LAUCAN

Darkness reigned and crashed down on the ancient barrier which took the brunt of his people's slow death. A cold grip within the walls of the palace, built upon a foundation of blood and ruthlessness. People clamored away from the house servant's corridors with gasps and the notes of tragedy. "Stay back!" the Knight-Valiant snapped, nudging the palace workers out of the way. Tears flowed down their eyes, though some huddled in the shadows, wide-eyed and in shock, Laucan went to one, to provide succor as was his duty, but the Knight Valiant came to him with his hand out. "You need not see this, Your Wyvern Grace. We have this under control." He nodded at the two nearby Sentinels, who held out their glaives to prevent their approach. Irritation flowed into his being, with Hayvala standing off to the side, but lost in his helplessness, she reigned.

"See to the well-being of the servants. Get them warm chocoberry tea and a bed," Hayvala instructed to another Sentinel who came forward at her command, and Laucan curled his fingers at the ease of authority. He stood there, silent, narrowing his eyes at the other side, where other Sentinels blocked the way for court-goers to go about their business before beseeching him for his meaningless power. "Kazmira," Hayvala called out to her handmaiden, who bustled forward. "Bring them to the crystal bathhouses to compose themselves. Draw up warm baths. Laucan, you must depart from this area." Hayvala's hand wrapped around his forearm, but he tasted blood, the Traye insignia dripping down the wall of Father's suite. It pooled at his boots, and the stream of blood gaping out of his dessicated, torn apart body — a slaughtered animal against a demon, a death curse. He pulled his arm out of her grasp, and he came up to the held out glaives until they pressed against his chest.

"Let me pass," he mumbled, unheard against the drowning song of crimson despair. Voice stifled. Grey feathers fluttered at his feet. Agitation pushed mist through his nose, his rule not so absolute. The aristocracy, vipers without wings. His hands shook, and he raised his voice, "Knight-Valiant Morzen!" He tried to find his voice, to raise it along with the one which once screeched through Volaris. The Knight-Valiant turned his head in his direction. "You will let me pass." Tired of requests, tired of asking, tired of getting nothing for the sins he bore and added onto the crown upon his head. His feet drew him forward when the Sentinels raised their glaives in time of Sir Morzen's non-verbal instruction. In his peripheral, Hayvala reached her hand out to stop him, but he pushed himself forward through that very night. Another Sentinel stood at the entrance of the common room, young and hesitant when his attention flicked to Morzen.

On the field of battle, face to face with what he had once thought his greatest enemy — and an outsider came to his defense without fear. With everyone out of his way, he opened the door to his truth and weight upon his head. A stench filled his nose, breached by the stale air, decay, and mold. Adjusted to the dark, Laucan drew inside without holding his breath, trying not to gag, to flee. Traye's chokes filled his ears at the soft, gentle drips in his ear, a slow, oozed shadow stuck in the corner of the room, a streak of blood dragged upwards. Embers died in the fireplace, turned crimson along the carpet, unable to become a blaze within the cold. Magick gathered in his hand, a magelight bloomed in his hand and he held it above his head to catch all the darkness sought to hide.

Show me what you really are.

Chairs scattered around. Tables overturned and pierced. Mold stuck to the back of his throat, but he went deeper. Ice circles blocked off a sordid sight. A bloody pile of unrecognizable remains. Shards of bones and flesh. Terror spiked his magelight, but he inched his way around it and followed the streak which wrapped to the window, cracked in several places. In fields of bloody light, he frowned at the remnants of a horde's thirst for magick. Time's up. He squeezed the magelight in his hand, cold to the touch and breathing with ice. Just like we were warned — like I was warned. This is worse than a death curse... a death curse would've been a mercy. He spun on his heel and left the room, where people sobbed — cried out murder right in the palace. Rumours and gossip spread, a contagion to block reality. Through the glaives, he stomped past Hayvala, the blood of his people still staining his boots.

It can't be a murder — nothing human can wreak this... I've seen it for myself, and if the beasts of the Obscura are here with their reckoning... my people are like to die in icy chains. Laucan rushed back into the royal wing of the palace. Wind whispered through the tapestries, a reflective growl sounding all around him. Up the steps to the king's quarters, he pushed past his door and slammed it behind him, throwing his crushed magelight into his fireplace. Embers breathed into the pyre, and he sat at his desk, opening the cabinets to take out a quill and ink, along with an empty piece of parchment. But I would have them sing free. His single failsafe. His quill scratched against the parchment, trying not to drown in his fear. In the bloody splatters across his walls to seep through the alabaster brick. Wax seal in place, he hid it in one of the drawers and escaped from his room again, the weight of the curse on his mind. Once more Hayvala lingered outside her room, her gaze snapping to him.

"Laucan." Her hand rested on the bottom clasp of his ribbon wings.

Laucan stopped. "We still have a council meeting to go to — and I doubt a single servant's death will bother the Lords overmuch. After all." He drew out of her grasp. "They aren't the ones who've seen it for themselves." Through the crystal corridors, underneath snow-flecked chandeliers, he entered the heart of the palace, where a flimsy replication of the Snow Prince's round table sat within the council room. Lord Vlasiz sat there, arms crossed. Laucan remained standing with Hayvala when the others poured in, indifferent and apathetic to the death biting at their heels. At his feet, Yuven Traye bled out black blood from his lips, with a snarl on his face.

"At least have a spine."

Laucan tasted his own blood long after Hayvala took her seat with a glance at him.

"Have the stomach to acknowledge the damage you do."

In his seat, Lord Lazron folded his arms with a glare of examination, hunting for weakness; and he'd give him no more.

"As I'm sure you've all heard already one of the palace servant's was found dead," Laucan started and gave them no room to remark. "The Knight Valiant has closed off the area, but I'm—"

"We all know it's the Traye's, Your Wyvern Grace," Lord Lazron pointed out, with another nodding along. "All they needed was the arrival of the Traye prince to go ahead with their wanton blood-letting. It'll start with your servant's first, then it'll move up to you." Lord Lazron rested his arms against the table. "I warned you that this would happen, Your Wyvern Grace — you were warned long before you took the crown the danger they posed to your rule."

"It wasn't the Traye's." Each and every Lord looked over to him, and Hayvala herself quirked her head in confusion. Laucan took a steady nod. "I saw the body for myself. It wasn't the work of a Magickae. I've only seen that visceral havoc before, when I went to the King's Summit." He threw his arm out. "There's a Derelict — or multiple — in this city. I need help rooting them out, because if they're here they are certainly in other places in Naveera as well, and we don't have the help of the Storm Wardens." He let his words settle on them, but his own soul dwindled with a hiss at their continued, apathetic expressions. "It's our people that are dying. If Derelicts—"

"Derelicts haven't been a threat in Naveera for a thousand turns," Lord Lazron bit. "It was either the Traye's or some other upstart who wanted to take advantage of the chaos Lotayrin left behind him, and I fail to see how it is anything else. If it was a Derelict, why isn't it still rampaging?" He waved at the other Lords. "Why did it not continue its hunt? After all that posturing that we've been told by the Sunlanders, you are jumping to Derelicts quite fast." His eyes narrowed. "Or do you mean to tell me that the 'Dragon King' filled your head with that drivel?"

Laucan took a small step back and turned to Hayvala for assistance. "We can send some Sentinels to look around the city for traces if you truly think a Derelict found its way into the city..." she began.

"It's a waste of resources," one of the other Lords argued. "We need to be shoring up defenses in preparation for the Traye Loyalist's attacks. They will not give in until their claimant is on the throne instead and our heads on pikes along the wall or being paraded through the streets."

Silenced with such ease, a child at an adult table. Feathers fluffed out, he tried not to hiss out his frustration when Hayvala dug her fingers into the back of his royal furs. You have to believe me! He cried out to the blizzard storm, their apathetic curse. If you don't believe me we'll all die here!

"We also have the matter of dispersing the mob that continues to collect outside the palace gates—" Lord Lazron started.

Laucan folded his hand and threw his cards at their faces. "One of our people has been mauled into nothing but bones right inside this palace and you all are worried about your own heads?" He threw his arms out. "Is this who we are?" Who we are as a people? Vipers in the mist, lacking real wings? Is this what we are as Avaerilians? Toxic, spiteful beings doomed to our apathy?

"It was one servant, Your Wyvern Grace," Lord Lazron pointed out to break the silence after his childish outburst. "You were given counsel on the matter." He switched his head to Hayvala, who frowned at him. "It is your choice to heed such. It wouldn't be the first time Traye loyalist's left a corpse unrecognizable." He took a scroll out of his coat and tossed it into the center, rolling towards him. "Here are the supplies brought with my contingent for that Embassy of yours. You know my conditions for delivering them." His snarl turned rueful and reluctant, but he made no other comment on the matter.

Laucan set his hands on the table, ready to flip it over in turn. "My lords, if you ignore what I'm trying to say, many of your people will die out there."

"Many of us already have," Lord Viktor said from his seat beside Lord Lazron, leg folded over the other.

"We don't have to, did witnessing what happened with Lotayrin not prove that to any of you?" Laucan snapped, tugging himself out of Hayvala's grip, too tired of the falsehoods and honeyed words. "We don't have to sit down and take this, but we're too busy fighting each other that we're so ready to ignore it when death chews on our heels." He pushed his fist deeper and cursed himself for his naivety while Yuven Traye bled at his feet. "We don't have to die like this!"

Like cattle to the feast of Derelicts.

Apathy reigned.

"We won't have to die if you handled the Traye Loyalists like your predecessors handled them," Lord Lazron countered with a couple other nods from the cold aristocracy. "Your Father always remarked that you had a sense of mercy that was always going to be your undoing, Your Wyvern Grace."

Hayvala snapped up to her feet. "Watch your tongue!"

Everyone else stood up. Words blazed with fury, but he stood there in the silence, all along at the head of an empty round table full of stories. On the other end, Yuven Traye, the last of his line. "I told you so, peacock," it mouthed on his lips. "You should've believed me the first time." His snarl became a gleeful sneer. Space and time bent, but he let their voices dull in his ears, into his own growth of apathy. Blood stained his boots, his furs, a crown of pearls splattered with red. Mist hung in the room, but when he looked up from his Father's side, a red-eyed, demonic beast scowled down at him. Runes grew out of their ghostly sword, but they slashed through the mist—

Before turning it on themselves instead of cutting him down in turn for the crime of his bloodline.

Is this what we're destined for?

Their own pale blood fell around him and they disappeared into nothing, leaving him with the shrunken, desiccated remains of a king, a frozen puddle of blood sinking into his knees.

Is this the sun I could hope for? That I was fighting for? For my people to see, why are they so quick to reject it? So ready to turn the blade on themselves at the slightest taste of being above a single snow dune? Laucan ignored the arguments, the out of control power, the vacuum blending them together.

Is this who we are?