Bazz scowls up at the stage — at the snot-nosed brat on the stage — and listens with half an ear as Yhwach drones on about the boy having survived ‘great adversity’ in order to ‘return to the fold’ and ‘take his rightful place’ as Yhwach’s successor.
His successor, Bazz mentally scoffs as he takes in the flat, empty gaze of the child standing next to a man centuries upon centuries his elder. The boy’s skin is an unhealthy pale and his gaze is empty and it’s clear — to Bazz at least — that he’s barely paying attention to anything Yhwach is saying.
Not that it likely matters, Bazz acknowledges with a spiteful curl of his lips; he doesn’t know for sure that Yhwach can jump bodies, but he also can’t ignore the possibility given his ability to hand his power over to Jugram every night. And even if Yhwach can’t, the idea of such a blank, empty bratling surviving something that Yhwach can’t is ludicrous.
Bazz would know.
He’s tried.
(Tried and failed and tried and failed and submitted like a vicious cur in order to bide his time, in order to get stronger and yet— and yet—)
It’s only because Bazz is staring at the bratling that he notices it: a tiny little curl at one corner of the bratling’s mouth, the first sign of any personality he’s shown since taking his place at Yhwach’s side.
If Bazz is being charitable, he’d call it a smile.
He’s not feeling charitable.
(That’s not a smile, that’s something else, something darker, something more primal.)
(The bratling is starting to snarl.)
Bazz frowns and slants his gaze back to Yhwach, replaying the last few minutes of speech in his mind but… nothing in there stands out as something the bratling should find objectionable. It isn’t even about their plans, it’s just the normal meaningless rousing speech to encourage fervor in troops, shit that Bazz has heard a billion times by this point. So what in the world—
Time screeches to a halt as Yhwach’s voice falters for the first time Bazz has ever heard. And then he lifts a hand to his mouth and coughs, wet and painful and wheezing like he’s been stabbed through a lung, except… except there’s nothing that Bazz can see. No blood, no blade, no one standing behind Yhwach…!
Not even the bratling has moved, his arms still at his side and his gaze still blank—
No, Bazz quickly corrects himself as he watches Yhwach fall to his knees and the bratling turn to look. No, the child’s gaze is not blank, not really, not anymore; there’s an edge of shock to his expression — expected, given the abruptness of Yhwach’s collapse — but his gaze is cold, not blank. His gaze is cold-empty-vicious and something in Bazz purrs because the idea is ridiculous but Yhwach is collapsing right in front of him, is coughing blood and bleeding from his nose and around his eyes and growing weaker with every inhale, every exhale, until he’s sprawled on the floor of the dais and blood is starting to pool and the boy just stares. He stares and stares and stares, his expression shocked and helpless and uncertain and his gaze cold-vicious-empty and Bazz knows.
The boy is the cause.
This boy, this empty doll of a child, brought into the fold like a sacrificial lamb, is watching Yhwach die with all evidence of surprise, but part of him isn’t. Part of him knows, like Bazz knows, like Jugram knows, that this is his own doing. That he’s been declared Yhwach’s successor and then squeezed the life from Yhwach’s body the way no one has ever been able to do before.
The Wandenreich begin to murmur as Yhwach’s last breath rattles through his chest and then fades away into silence. As all of them feel the moment that the weight of power in the room shifts, focused not on the body of their lord, only recently reawakened just to die in such an inglorious way, but on the child their lord brought before them. As connections shift and settle, the noose around their necks going slack for the first time in centuries, the murmurs swell into mutters. Into hushed chatter. Into confusion-uncertainty-fury the longer the bratling remains silent, remains staring at their dead lord, shock on his face but vicious emptiness in his powers.
“What have you done?!” Jugram roars as he kneels at Yhwach’s side and futilely wipes at the blood, straightening out Yhwach’s limbs in an effort to give their fallen lord some dignity.
(Not that he deserves it, a dark part of Bazz whispers.)
(What dignity did he ever give to anyone else?)
(Why does he deserve it when no one else did?)
(Why?)
The way the bratling’s cold-empty-vicious gaze lifts from Yhwach and fixes on Jugram is almost terrifying, as is the continued silence from the boy. Bazz knows it’s probably just the shock keeping the boy mute — it’s clear that no matter how much hate the boy has in his soul, he never expected this to happen — but there’s something so unnerving about the stare, about the silence, about Yhwach’s death—
Bazz can’t help it. He throws his head back and laughs, giving voice to centuries of swallowed fury suddenly freed.
Yhwach is dead. Yhwach is dead and it happened here, in the heart of his empire, surrounded by his own loyal minions. It happened with everyone watching and yet no one could do a thing but watch as the empty little lamb turned into a devouring monster worse than Yhwach could ever expect, could ever guard against.
Yhwach invited his own death to his side with a smile and honey-sweet promises of power.
And now look at him, dead on the floor at his successor’s metaphorical hand.
Unfortunately, his laughter has drawn the bratling’s attention. His stare is like a physical thing, blank-empty-cold like a frozen winter’s night, but it’s… different from how the bratling stared at Jugram. The viciousness is banked, tucked away like a blade in a sheath, and instead he’s…
Staring at Bazz’s hair?
“Bazz-B! Restrain yourself!” Jugram snaps at him, fury and loss etched across his fair features.
“Restrain myself? Restrain myself? Why should I restrain myself, Jugram?” Bazz can’t help but bite back, even as all the Wandenreich — even the other Sternritter — slowly back away towards the edges of the room, breaking into little groups as they do.
Jugram makes an offended noise deep in his throat. “Our lord is dead!” he snarls, hate creeping in even as his hands remain gentle on the dead-empty-worthless shell of their former lord. On the man they’d once promised to kill!
“And good riddance!” Bazz roars, sweeping a hand out to encompass everything around them. “This is what we’d once dreamed of and you know it! We swore, Jugram! We swore!”
“Our lord had his reasons,” Jugram says sharply, coldly, as if nothing they’d lived through mattered. As if the honor of playing Yhwach’s right hand had erased the horror they’d once been subjected to. “If you can’t see that…”
Bazz bares his teeth at his friend and clenches his fists, centuries of waiting, of watching, helpless to gain his revenge, helpless to do anything but submit like a broken cur, spilling up-up-up until he’s shaking with it. “Why would I ever come to understand his reasons? He had none beyond conquest!”
Jugram scoffs and shifts his feet, finally starting to straighten up. “Yhwach only wanted what was best for us all,” he says as if burning their town to the ground was ‘what was best’ for them. “And now he’s been murdered—”
“Or maybe he’s just finally passed on to his rightful rest,” Bazz mocks, gesturing sharply towards the empty-eyed bratling watching them argue. Not that it seems that the boy is really processing anything going on around him, not really. “Why, maybe he was just so tired that naming a successor just took it out of him!”
“You dare!” Jugram howls as he lurches to his feet.
“I dare!” Bazz spits back, letting his reiatsu pool in his hand, preparing to dodge, preparing to fight, because without Yhwach the death sentence for infighting no longer exists. Without Yhwach, he can finally prove himself the better of them like he’d long ago wished to. He can. He will!
Jugram draws his blade, expression stern and cold and focused in a way Bazz has long learned to hate and snarls, “Our Lord was far too lenient on you. I will correct that oversight!”
Bazz sucks in a breath and clenches his jaw, bracing himself—
The bratling’s gaze snaps to Jugram and his brows furrow, the snarl creeping back across his lips even as power begins to build, bright and vicious and aimed at Jugram and—
Bazz lurches forward before he can think better of it. Sweeps around Jugram in a burst of unexpected hirenkyaku, aiming not for his old friend but for the boy himself. Cinches an arm around the boy’s waist and heaves him up and over a shoulder and then flees. Flees the hall, flees the Wandenreich, flees the dead body and his former friend and every piece of sense left in his stupid, empty skull.
“C’mon kid, rein it in,” Bazz mutters as he blitzes down the hallways as fast as he can go, heading towards his own set of rooms. “As much as I appreciate you taking that bastard out, Jugram’s mine to kill, not yours.”
The bratling doesn’t respond, not that Bazz expected him to; he suspects the boy is trapped deep in his head, reacting on instinct to the feel of people’s reiatsu around him, and that’s… that’s dangerous. Not that kidnapping Yhwach’s heir is any less dangerous, really — both from the boy himself and from any number of the Wandenreich — but he has a suspicion about how things would go if he’d just let the boy do whatever.
Because that felt almost like Auswählen. And using Auswählen on Yhwach’s most trusted officer…
The bratling hasn’t had any time to earn either respect or fear, so about the only possible response that Bazz can foresee is outright war amongst them all. Which, given the bratling’s state, would likely result in him using Auswählen indiscriminately just to survive, instincts reacting when training can’t.
Bazz never expected to live past his revenge, but now that he has a chance he wants it.
Which means taking a chance and forcibly removing the newly crowned king from the situation.
(If he dies, he’s going to come back as a ghost and haunt this fucking kid so hard…!)
A hand presses to his back, right along his spine, and Bazz can’t help but tense at the contact even if he knows, he knows, that Auswählen doesn’t require physical contact to initiate. He can feel a rough probe into his powers and then—
The boy slumps in his grip, body going limp in a way that reads less like ‘unconscious’ and more like ‘kitten giving up’ and Bazz heaves a sigh of relief.
(One hurdle down.)
(Far too many left to go.)
(Fuck!)