Eighty-Six: Revenant
Sep. 23rd, 2022 01:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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prose_alchemistTitle: Revenant
Author:jordannamorgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Characters: Kiriya Nouzen.
Setting: During the climax of the Giadian civil war.
Summary: The moment when Kiriya surrendered his humanity.
Disclaimer: They belong to Asato Asato and A-1 Pictures. I’m just playing with them.
Notes: Written for the prompts of “Clear” atfan_flashworks, and “Minor Characters” at genprompt_bingo.
Kiriya Nouzen’s beloved princess was gone… and with her, the last fragile thread of meaning the entire world held for him.
What had once been a battlefield was now devoid of life, occupied only by corpses and the wreckage of war machines. In the distance, the red of fire consuming a ransacked fortress was splashed across the sky; but in his mind, all he could see was the red of blood splashed across Frederica’s royal mantle.
He had failed her.
He had failed to be by her side, to defend her personally unto the last breath in his body. He had even failed to die with her, to be her comfort in the end, to hold her with all his fading strength and follow her into the waiting dark. In the moment when it mattered most, he proved himself unworthy to be her knight, and now he deserved the hell of living on without her… but she had not deserved to cross that veil alone, and for letting her do so, his guilt and shame were more than his entire being could contain.
That self-hatred spilled over to the architects of it all: the revolutionaries. The rage toward them that burned in his chest felt like the only thing that still kept his heart beating, kept his feet stumbling forward mindlessly over the bodies of fallen comrades. He wanted to hunt down every last traitorous bastard who even thought of touching his princess, to crush them with his own hands, to take revenge for the innocent child they had slaughtered for nothing but the symbol she represented.
But Kiriya was powerless now: defeated, alone, lost to everything he knew, and most of all to himself. He was nothing any longer but a soul-dead ghost, trapped in a body that stubbornly kept breathing, yet was too weak to indulge a fraction of the tortured fury swelling within him. His hands couldn’t spill enough blood to make the world right again without her, much less ever bring her back.
Only vaguely did he perceive a warm throbbing pain in his chest, in his left side, at his right temple. He didn’t know what his own wounds from the battle were, or whether he could survive them. He didn’t want to survive them… but even if he didn’t, he was certain he could never rejoin the angel he had allowed to die.
A distant encroaching sound finally reached to the depths of the black pit of his thoughts. Kiriya raised his head to see a monstrous Legion unit striding out from the distant treeline, lured by the scene of death and ruin like a vulture drawn to carrion.
He knew what would happen to the bodies scattered over the field. He had seen the headless corpses these equally rebellious machines left in their wake… and within their sterile gleaming hulls, more than once, his hereditary Nouzen senses had felt the echo of a dead member of his clan.
Stillness gripped him for a long moment. Then a violent shudder passed through him, and he threw back his head to roar with hysterical laughter—not caring at all that he attracted the attention of the Legion scavenger.
If he couldn’t reunite with Frederica, at least he could go to them.
Kiriya stood unmoving as the Legion unit marched towards him, seeming almost curious at the presence of this human survivor that did not fight nor flee. He watched it intently from beneath lowered brows; and when it halted almost close enough to loom over him, fixing him in the sights of its guns and its lens, he stretched out his bloodstained hands in a silent entreaty.
Time dragged into eternity as man and machine faced each other… and then a grasping mass of liquid metal erupted from its undercarriage, engulfing Kiriya before he could draw a breath.
He didn’t even know whether it had seized his entire body, or merely plucked his head from his shoulders.
For the few moments that consciousness remained to him, there was only a hazy warmth, and a faint sense of movement as the Legion unit turned to carry him away. He could no longer breathe, but that didn’t matter. The embracing darkness that filled and silenced his senses was like a womb… or perhaps more fittingly, a chrysalis that would change him from everything he had been.
It was all so clear to him now.
The late Kiriya Nouzen would never be weak again. He would emerge from that chrysalis as something wondrous and new, gifted by the Legion with a form strong enough to unleash the full measure of his rage…
And then, all the enemies of his princess would die.
© 2022 Jordanna Morgan
Author:
jordannamorganArchive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Characters: Kiriya Nouzen.
Setting: During the climax of the Giadian civil war.
Summary: The moment when Kiriya surrendered his humanity.
Disclaimer: They belong to Asato Asato and A-1 Pictures. I’m just playing with them.
Notes: Written for the prompts of “Clear” at
fan_flashworks, and “Minor Characters” at genprompt_bingo.Kiriya Nouzen’s beloved princess was gone… and with her, the last fragile thread of meaning the entire world held for him.
What had once been a battlefield was now devoid of life, occupied only by corpses and the wreckage of war machines. In the distance, the red of fire consuming a ransacked fortress was splashed across the sky; but in his mind, all he could see was the red of blood splashed across Frederica’s royal mantle.
He had failed her.
He had failed to be by her side, to defend her personally unto the last breath in his body. He had even failed to die with her, to be her comfort in the end, to hold her with all his fading strength and follow her into the waiting dark. In the moment when it mattered most, he proved himself unworthy to be her knight, and now he deserved the hell of living on without her… but she had not deserved to cross that veil alone, and for letting her do so, his guilt and shame were more than his entire being could contain.
That self-hatred spilled over to the architects of it all: the revolutionaries. The rage toward them that burned in his chest felt like the only thing that still kept his heart beating, kept his feet stumbling forward mindlessly over the bodies of fallen comrades. He wanted to hunt down every last traitorous bastard who even thought of touching his princess, to crush them with his own hands, to take revenge for the innocent child they had slaughtered for nothing but the symbol she represented.
But Kiriya was powerless now: defeated, alone, lost to everything he knew, and most of all to himself. He was nothing any longer but a soul-dead ghost, trapped in a body that stubbornly kept breathing, yet was too weak to indulge a fraction of the tortured fury swelling within him. His hands couldn’t spill enough blood to make the world right again without her, much less ever bring her back.
Only vaguely did he perceive a warm throbbing pain in his chest, in his left side, at his right temple. He didn’t know what his own wounds from the battle were, or whether he could survive them. He didn’t want to survive them… but even if he didn’t, he was certain he could never rejoin the angel he had allowed to die.
A distant encroaching sound finally reached to the depths of the black pit of his thoughts. Kiriya raised his head to see a monstrous Legion unit striding out from the distant treeline, lured by the scene of death and ruin like a vulture drawn to carrion.
He knew what would happen to the bodies scattered over the field. He had seen the headless corpses these equally rebellious machines left in their wake… and within their sterile gleaming hulls, more than once, his hereditary Nouzen senses had felt the echo of a dead member of his clan.
Stillness gripped him for a long moment. Then a violent shudder passed through him, and he threw back his head to roar with hysterical laughter—not caring at all that he attracted the attention of the Legion scavenger.
If he couldn’t reunite with Frederica, at least he could go to them.
Kiriya stood unmoving as the Legion unit marched towards him, seeming almost curious at the presence of this human survivor that did not fight nor flee. He watched it intently from beneath lowered brows; and when it halted almost close enough to loom over him, fixing him in the sights of its guns and its lens, he stretched out his bloodstained hands in a silent entreaty.
Time dragged into eternity as man and machine faced each other… and then a grasping mass of liquid metal erupted from its undercarriage, engulfing Kiriya before he could draw a breath.
He didn’t even know whether it had seized his entire body, or merely plucked his head from his shoulders.
For the few moments that consciousness remained to him, there was only a hazy warmth, and a faint sense of movement as the Legion unit turned to carry him away. He could no longer breathe, but that didn’t matter. The embracing darkness that filled and silenced his senses was like a womb… or perhaps more fittingly, a chrysalis that would change him from everything he had been.
It was all so clear to him now.
The late Kiriya Nouzen would never be weak again. He would emerge from that chrysalis as something wondrous and new, gifted by the Legion with a form strong enough to unleash the full measure of his rage…
And then, all the enemies of his princess would die.
© 2022 Jordanna Morgan