Manon's Ascension

Building Bonds

Building Bonds

Firmin Didier, former general of Gascony, could be called the father of the war that had so decisively divided the two kingdoms as bitter enemies. Sabine, former queen of Gascony, had been driven mad by the assassination of her husband right in front of her eyes. In an effort to try to sooth some of her insanity, Firmin, in her name, had begun the war with the deliberate intent of killing the queen of Vasconia in an attempt to make it 'even' in an equally insane hope that such an act might help heal her broken mind.

Firmin was also Jacques' sire.

The man Jacques called father, the one who loved and raised him into the man he had become, was the former king of Gascony, once prince of Vasconia. He didn't love his wife, not like she loved him, but he loved the son that came from her body. Though he had known that Jacques couldn't be his as he was sterile, he adored him regardless.

Jacques' sire, by contrast, was an emotionless void that felt nothing for his son. The only thing he seemed to care about was Sabine. And not in a loving, devoted, loyal kind of way. She was his obsession. The only thing that seemed to have any meaning in his world. Jacques was the product of Firmin's rape of Sabine.

When Ambraude had been conquered, the mad queen had been captured. Insomuch as a completely mad woman could be captured. She hadn't even seemed to notice they were there, much less realized what was going on outside of her room.

And now, she was gone. Secreted out of the kingdom along with the ship that had taken away King Cyrille. Both of them giving up their thrones to their children and both of them retreating to the far south, to the Aqua Isles, where they could both hopefully heal from their losses.

But the day of Ambraude's invasion, Firmin had disappeared. He had been seen at the start of the battle, trying to defend his home, but as the tides turned and their losses became heavy, he had abandoned the city, his army, even Queen Sabine. No one had been able to find him and, though they hadn't really given up the search and he was still a wanted man with a heavy price on his head, they had more important things to turn their attention towards than tracking down one powerless man.

But they kept the former queen's departure a secret because they knew, one day, he would inevitably be drawn back to the source of his obsession.

And here they were, proven right.

Jacques and Manon returned with all haste back to Ambraude. By the time they arrived, there were two more reported sights of Firmin, but they had been on opposite sides of the city and, by the time the new city guard had arrived, he was gone.

"Do we really think it's him?" Manon asked as Jacques re-read the three different reports on the disgraced general's return. Really, nothing more than hearsay and a description from the witness that had been deemed reliable and plausible.

"I think we can't afford to assume it's not," he growled, hatred clear in his voice.

Though he had sired him, Jacques had no love for the man that should be his father. For the rape of his mother, for the deaths of his people, for the abuse to himself that he had suffered at his hands, Jacques loathed the man with every fiber of his being.

"Jacques, please, put the reports down," Manon begged, standing beside him as he sat at his desk. His hair was askew from how many times he had run his fingers through it in frustration. It was late and the bags under his eyes broadcast just how tired he was. Manon didn't mind having to do the majority of the work today so he could focus on this, but she didn't want Jacques to become completely lost in his search for the man that had caused all this pain and death. Not when, at the moment, he wasn't a threat to them.