Cor isn't Immortal. They *say* he is, but he bleeds just like any other man.
His husband *is*, and he's kept that secret for a very long time. Until now, of course, because fate and authorial interest demand it.
The blast catches him by surprise.
Frag grenades, in a barrage at close range. The shield comes into being on reflex, but Cor is not exactly well-versed in magic, so it only mitigates the damage rather than negate it entirely.
“Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” comes the mocking singsong voice, as the smoke clears and Cor catches a sight of the garish golden gleam of the MT armor.
Fuck.
He stands up, limbs loose and sword back at his hand, ignoring the places where his body is screaming at him.
“Ulldor,” Cor says, well aware that, despite it all, the gloating asshole is not going to be able to resist temptation and talk his ear off.
“Oh, what an honor to be recognize by such an illustrious peer,” Caligo says, his fucking monstrosity of a golden MA swaying forward as he approached.
Cor reckons he has one or two good hits still left in him, at least until he cracks a potion to recover some. But Ulldor isn’t a greenhorn that can be easily cowered simply by being in the presence of the Immortal, so Cor can buy enough time to use his provisions. Ulldor, despite how much Cor personally dislikes the bastard, is in fact capable. Skilled enough to pose a threat, even on a good day, much less when he is on the back step after a successful ambush.
“Do you really think we’re peers?” Cor asks, eyebrows arched as he ignores the sound machine guns realigning as they take aim at him, a few dozen red lasers pointing at his body. “You’re a general now, aren’t you, Ulldor?” Cor grins mockingly. “And me?”
A kukri flies into the side of the cockpit, blade embedding into the reinforced glass like it was butter.
Cor takes advantage of Caligo’s hesitation to duck out of the line of fire, bracing against a piece of wall debris as Nyx appears seconds later, slamming into place with the force of a tac-nuke made of magic. Cor cracks the potion open and huddles as the screaming of fire and magic eventually dies out, leaving behind a sizable crater and about half an inch of pulverized dust.
Cor stands up slowly, wounds closing much slower than Nyx’s: entire patches of skin growing back where the force of the impact tore him to pieces.
“I’m just the vanguard,” Cor says, watching Nyx lean over and pluck his kukri out of the wreckage. “Funny how they never figure out to ask for whom, huh?”
“Better that way, really,” Nyx replies, throwing him a hi-elixir that Cor cracks open when he catches it.
The last of his wounds close up, and the kick of adrenaline has him back at full power before the green sparkles finish dying off.
“What’s the matter, afraid of what title they’d give you, if they knew you existed?” Cor asks, walking fully into Nyx’s personal space, so he can kiss him.
“I mean, yeah,” Nyx replies, laughing even as he kisses back. “Imagine if I got something gaudy like the Immortal or some shit?”
Cor shoves him off remorselessly, even though his eyes dance while Nyx laughs and gracefully recovers without stumbling.
“C’mon, Safay Roth is still inbound for Caem,” Cor says staring down the plains towards the lone lighthouse in the distance.
“You go ahead,” Nyx replies, snickering. “Like a proper vanguard! I’ll clean up the stragglers before catching up.”
Nyx crouches for a moment, before he leaps back up into the sky, lightning, storm clouds and cawing crows. Cor watches him go for a moment, as he then lands with another explosive show about half a mile further back. The end result is a crater and no survivors. Based on intel he swiped from an outpost half a month ago, the Nilfs are convinced Lucis has built a canon that allows the King to fire concentrated magic rounds with destructive precision.
Cor supposes that’s better than them figuring out the truth and putting a face and a name to his husband and his ludicrous habit to bring in the heat, as he likes to say, everywhere he goes. Outside of this – Regis’ orders, which wrap around Cor’s throat like a leash and which Nyx knows better than to rip off, lest he breaks his neck in the process – they live a fairly quiet life. Small house in the outskirts of Insomnia. Terrible, recurrent correspondence with Nyx’s family in Galahd. Hanging out with all of Cor’s friends, who are all assholes like him.
Quiet and peaceful and utterly boring.
Ah well.
Cor leaps down into the rocky path and starts running at a fast clip. No magic, no fancy Nilf drugs to make it easier or faster. Just good old fashioned muscle power. It’s carried him this far, after all.
And again, the point of the vanguard is not to crush the opposition.
“Cor Leonis,” comes the acknowledgement, before Safay Roth opens fire at him, four miles away from the Caem outskirts where Regis is waiting. “Shall we test how truly Immortal your King’s magic makes you?”
Cor grins at him, as the smell of petrichor hits his nose.
Above them, the Storm congeals.
“Sure,” Cor says, grip tight on the handle of his sword. “If you think you’ve got what it takes.”
The point of the vanguard is to stall until the main force arrives.
Safay Roth is dead before Cor finishes unsheathing his sword.
Reposting this with the addition of the warning that I will fucking kill you if your response to this post is to accuse me of not reading the books, or not knowing how to read, or any other ableist classist bullshit.
I fucking hate you useless stan fuckwads who cannot even handle a fucking poor person pointing out basic fucking classism in a book series you like.
Don't you pathetic fucking sacks of shit dare to call yourselves anticapitalists if you literally cannot handle even reading a post pointing these basic fucking facts out.
Do not fucking reblog this post to accuse me of not reading these fucking books. I will fucking kill you.
Original fucking post you classist sacks of shit lost the privilege of reblogging:
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How come all the people we ever meet in The Murderbot Diaries who are not literal slaves are all already upperclass academics?
Where the fuck are the dock workers? The laborers? The miners? The farmers? The burger flippers?
Where are the actual poor people???????????????????
Why are they all upper class?????????
And I just know that a bunch of rich fuckers or their bootlickers are gonna go "they're all equally poor in the eyes of the billionaires <3 and I'm telling you now to shut the fuck up.
Where are my fellow poor people in this supposedly anti-capitalist series? Why is everyone we meet a doctor or highly specialized researcher of some kind????
Where the fuck are the poor people?????????????????????????????????????????????????????
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The only actually poor people we ever fucking see in this whole series are the people from book 2 who were demonized the whole entire time as being The Most Obnoxious and Horrible People Ever To Exist, and then victim blamed for getting fucking *sold into slavery*.
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Free fucking blocklist for the classist fuckers who decided that hijacking my original post to ~do propaganda~ for these racist, ableist, classist, exorsexist books. I fucking hate you people:
And if you reblog this post with stan fucking bullshit or reblog anyone else's attempts to do that, your name will be added to this list and people who actually fucking care about poor people will know you're a useless sack of shit who can't even handle basic fucking observable facts of a book series you like being acknowledged.
You do not get to fucking put your worse than useless stan bullshit on my fucking post and call yourself anticapitalist. Especially if you are also fucking currently joining Martha Wells in shilling for Apple by praising their racist whitewashing TV show.
Every single time you worse useless fucks add your stan shit to my posts my hatred for these books and the bigotry they are spreading increases ten fucking fold.
Do not fucking dare to put your classist ableist shit on my fucking post. Block me and move the fuck on with your life if you literally think pointing out basic fucking facts of the books is a crime.
ficlet prompt: The first time Nyx realized that Cor is in fact a lazy cat of a man.
Nyx moved in that very same day they arrived in Insomnia.
After lunch, and defiantly ignoring the whispers all around, Cor takes him and Prompto back to his office, where Nyx is introduced to his second in command, a quiet-looking, not at all scary lady named Monica, that takes one look at Nyx, and Prompto hanging off tenaciously off Nyx's braids, and then summarily smacked Cor with the binders in her hands and commanded him to let Nyx go home. Because Cor not only allowed this but looked vaguely sheepish about being called out about it, Nyx revised his previous assessment and decided Monica was probably a little scary.
Cor's office was spacious and hidden somewhere behind a labyrinth of identical corridors full of identical, unmarked black doors, up in the Crownsguard floors of the Citadel that Nyx had only ever known about in theory, not practice. They waited there for a few hours while Cor gathered up a staggering amount of papers - actual papers, which Nyx had always thought was dumb, considering everything in Insomnia was digital one way or another, but who was he to comment on it - and then guided them back to his car in the underground parking lot. By then Prompto was hungry again - and so was Nyx, but Nyx would rather die that bring it up, all things considered - and so Cor drove them to a small dinner in the backstreets around the residential district just beyond the limits of the citadel district. And the food was good and at no point Cor asked how Nyx was going to pay for his share of it.
And then, finally, at long last, Cor took them back to his apartment.
He lived in one of those massive towers that had always rubbed Nyx the wrong way because he couldn't quite not see it as a weird way to pack too many people in too small a place. It looked eerily pristine, clean floors and clean windows and nothing really out of place. Nyx followed Cor with raising nervousness, somewhat amused that the prospect of a campfire in the middle of enemy territory suddenly looked far more welcoming than, well. All of this. And then Cor put his stack of papers on the beautiful dining table, put his wallet and his keys on Nyx's hand, and then sauntered over to the couch that neatly divided the massive room into two functional halves. He moved with resolute steps, and then let himself fall face first into it with all the grace of a three legged goat: that is to say, not much at all.
Nyx blinked.
Then blinked again.
"...Marshal?"
When he made up his mind to approach, he realized Cor had summarily passed out. And on that day, after he made up his mind and decided to explore the apartment - two bedrooms, one bathroom, on kitchen and the world's most depressing balcony looking into the building itself rather than the outside world - since Prompto and himself but mostly Prompto desperately needed a bath, that was the day Nyx Ulric lost all ability to be afraid of Cor Leonis.
More so when Cor remained there a grand total of twenty solid hours, blissfully unconscious, and upon waking - and nearly scaring Nyx into an early grave - shooed him off his attempts to boil some water and instead cooked them all a nice lunch.
Nyx supposed there were worse roommates in the world. And anyway, it wasn't like he was going to stay long. Maybe a week. A week and a half, tops. It'd be fine.
For your colors:
Charcoal, because you make me think and re examine a lot of my own notions and biases, while still cracking my brain open like an egg about fic too. Steel, because your taste is the same as mine and that's fun. Lilac, because I adore you and when I see your posts I grin to myself. Mulberry, even though I'm Ace, because the characters need to smooch. Carmine, platonically and for the same reason. Saphire, gently and lovingly fascinated by your stories and thoughts and impressions. And Raspberry, because there's nobody else I would go godslaying with, or have half as much fun doing it with.
I would have added Forest, but you're not the stpidest motherfucker alive, even though I love you <3
dfgñsjdfgdfgsdfgsdfg
I do argue I am phenomenally stupid, tho. But you're a true friend and don't hold it against me. I love you.
What does the Royal Retinue (any verse) listen to for music?
Alternatively: Aulea and Titus go!
See, I'm going Regis' because I'm biased but also because I don't know that there's an English equivalent for the music I headcanon Regis being into, and forcing onto his friends.
