Chapter Text
The war had only made Abyss larger. Only made his child hungrier, more desperate. Yuri had so many mouths to feed, and his network could only handle so much. But war also brought out some of the goodness of people. Yuri saw that Abyss came together. That those who could, did. That the merchants and farmers paid their dues and no one went too hungry. That the fighters kept the bandits away, that the violent and the angry were put to work. After all, this den of vice, this forgotten lonely underground, it was Yuri's child. And this was war, the children had to be protected.
But mouths, they whispered, and Yuri had long ago learned to listen to the whispers. They told him where the soldiers were, what went on in the cities even as Garreg Mach was left to crumble. Perhaps it was better that way. No one looked underneath the ruins. No one sought out the crumbling cathedral, where Yuri liked to sit and think, and see the stars. But it had been months since Yuri had been able to leave his crying child. Operatives came to him. Meetings moved underground. The war crept closer, and his child cried. Cried of hunger, cried of the way she swelled with more people than her streets could hold. Cried of the dark and the fear and the soldiers and the bandits and the beasts that came closer and closer. It was all Yuri could do to keep up.
They whispered of a beast who had taken residence in the cathedral. A madman, who knelt before the ruins and prayed to the dead. A monster, who killed when they came too close, bathed in blood, darkness where his eye should be and a grin dripping with the viscera of his kills. They whispered and they prayed to the long dead gods of the Abyss and to the Goddess who had forgotten her lands and her people. Said that the monsters lived there now, the Goddess could no longer return. Not with the cathedral bathed in blood. The only prayers the mad litanies of the dead.
And so Yuri found themselves staring at the cathedral doors. Wondering what kind of beast lay behind them. Yuri was armed, and their spellbooks were full, and they were ready to fight if they had to. Had seen the kinds of monsters the war dead landscape had unleashed. If it was one of those, in the cathedral, Yuri didn't know if they could take it alone. But if it was just a man.
Well, the madness of war was somehow worse.
But the thing in the cathedral was neither. The hulking matted mess of cloak, the bonelike weapon that twitched and breathed alive in his gauntlet hand. The filthy blond hair. His back was turned, but he stilled, he heard the doors. Breathed his prayers. Dead bandits, dead soldiers lay around him in a grotesque tableau of the ghosts he prayed to. All Yuri could do was stop, stare. This wasn't a beast, and this wasn't a man. But it was, undeniably, the King of Faerghus.
And he was a mess. He was buried in what had once been a sumptuous cloak, now run near black with blood and matted fur, the elaborate colors and designs unrecognizable. His armor seemed to fuse to his body in places, dark, dented, a part of him. And as he got closer, the eye. Dear Goddess above, the eye. Or what had once been an eye, now a black mess, a hole. A gore filled, infected, void that saw the ghosts. Yuri looked at him and they knew, that was where he saw the ghosts, where that eye once had been. Because the other looked at Yuri, and saw nothing at all.
"Go." The mad king growled.
Yuri didn't move. Met the one remaining brilliant blue eye, that beautiful oceanic eye, and didn't move. Defiance, or maybe stupidity, but Yuri stood up to the beast that loomed over him.
"You do not belong here." The beast continued, his gauntlet creaking around the shaft of his spear, making it beat pulsing like a heart, curling in on itself, it was alive, somehow.
But Yuri saw a boy who had been made to grow up too fast. Orphaned, given all the weight of the world. No one saw the boy, they saw the crown, the potential. The horrifying strength of the Crest of Blaiddyd. They saw a fighter, a prince. The future of their kingdom. Yuri saw all his fears, all the ghosts he wanted to live for. And they didn't move away.
They took in the sight of him, all the mess, all the filth. All the pain that the man had taken on and taken in. The weight of the world that had sunk into his shoulders.
"Go."
"You're hurt. And hungry. Let me help you." Yuri lifted their chin to meet his eye more directly. To show he was unafraid of the mad king, that he was real.
But the king snarled, and turned away from him. Said nothing. And it was like Yuri wasn't there, the way he stared into the wreckage, began to murmur again, to speak to things that weren't there. People long dead. Like Yuri had never been there.
So all Yuri could do was leave him be. The prince, the mad king, he would need care. He would need more medicine than Yuri had on their person, a meal. Water. A clean cloth to parse what was blood and what was open wound. He needed someone who would sit and speak to him. All things Yuri could give, and would give, but not with what they had on them. All they had was a sword, a few curatives. Not enough to mend this madness. This beast seemed a hopeless cause.
But Yuri had taken on the crying mouths of the Abyss. The hungry refugees abandoned by war. Castoffs and unwanted. Hopeless causes. Like the mad thing in the cathedral. Taken them in and loved them all.
He had a soft spot for the hopeless, the weak. The pitiful, starving things no one else wanted. Yuri cared for them, perhaps in a way they had always sought care themselves. Loved, the way they had always sought love.
And so they wouldn't yet give up on the mad king of Faerghus.