could kill you, raze your whole kingdom.”
“Yeah, but only if I let him. Look, you guys are worried, I get that, but as close as Ryan and I were, I’m not about to let him start being an asshole and step all over us. Since you guys can’t do shit , I might as well give it a shot.”
“Ray,” Jack said softly, “It’s not that simple--”
“I know , Jack. Doesn’t mean I can’t try.”
Geoff looked at Ray up and down. The young king, as always, was being rather relaxed about an otherwise tense situation. He was taking this nightmare scenario, looking at it, and saying “alright, I got this”. He was handling the whole situation better than everybody, which, really, wasn’t too surprising, given Ray’s usual demeanor, but still… It was almost impressive, really.
“Alright…” Geoff sighed out, “You win. Michael and I will do our best to hold out, hopefully he’ll be so focused on fighting against you he won’t try too much, but just… be careful , alright kid?”
“Hey, YOLO, amirite?”
---
“I can’t fucking believe you!” Michael shouted, “Going up against Ryan alone ?! What the fuck are you thinking?!”
They were in the gardens, the young kings waiting for Gavin to get out of his princely studies, and Michael was still pissed off. Ray had drafted the declaration of war that morning, sending it to Ryan’s kingdom almost instantly. No matter how much Michael or Geoff insisted, he had refused to accept any help, saying he needed to face Ryan alone, and that Geoff and Michael needed to focus on protecting their own asses.
“I was thinking I’m gonna fight him for as long as I can until we figure something out or he snaps the fuck out of it.” Ray replied simply, tending to the various roses on the nearby hedge, paying special attention to the red ones.
“ Right , of course , because that’s a real solid plan, Ray, you idiot ,” Michael sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, “Listen. I get it, you wanna face this guy head on, fuck ‘im up, win the day for everyone, but--”
“That’s not what I want.”
Michael blinked in surprise at the simple, determined statement. Ray’s face was unreadable, his hands fingering a red rose he had plucked from the hedge carefully, the thorns retracting with a soft red light where his fingers touched the stem. Ray hardly ever used his magic willy-nilly like that.
“What?” Michael finally asked, voice uncharacteristically quiet, even to his own ears.
“I don’t want to fight Ryan,” Ray began slowly, twirling the bloom in his hands thoughtlessly, “We were the R&R Connection, dude. ‘Course, I wasn’t as close to him as I am to you and Gavin, but we were still… friends . Fighting your friend sucks , but when your friend is being an asshole and trying to conquer the whole land, you do what you gotta do, you know?”
Michael nodded, trying to analyze his friend. Ray was always either icy or hyped, there was never any in-between, none that most could identify at any rate, but Michael had been friends with Ray and Gavin for years , and Michael liked to think he had gotten to know them pretty well.
Despite all his determination, all his calm, Michael knew that deep down , Ray was scared .
“Yeah…” Michael said quietly, placing a hand onto Ray’s shoulder, “I know.”
“Hey!” A distinctly accented voice called from the other side of the gardens, startling the two kings and breaking the moment, “You knobheads gonna stand there all day, or are we gonna go out and have some fun before all hell breaks loose?”
“ Gavin !” Michael shouted, “Goddammit, read the room !”
“We’re not in a room, Michael boi!”
“He’s got a point.” Ray said, all previous evidence of fear or determination hidden behind a smile. Michael scoffed, rolling his eyes as Ray made his way towards Gavin. Michael took a step forward as well, but paused when he felt something be crushed under his feet. Looking down, he felt a chill roll up his spine as he stared at the now crushed rose on the ground. Ray must’ve dropped it when Gavin startled them.
The chill in Michael’s spine slowly rolled out through the rest of his body, causing him to shudder. It was an omen, and not a good one.
“Hey Michael,” Ray called out, snapping Michael’s attention back to the other lads, “You gonna stand there all day or what?”
Michael glanced back down at the crushed omen, the red petals smashed into the concrete reminding Michael too much of fresh blood. Then, he looked back up at his friends with a rather forced smile.
“Yeah, be there in a second.”
---
“They’re at the castle gates, your majesty!” One of the guards called out, “The king is with them!”
“Get the civilians to safety,” Ray said as evenly as possible, “Tend to the wounded once you’re all out, see if you can make it to Geoff’s kingdom.”
“But your majesty,” A young nobleman, a turncoat from Ryan’s kingdom called Pubert, said, “What about you?”
“I’ll hold them off for as long as I can.”
“But that’s suicide!”
“YOLO, Pubert! Besides, no matter what, this kingdom’s toast. The least I can do is try to make sure its people get to safety.”
Ray’s heart was thudding in his chest, and he was fairly sure that if it weren’t for the presence of the various plants trying to soothe him, he would’ve been shaking. The last of the palace guard and nobles glanced to each other, then to the various peasants huddled together out of fear. Within moments, there was a mass exodus into the tunnels below, which ran straight to Geoff’s kingdom. They had been constructed mostly for Ray’s sake, so that he could have a direct and safe path to Gavin’s place when the king wanted to spend time with the prince of that kingdom.
Now, it was the only thing to save his kingdom.
As the last of the guard disappeared into the hidden tunnel, Ray turned towards the doors of his castle, the soft, soothing whispers of the various flowers around him slowly growing into a crescendo of righteous fury to match the fire burning in the pit of Ray’s stomach. The king drew his sword, casting his cape to the side in a fluid motion.
His kingdom may have been toast, but Ray was still its king, and he was going to defend it till his last breath.
As the doors slammed open, instead of the dozens of cyborgs and androids Ray had been expecting, a single figure strode into view, the gold of his crown glinting. Ray gripped his sword tighter.
“Ryan.” Ray greeted, his voice more clipped than usual.
“Ray.” Ryan purred.
“What gives? Thought you’d bring your army with you, wipe me out like nothing.”
“No. I don’t need an army to do that , but I do need them to collapse the tunnels you’re using to evacuate.”
Ray’s eyes widened as he saw the wicked sharp smile spread across Ryan’s face. The ground beneath them shuddered, and Ray’s stomach dropped as the roots of the flowers relayed the attack to him, guards and civilians having to fight against them, barely keeping them back--
“They’re just civilians , Ryan,” Ray growled, his anger causing the various flowers in the castle to shudder, their vines curling, “Let them go !”
“Or what ?” Ryan sneered, “You can’t beat me! I’ve grown too powerful, and so has my army. You should’ve just surrendered, none of this would’ve happened.”
“Tell your people to get out of the tunnels,” Ray’s voice was low, threatening in a way that it had never been before, “This is your last chance, Ryan.”
“ No .”
“Fine. But don’t say I didn’t give you the chance.”
The ground and walls began to shudder, the flowers and vines shifting and moving and growing , though Ray supposed that wasn’t quite the right word, considering they were all going downward . He could hear the echoes of Ryan’s men, desperately trying to get proper contact with their king.
“ Roses everywhere, we can’t-- ” “ Thorns piercing armor, probability of survival dwindling-- ” “ Need to retreat, we can’t-- ”
Ray could feel an exhaustion creeping into his bones as he called on his magic, but he didn’t stop until the flowers told him his people were safe. He smiled slowly at Ryan, a smug sort of thing that reminded himself of a cat, even as Ryan’s face contorted into barely restrained fury.
“I was going to spare some of them, but now? Once I get through with you , fuck it: Everybody dies .”
“But that’s only if you get through me .”
With an aggravated shout, Ryan lunged, the two kings swords connecting in the final battle.
---
The Rose War ended with a man on his knees begging for mercy, though few know it was not the man most imagine it to be.
Ryan stared down at Ray, a bloodied and bruised face staring back up at him from where the younger king knelt. Ray had lost his crown during the battle, the golden headpiece laying on the ground just a few feet away. It didn’t matter, not to Ryan. All that mattered to Ryan was the fact that Ray was on his knees before him, defeated, though his eyes still held defiance, even as Ryan held the tip of the blade against the younger king’s throat.
“Any last words, Ray?”
“Yeah. You brought the whole land to its knees, and now they’re all afraid of you, Mad King . Hope it was worth it.”
“Poetic. Didn’t think that was your style.”
“Just get it over with, you pussy.”
“Ah… There it is.”
Without another word, Ryan made a wide arc with his blade, slitting the younger king’s throat in a fluid motion. Within seconds, Ray went from gurgling with wide, fearful eyes to silently staring at the ceiling of the castle, his blood slowly pooling from the various injuries all over his form. Ryan stood triumphantly, a wide grin on his face as he stared down at the corpse of the fallen king.
The fallen king who was once your friend.
Ryan didn’t know where the thought came from, the lucidity of the phrase startling him within his fog of superiority and bloodlust. He glanced around the wide throne room that they had ended up finishing the fight in, and, to his horror, he watched as the roses that had been growing all along the walls began to slowly wither away. Ray’s crown melted into a puddle of gold, red, and purple. The brown, lifeless petals from the wall fell into the slowly marbling colors on the cold stone floor, and Ryan felt something in the fog of his mind shift, something in his very soul straining uncomfortably.
The discomfort quickly morphed into pain, and soon Ryan was on his knees, kneeling into the slowly growing puddle of Ray’s blood with a wet slap. His breathing became uneven, and he soon realized he had begun to scream in pain, holding himself in a tight hug as the pain hit a breaking point, and then--
A loud, metallic CRACK resonated through the now silent air, and Ryan watched as a piece of his own crown hit Ray’s blood, just next to Ryan’s left knee. Ryan stared at it, a pit opening up in his stomach as the fog in his mind finally began to clear, and for the first time in a while, he saw the world, what he had done to it, clearly.
You have not only killed your friend, your fellow king, but you’ve broken your vow, Ryan Haywood. In an effort to further yourself, you have set the land back by years. You have earned the title of ‘Mad King’. You are not worthy of your Vow.
“Please, have mercy --” Ryan whispered as the pain began to return, sounding almost more like a whimper, “Oh stars above , what have I done ?”