Work Text:
The last time he set foot in the throne room, it looked so bedazzling to Louis’s eyes.
Exquisite draperies hang from above, shining upon the touch of sunlight that filtered through the window panes, and members of Royal Knights stood at the perimeter of the room, more like fixtures than living beings. At the furthest end of the room was the throne where the King sat, his authority uncontested and his austerity unrivaled. Louis caught the late King’s glimpse then, before his sponsor instructed him to bow and make his greetings, and wondered how that glance bore not even a passing spark, like a star already way past its prime, now dimmed into a dwarf.
Now that Louis sat on it, with the room devoid of life—saved his own—and overflowing with the people’s anxiety, he could not help but sympathize with the King’s solemn gaze. The window panes had long shattered, the gleaming opulence long departed, the sky overhead tainted with dread—all these only served to strip away the distractions that loomed over the true nature of the throne: that to bear it is to be chosen, to walk not as a common man but as an idol of the masses, to carry and become the sponge of the people's infinite anxieties.
The gaze that Louis once caught then reflected a dying spirit, of a ruler who despaired over his powerlessness.
“How many people walked into this room and begged you to solve their woes? How many asked for your favor, for your assistance to ease their struggles? How many walked out of here with their wishes unanswered, their justice denied? You turned away from the pleas of your people, allowed your weakness to be exploited, and your authority undermined by those snakes.” Louis wondered out loud, an inquiry made to the King’s will that had made this Palace afloat.
The question died in the wind, as much as Louis expected it would; the King was weak and a coward, and Louis knew that nothing stung more than being confronted by the living sin who had come for his due retribution.
Retribution.
There was a time once, he mused, when he desired such a notion. The Prince almost lost his life from an assassination attempt, and the blame was cast on Louis simply because of his matching profile: the curse was a high-level spell, one that could only be cast by a mage as sophisticated as he, and had the stature of a child.
The accusation was both unreasonable and audacious, for he was not even at Gran Trad when the incident happened. His recent promotion allowed him little freedom to visit the Capital, especially with the campaign to suppress rebel elements in the Principality of Oceana in full swing. Nevertheless, a fictitious account on the sighting of Louis Guiabern, strolling the Sunshade Row on the night before the attempt, was drawn up to contest against the accounts made by his trusted allies in the Royal Military. It was not sufficient to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but enough to slander his name, painting him as a force of malcontent in the Euchronian political gameboard.
Personally, the slander mattered little to Louis.
The King's silence, however, was what set the last splinter of his hope ablaze, into a fury that he slowly tempered into cold, cold determination. The doors closed down, the walls crept in, the paths before him collapsed; they all unfolded in such a manner because the King refused to act on the injustices happening right under his nose—
—just how he remained quiet before Louis now: a dead man, crushed underneath the weight of the crown, yet still possessing the gall to stand before the throne that he had long lost his right to.
Louis felt the embers of rage stirred in his heart—and quickly made it heel, like he did when he sent his men to stall the messengers from Halia; like he did when he started offering the blood of the innocents and wicked both to pave the way to his Utopia.
“You still dare to appear before me at the end of this sinful charade?” Louis inquired, with vehemence and curiosity in equal parts. “Speak your last words here, shade. If anything else, I am curious what a failure like yourself has to say to me.”
“Nothing that would convince you to stop this madness, I’m sure,” the King’s apparition replied, years-long regrets making his form frailer than Louis had ever seen him be—even on the night of the pathetic man's death. “But now that we are here, despite my machinations and your schemes, I cannot help but wonder if fate has another reason to let us have this moment.”
Louis might have all the time in the world, his victory assured in a matter of days, but there was a limit to his patience, and the late King truly was capable of draining his reserve so quickly. “And what do you think the meaning behind our meeting now, O foolish, dishonored King?”
“So that I may beg forgiveness,” the shade lamented, “for all the sufferings that my weakness brought upon you. Especially you.”
It was almost gawking, how those last few words dashed the last shred of Louis’ patience. It was what chained his ire down thus far, snapping off under the thrashing of his wrath—
—bubbling out into laughter, twisted by the pure incredulity of this situation.
“You say that as if the things I have suffered to this day were solely your fault. The audacity!! Such hubris befitting the King of this wretched nation!”
Louis wheezed upon spying confusion on the shade's face, lips crooking into a most condescending smile.
“I do not recall you as the one who accused me of the attempt on the Prince's life, nor do I remember you burning the very place I once called home,” he declared, savoring every moment the shade's face twisted in agony, just like the night he stabbed the knife on the wretched man over and over. “Eventually, we both discovered that they were all part of Forden’s elaborate schemes—or are you going to take responsibility for his villainy?”
“For my inaction and my lack of faith in you, if nothing else,” the King bowed his head, looking the feeblest Louis had ever seen him be. The pathetic sign only served to maintain his attention, however meek, and Louis managed to find a sliver of patience to hear the drivel to the end.
“Your appointment as Count was meant to curb Forden's influence on the Royal Court. Unconventional the decision was, between Kaino’s bastard, whose mother received the Church’s support, and Habelo's adopted son, a rising star even at the start of his military career… the choice was clear from the start. I agreed to the plan, and thus I dragged a child to fill in the shoes meant for an adult… Only to discard you upon a single lie.”
Were he still alive, perhaps Louis would have heard the King exhale a most tired sigh, as he lifted his head and cowardly sought for an answer. “I apologize for that.”
Once upon a time, when he was just a mere boy wishing to see beyond the verdant green of his homeland, his mother had taught him to apologize if he had upset someone. ‘It is important to apologize if you make someone upset. How, you ask? Well, you need to admit your wrongdoings and then make amends,’ she had chided him then, tending to his crying brother who had scraped his knees in their little altercation. ‘Now, apologize to Phillipe for pushing him down, Louis!’
Back then, he apologized as she asked.
But no one had apologized for the burning of his home, for the violence he had to endure to the point of murdering his assailant in self-defense, for the disparagement from members of the House of Guiabern upon his adoption, so to make an apology was one among the things he unlearned when he stepped into his new life. Then he learned not to expect one.
If this apology had come years earlier, it would have soothed his aching heart, perhaps alleviated a bit of his bitterness. Now, as he stared at the ghost of the late ruler, all he could feel was old enmities finally lulled to rest, becoming the fuel that solidified his conviction further.
The apology was worthless, coming from a dead man who had no rights to guide the living.
Nonetheless, it was extended, an olive twig lacking its boon; that alone was more than what this cruel world had ever offered him.
“You are correct when you said that this would not have convinced me to stop. I admit, however, that you have provided some amusement with your pathetic effort to cleanse your conscience, O King, so let me share with you a secret,” he said, head tilting to the side as if belittling the frail ghost for not catching up with his reasoning, his motivations. “Had you moved to support me back then, had you done everything else differently to defend me, we would still arrive at this moment. My answer would have been as it is now, and I would still seek a solution for everyone to take responsibility for their anxiety. To live any other way would be cowardice, and we are all bound to repeat this farce we all call society unless such an abhorrent vice dies!”
Louis took a brief pause, if only to take in the view of the late King once more. Feebleness had only exacerbated the weariness in his visage. Perhaps the King ruminated how Louis’ ascension, too, was within his capability to stop—
“All of this is simply a comeuppance past due. The Great War was the turning point that brought ruin to the Old World, called upon by the people's wretchedness. Now, as the inheritors of this land succumb to their weaknesses once more, the hour of their judgement draws near.”
—he smiled, propping his head on his hand as he looked back at the late King with triumph.
“I shall be the deliverer of the new world order and usher in the dream of Utopia that you once imparted to me. I will achieve that which you failed to do, slave to cowardice that you are, and become the living proof of your mistakes. I am Louis, once scion of the Charadrius, once Lord of the Guiabern County, and I will be the one who will remake this land.”
“Now begone, shade,” he bellowed, rattled ire finally unleashed. The apparition flickered before his sight, his form and presence dissipating upon the weight of Louis’ flare of magic, “and witness my triumph from beyond.”
When the remains of that apparition finally disappeared, his gaze eventually shifted to the door at the far end of the room. It was only a matter of time before the door swung open, before the Prince and his cohorts walked in to face him.
The Prince, the only person in this Kingdom powerful enough to challenge his might; the only person who earned the right to stand by his side, for they could have been kindred spirits chasing the same dream. If only he could see the chinks in the people's resolve, the cowardice that made them turn on one another for the sake of personal gain…
Louis closed his eyes and let that budding of what-if die before it could take root. The world would be reborn to his liking, regardless of that young man's disposition towards Louis’ aim. The Prince would surely survive the transformation to fit into his new world; eternity should suffice to convince him that the world is better off without this obsolete order.
The hour of his ascension drew near.
‘There were other solutions!’
Such a claim was at best an unfounded fantasy, and at worst a cruel spat on his entire life.
If he were to be questioned now, at the precipice of his achievement, whether he had tried these other solutions that the Prince exclaimed, then let it be known that Louis Guiabern tried every avenue he was given, played all of his cards and pieces, only to be smote down by the powers that be.
When he was forced to flee his burning home and was about to be murdered by a Sanctist monk, was there any other choice than to fight back and save himself, even when it cost that wicked man’s life?
When his position as the inheritor of Guiabern County was threatened by the sudden appearance of the late count’s bastard child, born of a fictional wedlock to a woman under the church’s thumb, was there any other choice than to plot for their defamation and paint their names with disgrace?
When all of his achievements for the Crown—his deployment in various monster extermination campaigns in Oceana, his effort in quelling multiple rebel factions in Montario, his work to improve the conduct of the Royal Army—were outshone by the false accusation levied on him, when he lost the trust and faith of the very person who possessed the highest authority in this Kingdom, when all doors to create meaningful changes were closed to him, were there any other choice than to rally the people and levied their cries, in hopes that the King would finally endeavor to fix this broken Kingdom?
“Fools… These false foundations… Who in their right mind could promise such fantasies?!”
The Sanctist monk killed the woman before him, even when she pleaded for her life, so he made the first strike—his first curse, the healing magic his mother taught him just a few days before this disaster befell on them—and made his first kill. Louis carved out the horns from his would-be murderer’s Clemar head, and had them fashioned into the headgear he had come to use so far.
The wicked woman who claimed to be the paramour of his predecessor tried multiple times to put him out of the picture. It was only through rumors he had painted himself, ones to besmirch her faithfulness—that she was a minx coveting the fortunes of nobles left and right, purported by evidence that Louis had deliberately planted—that he was able to secure his position. The Royal Palace was seeking means to counter the Church’s growing influence in the Senate, and Louis saw this as an opportunity to get close to the seat of power. The title was a tool to bring him closer to his lifelong dream.
The King fell prey to the lies perpetrated by that snake—the one that levied the death of his own lover, that painted Louis in falsehood—and closed the doors to his court out of fear and grief. His last avenue to change this Kingdom was forcefully barred; thus, what more could be done except to resort to his previous options? If the King had become too weak to rise against his own weakness, then Louis would take that Right to Rule by his own hand. He would make the people rally behind him, make the authority heel through their use, for what is a ruler without the people's submission? In that sense, the people were also a tool, their lives burned to light the way to an ideal nation.
If he were given the chance to walk this life again, Louis would, without a doubt, make these same choices again, for he had become the living proof of the people’s vices—
“Again, the world must be shattered. And again it must be rebuilt anew. You will die in tribute to my ideals, Prince.”
—thus it was within his right to judge the people for their sins.
The hour of his ascension was at hand.