Chapter Text
Somewhere halfway through this bottle of wine, too warm and too bitter, Sylvain realizes how vivid Conand Tower still is in his mind.
It’s as if he’s encased in the walls of hell itself, dark and enclosing, claws ripping from bloodied brick to wrap around his neck. There are no sounds but the heavy, rasping snarls of a beast, its breath hot and suffocating. Its claws are slick with blood, and covered by a black substance that’s heavy like tar. It’s hot to the touch, but it feels light and hollow, woven from insect carcasses. It smells of iron, of fresh gore, and it stains his tongue with the taste of copper.
The room is dark. There’s no light other than the eerie glow from a lance forged from the fires of hell.
It’s blinding. Sylvain wonders that maybe, if he stares too long, it’ll burn out his eyes.
Maybe those black tendrils will crawl free from the lance and rip them out instead.
If this happens, he’ll stop seeing Miklan’s silhouette in the shadows. He’ll still hear the beast, how its roars shook the tower more than the thunder that dared to topple it. He’ll still hear the animosity that drips from Miklan’s words like blood from a festering wound.
The cries of the damned rang in his ears as his lance tore through thick scales and sinewy muscle. All the while, viscous saliva ran down his arms and stained his uniform. The black beast fell to the ground with Sylvain’s lance embedded into its skull, and shortly after did its form wither away into black wisps as Miklan’s hollow gaze met Sylvain’s eyes.
Whatever happened after that, at least, he’s been able to drown out with enough wine.
Sylvain takes another swig, and nearly gags at how it tastes like blood. He sets the bottle to its side with a groan, and wonders through his drunken stupor how ridiculous he must look.
The heir to House Gautier, bearing a Crest that shackles him to a life of expectations he’s never wanted and hides it all under a smile and wink, is ready to be sick on the floor.
Pathetic, he hears in a whisper.
His eyes dart around an empty room. Shadows can’t speak. They shouldn’t be able to speak.
You finally won. This is what you’re doing with yourself?
Wide eyes look to the lance. If this is a nightmare, if the alcohol’s claimed him already, Sylvain wants to wake up.
I knew you were a fool.
The bottle slips out of his hand and shatters, fragments of glass and wine staining his floor. The urge to vomit rises as the sharp taste of blood coats his tongue.
“Mik...Miklan?” He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.
I thought you’d be happier. Wouldn’t mother and father be proud of you?
For murder? Is that what the Gautier legacy amounted to? Is this what their (his?) father’s done to Sreng over the years? It makes sense, given how often Miklan’s come close to taking Sylvain’s life. Even in death, his taunts run wild, poisoning his mind further than wine ever could.
“Only returning your gracious gifts,” he says with a slight hiccup, “sorry I didn’t have a well to throw you down.”
It’s not as though he wants the stupid lance anyway. A part of him remains disgusted at the professor’s insistence that he keeps it, for reasons that remain unclear.
Maybe it’s prudent to drive the lance through their chest and have their blood spill everywhere and have everyone pity them --
A sharp knock at the door interrupts his thoughts. It’s for the best.
“Sylvain? Are you alright?” Ah. Dimitri. Bitterly, he remembers their rooms are adjacent. “I heard a terrible crash a moment ago.”
He finds himself stuck; silence offers no comforts. Sylvain knows his words are slurred, and knows that it’ll invite an inevitable lecture. At least it’s not Felix or Ingrid. He’s heard enough from them both, Ingrid’s misplaced pity and a gaze from Felix he finds unreadable. But hey, so what if Dimitri knows?
“Don’t worry about it,” he says in a tone far too easy going, “I’m fine, Dimitri! Totally!” A silver tongue coated in wine is less effective, Sylvain’s bound to discover.
“Have you been drinking?” Ah, there’s the beginning of that lecture! Good ol’ Dimitri. “If it is alright, may I please come in?”
Is the door even locked? Sylvain can’t remember. “Sure. Knock yourself out.”
It’s hard to miss the unease on Dimitri’s face in the soft glow of the candle he holds. His eyes trace to the shattered bottle on the floor, and then to the Lance of Ruin. “May I ask why this is not in the armory?”
“Doesn’t Felix keep swords in his room?” He’s almost sad the wine is gone now. Stupid Miklan. Stupid lance. “I don’t-” he gives another hiccup, “-see the problem.”
“Yes, but…” Dimitri continues to look around the room with ( misplaced, the lance whispers) concern. “You are doing so in the dark, and you have been drinking.”
The wine soaking into the floorboards is pungent. “Sooo? I’ll come to class tomorrow. I’ll be fine.”
“Sylvain, I would prefer if you were to rest for the night.” Ugh, this may actually be worse than Ingrid or Felix. Why isn’t Dimitri yelling at him? “Perhaps in the infirmary so Professor Manuela can monitor your health.”
“Pffftt.” What health? It’s not as if the scar Miklan’s left on his arm is of great concern. “I’ll be fine. I’m not gonna bleed out. Mercedes healed me.”
“I mean if you happen to fall ill from how much wine you’ve had.” Sylvain groans as Dimitri goes to help him off the floor and anchors an arm around his waist. “May you humor me this once?”
Stupid Dimitri and his stupid strength, he almost whines out loud. “Fine. Just… just don’t tell Felix, okay? I don’t need him worrying about me. Or Ingrid.”
Dimitri sighs heavily, but offers a slow nod. “Can you promise me this won’t happen again?”
“Sure!” As if. “Can’t disappoint the future king with my actions, right?”
He opens his mouth as if to offer further words, but Dimitri continues to lead Sylvain out of his room, where the whispers cannot follow.
Sylvain’s never been happier to be alone with his thoughts.
A haunting air hangs low in the training grounds, a thick fog that threatens to steal the air from Sylvain’s lungs. He fears another sharp intake of air may cause them to shrivel up and snap. It’s like he’s taking a page from Felix’s book, train and train until you can’t think, train and train until your body’s ready to give up, train and train because it’s all you’re worth to your father.
Train and train, because Miklan can’t hurt you if you’re strong enough to take a hit, even if you never fight back.
The Lance of Ruin is heavy in his arms.
This thing killed me, didn’t it? Hoping for the same, little brother?
Sylvain freezes mid-lunge, the lance’s tip a hair’s breadth away from skewering a training dummy in the chest.
He blinks sweat from his eyes, posture straightened as he looks around the room. No one’s there. The training grounds are colder than they should be.
Sylvain stares at the lance. It stares back, twitching and pulsating, as if it’s a creature rasping for air with its dying breaths. With one hand still wrapped around its hilt, his other raises, fingers brushing over the jagged spikes that jut out from its blade.
It’s smoother than it should be. The material is foreign, and Sylvain’s doesn’t want to know what it’s made of.
Don’t you want to pay back what he did to you?
It’s a facsimile of Miklan’s voice, the snarls and roars of the Black Beast breathed in between each word. They rake down Sylvain’s neck like nails on a chalkboard. There’s a part of him that urges Sylvain to set the lance aside, to leave, to talk to the Professor or to Felix or to anyone who’s not going to think he’s lost his mind when speaking about a lance with a mind of its own. Consequently, Sylvain’s always loathed this lance. He’s loathed how it’s nothing but a symbol (an excuse) to what his father constitutes as safety towards his own lands.
The lance jitters uncomfortably in his hand, its barbs twitching like the legs of a dying spider.
He takes one of them in his hands and twists. The resulting crack he hears is reminiscent of a broken bone, a sickening snap that curdles the breakfast in his stomach.
Shrieks of the damned follow. They screech in his mind, a cacophony of sickening pain, a hissing of blinding agony. The harder Sylvain twists, the louder the screams get until his ears ring and a dull pain throbs in the back of his head.
“The fuck--” As the lance is tossed to the ground, pulsating and twitching and begging for life, the voices stop. The fragment in his hand burns, and he’s quick to drop it to the floor. When Sylvain looks at his hand, it’s stained with tar.
It’s the same substance that wove around Miklan’s corpse and turned him into a monster.
When Sylvain stumbles out of the training hall, he vomits into a nearby bush.
The lance hasn’t left his room since. It rests upon a corner, gaze fixed on the heir, the one who’s supposed to wield it with ease. It breathes miasma into the air, weighing down Sylvain’s body with lead as it continues to squirm like a soldier that is begging for death.
He’s tempted to tear it into bits, but he doesn’t want to warp into that black beast who nearly stole his life in Conand Tower. He’s been able to wash the tar off, scrubbing at his skin until it’s raw and bloody, but Sylvain swears it’s still there. It’s still there, and it’s going to crawl into his eyes and lungs and change him into Miklan. He’s going to become a monster, just like his brother. He’s going to prowl through the monastery, unfettered by the restraints of weathered brick, snapping his friend’s bodies one by one.
He’ll be no better than his brother.
Having a Crest won’t save you.
It never has.
It never will.
Sylvain’s not sure if the whispers are the lance’s or his own.