dogemperor (dogemperor) wrote in areyougame, @ 2010-02-17 10:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | *breath of fire iv, author: dogemperor |
Fic: A Raging Emperor's Banquet (Breath of Fire IV, Fou-lu)
Title: A Raging Emperor's Banquet
Author: dogemperor
Rating: 15+ at least in the US. Possibly 18+ in Commonwealth countries due to violence.
Warnings: Yes: God-emperor who has completely lost faith in humanity (and in part lost his mind) and is now in full kill-em-all/"CHARLIE'S IN THE TREES" PTSD mode. Description of the death of a significant other via Carronade. Description of what it's like when the vestigial empire calling you buggers up the summoning, with descriptions of genuine Nightmare Fuel involving Deis' and the Dragonslayer's respective botched summonings. Depictions of being run through with a sword and consequences including the violent beheading of a usurper. YE BUTCHEREDE OLDE ENGLISHE BY THE HOGSHEAD because this is the first time I'm attempting to write extended stretches of the pseudo-Elizabethan English that Fou-lu speaks in in-game.
Word Count: 3445, not counting author's notes
Prompt: Breath of Fire IV, Fou-lu: disillusionment - examples of the folly of mortals
Summary: For potentially the first and last time in his life, the royal court chronicler proves useful to the God-Emperor.
A/N: This is meant as a semi-sequel to A Little After The Dream. As with that fic (and damn near every attempt I have ever made to write any fic involving Fou-lu) historical and full author's notes are in an appendix due to potential spoilers. Be forewarned that THIS IS NOT A HAPPY FIC and that we are about to explore a very dark teatime of a certain god-emperor's soul.
I rather hope this was close to what was intended--Fou-lu's sentiments regarding humanity by this point, I fear, go rather beyond mere disillusionment. :P
It was, as it had been for centuries, the job of court chroniclers to record every moment--good, bad and otherwise--of the lives of the sitting monarchs of the Fou Empire.
Had you asked the court official earlier, though, he'd never expected to have recorded both the violent death of the sitting emperor and much of the capital, but the scene before him.
Fou-lu was on the throne, as he had been the past few days, sometimes weeping, sometimes screaming for his other half, once actually hissing at a court attendant who dared to get too close to him in one of his worse moods. (Not that any of his moods were exactly good ones right now.)
The chronicler looked. The God-Emperor was fortunately in one of his quieter moods. He proceeded to ready to put pen to paper, as he had done dutifully since being promoted in the royal exams, when he heard a voice.
"Chronicler."
The chronicler looked up to see Fou-lu staring at him...smiling. Not in the manner of a friendly greeting, either. He wondered if this was what mice saw in their last moments before being caught by cats.
"...y-yes, your Imperial Majesty?"
"We hath been quite aware of thine recording, even though thine country beith in its very dying throes, even when thou thinkest I hath gone quite mad. Oh, yes, we knowest this, even as we knoweth the sun doth rise in the east and setteth in the west." Fou-lu practically purred even as he stared at the chronicler with wild eyes.
"We knowest that 'tis thine duty. Every morn, thou and thine predecessors doth rise, to record the life of a sovereign in moments both glorious and lamentable, fantastic and mundane. Shouldst the Emperor go forth to make water, thou and thine kind wilt surely record, 'His Majesty the Emperor didst pisseth mightily in the honey pot and didst make night-soil, which was then tended to the garden.' Thou wilt even recordeth when an Emperor doth request thee not to make record, such is thine dutifulness."
The court recorder's eyes widened and he trembled a little, afraid of what the God-Emperor would say--or do--next.
"Yes, 'tis true, even with a mere shell of an empire thou wilt still record even to thine death. Here, then, let us giveth thee something truly of worth to record."
"Why thy empire--and thee, and the lot of the Changing Ones--shalt verily pass from this earth for thine hubris."
* * *
The chronicler--despite being in fear of his life (and this is one of the few times--perhaps the only time other than, ironically, with Soniel--that this is mentioned, and by the same chronicler no less) set pen to paper as the God-Emperor spoke. Such was his duty.
"Oh, yes, thou Changing Ones art full of hubris, and We fear this shalt never change.
"Thy first act of hubris, We knowest now, was to calleth the gods to serveth thee. We knowest the old Muuru Emperor wert desperate, as wert his people. They also didst know that there wert things that wert verily forbidden to them...
"They didst call upon one who hadst been to the Place of Summoning and left again. What they didst not know is that her training hadst been far from complete; they didst try to combine this with thine own native thaumaturgical arts.
"We wert in another world then, living as thou mortals wouldst live, when we felt ourselves pulled, then torn in twain--painfully so, Our other half in a limbo, floating betwixt worlds."
The chronicler, shaking, asked, "And you, Imperial Majesty?"
Fou-lu sighed. "We didst land, still screaming, in the place thou callest Mukto now. We knowest now that we were the most fortunate of thine attempts."
"...most fortunate, your Imperial Majesty?" The chronicler looked genuinely shocked.
Fou-lu nodded. "Verily. Thy second attempt--'twouldst be during the Dual Reign--thy people called another across, but lacking a body; yon Ministry of Thaumaturgy hadst to construct a simulacrum, itself a new thing. And the third--pulled across by the head thaumaturgist of Soniel's reign; merely the head came across, 'twas tortured, and bound into a sword."
"Ah, yes, that sword, the one thou callest Dragonslayer, the God's Iron. When we wert stabbed by that miserable usurper...We heard and felt it still screaming. Completely and utterly maddened." The smile changed to a snarl at this point, Fou-lu holding his stomach where he had been run through; the wound, as utterly fatal as it would have been to mortals, was healing but was not yet perfect; it still oozed.
The God-Emperor noted the look of absolute horror on the chronicler's face. Good. He wanted them to know everything.
* * *
After taking a bit to compose himself, the chronicler continued. Duty was duty, after all.
"After we didst arrive, we knew nought of this world, and the ones who called Us forth didst explain their dire straits, and the last Emperor of Muuru didst what he could to educate Us in court affairs before his own passing."
"Why did you help us?" the chronicler asked.
"'Twas Our belief then that thy people dealt upon good faith. Thy people didst suffer predations from Ludia, yes, and even on occasion from distant Wyndia, as well as the hundred smaller fiefdoms that warlords didst make war upon each other."
"With some, the diplomatic arts did suffice. With most...rather more severe measures wert necessary. Finally, though, people hadst seen reason--or so we hadst thought."
"Towards the end of mine own reign, we hadst proposed to unite the kingdoms, to stop the Ludian incursions...but We wert exhausted, and thinking again that thine people didst operate in good faith, hadst thy people agree to return the throne. We didst even then we wouldst go into a torpor, a deep sleep. We didst appoint a general as our regent, and then We passed into sleep."
The courtier suddenly at that point got very nervous--he, of all people, knew best that things had started to fall apart almost from the time of the First Emperor's "passing".
"...but things weren't all right, were they?"
"No." Fou-lu answered. "They most verily were not."
* * *
"In mine torpor, We didst come to a most terrible realisation," Fou-lu continued. "We hadst seen the intrigues of the court; We realised that the reason the last emperor of Muuru didst call us forth was because his people wert so divided that none would serve under a single ruler--save but for a very god."
"Even in Our own reign, people didst make intrigues against Us, even knowing what We wert--a dragon, the Truth That Moves The World, thy creators and destroyers. They hadst become addicted to power, even as the ones in the opium den art verily slaves to the poppy."
"We hadst agreed to take on a jade leash of royalty as 'twas Our belief thy people didst act in good faith. Towards the end, and whilst in our own torpor, We began to wonder if mortals merely didst crave our power. We hadst verily given up on understanding thy kind."
"We also wert aware that even in Our slumber that--again--thy people didst make war upon each other and upon others. We from there didst come to two further conclusions."
"Those were?" asked the chronicler.
"The first wert that men hath a desire for power and war and it wert not even within the power of the Endless to stop this. We didst not even realise how much, however, till our reawakening."
"The second...was that We wert trapped here in a fate not of Our own making. That we hadst been naive, and had agreed to this...and been geased, doomed to walk this path to its completion."
* * *
"Our first warning sign," said the First and Last Emperor, "shouldst have been the fact that none didst greet us; even our own beloved companion didst warn us of this. We hadst thought We worried too much, or that thou hadst been forgetful."
"We didst not suspect, young one, that thy people were overtly malignant."
"Malignant?" asked the chronicler, surprised.
"What callest it then when one's ancestors hath signed a contract with a god, and one hath no intent to follow up on this--to the point of sending thy priest to attempt to kill this god, knowing full well that the priest wouldst know the old ways and the god's vulnerabilities?" Fou-lu asked, staring daggers at the court official.
"Y-You...you do have a point, there."
"Interestingly, it wert thine priest who didst giveth us the first...indication to the level thy people hadst betrayed Us. In our first reign, the priests did venerate us, they were among those who didst call us forth."
"Even knowing of Yohm's treachery, though, We had thought perhaps he hadst become corrupt, that this wert not a plot by the Empire as a whole. Didst we not give this land life? Didst we not restore the empire that was nearly crumbled to a shell of itself? Even the contemptible priest, he hadst noted our legend had lived on."
"We didst later find out that Our reawakening hadst been termed the awakening of the 'Dragon of Doom', that Our awakening heralded the end of the empire."
The chronicler suddenly wanted to leave the room very, very quickly; he'd seen in the royal archives where this had been first spread officially by the Tenth Emperor.
"'Tis a pity for thee that this wouldst become a self fufilling prophecy, no?" Fou-lu stared.
The young court official had nothing to say.
* * *
"We didst learn in our recover from this first attempt on our lives the level of thine folly for war," Fou-lu continued.
"We hadst been taken in by a soldier who formerly fought in thine army. 'Twas through a brief parlay with him that we saw how things hadst gone astray."
The courtier now was curious. "How so?"
"We still knoweth not what was done in full, but he hadst noted to us that in Mine own time the wars may have made sense...but that now, that there was senseless slaughter, war, men butchering men for no reason."
"We hadst done this originally to unite as one people to fufill why we hadst been called here--to stop the wars of men and bring peace to the world."
"It wouldst seem this hath not only been forgotten, but outright inverted, with wars being launched in Mine own name and justified as Our will to thine people," Fou-lu said with more than a bit of exhaustion and irritation in his voice.
"We art becoming ever more convinced, young chronicler," said Fou-lu, "that the only way thy people shalt ever be at peace is if thy world be a desert called 'peace'."
The court official's eyes widened in fear.
* * *
"Dost thou wisheth to know what finally didst turn Us against thee?" Fou-lu stated to the courtier as he stared with peridot eyes.
The courtier got the distinct impression he was judging him, staring into his soul.
"...I-If you wish, your Imperial Majesty..." the courtier stammered.
"'Twas when thou didst take the one person who didst know what I was--but had nary a bit of the lust of power that thou hast...and thou destroyed her in an ultimate act of hubris, using black arts that We hadst forbidden to thee!" Fou-lu thundered, slamming his fist upon the throne's arm and leaving a solid dent.
The small bells--a mere toy, really--tinky-tinked in reply, and the God-Emperor held his head in his other hand. The courtier silently began to pray to himself: Please don't let the God-Emperor start screaming again. Please don't let the God-Emperor start screaming again. Pleasepleaseplease whatever Endless that might have sympathy to us please don't let him start screaming again...
After a bit, the chronicler looked up and heard a hiccoughing sob, Fou-lu cradling the bells again, softly whispering to himself (or to the bells--it was hard to tell). This was often his state when not screaming at the top of his lungs; for this, the chronicler was thankful. At least it'd be safe to be in the throne room.
"Y-your Imperial Majesty?"
Fou-lu turned to look at the chronicler, tears in his eyes. Where there had been sheer mania there was only deadness.
The chronicler wasn't sure which of the two was actually more terrifying at the moment.
"We long ago didst prohibit thee the use of the infernal arts, the blood magick, those thaumaturgies that useth the energies of the living to empower thee and thy weapons. They art corrupting, they breedeth foul things, they also corrupteth their users though it be a far more insidious form than a mere hex."
"And yet thy people didst promptly go to the construction and research into such horrors when We wert barely entombed! To find that thou hadst done such things didst send Us into horror..." Fou-lu sighed heavily.
"'Twere the knowledge of just what thou hadst done in thy hubris in an attempt to destroy Us...ah, thou didst wound us, but not in the way thou wouldst expect."
The courtier swallowed hard. Everyone in the Fou Empire knew of the Carronade--the war had gone to a standstill, but the final breakthrough had come during the fourth war, and it was felt it would give an edge to allow the Empire to finally enact the will of the First Emperor.
Or, at least, what the Empire said was the First Emperor's will. The more he listened to Fou-lu, the less sure of this he was.
"...if...if you don't mind me asking, your Imperial Majesty...why do you have those bells?" the courtier asked, hoping this wouldn't trigger another rage.
Fou-lu clenched his fist, gritted his teeth. Paused as if to recompose himself. Then the God-Emperor continued.
"These...didst belong to a young damsel benamed Mami. Thou wouldst not have taken notice of her normally; she didst live in an isolated farming-village that hadst somehow escaped man's follies of battle. After thy royal priest didst try to slay us a second time, she didst take Us in, and cared for Us. We had pretense of staying there, and..." Fou-lu's voice broke as he choked up. "We...we didst...love each other..."
The courtier remained silent for a time. This would explain why the God-Emperor would sometimes utter her name during the occasional fits he'd have, where he'd be talking to the bells as if Fou-lu were a child conversing with a comfort-toy.
The God-Emperor would call her name and apologise to her tearfully whilst hugging the bells to her chest.
The courtier waited until Fou-lu got himself under some composure (at least as much as he ever was these days) and, as soon as the dragon spoke, continued to write.
"Mami..wert the kindest, most incorruptible, gentlest person we hadst ever met, and she wert the only one who lusted not for power even knowing we wert an Endless. The last words she spoke to us...were that she hadst hoped for us to live together..." Fou-lu's voice trailed off.
"What...what happened to her?" the courtier asked, hoping he wasn't about to trigger an eruption.
Fou-lu just stared. Lost. Utterly broken.
"Thou didst capture her, torture her, and thou ultimately didst murder her in the Carronade in an attempt to slay Us. Thou didst slay her in cold blood because we didst have great affections for each other."
The First Emperor held out his hand with the bells, tears streaming down his face, his voice breaking. "This bell...this be all that remaineth of her in this world."
The chronicler, upon hearing this, dropped his pen and his book, mouth agape. For once, he didn't move even as Fou-lu dropped to his knees and descended into nearly animalistic screaming and wailing over how the very empire he had founded could do such a horrific thing to her, to someone so innocent..
Even as a God...he should not be able to survive being at the ground-zero of a hex...and they took his lover and used her in that infernal engine...knowing how they used people as sacrifices based on their connections to a target...
Sweet Endless forgive us, what have we done?
* * *
It would be several hours until Fou-lu had regained his composure enough to continue.
"When Soniel had tried to run us through, 'twas mere confirmation of what the priest had noted before he himself expired--that it was the usurper's idea--and We realised 'twas fruitless to try to discuss, particularly when he didst laugh like a jackass-bird and claim he didst kill a god."
"We hadst stated it to thy priest Yohm before, We shalt state again; Dragons are the Truth That Moves The World. We giveth thee life and verily taketh it away. To a dragon, a god, thou art but an insect; dost thou thinketh thou canst kill a god?"
"Soniel, at this rate, didst learn this wert but folly." Fou-lu actually gave a dismissive snort.
The courtier shuddered. He remembered being there--Soniel had himself demanded it, but he would have been there anyways--Duty is Duty. He had seen Fou-lu behead Soniel almost by will, the laughter then shock spread on the decapitated head during the short period of awareness as Soniel's brain lost oxygen--he'd realised his head had become disconnected from his body, which standing for a short bit by reflex as blood geysered out of it and painted the throneroom a terrible shade of red.
The recorder of imperial histories could never have imagined there was so much blood in a human body, and he never could have imagined he'd see a man not only survive being run through but push the sword back out by hand and hold the bleeding wound together as he staggered to the throne.
Fou-lu, by all rights, should not have been here to tell him this. And yet he was...and the chronicler began ever more to get the sense that Soniel and his ancestors had doomed them all.
* * *
"Of all of thee whom We hath met since our awakening, there hath been all of one person whom We hath trusted, and thou hath stolen her from Us and murdered her before Our eyes, with her lover's-name for Us on her lips as she died."
"There hath been but one who wert remotely apologetic for the horrors done in Mine own name that We wouldst never hath approved of, as well as the acts perpetrated against Ourself. And even Yohm, knowing full well what We wert and the hubris and folly of what he attempted, full well didst participate in the horrors himself and didst immolate himself rather than faceth the justice of the divine."
"Thou knowingly called a god across using arts forbidden to thee, geasing that god to stay here upon this plane until thine purpose be completed--which, hadst We known then what We knoweth now, We wouldst have commended thee to thine fate Ourselves!" Fou-lu thundered.
The courtier's handwriting became shakier on the page. "W-We were deluded ourselves, your Imperial Majesty! Please forgive us!"
"We became convinced by thy people's actions, young recorder, that thou Changing Ones are not merely misguided."
"Thou art hurtful, thou art cruel, thou maketh war and bitter sport upon your own and others, thou corrupteth the earth using the very love of people for the things they doth care about, thou art senseless, thou art unthinking! This goeth far, far beyond mere delusion!"
The courtier looked up in horror.
"No, thou mortals are not merely deluded. Thou art far worse."
"Thou mortals doth be monsters. Thou beith monsters, yea and verily, more fell than any hex-spawned creature, because thou committeth these horrors not just out of thine own base nature but by thine own choice even when thou knowest not to do so."
Fou-lu glared at the chronicler. "Knowest thou: we shalt be free of this hell. Our other half will come, and we shalt be free. We shalt break this leash of jade, and Our fate shalt be ours again...even if we must grind the bones of the Changing Ones to powder and thy works to dust in doing so."
"As for thee...it wouldst have been far better hadst thou never descended from the trees."
The courtier looked upon the First Emperor, and knew then the truth--that humanity had damned itself.
This time, it was not Fou-lu who wailed in tears or screamed in rage. The God-Emperor, for once, was stoic.
This time, it was the courtier--sobbing and begging for repentance, for forgiveness that would never come from a god that had become trapped and was desperate to escape by any means.
Appendix/full author's notes:
I am beginning to think it is a minor curse when I attempt to write on Fou-lu's history that I end up including an appendix of cultural references and such. I fear this is unavoidable; much of the "story behind the story" with BoF IV is in supplemental materials and I also tend to be an obsessive research geek inspired by the job done with Korean and Chinese imperial-period dramas. :D
Firstly: The depictions of Mami's, and particularly Soniel's, death are from the manga adaptation of BoF IV. (In the case of Soniel's death this was necessary; even in the Japanese version of BoF IV this is depicted solely in black-on-red silhouette and censored out completely from the international version. I actually suspect the manga adaptation was explicitly meant as a "Take That" to aforementioned bowdlerisation.)
As in the previous "A Little After The Dream", there is mention of the Muuru Empire (mentioned in the BoF IV official artbook, which has supplied supplementary info that has since been included in the manga).
As it is, I'm actually amused--and a bit creeped out--how much the Fou-lu x Mami storyline in the manga did tend to follow "A Little After The Dream". I swear I had not read this before I wrote it. :D
Secondly: The info on what royal court chroniclers do is truth in television. In fact, with Korean court chroniclers in particular, they had to record everything--good and bad--and a sitting emperor was not allowed to look at his own chronicles (but everyone else could, save for family members when he was still alive). This has proven an invaluable record to historians--but I can only imagine it must have been annoying as hell to actual emperors.
(There is some evidence to suggest that latter, in fact. There is reportedly a description of an imperial chronicle of a mid-Joseon Dynasty Korean emperor who, in annoyance, requested his court chronicler to strike a comment he had made from the imperial record. The court chronicler dutifully noted the emperor requested him to strike it--without striking the record. :D)