Work Text
It was a rare day when Alstaer was unattended by the tutors, the prince able to explore the ice palace alone with no intervention. Often, he was disallowed from doing so, especially on his own, due to the potential of him getting lost, injured or perhaps even escaping the confines of the structure. He had been told to stay in the library that day, the tutors having left him there in the morning. Alstaer had no such intention of obeying however, and he was instead in the throne room, standing before the podium. His father would return in the next week or so, and sit in the large chair up there. The throne was impressive, in hues of white, silver and blue. It was well suited to Rolmy, permeating a majesty and coldness befitting of the man.As Alstaer stood there in silence, he heard a large, scraping sound down the corridor: the sound of the main doors to the palace opening. Ears pricked, he jumped up and half-slid, half-ran to the throne room’s entrance, cracking the door open to peer through and into the long hall. There was a gathering of men and women walking up it, led by some of the senior attendants, all with self-important expressions on their faces and hands behind their backs. Alstaer knew that with his father returning soon, perhaps there would be people seeking employ of the Gameon, though the details were somewhat lost on the small child.The group passed and Alstaer held his breath, pushing the door closed to a sliver so he could just see. However, his hand slipped on the handle, making the tiniest sound as it did so, and one of the figures in the group stopped, lingering as the others went on, making loud comments on the beauty of the palace.Alstaer jumped back and tried to kick the door shut, but as he did so he felt a solid form materialise behind him, a dark shadow cast over the boy as he gasped.“Hm, who’s this, spying on us?”The voice was low, with a slight accent Alstaer could not identity, almost musical in its lilting quality. As he turned then, he came face to face with a man unlike one he had ever seen. He had dark, fairly long hair, that seemed to catch the light and refract metallic. Dark skin as well, far warmer than the pale faces Alstaer was used to seeing, and gold eyes that reminded the prince of dying embers in the palace lanterns. A beautiful person.“Oh dear, I’ve stunned you into silence? Or, are you a mute?” the man mused, rubbing his chin before straightening up, leaning over Alstaer to open the door properly, “Did you want to get a better view?”He said this all with a strange smile, almost knowing as he looked over Alstaer, from his white hair to his red eyes.“Your highness!”A voice interrupted them then, one of the royal attendants pulling up her robe to come and fetch Alstaer, bowing her head in apology to the man standing between them, “I’m sorry, Master Ma’lel, this is most unseemly! This is our young prince, Alstaer. I was told he was spending the day in the library but-”“Not to worry, what a fuss,” the man sighed, laughing a little as he put a hand on his hip, “The Mesaijan prince, are you?”He looked back at Alstaer, but somehow his expression was not at all surprised in contrast to his words. Rather, he simply looked amused.“Such a small majesty, ha. Right then,” he crouched down again so they were almost the same height, at which point he extended a hand for Alstaer to shake, “I’m Karul. Nice to meet you, little Prince Alstaer.”Alstaer looked at the hand, then the man, his eyes wide, as if awestruck. But then, under the shocked gaze of the attendant, he reached out and took Karul’s hand, giving it a tiny shake.“It is nice…to meet you. Karul.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It was summer again. His ship would come in with the melting ice and Alstaer would run down to greet him in the entrance hall, welcomed each time with a laugh and a hand in his hair.For many years now, Karul had come to the Mesaje. A tall man, he was the perfect opposite to the pale, frail occupants of the royal state. With dark skin and hair, he was stark against the ice whites and blues in the palace, always dressed in deep purples and blacks. Alstaer was most struck with the trader’s eyes however, thin and catlike; they were deep gold and seemed to flicker like small vestiges of molten.Alstaer thought Karul was beautiful. Everything in the Mesaje was so cold and frigid, but Karul was warm.It was in Alstaer’s fifteenth year, when Karul first showed him how to create a warmth of his own.“Look here, little prince,” the man spoke, crouched down in a corner with Alstaer, extending his hand.From Karul’s palm, a small flame ignited and snaked up in several twining plumes before it settled to burn in the air. Alstaer reached for it, about to touch the magical fire before Karul laughed and extinguished the spell.“Now, now, be careful. If I were to burn you, I wonder what sort of terrible trouble I would get in,” he grinned as he prodded Alstaer’s cheek, “I’ll show you how to do it, but later. Have patience.”The prince had patience, for it took him another year to learn how to produce a flame, another six months to control it. He practiced in secret, entranced by the little fires he created, each time trying to mimic the spires of deep purple Karul created for him. In his lessons at the palace, he worked with cold, with elements that belonged to the ice desert. In his bedroom at night, he conjured sparks of electricity and little glowing fires, the brightness of which refracted off the translucent walls and made the whole room appear made of candlelight.Come his seventeenth birthday, he was proud enough to show Karul. After he had pulled the man out of his final consultation with his father for the day, he found an empty room and shut the door behind them, conspiratorial almost as he beckoned the other close. When Karul was stood over him, he turned his hands over and shut his eyes, lines of white gold pulsing over his fingers before crackling into pale fire. Karul watched in silence for a moment, with the light of the fire reflected in his iris like some ghostly projection. It was as if he were entranced, fixated on the flames before he turned to Alstaer, a smile on his face.“That’s really something. Pretty. What else can you do with that, hm?”Alstaer did not know how to answer for a moment, his eyes wide in questioning. What else could he do with the fire, indeed?Karul clicked his tongue and then laughed, the gleam in his eyes vanishing.“Don’t worry about it. Good job,” he praised as he leant in to lower his hand onto the flame, able to extinguish it with ease, “I am proud of you.”Alstaer did not understand what Karul wanted of him at the time, merely happy to hear those words. In response, he shut his eyes and pressed his hand back up and against Karul. From the small gap between their palms, a flower began to form and deep purple petals spilt out like ruffles of shadow.Karul appeared genuinely surprised as he raised the flower to his eye level, as if he had never received such a gift before.“A dahlia?” he questioned then as he continued to turn the bloom in hand, “What a beautiful colour.”Alstaer had not really thought about which colour to make the flower, nor what kind: rather, he had found the flowers he created reflected however he felt about the person he made them for. A purple dahlia though, he knew the meaning well enough. He adored Karul, admired him to the point of thinking him nearly perfect. For anyone who knew the language of flowers, this gesture spoke volumes more than Alstaer had perhaps intended to reveal.Karul smiled again before he slipped the flower within his cloak, the petals vanishing into the dark folds of the fabric. And when he withdrew his hand again, he reached out to place it on Alstaer’s chest, his fingers glowing with purple light for a moment. And from under them, a stone formed, as if split off from the one Karul wore on his right ring finger. As the light settled then, Karul pulled a leather cord from his neck and bound the stone to it with a silver fastening, where it hung at Alstaer’s chest.“Thank you. In return, keep this, little prince. It will protect you, keep you safe. And as long as this is how you think of me,” Karul patted his cloak where he had stowed the dahlia, “keep that close to you.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The air was cold, turning breath into mist. Underfoot, the ground was slick and crystalline, Alstaer reminded of the palace back in the Mesaje. The faint blueish glimmer of ice crept up the walls, until he and Astra were surrounded by it, guided out and into the opening of an antechamber. Though the ice was a clear warning in itself, Alstaer was not prepared for what came next. In the centre of the cavernous room was a plinth, a faint mist obscuring the base. As he stepped towards it however, there was faint movement from the sides, a figure stepping forwards, promptly followed by another, then another. Slowly forming a line in front of him. Six in total. The first was a woman, tall and regal, her long white hair pulled back at the top into braids that supported a circlet. Curled intricacies of ice that seemed to glow, spilling out soft golden light like that of a candle. Beside her, a man of slightly stiffer disposition, slender and proud, hair a silvery white in comparison to the snowy shade of his wife. Sharpistal and Rolmy Gaemon, the king and queen of the Mesaje. His parents.“Alstaer,” Sharpistal spoke, facing her son, “Your task is simple.”“In order to proceed, you must make a choice,” Rolmy declared next, inclining his gaze towards Alstaer. They made no further move towards their child though, and stood perfectly still, as if waiting. Alstaer felt his chest grow tight as he took in the next in the lineup, a flash of red catching his attention. Luran faced him now, the usual half-smile on the man’s face as he met Alstaer’s eye. “It’s a little inconvenient, but here we are,” he hummed, his voice perfectly calm. He looked just the same as when Alstaer had last seen him, the purple stone necklace still hanging around his neck. The real Luran. But there was no way this was reality, he thought. His mother and father, they were back in the Mesaje. And Luran, he had left him in Ironstone, had he not? “It’s not gonna be easy for you.”The short woman to Luran’s left spoke up, hand on her hip as she addressed Alstaer. Blue hair, and a wineskin at her belt. Kas. Certainly, this was not real. Kas was taking these trials too, not part of them herself, surely. “Of the people standing here, you must decide…”An ethereal, distant voice echoed within Alstaer’s head, the deep tone immediately recognisable to the prince. Stood close to Kas, a good five feet taller than her, was Shu, resplendent in her fully restored state. Alstaer could not help the smile that broke out for a moment, overjoyed to see her so healthy, so vibrant after the ravages of the curse. It had been years now since he had seen her like this.“Which one of us will you kill?”The smile on Alstaer’s face died as he looked at the final figure in the lineup. A tall man with dark skin and strangely metallic, black-brown hair faced him. Unlike the others, who wore more gentle, distant expressions, this person was grinning, his eyes glittering as though lit with flame. Those eyes were thin, cat-like, and they fixed Alstaer in place. They were eyes that he had seen reflected in Luran’s, long ago. Seeing them again however, he wondered how he could ever have thought such a thing. Karul stood in front of Alstaer, for the first time in six years. It had been so long, but he had not forgotten that face, that smile that Karul never seemed to drop. But back then, it had seemed playful, almost carefree. It had been something he had liked in the man. Now, he found it predatory. It genuinely took a minute for Alstaer to catch his breath. He stood perfectly still in front of Karul, looking up at the man in pure disbelief and shock. Behind him, Astra had moved aside, her attention not on the figures but on the plinth behind them. Raised above the six, there was a double-bladed scimitar, its edges frosted, emitting that same blueish glow of the cavern. And leading up to it, a set of stairs.“Where have you been?” Alstaer finally gasped, his usually composed façade faltering.He hadn’t noticed Astra or the scimitar, completely absorbed in that moment by Karul. The man merely grinned a little wider, not at all perturbed as Alstaer strode up to him, getting right in his face. If anything, he seemed to be enjoying it. “So, I just have to ‘kill’ one of you, right?” Alstaer spoke again as he stepped back in frustration, this time trying to get a reaction from the group, desperate for anything. They all merely nodded, apparently completely apathetic. This isn’t real. It can’t be real. None of this is. Alstaer tried to assure himself as he turned away from Karul and took his head in his hands. Kill one of them? The six people he cared about the most in his life, of course he could see why this would test him. He had cared for nobody before. He had felt nothing. And now he would have to face losing those he had come to love. Alstaer took a long time to consider as he stood in perfect silence, back to the six. He did not want to think about his decision in terms of the real world. He needed to simplify it, in order to get through this.Sobek had said the trials would test their resolve. And Alstaer had chosen to go back, to take his trial in the past. That was what he was battling with right now. All of these people belonged in his future, all of them were people who still held a place in his life. Except one. “Father. Karul. Please step forwards.”Alstaer spoke quietly, finally able to turn and look at the group.The four figures of his mother, Luran, Kas and Shu seemed to fade from his vision: he had not even considered them. Even if this wasn’t real, he knew he would not be able to go through with ‘killing’ any of them. Rolmy and Karul both came forwards as they were ordered. Alstaer first walked over to his father then, and stopped before the king to look him in the eye. Perhaps, not even five months ago, he would have chosen him. But as he looked at his father now, he found no anger in his heart. He had needed to confirm that. The decision made, he pulled a dagger from his belt and turned to Karul, leaving his father to step back into the lineup. Karul merely looked at him, then the dagger, before his grin turned into a leer. It’s not real. Alstaer assured himself one last time as he stepped forwards, the dagger a little unsteady in his hands. This isn’t Karul.He stuck the dagger into the side of Karul’s chest, the blow so half-hearted it barely sank the blade halfway in. Alstaer still released the dagger in horror and took a step back, his eyes darting from the wound to Karul’s face.Still smiling. Completely unharmed, apparently. It was then that Alstaer noticed Astra by the stairs, looking from her to the weapon at the top of them. He had been so distracted, he had not even considered trying to use the scimitar. “It has to be…with that?” he asked the group.All six of them nodded again. His eyes moved over them all once more, taking in each face that he loved dearly. But he knew what he needed to do. “We need to get that scimitar, I’ll go up,” Alstaer said shakily as he rushed over to Astra, his steps a little uneven, as if he were dizzy, “We need to use it to get out of here.”“I will wait for you here,” she replied evenly as she stepped back to allow Alstaer up the stairs. He practically ran up to snatch the scimitar, and the moment his hand closed around the weapon it glowed brighter, lines of frost racing up the flat planes of the blade. As it did so, he inhaled sharply, holding it away from his body. Despite wielding a scimitar many times, this one felt strangely heavy, carrying with it a weight he did not want to bear. As he walked back down the steps then, his expression broke once more, waves of fear and pain crossing his features as he approached Karul. Astra seemed to notice and understand all too well, for she followed him this time, silent behind Alstaer. When he stopped in front of Karul, she placed a hand on his shoulder and a wave of warmth flooded from her touch and into the prince. Alstaer bowed his head ever so slightly in silent gratitude. It was all Astra could do for him, before she was forced to step back. Alstaer had made his decision. “You’ll kill me?” Karul finally spoke, his voice clear and resonant in the cavern, “I have a life, and you think you can take that from me?”Alstaer felt the scimitar weigh even more heavily on him, suddenly painfully cold to the touch. “You are nothing without me. I made you,” Karul laughed under his breath as he stepped forwards, his voice now quieter as he leant in, “You still admire me. You still want me.”Furious, Alstaer reacted violently to the final sentiment and slammed the scimitar into Karul’s chest. It was a rare moment of pure anger, the blade carving through the man in a single movement. There was a piercing sound, like shattering ice, before the scimitar fractured and split apart, Alstaer and Karul swathed in a mass of seething darkness. All around him then, Alstaer heard laughter, falling to his knees as a rush of intense heat hit him. A scene materialised out of the shadow, a burning building, the sounds of people screaming and running outside harmonised with the crackle of flames. The door in front of him creaked open, and a dark figure approached Alstaer, shoes tracking red on the floor. Karul stood before him, smile by now completely manic, face covered in blood that was certainly not his own. And he laughed, the sound high and mocking, echoing around the room as though there were ten of the man. Karul’s laughter consumed Alstaer as the scene was ripped away, everything spiraling into black. Moments later, when he opened his eyes, he found himself sprawled on the floor, Astra by his side.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Do you feel safe here?Alstaer opened his eyes at the entrance to the ice palace’s sky garden, pale light filtering through. Though it had been years since he’d seen it, his gaze traced the forms of the flowers and vines with immediate recognition, even as they wavered in the dreamscape.Are you dreaming?A voice from beyond a hanging basket of peonies, even more familiar to Alstaer than the garden itself. This was no fond memory though.Karul sat on a bench in the centre of the garden, one leg folded over the other, leant back lazily on one arm. Amongst the leached white of everything, he stood out stark; a dark, rich form.“Good evening, little prince,” he smiled as Alstaer stepped into the clearing, stood across from him, “What a surprise, seeing you here. Come, sit?”He gestured to the space on the bench beside him, the long sleeve of his purple robe brushing the surface. In his dreaming state, Alstaer could not quite register the terror the invite should’ve evoked, rather reverting, walking to Karul and taking a seat beside him as he had done as a child. No, not just a child. Until the day Karul had left him, seven years ago. He could blame his trust and love on youthful wonder, and yet he had had faith in this man into his twenties. Little lies.“What ails you so?” Karul murmured as he turned to face Alstaer and reached to brush the back of his fingers over his cheek, “Such a sad face? Have you been crying?”
Have you been crying?Karul’s voice from real memory echoed within the room, interspersed with this dream version of the man. Alstaer stared up at him, not striking the hand away as it came to fit the shape of his face. It felt so easy to return to this, to sit in his garden with Karul and speak as though this person had never shattered him. Never broken him into so many little pieces.“Am I…a good person?” he finally asked, his voice sounding so small in that wide, open space.As if he was nothing, even in his own garden.Karul’s expression twisted, eyebrows arching and smile widening as he raised his other hand to hold Alstaer’s face properly between both. Drawing long, pointed nails under his eyes and along the planes of his cheeks.“A good person? My dear,” he leant in, warm breath tickling Alstaer’s ear, “No. Haven’t I told you before? You’re nothing, without me. Not good, not bad. Nothing.”Alstaer’s throat grew tight and painful, choking on air. He made no noise though, as Karul laughed quietly and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, cradling him like a wounded animal.“You think you’ve changed anything, Alstaer? What are you fighting for, in the end? For the good of the world? Because you have such a good heart? You’re a liar, little prince. I know you. Desperate for love. Does it matter who gives it to you?”Karul’s grip on Alstaer grew tighter, constricting him almost.“Do you think any of them really love you? Even your own father can barely look at you. I’m the closest thing you’ve ever had to love, and even I, well, you’re worth less than an insect to me. Beyond the joy I’ll get out of seeing you suffer, that’s not much, hm? And yet still…how dare you go against me? What gave you the right?”Karul’s voice became uncharacteristically gnarled, incensed, and he pushed Alstaer back onto the bench, pressing a hand down onto his chest.“I was everything to you. You think you can replace me? Live without me? You’re disgusting. And everyone will know, in the end. How empty and pathetic you are.”Karul smiled as he leant over Alstaer, digging his nails into the other’s chest to break skin, begin to crack through bone.“You’re weak. A liar. Can you protect them, protect Luran? Do you not know how easy it was, to get my hands on him? You love him so much, and yet you let him walk right to me. Poor Luran, so confused and alone, as you ran away from him because you were scared. He’ll know, if he doesn’t already. You can’t save him. You can put as many rings as you want on his fingers. Take him to your bed, hold him close and tell him you’ll never let anyone hurt him. But you’ll be the one to hurt him, Alstaer.”Karul’s fingers broke into Alstaer’s chest cavity, the shock causing his body to arch and shudder as Karul spread his hand under his ribcage.“All of them. Kas was too weak to do what was inevitable, but she knew when to cut and run. But Slya, Nephelle, Bluey, your family, I wonder how long they’ll stay. Sarazur, your new beloved in-laws, you’re only good to them as long as Luran believes your lie. You gave him your heart, Alstaer?”Karul ripped his hand out of Alstaer’s chest, blood spitting back and covering the man’s face. As he laughed, he licked a rivulet of red from his lip.“There’s no heart to give,” he whispered as he stood up to tower above the dying prince.
As Alstaer’s vision began to swim, he looked down and saw his chest was pulled open like messy bird wings, exposed and red. And there was nothing inside.
*He woke up, breathing in shallow. A nightmare, he’d known it. And yet, his chest hurt, heart pounding so fast he wondered if it would not break.In front of him, Luran was sleeping, rolled onto his side. Exhausted no doubt, unstirred by Alstaer’s waking.Carefully, he shifted and wrapped an arm around the man, pressing his forehead between his shoulders. Luran’s heart was beating steadily, slow, Alstaer able to shut his eyes and match his breath and pulse to that calm sound.He would not let Karul near Luran again.Even if he ended up with a hole in his chest.