YUVEN

Ra'ik, Ra'ik, ware you open the door, for you will be dead come morn. Ra'ik, Ra'ik, ware the night, into the rule of wrights. Between those he sent into the arms of death. Right back into the nightmares of his manacles. Adara and Fenrer slept, undisturbed, though their breaths refused to rise into a tell-tale mist against the cold. His fingers tangled with Fenrer's Oath necklace. Greens intermingled with snow-whites. Over yonder, Evyriaz mighty breaths released plumes of magick mist at random intervals. Maria, on the other hand, busied herself with her tiny campfire, under threat of sputtering out with every howl of the blizzard outside their cavern. Skylights allowed snowflakes to flutter through, with the clouds above churning in anger. Relentless. Furious. Useless, he got up to whistle over at Evyriaz, who raised his head from where it rested, a white shadow. "I have a couple questions."

Evyriaz wings hushed with the long feathers poking out of the scales when he adjusted his sitting position. "What knowledge do you seek from me, child?"

"I expect nothing," Yuven clarified. "But you saw the ruins of Irimount for yourself." Light filled the tombs, but he ignored it all to focus on the beast in front of him. "If you are truly Euron Traye — if you truly were the king of Naveera, how could you allow all of this to happen?" He motioned around the tombs, and Evyriaz followed where he pointed. "All this death between our two families, all the bloodshed until its only men and the current despot who sits upon a white throne and wears a crowned headdress of bloodpearls, how did it come to this?" His numbness spiked into fury when he got up, leaving Fenrer and Adara to rest together in sweet slumber. "Do you know how many people have suffered and died because they can't agree who should put their ass on a chair and wear a fancy metal hat? Does my helmet make me a king?"

Evyriaz inhaled, his nostrils closing with the motion before he released it. "Two families?"

"You have the Trayes, the ones who had supposedly been in power, I guess a thousand Turns ago if we're going off your last reign," Yuven explained and memories burnt to ash at his fingertips. "Records are conflicting, some can't agree when your reign must've ended and the Travons — said other family at war with mine until they murdered every one of them who claims we are the cadet branch instead of them — took power." Yuven pointed upwards, and Evyriaz craned his neck. "Is the blizzard their fault too? I struggle to believe the blizzard is something natural. It is constant. Neverending. It buried so many of our people, and they refused to dig themselves out." Better the bitter truth than sweet tasting lies, Fenrer taught him that much. "Tell me what you know, what you're able to remember, and don't leave anything out. We have time to kill until those two come back." His Oathbound connection held on tight, the starry sinew solidified into ice. Fenrer yet 'lived', which meant they had a chance to fight back against the cult. "Tell me."

Plumes of smoke left between Evyriaz's jaw and scattered across the flow below. His beaded eyes thinned and near disappeared into the gray storm clouds of his irides. "Nay, I cannot recall," he admitted. "But there were never two families. Twas only us. Traye. Myself, the crowned ruler of Naveira, and mine own baby brother..." Evyriaz faltered, and Yuven narrowed his eyes at the proclamation. "Such is all I can recall, child. As mine soul is split, so are my memories, ashen with the infection. Any of the truth you seek would be within the other half of my soul."

Yuven looked back at Maria, who frowned while she stirred the pot. "You're inferring the Travons came about through your little brother?"

"Twould be the only explanation, but as to why he would forsake the name he once carried with pride yet eludes me," Evyriaz admitted. "But the separation you speak of does not exist. Through my blood, you are my family though we are ages apart. Such would be the same for whoever sits the throne to my baby brother." His gaze trailed to the openings of the cavern to the roaring blizzard. "Yet... something digs into the knowledge yet known to me... tasting of blood and bitterness. Of space's distance and time's cruelty... the blessed curse of our bloodline."

Though the words processed in his mind, it was his heart which lagged behind. Yuven sucked in his lips, then pinched his chin. That doesn't make sense. If the cult is the same as the one which took over Irimount from within, they had Traye blood aplenty. In the form of me and an awakened Evyriaz, that was their goal, no? He shook his head. But if that's not the case, if this place was simply an opening catalyst and it was not our blood they were after... then... It dropped to his side. "We killed ourselves."

Evyriaz dipped his head low.

"Yuven?" Maria left the simmering pot to stand up. "What's wrong?"

Heavy lead filled his lungs every time he tried to take in a breath. "Maria," he forced out. "Before I gave the order to leave Volaris, you mentioned there had been Derelicts within the walls?"

Maria's brow furrowed, but she nodded. "Yes."

"Kah'mai." Yuven hurried down the steps onto the frozen lake-bed. "They're not finished with this place yet. They're trying to repeat the process." Evyriaz drew back when he headed to him with full intent to bring a semblance of truth to the irritating stories Neven continued to tell, but Maria's quick, surefooted steps made him stop when she caught up to him. Oath necklace in his hands, he shoved it into her hands with a small hiss. "That has enough magick to pull them through if they return before I get back."

"Where are you going?"

"Volaris."

"What?" Maria asked, aghast then slid in front of him. "Yuven, explain yourself first before you go running off."

"Reyn mentioned his correspondence with the King of Naveera had become quiet with their last letters about the icecarvers Reyn was having his shipwrights build in return for stonemasons for the southern wall keeping the Derelict desert out," Yuven explained. Metal dug into his skin, but he shook them off. It tasted bitter on his tongue, but he said, "Evyriaz, I need you to fly me to the west of here, along the mountain range. And we need to be fast. We don't have a lot of time." Yuven climbed up his wing when Evyriaz adjusted it with a plume of smoke, with Maria following him.

"Alone?"

"We don't have enough time to gather a team, against... my faulty judgement of the last time, I'm going back to extract the king and princess — whether they want to or not. I'm not taking no for an answer," Yuven said as he settled himself between two smaller spikes. It salted his tongue with blood when Evyriaz stood up, Maria disappearing out of sight, though she reappeared with a step back when Evyriaz turned around. Bubbles of space pressed all around him, the same sensation across his skin when Evyriaz left the enclosed cavern to take to the skies in an instant. "I'll come back." A flimsy promise, but she accepted the one he carved with his magick, so he gave her yet another. "It wouldn't do me well to propose and then not see it through."

Maria relaxed. "I'll watch over them, but you're going to be explaining it to them when they wake up." Back turned to him, her golden hair glowed though the sun never touched Naveera. In front of her sputtered flame, Fenrer and Adara remained unmoving in their state of deathless sleep.

"To the west, child?"

"Hopefully it's not buried." Yuven pressed himself against the spike and held on tight. "Let's go."

Translucent, a ghost between worlds, he held on tight to the contact of him and Evyriaz when he started the next climb. It pushed against his brain, the darkness unending. Snow slammed downwards onto the crown of his head when Evyriaz clambered out into the wide streets of desolation and ruin, the cradle of the dead. Claws of stone, with some of the spires cracked over them. Evyriaz craned his neck around with a heavy breath, and Yuven slapped his scales, though he was but a flea to the massive wyvern. "Wake up," he bit. "There's nothing we can do." Nothing I can do.

Evyriaz turned his neck around to side-eye him. "Hold tightly."

On a throne of bone and scales, he looked down at Laucan, who readied the ice chakrams. It took you that long to show me your teeth — where was that at the King's Summit? Why let your fear rule you instead of fighting back? We've killed ourselves. But if you truly have any love for what you claim, then I'll settle for that justice. You don't get to die yet.

One step thundered through the streets when Evyriaz started the walk, his wing feathers expanding with the wind. Yuven dug his fingers into the spikes when Evyriaz lifted his wings, then took the leap. It swelled within his lungs and the unseen wings while Irimount grew smaller below him, escaping the claws of the dead he created. Hofvase'dylon. Lips curling, he tried not to taste the sweet freedom when Evyriaz flew forwards, his wings scattering the fog of the Frozen Wastes. "I hope you know how to navigate this place."

"Remember thy words of us," Evyriaz rumbled. "Hear. Feel. Sing." The maw of the blizzard drew closer as they escaped Irimount — twicefold dooms in the form of a child and a wyvern. Walls of snow, pounding against the ground. "Many times I have flown across her fields. Beneath the snow, she remains still, I sense it. Hear her heart. Feel her love. Sing with her, and you shall never die."

Yuven opened his mouth to argue, but the familiarity of his statement silenced him. Neven at his bedside, singing of their truth while he toed the edge of death, trusting in Maria to pull him out the other side without falter. As the wall of the blizzard drew closer, out of the sphere around the city, Yuven braced himself, but the tick against his ears made him stop when Evyriaz blew out flames. It swirled into a glyph, and they pierced through with ease, though it shut behind them fast, leaving only the unnatural howl. His throat clenched when Evyriaz continued his flight, silent against the roaring. An owl in the night. Yuven brought up his scarf to protect his face when hail slammed downwards. Is it a long night? He scowled, trying to see through the inky blots in his vision. "Evyriaz!" he called over.

Evyriaz banked, quick for his size. "Trust in thine soul... for as I am a wyvern, so are you."

Yuven scoffed, unable to contain the smile when Evyriaz dived low, into highs, following the flow of the wind currents. Not fighting against it, but gliding forward, carried on its own wings of freedom. "I'm not a wyvern. We haven't been wyverns for thousands of Turns," he called back, struggling to speak where Evyriaz rang clear through the roaring snow.

Evyriaz twitched, a shake of the head, a rumbling growl of a chuckle leaving through his teeth as short bursts of mist. "Nay, you are wrong." His scales covered his teeth. "Ever have we been the joining of fae and wyvern — such is not something that is erased. It is within our souls, and the louder we sing, the better we hear, it is only then it comes out. Whether as a shield, a cloak, or to embolden our blood and voice." Evyriaz turned his head slightly. "Such is what I sensed before, a knight most loyal... his name screaming through time."

Yuven held on tight to the stories Neven told to annoy him. "What name?"

"Atoran Lotayrin."

Yuven almost let go of the spikes. "What?"

"His name I remember, along with the few left to me." He drooped. "Such were they ash, that I had forgotten that the people they were yet lived on in those who came before. Such was that I forgot what I used to say, that we must do what we must, for those that come before and those that would come after. Of this, I believed, of this, he reminded me." His nose pointed forward, in the unseen direction of Volaris. "Though it was unfamiliar to me, the call was the same. Of justice, protection, of the fire in faith." Evyriaz scales curled upwards to reveal rows of teeth, a smile. "I have no doubt he would be mollified, such was his tundra dream."

"What are you talking about?"

"A wyvern reborn," Evyriaz chirped. "Hear. Feel. Sing. In letting go, he flew free. For a moment, it was as if my greatest friend had come back to life, to show me the way in the form of his one who shared his fire. Such is what we fought for, and what you continue to fight for — for those that came before, and those that came after."

Yuven stared down at his feathered scales. Stories. Stories were falsehoods, but yet...

Whose name does Neven carry with pride?