Messmer
He opened his eyes in their shared bed, feeling the warm touch of Rellana against his chest as she slept peacefully beside him. Despite his sorry lot in life, he did always feel peace whenever she was at his side. Yet, when she was not, he often felt the horrible bite of his curse flare again.
Raising from his bed with a modest groan of discomfort, the lock and pop of joints long strained with age he had not quite realized had passed. He had been in these lands, this prison, for far longer than sanity should ever had allowed.
"Mmm... Messmer..." He heard his heartfelt knight whisper. Stroking her hand, he raised it for a kiss and then laid it back down to rest as he rose to his feet to dress. Rellana deserved to savor the rest she could get, but the red son had much still to read, to learn, to decipher.
He carried himself quickly with a tossel of his robe to the library, settling back into the old tomes that began detailing the crushing of the misbegotten and omen. These were details he knew too well already, and his mind began to wander away to memories of a distant time.
...
"Mama!" A far younger messmer cried as he rushed into the stone lined chamber of his mother. He hugged to her knee and sniffled, aching terribly in his heart. "It hurts..."
The one who would become a God gently stroked his hair. She felt his anxiety and his pain. She understood how terribly he hurt in his heart every day as that thing wriggled against and within his soul. She had wept many nights for his suffering. Yet there was seemingly no cure for his cursed soul.
"I am so sorry..." She whispered down as a gentle hand lifted him up into her arms and rested his head to her bosom. Often, the rhythm of her heartbeat soothed the pain, and slowly, as he grew calmer, she knew it once more had worked. Yet, she feared the day it no longer would. The cursed thing that bore through his soul every day troubled her immensely, and it left her to wonder what grave omen it meant for her first child.
"Rest here, my sweet Messmer. Rest and be safe." She whispered tenderly to her, then only son, lightly stroking his head as the thrumming ache began to fade back into only a memory as sleep once more took hold of him. It was the rare moments like these that he truly found peace, embraced in the arms of his mother.
...
Messmer
He snapped from his idle thoughts as a knight of his lightly tapped his shoulder. "Hm..? What is it, Jacob?" He turned to see the tall and spindly knight. His clothes were never quite fit, for he was tall yet spindly with a surprisingly sturdy frame for a man who seemed like a stiff breeze would take him out. One would be further shocked to learn his preferred weapon was a greataxe that could fell trees and single swing, further still that he could lift the damnable thing.
"It seems... someone has arrived." The man said with a quietly shocked expression as his hood slipped by to briefly show his closely shaved head of brown fuzz matched by the slight stuble of his square chin.
"It is far too early for one of your jokes, Jacob." The red prince muttered.
"It... isn't a joke."
"Excuse me?"
Messmer ran behind his knight as he met up with his companion. A shorter knight of rugged face and feathery salt and pepper hair who often was found sipping at the ale stocks yet never once failed his duties. Said Knight was currently leaning over the far wall in shock.
"You may want to see this..." Russtafor offered his prince the viewing glass as the two moved to give him space to view.
Messmer looked down the old brass rod and through the set of lenses to see far in the distance, a very faint and gentle golden glow. "No..." He muttered to himself.
He knew then who it was, and he was shaken to his core as the memories of his younger brother came flooding back like a hurricane.
...
"So, you are the eldest?" The soft voice of the golden locked child spoke, yet it carried the weight and authority of age the boy's face did not otherwise carry. He was a small boy, perhaps only a preteen in stature, with locks comparable only to their shared mother in glimmering beauty. His face was still slightly rounded with the pudge of youth, and his eyes glowed with the grace of gold brighter than the red prince had ever seen.
"Yes..." He had answered cautiously. Blood they were, yet he could not shake this feeling of unease beside this kin. "I am Messmer. I have been away for some time at the recon of our mother. I am visiting from the shadowlands to get a missive from her."
"Shadowlands?" The young Miquella had asked. "What are those?"
"A dark and unpleasant land." Was all he was willing to respond to at first.
"Is that all that lies there? How dull. Why would you seek to go back?"
"Well, I watch over that territory since Mother's ascension. I was there at the day of her rise to godhood."
"You were???" The boy asked with a rather fervent and sudden curiosity. It did little to rest the unease in Messmer.
"Yes. It was a gruesome business that I would rather not revisit." He spoke with a finality on the subject.
"How was it done??" The boy pressed.
Messmee contemplated his answer for a few moments. He watched his younger brother's eyes with an analytical gaze. "Do not concern yourself with such things. There shan't be another god until Mother's fall, and that is a dawn that shall never rise."
The boy pouted, folding his arms over his white silk dress. "Hmph." Messmer strangely found this endearing before his eyes slightly narrowed, and he stepped back for a moment. Something told him to keep his distance. The boy began to speak again, only for the red prince to grunt quietly as he gripped his chest.
"Messmer?" He asked quietly, a bit confused by the sudden shift.
"I need to leave." With only those words, he departed. A hasty retreat, but he wasn't sure which had spurred him quicker. The sudden pain of the serpent, or the haunting feeling of the boy he had left in the library. He hoped his fears were just anxiety, but he was rarely so wrong.
...
Messmer
"Prepare all men. Everyone at arms. EVERYONE." He shouted as Russtafor blew on his old trumpet, resonating the castle with the sounds of incoming war. A rush spread through their halls as metal and men moved to prepare. Miquella was here, and Messmer knew that he could only spell disaster for them all. After all, his fears had been right. He should have listened to them all those years ago.