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Edna’s brother was enormous, even when he wasn’t a dragon.
It was miraculous enough that a few centuries of very earnestly gathered but haphazardly (read: terribly) organized notes from Zaveid had actually yielded a way to purify a dragon-turned seraphim. More so that, with a final grammar correction pass by Mikleo, and a leap of boundless faith by Sorey, they’d drawn the appropriate runic trigram, posted four seraphs at four corners to mimic the blessings of the Empyreans and then lured the aforementioned dragon down to it mostly by means of Zaveid literally pulling on its tail and then letting it chase him roaring down the mountainside.
It had worked, anyway. That was the thing. Now in the center of the runic platform was about four tonnes of shed black scales and one very large, terrifically irate-looking man.
Somewhere in the back of their minds, between the hard looks and bitten-off confessions from their little ground-stomping queen, Sorey and Mikleo had gotten what they thought was the full picture of Edna’s brother: a guy sadly cursed from creation, tragically forced to abandon his beloved little sister and who’d then nevertheless sent her thoughtful gifts and wrote her long, sensitive letters for the remainder of his days. Hearing all that you kind of got an image in your head of a frail young man around Edna’s height with a pinched elfin face and a melancholy air. Probably wearing a smart tailored jacket with a waistcoat and a flower in his lapel as he wandered the remote wilds of the world, or sat primly on a cliff somewhere in the middle of the ocean so that his terrible curse wouldn’t put others in danger.
They’d been right about the waistcoat at least.
The sad remnants of said waistcoat, trailing loose buttons and threads, barely held together a decayed white shirt under the tattered remains of a long velvet coat.
What this threadbare raiment barely contained was a six-and-a-half-foot marble pillar of a man with burning black-rimmed eyes and a long mane of overgrown yellow-orange hair.
So yeah. Edna’s brother was huge and looked like a thug. He looked like the king of thugs, like the kind of guy hardened criminals said ‘excuse me, sir’ to if they bumped into him on the street.
And when he rounded on Sorey and snarled “Who the hell are you?! You’d better not be here to hurt my sister-” the Shepherd, hero of nations, queller of hellions, but still, all in all, a sheltered teenage boy felt his stomach briefly try and become one with his spleen.
“Umm, I’m-” Sorey started to say.
And then Zaveid sauntered past him and up to this ancient horror, his grin nearly wrapping back around his ears, clapped Eizen on the shoulder and said:
“Hiya sweetcheeks! Toldja I’d sort you out~”
“You!”
The snarl smoothed out. With that flat disbelieving look on his face the former dragon really did look a lot like Edna.
“And you said it couldn’t be done, huh?” Zaveid spread his arms wide and laughed maniacally, spinning around, shed scales dancing in the little whirlwinds by his feet. “Bow and tremble at the awesome scholastic prowess of the mighty Zaveid!”
“How about no.” Eizen said flatly, Edna’s exact intonation down a few octaves. “But if this is real I’ll owe you a drink. Is this real?” He held up one of his hands curling the fingers tentatively in and out. They were soot-stained, clawlike with their long nails. His eyes, pupils still a little too vertical for comfort, re-focused on the seraph in front of him. “You look older.”
Sorey was sure he was the only one close enough to see the resulting flinch.
“Wow, way to kill the mood Reaper. It’s only been, what, 200 years? I’m still pretty, aren’t I?!”
“Zaveid.”
Oh. And now Sorey totally felt like he was intruding on something. That was maybe the softest way anyone had ever said Zaveid’s name.
Zaveid, if possible, flinched harder. He crossed his arms, his hair bristling around him.
“Hey, I meant what I said! Ever since back then I-”
Eizen took two steps forward and pulled the wind seraph into a bone-crushing embrace.
Zaveid shut up immediately. For a second he clung on with equal fervor, it was almost like the two of them were trying to kill each other or armatize, even though two seraph’s couldn't do that, but then Zaveid let himself hang limp in the other man’s arms uncaring of the soot getting all over his naked back and winding into his tangled white hair. He might have sniffled a bit.
(Sorey swore he wouldn’t say anything. This was one of those manly things that men did for other men. I mean, if he couldn’t see Mikleo for 200 years he’d be flat out bawling.)
“Heads up, you’ve got incoming.” Zaveid muttered rough-voiced into his old friend’s shoulder.
Sorey turned around.
They did, indeed, have incoming.
The ground shook. Blooming flowers of stone propelled Edna forward in an arc, she floated the last few feet to her brother on her parasol, screaming the whole way down.
“EIIIIZENNNN!!!!! Eizen, you JERK! I told you to come home and you came home as a DRAGON?! Are you FREAKING KIDDING ME?!” Light was gathering in her wound-up fist. “GRIT YOUR TEETH!”
At the last minute she pulled it back, the arte dissolving into a sparkling curtain around the three of them, Zaveid stepping aside so that Eizen could catch her.
“You’re awful!” she sobbed, hugging his neck.“You’re the worst!”
“I know. I know, I’m sorry.”
(Sorey was kind of overwhelmed and sympathy-crying at that point so he didn’t catch a lot of the next few minutes, only looking up as soon as he felt Mikleo’s hand on his shoulder. Scary or not, he’d finally been able to help save Edna’s brother, to do what he’d promised. Also he had the feeling that if Edna knew he’d seen her vulnerable like that he’d be finding sharp rocks in his bed for weeks.)
“A-as long as you’re sorry! I guess. I don’t care if I have to drag you to every freaking battle you are never leaving me again.” With her limited leverage Edna clambered onto her brother’s shoulders like she’d been doing it all her life and then promptly put him in a headlock. “Me or Zaveid. You got that?!”
“Yeah.” Eizen said softly. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
Unfortunately, he still looked scary when he was smiling. Maybe it was the teeth. Or maybe the whole covered-in-rags-and-soot thing. At least they could work on that last part.
“Hey- ” Zaveid called out. He’d gotten himself mostly back together, though there were a few suspicious dark streaks under his eyes. “-you want some clothes? Cause you’re totally pulling a Velvet here and there’s ladies present.”
And that’s when Sorey figured he’d better go over and introduce himself. It was never going to be a good time.
(It went about as well as he thought.
“So you’re the new Shepherd? They couldn’t find an adult? Seems cruel to make a kid solve the world’s problems. At least the first Shepherd was old enough to shave.”
“Oh wow! You knew the first Shepherd?!”
“If by ‘know’ you mean I punched him in the face a couple of times.” )
---
“You don’t even wanna know how long I’ve been hauling this shit around.” Zaveid grumbled a few minutes later after he’d fished a weathered oilskin duffel out from behind the mountain’s shrine. “Your favorite tailor shop closed ages ago.”
He threw the bag at Eizen who caught it one-handed. Edna stomped something like a privacy screen out of the ground. Ever practical, Mikleo floated a sphere of water over behind it. A few minutes later Eizen’s voice drifted back to them.
“Don’t suppose I could borrow a shirt?”
“Haha, nope~” Zaveid cackled. “And none of the kids have anything that’ll fit over your fat tits either, so don’t bother askin’.”
“Fine. I’ll try it your way.”
When Eizen emerged an orange vest sat carefully under a brand new velvet coat (identical to the old one), leaving a strip of pale muscled waist and his collarbones firmly on display. Much to the chagrin of all those inclined to appreciate that kind of thing (aka. most of the party) something to the effect of cleavage did exist.
Though only Rose was bold enough to wolf whistle
Wordlessly Edna handed him one of her green ribbons.
“Right.” He said, carelessly gathering his long cascade of hair into a high ponytail, planting both iron-tipped boots firmly into the ground. “I’m ready now. Where’s the enemy?”
His domain crackled around them like a restless sea.
Sorey got the feeling that soon, somewhere downslope, some hellions were in for some incredibly bad luck.
~