Post by Duke on May 20, 2011 14:43:31 GMT -5
I'm Frozen In Flight on fanfiction.net, so there's a lot o stuff I could put here. I'll just put a first for some of my shorter ones.... "short" meaning... still kinda long but not pushing 4-5k words.
"I know you do not care for the taste, but I have bought some Lemon-" Duke looked up then, and managed not to drop the pack of food and healing gels. Elucifur was where he had left him, but the dozen odd humans were new. They had all frozen at the sight of him, but he could see their weapons, the red that stained Elucifur further and shone on them. The great Entelexeia lay still.
"I thought you said Pantarei wouldn't be here!" One of the bloodied humans demanded from another. That snapped him from his shock. His blade was too far away. Fine.
"Elucifur!" His sight flickered over with the same color as his eyes and his soreness and exhaustion from the battle, flight, and tending his friend's wounds, vanished. "Holy Rain!" The rain his spell summoned glowed brightly, and the humans cried out. They turned from Elucifur to him, their blades running with the holy-charged waters and cleaned slowly of his friend's blood. "Guilty Resolver!" A flick of his hand enveloped half of them in violent light, startling the other ones into stumbling. "Flame Dragon!" the ground was lit up by a light he couldn't see, and the flame spell ripped through most of them, the magic carrying one up in its jaws. The last man looked panicked, and turned to try to stab into Elucifur. "Stop Flow!" A quick hit knocked the man down, the blade away and Duke bound his mouth and hands with the man's clothes, turning quickly to Elucifur. The adrenaline, or whatever it was, was fading.
"Elucifur!" Duke knelt by his friends head, dwarfed by the Entelexeia's size. One black-opal like eye opened weakly to blink at him, the normally bright, fiery colors dull. "Hold on! Healing Circle!" The lights formed and sank into his friend. Elucifur gave a great heavy sigh. It did nothing that he could tell; the great many wounds continued bleeding.
"T-turn into a Kritya!" Duke told his friend, removing his coat and pressing it against one of the larger slashes, leaning against it with his shoulder. "My Artes work better that way!"
"Duke..." Elucifur sighed, remaining as he was.
"Healing Circle!" Duke cast again. "Please, Elucifur! I can help you if you shift! I-I can't right now!" How that hurt inside as he applied more pressure to the wound, ignoring a half a dozen other visible wounds further along his friend's long body. "Healing Circle!" His coat was soaking through, staining his pale hair and skin red.
"Duke..." Elucifur rumbled, shifting.
"I can stop the bleeding – carry you to an Aer krene. Healing Circle! Please! I could-" Duke stopped talking as one of Elucifur's wings rested on his head.
"You are not listening." Elucifur told him, lifting his wing and half folding it against his side. "I cannot heal from this." Duke stared at him.
"You can!" Duke insisted. "You just need an Aer Krene, right? The-
"-Duke.-"
"re's one, not too far from here." Duke looked up at the sky, trying to remember where it had been. "I can carry-"
"-Duke. I am a dead Entelexeia." The albino swordsman froze at Elucifur's words, turning red eyes to his friend. "It is only a matter of time." Elucifur had turned his head, put his jaw on the ground and watched him with one dull eye.
"No!" But the fact that he was steadily staining more and more red from a wound he had tried to heal over and over again gave truth to the Entelexeia's words. "No! Healing Circle! Healing Circle! Healing Circle!" Duke struggled to keep casting the arte as his throat closed and the Aer he could call on dwindled. One of Elucifur's smaller claws grasped his hands, which he had pressed against the Entelexeia in effort to somehow, somehow get the healing from his Artes into his friend's body, and tugged him closer to his friend's face.
"Duke, nothing can be done." The hand shifted its grasp so that it held him about the shoulders and Duke sank against the side of his friend's face. He tried to swallow the burning that rose in his throat and pressed his face against the side of Elucifur's.
"I-is this how they repay you?" Duke demanded. "You practically won the war for the humans, and then they kill you!"
"Duke... Do not be consumed by anger to the whole of humanity..."
"Why shouldn't I? You save them, and they thank you by assaulting – murdering you!" Duke didn't quite shout, his throat was closing up too much for that, but his voice did rise. "We were allied with the Empire!" The men on the ground could have come from nowhere else.
"Duke." The small claw pushed his face toward the dulling eye. "Remember. Protect this world, our Terca Lumireis. Peace, for all living things." Elucifur's dull opal eye got some of its fire back, fragments of orange and violet catching the light. "Not just those monsters you manage to speak to, the Kritya and the Entelexeia. All living things."
"Y-yes." Duke felt tears now, and didn't bother stopping them now. The light to Elucifur's eyes dwindled.
"Promise me? To do your best?" It was strange to hear such a soft voice from such a large being.
"Yes." He promised. Elucifur sighed, closed his eye. "I promise, Elucifur." The Entelexeia leader didn't reply. "... Elucifur?" Duke pushed himself off his friends face, and the claw that had rested on his shoulder slid off.
Limp.
He whirled, eyes widening, to stare down his friends side.
The bleeding had stopped. A step back, and Elucifur's form shone slightly, then flashed bright.
When he opened his eyes again, all there was left of his friend was stained ground, shorn off feathers and scales, his soaked coat, and a crystal.
"Elucifur..." It came out choked, and a half step brought him over to the Apatheia. Elucifur had explained this, hadn't he? It was a mass of Aer.
It was all that was left but for memories.
Duke stared at the crystal, which lay serenely on the stained ground, glowing inside.
Humans had done this.
The man on the ground had been slowly inching away once the Stop Flow had worn off, watching, unable to make a noise as the war hero tried to heal his friend. Truth be told, he didn't want to make any noise. When the albino swordsman turned, his long white hair stained the same color as his eyes by his friend's blood, red smears on the side of his face and staining his red uniform-like clothes darker, he tried to move further away when those red eyes fixed on him. The man bent while slowly walking towards him, a blood gummed hand picking a blade from the ground – not his.
"...You... are going to tell me who ordered this." The last Pantarei's low voice was cold, deader than the Entelexeia behind him. "Whether you like it or not." Second chapter+
Estelle gave a weak cry as Duke flickered into place in the air above her, Dein Nomos slamming into the ground and creating a shockwave that made the pinkette princess crumple.
"Damn it!" Raven swore, fishing in his pockets for a life bottle, and missed the war hero's return to the ground, and the shields that floated about him spiraling into a line. The floating man's statement as the pieces of metal fired was lost under Raven's cry as he too crumpled.
"No!" Rita quickly jumped into the air, activating a formula nearly identical to the one Duke used, quickly beginning to flick her scarf through the air. "Oh countless particles that wander the very heavens-" While Yuri scrambled for a life bottle, he heard Duke match Rita for casting. However, the pale man's chant was far shorter.
"I now unleash the full force of my life!" Yuri hated to dive away while Rita could not, but if he was left standing then he could revive the others. "Guilty Resolver!" Yuri gritted his teeth as Rita fell from the air, her body crashing into the ground.
"Damn it! Damn it!" He heard Karol yelp, Repede bark, Judith shout, and kept moving.
"Luna Rondo!"
"Destruction Street!"
He heard them go down just as fast. There! A life bottle. Yuri turned and booked it for Estelle, only to skid to a halt when Duke appeared before him, as if he had just slid into place.
"Dragon Swarm!" He clipped one of the shields, but completely missed the hero, spinning past him.
"Dragon Ascendant!" And Dein Nomos slammed into him, wreathed in flame.
"Screwed up." Yuri grunted, hitting the ground. Darkness hovered about the edge of his vision but didn't completely steal it away. The bright glow from Duke might have had something to do with that.
"'And they were never heard from again.'" The glow dimmed as Duke stated this, almost musingly, as if tasting the words. "Although, there will be none left to have heard of you..." The sounds of Duke's boots hitting the floor created by the spell he had unleashed while absorbing Aer. "...You were far more foolhardy than your plan..." A pair of steps, then the world was falling. Duke's boots moved right past his face, stepping over Estelle as the brick garden returned to below them. Pale blue light and faint chirping indicated that Duke had pulled his formula back into existence. "Perhaps it is for the best..." Calm footsteps. Surely Duke realized they weren't dead? Or did he simply not care, because they were incapacitated? "Humanity would not take well to the change you would impose upon them. It is better for them to simply disappear."
"Dammit.." That was Raven, grunting as he tried to keep awake, the old man grimacing at the ground and his lack of strength. "Yer.. givin' up, on everythin'?" The archer's fingers missed the pale man's boot as he walked past, altering a symbol or two there, stepping over the purple coated man to another point and writing symbols into a blank location that appeared.
"There was very little left for me to give up." Duke states, indicating just how little he felt for his own kind.
"Khroma... didn't want to see you do this." Judith tells him, watching as he moved to a new point and altered his formula. "Take revenge on your own kind."
"Such frail ties..." Duke murmurs, removing a symbol and adding a new one. "As I had told you then, I do not hold that bond as common race to be of any importance. Terca Lumireis is better off without humanity and all their foolish whims."
"You don't care? That you're giving up your life?" Estelle struggles to turn her head to watch him.
"Child of the Full Moon..." Duke stops where his boots are in her vision. "I had thought you, with your words to Phaeroh, would be more likely to understand." He turned from her, altering the formula again. "What do you need..." Dein Nomos returned to the man's hand as he rested the other on the glowing wall that represented his formula.
"Duke... stop!" Rita glares at him. "Just try our way, please, it will work!"
"You risked your life and plan in a gamble against my own and failed." Duke states, stripping a glove off and calmly dropping it while examining his palm. "I have no interest in testing your cause when your strength, your conviction, was not enough to best mine." Dein Nomos' edge was casually pressed against his palm, the hand closing then opening again. Blood stained finger traced a symbol, then studied the formula.
"There." The chirping slowly crescendos, and Duke stepped away from his walls. "Farewell, Brave Vesperia." Light faded and grew and washed out the world.
And Yuri woke cold. Second chapter
"Hey, Duke, pass me the bowl up on the top shelf." I heard him move from where he'd been standing and watching to do so.
"My name is not Duke." I turned at that, but the man holding the bowl near my face was indeed Duke, long mess of silvery hair and red eyes complete.
"Excuse me?" I took the bowl, frowning a little at him, setting it on the counter. "You're Duke Pantarei, unless you decided to change it." He shook his head, slightly, only to the left once then back.
"Duke is not my name."
"That doesn't make sense. You answer to Duke well enough, so..."
"Duke is a title. A rank of nobility." Duke, or perhaps I didn't know exactly how to refer to him now, explained a little haltingly. "Commandant Scifo's first name is not Commandant."
"Because Commandant would be a ridiculous first name. Duke isn't... as much."
"I ... was, the Duke of Pantarei house." Red eyes flick away from my face to turn down the heat on the stove. "To those who were not my... friends, I was simply... Duke Pantarei." He put emphasis on the first, and it began to sound more like a title than a first name.
"So... What is your first name?" He stilled as I watched him, his face tilting down a little in thought. Then a puzzled hint came over his blank expression as he tilted his head to the side. "... Something wrong?"
"..." he looked away, his arms slightly crossing in the way that said he still wasn't comfortable with the movement. "I... have forgotten..."
"You can forget your own first name?" A lifted eyebrow back at me and I waved off the question. "Well, you can forget your name without a hard hit to the head? Amnesia?"
"I have not used my first name in some time."
"How long is 'some time'?" I ask. "It's not like you can just... forget your own name after not writing it for a week, or something."
"...The last person who used my name..." the albino mumbled, then his expression closed off and he looked to the side, closing his mouth in the way that said he wasn't going to continue.
It wasn't hard to figure it out.
"Ah. Elucifur?" A slight twitch, then a slow nod. "Ten years still feels a bit odd."
"I had not used my name for signing documents or anything of that sort for several years prior to my enrollment in the Imperial knights." At my confused look, he explained. "I inherited the Pantarei house. I became the Duke of Pantarei." His parents had died. Oh. "It is not important to me. Pass me a stirring spoon."
"What? Oh." I did so, and the albino put his hair up, taking over cooking. After watching him for a moment as he stirred the rice in the pot, putting the lid back on, I wrapped my arms about him as he reached for a frying pan. He froze, glancing back at me from the corner of his eye. "If... it was important to me, knowing your first name..." He watched me for a moment, then another, before taking the pan he wanted down and glancing away.
"... I will try to recall." It was quiet, well, as quiet as he really could get, and he wasn't looking at me, so all signs pointed to him being embarrassed.
"... Thanks."
..... I can explain myself for the last one, really! I overthink things, that's what it is...
Series: Vesperia
Title: Black Opal and Scarlet
Genre: Death.
Rating: ... Death, mention of a lot of blood, and a cliffy indicating more violence.
Warnings: Sadness. Don't read while listening to Nylen/Niren from First Strike, especially because it oddly matches up. I didn't intend that... This is my less violent idea for Elucifur Death Scene.
Title: Black Opal and Scarlet
Genre: Death.
Rating: ... Death, mention of a lot of blood, and a cliffy indicating more violence.
Warnings: Sadness. Don't read while listening to Nylen/Niren from First Strike, especially because it oddly matches up. I didn't intend that... This is my less violent idea for Elucifur Death Scene.
"I know you do not care for the taste, but I have bought some Lemon-" Duke looked up then, and managed not to drop the pack of food and healing gels. Elucifur was where he had left him, but the dozen odd humans were new. They had all frozen at the sight of him, but he could see their weapons, the red that stained Elucifur further and shone on them. The great Entelexeia lay still.
"I thought you said Pantarei wouldn't be here!" One of the bloodied humans demanded from another. That snapped him from his shock. His blade was too far away. Fine.
"Elucifur!" His sight flickered over with the same color as his eyes and his soreness and exhaustion from the battle, flight, and tending his friend's wounds, vanished. "Holy Rain!" The rain his spell summoned glowed brightly, and the humans cried out. They turned from Elucifur to him, their blades running with the holy-charged waters and cleaned slowly of his friend's blood. "Guilty Resolver!" A flick of his hand enveloped half of them in violent light, startling the other ones into stumbling. "Flame Dragon!" the ground was lit up by a light he couldn't see, and the flame spell ripped through most of them, the magic carrying one up in its jaws. The last man looked panicked, and turned to try to stab into Elucifur. "Stop Flow!" A quick hit knocked the man down, the blade away and Duke bound his mouth and hands with the man's clothes, turning quickly to Elucifur. The adrenaline, or whatever it was, was fading.
"Elucifur!" Duke knelt by his friends head, dwarfed by the Entelexeia's size. One black-opal like eye opened weakly to blink at him, the normally bright, fiery colors dull. "Hold on! Healing Circle!" The lights formed and sank into his friend. Elucifur gave a great heavy sigh. It did nothing that he could tell; the great many wounds continued bleeding.
"T-turn into a Kritya!" Duke told his friend, removing his coat and pressing it against one of the larger slashes, leaning against it with his shoulder. "My Artes work better that way!"
"Duke..." Elucifur sighed, remaining as he was.
"Healing Circle!" Duke cast again. "Please, Elucifur! I can help you if you shift! I-I can't right now!" How that hurt inside as he applied more pressure to the wound, ignoring a half a dozen other visible wounds further along his friend's long body. "Healing Circle!" His coat was soaking through, staining his pale hair and skin red.
"Duke..." Elucifur rumbled, shifting.
"I can stop the bleeding – carry you to an Aer krene. Healing Circle! Please! I could-" Duke stopped talking as one of Elucifur's wings rested on his head.
"You are not listening." Elucifur told him, lifting his wing and half folding it against his side. "I cannot heal from this." Duke stared at him.
"You can!" Duke insisted. "You just need an Aer Krene, right? The-
"-Duke.-"
"re's one, not too far from here." Duke looked up at the sky, trying to remember where it had been. "I can carry-"
"-Duke. I am a dead Entelexeia." The albino swordsman froze at Elucifur's words, turning red eyes to his friend. "It is only a matter of time." Elucifur had turned his head, put his jaw on the ground and watched him with one dull eye.
"No!" But the fact that he was steadily staining more and more red from a wound he had tried to heal over and over again gave truth to the Entelexeia's words. "No! Healing Circle! Healing Circle! Healing Circle!" Duke struggled to keep casting the arte as his throat closed and the Aer he could call on dwindled. One of Elucifur's smaller claws grasped his hands, which he had pressed against the Entelexeia in effort to somehow, somehow get the healing from his Artes into his friend's body, and tugged him closer to his friend's face.
"Duke, nothing can be done." The hand shifted its grasp so that it held him about the shoulders and Duke sank against the side of his friend's face. He tried to swallow the burning that rose in his throat and pressed his face against the side of Elucifur's.
"I-is this how they repay you?" Duke demanded. "You practically won the war for the humans, and then they kill you!"
"Duke... Do not be consumed by anger to the whole of humanity..."
"Why shouldn't I? You save them, and they thank you by assaulting – murdering you!" Duke didn't quite shout, his throat was closing up too much for that, but his voice did rise. "We were allied with the Empire!" The men on the ground could have come from nowhere else.
"Duke." The small claw pushed his face toward the dulling eye. "Remember. Protect this world, our Terca Lumireis. Peace, for all living things." Elucifur's dull opal eye got some of its fire back, fragments of orange and violet catching the light. "Not just those monsters you manage to speak to, the Kritya and the Entelexeia. All living things."
"Y-yes." Duke felt tears now, and didn't bother stopping them now. The light to Elucifur's eyes dwindled.
"Promise me? To do your best?" It was strange to hear such a soft voice from such a large being.
"Yes." He promised. Elucifur sighed, closed his eye. "I promise, Elucifur." The Entelexeia leader didn't reply. "... Elucifur?" Duke pushed himself off his friends face, and the claw that had rested on his shoulder slid off.
Limp.
He whirled, eyes widening, to stare down his friends side.
The bleeding had stopped. A step back, and Elucifur's form shone slightly, then flashed bright.
When he opened his eyes again, all there was left of his friend was stained ground, shorn off feathers and scales, his soaked coat, and a crystal.
"Elucifur..." It came out choked, and a half step brought him over to the Apatheia. Elucifur had explained this, hadn't he? It was a mass of Aer.
It was all that was left but for memories.
Duke stared at the crystal, which lay serenely on the stained ground, glowing inside.
Humans had done this.
The man on the ground had been slowly inching away once the Stop Flow had worn off, watching, unable to make a noise as the war hero tried to heal his friend. Truth be told, he didn't want to make any noise. When the albino swordsman turned, his long white hair stained the same color as his eyes by his friend's blood, red smears on the side of his face and staining his red uniform-like clothes darker, he tried to move further away when those red eyes fixed on him. The man bent while slowly walking towards him, a blood gummed hand picking a blade from the ground – not his.
"...You... are going to tell me who ordered this." The last Pantarei's low voice was cold, deader than the Entelexeia behind him. "Whether you like it or not." Second chapter+
Series: Vesperia
Title: They were never heard from again...
Genre: Depressing stuff.
Rating: vague violence, not very high.
Warnings: Spoilers.
Title: They were never heard from again...
Genre: Depressing stuff.
Rating: vague violence, not very high.
Warnings: Spoilers.
Estelle gave a weak cry as Duke flickered into place in the air above her, Dein Nomos slamming into the ground and creating a shockwave that made the pinkette princess crumple.
"Damn it!" Raven swore, fishing in his pockets for a life bottle, and missed the war hero's return to the ground, and the shields that floated about him spiraling into a line. The floating man's statement as the pieces of metal fired was lost under Raven's cry as he too crumpled.
"No!" Rita quickly jumped into the air, activating a formula nearly identical to the one Duke used, quickly beginning to flick her scarf through the air. "Oh countless particles that wander the very heavens-" While Yuri scrambled for a life bottle, he heard Duke match Rita for casting. However, the pale man's chant was far shorter.
"I now unleash the full force of my life!" Yuri hated to dive away while Rita could not, but if he was left standing then he could revive the others. "Guilty Resolver!" Yuri gritted his teeth as Rita fell from the air, her body crashing into the ground.
"Damn it! Damn it!" He heard Karol yelp, Repede bark, Judith shout, and kept moving.
"Luna Rondo!"
"Destruction Street!"
He heard them go down just as fast. There! A life bottle. Yuri turned and booked it for Estelle, only to skid to a halt when Duke appeared before him, as if he had just slid into place.
"Dragon Swarm!" He clipped one of the shields, but completely missed the hero, spinning past him.
"Dragon Ascendant!" And Dein Nomos slammed into him, wreathed in flame.
"Screwed up." Yuri grunted, hitting the ground. Darkness hovered about the edge of his vision but didn't completely steal it away. The bright glow from Duke might have had something to do with that.
"'And they were never heard from again.'" The glow dimmed as Duke stated this, almost musingly, as if tasting the words. "Although, there will be none left to have heard of you..." The sounds of Duke's boots hitting the floor created by the spell he had unleashed while absorbing Aer. "...You were far more foolhardy than your plan..." A pair of steps, then the world was falling. Duke's boots moved right past his face, stepping over Estelle as the brick garden returned to below them. Pale blue light and faint chirping indicated that Duke had pulled his formula back into existence. "Perhaps it is for the best..." Calm footsteps. Surely Duke realized they weren't dead? Or did he simply not care, because they were incapacitated? "Humanity would not take well to the change you would impose upon them. It is better for them to simply disappear."
"Dammit.." That was Raven, grunting as he tried to keep awake, the old man grimacing at the ground and his lack of strength. "Yer.. givin' up, on everythin'?" The archer's fingers missed the pale man's boot as he walked past, altering a symbol or two there, stepping over the purple coated man to another point and writing symbols into a blank location that appeared.
"There was very little left for me to give up." Duke states, indicating just how little he felt for his own kind.
"Khroma... didn't want to see you do this." Judith tells him, watching as he moved to a new point and altered his formula. "Take revenge on your own kind."
"Such frail ties..." Duke murmurs, removing a symbol and adding a new one. "As I had told you then, I do not hold that bond as common race to be of any importance. Terca Lumireis is better off without humanity and all their foolish whims."
"You don't care? That you're giving up your life?" Estelle struggles to turn her head to watch him.
"Child of the Full Moon..." Duke stops where his boots are in her vision. "I had thought you, with your words to Phaeroh, would be more likely to understand." He turned from her, altering the formula again. "What do you need..." Dein Nomos returned to the man's hand as he rested the other on the glowing wall that represented his formula.
"Duke... stop!" Rita glares at him. "Just try our way, please, it will work!"
"You risked your life and plan in a gamble against my own and failed." Duke states, stripping a glove off and calmly dropping it while examining his palm. "I have no interest in testing your cause when your strength, your conviction, was not enough to best mine." Dein Nomos' edge was casually pressed against his palm, the hand closing then opening again. Blood stained finger traced a symbol, then studied the formula.
"There." The chirping slowly crescendos, and Duke stepped away from his walls. "Farewell, Brave Vesperia." Light faded and grew and washed out the world.
And Yuri woke cold. Second chapter
Series: Vesperia~
Title: The name of a Duke
Genre: Random quasi-fluffy awkwardness.
Rating: Just general
Pairings: Someone with Duke. Anyone at all.
Warnings: Random, awkward, very, very, vague. Just to end with something that isn't death.
Title: The name of a Duke
Genre: Random quasi-fluffy awkwardness.
Rating: Just general
Pairings: Someone with Duke. Anyone at all.
Warnings: Random, awkward, very, very, vague. Just to end with something that isn't death.
"Hey, Duke, pass me the bowl up on the top shelf." I heard him move from where he'd been standing and watching to do so.
"My name is not Duke." I turned at that, but the man holding the bowl near my face was indeed Duke, long mess of silvery hair and red eyes complete.
"Excuse me?" I took the bowl, frowning a little at him, setting it on the counter. "You're Duke Pantarei, unless you decided to change it." He shook his head, slightly, only to the left once then back.
"Duke is not my name."
"That doesn't make sense. You answer to Duke well enough, so..."
"Duke is a title. A rank of nobility." Duke, or perhaps I didn't know exactly how to refer to him now, explained a little haltingly. "Commandant Scifo's first name is not Commandant."
"Because Commandant would be a ridiculous first name. Duke isn't... as much."
"I ... was, the Duke of Pantarei house." Red eyes flick away from my face to turn down the heat on the stove. "To those who were not my... friends, I was simply... Duke Pantarei." He put emphasis on the first, and it began to sound more like a title than a first name.
"So... What is your first name?" He stilled as I watched him, his face tilting down a little in thought. Then a puzzled hint came over his blank expression as he tilted his head to the side. "... Something wrong?"
"..." he looked away, his arms slightly crossing in the way that said he still wasn't comfortable with the movement. "I... have forgotten..."
"You can forget your own first name?" A lifted eyebrow back at me and I waved off the question. "Well, you can forget your name without a hard hit to the head? Amnesia?"
"I have not used my first name in some time."
"How long is 'some time'?" I ask. "It's not like you can just... forget your own name after not writing it for a week, or something."
"...The last person who used my name..." the albino mumbled, then his expression closed off and he looked to the side, closing his mouth in the way that said he wasn't going to continue.
It wasn't hard to figure it out.
"Ah. Elucifur?" A slight twitch, then a slow nod. "Ten years still feels a bit odd."
"I had not used my name for signing documents or anything of that sort for several years prior to my enrollment in the Imperial knights." At my confused look, he explained. "I inherited the Pantarei house. I became the Duke of Pantarei." His parents had died. Oh. "It is not important to me. Pass me a stirring spoon."
"What? Oh." I did so, and the albino put his hair up, taking over cooking. After watching him for a moment as he stirred the rice in the pot, putting the lid back on, I wrapped my arms about him as he reached for a frying pan. He froze, glancing back at me from the corner of his eye. "If... it was important to me, knowing your first name..." He watched me for a moment, then another, before taking the pan he wanted down and glancing away.
"... I will try to recall." It was quiet, well, as quiet as he really could get, and he wasn't looking at me, so all signs pointed to him being embarrassed.
"... Thanks."
..... I can explain myself for the last one, really! I overthink things, that's what it is...
