Chapter Text
Chapter One: Haunted Silver, Beautiful Calamity
“Do you… hate me?” The Asdana Princess said, “It’s alright if you do. I just thought, it must be terribly difficult trying to hide it.”
The girl without a name stared. The din and the clamor of the field tent, the salt-iron taste of blood in the air, sickeningly dry even when wet, the constant twitching frenzy of others with the same shell-shocked, hollow, expression; All of it around them had faded into a quiet, shared space between the two. Sunlight from the too pretty day streamed through the thin canvas stitching of the medical camp. In between the suspended dust, the Princess’s hair shone with silver fire. Halovian halo, bright, too bright, nearly blinding. Her face was shadowed by the angle, but the eyes reflected bottlegreen— the soft, unbent blades of grass in spring’s bud. Still blueish from winter’s grasp, green hued in rebirth.
The girl who clung onto a charred helmet, stiff plate and visor fixed down by a rend in the metal, thought the Princes seemed something out of the hymns. An angel. One to be very, very afraid of.
Her throat snagged on itself, but they would not prevent the weak mewl that forced itself into the air. “I don’t hate you.”
The Asdana Princess, she had given her name, but it had been too sweet to be overheard over the screaming of a man pulling an arrow out of face. “But you don’t like me much either.” Her words were quick, snapshot, the twang of a bowstring. Easily said, easily thought. The privilege of education.
On the other side, words struggled to come to life, even before the scorched air searing any throat that dared, language was a thing reserved only for utilitarian purpose, not for the musical lyricism-s out of a spoiled bird’s throat. As fitting, “You don’t belong here. Belong in high castles, safe walls. Warm.”
“That may be so,” A high twinkle of a laugh, like starlight, an echo of the spread of the galaxy against the night. “My brother would certainly agree, but I choose to be here regardless.” Those eyes looked miserably low, the wings dropping to rest nearer to hidden ears. More shadows, but softer from the feathers, gentle on the nameless girl’s face. “I can’t do much, but I can…” It felt even the Asdana’s Siren struggled to find the words. But the strength in her voice cannot be unheard. “I can do this much at least. Provide a surety, that if no one else, I will remember.”
“... remember what?” In these killing fields, where name and country only matter as much as the color you strike at, where the crows hawk endlessly, where the steel rusted, and the iron broke. Memory was nothing but a shackle. Another thing to strip off with the platemail.
The Princess disagreed, “Remember you. That your lives, short and fleeting as they are, mean something to someone, like tiny flames cherished in the dark, like fireflies , the little I can do is engrave your dazzling appearances in my eyes.”
It was a moment that changed, the girl clinging onto her forgotten past’s armor, hardly able to even be recognized as a fledgling lass under the grime, ash, and black-blood, her life forever. A singular bubble of space in the annals of time that wrote out her destiny in a single stroke.
It gave the girl her name.
For the Asdana Princess, it was only another battlefield among hundreds she would visit. Only the last, where an arrow splintered on helmet had nearly cut her life’s string in two at the curve of her neck.
It only granted her a cage.
…
It was the Asdana’s Star’s twentieth nameday, an accomplishment worthy for the nagging, head-shaking elders to change their tunes to ask a wholly different sort of bemoaning, too old, too old ! But altogether, twentieth namedays were just that. A common occurrence in the blessed lands of Asdana. Where even the peasants routinely mourned at reaching into their fifty summers, and all their bones creaked, their jaws worried at air, and their eyes had gone gummy.
But still twenty was an auspicious number, and moreover this was Princess Robin’s nameday, daughter to the King, adopted origin or not. Her brother, heir to the throne who had taken up most of the duties of the throne in any such— so to say, special in any case.
Appropriately, the day crested high into its zenith, the sun hot and watching, clouds wandered in, too curious and drifted by with lingering glances that drove them slack-jawed against the curvature of solar radiance, and then came back for another glance, fatter, glutted with weight and dark. It would soon rain, but for now, the day was kind. And in the empty garden, two made it not so empty after all.
Gleaming silver, a helm polished clean enough it burns, the knight stood still, cleanly delineated by the almost utilitarian dominance of its design. There were no tassels, no gambeson peeked out from the seams, for there were none to be found— just sharp angles, just flared sleek extensions meant to slide off armament from the armor’s many, many planes. It looked like an arrow would not only splinter on contact with the armor, but that even a trebuchet shot unfortunate enough to land on the silver mail would find it tougher than any castle wall. Not even a noble’s crest adorned the faceless, houseless, achievement in steel. Nothing for the single last ornamentation unstripped from the helm, a golden barred visor.
So forged for combat, the thing in armor seemed to be only a thing of war. Disconcerting then, to see it stood so still in the midst of a garden in full bloom. Perhaps, only a mannequin? An overengineered scarecrow, even.
“May I confess a secret to you?” Soft, lilting words drifted from the apple of Asdana’s eye today, told to a hunk of living metal; Princess Robin spoke to the tall armor, having to crane her neck up high just to direct her words into that helm’s golden faceplate.
For a long moment, it seemed even the birds and bees stolen into the castle’s garden thought the Princess mad. Look , they cowed and buzzed, the royal wings believe that this suit of argent be real! Metal scraped, shrieking out, scattering all the busy, yet not busy enough, tiny onlookers. A ‘No’ told only in the shake of a head. So, not a scarecrow afterall. Not dead at all.
Robin frowned, but it was a pleased, curious twist to her lips. “ No , you will not listen to my secret? Or no , I should not tell you?” The same question, but with all the differences in the world. She hardly seemed fazed, either, talking to a knight more statue than man.
The helm did not move, and though an equally long while passed, it beheld no answer still.
A small divot appeared in the cleave of brow to brow, a gentle crease in the folds of skin. “Is that perhaps too hard a question? I did not mean to overstep.”
If anything, the Knight looked to stand ever the straighter, the bearing did not change, the mail did not shift, but there, nonetheless, was a palpable stiffness to its… stiffness.
“I apologize, truly.” A twitch, the tremble of a gauntleted finger. Unnoticeable even to the Princess’s intense gaze. Yes, intense. It’d be strange to call a figure of royalty, especially Asdana’s shining star, as something as difficult as intense . But what else could you name the strength of focus in Robin’s every action. Fire, perhaps. “I’m a bit… apprehensive about today.”
Light gleaned off the knight in an inquisitive slant. Why?
“I know,” She inhaled, her lungs filling with the air’s pollen. Nature’s wildness uncontained even in the miniature manicured perfection of the castle's garden. “I know this is a day meant for celebration. Everyone deserves a twentieth nameday filled with hope, but well. It has become really quite the event.” It came all out in an exhale, a tiny release of tension.
This was… one could realize in that moment, the closest thing to a complaint from Robin one could hear. Overly polite and said with infinite patience and yet… a hint of bemusement lingered.
The knight understood why. Robin’s twentieth nameday had become a hulking, transformation of its original intent. Quickly, and vastly overblown from the moment it’s inception began in any noble’s memory, before even her eighteenth, preparations were to be made, dates to be sent out past mountains and oceans, pigeons sent out for reservation made a decade in advance. It understood completely, after all, that aforementioned event was the singularly most important reason for its placement on the Princess's detail. A duty recently so assigned, reassigned, and re-re-assigned from guard to knight, to soldier, to priest, to king’s shield and sword, even given to a contrary former Hound once, until it eventually fell to its current rendition in silver. Which made it all sound rather unfortunate to be given an actually quite important role, when it was nothing but. Rather, the fact that the knight in singular was believed to be the equal of a landed squadron of elites spoke volumes.
“I hardly feel adequate. What’s more, I do not know what they want from me.”
During this one-sided conversation, Robin had moved onto an orange plume, tracing the transparent veins within its soft petals, from thin flame to roaring dark of its edges. Examining the petal through the sun’s clarity, allowed her to see a little more deeply than she would have gathered with just a scant glance. The circulatory system outlined by daylight, the completeness of it, and the intricacy of its paper-thin frailty; in these things the life of the flower was stored. But people were not flowers, and comparing the two was cruel.
“An inside understanding of Asdana’s depths, a comprehensive guide to this castle, my beauty, my eye, the chance to grace the hand of royalty, the chance to wed. Any and all of these I can give, but of which should I?” She did not say these things with any kind of pride, or even plainness, it even… sounded at times satirical. As if she mourned the idea they had of her.
Silence from the silvered steel.
“I have been made into a commodity, and the list of those willing to trade are unending.” Robin plucked a wilting flower, the pale green stem of it bent over itself, too heavy to support the weight of itself any longer. She turned to her listening tree, her crack in the wall, the tower’s eyrie to shout your woes from, a figure in the shape of man but without the judgment. “So my dear reserved knight,” And here, she went to tuck the vividly orange plume into the hollow between winged collarbone, “Would you find a quiet place to stand in , so I might hide myself in your shadow—?”
The armor recoiled, nearly flinching in wholesale, in its haste to prevent touch.
A flash of hurt on the pretty face reflected in it, as a cloud moved over the sun.
Robin recovered quickly, forcing a bemused smile onto her expression. “... I am not so terrifying, am I? Asdana is a free country, you need not listen to my every word as command.”
The most motion seen of the living armor yet, a frantic shake of its head, both in denial and desperate examination of the surroundings for what Robin could only assume, an escape. Bowing in its haste, the knight kneeled low, and held out its hand, then moving it outwards, it held the gauntlet against a fallen leaf, yellowed and bug-bitten.
Instantly, the leaf caught aflame.
“Oh. Oh! Come out of the sunlight, you must be boiling in there!” Thinking swiftly, Robin placed the watering pail into the knight’s gauntlet, uncaring as the copper turned bright upon contact, and she set to the task of detaching parasol-bred with- table from, well, table. “I should have thought, even my feathers are sweltering!”
The pail set down, clinking against the glass of the table. The sound did not work, and so the Knight’s arm blocked Robin’s face from the sun. Blinking up from her worry, she looked deep into the empty green of that golden visor. She slowed her hurried movements, coughing, as a dusting of pink settled high on her cheeks. “... that was rather silly of me.” If the metal was so hot it burned everything it touched, then surely the man alive inside would be quite the opposite. “An enjoyable story to share with your fellows, hopefully?” She stared up, the swell of her lips bitten into mouth. Rueful of herself.
The knights’ helm turned from side to side, slow, almost… kindly . Then, with infinite slowness, the knight tapped against the golden bit of its sharp face.
Somehow, the communication was implicitly understood, though no words were shared.
Robin reached out again, unhesitating, and placed the flower there, careful not to touch any of the shining silver. It did not burn, and her fingertips did not singe.
A single nod, and the knight moved back to its place in the sunlight. Seeming, impossibly, smugly, satisfied.
There, that night, the Princess mingled with visitors across the lands, meeting and charming many of those upon first glance, but at the tailend of the night, she vanished like magic at the stroke of midnight. All that remained for the disappointed, was the ever still, ever burning suit of armor in the shadowed corner of the ballroom.
An orange flower nestled, oddly, enough into its helm.
So it was that Princess Robin elevated that silent silvered thing to be her guard forever more to the confusion of all, but the amusement of the few. Her brother, the King, and, of course, the jesters.
…