#▐ ⊰ ᴡᴀʀᴘᴀᴛʜ ᴏғ ʙʀᴏᴋᴇɴ ɢʟᴀss ⊱ crimson flower path.

[wolfhednn]

when iron bleeds, felix & sylvain

starter for @gallantgautier

          felix hasn’t dreamed in years. though he doesn’t recall when, exactly, they’d stopped. they used to be frequent and vivid: memories of his childhood, of those around him. some had been less palatable, often featuring his father, his brother, and a recurring location — a labyrinthine fortress not unlike the one whose doorstep he stood in now, though he’s never been here in his life. not recently, though. recently, his sleep has been deep and dreamless. he doesn’t remember how long it’s been like that.

          shaking the gore of the last enemy off his blade with a flick of the wrist, he looks up to scan for his next opponent. the liquid scarlet, deep in hue, reminds him of something recent, but the thick of battle is hardly the time to be reminiscing.

          ❝ archers sighted at the rear of the enemy formation! ❞ a lieutenant shouts above the din, weaving through the chaos of slaughter as he makes his way to edelgard, a brilliant shock of crimson several paces away, surrounded already in a small pile of corpses and casting a tall shadow of black who was never far behind. out of the corner of his eye, sunlight flashes off steel, and he turns to see a horseman galloping at him, hoof beats deafening on stone, lance raised. the attack is easy to dodge, and he swings around with an inhale, preparing to square off against his enemy, confident despite their mounted advantage.

          but in an instant, the horseman’s face contorts in shock, and he drops the lance to claw uselessly at an arrow protruding from his neck. he slumps sideways off the saddle and the horse panics, rearing with a shrill neigh and barreling past across the lowered fortress drawbridge. felix doesn’t bother to see who’d claimed his target, but he does register the now-dead horseman’s colors. silvery grey armor draped in dark, almost faded blue, the emblazoned insignia of the falcon knight discernible even stained in blood and dust.

          the fraldarius coat of arms, stained in blood and dust. it seemed fitting.

          so the front gate — at the very entrance — is where he’d chosen to place his men, then. aiming to end the battle here before it even began, stop the incursion before it pierced into the silver maiden’s heart. as though someone had injected electricity into his veins, felix feels the battle come suddenly alive, brimming with noise and color. he hears his heart in his ears as he forges ahead, the streets of the impenetrable city feeling huge and wide and limitless.

          he’s answered within seconds by the sound of shouting that breaks above the clamor of war. further ahead and to the left, a crowd of imperial soldiers is in disarray, diving out of danger, others blown backwards by the force of some blast that sends rock and shrapnel flying. there’s a frenzy as petra, conspicuous in dark colored dye, hurries to rally the battalion of scattered archers and answer the attack— 

          screams of alarm and pain are muted in the blinding pillar of light that swallows all sound, and felix veers off to the right to avoid the debris launched skywards by the sudden blast, muscle memory and adrenaline carrying him over newly disintegrated corpses and rubble even as his vision readjusts and his ears ring, very bones rattling from the force of the follow-up shock waves.

          he doesn’t need to see to find, his mind registering the enemy long before his eyes do. with the brilliant light of the aura spell as his cover, he launches himself forward with a battle cry he doesn’t hear.

          steel clashing steel flints sparks that dance inches from his face.

          they separate, the decorated steed steadying itself under a skilled hand. the bay roan destrier: his most prized. felix rights himself, knows he has to strike quickly; the more time he gives him, the more the scale tips out of his favor. focusing his attention on the horse, he summons the threads of lightning to his fingertips.

          two loud cracks of thunder in succession.

          the destrier swerves as they graze it, once— twice—

          its eyes are wide and panicked. he knows he’s succeeded. it rears up. now. ❝ hrragh! ❞ everything he has thrown into the keen edge of his sword while the creature is startled. off balance, his enemy can’t counterattack, and the horse’s shrill scream rings in his ears. even a master horseman struggles to stay in a bucking saddle while fending off an attack, and it’s with satisfaction that he watches his opponent forfeit his mount, landing with only a slight stagger before he regains his balance, lance braced in a defensive posture.

          now the advantage is his, on foot. now his enemy is forced to look him in the eye. even if he’s carrying a sword alongside that now-unwieldy lance, felix knows he’s the superior swordsman. all that remains is getting past the faith magic, looking for gaps, an opportunity. he’s been preparing for this.

          all that remains is closing the distance.

          ❝ so, my foolish son... ❞ the deep voice of years past quivers with bitter disappointment, with quiet fury. hearing it fills felix’s throat with bile. ❝ you took it upon yourself to leave your family behind. ❞ the lance shifts higher up in his grip. so he doesn’t have another weapon after all. a fool to the very end. he doesn’t owe him an answer; he doesn’t, not anymore. not for a long time. but he hears his own words anyway, hears them being bitten out.

                        ❝ i’m not coming back. i won’t serve the boar. ❞                            he hates how, even now, his father still finds a way to                            tell him he’s a child.

          some buried instinct urges him to look at the faces of the choices he’s made. the monster in the mirror. the beating eye of blutgang. this one is every inch as unflinching as his own, dusted from battle, the stress of a half-decade of war carving new lines. it’s him; it’s that same face — twisted with a look of rage and disdain, and something else. a desperate anguish. he feels a haze crawl up through his chest, and he clings to the red in it.

                    ❝ it’s a father’s duty to settle his child’s failures.                              felix... you must die here and now! ❞

          that roar is all the challenge he needs. his mouth tears open in a roaring answer of his own as he charges. and he feels it— the tide— surging, his arm, his blade— the crest of fraldarius baring its own fangs.

          he closes the distance.

                                             ( felix hasn’t dreamed in years. but last night,                                                he’d dreamed of the sword in his hand, and                                                the liquid scarlet, deep in hue, as it bled. )

[wolfhednn]

💫

send 💫 for a shuffle-generated meta | @aqura

❛ caught in this wicked game, we know that nothing stays the same. ❜

                                — mad world, within temptation

ooc. this is my CF!felix song, so i’m morally obligated to do CF meta. i’ve talked before about how felix is hilariously out of touch with his own emotions. he’s pretty emotionally perceptive of others, but has a lot of trouble parsing through and unpacking his own feelings about things, which is the root behind a lot of his maladaptive communication habits.

in CF, this already-prominent area of weakness becomes a lot worse. because he’s still ultimately a person who feels deeply, felix bottled up and shut down his emotions just about completely in order to pursue the path he had set himself on and achieve his goal. he knew that if he let his emotions get in the way, he would waver, and he refuses to turn back.

as a result, felix’s disconnect from his emotions in CF grows to a point where he has distinctive trouble actually feeling them, himself. ( there’s already some evidence in non-CF that felix tends to map his emotions onto external stimulus rather than own them as coming from himself, but in CF, this goes from a habit he’d developed to seem ‘ tough ’ to something that’s now reality for him. )

Felix: Since I allied with you and the emperor, my resolve has never wavered. I abandoned my country. I am prepared to kill my father, and kill a man I once called my friend. Resolute as I am, my sword feels… heavy.

this comes from his monastery line during the arianrhod chapter, and it’s notable that the only thing he can register emotionally is that his sword feels heavy, not what that sensation actually represents. he’s so out of touch with his emotions that he pretty much doesn’t have them anymore.

i do hc that in a CF route where sylvain and ingrid aren’t recruited, if he were to kill them, he doesn’t cry. in some ways, that disturbs him more than the fact that he actually killed them.

bonus: CF!felix never intends to live past the war. he’s not necessarily suicidal, but he just doesn’t see himself as making it to see the future. he doesn’t see a place for what he’s become in a world without bloodshed.

Felix: For five years, I’ve fought for the Empire. I’ve cut down hordes of enemies. Now I have the same look in my eyes that the boar used to have in his. The look of a savage beast who loves nothing but destruction and violence. 

[ You’re right. ] Hmph. I can hardly hold it against him anymore.[ I don’t see it. ] I hope not. 

You and Edelgard must not disappoint me. Mark my words. The future you’re building had better be worth all this bloodshed. ( italics for emphasis )

i think those last lines are indicative of the mindset of someone who doesn’t see themselves as living to see that future take shape.

[wolfhednn]

give me some forbidden.... Crest of the Beast!Felix HCs

ooc. hee ho hey you sent this to me 1.5 months ago and i’m finally getting to it eyy.

so crest of the beast!felix hcs originate from his mom. there’s literally zero ( 0 ) information on lady fraldarius, not even a mention that she ever existed, so i decided to just go hog wild.

lady fraldarius was born ghislaine alys gloucester, a daughter of a small branch family of the main gloucester line. their family didn’t have much sway in politics, being quite removed from the line of gloucester succession and lacking a crest, but they were still part of the gloucester name.

at a young age, she was tested for a crest as all children were, and was found to bear a minor crest of the beast. the family was immediately in minor uproar. afraid that the unlucky crest would bring ruin to the gloucester family, they disowned her early on.

keeping a low profile, ghislaine grew up in the eastern church, out of the way and forgotten. as a young teenager however, she was adopted into another minor alliance noble house, not notable enough to be known politically, not even really land-owning, either. she lived a better life here, but remained still sheltered and out of the way; no one knew she had a crest. this minor house was clearly in decline, though, and it was only a matter of time until they disintegrated. 

her adoptive parents, however, did love her, so when, as luck would have it, the then-of-marriageable age lord fraldarius ventured through the area and was struck by the sight of her, they were more than happy to send her off, with what little remained of their money as her dowry, to marry into a family as prestigious as house fraldarius. with that action, her adoptive house was abolished, and she carried their last well-wishes with her to northern faerghus.

rodrigue was the only one who knew she carried the crest of the beast, but, in true fraldarius fashion, wasn’t one to fear fables over what was real and true in front of him. no one else, even lambert, even glenn and felix, knew the truth about her. she died when felix was young, probably no older than six or seven, but only she and rodrigue knew the depths of her fears that her children would be born with the same curse, or that her legacy would bring misfortune to house fraldarius.

CF!route spoilers ahead!

given that this whole hc only becomes super relevant in my CF!verse, it’s kind of depressingly ironic that her fears do come true in that sense. glenn dies young, rodrigue is killed by his own son, and felix also dies after succumbing to blutgang: the weapon that matches the very crest she had, coming full circle. maybe the crest is unlucky, then? or maybe it’s just coincidence. hmm.

as for it being narratively appropriate, i mostly pegged that on CF!verse because it’s where felix becomes ( and canonically admits to becoming ) a monster just like he accused dimitri of being, shutting off his emotions and morals in order to become someone focused on bloodshed and violence. as the crest of the beast is rumored to turn its bearer into a beast, wiping them of their humanity completely, it seemed fitting to work it into felix’s CF!narrative somehow, even though he does not actually have the crest himself. the symbolism was just too good, basically.

final note on lady fraldarius: i think a lot of the reason why she was able to marry into house fraldarius despite having the crest of the beast is because of house fraldarius’ longstanding tradition of being something of a cultural anomaly within the kingdom. they seem to be the only house that doesn’t care about crests, pretty much at all, and who completely ignore the presence of crests when determining a person’s worth and ability. ( i have some headcanons on why this is the case, too, but that’s neither here nor there. )

[wolfhednn]

ooc. taking a moment to hammer out some foundational info for felix’s crimson flower verse in current TOA canon now that i’ve finally finished playing through it and have a more developed idea of what’s seen of felix in-game. this is both for my own housekeeping sake and for the clarification of anyone who’s like ‘what the heck....’. spoilers for CF route ahead!

as discussed with @gallantgautier, felix and sylvain are already in an established romantic relationship by the start of part 2 in CF!verse, which differs from AM!verse where they don’t even start poking that bear until well into part 2 ( as tracked through ‘52 hertz’ and ‘60 decibels’ ). in CF!verse, they got together shortly after the events of part 1 and it only went downhill from there

as played out in ‘beast blood blade’, as of the pegasus moon ( when marianne’s paralogue becomes available in-game ), felix has acquired blutgang and has taken responsibility as its wielder in the absence of anyone else able and willing. there’s ties between him and the crest of the beast that make this narratively appropriate, but within his TOA canon, this only happens in CF!verse ( more information to come about that in a later post )

throughout CF!verse, felix is markedly different from how he is on any other route. he has shut down his own emotions in order to follow the path he’s chosen for himself and, over the course of 5 years, has become more and more closed off to the point where his emotions are so repressed that he can't really feel them properly.

despite this, however, there are subtle changes in his behavior after the siege of arianrhod ( ch. 16 ). though he had prepared himself mentally to kill his father and former friends, he underestimates the impact that actually doing so has on him. while the change isn’t dramatic, during the month afterwards, he begins exhibiting occasional and very subtle hints of who he used to be as he unconsciously struggles with his actions, though he doesn’t recognize it himself

unfortunately, any potential he has for recovery doesn’t last long. during the battle against dimitri’s army at the tailtean plains, his hand in dimitri’s death is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. the emotional and physical strain enable blutgang to finally overtake him, wiping out the last of his humanity. he dies here after his rampage as a demonic beast slaughters many on both sides.

[wolfhednn]

i am 🔪 von aegir

send 🔪 for a fitting weapon! | @tobenobility | accepting

          ❝ hmph. the disgraced prime minister’s son. i’ll admit, your decision to serve the same emperor that brought down your father is intriguing. you seem more aware of the realities of the world than before. the ideals you once upheld — they’re not the same in the chaos of war. ❞

         he pauses, eyes narrowing in scrutiny and thought as he regards the other man, the weight of the last years cloaked about his shoulders like a mantle. he takes some satisfaction in it, but there is something else… that has him reaching for a blade from the scattered pile, one of a kind. ❝ but enough chatter, ❞ he mutters, more quietly. ❝ you came here for a weapon. ❞

                                                 ferdinand receives the king sword!