blades au wip [wintersberg]
Apr. 21st, 2023 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hexmixso anyway of course i wanted to do a knight/lord wintersberg au using blades. i have a very extensive outline for this fic but only a few excerpts; two from inktobers (2021, 2022) and one that i churned out as if possessed. they're all below the cut, in chronological order as they would appear in the fic. heisenberg's characterization in this is very much not what i typically go with. ethan's isn't really either for that matter. some dubcon elements that are not explicit/emphasized in the excerpts below but which would become very much so in the fic itself.
“The Lady said kneel,” Lady Dimitrescu’s Blade snarled, shoving him down forcefully.
His knees hit the stone floor and he hissed in pain, trying to yank himself out from under the Blade’s grip. She pulled back herself, but before he could get back to his feet she kicked him squarely between the shoulderblades, knocking him forward. He tried to catch himself, but she bore down, forcing his face flat against the frigid stone. She continued to hold him there, merely shifting her boot from his back to his neck when he continued struggling.
With his hands bound behind his back and the weight of her bearing down on him, there was nothing for him to do but cast his eyes around frantically, trying to pinpoint the Mother--
There she was, the gauzy fabric of her outer robes pooled around her like a shroud; he could make out her position easily enough from that.
“My child,” she said, her voice measured, weighty with self-importance, “what do you imagine I should do with that?”
“Mother,” Lady Dimitrescu said. She was standing just out of his line of sight, but her voice carried well enough. “I found this...this rat trying to sneak in through the cellars. He has done nothing but utter blasphemies since my Blades apprehended him, and I thought--”
“You thought what, my dear? To show me every low creature that stumbles through these halls?”
“N-no, Mother, I only-- It was just what he was saying. He knows--He is--”
He couldn’t see the look the Holy Mother was giving her, but going off of how much Dimitrescu was tripping over her own tongue in order to spit out her words, it really must be something else.
“His name is Ethan Winters!” Dimitrescu said at last. Her Blade pressed down harder against the back of his neck and he grunted, unable to do little else in this position.
“Ah,” the Mother said, and then the both of them grew silent. Ethan imagined they must be looking him over.
The Mother would have no reason to have heard his name, not unless--
“Dispose of him,” the Holy Mother said.
“Yes, Mother--”
“Mother Miranda, if I may,” said a new voice, and Ethan strained to get his head up just enough to follow the tread of boots on stone, trying to identify the speaker.
Riding boots, a worn, soft looking cherry brown, came to a stop a mere foot away from him. There, running up the side, was a simple ornamentation, tarnished silver: a stallion encircled by the bend of a horseshoe.
He knew that crest.
He felt a newly burgeoning hope he’d barely been aware of sink like a stone down to the pit of his stomach. There’d be no help from this quarter, either. Not from--
“Lord Heisenberg, how like you to stick your nose where it doesn’t belong,” Dimitrescu sneered, sounding much more collected now that the Mother’s attention had shifted.
“On the contrary,” Heisenberg said, “I think I can be of some assistance here, Holy Mother.”
“Oh?” she asked, her voice tipping more towards amusement than Ethan had yet heard it. It filled him with more dread than the disdain she’d shown previously.
“Give him to me,” Heisenberg continued.
“Give him--!”
“And what would you do with him, should you have him?” the Mother asked, speaking over Dimitrescu. “What difference is it to me if you kill him or if the Lady does?”
“Well,” Heisenberg said, sounding completely unbothered, “I don’t plan on killing him, for one.”
Ethan stared at the boots right there in front of them, feeling increasingly ill at ease.
He knew the Lord Heisenberg; had heard of him anyway. His reputation left no doubt in Ethan’s mind that this was no act of goodwill he was proposing.
“Well?” the Mother prompted. “What do you intend to do with him?”
“You’re always telling me I need a Blade, Mother Miranda, so I thought--”
“No!” Ethan yelled, already thrashing, twisting back and forth to jar the Blade enough to get free. She lost her balance, and he somehow got himself back up, was almost to his feet when she knocked into him again, forcing him back onto his knees and then kicking him, again and again, until he had to curl in on himself in an attempt to protect at least part of himself from the blows.
“No,” he said again, the word practically a grunt. And then again, “No.”
“So you see,” Heisenberg said, as if he couldn’t hear the muffled blows, Ethan’s pained grunts, “he lives, and is of some use, or he dies, and, well,” a pause, “that’s one problem solved.”
“Mother Miranda, you can’t honestly--”
“Silence.”
The Blade stopped kicking him, stepping back immediately to Dimistrescu’s side. The Mother must have done something; the Lady was gasping, making these high, pained sounding noises that snagged Ethan’s attention even through his own pain.
“Lord Heisenberg,” the Holy Mother said. “I will entrust this man’s fate to you. See that, one way or another, he is no longer a problem.”
One of the boots slipped back behind the other; he must have sketched her a bow. “Of course, Mother,” he said.
At that, she turned on her heel, and Ethan watched the trail of her outer robes until they were completely out of sight. He continued to watch, biting his lip to keep any more pained noises from escaping, as Dimitrescu, after only the slightest of pauses, hurried after her, her heeled riding boots tapping quickly across the stone. Her Blade followed at her heels, and Ethan watched that pair of pointed boots leave with no small amount of relief.
Once Ethan could no longer hear the Mother or any of her retinue, Lord Heisenberg’s boots turned, their toes pointing towards him.
“Ethan Winters,” he said, “I have a proposition for you.”
The horse plodded on, keeping to a slower pace than Ethan would have preferred, the only light the moon and the little sparking witchlight Heisenberg had summoned that bobbed ahead of them at a little distance, casting the wagon-cut road a bluish-gray.
Ethan sat as straight as possible, trying to keep as much space between himself and Heisenberg as he could, all the while picking at the restraints on his wrists, grinding his teeth every time the horse would jostle him right back against Heisenberg’s chest, while the man in question just yammered on, acting as if he was completely unaware of Ethan’s distaste.
“Used to have them all over the damn place,” Heisenberg continued, his tone the same even musing, “back when having your own personal little army of Blades was all the rage.”
“Back before they started going crazy and killing their masters, you mean,” Ethan grumbled. He knew a fair bit of history too.
Heisenberg snickered, and Ethan ground his teeth again. “Yeah,” he agreed easily, “turns out trying to circumvent a centuries old ritual by using paid mercenaries wasn’t the brightest idea.” He slapped a hand down on Ethan’s thigh, squeezing. Ethan didn’t know if it was supposed to be a threat or just him getting handsy again. It was probably both, he thought bitterly.
“Of course,” Heisenberg said, leaning forward so that his chest and stomach pressed right up against Ethan’s back, forward still more so that Ethan could feel the weight of him, bearing down. He brought his mouth close to Ethan’s ear, almost whispering when he said, “That’s not going to be something I’ll have to worry about with you, is it?”
I’m actually considering the possibility of going crazy and killing you a bonus, is what Ethan wanted to say. But he forced himself to bite his tongue, replying, “No. If anything, the ritual will just kill me outright.”
Heisenberg hummed, the sound tickling Ethan’s ear, before he withdrew, leaning back in the saddle and putting space between them again. Ethan didn’t allow himself to relax.
“Think you’re probably sincere enough to pass,” Heisenberg said after a while. “It’s not really as clear cut as the legends all make it out to be. The ritual can’t read loyalty, not the way it’s made out to. It’s more a matter of intent. Do you intend to serve me, to protect me? Think your desire to save your wife is sincere enough, and that’s what the ritual is going to read.”
Ethan was silent for a while, listening to horseshoes on hard packed earth and working through what he’d just been told.
“And how the hell do you even know that? You said yourself you’ve never had a Blade before,” he glared out at the witchlight as a substitute for glaring at the Lord.
“Because I’ve actually read the damn texts,” Heisenberg said, his voice as close to annoyed as Ethan had heard it since they’d set out. “It’s binding magic, and binding magic is some of the most straightforward shit you’ve got. There’s a literalness to it that means it’s not gonna go sideways on you, or you don’t have to worry about how it’s gonna decide to interpret itself.”
Ethan didn’t like acceding to him, in any fashion, but his experience with magic of any sort was limited, so if one of the Blessed Lords was here telling him how binding magic worked, he really didn’t have the space to gainsay him. Not that it made it any easier to swallow. “So it doesn’t matter that I don’t actually want to be your Blade, just that I intend to do it, that’s what you’re saying?”
“That is exactly what I’m saying,” Heisenberg replied, still sounding miffed.
They lapsed into silence for a while after that, Ethan straightening up any time he brushed Heisenberg’s front, and chewing through what he’d been told.
He’d been pretty much certain that the ritual was going to kill him, was the thing. It was only ever a last ditch effort; the only path open to him. It was either die uselessly with no chance of helping Mia, or die uselessly with a small chance of helping Mia, and his choice was pretty well made for him when he looked at it that way.
So hearing that Heisenberg genuinely thought he’d survive was…strange.
It didn’t exactly feel like a good thing.
“Miranda was the one who tore down most of the temples around here,” Heisenberg eventually said. Hearing him refer to the Holy Mother by her given name jolted Ethan the same way it always did. “They were originally built as part of the ritual itself, so there was magic in their construction. She had them harvested,” he said the word like it was something despicable, “it was never about the Blades going crazy, falling out of fashion.”
“What did she do with them?” Ethan asked after a moment, genuinely interested despite himself.
“Siphoned them,” Heisenberg said, his tone flat, “you’ve seen how much her influence has grown, it’s hardly coincidence.”
Ethan had suspected as much himself. Not that the Holy Mother was out sucking the magic out of really old ruins or whatever, but that she was going against the very precepts she’d sworn to at her Ascension in order to increase her own power.
“You can’t be the only one who’s noticed,” Ethan said softly, suspecting he knew what Heisenberg would have to say to that too.
“Of course not. But the people who’ve tried to say anything about it have a tendency to die horribly and suddenly.”
Ethan twisted his wrists in the restraints, feeling a familiar helplessness bubble up again. “And you really think,” he said, “that I’ll actually be able to help you put a stop to it? To her?”
“Wouldn’t have bothered scraping your ass off the floor if I didn’t,” Heisenberg said simply, and then, “We’re here.”
He clicked his tongue at the horse and it came obediently to a stop. The witchlight too had stopped, and was sparking frantically in front of a squat, semicircular structure made of some kind of dark stone.
Ethan waited as Heisenberg dismounted first, and then followed. Or attempted to. He lost his balance almost immediately and Heisenberg had to reach up to steady him, helping him down. Ethan felt the briefest flicker of gratitude before he viciously ground it out, remembering that the whole reason he was even struggling to get off a fucking horse was because Heisenberg had bound his hands.
“The ritual is built on separation and rejoining,” Heisenberg told him, taking Ethan’s wrists in his gloved hands and running his thumbs over the chains. The metal lit up, the same blue as the witchlight, and then simply unlinked itself, like it was a cat Heisenberg had stroked into purring agreement. Heisenberg unwound the chains from him, speaking the whole while, Ethan waiting in mute annoyance, “We’ll enter from opposite ends. It goes down under the earth–I’ll light a torch for you–and there are three chambers. The one you enter first will have instructions. All you need to do is follow them as closely as you can. You’ll enter the central chamber when you’re ready.”
Heisenberg pocketed the chains when he was done and moved back to the horse, reaching for the leather-wrapped bundle he’d brought with them and taking it under the crook of his arm. Ethan watched him, rubbing at his wrists.
“How will I know when that is?” he asked.
Heisenberg shrugged, seemingly unconcerned, but then speared him with a sharp, almost predatory look. “Guess that’s part of the ritual too,” he said.
Ethan glared at him, but took the torch the Lord lit using a spark of magic and moved to the entrance he was directed at.
“Winters,” Heisenberg said, right as Ethan was steeling himself to enter. He turned to meet his gaze, expecting another blithe line.
“Just think about why you’re doing this,” Heisenberg said instead, sounding as serious as Ethan had ever heard him. “That will be enough.”
Heisenberg had, Ethan reminded himself, plenty reason for this to work. He wouldn’t be telling Ethan something if it would only lead to him sabotaging himself. Ethan was certain that, if nothing else, Heisenberg did have his own best interests at heart.
He nodded, the only acknowledgement he was willing to give, and turned back to the waiting darkness of the temple.
Torch in hand, he began his descent.
Think of it this way, you’ll be little more than a set piece. Just need you for the display.
It should be a relief, even as insulting as it was. Better to just stand around doing nothing than be expected to engage in Heisenberg’s manipulations.
Except that he wasn’t going to be standing around at all, was he?
Heisenberg gave him a look. Ethan knew he wasn’t going to gesture a second time, knew that Heisenberg would take it out on him later if he didn’t obey--even now the compulsion was digging its hooks in--but he just…
He couldn’t. He wouldn’t fucking demean himself--
Patience, he thought, schooling himself back towards calm. He stepped up the dais, lowering his head in the show of submission Heisenberg’s guests would expect, and bent down on one knee, keeping his face lowered.
Heisenberg’s gloved hand brushed the lightest touch against the crown of his head, slipping fingers down to his temple, around behind his ear, finally cupping the base of his skull.
“Come here, Ethan,” he said, his voice low, barely audible, but nonetheless an order.
Ethan moved forward on his knees, moved into the V of Heisenberg’s legs and laid his head against Heisenberg’s inner thigh, where it was guided. “Relax,” Heisenberg said, still in that same low voice, still threading it through with command.
That was, Ethan thought with no small amount of bitterness, easier said than done.
The score of people gathered in Heisenberg’s dining hall, their unknown voices, unknown motives, unknown allegiances--it was all grating against the compulsion, which kept urging him alert, alert, alert. The eyes he could now feel on him weren’t helping.
But he made himself relax all the same, loosening his posture until he was leaning more of his weight against Heisenberg’s leg.
Heisenberg hummed in approval and resumed stroking Ethan’s hair. “Just like that,” he said. “That’s all you need to do, Ethan. Stay just like that.”
It was an order. He’d have to obey.
He exhaled, but stayed where Heisenberg had guided him. He merely listened to the guests filing in, taking their seats or milling about chatting.
Their voices mingled together in a discordant mass he was having trouble sifting through. He needed to be on guard, he needed to be--
No, he thought, fighting it. No, he said to stay just like this. So that’s what I’m doing.
It took a while, and was a little like arguing with a wall, but eventually he got the compulsion set into the new rhythm of set piece wait like this display just like this wait wait.
The urge to follow every word of every audible conversation passed. The urge to be up, one last line of defense between his master and the masses who may even now be hiding someone who would do him harm, that too passed. The compulsion occupied itself with the new order given to it.
“Well?” Heisenberg said after some time, “Sit the fuck down so we can get started.”
The guests sat, and Ethan felt a sort of relief at the absence of the urge to turn and watch them all, watch their motions, cataloging them--
He huffed, closed his eyes and allowed it when Heisenberg slipped his fingers under the back of Ethan’s collar, just holding his hand there; palm against Ethan’s neck.
The dinner droned on. Heisenberg chatting with his guests, many of whom had what they thought were clever comments to make about his new Blade.
They hardly even reached Ethan anymore. He was, by Heisenberg’s own command, little more than furniture. Decoration. A set piece in whatever drama Heisenberg had constructed.
Being that, being this, was the easiest thing the compulsion had ever demanded of him.
He’d even found himself drifting off. Heisenberg’s thigh was warm against his cheek. His pants were some high quality fabric that was soft enough that it didn’t even scratch. Heisenberg’s fingers trailed steadily back and forth across his scalp, lulling him.
It was suddenly so easy, being here, in this space. He’d pulled back from himself. Even the compulsion had quieted. Things became--gradually, as in the shifting of a dream--as sharp as broken glass. There was a clarity to everything. To the voices of the guests, to the clink of glasses and plates, to the softened footfalls of servants.
His Lord’s voice, a steady rumble. His heartbeat. His breaths.
The movement of every individual body in that room. Shifting fabric. A sudden intake of breath--spilled wine. Chastising tone. Servants pattering over. Food, chewing, smell of spices, of braised meats.
His Lord’s hand, pressing him closer.
Existing there, in that space. Just that. Nothing else but that. And it was so easy. The easiest thing, being nothing save exactly what his Lord had asked.
Someone coming closer--threat? no--a shift of fabric--he was bowing, and a nasal voice, “Remarkable how quickly you’ve tamed him.”
“Is it?” his Lord asked. His voice held amusement.
The other man tensed. His heartbeat increased. “For anyone else, my Lord, it would be a remarkable feat.”
His Lord snorted. Said, “I’m sure it would.”
“M-my Lord,” bowing again. Retreating back to the table.
“Ass,” his Lord muttered, and then shifted, leaning back.
Moving with him, moving where he was guided. Easy as anything.
As feeling a shift in the air. Footsteps, trying to be silent, trying to be unheard.
A click--crossbow bolt slid into place--among all the noise of the room it should be drowned out but there it was: the alcove overlooking the room. A man, with a crossbow. Aiming now.
Follow the trajectory. The bolt will travel down, at an angle, down towards his Lord. The air will thrum with it. It will land...where will it land? It’s only a matter of--
The snap of the bolt firing, and rising--he was rising, his hand lifted, fingers closing exactly around where he knew the bolt would be.
There in his grip, stopped just like that.
Eyes opening, seeing the surprise on his Lord’s face, his hand, holding the bolt mere inches away from his Lord’s throat.
The assassin was moving, reloading. The distance between them was lessening because he was on his feet, he’d leapt up onto the table and was running--dishes knocked flying, crashing, out of his way--picking up speed.
Seeing the handholds he would need to grip to make it up to the alcove. Knowing the speed, the momentum, he’d need to build up. How high to jump in order to make it up to the first handhold, the momentum taking some of the strain off his arms--upper body strength alone wasn’t enough to make it.
At the end of the table he jumped, kicked off the wall and grabbed for the first handhold, then the second.
The assassin would have the crossbow up. He’d have to dodge--he pulled himself up over the ledge, knew when the man would fire the bolt, knew when to--he dodged.
Wide eyes. Fear. Fear of him.
His hand grasping the front of the man’s shirt, yanking him back, pulling him, throwing him over the edge of the alcove.
He landed with a crash on the table. The guests were screaming, scurrying like rats to the edges of the room.
He stepped off the ledge and landed, knew how to land to avoid injury. Unsheathed his sword--
“Ethan, don’t let that fucker kill himself!” His Lord’s voice. A command.
It was only three steps towards the man. The assassin had slipped something in his mouth--poison--and he shoved his hand in after it, found the capsule, threw it aside.
The back of his hand hit the man’s face and he was scrambling to get away, gasping.
Grabbing his ankle and pulling him back, stabbing the sword down through his shoulder into the wood of the table just to keep him still. Reaching around to shove his fingers in the man’s mouth so he couldn’t bite off his own tongue.
“Ethan.”
Looking up towards the voice. His Lord, there next to them, standing at the side of the table.
Brows furrowed, eyes locked on…
Locked on him. Watching him. Flicking briefly down to the assassin.
“Knock him out.” A command. One he followed.
