Archive of Our Own ^beta

The coastline is a ragged, beleaguered thing. Weathered cliffs, eroding rock, and miserable grey sky for as far as the eye can see. Even before they leave the dubious safety of the great forest, Eiji feels like all he can hear is the howling wind. It’s unnerving, the sheer volume of it. He’s heard - he thought he’d heard - howling wind before. Fierce wind whipping through narrow streets, rattling the windows of his apartment, an entire world away; it doesn’t compare. 

If that was a howl, then this is a siren. The very wind itself warns of danger ahead, screaming of loss and death and the evil it buffets from all sides. 

Luckily, Takahasi Eiji isn’t the type of man to give in to blind superstition - or, truthfully, to be overly cautious - so he’d stepped through the last true line of trees without hesitation. Louis had followed him without pause so Eiji can’t bring himself to care that the rest of the party are joining them only now. Edging around the thick oak trunks, eyes flitting back and forth as though some great terror could descend upon them at any time.

…

Eiji clears his throat and scans the horizon with a bit more focus, gaze sweeping up and down the coast, given that there’s a distinctly non-zero chance that such a thing could actually happen. Louis, tall bastard that he is, leans down. He speaks directly into Eiji’s ear, as a precaution against the punishing wind - as a precaution, to prevent them from being overheard, letting him keep what little pride he still has in front of the men who trained him.

“The ruins aren’t visible so we’re safe enough, for now.”

A small amount of tension seeps from Eiji’s shoulder’s at his friend’s assurance. They are by no means safe, the constant assaults as they made their way through the Great Forest hammered that lesson home, but safe enough indeed. Until the ruins of Ys are visible, they have nothing to fear from that which they’ve come here to slay. Herensuge, a great seven headed dragon, a blight on the entire region. 

Eiji’s never fought any type of dragon before, let alone one a western dragon with seven heads. Then again, until he was summoned to this world, he’d never held a broadsword or fought monsters or even been involved in a fight more serious than a schoolboy scuffle.

Months of training and travelling have all led to this but Eiji’s almost entirely confident. He might be King Gradlon’s last hope but he’s not alone. He has the kingdom’s best knights at his side - he has Sir Louis Vinçu! How could he ever waver when such a gentleman stands beside him?

“We’re through the Great Forest,” one of the other knights says, barely loud enough to be heard through the wind. Just faint enough that Eiji can’t quite tell who said it, though he certainly identifies the next, booming voice as Sir Jacques Gaudreault. 

“We made it!”

The rest of the knights crowd in, then, surrounding Eiji, patting his back and cheering and jostling him back and forth in their good cheer.

“Through the forest!”

“Never has the quest reached so far!”

“Amazing, amazing. All thanks to you, Eiji!”

“This far, and only one death! It’s a miracle!”

Eiji laughs around the sudden lump in his throat. It sounds awkward to his ears but none of the men crowded around him seem to notice. Past the shoulders of the knights, Eiji meets Louis’s eyes. The older man gives him a small smile; it’s enough to melt the ice which had started to creep up Eiji’s spine.

“Rest in peace René,” Sir Marius Ciroteau says, “but I’m sure you’d be heartened to know of our successes.”

There are echoes of his words, prayers for their dead member, and Eiji makes some small show of doing the same. His words are hollow. He holds no remorse, no regret, though the horror of such a thing had not let him sleep well for weeks. Even now, almost an entire forest away, he still sometimes wakes in the night, suddenly alert and afraid, memories tearing at his mind. His bedroll is always next to Louis’s, so it’s easy enough to roll closer, to press his forehead against the man’s broad back and remember how to breathe.

Sometimes, if it is Louis who has the watch, Eiji will leave the warmth of his bedding in order to weather the cool night with the man, pressed shoulder to shoulder. His mentor turned friend often wraps his arm around Eiji’s shoulder and keeps him tucked there, safe and protected. Louis does not ask what disturbs his sleep, he does not need to. He was there, after all. 

Neither of them mourn the death of René de la Verrière.

Maybe it’s a weird thing to say, but Eiji kinda… forgot, that cis people exist. It hadn’t been until the end of one training session, a week or two after the whirlwind of his arrival to this world, that he’d remembered. They’d been training with blunted blades, meaning they’d all also been wearing full armour. Each of them had been sweaty by the end but Eiji, still adjusting to his new workout routine, had been little more than a puddle of sweat. 

One of the squires had helped Eiji from his armour but that had not been enough, so he’d continued to strip with thought for little except feeling the late summer wind on his skin. His sweat damp gambison thudded to the ground, followed by his nearly wet shirt, making a frankly disgusting puddle in the training ground dirt. He’d stood there, panting in the heart, glistening with sweat, and then Sir Mathias de Châteauvillain had idly remarked,

“Takahashi, what an odd pair of scars.” 

“Didn’t you say you’ve no experience with blades, Eiji?” Sir Arnaud Genevey Metat had queried, attention instantly aroused. He’d drifted closer, already unarmoured and looking unfairly unbothered by heat and sweat. Eiji had looked himself over, then, trying to figure out what they meant. His confusion had drawn more notice and, soon enough, the six most prominent knights in the land had been standing before him, staring at his chest. 

It had taken Eiji a few flustered moments to realise that they meant his top surgery scars. They’re faded, now so much a part of his body that he’d nearly ignored them entirely and continued to search for the mysterious set of scars his trainers had pointed out. 

“Ah,” Eiji had said, blinking at his own muscular pecs, reeling from the reminder that cis people exist. Eiji’s no coward, but it is no cowardice to ensure your safety. A quick set of mental calculations and he’d reached the conclusion that in this world - vaguely European, vaguely mediaeval - it’s probably that being an out and proud trans man isn’t going to endear him to the locals. Eiji had looked up at the tall knights ringing him, and he’d grinned and said,

“If I had any experience with blades, I wouldn’t have lost the fight so badly as to have these!”

He’d laughed, and they’d laughed, and he’d spun a quick story of a back alley knife fight that had been so long ago he’d near forgotten about it entirely. Some friendly ribbing, some declarations to train him harder; Arnaud had carved time out of their already busy schedule to teach him how to disarm a knifed attacker with minimal risk of injury. 

After a few days had passed, just enough for him to be sure the two events wouldn’t link themselves within anyone’s mind, Eiji had made some (more or less) subtle inquiries about the state of the local queer community and the results had been… mixed, to say the least. Never had he been so thankful that communal bathing wasn’t a local cultural practice, here. Plus, the huge claw footed baths that magically fill with hot water for him within the lavish set of rooms he was given is pretty fucking cool. 

Eiji never bothered to raise the subject further with any of the six knights he’d come to know, which became something of a problem once they embarked upon their quest. After they’d left civilization behind, after they’d entered the Great Forest - a towering behemoth filled with old growth trees, dense shrubbery and darkness seeping from the very air. Literally, sometimes. Eiji’s mouth had dropped in time with black sludge, as he’d watched it gather from mere wisps of shadow. Hovering in midair, deepening, thickening, until it gained enough mass to drip to the forest floor. 

There can be no doubt that within such a forest, monsters lurk. All manner of beast in fact, mostly foul, which his companions had been educating him on over the first leg of their journey. To bathe alone is, in and of itself, a risk. But travelling through the forest will take the better part of a month and no one was particularly inclined to marinate in their own armour for the entirety of that time.

It had come as a great relief to Eiji when he realised that bathing in pairs didn’t mean bathing together, at the same time. Instead one would bathe and the other would keep watch, walking a perimeter around the river’s edge, looking out into the forest. Under such circumstances, Eiji hadn’t been worried. His cock’s great enough to pass muster, and no one’s going to be attempting to peer between his legs anyway.

Eiji’s content to ride the status quo until they defeat the dragon. Then - once he’s not just the chosen hero, once he’s a certifiable dragon slayer - then he’ll figure out a way to leverage that into maybe making things a little better for local queers before he heads back to his own world. If he’s really, really lucky, he might even get back in time for his next T injection. 

Not quite a fortnight into the sprawling forest, Eiji was tired and filthy and sick of suffering regular attacks from monsters who wish to strip the flesh from their bones. A tarasque had attacked them, a terrible chimaera of a beast. Head like a lion, body nearly entirely covered by a thick carapace, with a serpent’s tail and six feet, each of which had hellish claws. The damn thing had had far too much reach, considering how restrictive its carapace had appeared to be. 

The fight had been tough but not overwhelming; the real shock had been in the thing’s appearance, though no one else had been so stunned by it. Stunned enough that he’d slipped in some of the ever present black sludge, smearing it over half his backside before he’d found his feet again.

“Thank god this one does not breathe poison,” Sir Arnaud had said, rather than comment on Eiji’s blunder, and the seven of them had worked together beautifully in order to defeat it.

In the aftermath, sweaty, blood splattered and covered in goo, Eiji had stomped away to the nearby river in order to bathe. He hadn’t much cared that it was René who’d jogged after him, everyone else either sprawled across the ground or helping to set up their latest campsite. One man is much like another, when all they must do is keep their eyes sharp, on the lookout for threats. 

Sir René, who’d been the threat.

Eiji might not be a tall man, especially when placed against the six towering knights, but he’s sturdy and strong and it’d take more than a single sucker punch to put him to the ground. They’d fought, blow for blow, until René de la Verrière had used his greater mass to bear Eiji to the ground, wrestling him. Attempting to eel his way between Eiji’s legs as he proved himself a transphobic piece of shit, spitting bullshit about how Eiji was clearly not the man who’d been promised to defeat the Herensuge - but a son, oh René would be happy to provide him with one.

Fighting on the riverbank, naked and unarmed but powered by a rage so bone deep it almost set him alight, Eiji knew he’d win. That doesn’t mean he’s not grateful that he didn’t have to.

The sounds of the forest had been drowned out by René’s disgusting words, by the thundering of Eiji’s own pulse in his ears. 

Then, blood. 

Blood splattered against his chest, his face; a cascade, hot against bare skin. René’s eyes bulged wide; the loosening of his vice grip as he’d struggled to close the gaping wound which had once been his throat. Free from René’s questing hands, Eiji had thrown the man off, scrambling to his feet as René floundered on the ground. The noises René made were haunting and they haunt Eiji still; wet, pathetic gasps. A slick rasp fading into a gurgle, fading into the sound of the river as it flowed gently past. 

Eiji had stood there, naked but for the blood staining his skin, and stared at Sir Louis Vinçu. Louis had stared back, sword in the same bare, bloodied state as Eiji. Tense, ready to defend himself, Eiji had waited for Louis to prove himself the same beast as his fellow knight. Instead the man had cleaned his sword on a handkerchief without sparing another look at the barely twitching René. He asked Eiji if he were injured, asked if he could approach, and spoke only once of the new understanding he had of Eiji’s body.

“You…” Louis had paused, trousers rolled up past his knees as he searched the river bed for a rock sharp enough for his purpose. “This business is your own and none of mine but… if you would like to tell me of any things, these ears work well.” 

“There is nothing to say.” Eiji had focused on smoothing out the mud and the wet dirt, erasing the signs of the previous struggle, to better sell the lie they had both known was needed. “But I am a man, as I have always been.”

“So you are,” Louis had agreed, before making a small sound of discovery and climbing the bank once more, new weapon at hand. Eiji had angled René’s head while Louis used the river rock to open the corpse’s throat further. The sight grew so gruesome that Eiji could barely stand to look at it, instead watching the treeline, the river, to make sure that nothing would catch them unawares.

Louis made quick work of it and Eiji had to breathe carefully through his mouth as they set the scene. René’s corpse, less a throat, less a hunk of flesh from his shoulder, thrown half into the river; the current tugging at his bloodied clothes, at the loose threads of flesh barely clinging, at his strawberry blond hair. 

Then, Louis had shouted, and Eiji had shouted, as they ran towards the corpse.  Eiji had placed his hands to the ragged death wound and acted as though he would have done anything but choke the bastard to death, were there still life in his bones. 

Then, the rest of their comrades had burst through the trees, blades bare. Devastated at the sight, at Louis gently prying Eiji’s hands away, muttering soothing condolences.

Then, Eiji had let his voice waver and crack, saying again and again, I thought it was just a cat. Just a cat. Big, but just -  

Matagot, Louis had sighed, running a hand through his wheat blond hair, cat to fox mid leap and then…

And then that was all there was to it. Eiji waited for someone to spot a discrepancy, for suspicion to creep into their eyes, but the death of René de la Verrière came and went with little more than some muttered cursing, a set of prayers, and a body stripped and left to the carrion. 

“This is not our first death, on our quest to vanquish evil,” Sir Mathias de Châteauvillain had told him quietly, as the others bundled up everything of René’s that could be used by another. “Eventually you learn that a corpse can do nothing but make more of its kind. The simple weight of it will slow you. The creeping rot of it will sicken you. Try not to dwell on it, if you can.”

“We were overdue for a death, anyway,” Jacques had gruffed, perhaps not as quietly as he meant to, for his voice had echoed through the small clearing, bouncing from tree to tree, burrowing into Eiji’s mind.

He’s turned such a thing over and over, since. Were it a physical thing he would’ve worn it smooth by now. King Gradlon had said their quest was perilous, that years have passed without success, that many a knight had died making the attempt; Eiji doesn’t think any other knight has found an end such as this, in attempting to kill the Herensuge. 

Perhaps another of the knights would have done the same as Louis did, skewering René without hesitation. He thinks that Arnaud would, with his sharp grins and inclination to duel for the slightest sleight against honour. They had spent an afternoon at a festival once, just the two of them. Surely Arnaud, at least… Eiji’s tormented by the thought that he wouldn’t; that every last one of them would have agreed with René. 

Terrified of having to find out whether he could win a fight against all of the knights who trained him, should it come to it. 

It will never come to it, so long as Louis is at his side. From their first introduction the older man’s kindness had shone through, his honour. Like a figure from a story, a true champion of chivalry. Loyal - loyal to Eiji, though he’s known the other knights far longer. 

Seven knights, one for each of the seven heads of the Herensuge, and now they number only six. They will need every man, in order to complete their quest. Eiji had grown to know these men well, since his arrival in this world. They have done near everything together since Eiji arrived - training, eating, sharing folk tales and songs and life stories. Eiji knows these men but - he would have said the same, about René. 

Eiji thinks, again and again, overdue for a death. Of the book of names read out by Lord Henri Achille LaCharité, of the King’s Council, the morning they set out on the quest. Name after honoured name, of the knights who have fallen walking these same steps that Eiji takes now. 

Louis is the only man that he knows he can trust, in this entire world. Is it so wrong that he prioritises Louis’s safety, over all others? That he watches the close calls these knights have in battle and thinks, so long as it’s not Louis.

They can’t light a fire that night out of the forest, wind too fierce. Out in the open as they are, they wouldn’t have dared to, even without the wind. Too visible; a beacon for anything that wants to prey on them. There’s a chill in the air that had been absent in the forest and each man has paired together for warmth. Jacques and Mathias back to back in their adjoining bedrolls; Arnaud and Marius back to back on watch, huddled miserably together against the brutal wind.

Louis is pressed against Eiji, chest to back. His arm is a warm, heavy weight across Eiji’s waist. His broad hand feels like a brand where it rests on Eiji’s stomach, even through the cloth. They lay so close together that they have no choice but to breathe as one, sharing space so intimately that Eiji fears his burning cheeks are obvious even through the dark of the night. Tucked under the older man’s chin, it could almost be a perfect night - except for the wailing. 

Not only the wind, though certainly that as well. 

Real voices, piercing through the night, not just the uncanny facsimile nature conjures up. Eiji had shot to his feet at the first mournful wail, twisting this way and that as lou! lou! echoed the cliffs and the water. No other of his party had stirred themselves at the sound, though Mathias had given a grim smile. 

“Iannic-ann-ôd,” the man had said, while Louis and Arnaud had urged Eiji to retake his seat. “Souls of the drowned, damned to the sea for all eternity, their bones and bodies lost to land forever.”

“Oh,” Eiji had replied, for lack of anything else. He has come to learn that there are a multitude of water based creatures roaming these lands, most of them dangerous. “Will they attack?”

“Only if you mock them.”

“...Who would even do that?” He’d asked, settling back down to his cold, unappetising dinner. What he wouldn’t give to eat something with flavour. Spices are rare and salt is a commodity, here. Eiji would probably do something terrible for a proper Japanese meal right now. 

“You’d be surprised,” Arnaud had drawled, mostly drowned out by Jacques spitting on the ground, growling out, 

“Pierre Reguindeau, that bastard, may he rot with the rest of the Iannic-ann-ôd.”

“Not even Lord LaCharité could find sympathy in his heart when news of Reguindeau’s death reached us.” Marius sent Eiji a significant look, as though Eiji knew the red haired lord well enough for either the look or the words to mean anything. Eiji’d only met the man in passing, a handful of times. He’s on the King’s council; he’d been the only person who’d apologised for taking Eiji to their world without permission. 

“Lord LaCharité is well known for his kind heart,” Louis had explained, which fit well with the little Eiji knew of the man. 

“Soft heart, you mean. Man’s vaunted as a saint but he’s just a pushover.” Jacques scoffed, much to Arnaud’s obvious offence.

“Gaudreault, be thankful that this is no place for a duel, else such words would demand recompense!”

The conversation had devolved rapidly from there, helped along unintentionally by Marius’s sincere attempt to peacekeep - and extremely intentionally by a bored Mathias, playing devil’s advocate.

Eiji had pressed his arm against Louis’s, trying to conjure up any further memories of the man at the centre of the debate. Quiet voice, fiery hair and a broad smile. Of a height with Louis. Handsome, too. Then again, each of these knights were equally handsome, in their own ways. The six of them could debut as an idol group, honestly. Even Jacques, rugged and prematurely greying as he is. Listening to the argument with half an ear, Eiji had spent most of it trying to figure out what niche each of the men would have in a pop group. 

“If you reply to the Yannig an Aod,” Louis’s voice, quiet enough to go unheard beneath the argument spanning more than half of their campsite, had drawn Eiji from his thoughts. “they will cross half the distance between you and he. Reply once more and the same will happen. Half again the distance, crossed in a single step.”

“Again and again until he’s next to you?” 

“Ha, no. I’m sure Reguindeau wishes. Reply a third time and…” Louis had raised his hand, trailing one gloved finger across the skin of Eiji’s neck, just below his jaw. “The Yannig an Aod will snap your neck.”

The seam of his glove had scraped against Eiji’s skin, just barely; it had sent shivers along the length of Eiji’s spine. He wants to feel the same thing again; wants to feel bare skin, the edge of a nail. Wants to feel Louis’s teeth retrace the path of his hands; the feel of man’s moth against his jaw, his neck, his stomach where the other man currently has his hand. At the barest hint of interest, Eiji would be more than happy to press back against the other man. But Louis stays still, as does his hand, and so Eiji fights to find sleep.

The baying of the drowned souls is both constant and inconsistent. Several voices attempting to speak over each other, trying to be heard, to be remembered and noticed and mourned. Fluctuating in volume and length and pitch, wails and moans, an hours long performance of grief and sorrow. 

“Why are there so many of them,” Eiji grumbles to himself, shifting in place yet again, attempting to find a position comfortable enough to make sleep even remotely possible. Louis’s gloved hand tightens on his stomach, drawing him even closer still, and Eiji abandons all notions of sleep in order to listen to what the other man whispers into his ear.

“What did they tell you, of Kêr-Is?”

“Shit, I thought it was Ys. Sorry, these names are a bit hard for me.”

Louis’s laughter is felt more than heard, short puffs of air felt against Eiji’s hair only due to their proximity. 

“It is also Ys, fear not.”

“Oh, good. It, uh, got submerged? The princess opened the dyke wall and everyone died and now the Herensuge lives in its ruins and blights the entire land.”

“Its king survived, though that tale is for another telling. But most everyone else… yes. Death after death after death. I’ve heard people say that drowning is a peaceful enough way to die. Have you ever seen some poor soul drown?” Louis’s fingers dig into Eiji’s stomach slightly. Not enough to bruise, not really, though he wishes it were. The dull throb of dark bruising would be a physical reminder of the other man, one that Eiji finds himself greedy for. Instead of pressing Louis’s fingers further into his flesh, Eiji places his hand atop Louis’s in an attempt at comfort. 

“No. René is the only person I’ve ever seen die.” Eiji struggles not to freeze when he feels Louis’s nose press against the side of his head, followed quickly by the brush of his lips as the man talks.

“It is a wretched thing. The illusion of peace is nothing more than failure, than the loss of all hope. I would slit my own throat before I drowned, Eiji.”

“Let’s aim for neither. Besides, I’m a fantastic swimmer. Follow me forever and -” Embarrassment swamps Eiji for a moment, belatedly realising what he’s just said, just implied, even though Louis’s lack of reaction highlights yet another cultural gap. “Follow me forever and you’ll never fear drowning.”

Follow me for the rest of your life, he thinks, twining their fingers together against his stomach. Please follow me back to the world I come from, far away. 

“A tempting offer,” Louis says and Eiji can feel the way the older man smiles, feel the way it’s pressed against his hair and skin. 

Let’s lie in the same grave, Eiji thinks, and dares to press back against the other man a bit more.

Louis pulls him closer in return and, soon enough, Eiji drifts to sleep.

The beast emerges from the river, visible past the wind stunted trees at the edge of the forest. It’s near silent, despite the horrific size of it. It announces itself with a gout of flame that barely misses singing off all of Eiji’s black hair and follows it up with a whip crack of its muscular tail. The thing is another ungodly chimaera, with a face halfway between serpentine and draconic, too much green fur and brutal spikes attempting to hide within the pelt. 

“La Peluda?!” Sir Jacques bellows, a belated announcement as they’re all busy scattering from the first crushing blow of the tail. A tree trunk splits in twain from the force of it. “Does this beast not haunt only rivers far from here? Why has it - “

“Less complaining, more fighting!” Mathias shouts as Eiji dives from another swing of the tail.

It’s a hard creature to fight, between the fire and the spikes which drip some sort of viscous substance. Eiji focuses on the thing entirely, searching for a pattern, for an opening, for an idea. A handful of glancing blows that do little more than fluff the beasts waterlogged fur but then - gold. 

Or, more accurately, blood.

“The tail!” he calls, unsure if it’s audible to anyone over the way the thing had started to scream, when Eiji’s broadsword had pierced the vulnerable flesh. It thrashes and Eiji must dodge the tail’s wild attempts to turn him to paste thrice, before he’s able to land a second blow. He manages to strike the same place, miraculously, and severs the tail entirely. 

The tail thuds to the rock and for a moment the monster's screech becomes truly deafening, before it abruptly falls to silence, then to the ground. It writhes, bearing some resemblance to René. Pathetic jerking motions as it struggles futilely with its imminent end. Eiji steps forward, foolish enough to believe that it can do no more harm in its death throes. It lunges, a sudden, awkward roll of its ungainly body, but what hits Eiji is not the beast.

Arnaud shoulders him to the side with a clang of metal against metal and, as Eiji watches, is pierced by a dozen spines. They punch through his armour as though it were paper. Most through his chest, a couple through his arm and the last burying itself into his round cheek. Eiji, standing so close that he can hear the way Arnaud’s lungs have begun to wheeze, can barely comprehend what he’s seeing.

He is close enough to wrap his arms around Arnaud, and he does. Supporting the knight as his knees waver, weaken and finally give way. This close, Eiji can see the film that’s starting to cloud Arnaud's kind, brown eyes. 

“Hey, hey,” he says, trying to keep his voice even rather than urgent, panicked, “Arnaud you’ll be fine, you’ll -”

The green and black spine in his cheek, the blood and poison slipping from his plush mouth, both turn Arnaud’s soft smile into something horrific.

“You were always,” a pause, a wet breath, “so lovely.”

The seizures start, then. Convulsions wrack the older man so violently that Eiji almost can’t keep his grip. Someone helps to ease the pair of them to the ground. Eiji doesn’t know who; can’t quite bring himself to look away from Arnaud. Even in death, his eyes are fixed on Eiji. 

They leave his body, as they had left René’s. 

It weighs on him. He had not thought twice about leaving René’s cold corpse, about stripping it of anything valuable; he’d approved of the pragmatism. Eiji cannot do the same for Arnaud, though he says nothing to stop the others from doing as they must. Something must show on his face, no matter how he tries to be impassive, for they barely take anything at all from the man. 

They had left René by the river but Arnaud they move, away from the Peluda’s corpse. There’s a collection of mossy rocks ahead and they lay him there. Louis slides the poisoned barbs from the man’s corpse, one by one, and Marius prays. 

It is hard to keep looking forward. Every few steps Eiji has the urge to look back, as though Arnaud might sit up, call out, ask why they’ve left him behind. Louis takes his hand as they walk, the cliffs slowly starting to angle downwards. Perhaps Eiji looks as miserable as he feels, for Jacques gives him a rough pat on the shoulder and Marius says, 

“That much poison, nothing at all will eat him. You can see him again, on our way home,” as though such a statement is at all comforting. 

“And what a pleasant sight that will be - if we live long enough,” Mathias says, voice scathing.

“One more word and I’ll throw you from the damned cliffs!” Jacques spits, voice echoing across the rock. Mathias makes an amused sound, giving Jacques the same rough pat to the shoulder that the knight had given Eiji.

“Two down, five left. How many will die this time, ‘ere we flee once more?”

Mathias dodged the elbow Jacques attempted to shove in his side, laughing. No one could find anything to say in response, not even Jacques, so they trudged down the cliff in silence until they found a place to set up camp. All the while, Louis’s hand was warm against his own. 

The cliffs lose all their height, eventually. A precarious incline of loose rock and slippery moss, making every step cautious and every monster attack an ungainly fight to stay upright. If anything larger than a wolfhound had attempted to fight them, Eiji knows at least one of them would have fallen - over the edge or down the steep incline, it would have been the same result either way. 

Eiji has long since grown used to the sight of blood. Small animalistic corpses are dotted on the cliffs above them like a morbid trail, breadcrumbs to show them the path home again. To grow numb to any death is a cruel thing. It is almost a relief to have felt Arnaud’s death so deeply. To know that he has not become completely numb. 

They walk, and walk, and walk, and Eiji would grumble about how off course they veered in the forest, except that he’s well aware that it wouldn’t matter either way. Seven nights and seven days must they walk along the coast, to reach the place where they can travel to the ruins of Ys. 

Eiji’s getting fucking sick of the number seven. 

They find a rocky beach, eventually, and Eiji allows himself to relax. Attempts to. His entire body feels tight from the constant walking, from the weight of his armour, from the unending tension of knowing a single misstep could send him careening down or off the cliffs to his death. That part, at least, gradually loosens as they walk on more or less level terrain once more. 

If Eiji lets his mind wander, it could almost be a pleasant day. Miserable, with an overcast sky and no sand at all, but pleasant enough for all that. Louis’s hand within his own and absent chatter shared between a group of friends, Eiji could almost pretend he was home, or at least simply on holiday somewhere in Europe. 

Ocean fog and sea spray haze the horizon. Eiji doesn’t know how long he stares sightlessly at it while they walk, before he realises that there’s a shape visible out at sea. His hand clenches tight against Louis’s and he gestures to it, asking,

“Is that it? Ys?”

“No,” Louis answers, at the same time as Mathias says, 

“Qui voit Ouessant voit son sang,” and it takes Eiji a second to realise that he cannot quite understand what the dark haired man had said. It sounds almost entirely like everything else the people of this world speak, except the spell which usually translates such things immediately within his brain is silent.

“Shut up, Châteauvillain,” Jacques says, knocking their shoulders together with a clang of armour. 

“What happened to your sense of humour, Gaudreault? Did you not used to laugh in the face of danger?”

“Quiet, you fool,” Jacques snaps.

“Mathias, please, do not -” Marius attempts, only to be immediately spoken over, Mathias’s pleasant voice pitched to carry as he says,

“Or perhaps something has happened recently,” Jacques makes a sound that Eiji’s fairly certain a human shouldn’t be capable of making, a gutteral almost-growl. Mathias continues, “to poison your otherwise jovial disposition.” 

From behind them, Eiji hears a great clash of armour and when he turns to look, Jacques has tackled Mathias to the rocks. After a moment, it becomes apparent that Mathias is laughing, breathlessly, which only serves to infuriate Jacques even further. Marius stands over them, tiredly shaking his head. He doesn’t bother attempting to pull them apart and Louis doesn’t stop walking, so Eiji is dragged along in his wake.

“Do not worry, this will help to wash away the tension. Mathias always gets nervous, if we reach this far in our quest.” Louis would know, Eiji supposes. He’s a veteran of this journey, along with Mathias, and Jacques. Mathias has been questing for the Herensuge’s death for most of his adult life, has made this journey more times than anyone else. Has seen more of his comrades in arms die than anyone else; at what point must it feel like insanity, attempting once more the very thing which has killed so many friends? No wonder the man’s anxious.

“What did he say, anyway?”

“You… did not understand? Is the translation spell failing?”

“Uh, I don’t think so? I can understand you perfectly fine, so I don’t know what it was that made the magic glitch.” He shrugs. After a second, Louis breathes a humourless laugh.

“The spell does not translate Breton. Of course it does not. That is the language Mathias spoke, and one which is not well liked in the court. In any court, anymore.” Louis swings their hands as they walk, a soft back and forth. 

“What he said was part of an old proverb, though it is a grim one to be sure. Would you like to know it?”

“I’d like to know anything you’d like me to,” Eiji replies, like a sap. Louis laughs, a bright bark of sound, and when Eiji looks at him, he’s smiling like the sun. 

“Would you now? Well, my honour to educate you, then. Who sees Molène sees his pains; who sees Ushant sees his blood; who sees Sein sees his end; who sees Groix sees his cross. That, on the horizon, is Ushant.”

“Ah. Very pleasant. You speak Breton, then?”

“As does Mathias, and even Jacques though he won’t admit to it. Not many nobles will own the knowledge they have but very few know nothing of it at all, even what they know is little enough. Do you remember the old lady in that inn, who mumbled and mumbled and glared all the while?” Eiji does. Usually old ladies love his charm, but she’d unbent not a centimetre the entire night they’d stayed.

“All the time, she was cursing us all in Brezhoneg - Breton.” 

“She should’ve spoken louder, so that I could enjoy the lovely sound of it more.”

Louis laughs once more, bringing Eiji’s gloved hand to his mouth for a quick kiss. Were they closer in height, Eiji would steal a kiss from the man’s very lips. Unfortunately, the moment would be lost by the time he scaled Louis’s tall form in order to do so.

“If we pull far enough ahead that the wind won’t carry our words, I might even sing a song in it, just for you.”

Suddenly it is Eiji who is tugging the pair of them forward by their joined hands, walking twice the speed he had been. Louis’s laugh rings again, delightful to hear, and soon enough they’re jogging across the rocky beach, giggling like children as they go. 

Sir Marius Ciroteau dies next and Eiji can do nothing at all. He and Louis have set up another cold camp, making a game of trying to find the most comfortable rocks to set their bed atop of. Ridiculous as the game is, it feels intimate, still. Preparing a bed to share not incidentally but intentionally; Eiji feels something like a bird preening a nest, trying to entice a mate. It might be working, too, for Louis lays back on the smoothed stones and the smile he sends towards Eiji near melts him entirely.

By the time dusk begins to loom, and still no sign of the other three, the shine of being alone has long since dimmed. They both glance up every handful of seconds, waiting to see the forms of their companions round the curve of the headland. Hours have passed since they last saw the other knights and eventually Eiji cannot take the worry anymore. 

Rocks clink and crunch underfoot as he jogs down the beach, back the way they had come. He goes from a walk to a job, overtaken by urgency, by the sudden, bone deep knowledge that something has happened. Louis matches his pace and before too long they’ve rounded the long curve of the coast which had kept hidden their trail from view. Eiji sees them instantly and begins to sprint, attempting to reach his friends faster than is physically possible. 

Mathias and Jacques are stumbling down the beach, kept upright only by each other, Marius nowhere in sight. The orange of the quickly setting sun shines against their smeared armour, blood the shape of someone’s hand stark over Mathias’s heart. 

Later that night, keeping watch with Louis, Eiji hears Mathias whisper to Jacques, 

“We should turn back. Us four alone? Can we even cross the strait? Will we not be torn asunder by the Herensuge instantly?”

“Calm yourself, you fool. We’re here together. Plus, we’ve the boy, prophesied and true. Keep faith.”

The words weigh on his chest, crushing but empowering. They’re relying on him, all of them, and the King and the rest of the kingdom as well. Their safety, their wellbeing, their freedom from the Herensuge’s reign of terror - all of it in his hands. He will succeed. He must. There is no other choice. Eiji has never been a man to buckle under the weight of his responsibility, to turn away from those in need, and he will not start now. 

“Besides,” Jacques continues, after a long moment, gruff voice not quite capable of a true whisper, “can you walk back up the cliff right now? I sure as fuck can’t.”

"You're never inclined to walk anywhere, lazy bastard."

Behind him, Eiji can feel Louis’ shoulder shake as he laughs, near silently. 

The next morning dawns the seventh day and, before midday, they come across a dilapidated jetty. Bobbing gently at its end is a boat, perfectly sized for the four of them. It would almost be quaint, if it weren’t one of the most ominous things Eiji has ever seen. Mathias is closer in height to Eiji - in fact, he’s the shortest of all the knights, though the top of Eiji’s head still only barely scrapes the top of Mathias’s shoulders. It makes it an easy decision, that Louis will help Jacques to the boat while Eiji supports Mathias.

The fight with the beast that killed Marius had taken its toll on both of them, though they are not so injured that they cannot fight. Eiji reassures himself that they’re just being cautious, ensuring that no one slips on the creaking, sea soaked wood. Louis and Jacques move slowly, even with their armour stripped away and waiting at the edge of the pier. Eiji’s hesitant to introduce too much weight to the aged structure so he and Mathias wait on the rocky beach, watching as Louis acts as something of a full body crutch to Jacques. 

While Eiji’s focused on Louis and Jacques, Mathias is staring out across the sea. Just before Eiji’s about to draw Mathias onto the planks, the knight speaks. 

“More than a decade I’ve been attempting this farce, Eiji, and this is but the third time I’ve ever come so far. Are you good luck or the worst omen of them all?”

“...I -”

“No, do not listen to me. Jacques is right. I’m a fool and a coward and I do not want to die.”

“It does not make you a coward, to want to live. I want you to live, too. Us all to live, preferably.”

“And Louis especially, I suppose,” Mathias gives him a shadow of his usual sharp grin, and Eiji gives an embarrassed shrug. They start down the jetty, slow and steady, and Mathias begins to sing to himself, under his breath.

“Eunn alarc'h, eunn alarc'h tre-mor. Eunn alarc'h, eunn alarc'h tre-mor. Dinn, dinn, daon. Dann emgann, dann emgann. Oh, dinn, dinn, daon, d'ann emgann a eann…”

He trails off as they approach the boat, and the two knights waiting within. He needn’t have worried; the wind whips his words away the moment they’re spoken. If Eiji hadn’t been standing directly downwind he’d never have heard a thing. He tries to fix at least part of the words in his mind, to ask Louis what Mathias sang, when they have a moment. 

Dann emgann, he thinks as he helps lower Mathias into the boat before beginning to pass their bundles of armour down to waiting hands. They run the risk of losing the armour overboard if the sea gets too rough, but better the metal alone than themselves with it. 

Dann emgann, dann emgann, d'ann emgann a eann.

In the distance, rotting thatch is visible as the waves play to and fro over the ruins of what was once Ys. 

Beasts crawl from the woodwork, almost literally. 

For long, tense minutes, Eiji fights them single handedly. The other three are scrambling into their armour, helping each other as quickly as possible, as the creatures had not waited for them to finish climbing from the boat before they had attacked. Eiji, no longer having any armour to wear, had rushed to meet them, to keep them from his unprepared friends.

Eiji’s own armour rests on the seabed, a more than fair trade for Louis’s life. 

From the moment the enchanted boat had set sail, straight for Ys, Louis’ hand had clung to the side of the boat. White knuckled, lips a thin bloodless line, the man’s discomfort had been obvious; perhaps if he’d not held so tightly, from the very first lurch of the boat, he would’ve had more strength to hold on when it mattered.

The boat had hit a sudden swell, a patch of turbulent water; rolling, yawing, it had pitched Louis over the side. Eiji had dived after him immediately, practised hands parting the water until he was by the man’s side once more, doing his best to hold the other man above the water. Doing his best to calm the man while Louis panicked and thrashed and did his best to drown them both. 

I have you, Eiji had said, again and again, half spluttering it through the sea water attempting to fill his mouth and lungs. With Jacques and Mathias’s help, they’d gotten Louis back into the boat, Eiji throwing himself in after with an exhausted groan. They’d laid together at the button of the boat, side by side, and Eiji had given Louis a tired grin.

Like I said, I’ll never let you drown.

Louis’s dark blue eyes reflected the colour of the overcast sky, reflected the turbulent sea, and it felt as though they pierced Eiji through to his very soul. Louis’s trembling lips had slanted to a smile. Eiji should have kissed him then, but Mathias and Jacques had been looming, and talking, and worrying, and the moment had slipped through Eiji’s fingers before he’d realised. 

Once we’ve a moment to breathe, Eiji promises himself. He won’t even wait until this is all over. The next time they’re not being attacked, the first second they can lower their blades, Eiji will kiss Louis.

A promise to only yourself is easily broken, easily forgotten. When they’re finally able to stop fighting, nothing is further from his mind. 

There was no wave after wave of monsters as they fought; no breathing time. Unlike a carefully programmed game, this is real and constant. Relentless. A ceaseless inundation of small beasts with sharp teeth and claws and spikes and a hunger for their flesh. It became a battle of attrition; human stamina against inhuman numbers. It was only ever a matter of time before one of them faltered. 

The grind of hack and slash, dodge and parry, quick step quick step quick step because nothing protects Eiji but a waterlogged gambeson and soft leather pants - all of it clatters to a halt when a loud bellow tears through the usual cacophony of battle. Eiji beheads the thing in front of him and spins in time to see Jacques fall, still swinging his sword. He’s covered in a living blanket as the beasts swarm him. The beasts which had been attempting to surround Eiji - all of the creatures, those besieging Louis and Mathias too - abandon them immediately in favour of the downed knight.

The little things are far faster than Eiji, horrifically so, and he wonders if they had simply been playing with him for their own sick amusement. Sometime during the chaos of battle, Jacques had become separated from the rest of them. Metres and metres of distance and the beasts cross it in what seems like a heartbeat. 

Eiji feels as though he runs faster than the wind, arriving before both Louis and Mathias, but it’s entirely too late. The beasts have finished their terrible work, already skittering away. A single back hand blow cleaves one of the stragglers in half but the rest are gone, fled to the shadows and puddles and far out of reach. 

On the slippery, algae covered cobble, Jacques stares blindly up at the gathering storm. His armour has been cracked open, jagged metal where once it was smooth. Within, his chest has been pried open. Cloth and flesh torn asunder. Ribs broken apart. There is nothing left inside his chest at all but blood and bone. 

Behind him, Mathias begins to vomit.

The beasts must be too busy glutting themselves on what they stole of Jacques, for the horde does not descend again. It gives them a brief time to mourn, while Mathias stumbles over the prayers, knelt above the man’s broad body. He had taken a cord from around Jacques thick next and strung it around his own. 

Eiji pretends that he does not see the way Mathias presses the necklace to his lips, something desperate and wretched etching itself into his face, uncaring of the blood the carved wood smears against his face and hands. When Mathias stands once more, ready to press forward, his usual sly humour is entirely absent. The narrow planes of his face are hard, resolute. He looks a man pushed far past what he can take.

They stare at each other, Mathias and Eiji, while Louis stands silently to the side. He hears Jacques voice, rough and never as quiet as he thought it was. We’ve the boy, he’d said. Keep faith.  

What is faith to a corpse, torn to pieces by greedy, hungry paws? What is faith to the man left behind, blood on his hands from where he failed to ease the gaping wound closed? 

If Mathias hits him, Eiji will not defend himself. He will defeat the Herensuge but the cost of it all… A pyrrhic victory, all but three dead in their wake. He should have been better, stronger, faster. 

Mathias approaches, closer and closer, until the metal of his armour buts up against Eiji’s chest. His golden blond hair curls across his shoulders, freed from its helmet and fallen from its tie. He could have walked straight from one of those folk tales Louis had been telling him, where death comes for all and carries not a shred of mercy in its heart. 

Eiji doesn’t flinch from his hand and the blow that lands is soft, no blow at all. Mathias cups the base of Eiji’s skull, fingers threading through his short, shaggy black hair. His brown eyes are bright, near feverish as he bends to press their foreheads together. 

“What fear I have of death, died with him. Whatever the cost, victory comes to us. Do you understand? Whatever the cost."

“All for one, one for all,” Eiji quotes, though as far as he knows, this universe has never heard of the Three Musketeers. Mathias nods, pressing their foreheads together so tightly it has begun to hurt. Eiji presses back, harder still. 

“To the death,” Mathias mutters.

“Keep faith,” Louis adds, quietly. Mathias breaks away from Eiji, his laugh a beast of pure misery, and they finally break away from the wide, watery streets near the docks and head further into the looming rot of Ys. 

Sound echoes. The streets narrow, the old buildings begin to tower, until it seems as though they walk through tunnels. Every footstep bounces from hard surface to hard surface, loud and obvious. 

“Foul sorcery,” Mathias mutters with a twist to his lips. Eiji has not yet heard the difference between magic and sorcery, every attempt to explain it getting twisted between his culture and theirs, but he thinks he finally understands, here near the heart of it all. 

They walk, blades bared, even as the street narrows to the point that they must walk single file. Eiji takes point, Louis the rear. They have come too far for Eiji to be worried about his safety, with no one at all to watch his back. They will live together, all three of them. Dying simply isn’t an option. He might hold Louis first in his heart but he cares for Mathias, too. Worries for Mathias more, now; the look in his eyes is wild, unhinged. It seems equally likely that he will run off and get himself killed attempting vengeance, if he is not sandwiched between Eiji and Louis. Louis, at least, has remained as steady as always. 

Whatever Louis felt at the sight of Jacques, he had locked it all away by the time Eiji could tear his eyes from the gruesome sight. Eiji will be there for him, when there is safety enough to process and grieve. Until then, the knight’s stalwart presence is a balm to the turbulence in Eiji’s own soul. 

Step after echoing step, street after cavernous street, they walk. Nothing jumps out at them, no creatures skitter in the dark. No monsters lurk, half hidden in the shadows. It feels as though the only people in the world are the three of them. There is nothing to be said to lift the oppressive silence, either. The weight of their looming end, one way or another, presses upon all of them. 

Step after step after step; leather on wet stone, the drip of distant water and the faint clinks of shifting armour are the only sounds at all. Eiji wishes for more noise, for anything to break the tense monotony, until it does. 

Halfway down a crooked zigzag of a street, a faint voice is heard. Stronger, louder with every step they take towards it - and they can only walk towards it, for what other direction do they have? Forwards is their only option, for they can no longer flee, even if any of them were so inclined. The path behind them has become shrouded with mist and a palpable sense of misery, wretched enough that even Eiji hesitates to take a single step backwards for caution of it.

The voice is a deep baritone, pleasant to hear, and all the eerier for it. 

For half a street, Eiji had been convinced that it was another of those drowned men, its ritualistic cries distorted by the very streets they drowned in. Soon enough, though, Eiji realises the truth - the voice sings. Eventually they have come close enough to hear distinct words, though such a thing is of no help at all to Eiji. Breton again, he thinks. Pretty but haunting; a death knell that he refuses to heed. Eiji can do nothing but win, so win he shall.

A handful of steps after Eiji realises the voice sings in Breton, Mathias must realise it too, for he swears and laughs in the same breath.

"What's being said?" He asks, risking a glance over his shoulder. Mathias is frowning and, behind him, Louis walks backwards, facing the looming menace of supernaturally darkened streets.

"The line is from a song, about three sailors. Our enemy sings from the end of it, though they’ve changed the lyrics. Instead of servant girl, it’s servant boy. Us, presumably.”

“Are knights not servants to the king they serve?” Louis asks, rhetorically. Mathias ignores him and begins to hum for a moment, catching the tune of it so that Eiji can hear what it should be. Then, finally, he translates,

“ There was a servant boy, and he asked me where we met. Where have we met before? Less some repetitions and ‘la’s.”

“Those three lines, over and over again. Do you think the final line would still say Nantes?" Louis wonders. Eiji, facing forward once more, hears the familiar metallic sound of Mathias shrugging.

"The final line?"

"It answers the question, perhaps, or simply starts anew. In Nantes, at the market. In Nantes, at the market, we bought a ring."

“A love song?”

“Is not every song a love song, if you yearn hard enough?” Mathias replies. Eiji cannot argue that he’s wrong and Louis says nothing at all, so they continue forward in silence, mocked and serenaded all at once.

“God, every occupational health and safety officer would have a fucking heart attack at the sight of this,” Eiji mutters as they finally come to the end of the road. A castle looms above them. Its walls are eroded and rotting in parts. Two of the low towers list dangerously to the side. Even as they watch, a wall is slowly detaching from the rest of the building, crumbling to the cobble in a slow, pathetic avalanche. 

Eiji wants to say, this is a death trap waiting to happen, but that rings too true. 

“Do you think the Herensuge’s minions are unionised?”

“What?” Both Louis and Mathias turn to look at him, confusion writ large across their handsome faces. 

“Uh. Nevermind. I don’t suppose either of you know where to go, once we’re in there?”

“If I were an evil bastard, set on tearing down an otherwise peaceful kingdom, I’d probably take the throne room. It’s where the worst sort of people usually like to lurk.”

Sometimes, Eiji really wants to ask Mathias’s opinion on monarchies and democracy. There’s never been time, between training and questing and constant attacks and all the death. He should’ve made time; Mathias’s scathing wit would likely have had him in stitches. 

“I know where the throne room is, I think,” Louis says, rubbing at his jaw. Unlike Mathias and Eiji, his chin remains unstubbled, despite the lack of shaving opportunities over the past days. 

“Excellent. How reliably?”

“It’s been a long while since the King walked these halls, but his memory is likely reliable.”

“The King? Gradlon? I thought Ys fell several decades ago? He isn’t so old as that so how does he know the way?”

“Kêr-Is fell more than a hundred years ago and Gradlon was its king.”

Eiji, stunned, blinks at Louis and then over at Mathias, who only shrugs, offering a trite, “Magic.”

“A King should die as his kingdom does, should he not? He survived where everyone else perished and now death touches everyone but him, in revenge.”

“I feel like this is necessary information. Something to be said before we’re stood in the middle of Ys.”

“It’s not a comfortable subject for most, and everyone already knows, so I suppose it was easy enough to let it slip our minds,” Mathias says, partially apologetic. 

“How is he king, still, if the people he ruled all died here?”

Both Mathias and Louis scoff, looking equally disgusted. 

“He threw his lot in with the nearest court, abandoning his people and his language in favour of more power.” Mathias spits on the ground, “He was Gralon once, you know. Most don’t remember but my grandmother does, as did hers. My parents could not even name me as they willed, forbidden, as though language itself is where the trouble of Ys spawned.”

“They say Gralon was the lone virtuous man of Kêr-Is, the rest of the city entrenched in debauchery and sin. The citizens and their wrongs were washed away but Gralon alone escaped, due to his piety. Did he seem especially pious, to you?” Louis asks and Mathias gives a derisive snort of laughter. 

“Were it not for this great evil that threatens us all, I would’ve long since left the court.”

“I think I need three to five business days to process this. Think the Herensuge will take a raincheck?” Eiji asks, wondering if there’s a single seat in all Ys which would keep its structural integrity if he sat on it. There is no time to sink to the stone beneath their feet, however, for Louis starts to walk for the hole where a likely imposing gate once stood. 

“Herensuge isn’t even Brezhoneg,” Mathias grumbles as they follow Louis. “It’s fucking Basque, those southern fucks.”

“You know, I’ve never heard you swear so much, Mathias,” Eiji notes. The man throws his hands up, sword tip narrowly avoiding skimming across the stone walls. 

“If not now, when?” 

“...That’s quite the compelling argument at the moment, actually. What’s Basque?”

“You know what? We make it out of here alive and I’ll take you there. They’ll call you Txiki and pinch your cheek and you’ll never understand a damn word anyone’s saying. Jacques' mother was Basque, you know? She named him Gaizka.”

“Cheeky?” Eiji asks, because he doesn’t think Mathias can handle a question about Jacques right now.

“Txiki. Means little, cutely.” 

Eiji takes an extra step forward just to kick Mathias in the ass. Mathias’s laughter rings down the hallway and, just for a moment, things don’t seem too bad.

The throne room is awash with light but as empty as every other inch of the castle has been. The handful of windows that had once existed have all been blocked, thin strips of weak light shining through tiny gaps. Innumerable candles ring the room, littering the floor around the door, at the base of the throne and across the back of it. There should be wax everywhere but the floors are clean; the candles don’t even look to be melting beneath their own heat. It’s uncanny, as though rendered by an artist who’s never once seen a candle. 

A throne sits pride of place, wooden and ornate. Unlike the walls and corridors and ceilings, it alone seems untouched by time. Weathered a little at the edges, worn through use, but the carvings in the back are stark, beautiful and vivid, the paint untouched by time. 

They enter cautiously, ready to spring into action at any time, but there’s neither tip nor tail of a giant beast. No dragon, not even a sea snake. No shed skin, either. None of the debris and litter Eiji would expect from an animal’s den. The entire place has been the same. Not so much as a stray bone.

Sword at the ready, Eiji approaches the throne on light feet but nothing leaps at him. Not even when he rests a hand on the wooden arm of the chair, rubbing his fingertips across the curled carvings. Nothing in the world could release the tension coiled within him but Eiji does allow himself a small breath of relief. They’ll have to search this place from the tallest tower to the lowest, dankest - probably submerged - basement. Great. His clothes had long since dried, so it’s clearly time to get them wet once more. 

“...What?” Mathias’s voice is faint, trembling. Eiji’s attention snaps toward him, standing near what may have once been a window. He's staring at Eiji, horror on his face. Eiji's eyes flick across the room to Louis, whose face could be carved from stone. He, too, stares at Eiji.

No.

Behind him.

Sword first, Eiji spins. He feels the impact of sword against something, feels it jar his wrist, echoing up his arm. His eyes follow half a second later and he knows his shock is but a pale imitation of what the other two knights are experiencing. It is no great beast that faces him, no maw of infinite teeth, no seven heads. Just one, handsome and fair.

“Faithless dog,” Mathias spits, footsteps heavy against stone as he and Louis race forward. Eiji knows it’s too late already but he will not die without a fight. His sword, held between two long fingers, does not so much as waver when Eiji tugs on it. 

“Eiji Takahashi. My apologies, Sir Eiji Takahashi, now, is it not?” Lord Henri Achille LaCharité says, deep voice as pleasant as it had ever been, “I truly did not expect you to make it this far but you are very well liked. Not that you’ll appreciate that for long, I expect.”

Lord LaCharité smiles, broad and amused, and Eiji has never felt fear like this. He cannot look away from those burning green eyes, even as he hears horrific noises from behind him. 

Audible tearing, snapping, the clang of armour against stone; a familiar voice distorted by a tortured scream, the sound continuing to echo even after it’s cut short. The sound of something dripping; a nauseating, wet sound that Eiji wishes he couldn’t identify as someone attempting to breathe through a severed windpipe. 

Eiji doesn’t feel the tears until they’re sliding off his chin. The man - the monster, no matter his face - tuts, smile turning into a smirk as he leans forward. Eiji jerks away at the first touch of tongue against skin but something grips the back of his head, hard enough to bruise, and keeps him in place. With LaCharité’s mouth open wide, it’s easy to see how sharp his teeth are. He could bite through Eiji’s face without thought. He doesn’t, content to lap the tears from Eiji’s face, kissing them away even as they drip from horrified eyes. 

“What are you?” He cannot help but ask, overwhelmed, still unable to free his sword. LaCharité rips it from his hands without any apparent effort, flinging the blade hard enough that it embeds into the far wall. 

“Are you not here for me? The Herensuge? Though admittedly, I am nothing so grand as a dragon. It felt fitting, however. Seven heads of the beast; seven implements of revenge. Seven of us here, seven of you attempting to stop us. Straight from a lai, is it not?”

“Revenge against who? Why, for what purpose? Who could you hate so much, that you would terrorise so many?”

“King Gralon, of course. Why else would we be here, in Kêr-Is, if not to deepen the torment?”

“But you have access to the king!” Eiji shouts, attempting to fight his way free of the hold on his head. A second, equally huge hand wraps itself around his shoulder, keeping him in place. Keeping him from hurting his neck in his own struggles. The strength in it is as obvious as it is inhuman. Eiji can see the edge of the hand, from the corners of his eyes. Blond furred fingers end in black tipped claws, squeezing in warning as he continues to thrash. Eiji fights against the instinct to go still and continues his attempt to struggle free. The hands never tighten as they could, simply hold him steady, and close.

“You could kill him at any time! Why all of this? Why -”

Eiji’s breath breaks, shuddering, and LaCharité laughs. It’s a bright sound, beautiful, and Eiji cannot so much as flinch when the man’s hand snaps out and grips his chin, splitting the skin of his jaw beneath the sheer pressure of his touch. Eiji feels it, as the man’s nails turn to talons, sliding easily into his flesh.

“Because when I drowned with my mother and every other damned person in this cursed city, everything good went with me. When I clawed my way up the cliffs, for years hearing no sound but that of those whose bodies would never be recovered, I found that ruinous King Gralon was now the virtuous King Gradlon, who had no hand at all in the destruction of his own kingdom. I found that my grandfather had pinned every scrap of blame on my mother. Have you heard what they say of her? A fool, at best. The ruination of a good king.”

LaCharité laughs, bitter and wild and he draws Eiji’s face even closer to his own. They are near nose to nose, now. Close enough that it takes barely any movement at all before LaCharité steals a kiss, forcing his tongue into Eiji’s mouth. He cannot bite down, cannot move his jaw at all. LaCharité does not seem to feel the way Eiji pushes and punches at him, unmoved beneath his blows. 

“But most of all, lovely Eiji,” he says, deep voice low and seductive, “I do it because I want to. You cannot possibly understand how much it amuses me, to watch questing party after questing party stagger home, defeated and disheartened, if any of them manage to survive at all. Watching my grandfather splinter even further under the weight of a duty he can never again shirk. An entire court, eroding day by day, year by year, dying by the smallest cruelties, by sweet inches, due to my influence, my hand - though not mine alone, of course.”

LaCharités eyes are alight with madness and, still, he smiles. He ducks his head, leaning forward to lick Eiji’s blood off his own fingers, tongue sliding against the cuts slowly widening in Eiji’s skin with every shift of LaCharité’s hand. 

“Everyone is so eager to meet you. We’ve been following your journey. Morvan was so frightfully upset when de la Verrière failed to rape you, he moaned of little else for days. I am not so cruel a master that I would keep him in such misery so we’ll have to fix that immediately, won’t we?”

“With pleasure,” a man answers, voice like a burbling creek; like those which cry out at night, lou, lou, mourning their lost lives. LaCharité’s hand on his chin forced his head to turn, bruises blooming dark and immediate beneath the torn skin, the blood. A beast crawls from the shadows, little more than shadow for a moment before it catches the light of the candles as it stands. He’s unmistakable - a drowned man. Pallid skin; black hair tangled around his waist, seaweed caught within it; each step he takes makes a wet sound, dripping a puddle as he goes. His clothes are rags, rotted by time and water, and the phallus between his legs may never have been human at all. Too large by far, too thick, the end of it reminiscent of a horse’s cock. He strokes himself as Eiji watches, horrified. 

“This is Morvan. Next to him, Yann.” 

What Eiji had taken as nothing but shadow moves, warps. Becomes a black cloak which shifts to reveal a skeletal man beneath it. He’s thin enough he looks as though he has already died and perhaps he has, for when he raises a hand to wave at Eiji, there is no flesh at all. Just bone, affixed to each other through magic. 

“Rónán, Mael and Erwan are yet to return, still dealing with the mess the three of you made on the docks. Our poor brethren, their entrails scattered across wood and stone - Mael must lick every inch clean and the other two aren’t likely to leave him alone, you understand. He’d get himself into far too much mischief. Fear not, we can entertain you well enough until their arrival.”

Eiji does not want to be entertained. If he could, if LaCharité’s grip on his jaw allowed him any movement at all, he would spit in the man’s face. As it is, he can do nothing but stare at Morvan and Yann until LaCharité moves his head once more. His smile is so broad, so sinister.

“And of course, you already know Loïc.”

LaCharité tilts his head back and the pressure behind Eiji’s head recedes, allowing it. Eiji closes his eyes, unwilling. His willingness is no matter at all, for something sharp hooks through one eyelid and pulls, forcing him to open his eye or have the lid removed entirely. 

Through the blood, and the tears, Eiji looks up at Louis, who stares back at him. Blood is smeared around his mouth, the familiar shape distorted by a maw full of sharp teeth. His pupils are slit, and his eyes too blue, and he leans down to lick the blood away as fast as it wells. 

“I would have simply killed you but, as I said, you’re far too liked. Loïc’s grown fond, foolish man. And he is right, you are too pleasing by far.”

LaCharité drops him and Louis - Loïc’s - hands disappear, leaving Eiji to crumple at their feet. He tries to stand and is knocked down, instantly. Claws rake across his torso, front and back, Loïc and LaCharité both tearing at cloth and skin indiscriminately until he is bare from neck to knee. Once the small frenzy has ended, LaCharité seats himself on the throne and Eiji lunges for the candles by the man’s feet. 

A booted foot slams against his cheek, dazing him enough that he cannot even fight back when he is flipped. His back slams against stone, then his head, and for a while he cannot focus on anything at all. His head aches in time with his pulse and his eyes are blind. Sight returns to him soon enough though he wishes it hadn’t. 

He can see Mathias. What’s left of him. His neck’s a ruin, a savage wound. No wonder Louis had known how to mutilate Rene’s corpse properly. Blood has puddled around Mathias and Eiji’s thankful that his death, at least, was quick. No time at all to savour the betrayal, to stew in it.

Eiji wishes he could say the same. 

Louis - Loïc, Loïc; it would be easier, if Eiji could pretend that this beast was not Louis at all, that it had never held his hand or laughed with him or whispered to him in the dead of the night. Eiji refuses to fool himself, however. The eyes hold the same warmth as they look at him. The smile, altered by too many sharp teeth as it is, is the same uneven stretch. 

His too large, malformed hands grip Eiji’s thighs just below the swell of his ass and pull his legs to either side of his now furred waist, impossible to fight against though Eiji tries. Louis rubs the sensitive skin of Eiji’s thigh in small circles, the exact same way he often rubs at the back of Eiji’s hand when they walk. 

Loïc stares down at him and Eiji glares up. The man’s shoulders have broadened, disfigured slightly. Even from this angle, it’s easy to see the curvature of his back has changed. Fur dusts across his skin, the same pale blond as his hair, thin over his shoulders and chest and thickening the further down his body Eiji’s eyes go. Not quite a werewolf but something similar, perhaps; or maybe he’s another river creature, like the haired beast that killed Arnaud. 

The transformation has stripped Loïc of his clothes and so Eiji can see what threatens him, what slides against his groin and up across his stomach. Two of them, terribly long, both ending in a terrifying barb. He tries to scramble away again, hands frantically scratching at stone. A wet foot plants itself on his chest, sending all the wind from his lungs, and Morven crouches to the side of him while Eiji wheezes for breath.

“What a delightfully small cock,” Morvan coos, patronising. Yann makes a creaking sound as he mirrors the man, boxing Eiji in entirely. Loïc at his feet, LaCharité and the throne at his head, and Morvan and Yann to the left and right of him. He hates it, but at least Mathias is hidden from view. “Not that it’ll do you much good. Still, I see why Loïc is so charmed.”

The man reaches out and Eiji attempts to slap his hand away, only for both of his hands to be caught by Yann. One, he stretches above Eiji’s head, until LaCharité can pin it beneath the same boot which had so callously kicked him across the face. The other, Yann holds, bringing it up to his mouth. Eiji attempts to curl his fingers into a fist but Yann’s skeletal fingers straighten them back out. The inside of the man’s mouth is dry, rough, and the feeling of his tongue sliding across and between Eiji’s fingers is repulsive. Eiji attempts to tear his hand free by the man’s gentle hold on his wrist is impossible to break free of. How sheer bone manages to touch softly, Eiji doesn’t know. 

Morven's hand is not gentle, when it grips Eiji's cock. His hand is cold as ice and wet and he squeezes without care until Eiji can do nothing but shout between gritted teeth. It throbs when Morven finally releases him, sore in a way he’s never been before. It is still white from the pressure of it, when Eiji dares to look. Yann's fingers run across the back of Eiji's hand, faux soothing, while Morven laughs.

"Ah, such a cute little prick. The perfect mouthful - "

"Morven," Loïc says, speaking for the first time since Eiji's world was upended. His voice sounds the same, not even a hint of gravel or growl. Measured, well thought out. Eiji had loved the way every word had seemed perfectly thought out, perfectly weighted. He hates it, now.

"Fear not, lover boy, I'll not bite it off. Yet. Surely you'll be sick of him soon enough, crawling back to lap at our Lord's cock like the dog you are."

“I’ll bite yours off if you fucking think about it again,” Eiji spits, words half slurred around his aching jaw. Morven only laughs, wet fingers trailing up Eiji’s chest to start pinching and pulling at a nipple. Eiji arches away. Attempts to. At the first shift of his weight, both Morven and Yann shift in order to pin his shoulders with their knees. Morven’s fingers don’t miss a beat, rolling and tugging, and Eiji can feel the way his hole twitches, spread open for Loïc’s viewing. His nipples are sensitive and, even as Morven starts to sink his nails into sensitive flesh, it feels good. 

Morven doesn’t notice, too engrossed with the way Eiji continues to try and flinch away from the increasing torture he’s inflicting on Eiji’s nipples. Yann doesn’t notice, rubbing the back of Eiji’s hand against the paper thin skin of his face. 

Loïc notices. One of his large hands slides across Eiji’s thigh and forces itself inside. Eiji kicks out hard enough to shatter the man’s ribs but though Loïc sways with the blow, he does not stop. Eiji is tight and dry, his vaginal tissue withered from years of testosterone, and he cannot possibly take anyone at all without lubrication, without proper preparation.

One of Loïc’s sharp dicks slides against his folds and Eiji still cannot find a way to free himself. Pinned at the shoulders, both nipples being played with, fingers still being lazily sucked on by Yann’s dry mouth, Eiji finds a scream building in his throat that he barely bites back. Loïc’s cock shifts, slightly. A minute back and forth, barely entering Eiji at all. A threat. A torment, more mental than physical. Above them all, leant forward on the throne, LaCharité is still smiling down at him. 

“Feel free to be loud. I want to hear you,” he says, voice soft, and Eiji fights through his injured jaw in order to spit blood at him. It lands on his cheek but the man doesn’t flinch, doesn’t retaliate. Instead he wipes it away with his thumb, then licks himself clean. 

“Once they’ve finished with you, I’ll make sure you regret that.”

Eiji can feel the hysterical building in his chest. Loïc moves forward the slightest bit further, enough that Eiji can feel the sharp edges of his tip; enough that the man buts up against how tight Eiji is, how unprepared. 

“Will you slick up for me?” he asks and Eiji cannot help but laugh, though the sound is so ugly it can barely be called such. 

"I should have let you drown," Eiji hisses, furious. So long as he is angry, he has not the space to be afraid. If he focuses on that, then - the thought is derailed as Yann releases his hand. There’s the scrape of a knife being drawn from its sheath, though Eiji refuses to look away from Loïc’s eyes. Morven’s hands slide away from his chest, the man’s watery laughter a horrific soundtrack.

"I already did," Loïc replies before he fucks in until the sharp head of him hits the back of Eiji’s cunt. Eiji feels himself tear, forced apart, and the building scream finally erupts. He can hear himself, echoing off the bare stone. The pain is indescribable, worse when Loïc pulls out, only to align his second phallus next to the first. He forces himself back in and Eiji’s voice cracks, breaks, pain so great that there is no sound at all which can alleviate any of it. 

Loïc hits the same wall as he did before but this time, he does not stop. Those barbs which had so terrified Eiji sink into his flesh, questing for the entrance to his cervix. They find it and push even deeper, attempting to breach it. Eiji can feel the blood dripping from him, dripping to the floor below. He will die of this, he knows. Loïc presses deeper, deeper, and finally Eiji’s body can do nothing but submit, even as he thrashes, and bucks, and clenches, desperate to keep himself from the deepest violation.

He is torn asunder, torn apart, so terribly hurt that all he can do is writhe and sob and beg. Loïc leans over him and licks the tears from his face. He steals the scream from Eiji’s mouth, when the first cockhead finally slides all the way inside. Soon enough, the second follows, and Eiji realises that there’s no difference between one or two, they both hurt the same. Hurt so much that everything has begun to fade at the edges, black and white and hazy.

Loïc presses their hips together, a slow grind, and props himself up on his forearms, braced over Eiji. He withdraws fully, both cocks sliding out, and Eiji can feel the way he gapes open. Can feel the way he twitches, abused muscles unsure how to react, unable to do anything but tremble. It’s a faint surprise that he still has blood left to lose, enough to pour from his ruined hole like this, plugged up only when Loïc’s cocks press against him once more. 

Each thrust is a torment all of its own; each time Loïc must force his way inside Eiji’s cervix, until even the barest attempt at resistance has ceased. He could likely even take the flat head of Morven’s dick all the way inside without issue - thought not without pain. The man’s sole cock is thicker than both Loïc’s combined. Hopefully Eiji will be dead by the time the drowned man takes his turn. 

It seems endless. Surely he should have passed out by now, from the blood loss if not the pain. But he continues to bleed, and feel, and hear, though he wishes he could do nothing at all. Eiji can hear his own pathetic whipmers, the wounded animal sounds he cannot help, the slick, wet sounds of his own brutal rape. He can hear Loïc’s quiet grunts, the way he had begun to pant.

He can hear Morven as the man says, “If we slit open his stomach, all of us could take him at once.”

“Patience. Too soon and our new pet won’t survive.”

As though he could survive any of this. Their monstrous nature has blinded them to the frailty of Eiji’s mortal life. He might be clinging to it now, somehow, but soon… He has never before thought death would be a relief but now he longs for it. 

Hands grab him under each knee and lift, and spread, and Eiji lashes out with his only free hand. He feels his nails catch against something but whatever hit he scored counts for nothing, in the grand scheme of it all. Like this, Loïc has managed to reach even deeper. How there is so much room within Eiji’s body, he does not know. Perhaps Loïc will fuck right through him, until Eiji is split from cunt to neck. They would use his cut open corpse, he’s sure. Fucking the wound and coming inside, white splattered across cold organs. 

Everytime Eiji’s eyes flutter closed, another spear of pain lances through him, forcing them wide. Eventually, however, he has become so used to the pain that when his eyes flutter closed. Not even a mistimed thrust, barbs stabbing into his walls instead of through his cervix, can rouse him. Eiji is desperate to reach the end - not of the rape. That, he knows, will end no time soon. Eiji does not have to stay, though, if only he could die. He hopes, desperately, reaching for an end that hovers just out of reach. 

A wet hand slaps against his cheek, then pries one of his eyes open. It’s the same one which had been wrenched before, and Morven’s rough touch breaks the scab open. Blood and tears and, as always, Loïc. His intense eyes, his fond smile, moving back and forth as he continues his ceaseless rape. Eiji’s wet near to the thigh with his own blood. 

“It’s time,” creaks an unfamiliar voice that can only be Yann. Morven cackles and even LaCharité lets out an amused hum. Loïc just fucks harder, his hips slapping against Eiji’s own. 

“Hurry, hurry. You’ll enjoy this, pet,” Morven cackles. One of Eiji’s legs drops to the ground, limp, as Morven releases him in order to shove his water pruned fingers into Eiji’s slack mouth. Eiji bites down, hard as he can, until the pain in his own jaw is almost insurmountable. Blood floods his mouth, thick and coagulated. He stops only when Morven moans, unmistakably aroused. He doesn’t remove his fingers, even when Eiji stops biting him. He forces them in further, until his fingers touch the back of his throat. 

“Don’t worry.” Loïc mutters, moving to grip Eiji’s fallen leg with one of his soft hands. He wraps Eiji’s leg around his waist, thumb moving back and forth across his skin. 

Eiji doesn’t struggle, when he realises that he can’t breathe. He welcomes it. He will suffocate soon, death following at its heels. He only notices the shape that passes across his blurred vision because the esoteric etchings on it catch the candlelight, an odd shine to them. It’s a knife, he realises only belatedly. Only as he feels the awkward pull and pinch of it, as it slits his throat. It isn’t painful. There’s no room for more pain. 

The knife cuts deep and blood slides down his skin. For half a moment, he can breathe again, before the blood begins to drip inwards. 

Eiji has a flash of insight - the plan to drown him in his own blood. How he has enough of it left after the ruin Loïc has made of him, he does not know. It does not matter how, only that it happens. A slow death, only the illusion of peace. Loïc was right - this is nothing more than the loss of all hope.

Eiji struggles to breathe, an instinct that he cannot stop, gasping for breath around his cut throat. Loïc leans down once more, stealing what little breath he can from Eiji’s lips. He can hear little more than his own weakening pulse, than a sound that could be the ocean, rushing to claim him, but he hears Loïc’s soothing voice, loud and clear.

“Only the first death hurts.”