Heron Lake Plateau What a wonderful world

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The Hound of The Gilded Sea.

By the tradition set by Atlas himself, once-patriarch of the Medeiros family, it was Atlas II who would inherit their legacy. Their oldest brother, so loathed by their father and so adored by the siblings he'd helped raise, had always looked ahead to his future with a steady acceptance. Until the fire. Until Rose.

Everything had changed, then. Abruptly Atlas's favored daughter was nothing more than a broken possession to be sold at a discount, his oldest son a flawed blade wrought with far too many imperfections to ever be wielded, and Tybault... well, Tybault was the only one he'd still trusted in the end.

Get fucked, you old cunt, had been his last words to his father.

Nothing had ever tasted so sweet as the betrayal in his eyes.

Yet there were nights when he missed him, missed The Gilded Sea, if only because it was the one time in his life anyone had looked at him with hope in their eyes. Hope for his future, for what he might become. He'd been made a twisted thing in his father's image, but at least someone had looked at him and thought that they might one day be proud of all that he was.

His siblings had nothing to give but their pity and their disappointment. Poor Tybault, forced to be something he never was; awful, evil Tybault, trying to control them again. But he knew them. He knew that, left to their own devices, they would only ever turn to wildfire spiraling out of control. Their father had been wrong about so many things, but he'd been right about that.

So he'd dimmed his own fire to be something more like the rain. Something like a storm to stand against the flames, to bring solace the only way he knew how. The way he'd been taught.

What no one ever told him was that a Medeiros was a flame, that it was woven into their souls in strands of sunlight — and that when the flame died, so would he.

He was dying.

Or he would have been, were it not for a certain ember whose tireless work kept his flame burning low but steady. Each day his strength returned to him a little more. Each day he roused, just a little, sometimes with a few muzzy blinks of his golden eyes or a low whine of pain under his breath. Never more than that.

Until today.

Today he stirred at the sound of Reina's voice, catching a few words here and there while he slowly registered each new and agonizing aspect of his existence. He was aware first that his mouth was dry; next that the rest of him was aflame, or — or, no, it only felt that way. Tybault blinked, straining to lift his head only to find his nape scabbed and tearing painfully when he moved. He groaned softly and let his head fall back to the ground.

For a time he could do nothing but listen to her song. In The Gilded Sea she would have been a singer, like him. Here, she was nothing but a broken thing calling out to a world that would never listen.

Like him.

Tybault sighed, closing his eyes again. After a time he managed to speak, though his voice was rough with disuse. Gemstones, huh? Got one for severe ass pain? He huffed a brief laugh. Did that fucker get my tail? Honestly, he wasn't sure he wanted to look for himself.