Ardaik 17th - Homenil, Serellia

"Artus!" Rowan called out over the servants and guards busy moving past him in the hall. In an instant, Cullach manor had come alive after Bhalthier had disappeared to handle the matter of the incoming terror that was the great black dragon.

"Bhalthier has informed me of the dragon's approach! We must go at once!" Rowan exclaimed, already taking the other male by the arm and starting to move until he felt Artus's form stay fast where it was, which caused Rowan to pause and cast a questioning glance back at him.

"Go?" Artus gasped, his brows knitting together. "Where? Rowan, I can't leave yet!"

"Anywhere other than here! You've seen what those beasts can do. They'll level the city!" Rowan warned, giving him another tug.

Though Rowan was strong enough to tug Artus's lighter frame forward, the prince resisted. "But you don't understand," he protested, "I need to stay with Lord Cullach!"

Rowan's brows lowered, and his mouth opened to ask 'why,' but he stopped himself. He knew Artus wouldn't answer. He'd already made it clear that he had no intention of divulging his reasons for remaining in Serellia, so Rowan redirected his thinking.

"Then if you won't go... I suppose I'll have to draw him away."

Artus's eyes widened even further in horror. "What?! No! Rowan, don't be foolish! Just stay here with me. Please!"

Rowan squared his shoulders with Artus. "Look, Auganull's master wants that relic, and he thinks I have it... Better to let him think that. Besides, Kamuhr and him have unfinished business... Once we're gone, he'll have no reason to stay. Homenil is no La'trest. It'll be leveled if we don't do something."

"But—you..." Artus couldn't form the words to finish his thought. There was truth to Rowan's claim, yet Artus had never wished more that he were wrong. "Promise me you'll send word of where you are," he said, his voice cracking as he choked on a sob he refused to let loose.

It wasn't until he heard the tone in Artus's words that the gravity of his own choice settled onto Rowan's heart. He was leaving him—again. He'd promised him he wouldn't, and now he was about to break that vow for a second time. But as he heard the giant bell in the citadel tower begin to ring, Rowan knew he had to go.

"I swear it, the moment I am able, I'll send word!" Rowan assured firmly.

They only had time for the briefest tight hug before Rowan retreated to leave Cullach Manor at a full sprint.

Rowan made a stop at his room to put on his armor but could only manage some of the smaller pieces. The larger ones that took help from a second pair of hands to equip would have to remain here. He sprinted out the front doors and down the gravel path, his legs and lungs burning when he got to the end of the drive and had to stop to catch his breath. That was when he heard the sound of hooves trotting up the path behind him. When he had enough sense to turn his head to look, he spied a large black horse beside him and Bhalthier upon its back.

"De-Saint Pierre, you should be inside with your prince," said Bhalthier.

"No, I must get to the white dragon. Only she has a chance to draw Auganull away!"

Bhalthier considered Rowan's words a moment before dismounting his horse. "Then take Cethern. He can get you there faster." The Marquis held the reins of the Lorellian saddlebred out to Rowan.

"Thank you! I'll leave him at the edge of town!" Rowan said as he pulled himself up into the saddle. Bhalthier nodded in return as Rowan gave a kick and whistle that set Cethern into a gallop.

Lorellian saddlebred were versatile and handsome carriage horses, often solid black with black manes and tails. Though bred for carriage work, they were equally skilled hunters with long legs that cleared jumps quickly. Rowan had no trouble taking Cethern over fences and low stone walls, making up lost time quite easily and arriving at the clearing, where he'd left Kamuhr, in minutes.

"Kamuhr!" Rowan called out into the wall of misty pines. "Kamuhr!" he called again, panic rising in the back of his mind as his voice echoed back to him. He'd not seen her since they arrived. Had she left? In a moment, his fears were dismissed when he heard the cracking of branches and then saw the white dragon's head emerge from between the haze of fog and trees. It was terrifying to think that something that big had been sitting there undetected the entire time.

"Rowan, what's the matter?"

"Auganull is coming! You—we must do something!"

The White dragon looked to the sky as if expecting to see the black dragon descending upon them at that very moment.

"You're not ready to face him," she stated plainly.

"Then we must draw him away from town!"

The white dragon studied Rowan a moment before coming over and offering him a way up onto her back. "Perhaps this will work in our favor, come."

***

Once Rowan and Kamuhr were above the trees and fog, Artus could barely spot the white dragon's massive form, pale and glimmering against the gray fall sky. Auganull, on the other hand, wasn't difficult to spy at all. The black dragon's titan-sized silhouette drifted along in the distance, cutting through the sky like a shark through water.

Artus ran farther from the steps of Lord Cullach's manor in a desperate attempt to extend his view of Rowan's companion. He could scarcely imagine Rowan astride her... She was so high up, and the biting wind gusting across the garden was so uncomfortable already. He couldn't fathom Rowan being warm enough to keep his grip or balance. However, the prince wasn't allowed to think on the matter any further before he witnessed the black dragon abruptly adjust its course. Fear, even more, intense than what he was already in the clutches of, constricted the prince's chest. He could only watch helplessly as Auganull's wings beat a few extra times, increasing his speed...

The necromancer's dragon was on the hunt, and he'd spotted his prey on the horizon.

Stumbling through the garden, Artus was only able to keep the beasts in sight for a few moments longer before his view of them was obscured, and his brave hero was gone again...swallowed by the sky as if he, his mount, and their pursuer, were only a dream; as unreachable to him as the shores of Itacia and Kelluciel.

He wasn't sure how long he stood there before noticing a figure walking up the drive. "Rowan?!" he gasped, but Artus only strode a few feet before stopping as though he'd hit a stone wall... The figure was too tall to be Rowan...his hair too dark, and his frame too slender...

Artus's lip quivered, and he shut his eyes hard, trapping his despair and disappointment before it could come flooding out of him in a downpour.

After a moment, he realized it didn't feel like anything was coming out of him. No drumming heart, no labored sobs... Instead, Artus's world was imploding. He could feel it compressing his ribs, frigid and cruel.

Artus sucked in a sharp breath, and all at once the moisture in the air around the Lorellian prince froze with an echoing snap, raining to the ground as small pebbles of ice. His eyes shot open to behold the late-blooming flowers in his vicinity blacken and wilt before him. The shrubs shed their leaves, leaving skeleton-bare stems within the span of a breath.

Whatever horrifying thing was happening was spreading, and it was doing so at an alarming rate.

Rowan's ability to sprint as far as he had down the drive, partially armored no less, was admirable, and it was just as Bhalthier was musing this to himself that he took notice of Artus alone in the drive, but something was deathly wrong. Frost crawled across the gravel at an alarming rate in a wide circular pattern that Artus was at the center of.

Panic suddenly seized Bhalthier as realization took hold in his mind, and he dashed forward. "No, no, no!" he chanted anxiously as he darted towards Artus, an act that not a single guard or servant dared to make. Frost collected and clung to Cullach's attire and hair when he entered the range of Artus's influence. He could see his own breath coming out in clouds as the temperature around Artus continued to drop. "Artus, you need to control yourself! Get a hold of your emotions."

His emotions? Was this what Lord Cullach had meant by magic at will? But Artus didn't want any of this to be happening! Putting on the poised expression that he'd been reared to wear at a moment's notice didn't do a thing to help, either.

The mask he so often relied upon didn't change what was happening inside. His roiling mixture of feelings forced out hot tears that could barely creep down onto his cheeks before becoming crystals. Artus's fingers were numb, and his joints began to throb painfully while his teeth chattered.

The moment Bhalthier's hand clapped onto Artus's shoulder, he closed his eyes, and the chill subsided. By the time the Marquis's eyes opened, the bits of frost and ice around them were slowly starting to melt.

Feeling soon returned to Artus's fingers, he felt more able to draw a full breath, and he was no longer shivering. But, as he looked again at the ruined garden around him, he felt quite terrible over what he'd unintentionally done.

"...Apologies," Artus muttered, glancing up at Bhalthier. He owed him that, at least.

"Not at all," Bhalthier assured with a sympathetic smile.