Ico does not fight. Contrary to what many villagers suspect, he isn't violent. Like other boys, he has watched the young men of the community practice in combat. He has imitated them, though only in the forest, when he's certain no one can see. They would harass him if they saw a horned child wielding anything like a weapon, even a simple branch. He knows resisting when the villagers cause him trouble only makes things worse for him. When someone, usually one of the priests, questions him, Ico feigns ignorance, even though he often knows what he's being accused of.
Pretending he doesn't know any better doesn't help when the men with helmets come take him, dress him in ceremonial garb and restrain his hands. They force him onto a horse and leave in a quick procession, the armored guards accompanied by one hooded man with the air of a shaman or a priest.
Ico does not offer resistance, only raising his arms once in a while, trying to relieve the discomfort of his bonds and wipe away sweat. Flight is the only instinctive response he ever readily acts on.
A foreboding unease rests in his bones, though, as the trip extends several days, with only grim silence between his captors. Apart from murmured exchanges, they do not speak, and do not look at him. Ico's used to being ignored, but the people in his village did not actively seek to cast their eyes elsewhere, rather looking through him.
He doesn't know what it means, this ominous cloud that hangs over the group, even when the sun becomes almost blindingly bright as they near the sea and the trees part. He is but a boy, in stature if not in years. None have bothered to count that he's aware of, and so he can only guess his age. He knows, at least, that were his head not marred by two omens made of ivory, he'd be expected to learn men's work as an apprentice.
But he is horned. And these forests are unfamiliar.
The tension in the men, as though they are not themselves wholly at peace with what they are doing, unnerves Ico.
He fears he will not be able to slip away and escape the vague, disquieting fate that awaits him, not this time.
Once the castle, looming over the sea and shrouded in mist, comes into view, his fear becomes certainty.
The men with helmets, their fake horns pointed opposite his, perhaps for distinction, ferry him across a channel rather than take the bridge. The gate into an alcove opens, and Ico absently wonders why the gate to the bridge did not.
"Bring me the sword."
Ico starts at the first words he's heard spoken above a whisper in days. The men still avoid looking at him, as though the change in their enunciation is for another's ears, someone Ico cannot see.
A sparking, crackling blade is brought before a pair of horned statues. Runic patterns glow in answer, and they part. Ico rides a circular lift upward to another chamber.
Before they step off, one of the armored men picks Ico up into his arms, baffling the boy. He can't remember the last time anyone interacted with him like a child.
Distracted by the foreign sensation and the conflicting feelings it evokes, Ico does not notice the stone coffin until he is brought before it. Ants crawl up and down his skin, an unfeeling washing down his spine and causing a quiver in his horns.
They shackle him inside the claustrophobic tomb. The man who carried him addresses him tersely.
"Do not think ill of us. This is all for the good of the village."
Their footfalls recede from the chamber, echoes fading away unhurried and deliberate. In the brief silence after their exit, panic takes root in Ico's stomach. Restricted, his body needs, screams for motion. Running, climbing, jumping, swinging- these things he has always been permitted, effective diversions both from what he is and oppressive loneliness. Bound hand and foot, he has nothing, and he adamantly protests.
The walls quake, dust and debris skitter over stone floors, and Ico flails and heaves with all his weight.
Crack.
Ico's world tilts, and the tiny tomb breaks open with a dull, crunching impact on the floor. Ico, his bonds released, tumbles foot over head down several feet and lands hard, face down.
Wind and rain whips a single faded curtain around, yet, as if by the castle's will, the sounds are muted and dull, never clashing with the monochrome atmosphere.
Inky, otherworldly blackness drips from a suspended cage, pooling like blood at the tower's base below. A prisoner, small and wreathed in shadow, lethargically raises their head, one immaterial arm slowly reaching out.
Chills, a shudder, creeping and haunting numbness precede a cold so intense it burns.
Ico, stymied, shakes his head and pulls to escape the wall.
He is consumed.
Ico blinks away the vision, carefully pressing up to his knees and rising to his feet. Unnerved and still alone, he falls to habit and ceases to think.
He acts.
He acts, so he will live. He does not know more than that as he ascends a ramp and pulls a lever, nor does he need to know. If he must think, it will be in aid of action.
With the practice of one familiar with the forests, he clambers up stair-less walls in the next room, pulls himself up on a dangling chain. The next chamber, he finds a ladder, another chain, a path circling a curved wall.
Only when he sees the cage does his dream crowd back to the forefront of his mind. Again, he shrinks back to the wall, gives a small exclamation once he remembers being pulled in.
Nothing drips off from the cage, however, no shadow drapes itself along the iron base. Instead, Ico sees-
Light.
His vantage point does not afford a good view of the prisoner. She, for Ico can tell a girl sits insides, remains so still he might mistake her for a statue.
Nonetheless, he calls to her.
She does not reply, does not even move.
Still…
"Hold on. I will get you down."
Ico moves with an urgency previously absent. Even among everyone he knows, comprising only of the villagers who neglected him and left him isolated, Ico cannot think of anyone he'd wish imprisonment upon.
Another lever, and the hanging cage descends. Briefly, he sees a glimpse of the girl inside, standing now. He clambers through the two windows again, each step a little longer than his last.
The cage remains suspended, dangling over the floor by the height of two men. Ico finds another ladder, works his way onto a ledge adjacent to the cage.
His coffin had been aged and weathered. The chain holding the girl's prison aloft proves much the same. One leap onto the cage, and a link snaps from the sudden extra burden, cell, Ico and the girl falling to the floor.
Ico grunts on impact, gingerly propping himself on his hands. He takes his first look at the former prisoner.
And stares.
The girl, nearer a woman than Ico is a man, steps out of her cage with such grace, such elegance, Ico believes she may be floating. Her skin, white as the thin dress that hangs to her knees, stands out so brilliantly in the castle's darkness she almost glows. Ico thinks she appears translucent, feels that if he tried touching her she might fade. Two slightly elfin ears poke out from beneath gray hair.
Yet, even among her otherworldly qualities, her face is what shocks him into speechlessness.
It holds no scorn, no repulsion, nor pity. Gray eyes regard him only with innocent, gentle curiosity.
Dumbstruck by the thought that anyone, even a pale girl more spirit than person, could look at him softly, Ico doesn't realize the girl has spoken until she glides toward him.
"They-they brought me here because I have horns," he says, watching her kneel in front of him. "In my village, horned children are brought here to be sacrificed."
He does not notice the room grow a few degrees colder, entranced by the white hand slowly, hesitantly reaching out to touch his face.
"Are you a sacrifice too?" He asks, the thought digging a pit in his stomach.
Inky blackness stalks behind her, snatching the girl into immaterial clutches. She does not scream, only gasps quietly, lifting not a finger to free herself from the lurching shadow.
She keeps her eyes on Ico, and he sees resignation, helplessness, but also fear.
The Cursed One does not think. There's no decision behind his actions, just a desperation he cannot describe.
He grabs a stick that had fallen from the torches in the tower and he rushes for the shadow. He swings the blunt weapon hard. A shadow should not recoil from any blow, but it does, and the girl drops to the floor.
Ico strikes and strikes and strikes at the creature until it rises no more, dissipating with a faint hiss.
The horned child lets out a long breath, blood and action and anger leaving his limbs hot in the castle's chill. His grip on his weapon turns his knuckles white.
Ico had always fled, always run from danger. He did not fight or inflict injury except when he hunted small game in the forests. The priests and his own experience taught him that he could not escape harm by resisting, thus he had learned to run, and run well, hiding and leaping like the animal many villagers accused him of being.
He turns back to the girl, still sitting as she had fallen on the floor, staring at him with wide, confused eyes.
"What was that thing?" He asks, though he does not wait for an answer.
He casts wary glances about the tower as he walks to her.
"They'll keep coming after us." He says, and a tingling in his horns, the source of his demonhood, tells him he is right.
He takes her hand in his, offers silent encouragement to stand. She blinks and obliges, and a pulse of something warm passes through him at their contact.
The confusion has left her gaze, replaced once again by that childlike, wondering curiosity. Yet there is something else there, which takes Ico several moments to identify.
Trust.
Ico stands a littler straighter, an odd power filling his limbs.
Between fight or flight, he had never chosen the former.
Of trust and suspicion, he had only been regarded with the latter.
Shifting his grip on his wooden staff, Ico recognizes the statues from the underground lift. He strides toward them to investigate, pulling the girl with him.
He feels her stumble, and he eases his pace. He turns a smile at her over his shoulder.
For her, Ico makes his first promise.
"We're going to get out of here."