Work Text:
There's almost nothing more beautiful than Verdania's marshes in the springtime. The thin rays of light that beam from the sky into the shallow waters of the nearest lake, making a thousand miniscule fractals that reflect onto the walls of the caverns. It's hard to find a beauty more visceral than the summer crops in full bloom, children insisting on ‘helping’ parents by carrying a few berries in little baskets, then getting distracted and making flower crowns for each other instead.
The pendra fly overhead without care, and the leaf rollers laze about in the clovers, basking in the light. Cloverstags nestle down to sleep in the well-suited camouflage of their homelands, hunters approaching silently behind. Indeed, there's almost nothing more beautiful than the lands of Verdania in full bloom.
“Well, love, you're certainly deep in thought.”
Almost nothing. The Green Prince looks over at his other half, settling down next to him on the banks of their small place of respite with the grace of the palestag itself.
“...Just thinking. It’s been a long time since we first came into our place as rulers of our homeland, has it not?” The prince lays his head gently onto the shoulder of his lover, antennae brushing up against each other with small twitches of greeting.
“It has, hasn’t it. I’d like to think we did a good job, for the most part. What’s got you all sentimental, hm?” The Teal Prince places his face to his lover’s forehead with a small trill, chuckling at the way his counterpart melts into his side.
It takes a moment for the prince to respond, mind adrift in the bliss of his partner’s love. “I don’t know. I just… It feels too perfect here. Everything is so wonderful, shouldn’t something be going wrong?”
“I don’t think so. We worked hard for our kingdom, made it the most wonderful place in all of Pharloom. Now it’s just time to enjoy the fruits of our labor, is it not?” The other prince runs his claws gently over the head of his partner, watching with great satisfaction as his antennae twitch in pleasure at the sensation.
“Hm… You’re right, love, you’re right. Still, I… I don’t know. Something feels wrong.” To brush the uncomfortable feeling off of himself, the Green Prince drapes himself in his lover’s arms, relishing in his warm embrace and burying himself in his fluff.
But his partner has no fluff. And he has no warmth.
“Wrong?”
He’s practically frigid in fact, icy touch burning into the shell of the Green Prince as claws start to dig into flesh. Startled, he stiffens, looking upwards at his other half for an explanation.
Cold, empty eyes on a face of bronze and iron stare back at him impassively. The embrace that was once a refuge for the lone prince turns stifling and terrifying in the blink of an eye, metal claws piercing into the prince’s shell, drawing haemolymph as he struggles to escape the iron embrace of the thing that was once his lover.
“Of course it’s wrong.”
The Cogwork Dancer smiles down at him, so different from the soft and gentle smiles of his love. No, this smile has spite and disdain etched into every feature, mocking him with the face of love itself, before shoving the last Prince of Verdania into the ground. Clovers wilt underneath him as his body sinks into the mud, the green of the surrounding lands dripping away into the hungry mouths of Citadel worshippers.
“You failed, Love. You failed.”
Too many claws and paws and pincers are holding him down alongside the hardened facsimile of the Teal Prince, some Reed’s silk ensnaring his body as they do and binding his hands behind him, soon they’ll gag him and drag him away, the prince is sure of it. And someone is screaming- for a moment, the Green Prince thinks it might’ve been him, before he sees the splash of haemolymph in the distance.
A Citadel warrior cuts down a fleeing bug as the massacre rages on. And even through the chaotic sounds of the battlefield the world has turned to in the blink of an eye, the sickening thump of their body hitting the ground in two pieces is loud and clear.
Hands grab his arms, throwing the Prince face-first into the too-thick waters, drowning in the blood of his people as his arms are wrenched behind his back. Withered clovers crush under his weight as he falls, the grey leaves blocking the last traces of his vision. Someone’s hands are on the blades of his arms, waves of agony shooting through them as someone files them dull.
Someone is talking over his head, but the words are impossible to make out over the rushing in the Prince’s ears. One of the monsters that claim holiness strikes too hard with a file, the keratin of his blade cracking into pieces under the pressure.
The snapping from behind him is followed with a wave of agony, but none so much as glance in his direction as the Prince screams. An inefficient waste of time, to help a prisoner no higher-sought than an interesting trinket. And the Citadel is nothing if not efficient.
“Oh, Love. I thought you promised to protect our home in my absence?” His head is tilted up, just enough to barely see the face of his lover’s tomb as agony climbs up his arms. Disdain still covers his lover’s features, now mixed with a sickening pity and anger.
“I… I’m- I tried, I promise I tried, love, I’m so sorr-” The frantic pleas of Verdania’s last Prince are cut off by the Dancer slamming his face into the greenish mud yet again.
The Dancer drops his head back into the mud, tilting his head up with the tip of his foot instead. Spite and disgust coat his words as he speaks: “Sorries don’t bring innocent people back from the dead, Viri. They don’t bring our friends back, nor our people or lands. Certainly they don’t bring me back.”
The choirbugs wrench the prince up to his knees, but only so he can have a clear view of the hatred the Dancer wears like a badge of honor. Slowly, the metallic blade of his love’s corpse is placed against the neck of the Green Prince, almost drawing haemolymph with the pressure placed against it. The Last Prince of Verdania has the disastrous urge to lean into it, to shut his eyes and be rid of all of this.
“Goodbye, love,” the Cogwork dancer smiles wider than should be possible as his arm starts to move downwards. The first sign of give in his soft, flimsy flesh is the crack of his exoskeleton as thick, green liquid starts to pour from his throat. It’s painful, agonizingly so, but not as much as the look on the face of his love.
The last Prince of Verdania jolts awake to a splash of water falling on his face, the bars of his cage catching the filthy waste of Sinner’s Road to splash on his head. Muckroaches snarl in the distance, slamming against the iron walls of their own cages. Treated just the same, or perhaps better than the Green prisoner, he can’t muster much sympathy for the animals.
Pain laces out across his forearms as the reminders of his imprisonment make themselves known once more. His shoulders sting, the phantom pain of people wrenching his arms making long-healed tissue ache.
The phantom pains are nothing, though, not compared to the dull blade of grief cutting into already raw injuries.
Sitting up, the last surviving denizen of the lost kingdom of Verdania takes a deep breath, but chokes on the air he draws in, starting to sob.
He buries his face in his arms, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. “...goodbye, love… goodbye…”