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'nother EO2U dump
In the interest of not further exploding this blog with more posts about EO, here, I'm sweeping up all my remaining unposted content and putting it in a pile. As is my general policy, all Flavio content is Flavnir content; all Bertrand content is friggin' dismal.
~100 words of Flavio being a nerd
"Let's see. This flower isn't actually from this tree, so it must come from a separate plant that's growing along this branch..." He muttered to himself as he traced the flower stem back into the moss, trying to remember a botany lesson from over a year ago. "Yup, there we go. It's got leaves and a simple root system. So that makes it... an air plant?" He noted this down in his book. "But the leaves are green, so it's not parasitic. It just climbed up here to get closer to the sun - hey, am I getting this right? Do you remember that class?"
On the forest floor below, his friend just shrugged and asked how long he planned to be up there.
~400 words of Flavio freaking out
Flavio wiped away the blood that ran into his eyes and tried to concentrate. Okay. You know how to survive. You're trained for things like this. Okay. It's okay. When the monster is stronger than you, you just have to be smarter than the monster. When the monster is stronger than all five of you -
when the monster can take out four people with one swipe of its tail, but you only got clipped so you just got smacked into a tree at an oblique angle and you're basically fine except for the ringing in your ears -
He shook his head, which was a bad idea, because it sent a stab of pain through the front of his skull. Not that he should complain. He was still standing. He - the most useless member of this guild - was still standing, and the baby salamander was pretending for now not to notice him, the way a cat will stare calmly at a wall but keep the mouse in his periphery -
He fumbled at his belt for the medical supplies. His fingers were clumsy, wooden. There should be a couple of flasks of nectar in here. He just had to avoid getting incinerated long enough to force one down the throat of -
- his best friend, whom he'd let down, whom he shouldn't have allowed to take that hit, who shouldn't have crumpled like that -
No, no. Think. You're still here and nobody's dead yet, not really dead, whatever it looks like. It would make more sense to revive Chloe first. She could patch everyone up without dipping into the more expensive supplies. That would work. You're supposed to think strategically, Flavio, not just prioritize your best friend.
Except Chloe wasn't that fast, and neither she nor he should be on the front lines with nothing between them and a bored salamander - and she was just a kid, she shouldn't be out here taking hits in the first place, she should be at home reading about these creatures and not personally getting her arm fractured while she reached for her staff -
The salamander's tail flicked restlessly. He could see sparks gathering in the corners of its mouth. Time to make a move.
~300 words of Flavio having a nice time, pre-canon
Flavio seems happier since you left. You weren't expecting this. He's your best friend, but let's be realistic: he isn't great with change, or the unexpected, or leaving his very small comfort zone. When he talked about this trip in the weeks before you left, he always sounded excited, and you thought this was a put-on. He talked about going on a cool new adventure with his best friend, and you thought, He's not going to stay this cheerful when we get to the end of the road and he has to meet people. He's going to get homesick. He's not going to know how to deal.
You have not given him enough credit.
Every day on the road he points out a plant or animal or cloud pattern or rock formation that he's "always wanted to see". Every evening he scavenges for plants near your campsite to supplement the provisions you packed, and builds a fire (and the fires get more efficient as you go along) and cooks something a little different, and you cannot believe he made this out of nuts that he found on the ground. The first night he exclaims at how many stars there are; he doesn't say anything on subsequent nights but you're sure he's still thinking it.
It's getting colder. You're getting farther and farther from home. And Flavio is... fine. Out here he doesn't have a reputation. There are no critical eyes on him waiting for him to fail. The two of you have a destination, but you're not there yet; you can just exist where you are. It's just you, and him, and the whole wide world.
Violetta+Bertrand, ~1k words
The need for anyone to become the Fafnir Knight at all was brutal, and so measures had been taken. The Fafnir was to be chosen from the noble houses, as those with the greatest privileges had the greatest responsibility to the citizens. The victim’s (but of course she wasn’t supposed to use the word “victim”) immediate family would be provided for by the crown, for life, to offset any personal griefs. And the order in which the houses must surrender their young people had been laid out in the very beginning, in a book that was kept locked up in the castle, so that each had their turn with perfect impartiality (she had no way of knowing how the order was chosen in the first place. She had no choice but to hope it had been done fairly).
Violetta had been slightly acquainted with both of the prospective knights, men of about her own age from the house of Desjardins. She had liked the son a little better, but had assumed that they would send the nephew, as the more expendable. Anyway, she’d tried not to think of it in those terms. There was something perverse in hoping that the person you must lead to the slaughter be one you liked.
So she must have heard the name wrong. As the door opened she was turning back to the minister, whispering, “Wait, 'Gervaise?'”
The minister shook his head. The door closed behind her. And now she was in the presence of her knight: a complete stranger.
He knelt. She didn’t know what to say.
She had resolved ahead of time that she would not stand on ceremony. That would only be one more cruelty to the person she’d come to escort out of this life. Besides, the records stated that the ritual worked better if the participants trusted each other. (How did they measure that? she had wondered, reading them over and over again. How did you decide whether one human sacrifice was a greater success than another, and how could you assess the value of a bond between people?) But none of the friendly remarks she’d contemplated would fit here. She had never seen this man in her life.
“It wasn’t your family’s turn,” she said, which was even less formal than she had planned. “You should not have been asked to do this.”
He looked up, and then raised one shoulder in a careless shrug. “No big.”
“Pardon? No big what?”
He grimaced. “Ah, crap. Forgetting my manners already. Your Grace, what I meant was -”
“Please, stand.” He did. “I don’t question your resolve - the courage it must take to submit to this fate. But this is too much to demand of your house, so soon after…” After Lord de Gervaise’s death, yes, that was where she’d heard the name most recently. And he had been a strong man, never ill a day in his life, not yet fifty years old, keeping only the most respectable company, with as few enemies as anyone could have, in a life at court -
But Lord and Lady Desjardins might have considered anyone an enemy who didn’t have to sacrifice a child.
From the look in his eyes, he had already made the same conclusions. But he just smiled sardonically and said, “Well, there are only three of us left. Guess the council figured we should pay our dues while we still can.”
Only three left, yes. A mother and a sister. Who would be provided for after this man’s death. Who would need that provision after the death of their patriarch. “This was expertly done,” said Violetta, and could not keep the steel from her voice.
“Lady, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She frowned. Evidently taking this for disapproval, he hastened to add: “Sorry. They’ve been trying to drill decorum into my head for years now, but if there’s a courtly protocol for this situation, they never covered that one. I’ll, uh - I mean no disrespect.”
Why would such things need to be drilled? Unless - “Wait. You were the boy who was adopted from the slums, weren’t you? Because the main branch lacked an heir -”
“No offense,” he said, eyes narrowed, “but are you always like this? Do you just memorize a rap sheet on everyone you might ever get introduced to?”
Injustice mounted on injustice. She ought to do something. “You’ve been dragged into a plot that should never have -”
He held up a hand. “Hey. Weird shit happens to me. I’m done arguing with it. Anyway, my mother and sister have been nothing but kind to me. Even if they’re not the family I was born to, I’m not leaving them out in the cold.”
“But you know what the Fafnir…?”
“I know what I’ve been told. But a hundred years is a long time. Maybe things have changed since the last go-round. Maybe the Calamity is old and tired and I can just knock it on the head and walk back out.” He flashed a lazy grin. “Won’t know until we get there.”
The council had made its decision; this man would be the Fafnir Knight. She could not reject their choice without causing an incident, without triggering reprisals against his family, without losing precious time needed for the ritual, and losing the goodwill of the noble houses left standing. Or without insulting him.
“Sir Bertrand, was it not?” She held out her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
He should have knelt again and kissed her ring; that was the protocol. He should have regarded this as an enormous honor. Instead he stared at that hand for a long moment, looking increasingly flustered and confused - they really hadn’t told him what to do. They were really sending him in blind - and finally took hold and gave it a firm shake. “The pleasure’s all mine,” he said, in the tones of someone who knew this wasn’t the right response but was hoping to get away with it anyway.
She wanted to be his friend, she realized, not without pain. For his own sake she wished he’d never ended up here.
~100 words of Bertrand angst, pre-canon
It was when his birth family died, when he was just a kid, that he decided the world was cold. In retrospect, that's almost cute. Since then he's gained and lost an entire second family, a best friend, a decent chunk of his humanity, and any chance of going home; he thinks sometimes of asking his younger self, "What, you feel abandoned now? You think you're all alone now? You're just getting started."
Ten or twenty years from now he'll realize he's never gonna die, and then he'll look back on this as more youthful naivety. And he'll want to add: "Quit tempting fate, you asshole."
ETA Jan 2019: nother couple hundred words of Bertrand angst, post-canon
Arianna stands up, the Queen of Caledonia, and all kneel. After a pause, she turns, with crown and scepter, to face her subjects. These regalia passed through the hands of generations of Caledonian royals (but not that one) and it's like they were made to fit her, or she to fit them (but that would have been true for any Daughter of the Mark). She's come so far (she's not the first one). She's a good kid (last in a long line of 'em) and she'll be a badass queen (just like...)
She looks like Violetta (Violetta never looked like this).
(But she would have, if he hadn't screwed up, if he hadn't taken it from her. If he'd just shut up and died like he was supposed to. If she hadn't thrown her life away on a dumb motherfucker like him.)
Time is still passing. No clue how much. People are starting to stand up again. Chloe shoots him a questioning look. From a distance he hears himself say, "I can't do this." But Chloe grabs him by the elbow and gets up, so he gets up, too, and Arianna walks back down the aisle giving everyone the royal wave and everything's fine. There's a party, after everyone has left the cathedral, but he doesn't go.
~100 words of Flavio being a nerd
"Let's see. This flower isn't actually from this tree, so it must come from a separate plant that's growing along this branch..." He muttered to himself as he traced the flower stem back into the moss, trying to remember a botany lesson from over a year ago. "Yup, there we go. It's got leaves and a simple root system. So that makes it... an air plant?" He noted this down in his book. "But the leaves are green, so it's not parasitic. It just climbed up here to get closer to the sun - hey, am I getting this right? Do you remember that class?"
On the forest floor below, his friend just shrugged and asked how long he planned to be up there.
~400 words of Flavio freaking out
Flavio wiped away the blood that ran into his eyes and tried to concentrate. Okay. You know how to survive. You're trained for things like this. Okay. It's okay. When the monster is stronger than you, you just have to be smarter than the monster. When the monster is stronger than all five of you -
when the monster can take out four people with one swipe of its tail, but you only got clipped so you just got smacked into a tree at an oblique angle and you're basically fine except for the ringing in your ears -
He shook his head, which was a bad idea, because it sent a stab of pain through the front of his skull. Not that he should complain. He was still standing. He - the most useless member of this guild - was still standing, and the baby salamander was pretending for now not to notice him, the way a cat will stare calmly at a wall but keep the mouse in his periphery -
He fumbled at his belt for the medical supplies. His fingers were clumsy, wooden. There should be a couple of flasks of nectar in here. He just had to avoid getting incinerated long enough to force one down the throat of -
- his best friend, whom he'd let down, whom he shouldn't have allowed to take that hit, who shouldn't have crumpled like that -
No, no. Think. You're still here and nobody's dead yet, not really dead, whatever it looks like. It would make more sense to revive Chloe first. She could patch everyone up without dipping into the more expensive supplies. That would work. You're supposed to think strategically, Flavio, not just prioritize your best friend.
Except Chloe wasn't that fast, and neither she nor he should be on the front lines with nothing between them and a bored salamander - and she was just a kid, she shouldn't be out here taking hits in the first place, she should be at home reading about these creatures and not personally getting her arm fractured while she reached for her staff -
The salamander's tail flicked restlessly. He could see sparks gathering in the corners of its mouth. Time to make a move.
~300 words of Flavio having a nice time, pre-canon
Flavio seems happier since you left. You weren't expecting this. He's your best friend, but let's be realistic: he isn't great with change, or the unexpected, or leaving his very small comfort zone. When he talked about this trip in the weeks before you left, he always sounded excited, and you thought this was a put-on. He talked about going on a cool new adventure with his best friend, and you thought, He's not going to stay this cheerful when we get to the end of the road and he has to meet people. He's going to get homesick. He's not going to know how to deal.
You have not given him enough credit.
Every day on the road he points out a plant or animal or cloud pattern or rock formation that he's "always wanted to see". Every evening he scavenges for plants near your campsite to supplement the provisions you packed, and builds a fire (and the fires get more efficient as you go along) and cooks something a little different, and you cannot believe he made this out of nuts that he found on the ground. The first night he exclaims at how many stars there are; he doesn't say anything on subsequent nights but you're sure he's still thinking it.
It's getting colder. You're getting farther and farther from home. And Flavio is... fine. Out here he doesn't have a reputation. There are no critical eyes on him waiting for him to fail. The two of you have a destination, but you're not there yet; you can just exist where you are. It's just you, and him, and the whole wide world.
Violetta+Bertrand, ~1k words
The need for anyone to become the Fafnir Knight at all was brutal, and so measures had been taken. The Fafnir was to be chosen from the noble houses, as those with the greatest privileges had the greatest responsibility to the citizens. The victim’s (but of course she wasn’t supposed to use the word “victim”) immediate family would be provided for by the crown, for life, to offset any personal griefs. And the order in which the houses must surrender their young people had been laid out in the very beginning, in a book that was kept locked up in the castle, so that each had their turn with perfect impartiality (she had no way of knowing how the order was chosen in the first place. She had no choice but to hope it had been done fairly).
Violetta had been slightly acquainted with both of the prospective knights, men of about her own age from the house of Desjardins. She had liked the son a little better, but had assumed that they would send the nephew, as the more expendable. Anyway, she’d tried not to think of it in those terms. There was something perverse in hoping that the person you must lead to the slaughter be one you liked.
So she must have heard the name wrong. As the door opened she was turning back to the minister, whispering, “Wait, 'Gervaise?'”
The minister shook his head. The door closed behind her. And now she was in the presence of her knight: a complete stranger.
He knelt. She didn’t know what to say.
She had resolved ahead of time that she would not stand on ceremony. That would only be one more cruelty to the person she’d come to escort out of this life. Besides, the records stated that the ritual worked better if the participants trusted each other. (How did they measure that? she had wondered, reading them over and over again. How did you decide whether one human sacrifice was a greater success than another, and how could you assess the value of a bond between people?) But none of the friendly remarks she’d contemplated would fit here. She had never seen this man in her life.
“It wasn’t your family’s turn,” she said, which was even less formal than she had planned. “You should not have been asked to do this.”
He looked up, and then raised one shoulder in a careless shrug. “No big.”
“Pardon? No big what?”
He grimaced. “Ah, crap. Forgetting my manners already. Your Grace, what I meant was -”
“Please, stand.” He did. “I don’t question your resolve - the courage it must take to submit to this fate. But this is too much to demand of your house, so soon after…” After Lord de Gervaise’s death, yes, that was where she’d heard the name most recently. And he had been a strong man, never ill a day in his life, not yet fifty years old, keeping only the most respectable company, with as few enemies as anyone could have, in a life at court -
But Lord and Lady Desjardins might have considered anyone an enemy who didn’t have to sacrifice a child.
From the look in his eyes, he had already made the same conclusions. But he just smiled sardonically and said, “Well, there are only three of us left. Guess the council figured we should pay our dues while we still can.”
Only three left, yes. A mother and a sister. Who would be provided for after this man’s death. Who would need that provision after the death of their patriarch. “This was expertly done,” said Violetta, and could not keep the steel from her voice.
“Lady, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She frowned. Evidently taking this for disapproval, he hastened to add: “Sorry. They’ve been trying to drill decorum into my head for years now, but if there’s a courtly protocol for this situation, they never covered that one. I’ll, uh - I mean no disrespect.”
Why would such things need to be drilled? Unless - “Wait. You were the boy who was adopted from the slums, weren’t you? Because the main branch lacked an heir -”
“No offense,” he said, eyes narrowed, “but are you always like this? Do you just memorize a rap sheet on everyone you might ever get introduced to?”
Injustice mounted on injustice. She ought to do something. “You’ve been dragged into a plot that should never have -”
He held up a hand. “Hey. Weird shit happens to me. I’m done arguing with it. Anyway, my mother and sister have been nothing but kind to me. Even if they’re not the family I was born to, I’m not leaving them out in the cold.”
“But you know what the Fafnir…?”
“I know what I’ve been told. But a hundred years is a long time. Maybe things have changed since the last go-round. Maybe the Calamity is old and tired and I can just knock it on the head and walk back out.” He flashed a lazy grin. “Won’t know until we get there.”
The council had made its decision; this man would be the Fafnir Knight. She could not reject their choice without causing an incident, without triggering reprisals against his family, without losing precious time needed for the ritual, and losing the goodwill of the noble houses left standing. Or without insulting him.
“Sir Bertrand, was it not?” She held out her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
He should have knelt again and kissed her ring; that was the protocol. He should have regarded this as an enormous honor. Instead he stared at that hand for a long moment, looking increasingly flustered and confused - they really hadn’t told him what to do. They were really sending him in blind - and finally took hold and gave it a firm shake. “The pleasure’s all mine,” he said, in the tones of someone who knew this wasn’t the right response but was hoping to get away with it anyway.
She wanted to be his friend, she realized, not without pain. For his own sake she wished he’d never ended up here.
~100 words of Bertrand angst, pre-canon
It was when his birth family died, when he was just a kid, that he decided the world was cold. In retrospect, that's almost cute. Since then he's gained and lost an entire second family, a best friend, a decent chunk of his humanity, and any chance of going home; he thinks sometimes of asking his younger self, "What, you feel abandoned now? You think you're all alone now? You're just getting started."
Ten or twenty years from now he'll realize he's never gonna die, and then he'll look back on this as more youthful naivety. And he'll want to add: "Quit tempting fate, you asshole."
ETA Jan 2019: nother couple hundred words of Bertrand angst, post-canon
Arianna stands up, the Queen of Caledonia, and all kneel. After a pause, she turns, with crown and scepter, to face her subjects. These regalia passed through the hands of generations of Caledonian royals (but not that one) and it's like they were made to fit her, or she to fit them (but that would have been true for any Daughter of the Mark). She's come so far (she's not the first one). She's a good kid (last in a long line of 'em) and she'll be a badass queen (just like...)
She looks like Violetta (Violetta never looked like this).
(But she would have, if he hadn't screwed up, if he hadn't taken it from her. If he'd just shut up and died like he was supposed to. If she hadn't thrown her life away on a dumb motherfucker like him.)
Time is still passing. No clue how much. People are starting to stand up again. Chloe shoots him a questioning look. From a distance he hears himself say, "I can't do this." But Chloe grabs him by the elbow and gets up, so he gets up, too, and Arianna walks back down the aisle giving everyone the royal wave and everything's fine. There's a party, after everyone has left the cathedral, but he doesn't go.