Chapter Text
Lucrece, delicately, painstakingly, crafted by the hands of men, with limestone and gold pried from the land’s barren riverbeds, stands deadlocked in a barrage of cannonfire.
It is not the first time – nor will it be the last. It is Her way; for there is blood beneath the brick and copper. A kingdom so fine could only be erected from a pile of corpses – from where else do you secure your plots, your riches and your stage for the world?
The discharge of artillery rattles the walls of houses, splitting their roofs. Women huddle in the corner with their children, shrinking into their wimples, hiding the little ones heads away and beneath their tunics. Men – they scream with the agony of hellfire and the need to conquer what had never been theirs to claim. The king watches, brows knit and steeled, in the leisure of his throne.
A boy is born from the ash. He is motionless in the crossfire. If something that was not the carnage and crimson of this world gave life to him, the memory of it has already been singed with the body. There are no shoes to separate him from the earth, no sleeves to comfort him. Sluggishly, with dust whet against his tongue, does he trawl through one of Her abandoned alleyways. At its end, a figure forms, its stature equally as small as his own.
“Mother—mother!” The shadow cries. Its voice quakes with fear. The boy stares, mindlessly, his body carrying him forward. It’s then that the figure enters the light, its face and body illuminated and transmogrifying into that of a raven haired child.
“Where have you gone…?” The tears that well in his eyes make the boy’s feel comparatively dry. “Take me with you…!”
The boy is quiet. There is no answer to offer; only a nod to assuage his pain. Seemingly, it works, as the tears shrivel and return to whence they came from. Suddenly, the child produces a piece of bread from his satchel; it was a deep mahogany brown, the kind he’d seen proudly put on the displays of artisan’s shops.
“Here,” he says, gesturing it towards the boy. “I feel as if you…you have not eaten in some time...is it so?”
The gesture is so foreign – such an impossibility in his mind that he can only scarcely register it. But with the fervor of a wild animal, the boy snatches it from his hands, tearing it apart with his teeth and swallowing it wolfishly.
“I was right…” the child replies, awestruck – his voice is a wisp in the cacophony of gunfire. Still, the boy hears it. “I’m Streibough.” He says louder this time. “And what shall I call you?”
This is the one thing the Earth has allowed him to keep – and so the boy answers easily, and without doubt.
“Oersted.”