"The third prince of Balbadd, you say?"
"Yes. His name is Alibaba."
"Don't look for him. That person no longer exists."
He awakens to the ashen light of depravity. A storm of feathers, eternal braid on a black sun, blood tears, hollow people, mangled silhouettes rising from the fumes of ancient binds.
"Alibaba-kun! Alibaba-kun!"
"Come back, please."
Alibaba? The boy who speaks, cries. The girl's expression is one you'd expect if the moon swallowed up an entire town in a single minute.
That Alibaba must have been a king, for him to be missed this much.
Ghastly gnats bury into his skin. His eyes narrow into crevices of ice. It's time for these people to disappear.
He raises his sword.
"The person you wish to meet is…?"
"Ren Kougyoku, eighth princess of Imperial Kou."
"Forget it. Spare yourself the trouble of searching for the dead."
The ringing in her ears is the scream of their blood. Everywhere, she sees visions of destruction, feels her sword salivating for the next kill. Crimson rain splatters on her hair and runs down clothes forever drenched in scarlet. They say her eyes are a premonition of a massacre turning on is cogs. They call her the empress of dripping swords.
"Hey!" someone calls, and his eyes are redder than hers. "'Sup?"
He reeks of disaster, incense, and other scents that mirror her own. Chapped lips curl into a smirk as she steps onto his carpet and lets him steer them deeper into this chasm of unending night.
Sometimes, lighting strikes.
"Who are you?" the girl asks, and the boy doesn't know what to reply.
He is a shadow monster now, one who'd rather kill puppets than play with them. She is as dead as her words, cold and doll-like as the lifeless ash floating down the watery grave of her former self.
He points to his chest, for though words have failed him, the fluid movement of his limbs has not.
"Death," he says at last.
She smiles. "I frequent graves. Actually, I make them."
His eyes do not cry. His mouth does not smile. But he takes a step forward and touches her sword.
She hands the blade over for him to inspect. "It's beautiful, is it not?"
"It's deadly."
He turns it over in his fingers. Such a weapon suits her well. He returns it.
"I don't know what my name is. I think I had one but I've forgotten it a long time ago," his companion admits. "Are you the same?"
He nods.
"Well then, we should get along." She runs her fingers through her hair – her very long, blood-colored hair, he notices – and begins to vanish.
Wait.
Don't go.
Not yet.
She whirls around, and he realizes she's a master of shadows, too. Heels tap impatiently over crumbled cobblestone, accompanied by a scowl on the girl's face.
"So? Aren't you coming?"
Maybe.
Of course.
Sulfur blazes in his eyes. He staggers forward, letting the chilly black of their surroundings fester on his wounds. They'll heal eventually. For now, he, this girl, and the fallen rukh have a city to burn down before dawn.
Miles away, miles apart, two funeral pyres ignite.
"So, where are they? That prince and that princess, I mean?" asks a girl of five autumns.
"Wonderland," replies her father.
"Neverland," says her mother.
"Huh?"
"It doesn't matter. As long as they're together," explains her mother, weaving amber braids into hairloops that resemble her own pair of vermillion pinned up with gold.
"They'll be alright," her father assures her, and for a moment, she notices the glint of red on jade earrings.
Maybe someone saved them, the girl thinks, just like in the fairytales her parents love to tell. Probably some powerful, kind-heartened stranger. Or maybe...
Maybe they saved each other.
"And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds,
in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you." ~Kiersten White