#vitari venator aquila

[aimeelouart]

For you, Titus-loving anon

[aimeelouart]

More self-indulgent crossover. Yeah technically Gladio’s got a shirt on but we all know it doesn’t count.

[aimeelouart]

For you, Titus-loving anon: what I know would happen if Titus could just meet his adult son

[aimeelouart]

Help im thinking about Titus successfully saving his son again.

Good, keep thinking about it >:3c

[aimeelouart]

He has the upper hand and he knows it

[aimeelouart]

You've scored 2 for 2 on Dads Who Died Trying to Rescue Their Kids. Titus and David. I'm face down on the floor and WEEPING.

One happy ending. One…not so much

[aimeelouart]

Problem child, now in color

[aimeelouart]

Lora definitely believes in you, but Vitari? He’s a bit more of a pessimist.

[aimeelouart]

Today in fun crossover doodles:

Roche challenges the man with crazy-ass magic and a history of being a gladiator to a spar. Gets knocked on his ass in 0.2 second flat

Flirts even harder

@birdsfortheboobourgeoisie ‘s addition: Roche, knocked flat, a foot choking him: how wonderful you are that you've - ghk - swept me off my feet

Teenage Lora’s not about to step in and stop this prime entertainment either

[aimeelouart]

I'm pretty sure I've filled an oversized swimming pool with the amount of tears I've cried over Titus. Probably a couple of oversized swimming pools since you chose to bless my crying-over-Titus asks with art of him with his son t w i c e. (Titus is not the only absolute sucker for cuteness.)

Titus propaganda! Titus propaganda!

[aimeelouart]

I've accepted that I'm never not going to be crying about Titus.

Me too anon. Me too.

[aimeelouart]

I wanted to do a proper Vitari portrait after this shitpost

[aimeelouart]

@qwertialmalfunctions @creatingkingdoms you guys are so right, it’s my High Fantasy setting and I can do what I want with it

[aimeelouart]

So anyway, my accomplice wonderful writing buddy encouraged me to do unspeakable things to my protagonist and consider what she would be like if she and my antagonist had swapped places as children. And now my heart hurts.

Anyway, some freewriting under the cut of my swapped protag fighting with my swapped antagonist in front of the normal universe cast because, you know. Why not.

Vitari comes stumbling out of nothing, but it’s not the Vitari any of them have seen before. His hair is short-cropped and neat around his head, not wild and uneven. He’s dressed in full armor, beautifully-crafted armor, like the High King’s or Queen’s. He’s beat to hell, but on closer inspection, his scars are gone, replaced by a smattering of smaller, lighter scars that were clearly much better cared for. He gasps for breath like he just finished a marathon, pushing back to his feet with a wince. He doesn’t seem to notice them. His hands move quickly, and suddenly he’s veiled in concealing darkness.

A second person steps into being with far more fanfare. “Oh princeling!” she sings, striding out with the sinuous grace of a hunter. “Running away so soon? I wasn’t done with you!”

Lora⁠—unmistakably Lora⁠—grins like a mad thing. There’s a cloth tied securely across her eyes, but a familiar golden glow shines from behind it.  Her hair is long and unkempt, falling like a lion’s mane of red curls around her. A plain white band covers her breasts, and she’s dressed in a sailor’s simple canvas trousers tied with a blood-red sash, nearly identical to the Vitari they are used to.

And she’s covered in scars. She’s covered in even more scars than Vitari. She bears them like a badge of honor, or a poisonous animal’s bright warning colors.

“Come out come out wherever you are!” she lilts, raising a hand. A ring of bight green fire bursts forth with her at the center. It traps Vitari as well, who hisses and is forced to drop his veiling darkness. She turns her face to him with a grin. “There you are! Don’t tell me you gave up so soon, princeling.”

“Of course not,” he says evenly, gauntlets lighting up as he summons (or re-summons) a sword and shield. “Just putting us on equal footing.”

She scoffs. “As if you and I could ever be equals.” She runs a tongue across her teeth. She, too, has a pair of familiar-looking gauntlets strapped to her bare arms. From them she pulls forth a long whip. “Ready to die, princeling?”

Vitari’s lips press into a line. “You don’t have to do this, Lora, we just want⁠—”

“SHUT UP!” In a move so quick it’s a blur, the whip dissolves and a crossbow takes its place, firing a bolt that Vitari catches on his shield with a grunt. “Don’t invoke the dead unless you’re willing to pay the price!” 

He gives her a hard look. “You are not dead, Lora.”

The crossbow becomes a long spear which she points at him, lips curled into a snarl. “Ameliora was a weak, ignorant little child who died a long time ago, stupid prince. I killed her myself!”

His expression becomes one of raw pain. “Please,” he begs, “don’t do this. Don’t make me fight you. We just want you to come home, please. They never would have stopped trying to find you if they’d known—”

She throws her head back and howls with laughter before he can finish. “I am Nemesis, Unbroken, Fire of the World’s End! Naïve little princeling, if I have a home, then it is the Void to which I will send you.” She grins at him again, wide enough that it borders on a snarl. “The Royal House of Perdel will end by my own hand, Vitari Octavius, and it starts with you.”

Vitari’s jaw clenches. “Then it would have to end with you, wouldn’t it.” he snaps back.

But her grin only widens. “The world crumbles like ash around us and you think I intend to outlive it?” She prowls a few steps closer, wreathed in flickering green flames. “Silly prince. I go to the Void, and I take your Empire with me.”

Anguish crosses his face. “Then you give me no choice,” he whispers. He dismisses the sword and shield, instead reaching into a pouch on his belt and pulling out a short braid woven from several different lengths of hair, half dripped in long-since dried blood. He holds it in cupped hands, takes a deep breath, and begins to sing a spell. His eyes are not blue like the other Vitari’s. They are gold⁠—like Celsus, like Caius, and like Lora. Like the child of a blood adoption into House Perdel.

She looks genuinely surprised by the braid, eyebrows rising beneath the blindfold, and then she laughs like a delighted child. “You would throw away your precious Virtue and call on darkness? Oh princeling, I’m so flattered by your stupidity! As if that could ever work on⁠—” 

He sings a word of command⁠—a resonant remain near me⁠—and she gasps, staggering and clutching at her chest. “NO!” she cries, disbelieving. Vitari looks relieved as he continues the spell, as if he hadn’t entirely expected it to affect her.

She screams, high and shrill with rage, and charges him like a raging bull. A long curved scimitar materializes in her hand as she leaps and swings to take his head from his shoulder. “AMELIORA IS DEAD! YOU CANNOT COMMAND ME!”

But the scimitar doesn’t connect with Vitari’s neck, as she intended. Instead, a bright golden barrier appears when the blade is within a foot of him, flaring like the noonday sun. She’s thrown back violently, tumbling across the ground nearly to the edge of her own firey ring.

Vitari cannot stop singing the spell, lest it be broken. But his eyes speak clearly, to her and to the audience they ignore—no, Lora. You are not dead.

She charges three more times in rapid succession, each ending the same way, until her skin is raw and bloodied. “I’LL KILL YOU!” she howls. “I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL⁠—” then she stops abruptly, chest heaving, and an unhinged grin crosses her face. “You want to save me so bad,” she giggles, wiping blood from the corner of her lips with a trembling hand. “So badly you would throw aside all your silly Virtues! Alright, princeling.” She extends a hand, summoning forth a long, sharp dagger. “Let’s see you save me from this!”

 Vitari blanche, face paling as he reads the intent in her wild eyes, but he cannot stop singing even as he watches her plunge the blade directly toward her heart.

[aimeelouart]

Oh heck, go for it Vitari

He went for it

[aimeelouart]

Two years before the start of the story, Vitari, age 15, endures one more day as a slave—endures, knowing that by tomorrow his Master will be dead beneath his feet.

In one day, he will go from slave to one of the most powerful men in the Empire, as he takes the Master’s entire network for his own.