CHAPTER 1: I need your help

The walls, the floor, the ceiling, even the torchlight that lit the way... – Everything seemed to be much darker down here than I remembered, and when I finally entered the prison cell, it seemed as if the light got shut out completely for that moment.

Varian was sitting in a corner of the small room. Motionless, with chains around his wrists and neck, gaze lowered to the grubby floor.

"Look, who came to visit me..." A crooked smile showed upon his face, when he finally lifted is gaze up to me.

I got a little scared when I saw his face again after all this time, for he'd gotten pretty pale since he had been locked away. - I mean, even paler than he had already been before. The little red on his cheeks had gone completely and the light freckles had become more kind of small shadow-spots on a white canvas. His eyes were heavily black and red underlined, which led me to the question, if he'd ever slept or eaten enough since he got locked down here...

"Welcome to my modest dwelling, your highness. If I'd known, I would've cleaned up first..."

He smirked oddly while eying me up intently. The way he did left a feeling of discomfort in my stomach, which even intensified when I realized that his once so lively blue eyes seemed to have lost their gleeming spark of zest for action which always had been so typical for this boy.

"Varian, I... I need your help."

"Oh." The expression on his face darkened and his voice almost went down to a whisper when he continued speaking:
"You need my help...", he repeated. Then he started chuckling while his eyes started wandering unsteady around the walls of his prison cell.

"She needs your help, Varian, have you heard that? 'Guess, you should be a good boy then and go help your highness with her problem, shouldn't you? Oh, nevermind, that they threw you out of the palace when you asked them for their help as they promised you..." Setting his eyes back at me, he chuckled again.

"Varian-"

"Quiet!", he hissed all of a sudden, "You came here to ask me for help, yeah? Why don't you look at what you made me do first: I've lost everything beacuse of you. My father, my home, my freedom... Maybe, it would've been the best thing for everyone, if I had lost my life, too, instead of rotting slowly in that stupid prison cell! - And now, you just come here to ask me for my help... WHAT IN THE WORLD COULD EVER HAPPEN, TO MAKE ME HELP YOU? TELL ME!"

I backed when he started yelling at me all of a sudden and Pascal nearly fell off my shoulder. That was truly something, I hadn't expected to happen... Although I shouldn't have been all that surprised at all. I mean, he was right: I didn't keep my promises back then. I couldn't...

"Varian... I'm really sorry for all the things that happened back then..."
Varian's eyes narrowed. But instead of starting to shout again, he put on the most saddest look I had ever seen and send his gaze down to the floor again.

"I counted on you...", he spoke in a soft but painful tone which truly made me imagine the pain he felt in his heart at that moment. „I trusted you... You were my only hope back then, but you let me down like an old rag, not worth to give a single thought to anymore..."

"Varian..." I kneeled down in front of the boy and tried to look him in the eyes. But Varian let his head hang down and stared to his feet.

"No! Don't... Don't touch me right now..."

I lowered my hand, which had been about to stroke the boy's shaggy hair in order to comfort him.

"I don't need that anymore..."

He looked at me with weary eyes, but still I had the impression that he was searching for something - or someone- as he was always looking to the space behind me...

"You've come here all alone?"

I nodded.

"So, you must be pretty serious about your concern, aren't you?"

"Yes. Please, Varian, look: The Black Rocks are still spreading further and further all over the country and the people of Corona already have lost a lot of their livelihood..."

Now he really started to show some interest, although his expression still told me 'I already know that'.

"But there is still some hope left after all... The scientists have found some kind of a strange liquid, dripping from some of the rocks futher up in the north of the country."

Varians eyes widened for a second and then narrowed again. This time he seemed curious but still skeptical.
"It's the thruth."

"And what exactly do you need my help with?"

"They weren't able to keep the liquid anywhere in and so they couldn't analyze it proper, yet..."
"Ah! And now you want me to analyze it. Want the bad guy to continue his research on the 'moonrocks', because no one else could do it so far..."

"Y...Yes." I nervously scratched my foot forth and back. "You'll be a free man afterwards. No one will ever hunt you down, or convict you for any of the things you've done, if you help us... - I-"

"You promise?"
Varian stared at me with an evil grin that set my teeth on edge before silence laid itself upon the room like a blanket.

"Fine.", Varian said after a while before the silence started to get really discomforting. "But how are we supposed to get me out of... this?"

He looked around the sparely illuminated cell and lifted his hands to show me the chains around his wrists.
As if I had known he would ask, I started rummaging around in the pocket of my cape and drew out a formal looking peace of paper, which read 'Permission for the alchemist Varian to leave the dungeon for a special reason.' Signed King F.

"What? It wasn't so easy to get that, you know..."

I frowned, when Varian looked at me again in a pejorative way. He knew as well as I did, that this letter wasn't written by my father the king of Corona... - Anyway! It actually had been a good deal of work to fake it adequately and so I wasn't lying after all... Or at least not too much...

And, as luck was on our side, the job payed well.

The guards surveiing us outside the tiny room were clearly puzzled when I handed them the letter. But after a few more seconds, they nodded slowly and started to unchain Varian's neck. The chains around his wrists, however, stayed. "For your own safety, Princess Rapunzel", they said when both – Varian and I – left the tiny chamber and wordlessly headed for the corridor that lead to the Exit of the dungeon.