The peace that formerly reigned in Terra Nova has eroded, now little more than a memory. War ravages the continent. Disputes divide kingdoms; ideals divide families. The quest for power consumes absolutely and indiscriminately. None are immune to its allure.
Who will rise and who will fall? Only time—and ambition—will tell.
UPDATES
05.26.2023
2 month character creation hold for all existing members begins 6/5/2023. Ended 8/5/2023.
10.29.2023
Change in how times flows. Was 4 IC seasons, now only 2 IC seasons per 1 OOC year.
5 whole years of Heir Apparent goodness! When I started the site, I knew I was hunkering down for the long haul, but I never could have predicted the numerous twists and turns this roleplay site has seen. Hundreds of plots, characters, and members have come and gone, all leaving marks on the site. I am so very thankful for those who have invested. Because you keep coming back, keep getting on, and keep writing, Heir Apparent has the legacy it does today. Three cheers to us!
Kat still felt bad for Octavius. While they weren't a pair anymore, that didn't mean that the past few months had been for nothing. She had changed a little bit as a person. But now she was getting to do something that was perfect for her. A lone assignment where she could fly under the radar. That had basically been her job when she was working the streets. And now she was going to get paid to do it, and get private tutors from the military. It was ideal, even if it meant withdrawing back into her shell a little.
Either way she strode into the infirmary, walking over to the witch in charge when a familiar face caught her gaze. Was it wrong to kick a man when he was down? Especially when it was your pair that put him there? Well really it was Stormcrest's big mouth but that was neither here nor there. But a light bit of bullying was good for the soul. It was normal, and it was very Kat.
Clearly no one else was going to step up or was better for the job. "Stormcrest. How's the loud mouth?" It was hilarious. And he was obviously fine anyways. Probably.
It was day two in the infirmary, and Ber had recovered enough to start feeling a little bored during the somewhat more frequent times he wasn’t somewhere between asleep and unconscious. Much of the fog that had clouded his head the previous day had cleared, leaving behind a headache that refused to fade. As far as he was concerned, the world was still a little too bright and a little too loud for his tastes, but perhaps the most significant difference of all was that he was starting to remember for himself what had happened after he’d yelled at Regan.
Only bits and pieces, but what he did recall was enough to have his heart start racing. Despite that, he couldn’t help but linger on his fragmented memories.
The distraction she offered was the only reason a tiny part of Ber was grateful for Katerina Winters’ otherwise entirely unwanted appearance. Then she marched up to the side of his bed, opened her loud mouth, and he decided that he could do without her company after all. He made a show of looking around the infirmary, ignoring how the movement made his head throb a little more. “I’m sorry, Winters, did someone ask you to be here? Because it wasn’t me.”
Kat wasn't one to care if she was welcome or not. She would go where she wanted to go, and talk to who she wanted to. In this case, he was stranded, so what Berengar wanted was not something that really mattered. He was stuck, and now he got to be her verbal punching bag.
Life had been hard enough for her, he could take a couple more minutes of annoyance. "That's Officer Winters to you private. I'd ask if you were going to run away but..." Looking him over, her pair probably would have wanted her to be kind to the kid his werewolf form beat up. But she wasn't paired with Octavius anymore. So Berengar would just have to deal with it.
Ber’s eyes narrowed, and he peered at her for a moment, trying to judge whether she was trying to pull one over him or not. If she was, then he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of falling for it and taking her seriously. If she wasn’t, then he quietly cursed whoever had made that horrible decision because more power only made people like Winters more intolerable. Unable to tell from her expression, he opted for a clearly skeptical but slightly less hostile, “Okay, and since when were you an officer?” Just in case.
He wished he could cross his arms, but with his arm in the sling, it was not to be. Instead. he opted for merely leveling an unimpressed look at her as she assessed him in turn. “Your promotion hasn’t improved your sense of humor,” Ber responded, still skeptical about the veracity of her claim even as he erred on the safe side and spoke as if it were true. At least if she had to stop by, it had been today and not yesterday, when he definitely wouldn’t have been able to keep up with her - though if she had actually been promoted, then he would hardly be able to address her like he was accustomed to anyway. The witch before him was a walking abuse of power. “And for the record, my legs work fine, thank you for asking. Is there a reason you’re here, Officer?”
"Maybe I should write you up for insubordination just so we can see if I'm telling the truth?" Kat wasn't sure what was going on with Berengar after his outburst in court prior to the much more noteworthy outburst. But she thought that it would be funny to threaten him a little, that was the point of having power right? To lord it over your enemies. And since Regan wasn't there, the injured soldier was just going to have to do.
Looking at him Kat laughed. "It was too much to hope that a knock on the head would give you one huh?" Clearly. That would have been something to come out of the whole debacle. But no, instead he was the same stubborn child that he always was. Even if he couldn't move his arm completely with a sling in place.
"Do I need a reason Stormcrest? Maybe I'm checking on my fellow soldiers." Technically she was, Octavius was just in a rough place that she couldn't joke around about. Berengar though, he could totally use a couple of jokes, even if they were at his own expense.
Eyes narrowed, Ber stared at Winters for another long moment as she threatened to write him up for insubordination before looking away. “Let’s not and say you didn’t.” He hadn’t yet met with the captain commander, but he’d been informed of the man’s intention to meet with him. He knew that he’d stepped out of line at the ball by yelling at Regan, and a growing apprehension at what exactly that meeting would entail tempered his tongue now. Another insubordination charge sounded like the last thing he needed, even if it was just Winters being her usual horrible self.
In an attempt to keep to that resolution, he ignored her jab at his sense of humor - or apparent lack thereof - and considered it good practice for a future that would undoubtedly be filled with unnecessary needling and an inability to respond to it in any satisfying way. After all, what was one more officer who tossed around insults to piss off their subordinates just because they could? If she was so determined to throw her weight around, then maybe he ought to use the same tactic with her that he employed on Abbott and simply bore her into leaving him alone.
“You can consider me checked on,” Ber grumbled under his breath, allowing himself one last remark before he looked back at her. His next words were spoken more clearly, his tone innocently polite. “No, ma’am. It’s just I would’ve thought that you’d have more important things to do with your time, Officer, now that you’ve seen I’m alright.”
Kat liked to win. And she very much felt like she had just won round one with Berengar. Not that was a huge surprise, kid left himself open for things sometimes. And that was when she liked to pounce. Maybe it wasn't the nicest thing to do when someone was injured, but Kat didn't mind if the prey was weaker.
As Berengar started to lay on the officer talk, all she could do was roll her eyes. He might have thought boring her to death was a good idea, but Kat could easily make her own entertainment. In this case though, she actually thought it was a good thing to have run into the petulant child.
"I'm fine right here thanks." Crossing her arms she looked at his injuries, knowing what they had come from. And while it was all Bex's fault, she wanted to make sure that Berengar wasn't planning to blame her partner. "You and Octavius talk at all while you'd been laid up?"
Winters, unfortunately, did not seem to be as easy to chase away as Abbott. Crossing her arms, she looked at him and seemed, if possible, to plant herself even more firmly in place. Once again, he wished he could cross his arms and return the look to its full effect. Instead, he could feel his expression flattening as he stared back.
Her question had him pause. Why she cared about whether he and Wulfbrand had talked he had no idea, but the answer remained the same regardless: “No, we haven’t.”
An unfortunate answer, as a yes could have had her on her way. But now she needed to ask more questions. At least it meant she could annoy him more with her presence.
"Do you blame him for," Kat gestured at the arm but then generally at Berengar, "all of this." There weren't a lot of people Kat would go to bat for in Nevermere. Well actually her family was the size of a small squadron, but beyond that family, Octavius was one of the few.
And if Berengar planned to hold it against her pair? Well. This was going to have to be a longer conversation then necessary.
Ber’s brow furrowed at Winters’ question. “Why would I blame him for everything?” His response was genuine, predicated on the understanding that they had always said that the werewolf and the man were two vastly different beings. When the shift happened, all of the agency the man had fell away to the nearly uncontrollable bloodlust of the werewolf. Of course, the younger soldier himself had never been changed, but he could see no reason why anyone would lie about something like that. He had assumed that, while it was preferred for obvious reasons, a man’s consent was not strictly necessary for the shift to occur. So it didn’t make sense to hold anything against Wulfbrand, unless… “He didn’t ask for this to happen, did he?”
Kat saw Berengar as a petulant child most of the time, so when he actually saw reason, it was always a bit of a surprise. Clearly he saw that it wasn't on Octavius though, and that's all that she needed from this conversation. He was going to have enough guilt and doubt swirling around his head, he didn't need a little shit on his case about something he would never do on purpose.
But then came another question, one that had her wrinkling her nose. "You've never been turned, huh? They never ask for it." It was the one time that the woman of Nevermere had control, and now that Bex had stepped out of line, Kat wasn't sure what would happen with the pair part of the military now. "So no, he didn't. You both should talk sometime."
Ber blinked at Winters as she commented on how he’d never been turned. Obviously he’d never been turned - he was and always had been an unpaired soldier, and she knew that. When would he have been turned? But both that response and the confirmation she gave a moment later answered his question anyway. Lifting one shoulder in a shrug, Ber concluded, “Then it doesn’t make sense to blame him for something he couldn’t control.”
If their positions were reversed, Ber knew he’d want the same grace extended to him.
Still, he reached up and scratched the back of his neck with his good arm. “Yeah, maybe.” Probably not. “Dunno if he’d want to talk to me though.” The words were accompanied by another half shrug. Truth be told, Ber wasn’t entirely certain he wanted to talk to Wulfbrand either. “He wasn’t too happy with me the last time he saw me, right before...” He made a vague gesture with his hand and let his voice trail off.
Kat was glad that Berengar actually had some maturity so see something from another's perspective. It was surprising for sure, but maybe getting knocked around had made him grow up a little. Who said that getting bashed against a wall was all bad?
"He'll want to." For now Kat would leave it at that, not sure if he would even care to take her advice. But at least she had spoken her piece. Now she could get back to annoying the shit out of the guy.
Tilting her head to look at him she frowned. "So what's with the sling? Reason to ditch duty?"
Winters seemed pretty confident about how Wulfbrand would feel, but Ber figured he’d get his answer if the two of them ever crossed paths again. Until then, whether the other soldier wanted to talk to him was neither here nor there.
He had hoped that to conclusion of that little discussion would bring about the end of their entire interaction, but unfortunately, the witch still seemed set on sticking around and, even more unfortunately, bothering him. Her question had his expression flattening once more into something distinctly unamused. “I got thrown across the throne room by my arm,” He said dryly, keeping his tone barely on the proper side of mostly respectful given that she was technically his superior. “Turns out that causes some damage that takes a little while to heal.”
"Hmmm." It was fair enough, but Kat wasn't about to tell him that. Stormcrest clearly had enough ego to go around insulting superiors at the ball, he didn't need it stroked any further. Although she really wanted to give him props for standing up against Regan, it wasn't exactly a good idea to do so.
So she just shrugged her shoulders and turned to move on. "Good luck with that then."