#also please imagine this as what lead up to shigeo's appearance

[feroluce]

Shouritshou Week - Fairy Tale

Warnings: None!

This one is also on twitter and Ao3, so I wanted to hurry and crosspost it to @shouritshou on here, too, before the week was over! It was a style experiment for me, I wanted to write something kinda like the reader was listening to an actual fairy tale. So I imagined they’re also aged up to young adults, like a lot of warrior-hero fairy tale protagonists.

Once upon a time, there was a kingdom.

The king of this kingdom was not cruel, but he was not kind, either. And the people often suffered under his apathy.

But they had one ray of hope. For before the queen had quietly slipped away, she left them an heir. A little child who shone bright and hot where their king only gave them coldness. Someday, when the king passed, he would inherit the throne, and the people all eagerly awaited it.

But then there came a day where the king declared war on a neighboring nation. And then another, and then another. He conquered lands left and right and his territory expanded, but under him, the lands languished. He couldn't help them prosper and grow.

The prince was set to inherit a war-torn wasteland.

So he gathered up a tiny army of his own. A swordsman, an apothecary, and an alchemist all joined him. But there was one last person who caught his eye, moreso than anyone else. A knight from a nearby conquered land, with eyes like firelight and hair like crows feathers. He had fought against the invasion, even when greatly outmatched, even when his weapon was taken away from him, even when he was captured kicking and screaming. The prince had fallen in love with his resourcefulness and determination at first sight.

As the day of his rebellion drew near, the prince went down into the dungeons, keys hidden in his sleeve. However, he found that the knight had already gotten loose all on his own and was even leading other prisoners to freedom. The prince showed them the path through the underground tunnels and sewers to the outside, where all but the knight left to return to their own homes and families. The prince told him his tale and asked that he might join him in his coup and much to his surprise, the knight agreed almost immediately. His own elder brother was an extremely powerful sorcerer who could so easily overtake the world the same way that the prince's father was doing. His plight moved him and stirred the knight's heart.

Right then and there, he knelt and pledged his life to the prince and his cause, and the prince knighted him as one of his own. He would be his sword and shield.

And so the two of them ran away into the night, somewhere that the king would never find them, and they spent their days together poring over plans. Everything that the prince had plotted, the knight improved upon. Everything that the knight became stuck on, the prince charged through and worked around.

And every night, the alchemist and the apothecary and the swordsman had to watch them sit closer and closer together around the candlelight.

♢♢♢

When the promised day suddenly announced itself and forced them into action, the knight and the prince fought almost like a single person. They tore their way back-to-back through the king's army and through the first four of his Five Generals- An ogre, a dryad, a beastmaster, and even a demon who warped through thin air.

("Go," the knight insisted. "I'm glad to have you around," the prince replied.)

♢♢♢

The prince never even made it past the fifth general, a dragon capable of human speech who was never far from the king.

It was only by the elder brother's hand that he was saved from his father's cruelty. The sorcerer had come to reclaim his younger sibling and stumbled right into a full-blown battle. He would make his wrath known.

♢♢♢

The knight and the prince stood together as they watched the tallest tower be lifted almost effortlessly into the air, and the world came raining down around them.

The prince took the knight's hand and laced their fingers together. The knight did not pull away.

♢♢♢

In the end, the king was defeated by the sorcerer, and the prince was left to gaze at the crumbling wreckage that had been his castle. The knight was the one to approach him and take his arm. He hadn't left yet.

When the prince asked why, he said that he was his knight. He had made an oath to stay as long as the prince needed him. So...if the prince needed him for forever...then he would stay forever.

And hearing that, the prince immediately dropped to one knee and knelt to pledge his life in return, and asked that he really might stay with him forever, then. The knight agreed, even quicker and more sure than before.

And the two of them lived together happily ever after.