[OPEN] who will I be when the empire falls?

[bladeascent]

Who: Vildred & you :)
What: Unfortunately, it's a canon update
When: Early March
Where: Around the Grove, specific locations will be mentioned in prompts
Warnings: war depictions/mentions, general violence mentions, more tba


i. and i play discordant days on repeat [OTA]

[Vildred stumbles, trips, and catches himself on a tree at the edge of the Grove, the melting snow soaking into the ends of his pantlegs. At some point, he'd wandered off into the woods and he isn't sure when or why, his memories of "being in the Grove" and "being back in the Grove" missing their connecting point. Like the frost itself, he now dons white, the once-gold making up the insignia that sits upon the knot of his tie now gleaming silver and sickly purple. That same purple reflects now in his eyes, the prior bright gold shifted alongside his humanity.

The blood splatters on his hands were not there when he died, he recalls, but he recognizes their shape — they're the very same that had coated his palms after he'd assassinated, murdered Queen Diene. An action he thought was worth something then, now a sick joke staining his palms as a reminder. Similar splatters soak into his coat and undershirt, marks left from where wounds would be, had the Forest or some other force not seen fit to heal him.

For all intents and purposes, he deserved to die. To stay dead. To atone for all he'd done to Ezera, to Orbis, to Ras himself, the least he could have done was stay dead and buried. So many people believed in him. For seven fucking reincarnations, people had put faith into him as Ras' most devoted. Diene certainly had, and he'd killed her and made her son an orphan. Ran always had, spending several iterations of Orbis teaching him how to wield a sword. Kise, Ruelle, Victorika, Krau, Rinak, Robin — a single reincarnation cycle ago, they were his friends, comrades in arms, people he used to joke with and mourned when they fell in battle. Even Aki had believed in him, for all their arguments in the fifth world, for all the times Aki had called him a brat and refused to acknowledge Vildred's worth in some regards. A tentative allyship, but one nonetheless.

One Vildred had easily scorned, just as he'd scorned and made an enemy of the other deceased Heirs of the prior timelines, as easily as he'd let Kayron trick him in the newest world and cast Ras out as well.

"Ras Elclare's most loyal."

Vildred doesn't deserve the title, the claim, or what love Ras had reached out to him with in his final moments before death. And now, the Forest has taken it upon itself to give Vildred life anew, knowing that the man has no home to go back to, that he'd destroyed a chunk of it in some ever-so valiant thought he was saving it. He's not sure if he should consider it a fitting end, or if he should walk back into the woods and ask to be put out of his god damn misery before he fucks more things up for everyone. Worse still is the fact he can feel the Archdemon's power still flowing in his veins, as if it had never left him or waned at all, which will make him functionally immortal. Again.

Fuck.

Okay.

The mental breakdown is still ongoing — regret clouds his steps as he walks forward, making the bold choice not to run off into the forest forever and become a hermit simply because he knows people will come looking for him. He has to face the music eventually, though Vildred finds himself wishing that more people here cared enough about Orbis as a whole to give him a good hard punch for all he'd done, tricked by the Archdemon's lackeys or not.

So he stumbles and trips his way into the Grove. The resurrection he wasn't supposed to have, pulled from back home, weighs heavy. The snow does little to wash the blood from his hands or clothing, and as Vildred pulls himself back to his feet, his eyes meet yours.

Uncharacteristically, he doesn't smile and wave. He simply turns away, looking haunted.]

ii. until the tape runs out on me [CLOSED to Ras]

[The first person he needs to talk to is Ras.

By now, at least with the distant thrum of magic in his pulse, he imagines Ras must be starting to wake up. Funny how sour a taste the thought of Ras ever sleeping again leaves in his mouth; had he only woken up twenty years earlier on Orbis, Vildred might not have been tricked. In the end, it all worked out in Kayron's favour; separate the most devoted from the vessel, and hell breaks loose. In any other timeline, despite Vildred's deaths, there really was no stopping him and Ras if they were together. Ras, who had loved Vildred absolutely, and Vildred, who had stood dutifully at Ras' side and died for him every single time.

He wants to ask if the Archdemon was ever properly dealt with again after he perished that seventh time, but he knows Ras is from prior iterations of Orbis. He wouldn't know. That makes this harder; he has to fess up that he never deserved the kindness offered to him, that he was angry Ras never told him anything and that all it would have taken was one single statement to keep Vildred's non-communicative ass from going off the deep end, that he made mistakes that endangered the world and that he shouldn't have the blessing of air in his lungs or even be allowed in their goddamn home. And, of course, this happens in the timeline where it could have simply ended. No reincarnations, no world resetting. They could have made good on their promise to travel together. Vildred could have grown old at Ras' side. Could have tried, like he'd joked once, to ask Diche if he could maybe possibly sort of be made into something greater so he could spend eternity at Ras' side.

What a goddamn joke of a man he is.

He stumbles into their home, violet eyes locking with Ras', and he freezes. What the fuck is he supposed to say? "Hi, I fucked up" doesn't seem good enough. "I'm sorry I'm not as good of a person as you thought I am" gets closer. "Turns out there are seven total timelines as far as I can tell and I don't know how the seventh ends because I ruined it" is a good start, too.

But he clams up, his gaze dropping to the floor instead.]

iii. come up for air and choke on it all [CLOSED to Wolfwood]

[Several conversations and mental breakdowns later, Vildred makes his way to the bakery in search of Wolfwood, because if anyone will listen to him bitch and moan and fuel his anger, it's definitely him. He'd vented about the world resets and the Archdemon's bitch party enough to the guy, but now he has what is essentially the full fucking tea and is going to go fucking off. He deserves that much, he thinks.

Of course, the upstairs of the bakery is relegated to staff only, and Vildred isn't quite rude enough to let himself in. He does knock on the door, hard, a couple of times, crossing past the countertop to do so.]

Wolfwood? Are you here today?

iv. no one else knows that i've got a problem [CLOSED to Lodi]

[And somewhere else, Lodi is getting slammed with visions. Oops!

In another world entirely, in a battlefield smelling strongly of dust and blood and carnage, the skies are tinted a deep purple-red, and something looms ominously in the background, but that isn't at the forefront of what Lodi will be seeing. Instead, he'll see Vildred as he remembers him last — golden eyes, but without the scar over his face — facing off against another man. Vildred calls him "Kayron" in a shout angry enough to have shattered a window with the sheer magnitude of his rage, and in the centre of the battlefield, their blades clash. They push against one another, shove each other back. Clash again.

This occurs several more times, but even to the untrained eye, it's obvious who the victor will be. For as fast as Vildred is, Kayron far outspeeds him, is far more agile, and clearly more trained. A downwards swing of his blade slashes Vildred across the face and blinds him with his own blood, forcing the knight on the back foot. The whites of his eyes are just barely visible, searing a furious red, stinging, and through the hand clutching his face to stay the bleeding, Vildred can only manage a glower as he uses his blade for support.

The second blow comes swiftly enough to end it all, and the knight collapses into the dirt.]

Comments

[bladeascent]

[Vildred vaguely motions to a clear patch of grass nearby, an offer to sit down with him while he cleans and re-cleans and re-re-cleans the sword off. The sword his mentor gave him, when he was just a stupid kid that Ran saw promise in.

What a god damn mistake he is.]

That could be any but the seventh and fifth. [Vildred's laugh is thin. Forced.] You probably saw the Archdemon. That's... what we were all fighting against. Kayron works as an Acolyte under it. It makes it sound like a job title, but it's more like a cult, I guess.

You don't have to apologise. It's a long, long story, but Orbis has been destroyed by the Archdemon six times, and Diche reset it back to what it was after every loss. Ras was created to stop it, and as you can imagine, he's failed six times. I was there for all of them, always fighting at his side.

[...]

Until the seventh iteration, which I imagine is the last. We defeated the Archdemon, and I went and messed it up for everyone.

[ninelines]

[ After a moment of warring with himself and whether this was the proper way to go about discussing a vision of this magnitude, Lodi seats himself where Vildred has indicated. The repetitive motion Vildred is engaged in, the act of cleaning his weapon ad nauseam, reminds Lodi enough of the motions his more haunted comrades in arms would engage in to self-soothe. Taking something apart and putting it back together, the familiarity of going through the motions, the mindlessness of it… if they were closer than they were, and if he knew the depths of Vildred's torment, Lodi might have reached out a hand to stop him.

As is, he keeps his hands to himself. He valiantly does not wince at the tight sound of Vildred's laughter, but he does grimace. In a way, he understands. He might not know the circumstances beyond what he had Seen, but he understands.

Lodi has come to understand, through both circumstance and retelling, that a sizable number of the people here had… more or less, gone through hell. Vildred being among their number after the kindness he had shown Lodi is… heart-wrenching, yes, but equally embittering. Empathy spears something akin to righteous anger in Lodi's heart and roots it firmly there.

He does not know the specifics. A large part of him is convinced he does not need to. The way Vildred spoke about it all was if he had resigned himself to an understanding of the events that seemed misaligned with what Lodi knew of his character. And though he scarcely knew Vildred, he liked to think, in his heart of hearts, that he was a decent judge of character. ]

First of all: I am sorry that you were forced to endure all of that. If you don't mind me asking, when you said you went and messed it up, what exactly do you mean?

[bladeascent]

[Vildred doesn't seem to mind. If anything, he needs to speak about it to work through it, so he'll put his sword aside for now. The blade has been cleaned to the point of being so shiny it blinds him when the sun glints off of it.]

Every time Orbis got reset, Ras would fall into a coma and wake up before the Archdemon's Advent. But after seven resets, things started to go wrong. Rifts would open up everywhere, or time would start to warp, or some people would get memories of their past iterations bleeding into their dreams. When the Archdemon attacked the seventh time, Ras didn't wake up, so it fell to us ordinary people to deal with it without him.

The Archdemon and his Acolytes made things difficult, but we managed to chop him up into pieces and hide the fragments all over Orbis. Twenty years later, Ras woke up to a peaceful world, and meanwhile...

[Vildred sighs, exhausted.]

One of the Acolytes, Kayron, had me convinced that Ras waking up was a bad thing. That Ras wanted to continue the cycle of Orbis' resets instead of stopping them, and that him waking up meant that he was going to figure out some way to do it. And I was... so convinced I was doing the right thing when I took matters into my own hands to save Orbis, I was so convinced Kayron had a point because I didn't know better, I was so convinced that because there was no documentation about Ras or any of the other Heirs that had died for the cause that it had to be for some conspiratorial reason instead of simply because no one else knew. So I assassinated Ezera's Queen, and went and fused myself with some of the Archdemon's fragments, and started destroying what I thought needed to be destroyed to stop Ras.

...in the end, he wound up trying to forgive me, but someone else with him killed me. I guess I deserved that much.

[ninelines]

[ Given that he had, unwittingly or not, opened this can of worms, Lodi wholeheartedly believes it is his duty to sit and listen carefully as Vildred explains. In many ways, Lodi does not blame Vildred for his actions: being faced with such a sudden deviation in what is anticipated, and witnessing the very foundation of your world cracking apart, would cause anyone to question. Desperation would easily set in in even the most weak-willed of people. If presented with information that seemed both reasonable and the very solution for such a significant issue, most would also gladly leap to believe in it.

That could be doubly exacerbated by an uneasy peacetime. Fear of the unknown, a generous helping of lack of familiarity…

Exhaling quietly through his nose, Lodi braces his hands against the ground and leans back, staring at the sky rather than at Vildred. The last thing he wants, in this moment, is for Vildred to feel cornered. Judged. Any of the above. ]

To me, it sounds like someone took advantage of your fear and used convenient, convincing lies to drum up enough paranoia to convince you it was the right thing. After enduring what you've had to endure… it's hard for me to conceptualize the suffering to begin with.

I can't tell you that what you did was right or wrong for that reason. But if the one who you feel you betrayed the most felt it was right to forgive you, why shouldn't you be forgiven?

[bladeascent]

[It's a hard-hitting question. Vildred's eyes glaze over very briefly, and then he turns his gaze skywards, as if searching for an answer the heavens cannot provide. Expectedly, they're silent, and slowly he looks back down to the ground.]

Some betrayals shouldn't be forgiven. I killed a lot of people. I could've destroyed the world again, after so many times of it being destroyed. I swore to protect people — I took an oath as a knight to do that very thing, that was my entire goal, that was my family's entire goal for generations — and instead of paying attention and opening my eyes, I damned them instead. I don't want forgiveness or absolution, even if Ras decided to give it to me. I'm always going to hate myself for the choices I made, whether I was manipulated into them or not.

[ninelines]

[ Their positions swap the moment Vildred's gaze redirects. Instead of looking to the sky, Lodi looks to Vildred.

His eyes remain fixed even as Vildred goes through motions that are familiar: beseeching the stars for an answer they cannot provide, then feeling the profound weight of being utterly downcast. Though their circumstances could not be more different, Lodi feels as though he can understand at least a sliver of what his companion is grappling with.

For that reason, he won't discredit or attempt to dissuade Vildred's line of thinking. It was one thing to quietly encourage self-forgiveness, but it would be both out of line and likely useless to try and force a shift in mindset this massive.

And, in truth, there was a logic behind Vildred's mindset that Lodi could not entirely disagree with. Regardless of the insidious manipulation at play, having a hand in the unraveling a world was a weight he would ultimately have to bear.

Not that this was the best way of shouldering it. But how best to word that… Lodi lifts one hand, adjusting his glasses with his knuckles. ]

Alright. So, you've done something unforgivable. You've committed an act so utterly heinous that you believe there's no absolving it. Let me ask a different question instead, then: ultimately, you're still here. What are you going to do now?

[bladeascent]

...I guess just try to be less stupid about things. Be better. I don't know, I don't really have a game plan. I just need to be a better man than I was back then.

[It won't make him feel much better, but it'll make him feel less like he didn't deserve another chance at life. The fatigue in his voice is obvious, though; if it were up to him, he probably would've just stayed dead on Orbis. This isn't how this place works, though, and he knows that better than anyone now.]

Not that I know how to do that right now.

[ninelines]

Hey, it's a start. Having even something in mind is better than simply feeling rudderless. It gives you something actionable to work towards.

[ Lodi sighs lightly through his nose. He doesn't want to be overbearing, here, nor does he want to feel as though he's... pushing Vildred one way or the other. This was ultimately his journey, his struggle to work through, and Lodi had remarkably limited insight on what it could potentially look like.

Still, though. Maybe he could sprinkle in his point of view. Give his two cents. ]

If you want to know what I think – I think you pinpoint those things you regret the most, and consider why you regret them. Sitting with those moments, those feelings, it sucks. It's terrible, frankly! But there's always things we can learn from even our most terrible mistakes. Even when our backs are up against a corner, we rarely only have one option. Sometimes you just need that informed shift in perspective to help you realize the other options are there, though, right?

[ One corner of Lodi's shoulder lifts in a shrug. ] And if there is only the one option, you take it. Sometimes, part of being better is acceptance.