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sorceresssundries · 15 days ago

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Between the bones

A belated birthday gift for the wonderful @sorceresssundries. She wanted Emmrich and Lucanis on a date and I was VERY happy to oblige.

Pairing: Lucanis Dellamorte x Emmrich Volkarin

Word count: 4.6K

Summary: It was before dawn when Emmrich had found him staring into the kitchen’s cold hearth, the skin under his eyes the same violet hue as his shirt. It’s the same place he’d found him every morning since the mantle of First Talon and had been all but thrown onto his head by Caterina. A deserving honour, but one Emmrich could almost feel the iron weight of as it hung over Lucanis’s shoulders. Having a demon pulling you one way and the security of an entire nation the other were hardly the most relaxing thoughts. Emmrich was glad for the opportunity to offer distraction, though the exact nature of such a walk was still undetermined. He’d tried to think of the right word before asking the other man for company. Excursion? Jaunt? Outing? It was not a date if the word had not explicitly been said nor did it seem appropriate to ask at that particular moment.

Emmrich knelt in front of the closest flowerbed and carefully removed the rings from his gloves. “I am glad you could join me. I was hoping a walk here without hauntings might make this place seem less peculiar. The early morning is the perfect time to enjoy the garden.”

“Can you really tell it’s morning this far underground?” Lucanis asked, watching Emmrich pull a selection of violas from the soil.

“Perfectly. When one spends enough time here, you can feel it in the movement of the air.”

AO3 link

To Emmrich Volkarin, the Memorial Gardens of the Grand Necropolis were a haven. Many adored it for the flowers that bloomed under shadow and veilfire, others for the ancient heraldry that adorned the shrines of their most esteemed dead. For him, it was the stillness of it all. Gods and monsters stormed above, but here, amongst silence and stone, it could all be forgotten. He had a duty to the world now, but a duty as a Watcher too. Tend to the marble, the plants, the bones– the perfect time to tend his own mind too. There was a method to it all. A mundanity he dearly missed with each passing horror he witnessed.

Usually he would perform such work alone. This morning, he had company.

Lucanis followed a step behind, his eyes trained to the great chasm of the ceiling. “I swear this place was higher up before.”

Emmrich gestured to the vast pillars flanking the walkways. “The halls do have a habit of moving about now and then. Although, the Gardens seem to be especially excitable these days.”

“Right. Of course they have.”

It was before dawn when Emmrich had found him staring into the kitchen’s cold hearth, the skin under his eyes the same violet hue as his shirt. It’s the same place he’d found him every morning since the mantle of First Talon and had been all but thrown onto his head by Caterina. A deserving honour, but one Emmrich could almost feel the iron weight of as it hung over Lucanis’s shoulders. Having a demon pulling you one way and the security of an entire nation the other were hardly the most relaxing thoughts. Emmrich was glad for the opportunity to offer distraction, though the exact nature of such a walk was still undetermined. He’d tried to think of the right word before asking the other man for company. Excursion? Jaunt? Outing? It was not a date if the word had not explicitly been said nor did it seem appropriate to ask at that particular moment.

“Can you really tell it’s morning this far underground?” Lucanis asked, watching Emmrich pull a selection of violas from the soil.

“Perfectly. When one spends enough time here, you can feel it in the movement of the air.” He infinitely preferred this gloom to the endless twilight that shone outside his bedroom window. Time meant nothing in the Lighthouse but it was everything in the Necropolis. Years, ages, movements— all were recorded and celebrated under the precise care of the Watchers. It was so much more than a city-sized crypt. Tendrils of memory and magic sprouted from its walls like the branches of an immeasurably large forest and ran across the entirety of Thedas. Those that dwelt here were cut off from the sun but certainly not the world.

Manfred suddenly clattered past them, Spite’s cold presence in hot pursuit.

“Curiosity. Can. Leave,” grumbled the demon, his voice a bitter air in the fade. He was invisible to Emmrich’s eyes, but his intrigue was clear.

Emmrich chuckled and plucked a selection of blooms from a twisting Felandaris bush. “Manfred has his own task. He is helping me with my graveside preparations.”

“I want. To see.”

Spite’s voice quietened as Manfred ran back with a bouquet of crimson roses clamped in his hands. Emmrich took them from him with a smile, glad to see his coordination was coming along.

“Excellent work. Now the Royal Elfroot for when we return.” He watched fondly as the skeleton charged off in the wrong direction before hastily correcting himself and wading into a patch of weeds near the back of the garden. Emmrich felt the faintest movement in the air, perhaps the demon trying to follow him.

“It seems Spite likes it here,” he continued.

Lucanis looked to where Emmrich presumed Spite was standing. “There’s something about this place that excites him. I think he likes the idea of screaming at passing spirits.”

Emmrich nodded. He had heard him snapping when they’d first entered the garden and all the wisps had clumped together as far from Lucanis as possible.

“They’re too. BRIGHT.”

Emmrich jerked away at the demon’s sudden shout, dropping the flowers behind him. “Spite.Volume. I can hear you perfectly well without you having to scream.” When he looked back Lucanis had the flowers in one hand and the other stretched towards him.

“Sometimes I think I need to apologise for the fact that you can hear him,” he said, pulling Emmrich to his feet in one fluid movement. His touch was firm through the leather of Emmrich’s gloves, five little pinpoints of warmth.

Emmrich shook his head. “Oh it’s no trouble. Listening to his perceptions of the mortal world is actually rather fascinating sometimes. He does seem to have a better grasp on what is and isn’t edible.”

“No matter what I say he still wants to take a bite of that soap you brought back from Rivain.”

“Smells like. Citrus. And amber.” Spite punctuated his words with a loud inhale. Emmrich tried not to wonder if the demon was currently smelling his head. Before he could answer he felt another breath kiss past his cheek and towards the other man.

“He knows. That you like it.”

Lucanis released the hand he was still holding as if it had burned him. Emmrich swallowed his laugh, deciding it was infinitely more merciful not to comment that he’d already noticed the way Lucanis would linger for just a fraction of a moment too long when they passed each other.

Emmrich silently made a note to purchase more when he had a free afternoon.

“I must say, the two of you seem much more in sync as of late,” he said, turning on his heels.

“We have an agreement.”

“A. Contract,” interjected Spite.

Lucanis tsked. “No. Contracts are for clients. We work together and then we have coffee. I drink it. He smells it.”

Emmrich heard the demon grumble a little further down the path and the wisps at the gate suddenly scattered.

“It’s wonderful you managed to find an equilibrium after coming together under such unjust circumstances,” he said, watching them float like dandelions between the graves.

Lucanis slowly twisted the flowers in his grasp. “We’re working on it. I actually took your advice. He’s calmer when I read to him.”

“Oh really? Well, what does he prefer? Classic tragedies? Historical accounts? Romance?”

“Right now? Orlesian cookbooks. I think he likes to hear about the flavours.”

Emmrich rummaged in the inside pocket of his robe and sighed when he found it empty. “I wish Manfred would stop taking all my pens as this truly is fascinating.” He had been itching to draft a paper on the subject ever since he’d heard the demon’s voice soften from thunder to whispers through the pantry door. Emmrich briefly wondered if he would still have the time or want to explore such topics when he took his seat amongst the Lich Lords.

“You will just have to let me know if Spite chooses a favourite,” he continued, tucking the thought away for now.

He led them to the front of the gardens. Braziers of veilfire flickered by the path, washing the stone of the Necroplis’s most famous tombs in waves of silver and green. None were who he’d come to see today. He stopped in front of a pair of twin headstones, ones he’d crafted himself a lifetime ago. He flexed his fingers and the moss creeping along the snowy marble vanished.

Lucanis stopped beside him. “In memory of Rupert and Elannora Volkarin. They walk eternity hand in hand.”

“When I became a Watcher, I erected a proper shrine to my parents. When I come to talk, I like to think they listen.” Emmrich took the flowers and carefully laid them between the headstones. A few other arrangements were starting to brown beside them, most likely left by kind onlookers. A selfish king of pride warmed him whenever he saw such offerings here. Volkarin was as common as grass in Neverra, but they alone carried that name amongst the nobles and kings here.

“Do you remember them?” Lucanis softly asked.

Emmrich sighed. “Some memories are clear. Others less so, more akin to waking from an early morning dream.” It was their voices that always eluded him. Sometimes he could almost feel the hearth from their home or smell the blood and ember from his father’s butcher’s shop… but their words were always just too quiet to hear. Something precious. Something lost. Something he would have to get used to as the years continued to stretch on. He was already decades older than they were when they died. Eventually it would be centuries. Millenia.

Lucanis’s eyes drifted back to the graves. “That’s something we have in common.”

Emmrich remembered him mentioning it along Treviso’s rooftops, how the long branches of the Dellamorte tree had been hacked down to the root in a bid to dethrone Caterina. The story had been tragic, the casual air of his voice when mentioning it worse.

“How old were you?”

“Younger than anyone should be when presented with your parents’ urns. Old enough to know it’s an inevitability for an assassin,” Lucanis answered.

“I’m sorry.”

“Death at the blade of another Crow is an honourable sacrifice. That’s what Caterina told me and Illario before we saw their bodies.” Lucanis paused as his cousin's name left his lips. Despite everything, there was still a softness that curved around it, like a dagger sheathed in leather.

Emmrich stopped himself reaching for Lucanis’s shoulder. “It was a true kindness to show him mercy.”

“That wasn’t mercy,” Lucanis said cooly. “He was humiliated and brought to his knees in front of all the Talons. He’ll never come back from it.”

“You could have killed him. You chose not to.”

A sharper shadow fell across the strong lines of Lucanis’s face. “He’s my cousin, my brother. That still means something. And while I had a feeling he’d try something like this eventually, I thought he’d at least grant me the respect of using his own knife. That was our way.”

“I feel that would have been a quick fight,” Emmrich answered after a pregnant pause. Even with his long years, the bloody politics of family were not something he was particularly well versed with. He could scarcely imagine the complexity when it came to literal assassins.

Lucanis closed his eyes. “I’m good at what I do. With Spite I might even be better. But First Talon still could have been his calling. If he’d just waited…”

Emmrich picked up the dropped end of Lucanis’s sentence. “You don’t want it.”

Lucanis stiffened. The space between them suddenly felt much wider than the grave.

“It doesn’t matter if I want it. The House, the Crows, they’re all looking to me now. I always wondered how Caterina dealt with it all on her shoulders. Keeping the fragile peace between the Houses, dealing with the Antaam…” He rubbed the top of his neck, exhaling. The Atlas Vertebrae Emmrich noted, named after the legend of one who was cursed to forever hold up the weight of the world.

In this case, the weight of Antiva.

“Death. That’s what I know,” Lucanis continued. “Perhaps the only thing I really know.”

Emmrich leaned towards him, softening his tone. “You know, that might be another thing we have in common.”

It was almost strange how something technically true could feel so far removed from their reality. Both of their childhoods were probably spent meticulously learning the names and weak points of mortal bones. For a watcher it was to clean and venerate them, for an assassin, to slip a blade between as quietly as possible. The fine strings of death were still wrapped around each movement.

The silence between them stretched on just long enough to get cold. Emmrich waved his hand and the fire brightened beside them. “Humour me for a moment,” he said, seeking distraction. “If you were contracted to kill me, how would you do it?”

Lucanis raised an eyebrow. “Who exactly have you made angry enough to hire an assassin?”

“Plenty I’m sure. Spurned colleagues, disgruntled students, the merchant I had banned from my favourite market for selling ‘moon-blessed’ trinkets. Though I suppose none of them could afford First Talon of the Crows.”

Lucanis thought for a moment. “Would this be before or after lichdom? Can you even kill a lich?”

“Well liches are not completely indestructible,” answered Emmrich. “I’ll lose most of my mortal tethers like taste and breath so poisoning or stabbing seem unwise, but I still need a body to house my eternal soul.”

Lucanis’s brow wrinkled. “The idea is sounding less appealing by the moment. You’d really never be able to eat again?”

“It’s the sacrifice you must be willing to make. In return you feel more; you see everything.” Emmrich looked back to the shrine, a familiar sense of dread curling somewhere deep and hidden at the back of his mind. In his early years at the Necropolis it had been hard not to think of his parents in their final moments, about what miasma of fear and pain took them into eternity. It was a wound that festered into some all consuming black terror that could rend him immobilised whenever it felt like rearing its maw.

The notion of never having to feel such a way for the rest of time was the biggest gift his ascension could ever give. Though right now he was enjoying the smaller one of being able to entertain this charming hypothetical with Lucanis.

Emmrich gestured to another path down the garden, the dread disappearing back into its hiding spot. “While you’re pondering, I’d love to show you some of my favourite pieces. One was even interred here during the Storm Age.”

Their stroll around the garden turned quiet, Lucanis’s dark stare drawn to the middle-distance as he thought. Emmrich noticed that his gait was tighter than most, spring-coiled like he was ready to leap into the shadows or an enemy's chest at a second’s notice. Idly he wondered if that was a feature of all the Crows or something unique to him.

“Perhaps some kind of carefully placed explosive in the chest cavity–” Lucanis murmured after a moment. “Though placing it in there would prove the hardest detail. Would you still need to sleep?”

“You know, I’m actually not sure. Perhaps not in the sense you or I are used to but, even in undeath, rest would most likely be a necessity.” Emmrich tapped his own sternum and chuckled. “Though if the plan is to slip a bomb in between my ribs I think I’d notice whether I was mortal or not.”

“Damn.”

They stopped in front of the centrepiece of the garden, a towering statue of two embracing skeletons atop a candle-brightened plinth. During his training, he’d spent many an scraping off sheets of wax and relaying the fat ceremonial candles for the morning rites. It was unglamorous work but he’d always enjoyed spending time under the fathomless stares of the lovers carved there. It was a reminder to all that walked the gardens, when all else fades, memory, flesh, wealth– it is love that will always persist in eternity.

He always seemed to find himself here in his dreams. Sometimes alone. More recently, with company.

Lucanis watched Emmrich reignite the yellowed candles. “You’re going to outlast everything you love,” he said quietly. “Everything dies: music, fashions, cities. One day everything you know will be dust.”

“But there will always be something new. I shall never grow tired of watching the world grow.” With the likelihood of his change drawing closer, Emmrich had wondered if he should be enjoying all of life’s physical wonders more or distancing himself in preparation. It would be a lie to say there were not things he was certain he’d miss: the smell of earth and stone, perfumes of embalming, the feel of his sheets or the jewelled taste of pomegranates and merlot. The price had to be a heavy one, he’d see it written as such in the secret writings of the Lich Lords. It was the passages after that had set his mind spinning, pages of poetry about how the beige walls of reality all but fell away. Some wrote of seeing into the very eddies of the fade, others of feeling the veins of life vibrating like harp strings into the cosmos– the melody of life, magic, creation. Sacrificing the ability to feel skin was a trifle.

One day soon he’d have to be able to say that with complete confidence.

Lucanis faced him fully and Emmrich could almost feel the point of his stare needling at such thoughts. “Relationships die too.”

Emmrich laughed again. It was a warm thing amongst the flowers. “I can hardly say I’ve spent my mortal years as a recluse or a saint. Those are memories I’ll cherish for centuries.” He cherished them now, every stumble when he was young and then less young, every passionate affair that felt like months swirling in wine and fire. He knew the difference between love and lust, of having someone’s name between your lips or your teeth. Sometimes he’d think on them and feel the vigour of that younger man, someone ready to take risks, dive in and damn the consequences. Then he’d catch himself staring back in the mirror, prim, handsome, distinguished even, but time had taken its fair share. He’d prefer if it did not take any more.

“If someone you truly cared about did not want you to change, would it deter you?” Lucanis asked.

Emmrich felt the weight of the question hang in the air. “Well, if a lover told you not to take your Grandmother’s title, would you listen?”

“I’ll make sure to ask all none of them.” Lucanis sighed and looked at the embracing figures in front of them. “I never had Illario’s gift for flirting– though none of those flings ever lasted. It was good for charming information out of people, less so when angry lovers tracked him down on the job.”

“None?” Emmrich waited a deliberate second before lowering his tone. “Now that does surprise me.” In that moment he would have paid any amount of gold to capture the colour that briefly flashed across Lucanis’s face in a portrait.

The other man coughed and folded his arms. “You know, you don’t need to be a lich to live forever. You just need to be a bastard.”

“Excuse me?”

Lucanis shrugged. “It’s a truth acknowledged in Antiva. The good die young. Bastards cling on. Usually they’re just too stubborn to die. I can tell you first hand some truly evil people will keep breathing even with more than one knife in their chest.”

Considering that Johanna refused to stop being a problem, Emmrich could see his point. “I suppose that means your cousin will be a pain in your side for decades to come then. Though I’m not sure if that logic bodes so well for you.”

“Am I not enough of a bastard to live forever? I’ve probably killed more people than are buried on this entire floor.”

“It’s not the word I would use. More of the charming sort of rogue.” Emmrich, as always, chose his words very deliberately. In this case it was because they were true, but also had the added benefit of that flash of red warming Lucnains’s face for longer this time.

He opened his mouth to respond but only a quiet grunt of pain escaped as he raised his right arm. It’s one Emmrich had heard a few times this week.

“That wrist has been bothering you for days,” he said, gesturing to the afflicted area. “I can mend it if you’d like.”

Emmrich could almost see the words ‘I’m fine,’ curling on his tongue before another twinge of discomfort had him swallowing them back.

“Please. It will take but a moment,” pressed Emmrich before sitting down on the closest bench. He removed both his gloves, then the one covering the affected wrist as Lucanis hesitantly took the spot next to him. He looked over the web of veins, the freckles, trying his hardest to focus on the bones and not the heat of Lucanis’s skin.

Radius. Lunate. Scaphoid. “As I suspected. It did not align correctly the last time it healed,” he murmured, rubbing along the line of his wrist.

“You can tell by looking?”

Emmrich concentrated on his magic as it pulsed from his hand and gently pushed the bones back into place. “Well I happen to be familiar with the finer points of anatomy.”

Spite’s presence suddenly flickered behind them like the last breath of a candle before it burned down.

“He. Likes it,” he whispered, his voice barely audible above the breeze in the halls. Emmrich kept his face flat as he pulled up the sleeve of the other man’s shirt.

Ulna. Up to the Humerus.

His forearm was riddled with scars of various sizes, some decades old.

“You have quite the collection,” Emmrich commented. “The work of a master assassin I suppose.”

Lucanis pointed to a small pink star by his elbow. “Not all of them. That one was from my first attempt to make churros as a child.”

Emmrich stopped his touch but his eyes kept following the line of his body. Scapula. Acromion. Clavicle. Do not stare at his neck. His gaze stopped on a series of yellowing bruises punctured just above his collar. A bite mark, he realised, and an angry one at that. “What happened here?”

A laugh echoed somewhere in the distance. Lucanis jerked his head towards it. “It took a while for Spite and I to find our footing. He can’t touch the real world but he can still take his annoyance out on me when I don’t give him his way. For a while I wished I could hurt him back somehow…”

Lucanis trailed off, something unreadable washing across his face. Despite his curiosity Emmrich decided now was not the right time to push.

“Does anything else hurt?” he asked instead, flexing his hand.

Lucanis was quiet for a moment before pulling off his other glove and presenting his right hand. Emmrich immediately spotted the line of scarring over his knuckles. One protruded at a slightly strange angle.

Emmrich brushed the discoloured skin. “You hit something rather solid– wait, no. Something hit you.” The pattern of scarring indicated something long, wooden. A cane perhaps? A cold realisation hit him the second before Lucanis answered.

“Caterina,” he said softly. “I had poor form in my early days. After that, I never dropped a blade again.”

Emmrich bit back his immediate response. It was yet another comment for another time, another place, if there would even be one before his lichdom. “I think you would be just as skilled without such measures,” he murmured, pressing down on the knuckle. He tried to ignore the thought about whether this would be the last time he’d touch soft, living skin with his own. He felt it take root somewhere in his mind, ready to twist and bloom in his dreams like the bushes of Shroud’s Kiss around them.

Another time. Another place.

Lucanis winced as the knuckle audibly clicked back into place. “This explains why you’re– mierda— still so nimble with that staff. It’s impressive.”

“Thank you, but my skill with a stave is from practice. I can heal malignant pains, draw breath back to the dead but there is no magic in Neverra or beyond that can undo the ravages of time.” Emmirch felt the aches of it each morning like splinters of stone chipped between his bones. He was older and still on that delicate path towards the end.

He looked down and fished in his pocket for a bandage. “Although if I recall, young magister Pavus did have some thoughts about manipulating the Fade in order to jump through time–”

His words died as he turned back. The tip of a thin silver blade was pressed against his throat, the handle disappearing up Lucanis’s free sleeve. His dark eyes were alight, smile sharp as the weapon in his steady grip.

The edge of the knife kissed his skin as Emmrich took the most composed breath he could muster. One flick of Lucanis’s hand was all it would take. Oblivion. Nothing left but petals of blood on marble and his body collapsing directly into the arms of the other man. Their own death embrace to match the stone above.

“This is how I’d kill you,” Lucanis said quietly, his finger moving slowly along the skin-warmed metal.

Emmrich held his gaze, unflinching. “Simple and quick. I can appreciate that,” he answered, matching the point of his smirk. He gently took Lucanis’s wrist and moved the knife down until it pressed over his thudding heartbeat. “Though I had thought you would aim here. With a thin enough blade you could pierce above the fourth rib without touching the lungs.”

Lucanis slowly dragged the tip over the button that held his robe together. “People asphyxiate quicker than they bleed to death. You’d be gone before you’d even know it was me.”

“I would recognise those hands anywhere.” Emmrich shifted his grip until he could feel the rhythm of the other man’s pulse. It was quicker than he would have anticipated for such a steady hand, fluttering like the crow’s wing as it launches itself from a Rookery.

And oh, does Emmrich want to fall. He could feel the blade’s edge against his chest and of this moment– he wants to push forward and live recklessly one final time, flirt with blood and death and danger until he could look into the void-deep eyes of the Lich Lords and truly say he’d lived a life without regret.

A cold wind cuts between them, Spite’s angry voice shattering the moment.

“Ugh compassion. Go. Away.”

A brightness flits in the corner of Emmrich’s eye. A few wisps had darted around them, glimmering lights of compassion and hope. They brush against his arm before shooting back to the other end of the garden, the demon snapping after them.

“Oh how charming,” he said, turning back to Lucanis.

Lucanis was already standing, the knife disappearing up his sleeve in a slick movement. “I think Spite wants to leave,” he said, shifting on the balls of his feet.

Emmrich sighed and pulled his gloves back on. His own heartbeat was racing, still clinging to that moment and the lingering question of ‘what if.’ “Well if Spite wants to leave then we certainly can.”

When he looked up Lucanis was holding out his hand again.

“Will you come back?” he asked, helping him back up.

“Not for a few days but yes.”

Lucanis looked around. “I suppose it gives me more time to consider how to kill you as a Lich.” There was something warm under the death in his words, almost unsure. Asking to accompany him again without really asking.

Emmrich smiled, glad to see the glint of humour between them returning.

“Well then, I’ll be looking forward to it.”

There was still time before the end. Before the death of Gods, of the world, of his mortality. Time to explore, feel, live.

Surrounded by nothing but death, something new could grow. He could hardly wait.

#please read this #because emmrich x Lucanis is now a ship i cant stop thinking about #what is there ship name?#Emcanis?#BoneCrow?#SkeleBird?#im not very good at ship names #but this fic is excellent #and I would like a sequel please #BoneCrow 2: Electric Boogaloo

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