alistair gets crowned

Alistair is sixteen years old when he takes the crown. Sovereignty had become a namesake of his, he’d found, imbued into his destiny the moment he was born. Fate was too juvenile a precept to believe in— tragic, puerile words that dripped between the gnashing teeth of those it pitied— but were he any less thoughtful, he could have guessed this was just as much fate as anything else.

It is a brilliant ceremony, when it finally comes time; the necessary match to strike the fire in the hearts of a frost-bitten people. The north is as cold and bitter as its citizens, unyielding in prospect, relentlessly unforgiving. Such is the duty, then, of its king, to maintain its fortitude. His father taught him the magnitude of responsibility that came with the title, wove it into his livelihood with apt skill— so much so, then, that he would have thought nothing of it otherwise. 

The crown itself is a brilliant sheen, cast in steel and a scathing heat the king is expected to represent. His father handles it with reverence, his elbows dip with a weight unexpected of its appearance. But Alistair simply sits and watches it, the spectacle— the white noise of murmurs, his peoples’ murmurs, that do nothing but fall quiet on his ears. 

When he rises to speak, crowned, that murmur turns to a thunderous wave of cheering, but even that meaningless sound is nothing more than an amplification of white noise. He speaks, as eloquent and occasional as he needs to be, all manners, promises of a future defined only by its success— a success he is sure to ensure. It is what he knows as truth. That promise was one engrained in his childhood; there was no doubt toward its posterity, only the means in which it would be obtained. 

When he finishes his address, he turns to his father. The ceremony hall has long since cleared out, by now, the celebration of the event tapering off to the rest of the kingdom.

They walk to the edge of the room, the two of them, ascend the grand stairs to the throne in silence. His father exudes an odd happiness, unfamiliar to Alistair; it is the overwhelming presence of triumph, of glory. Alistair walks in front of him, scales the steps with luxury-bred confidence, despite having never walked to the top before now. The crown feels weightless on his head, practically an afterthought, like it was known he’d be destined to wear it and was tailored accordingly. 

He takes his seat at the pinnacle, high above the ground he’d stood to address his subjects. His father stands by his side, at the arm of the throne, arms folded. Finally, he speaks, much too simply for a man of his status and with an unusual chill to his voice. “How does it feel?”

Alistair does not answer. He simply sets his gaze on the hall before him, in all its smallness from their height. How very towering, he must be, to any that dared step at the foot of the throne; what great power his predecessors before him must have held. And what great image, then, he would hold— his father spoke with a great reverence in his voice the light he’d cast on this kingdom. The magnificence he’d bring along with it— him, wielder of that title, tyrant king of the North.

It is a hefty responsibility. He does not look away from it. It was a weight he was prepared to carry on his shoulders every moment of his childhood— trepidation would yield nothing for him if not failure.

Two years later, he is on the battlefield.

The air is tinged with iron. Dark clouds loom heavy over the sky; they trap that smell of blood to the earth, force its hand and make it cling to the ground from which it was drawn. His sword, too, is wrought in it, red to its very handle. 

Ghastly faces of pallor corpses litter the ground, haunted by the dreams they may never hope to articulate. Whatever deeds they’d left unfinished rested solely on the shoulders of the living, now; but Alistair had no such interest burdening the weight of their foolishness for facing against him. The consequence of having the feet to stand against his will was losing them if they did not possess the fire to combat Alistair's. 

Particularly in his focus, amongst the waves of death, of pale nothingness, was one soldier. Nothing about him was remarkably outstanding— he had fought Alistair with the same, trained diligence any man of an army was taught to, died as meaningless a death as was expected of him. But what stood out about this soldier, marked him more prominently than any of the others, was the manner in which he had died.

He had perished by Alistair’s hand. The man had charged at the king with valor, a sworn promise to fell him marked in the soldier's soul; and by that same determination, he had died. Foolishly and slaughtered without so much as an afterthought, by Alistair’s hand. What was he to feel about it; stripping a man away of his life’s goal with one simple cut from his sword? Perhaps regret. Pity. No such feeling settled in his soul. 

It had been the first man he’d killed. It would most certainly not be the last— that he knew well. And yet, the violence did not bother him— the viscera, the deliberate understanding that he had stripped from a being what they could never hope to gain again. It was an ideal to be met with contempt by some of his peers, an unfortunate necessity. Those who stand against his kingdom must expect its wrath against them. At age eighteen, he had understood that more than anything.

Victory won, he departs the battlefield. His troops stay behind to see to the carnage. His father waits with them, too, and perhaps to revel in their success; the prime violence of it all. In their wake, Alistair returns to the throne room. It is quiet, with the same, looming air of war, suffocating and thick, though it serves a peculiar comfort as a place of solace. 

He ascends the stairs. Two years after his coronation, he still makes his way up them with the same confidence, though time has made each step upwards familiar. Those grooves in the steel iron from years of use only deepen, he'd found, that dreadful wear and tear from the constant traffic flowing up and down them by kings, tyrants, those of power and status. 

Alistair continues his ascent, footsteps echoing bluntly against the vast walls. He walks in the shadows of those leaders, the darkness they cast along the iron-clad stairwell.

That the expectation he would live to outcast their shadows did not worry him in the slightest— he knew, in the same way he knew swordsmanship and taciturn sophistication, that he would burn so bright, it would be as if those shadows had seldom existed before him.