One of the most tragic and compelling aspects of Dunmeshi, to me, is that we’ll probably never know (unless Kui tells us lol) how Delgal actually felt about Thistle. I’ve seen people say that he genuinely cared for him as a brother and his journey to the surface was to save him from his madness as much as it was his people. I’ve seen people say that he saw Thistle as nothing more than a fancy accessory or tool that ended up going astray. Others I’ve seen (and personally agree with) say that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. But honestly, I think any one of these interpretations has the potential to be correct… and that’s just heartbreaking.
After all, Delgal is dead. Like, dead-dead. The very first chapter of the manga starts with his spirit leaving this mortal coil, taking that answer with him. And…
How he talks about Thistle here… it’s interesting. He does not ask for him to be talked down, or captured or imprisoned, but instead “defeated”. Which Mithrun interprets as asking for his death… which is reasonable, because that’s likely how the vast majority of adventurers interpreted his words, too. Obviously as he was crumbling to dust he probably didn’t have the capacity to be particularly verbose or explain the complex backstory to how the kingdom ended up this way, but the effect is the same no matter how he may have felt with it. He asked for Thistle to be killed.
But… even in situations where he wasn’t under any such time limit to explain what was going on, he still seemed not to. Most glaringly:
Yaad seemingly has no idea that it was Delgal’s fault that Thistle sought the demon’s power. Obviously he couldn’t talk to him about it because Thistle was, uh, a little out there by that point, but why didn’t Delgal explain? Was he embarrassed? Mournful? Couldn’t find the words?
Delgal was scared of dying. He wanted prosperity at any cost, and how could Thistle possibly refuse? Did he even realize that what he was the one who pushed his own brother— One who basically helped raise him despite being a child himself, and in many ways is still a child— down this path? Or was it like watching an overzealous employee misinterpret directions?
The way Yaad describes things here makes it sound like Thistle simply dug too deep in his studies and fell into madness, but we know that’s not true. Delgal didn’t “suggest” he learn magic, he wanted a mage who could help himself and his people defy death, which he admits to Thistle openly:
So, why? Why not tell his grandson, at least, the truth of the matter? Did he worry it might make the remaining residents more likely to upset Thistle, and therefore suffer the consequences? Did he just not care? For what it’s worth though, Yaad does suspect the truth from Delgal’s behavior.
He “always blamed himself” for his descent into the dark arts. This is just Yaad’s observation, and that’s without knowing that it was quite literally Delgal’s fault Thistle went down this path. So, why? Why was it all kept a secret?
Of course, this made things ripe for the winged lion to manipulate to its advantage. Clearly despite knowing he’d pushed him into using it, Delgal still thought the lion was a force of good that was misused by Thistle as a result of his madness. His face in that last panel is particularly haunting. He looks terrible, gaunt and pale with overgrown hair and missing teeth. Had he gone mad, with grief and sorrow, as well?
Could he no longer see Thistle the way he did when they were younger? No one can ask him, because he died long before the story even began.
To go back to the original question, well, how did Delgal see Thistle? None of the previous points make a definitive answer any clearer, and I think that’s just brilliant. And so, so tragic.
857 notes
·
View notes
I feel like, Young!Pathetic!Konig would do REALLY well with a Older!Lady-Cougar!Reader, She's maybe been divorced twice and looking ta maybe become widowed this time? May-haps her current hubby has wealth and power but is a few screws short of being a good man towards our poor reader, and there's that Pesky prenup that makes it so she won't get ANYTHING in a divorce...buuuttt if the bastard has a bit of an....*Oopsie doodle*....
Maybe she's looking for someone to take care of her problem, and maybe she likes this young soldier boy, whose all too happy to help with *whatever needs* she might have? Likes how desperate he is for just her hand on his arm, likes how he's on his need begging for just a *taste* Likes that she can teach him how to please a woman, how to make her moan like no lover before....Likes how willing he is to kill the man she's married too...
Asfdf my brain short circuited ❤️ I know I said somewhere that I don’t write cheating but if it’s cheating a bad man with an even worse man König….
CW: 18+ MDNI. Age difference, F!dom/M!sub undertones, praise kink, cheating (your husband is an old dick), mating press & other shenanigans, murder & mentions of blood, König is a lovesick yandere in the making.
It was just one night.
Just one night to satiate your needs because your husband for sure never takes care of them.
But then the young pup you picked off from the pub pops into your workplace next week... With a large bouquet of flowers in his hand and a box of chocolate in the other, your desperate little “detour” looks like a boy who just got laid for the first time in his life.
“König…” you sigh and pull him to an empty breakroom before all your colleagues see you’ve cheated on your beloved husband with a man at least ten years younger than you.
“You can’t be here,” you start, trying to ignore the happy, greedy stares this little—big—soldier gives you.
He’s all the equal to his alias, looking like a king in the making with those wide shoulders and that fierce stare. But his hands are shaking, he guides those eyes to the floor as he puts the gifts on the table littered with crumbs and coffee stains, switches his weight from one foot to the other once you start to tell him how it is.
He listens dutifully as you try to explain how it was only one night, that he was incredibly lovely and you had so much fun but that you can’t see each other anymore. It was wrong of you to do so in the first place, you’re married, and you’re so, so sorry... You were just so sad and lonely.
You tell him he’s a good man. That he’ll find someone special, some lovely girl to call his own. He will find someone who can give him what he wants, someone who will cover him with kisses for bringing her flowers and sweets.
You try to explain it to him even as you get slowly chased into a corner, you try to tell him what a catch he is even when you get pinned to the wall by a hard, lean chest.
You try to tell him that he’s the perfect man for some other girl even when he pulls your strings aside and bullies his cock inside you.
One minute is all it takes as he huffs and groans and fucks you against the wall, your moans and his grunts barely muffled by shirts and fists and lips and skin. There’s lipstick on his clean, white shirt after he’s done with you, teeth marks where his shoulder meets his neck, a spittle of cum on your skirt as he pulls it down with shaky hands.
“Sorry,” he murmurs in your ear. “I just had to see you. I missed you so much...”
Your cunt is what he missed, any woman could see that. Got a taste of it last weekend and wouldn’t let you leave his place at all; a small, miserable flat of 25 square meters, with burned rice on the stove and a thin, cum-stained mattress on the floor. He fucked you on that mattress, four times because on the fifth attempt to part your shaking thighs, you told this horny lad you need to go home.
“I know, big boy. I missed you too. But you need to go now,” you say to your pretty lover. Ugly but pretty, in his own way, his utter lack of cruelty is what makes him beautiful in your eyes.
“I don’t want to,” he dares to argue back and claims your mouth, kisses you like you’ve never been kissed before.
“You have to,” you moan. “König–”
“I love you.”
You’re huffing, panting into each other’s throats as you realize he’s even younger than you thought. Fell in love with your cunt so easily, this big runt, thinks it’s meant to be just because you’re wet and he’s hard.
“Don’t be silly,” you huff and look at the drowsy smile, the messy state of this lovesick man before you fight your way out of his lap.
You want to cry, wail, scream from the injustice. Where was this silly young golden retriever six months ago? Why didn’t you meet him when you were single and sweet? Now you’re trapped in an unhappy marriage with some old fool who was cunning enough to trick you into a ludicrous deal with him. The prenupt you discovered only later, after he swore that you wouldn’t have to work a day in your life and that everything that belonged to him would be yours one day. In reality, you’ve had to beg for every crumb, act the part of a trophy wife who also has to work herself to death. And he won’t even fuck you, only wants you to massage his back and his cock while you’re left all alone without love, without a single kind word.
But König never lets you go: not in a way you beg him to, no, he always shows up at your door. Sneaks into your lonely room from the window, licks you to ruin while you laugh and tell him no, fucks you three times a night, crawls under the bed when a cleaning lady almost catches you two. He shows up at cafes, restaurants, conferences, parties, everywhere where you go but your husband won’t.
He’s so reckless that you have to teach him to be more patient, more gentle. You guide his fingers and his head, even his cock, while locking your eyes with his so that he knows when he’s doing it right. You praise him for a good, unhurried fuck, cup his face and kiss him when he gives it to you nice and slow. Anyone can see he'd want to ram it in until there’s nothing left of him and you, but you kiss and kiss and kiss him until the poor boy moans and cums without permission, just from that tiny taste of intimacy and love.
He gets pets, smooches and caresses, blowjobs that leave him shaking and breathless on the bed. He looks like he has no brains left after you’re done with him, looks a little helpless when you climb on top of him and help yourself with his cock after he only just came.
He’s always up in no time, especially if you tell him he did well. Stares at you and your breasts like you’re a vision from heaven, drools on them once when you won’t let him have a lick. Mopes when you laugh at his predicament, and won’t stop brooding even when you give him a kiss on the tip of his nose.
But he’s never mad at you for long, not if you call him sweetie or your silly apple crumb, not if you let him fall asleep in your bed, partly on top of you. There’s always a wet spot on your back if he’s the big spoon, he begs you to sleep naked as he does, says it’s better for your health and then teases you with his fingers come morning, probably thinking he’s so very clever. Takes you to the theater and offers you expensive port wine and cake, tells you how to steal a car, how to shoot any gun. Gives you a hungry kiss in public when you tell him he has to act like he’s your cousin from abroad, vanishes for weeks to his training, sends letters instead of texts, and tells you he’s going to be a big boss someday.
It’s hard to imagine this serious but silly mess as an intimidating officer, not even when you know he has the size and looks for it. He’s too innocent and needy, doesn't know how the real world works yet. Thinks he’s immortal just because he’s young...
There’s a certain darkness in him, and you mistake it for the remnants of some turbulence of his teenage years, just some wrath of a boy who never got what he wanted. Who wouldn’t be a little pissed and impatient in their twenties? He probably doesn’t even know what he wants: hell, you don’t know what you want.
“Like this...?” He asks demurely when he lifts your knees to your ears and sinks his cock into you inch by inch, carefully as if it’s the first time you’re making love.
“Just like that,” you whisper as he spreads you so wide you can’t even breathe, fills you up deliciously, like no one else before. His eyes never leave you, not even when he uses your hole as a place to bury himself and all his bad memories, not even when he makes you squirt like you’re nothing but an oasis in a desert that never ends.
But you know he comes to you for other things than just that.
He comes to you for kind words, breathy praise, soft touches and ruffles of his hair. He comes to you for practice and to get his sense of self in order. He’s your pretty knight in shining armor when others have called him ugly, he’s your strong bull when others have ridiculed his disproportionate limbs. He’s your safe haven, your sunshine, your crazy, silly man, your soldier and your savior, and he soaks up your love and attention like a sponge: every drop gets gulped down like he’s a man dying of thirst. He doesn’t take sips, he doesn’t know how to, and you on the other hand don’t know how to quench the raging drought inside him, long after yours has been satiated.
You sleep like Romeo and Juliet just before their death, and fuck like rabbits in the spring. He takes you in the car, in the closet, in the toilet, in other people’s beds, even at the alley one night.
“I love you,” he always says after he has spilled his cum – it’s like a ritual or a prayer, and you always reach for the baby hairs of his neck in return, and give them the gentlest caress.
“I love you too,” you whisper one night – it just slips when you stroke his cheek. It never comes as a surprise that he gives you the most miserable pair of puppy eyes you’ve ever seen.
He knows about your situation, knows enough that you’re trapped and unhappy. But you never knew he saw you as a victim. If anything, you feel like he’s the victim here. Poor boy, saving what little he has for a future with some woman who knows nothing about true love... You’re not the one for him, you’re not even a silly little sex kitten any young soldier would want to play with. You’re just some bored, abandoned wife who wants to feel something, mean something to someone. But you love him enough to know that you’ll let him go when he wants to move on. As bitter as it makes you feel, you know you’ll give him to someone younger and more beautiful, someone who will love as passionately as he does. Anything to make him truly happy.
But the next evening, König doesn’t climb in through your window. He uses the door, the inside door, and you jump from the bed and hurry to him in your nightgown, the only gift your husband ever gave you.
“I killed him for you,” he says, your soldier boy from Austria, your good, good boy with a good, big cock.
You only now see that his hands are stained in blood, and nothing shakes anymore: your wannabe sniper is as calm as ever when he confesses he’s murdered someone.
“...What?”
He comes to you and cups your face, the blood on his hands both wet and cold. You’ve never seen him so peaceful, not even after he’s had a good fuck. The boy who no one ever loved has turned into a man, but what kind of man… You shiver in his clutch, unsure if you’re about to suffer a heart attack from fear or love.
“He didn’t suffer... Much,” he says, his cracked lips only a breath away from yours. “Knives can be messy…”
You gulp while staring into the deep, dark abyss of his eyes, the innocent baby blue nearly swallowed by the darkest of all loves.
This is not how you thought things would go… You were supposed to give the old man the finger and divorce during the summer. Put your finances in order so that you can escape. Maybe fuck König on the side and see if he’s still the man of your dreams once you’re happily divorced.
Now he’s telling you you’ll marry as soon as possible, or that if you want a summer wedding, he can wait a few months… He tells you you have nothing to worry about, he won’t go to jail, not this time. He’ll take care of you now; he just got promoted. You don’t ever have to be sad again.
“Don’t worry, my love,” he says when all words have finally escaped you. “Now we can be together. Forever…”
475 notes
·
View notes