#v12. prince of a thousand enemies

[revvnant]

@slaughterlocked / homecoming

His capture was not inevitable; he will go to the headsman swearing as much. Had he been a bit faster, had he not been so concerned with his friends, had he watched where he was putting his feet, had it not rained the night before— a thousand tiny mistakes, some of them his, yes, but none of it inevitable. And the rest of the party had escaped, vanishing when the soldiers came. Foxy had hesitated, wanting to scale the rigging to retrieve him, but Chica had dragged him away. Thank goodness. They would be fine with her, with each other, until Michael could escape and get back to them.

And that is inevitable: his escape. He’s been chipping away at where his chains meet the stones since they brought him down here, wiggling the peg back and forth. It didn’t move at first, but with forced patience ( and lack of distractions, save for a brief spat with a rat that ended in the rat’s favour ), he’s gotten himself a good hawfinch on either side of room. That means it must be close to giving. He hopes. He’s had a few close calls, moving to cover it when the guards approach. He’s quickly learnt to drop what he’s doing whenever a shadow passes the bars of his cell. That’s what he does now, releasing the chains and spinning around, leaning his shoulder over the loosened peg. He expects a soldier with food, or perhaps one of the castle’s many, many masters of torture. He does not expect the king. His eyebrows shoot up; his face flushes. He turns his face away.

[revvnant]

straightforward fantasy headcanons.

michael is the ( former ) prince of the kingdom, the eldest of three siblings. he got evan killed in a bear-related accident on his eleventh birthday. he's quite close with elizabeth.

kind of a playboy prince! did what princes do and went into military service after training as a knight. very skilled at arms. was the king's bodyguard for a time. he got better as he got older but he used to shirk his duties to run around town, cause problems, etc. big ol head. thought he was the centre of the universe. he only started to wise up after his brother's death.

sadly this newfound devotion to duty also meant he realised that the kingdom was an actual nightmare. i leave headcanon space open for other people but my takes on fantasy william are that that shit was atrocious. if he could not successfully run a pizzeria i don't think he could successfully run a nation.

he was having a longterm affair with his manservant! said manservant helped him fake his death and escape because uh. he wasn't gonna be fixing all that. both like. in a literal 'i don't have the power to' way and in an 'oh fuck no' way.

an artificer / mechromancer! mechromancy is pretty rare, but the royal family has been cultivating it for generations. basically they can freely shape and also animate metal. they can either do this by puppetry ( directly channeling their magic into something and moving it around in synch with their bodies ), or by setting up spells ( drawing symbols into the metal than then allow it to move without their supervision ). the latter requires a power source. you may grab a bird or a hedgehog or an unsupervised peasant child. michael doesn't often use that sort of mechromancy.

has big fuck-off gauntlets that enhance his punches either with steam or electricity, though he may eventually add fire or poison to the mix. you do not want to get into a fist fight with him. he made these specifically to fight automatons.

prince michael like i studied the blade runaway michael like thou shalt study the first two knuckles of my right fist lol kersplat!

[revvnant]

verse introduction: his most serene absent highness, prince michael james afton, heir to the throne, the king's firstborn son, dead?

royalty / fantasy au because we love to see it.

what is was prince michael? a soldier ( as expected; when you're not actively sitting the throne, you'd best go off to war, and william is in 'perfect' health ); a brawler ( when he turned seventeen his royal parents came down on his head with this ultimatum: if he did not stop going to taverns and roughing up his subjects, they would pass over him for his sister and name her heir ); a hedonist ( they say he could drink his own weight, that he never said no to a proposition, that he was sleeping with his manservant ); a kinslayer ( it is, in fact, illegal and punishable by death to call him such publicly; but on the little prince's eleventh birthday, he was led into the woods by the heir apparent, and did not return alive ); an artificer ( all aftons are artificers -- mechromancers, they call it; the ability to imbue metal with magic and manipulate it, producing automatons for their armies ); dead?

before the prince's twenty-first birthday, the king and queen announced his untimely death. he was buried in a closed casket, a national affair, but lacking a bit of the pomp and a lot of the mourning expected of the royal family. his sister elizabeth waits in line for the throne.

who is michael? the village blacksmith, with an unheard-of talent for working metal. he'll mend your ploughs and hoes the same as any smith, but why let him go to waste? he crafted a chair that allows the apothecary to wheel herself around town ( he says he made one similar for his young sister ). he straightened a farmer's spine with interlocking metal plates. he's tall, and strong, and his services come cheap. for this reason, they have not banned him from the tavern. yet.

he wears a neckerchief, the colour so worn and the material so stained it's difficult to tell what it began life as, but some swear they've seen it close, and that it was purple silk. this earned the scoffs and immediate dismissal of all who heard. after all, purple silk is hard to come by, and the only people who wear the king's colours are royalists, and there are no royalists in the village. when asked, michael only laughed, from behind his pair of smoked-glass spectacles. ( no one has ever seen his eyes in good lighting -- purple silk, perhaps? )

he has no head for politics. when asked his opinion on the movements of local troops, or on the treatment of the animalkfolk who live in the kingdom ( the aarakocra, the ursids, the kitsune, the leporines, and all the rest ), he'll claim to have none. yet he has been known to frown when word of the army has reached him; the invasion of a neighbouring kingdom and the taking of their princess kept him up all night, and he was closed the next morning. when he reopened, he would not speak of it.

he keeps his gloves with him at all times. he says they're used for smithing, and perhaps he's telling the truth, but no one in the village has ever seen gloves like these before: great leather gauntlets inlaid with metal and strange tubing. occasionally, they give off steam. he says it's from working the bellows. even the villagers find this hard to believe.

he is not, under any circumstances, going home.

[revvnant]

@starywisteria / workshop

His talent to work metal is limited only by his ability to keep the fires going. Manning the bellows has kept him fit, that much is certain; more than swinging the hammer, he’d wager. Had he worked solely with the shaping, and kept an assistant for the fanning, he imagines that he’d be quite a sight now: all arms, no legs. Like Chica. Some smiths are built that way — those that keep their fans to hand, instead of installing them in the floor, as Michael has. Getting the coals hot is more difficult, but it’s better to struggle a bit in the morning and the be able to alternate between elbow and knee, than to rely entirely on his upper body and wear it down to nothing in half the time. It’s what he’s doing when she walks in; gripping the rope he’s tied overhead to keep his balance, and pushing away at the flap in the floorboards. Hot, shimmering air wafts up with every thrust. He notices her, but he doesn’t stop, instead calling out, “Take a seat there!” There’s only one stool in the shop, near the bench.