#vanyel/tylendel

[bluewingedcoyote]

Somewhat belated April Fool's crack-fic! (Last Herald-mage series)

[Summary: For weeks Vanyel Ashkevron has been making snide, back-biting comments about Tylendel Frelennye. One evening Tylendel finally decides to do something about it.]

(Or... what if the staged fight wasn’t nearly as convincing as they thought.)

------------Muck-Raking----------

“Fight! Fight! Fight!!” Chanted a group of boys clustered by the doors that opened into the commons where several days of rain had flooded the paths and turned the little dirt ‘short-cut’ everyone took into a mire of mud.

“Your name is going to be mud when I’m through with you!” Tylendel Frelennye, Herald-trainee shouted just before he punched Vanyel Ashkevron, heir to Forst Reach, square in the mouth.

The dark-haired boy staggered back, wiping the blood from his lip with the back of his hand, his surprisingly deep voice a growl that carried easily to the watching crowd. “Big words from an even bigger pervert! I’ll bet you are quite the connoisseur of filth!”

“You’ll pay for that you puffed up little toad!!” Tylendel roared and lunged at the smaller boy who adroitly dodged his outstretched hand while mocking him for his slowness.

Read on Ao3

[isnt-it-pretty]

I need to talk to somebody about Last Herald-Mage fic ideas/concepts/canon divergence AUs I am GNAWING on them. Please send help. They've been rotating in my head live a microwave.

[forrestghostss]

Been too busy recently. Vanyel posting will resume when I feel more inspired, I hit a wall on my big piece and got fed up.

[wafflelovingbatgirl]

Are you a fantasy fan? Do you love tragedies? Do you want a new poor little meow meow who can do magic? Do you want to read a gay book from the late 1980/early 1990s? Would you like to enjoy the first high fantasy with a gay lead?

Read The Last Herald-Mage by Mercedes Lackey, staring Vanyel Ashkevron and his soul bonded magic horse Yfandis. Vanyel is a young man who journeys to Haven to study music, and meets Tylendel Frelennye, quickly becoming his lover. Their happiness is cut short when Tylendel makes a very dangerous choice that reshapes the destiny of Vanyel and the country of Valdemar.

As a fun bonus, the author wrote in world ballads that can be found on YouTube!

[artbyvampiraptor]

Vanyel and Tylendel from Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey ;u;

[meat-loving-meat]

Medren and Stefen using a little bit of insufferable gen z slang when they talk to each other hurts somehow

[softlysilverfountainsfall]

Savil's death was the most devastating one in the entire Herald Mage Trilogy and I will die on this hill.

"I [Vanyel] can take care of it tomorrow. It's not that urgent...It can wait until morning. He watched the fire through half-closed eyes, listening to Stef breathe, and waited for sleep to take him. Then the peace of the evening shattered.

:VANYEL!:

He was out of bed and grabbing his clothes before Stef woke.

:VAN—:

Savil's cry was cut off, abruptly, and Vanyel doubled up and fell to the floor—Pain—knives of fire [...] Then, nothing—" (Ch 15, Magic's Price)

You can hear her screaming through the all-caps mindspeech. You can hear her desperately calling out to Vanyel, her beloved nephew and protégée for help, the strongest herald-mage in Valdemar and now the last.

You know exactly when she dies because her cry for help is brutally cut off in the middle of Vanyel's name.

"Savil's door was locked; Vanyel kicked it open. His aunt lay in the center of a circle of destruction; furniture overturned, lamps knocked over, papers scattered. Blood everywhere. [...] Claw and teeth marks on Savil's throat and torso showed that she'd put up a fight. A trail of greenish ichor and a broken-bladed knife told that her enemy had not escaped unscathed.

"Not that it mattered to him. The damage was already done, and this time Vanyel's hard-won detachment failed entirely. While the others checked the locks, and looked for clues or any sign of what had attacked her, he sank down to his knees beside the body, and took one limp hand in his—and wept.

Oh, gods—Savil, you were right, and I didn't listen to you. Now you're gone, and it's all my fault. . . ."

"'She was afraid she was going to be next; she asked me to help her, and I just thought she was being hysterical. I promised to strengthen her wards, and I didn't; I forgot. This is all my fault—'"

You are devastated by Vanyel's heartbreak as he curses himself for not listening to her, for putting it off when she said someone was targeting the herald mages and asked him to help her.

"She's never going to sit there in her chair and expound at me again. I can't ever ask her for advice. She'll never take on Father for me—she was my mother in everything but flesh, and I failed her, I failed her, when I'd promised to help her. He hung his head, and closed his eyes, choking down the sob that rose and cut off his breathing" (emphasis mine).

Savil was a rock for Vanyel and thus for the reader throughout the trilogy (and her death is near the end of the last book & the catalyst for the end). She was very human and fallible but steady, devoted, and talented mentor and mage.

But what about Tylendel?, you say. Yes, Tylendel's death was awful, but it doesn't get nearly the lengthy treatment that Savil's does, and...there was a lot of other stuff going on. But what about Vanyel?, you say. Well, there is a reason that I put off reading the last part of Magic's Price, and it's because Vanyel's death is horribly devastating, but also victorious, and he gets his happy afterlife.

"Savil, Savil, I'm so sorry—and sorry isn't enough. Sorry won't bring you back. Tears escaped from under his closed eyelids, and etched their way down his cheeks. He couldn't swallow; he could hardly breathe." (Ch 15, Magic's Price)

She called for him. The last thing Savil ever did was call Vanyel for help. He was down the hall from her and much, much too far away.

[checkoutmybookshelf]

The Trilogy I Read When I Need Sad and Fury

*CONTENT WARNINGS FOR THIS POST:* Mentions of sexuality, sexual assault, depression, and suicide. Take care of you, and skip over this post if any of these topics aren't a good choice to engage with!

So this is not my original copy of these three books. My originals are in the book tubs in my Dad's basement in Alaska. So this copy is on my bookshelf because I was overwhelmed and sad in the first year we moved, and quite frankly, Mercedes Lackey's the Last Herald Mage Trilogy is what I reach for when I need a good solid cry. This heckin' chonky omnibus edition holds three complete novels: Magic's Pawn, Magic's Promise, and Magic's Price. Let's talk Herald Mage Vanyel Ashkevron.

Mercedes Lackey, similar to but less egregiously than Jim Butcher, is an author I sometimes need to raise my eyebrows at. But we'll start with the good things (and there are many of those) about these books.

Magic's Pawn begins with simultaneously spoiled and neglected rich boy Vanyel, who fits into his family home about as well as a square peg in a round hole. He desperately wants to be a Bard, but lacks the qualifications to be accepted into the Bardic Collegium. Once his father is completely fed up with Vanyel, he is shipped off to his Aunt Savil at the Collegium, where he can take classes and figure out his life.

Figuring out his life for Vanyel entails falling head over heels for his Aunt's Herald Mage trainee, Tylendel, and finally putting a name--shay'a'chern--to his own sexuality. Vanyel is happy with Tylendel for a hot five minutes before Tylendel chooses violence and massacres the family that murdered his twin brother, and then commits suicide in the aftermath. The aftermath also involves Vanyel catching a brainful of magical backlash that basically triggers every potential magical gift Vanyel could have gotten. He also ends up seriously ill and depressed because all of this went down in a storm, he lost his lifebonded, and could hear people's thoughts and interpreted them as blaming him for Tylendel's death. Vanyel then also attempts to commit suicide, but is unsuccessful.

Literally the only good thing about this three-day period in Vanyel's life is that he bonds with Yfandes, a companion, and she can mitigate some of his new powers and reassure him that he is loved.

To save her nephew's life, Savil takes Vanyel to the Hawkbrothers. This works, and Vanyel is trained in both Hawkbrother techniques and as a Herald Mage.

Magic's Promise opens with a fully trained, adult, and notorious Herald Mage Vanyel returning from a campaign along the Karsite border. He is UNDERSTANDABLY burnt out, and heads up to his family home for what turns out to be the worst trip home ever. Half the castle is accusing him of banging everything on the estate down to the sheep, and the other half is trying to seduce him.

To make things worse, Vanyel has to take a child with an out-of-control gift that on first blush appears to have murdered an entire neighboring castle (it didn't, the poor kid was set up). The kid is also a dead ringer (pun not intended but I'm leaving it) for Tylendel, which wasn't helping Vanyel on any level.

To make things even more complicated, Vanyel has set himself out to stud; he is secretly the father of Shavri's daughter. This is complicated because Shavri is the king's lifebonded, Vanyel is getting confusing feelings about her, and the king is dying of a vaguely defined wasting disease.

This book was mostly eyebrow raising, if I'm being honest.

The final book, Magic's Price, gets even more eyebrow-raising because if the previous book was setting up a ton of heartache and really super sketchy prejudices, this one kicks it up to 11 and aims it all at Vanyel. From watching his king die slowly and painfully (eyebrow raise over the "chronically and terminally ill person is an object of abject pity) to getting stabbed in his family home to getting beated and raped (massive eyebrow raise, we don't need to keep doing the rape trauma plotline) to dying holding an army back alone.

It might possibly sound like I don't like this trilogy; that's not accurate. This is my go-to "I need a good cry" and "I need a good rage session" trilogy, and the storytelling and sheer heart in the trilogy are never not compelling and well plotted. It just has a lot of eyebrow raising, and it's a very heavy trilogy that tends to lean perhaps overly much on sexual assualt trauma in books two and three.

I'm starting to get the sense that my relationship with a lot of my books is most accurately summed up as "It's Complicated" and y'know what? We're leaning into that, because my Mercedes Lackey shelf is overflowing and there is a reason for that.

[inexplicifics]

i love reading all these little WIP snippets! there are so many interesting ones, and i'm really excited to get to read several of them.

i'm also very curious to know who Vanyel is, and how they end up in Kaer Morhen

Vanyel is a character from Mercedes Lackey's Magic's Price series, one of the early Valdemar installments. The series is notable for how incredibly thoroughly it whumps the poor man. He spends large portions of it Very Unhappy and most of the nice things he gets are taken away from him in the most dramatic fashion possible.

...So of course I've sent him to Kaer Morhen so he and his soulmate (the first iteration thereof, it's a long story) can be happy without all the Drama. Or at least with less of the Drama.

As to how he got to Kaer Morhen...

And a gash opens in the air in the center of the circle. It’s a horrible, pulsing, nightmarish thing, black as pitch and radiating malice, and it seems to have a gravity all its own. The Herald-Mages all stumble forward, towards it, though they are clearly trying desperately to stay back. One step, two, and then Herald-Mage Jaysen steps on a hummock and turns his ankle and tumbles forward and the gash in the air devours him. His Companion leaps after him, of course. And their fall seems to give the gash in the air greater strength, as the other Herald-Mages and their Companions scream in rage and pain and are pulled inexorably closer to its heart. Unbonded Companions dart forward to grab the Herald-Mages by their collars and pull them away, and are hauled forward themselves instead, their hooves leaving long divots in the ground. “Lendel!” Vanyel howls and sprints forward. He can’t lose Tylendel. He can’t.

[sparklecryptid]

One of you needs to stop me before I drag my pure self indulgent Vanyel/Tylendel/OC fic idea out of the waters

[oscargender]

Feeling intensely emo about Vanyel Ashkevron again

Like. He is an INCREDIBLE character because he cannot exist without the context of the politics and worldbuilding of Valdemar. There is no such thing as a Modern AU!Vanyel--he just isn't the same character without the grief of losing Tylendel, without the isolation of being the final mage of Valdemar, without the sense of dread that his Foresight dream gives every minute of his life. And, most importantly, he cannot be Vanyel Ashkevron without Yfandes and his duty as a Herald.

There is an unimaginable sadness at the core of his person--every part of his life, from the death of his first lover to his death to protect Valdemar, is a tragedy. He experiences flashes of happiness, but nothing can come close to the intensity of his goddamned sense of duty. Not even a future with Stefen can tempt him away from running headfirst into a glorious, heroic suicide. He is THE candle being burned at both ends

All this being said, it's important to remember that he's ALSO hopelessly dramatic and self-obsessed

[bluewingedcoyote]

Chapter 7: Truth and Consequence

Lissa had been with them a week now and the girl was an absolute godsend. Practical and unflappable, she had refused to let her brother wallow in self pity after Withen’s disastrous visit, brushing it off as ‘good riddance’ and assuring Vanyel of her unwavering support. Savil wasn’t sure what she would have done without the girl’s steadying presence. It wasn’t just that Vanyel had the support of someone else in his family, the one person who had always supported him, she was also better at dealing with his worst moods. Lendel was quickest to predict when his bond-mate was going into a downturn, but it was his sister who was able to deftly handle what was apparently a common refrain to her ears.

Lissa had the ability to pick through his surface complaints to cut through to what was actually bothering him underneath it. And she was unafraid to call Van out when he was being particularity bratty, whereas Lendel felt far to guilty to ever complain about anything Vanyel did or said. It probably helped a great deal that she had concrete examples of the good in his life to point out to him as balm to his father’s rejection. He had received a nigh-hysterical letter from Teresa trying to warn him that his father was coming for him and assuring him that her love for her firstborn son was undying.

Savil had also received a letter from her sister-in-law, while not noticeably any less hysterical, it had however contained some vital pieces of information. First of which was the enclosed letter of ‘anonymous concern’ that had sent Withen off in such a frothing fury it had terrified even those who were used to his temper. Second was that Withen had been convinced by the household priest to send Vanyel away to a remote monastery of his order to ‘purify’ him of the perverted taint that had led him astray and into a life of sin. Teresa had begged her to use whatever power was at her command, to use her position, her magic, anything to keep Withen from Vanyel. Begged her to take him far away and hide him if necessary, that she feared for her son’s life should Withen get his hands on him.

Teresa had also confessed to how much casual abuse Vanyel had suffered while at Forst Reach; the daily sword practices that were little more than public beatings, how any prank committed on him by his cousins or brothers, no matter how cruel or dangerous, was always brushed off as ‘boys being boys’. How all her protests were put down as feminine hysteria and motherly softness, how any attempt to complain to her husband that he was too hard on Vanyel had only led to harsher treatment of the boy.

It had sickened her to realize just how bad it had been for her nephew there, and for her niece as well. Lissa had gotten the opposite side of that clipped coin, constantly dismissed and diminished, too unkempt and uncouth, never feminine enough, never going to get a good husband the way she was. Barred from the sword-lessons that her brother had so hated, she had taught herself in secret, with help from rapier manuals bought without her father’s knowledge and with Vanyel as her secret sparring partner. The two of them had banded together as the black sheep of the family and been each other’s only support until Lissa had the chance to go foster with Lord Trevor.

---Read it on Ao3!---

Link to Chap Seven- Truth and Consequence

Link to Chap One- Darkest Night

[isnt-it-pretty]

What's really interesting to me from a story perspective is that Vanyel's reaction to Savil's death was with the same vengence as Tylendel did to his twin's, straight down to the obsessiveness and borderline madness Stefan observed in Vaynel that young Vanyel once observed in Tylendel, and the desire both of them had to go along with whatever they thought their partner to see them returned to their old selves. If I compared, I bet I could find similar descriptions/passages of Tylendel post Staven's dead and Vanyel post Savil's, and the reactions between young Van and Stefan.

The only initial difference is that Vanyel has the backing of the Companions. His need for vengence just happened to line up with what Valdemar needed, but before the time spent with the Kyree, Vanyel was motivated by the same vengence as Tylendel was, not the greater good of Valdemar.

Even though Vanyel's actions were eventually for the good of Valdemar and required to save it vs Tylendel who just wanted to hurt the Leshara, Vanyel still pays for it with his life and leaves Stefan behind.

History is cyclical, the past parallel's the future, etc. etc.

Anyway this series has ruined me.

[forrestghostss]

[elvishdemigod]

Seeing a black haired x blonde hair m/m fanart of something is "Is this Jake and Aiden? Almost any ship involving Nico di Angelo (including Percico now)? Jason and Percy? Lysander and Eroan? Vanyel and Tylendel? Johann and Florian? Some anime ship?

THERE'S SO MUCH, GODS DAMMIT, AND PROBABLY MORE I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YET

[leveragehunters]

Tag game

I was tagged by the most excellent @brendaonao3!

last song: St Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion) by John Parr from the St Elmo's Fire soundtrack (clicky link), because the delivery driver was blasting it when he dropped off a parcel and I was instantly catapulted back to 1985 and hovering in front of the radio ready to whack record the moment they played it, because it was my absolute number one favourite song (i still love it).

currently reading: Rereading the Liaden novels by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, because I just realised there's two new ones I missed. I'm just about to start Mouse & Dragon.

last movie: Polite Society! Highly recommend!

currently watching: Bob's Burgers is on in the background.

currently craving: pierogi! But it's a craving I can satisfy since a dear friend found somewhere nearish to me that makes them AND delivers, so for Xmas I received a freezer full of delicious dumplings.

currently consuming: fruit cup cordial - gotta stay hydrated!

first ship: geez, I have no idea. It was maybe Vanyel/Tylendel? Since I'm not under affirmation, I'm gonna go with them.

favourite colour: deep green

currently working on: oh boy, well, fic wise I've got 10 Steve/Bucky WIPs, but the main two I'm focussing on are the sequel to On a Pale Horse and an 80s movie AU. Fibre wise, I just wound the warp for a cowl and I'm about to wind a second warp for a second cowl and then the warp for a mobile phone pouch I want to make, plus I have a foxes inkle band on the inkle loom that's almost finished. And I only have ten more days of leave!

Not tagging anyone directly, but if you want to play, I secretly embedded tagging in this post that can only be sensed by you!