Chapter Text
Lycaon von Hresvelg was thirteen years old when he was first sent out to lead troops in the field. Logically, he knew that was young. He knew he shouldn’t have felt ready for that kind of responsibility. But he had already been on active duty in the Adrestian army for four years, he had faced the reality of battle many times before, and before he had been old enough to fight, he had been raised to fight. To lead, one day. It was what he was born for. He struggled not to let his mind wander to the thought that it was the only reason his parents had brought him into the world.
Taking his first command at thirteen felt less like starting something new too early and more like finally, finally starting something he had been planning on doing for far too long.
Of course, there hadn’t been any word that one of the Ten Goddess-damned Elites was going to be there at this particular engagement.
Lycaon knew a few things about the commanding officers of the Liberation Army, of course. They were the bane of the Empire’s existence. Any given one of them could just about clear the floor with a whole regiment. Apparently, most of them sort of flitted in and out of the action, these days. They were all hundreds of years old, and had grown a bit bored of the whole “combat” shtick over the centuries. It was a big deal when one of them showed up to do battle with the Empire in person rather than sticking to partying, politics, and politically-motivated partying.
Briefings on the Elites had never really gone into what any of them were like. Lycaon knew which ones tended towards which modi operandi ; General Matei was the old woman who used all different types of magic, General Goneril was the madman who insistently preferred fisticuffs to all other forms of combat, General Riegan was the one who could shoot straight through five men with one arrow. Going off the testimony of soldiers who had encountered these people in battle and survived, knowing what the Elites did wasn’t really all that useful when you were actually staring one of them down on the field. Face to face with them, you weren’t thinking tactically, analyzing their habits and looking for weaknesses. You were just thinking about not dying.
It made logical sense that the briefings didn’t really cover the Elites’ personalities. However, this particular one standing at the front of the army opposite Lycaon’s men… really didn’t need it. Every aspect of his appearance just about punched you in the face with personality, from the incredibly flashy and elaborately embellished purple armor to the equally flashy Cheltaidd tattoos and war paint to, of course, the fact that he had magically dyed his horse purple . If the fact that he was carrying the spear Areadbhar hadn’t given away his identity as General Blaiddyd, the purple horse definitely would have. Sure, there wasn’t much about personalities in the official military briefings, but you just couldn’t avoid hearing about General Blaiddyd. Usually, more specifically, hearing about how wild and crazy he was. How he tended to flirt with Imperial commanders mid-battle. How more than a few Imperial soldiers had been dishonorably discharged for going to bed with him. How just dealing with him probably aged Emperor Wilhelm by a good hundred years.
Lycaon had grown up with stories of this man, and his comrades-in-arms--this man who didn’t look like he could possibly be older than his late twenties or early thirties. And now, here he was, hopefully not about to incinerate Lycaon in an infernal blast of neon purple flame.
Lycaon took a shaky breath, drew his sword, and really hoped he didn’t look as intimidated as he was.
“I don’t suppose you’re here to stand down?” said Blaiddyd, in a tone that would have been a lot more fitting for somebody chatting up their friend they hadn’t seen in a couple of days than for a five-hundred-year-old immortal reality warping army general demanding his opponent’s surrender.
He spoke with a heavy Faerghan accent. Wilhelm always said he was perfectly capable of dropping it and speaking flawless Enbarrian, that he could sound indistinguishable from a native. When he wanted to. Wilhelm said Blaiddyd knew the accent made Imperials angry, so he laid it on thick to get a rise out of them. Apparently, entertainment was a priority after all those centuries.
“I am not,” said Lycaon. “The Empire will never bow to--”
“Oh my gods. Wait a second.” Blaiddyd’s smug, blasé demeanor vanished into thin air in a downright impressive amount of time. He probably rehearsed his battlefield code-switching. He turned to face his soldiers. “Une seconde! Arrêt! Personne n’avance! L’officier Enbarrien, il est just un enfant!”
“Incroyable,” muttered one of the Liberation Army soldiers. “Elle n’a pas de conscience, cette Seiros!”
“Et, quoi, on va…” another addressed Blaiddyd directly. An oddity of the Liberation Army. In the Empire, the proper hierarchy was maintained strictly. You didn’t just randomly start talking at your commanding officer. “Alors, c’est un enfant, d’accord, et qu'est-ce vous voulez qu'on fasse avec ça?”
“Laisse-moi lui parler, au moins. J’vais pas tuer un enfant, Isaeva. Contrairement à Seiros, moi, j’ai les lignes que je ne franchirais pas.”
Lycaon, of course, couldn’t understand a word they were saying. The languages of Fódlan besides Enbarrian weren’t taught in the Adrestian Empire. Those languages were heathenish. They shouldn’t be spoken, they shouldn’t be understood. But while Lycaon couldn’t understand any of the words Blaiddyd and his troops were saying, he did get the general idea that they were...distressed about something? Not scared. Maybe a bit angry? Incredulous? Definitely not any of the emotions that might usually qualify a person as battle-ready.
“Eh, you, uh, Enbarrian kid?” There it was. This time, when Blaiddyd spoke, he had no accent at all, as if he too spoke no language besides Enbarrian. “What...what’s going on, what is this?”
“And just what is that supposed to mean, General?”
“How old are you? I’d estimate some vaguely early age, but...well, your perception of age kinda gets weird and inaccurate after a few centuries. I forget that fifty is middle-aged, sometimes.”
“I don’t see why that matters. I am old enough to take up arms in the name of my Emperor and Goddess.”
“Isn’t your Emperor , you know, your dad ? Bit formal, eh?”
It was formal. Lycaon tried not to think about it. That he really did think of Wilhelm as the Emperor before he thought of him as his father. And...no, he would not think about his mother. While his thoughts on his father remained complicated at times, he had long since learned not to think about his mother at all.
“And you are being far too in formal, considering we are about to do battle. I have no intention of surrendering.”
“You don’t have to do this, you know. They ever give you a choice? Seiros and Wilhelm? You have a choice. You can leave .”
“Are...are you trying to recruit me, General Blaiddyd?”
“I am not. No enlisting in the Liberation Army under eighteen. All I’m saying is that...ugh, I don’t know how to say shit like this to kids. Look, le point c’est que, you can always leave. Whatever they’ve told you, it’s not worth fighting for at your age.”
“You clearly do not wish to fight me. Are you going to surrender?”
Blaiddyd sighed, then addressed his troops once more. “Tuez pas l’gamin, et si y’a d’autres enfants soldats dans les rangs des cultistes, ne les tuez pas non plus. Wow, j’peux pas croire que c’est un ordre, ça, que je doit même donner! Ugh, foutu impériaux…”
There was something about his voice. His expression. There was no mistaking, now, that General Blaiddyd was genuinely distressed. For the life of him, Lycaon couldn’t figure out why . If the infamous dark mage was truly as powerful as he was talked up to be, then surely he couldn’t be afraid to fight a young, newly-commissioned officer.
***
Lycaon’s regiment lost. Badly. There weren’t many casualties, all things considered. A lot of people incapacitated or taken prisoner, by a general who was well-documented as able to kill hundreds of people single-handedly without breaking a sweat. Which, of course, meant that the only conclusion that made any logical sense was that Blaiddyd and his troops had intentionally downplayed the carnage to the best of their abilities. Odd behavior from somebody who was supposed to be some sort of beast of a man, incapable of mercy or reasoning like those who lived by the teachings of Seiros.
Among those taken prisoner was Lycaon himself. Something about high-ranking war prisoners being good bargaining leverage.
Apparently, being a high-ranking war prisoner to Blaiddyd’s division meant...sitting around Castle Fhirdiad until whatever deal its lord was trying to strike with the Emperor was done. As a prisoner, Lycaon was barred from the armory and the training grounds, but other than that, Blaiddyd was a downright suspiciously lax captor.
Blaiddyd’s castle was made to entertain company as much as it was made as a fortress to withstand both the might of the army of Seiros and the homicidal climate in Faerghus. Lady Seiros had always warned that the human mind is intrinsically wired to turn on its brethren, that it is in everybody’s nature to desire the suffering and subjugation of others, and that that was what made the Empire and the Church necessary. To stop humanity from acting on its nature. That nature, clearly, was not universal, as Lycaon had never encountered any person quite so...so social as General Blaiddyd. He always had almost as much company as could comfortably fit in the castle, which had no end of entertainment. Games, books in more languages than Lycaon had ever known even existed, a seemingly endless supply of food, art, even supplies for creating more art. There were always at least a few people in to play music. From all over the world. Beyond Fódlan, even.
Blaiddyd himself was an interesting character. He spoke not only Faerghan and Enbarrian, but Dagdan, Brigidian, Morfisian, Duscur, Srengi, and many more languages Lycaon had never heard of. He played the lute, the vielle, the piano, the bagpipes, the dulcimer, the psalterium, and the hurdy-gurdy. He sketched and painted; mostly self-portraits, the vain madman. He designed and sewed his own clothes. Apparently, five-hundred years was a long time to learn skills and languages. Most interesting--and easily most unsettling--of all, however, was how personable the man was.
“Do you speak any Faerghan?”
“No.”
“That makes sense. Only thing that’s really important to know is ‘il fait sacrément froid.’ That means it’s damn cold , which it always is, up here. I think our summers are colder than your winters.”
Lycaon wanted to rebuff Blaiddyd’s attempts at conversation. This man was the enemy. He was a heathen, a heretic. But there was something inexplicably magnetic about him, and… casual conversation was in short supply, back home in Enbarr.
“How cold does it get here, in the winter?” he asked.
“Coldest part of the year? Sixty below.”
“Below freezing ?!”
“Oh, yeah. That time of year, if you walk outside with a pot of boiling water, that water will freeze within seconds.”
“How does everybody in Faerghus not die ?”
“...We’re resilient.”