Inspired by: bit . ly / 1ah2g81 .

I wrote this fanfic nearly two years ago, so I think it's unlikely I'll return to it, but I hope you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it! If you enjoyed it you should probably check out the awesome dramatic reading the Leviathan tumblr oomrsharp made: bit . ly / 17lu6Pw

It was a dark and stormy night. Oh, how the wind howled, like a wolf! Rain lashed against the castle's parapets, the wet stone glinting in the moonlight like diamonds in sunlight. Why, it was as though the night itself was in violent mourning of the archduke, murdered just that night in Sarajevo!

Word had just reached the castle of the dastardly assassinations of the archduke and his morganatic duchess. Lo! At the window, light! Boots thunder like a storm on the marble floor! Harsh whispers whisper away harshly. A door is flung open and a beam of light falls across the dazzlingly handsome face of Prince Aleksandar Ferdinand, son of the archduke, who is a mere prince thanks to his mother's common blood! He is sleeping like an angel, unaware of the unearthly horror that has befallen him.

"Verdammt!" Wildcount Volger cries. "He looks so innocent - I cannot tell him of the deaths of his parents!"

"There there, Ernst," says Otto Klopp, the genius master of mechaniks, patting the weeping Volger on the shoulder. "But it is your duty - for Austria!"

"For Austria!" Volger bellows, springing to his feet and grooming his mustache.

By now, Alek has started awake, and leaps from the bed - he's really tall and it makes him look handsomer. "God's wounds, man!" he yells. "What in blazes is afoot?"

Otto Klopp's face is grave. It is hard not to think of the Arthur and Merlin of olde legende (except they're Clankers not magic and there's a sobbing count grooming his mustache inbetween them and there's a walker rather than a sword but I'll get to that bit later). "Your Majesty, your parents are..." his hair and piloting jacket both swish as he faces him. "... dead! Callously murdered by Serb anarchists in Sarajevo!"

"Nein!" Alek cries, swooning but in a really manly noble way. For this is the day that the Prince of Hohenberg shall truly become a man, swift as the coursing river, with all the force of a great typhoon, all the strength of a raging fire and mysterious as the dark side of the moon! "This cannot be!"

"But it is so," Otto Klopp said in a deep, sad voice, fists clenching and biceps rippling.

A single crystal tear rolls down the damask flesh of Aleksandar's cheek. But he is suddenly unwavering in his resolve. He has a plan, despite his grief!

"We must flee! To Switzerland, where there is a secret castle specifically for such a time as this! Klopp, ready a walker and I shall take the helm!"

"Of course, Your Majesty!" Klopp cries. "Your plan is most fiendishly clever! Except not fiendish, for you are a model of virtue!"

He thunders away to ready the walker, and Alek dresses, looking handsomer than ever in his leather piloting jacket and boots. But his eyes, they're old eyes suddenly, and one thing he can tell you, Serb anarchists are real... silver moonlight falls across his face and the effect, given how handsome he is, is enough to make all the girls in Europe faint.

"Oh, Lord," he gazes up at the sky through the glass of his tall glass window with its heavy red velvet curtains drawn aside. "What hath I done to merit such treachery?"

But all a-sudden, Klopp has reappeared at the threshold. "Your Majesty," he said. "The walks awaits."

"And so does my destiny, old man!" he cries. "For I shall one day be Emperor, in spite of my mother's common blood! Now Volger, cease in your mustache-grooming! Switzerland awaits!"