Beta'd.

Character's are not mine. Plot is.

Once upon a time

Hoof beats. Like a battle drum, pounding in his chest, rushing in his ears with his pulse and the rain; blinding in its desperation, a harried barrage of noise and mud and fear.

In a place not so far from this one

They're still screaming. The horns, the dogs, the echo of men. He keeps his head low, body bowed down against the shaking back of his mare and before him the forest opens like a tome of Archaic Magic.

There once lived a Prince.

The mane, the rain, the mud and the darkness are all distracting factors. What he focuses on are the trees, looming ahead just far enough. Just out of his reach before him. If he can reach them, he thinks, if he can reach them he can hide. He can wind himself in their branches and disappear from the world. Behind him, the men are shouting, the dogs are barking, their shouts tear the night apart at the seams. They're gaining, the mare whispers in her snorting. They're gaining and I can run no faster.

You must.

And where every Prince rules

If he glanced over his shoulder, he knows he would see the hounds. Their eyes would glow, turquoise and yellow in the moonlight, reflecting their rabid intent. Their only knowledge, to find, to follow, to hunt, to kill, to return. A vicious cycle. He could hear them, at his mare's heels, barking. Already though, the trees were encompassing him, enfolding him in shadow and night and all things no man in their right mind would force himself to enter. As the trees grow around him, reach their spindly fingers in whispers of sanctuary, he can hear the dogs falling back, hear the men coming to a halt at the tree-line.

There must be a Villain.

When the night is all he hears, when there are no dogs with gnashing teeth, no guns with twisting barrels, no men on horseback with mead in their breath and rot in their teeth that want him gone, he whispers the words to his mare. She slows, she thanks, her breath made of ice and steam as her feet cool with his heartbeat.

But Villainy is objective, Child. Do you understand what I say?

He turns, lets the mare bob her head, lets her walk the trees as they guide her to somewhere he trusts she knows. His eyes dance across the moonstreaks, like thread that binds the night together, and he sees nothing. He sees no one. The rush in his ears, the hoof beats in his chest dissipate, and he once again faces forward.

And the Villain in this story is truly no Villain at all.

The jewels sit heavy in his saddle bag, the horse beneath him rocks and sways as a boat does. The forest welcomes him, greets him, stretches out to shake his hand in the dark but he does not notice.

If anything

As the stars dance their waltz above him, and the Moon sews her shawl of noir, the mottled mess of the witches roof grows only nearer. The men had frightened him, his horse, his heart. But this, the stone slant of the witches domain; within him it evokes something primal. No fear, nor horror, something deeper, baser. Blooming in his chest is a desire to fight, a desire to storm the house and catch blood with the sharp of his sword. It hums, it sings, it trembles, a simple extension of his own being. His arm, he thinks, is not complete without it. He is a warrior. He has been a warrior, and knows only how to fight as a warrior.

As he approaches, the bogwoman stands, and she waits, and she smiles.

Our Villain is perhaps simply another kind of Victim

She takes the jewels and the need to fight becomes one of flight; a need, a desire to take wing on wind that slips through his fingers like sand. As though she glows from within, the wretch claws for him, howls into the night air and twists it, burns it from his lungs. He cannot breathe, he cannot run, and he stares into the wicked glint of turquoise and yellow, so like that of the hunting dogs, as the moon lays her new-sewn blanket of black across his eyes.

Of a Villain in a whole other story.

He knows nothing more.

But our story does not begin with our Villain. No.

He sleeps for a length.

It begins with a Prince.

And then, one day, he wakes.

And a fairytale.

The gardens in spring are the most magnificent. Somehow, through the length of the year, even the cold of dead winter and the burn of mid-summer, it remains somewhat immaculate. But in spring, when the birds sing with no reserve and the clouds part to cry their sorrows on the parched earth, the gardens are not a garden. They are a wonderland.

Well above even the King's head stand the rosebush walls of the twisting central maze. A circular thing, with many paths and dead ends, which only the Gardener knows by heart and it is a child's favorite place to hide from lessons. Above, making a fitting roof of the walls of greenery is a robin's egg sky dotted once, perhaps twice with cotton clouds too small to carry rain, too lazy to drift quickly. The gravel creaks and clatters quietly beneath the Master's feet as he walks, the smile pulled to his lips by the quiet, if not so distant, girlish giggling only one knows a small girl can make.

From one bush, he plucks gently the head of a rose, and as he walks fingers the thorns from its stem. It's lovely, his mother's favorite, a pastel sort of pink that grows in only the most central section of the maze. Off to his left, again, the giggling starts. His answer is a chuckle of his own, soft and fond and low, and he can't help but turn around as ask in feign curiosity; Raven? By the Stars, I where has she gone? Such a clever girl is she, who can hide from her slow and simple brother. I come even baring a parcel for her and yet still she evades me.

Parcel, Peeps a rosebush, and Charles knows better than to thrust his arm within, to catch and cut his hand and silk sleeve on the forbidding thorns. Not for the first time he wonders how his sister hides inside them so easily and without so much as a nick. Really, a parcel?

Do I hear a Raven calling? He asks, stopping and letting her voice guide his eyes. There, just around the bend ahead. Perhaps she knows no magic and simply knows how to leap behind things more nimbly than he does. He does not doubt this. Yes, my dear, I do. A rose as lovely and soft as your hair. Won't you come out so I may be graced with such beauty?

Charles, And her voice carries with it a fond condescension. He smiles again. And here I think a necklace or sweet chocolate. A rose? I have plenty of those, a maze even.

A maze, he asks and begins his walk away. The soft push of gravel and bare feet is just opposite the bushes to him, and he knows her hiding be only that of being behind a convenient wall. You must have a lot of money, dear, to own a maze.

My father does, Raven says, wearing an imperious tilt in her mouth. She was so much more adaptive than himself, dressing her words in find velvet and pearls at balls, and in cotton slacks and leather loafers when they sat together on the balcony and said things that would make his mother roll in her grave.

Rest her Soul.

He's a king you know, His sister continues, and he wills the hard soles of his shoes to quiet as he rounds the corner. There, down the aisle of prickly green, sits his sister. Strewn about her like water is her gowns where she sits on the ground, the soft white folds of her casual dress rucked up clear to her knees. Her stockings are seen, white, hiding her shins from the world. Beside her sit her boots, tossed and careless and one is nearly hidden beneath a bush, and she is twisting her hair about in her hands. Obviously she had let it from its tight bun, but Charles rather preferred her with it down. It well suited the carefree smile she wore. And I a princess.

I come on bended knee before you, my lady, and offer you this token. Charles apologizes as she startles, hands falling to her lap. The blond curls dance across her back and shoulders, framing lovely blue eyes he knows he shares. Sorry, is all he can offer besides a laugh. Raven pouts grandly, plucks the rose from his fingers and eyes it for thorns he knows she won't find, before it's placed behind one ear. Marvelous. May I join you?

If you must, Finally she smiles and his heart settled; he sat beside her and pulled his boots from his feet so he could feel a fraction of the relaxed nature she clutches like pearls to her chest. I suppose that's an 'I must.'

Quite so. Oh, don't look at me like that Raven. I'm not going to haul you back to the library. Rigid as he may be with his devotion and passion for the written, Charles has found his sister more drawn to music and art. Quite a talent, hidden in her dainty, thin fingers. Her shoulders relax with his confession. The tutor has gone anyway. What are you doing so deep in this maze?

I'm not sure, to be honest, she follows his eyes as he looks around them. Drawn here, as usual. More so in the last fortnight. It's inexplicable, like a siren song. You know, we've lived here our entire lives and never seen the center of this place. Maybe that's why I keep coming.

To see the center? Charles turns his gaze on her, though she faces away from him. In that moment he feels the familiar tug, a brief desire to crawl into the busy thoughts of hers and find what draws her to this place. Perhaps it draws even Charles himself; he's out walking in the dark walking among the roses more than he sleeps in his bed. Once or twice the temptation to find the center has interested him, his curiosity ever present, but it has only been fleeting and unfulfilled.

And frankly, their gardener was a twisted, wrinkled old woman with leather skin and a cat's eyes and the idea of asking her, of glimpsing the path in her mind it frightened him. Not that he would admit such a thing.

Perhaps.

Shall we venture onward?

Raven turns to him once more and frowns, her head canted to the left, and leveled him with a calculating look. He waits her out, and eventually she deems his offer worthy of her time and stands, brushes dirt from her skirts. We shall. Will you be able to find our way back?

I think so. Between your savvy knowledge of the lanes and my nightly wanderings I think I can find us an exit. He stood as well and, after brief debate, chose to rid himself off his stockings and jacket as well. Folded and resting atop his shoes, Charles turned to his sister. She beamed at him, reached forward to untuck his cravat, and turned on her heel to march down the hall of emerald and ruby. I think our problem lies more in actually finding the center, than finding the exit.

Makes sense, Is all Raven offers, and turns down another path that looks no different than all the rest. Charles does the only thing he can do and follows her. And follows her. And follows her.

(NEW SECTION NEW SECTION NEW SECTION NEW SECTION NEW SECTION)

As they walk, they talk. Charles, of course, turns his side of the conversation towards her so despised studies, Raven in turn asks about his trips down to the local tavern. She asks about Moira, the lovely woman he claims he's 'courting,' but her knowing smile only makes him laugh and he tells her to stop. She doesn't, of course, doing a rather decent impersonation when he's perhaps gotten too friendly with the scotch. Or the ale. Or whiskey.

Their well into an hour of conversation before Charles recognizes this, sees that the sun has turned on its axis and seems to be sinking rather than floating above them. While Raven speaks of her piano, Charles lets his eyes graze over the walls of the maze. It was all the same, his mind whispered and his heart clenched. The flowers were no paler and, to his knowledge, that means they had not gone any deeper. But which way had they come? Had they been this way before? They must have gone somewhere, for he had yet to come across his shoes and jacket. The sun's placement and the fall of their shadows suggested far longer than the hour he had assumed, as well as a northward progression. While Raven talked to herself Charles turned to see the palace behind him with, that made no sense. If they were really going North the palace Something is wrong, he decides. Very unusually wrong.

Raven is still talking, so he lets himself ignore her and instead focuses his power within himself. The world around him only dims, as if in a dream, the edges going grey and ragged as he unfolds. It's all trivial, when the power is untied from its post. It washes over the world like a blanket, feels and hears and tastes everything and everyone, every thought and feeling and impulse. When the waves brush the solid stone that is Raven's mind, she's calm. She has yet to notice anything, enthused about the young tutor she has a fancy for but still managed to avoid due to the subject matter that spills from his mouth.

He ignores her still.

Instead, while the sea of his own mind floods the maze, he imagines within himself a tree. It is an ancient weeping willow with long, spindly branches and vines that fall like a cascade of hair. Slender and tall and sad and beautiful, all the things his mother was. It both makes him ache and warms him, the familiarity of the tree. Within its branches is perched a dove. It coos at him, expectant, and he calls it to him like a pet. Visually it is petite, like himself, small and soft and perhaps a bit overfed, but it's a smart and kind bird.

It lights upon his shoulder and the grey-black corners, the tastes of other people (person, Raven, being the only other as questionably sane as himself to be so far in the maze) fade as he reels the water back it, tucks the power inside the central knot in the Mothertree and locks it away. His dove remains, as the tree does where it is rooted at the back of his mind. It brushes its wing against his neck a comfort he has given himself since a small boy, and though he worries he does so less now. When the time comes Raven gets hungry, all he need to is send the dove into the sky, tied to the tree with whisper-thin vines, and follow its trail home. Tempted as he is to do this now, to lure her home with talk of sweet bread and wine, he wants his sister to have her fun. He can wait, his dove can wait. There is no danger for the Prince and his sibling in the maze.

Granted, as true as he wants to believe it, the sun sinks faster than he thought possible. He had since lost track of the conversation, nodding and humming and whispering to Raven the nonsense sounds of one who isn't really listening. Instead, he watched the sun sink and sink and sink, the sky grow more and more grey. Finally, when still she has yet to notice the bizarre half-changes in their journey Charles takes her by the elbow and turns her. Raven, he asks, and Raven turns to him in confusion and perhaps a spot of displeasure at having been interrupted. Look above you.

She does. She looks at him.

Yes?

That's all you have to say? Charles feels himself falter and she looks at him expectantly. About the sky?

It's as blue as it was ten minutes ago Charles.

Raven, we have walked a great deal more than ten minutes. At her skeptical look, Charles adjusts his footing and releases her arm. I think it's time for us to turn back.

We've only just begun! She's unhappy, he feels it like a clatter in silence, her displeasure. He does not back down.

We're going home, perhaps another day.

Charles, Raven calls as he turns. When he does, Charles startles and runs fully into a severe wall of greenery. The dove at his shoulder flutters and coos at him, as flustered as he himself was, and he takes a step, two, back. That wall was not there, Charles told himself. I've only just come from this direction.

All right, we'll go this— But his words catch in his throat as he turns, again, to something unexpected. Where once his sister and, beyond, a maze had been is now a house. It's unlike any that Charles has ever seen, this house, a small hutch of a thing built of the same stone as the palace. Its roof lay thatched and a bit weather-worn, straw bound by aging iron strings. The house sits in the center of a clearing, perfectly circular Charles observes, and it's walls made of bare rosebushes so high he could only guess they were well over twice his own height. There was no gravel here, as what lined the entire rest of the maze. Instead, green grass, beautiful as emeralds in his father's sword. The house had behind it what looked like a petite reprieve for a horse, or perhaps a cow. A horse is what he chose in the end, hearing it bay.

Above him the sky was pitch as midnight, stars twinkled like candle lights, and yet the grotto seemed almost lit from within. A pond lay to his right, a metal worked bench at its edge by a small waterfall. How does the water continue to fall? Charles wondered as he approached the house. It has no river. At his shoulder, the dove whispered its concern and Charles agreed. The closer he got, the more and more flowers Charles noticed. Wrapped around the house, save for the door, was a gorgeous garden of begonias and forget-me-nots. A section looked carved out, specific for what looked like herbs. Idly he wondered if vegetables grew somewhere else. The gardener's home, perhaps, he asked the dove. From his shoulder it took flight, floated, and landed again. No then, no entrance. And as much as it really should have concerned him, it didn't.

Charles had only been in the grotto for a short time. He had advanced hesitantly towards a small patch of rather impressive sunflowers, perhaps seven feet tall, when something brushed his conscious. It hadn't realized it had touched him, whatever it was, but it was a massive mind. The mind itself felt physical, it's sudden arrival into the grotto nearly knocking Charles to his knees. The dove cooed in earnest, uneasy and puffed in defense on his shoulder. The massive existence came closer and as it did so, Charles began to feel as though there were binds wrapping around him, ice cold and metallic and heavy and oh, so very strong. The dove, unhappy with the development, nibbled his hair in reassurance it really didn't mean and fluttered back into his head, back through the disorganization of Charles' thoughts to the quiet safety of the Mothertree.

The creature, the mind, the thing was drawing closer. Charles began to feel out of breath, felt compressed and claustrophobic. Chilly fingers were winding around his mind, squeezing the life from him and the air from his chest. Charles brought his own hands up, pressed them to his temples, pleaded, pleaded for the aching hold to release. Set him free. Deep within the aching compression he could almost taste the emotions, almost as large and thick as the presence itself; anger, vengeance, sorrow, fear, unhappiness.

What was it? Where? To no avail, Charles tried reaching out with his gift and yet it was frozen in place, unable to move in the oceanic waves it was used it. He felt bottled, inside and out, and it hurt. It was a deeper pain, a fear, of being controlled and having no control over oneself. It began to manifest in his mind's eyes, the pain, as fireworks of red and orange. Of blood on snow, and diamond-sharp shards. Of years and years of solitude. Charles' eyes only barely managed to open, he took in the red-wash world around him; Empty, empty, there's no one here. There's nothing here! The pain, the pain, the pain. The emotions were drowning him, filling his head and heart and lungs; sadness, loneliness. My flowers need water.

A voice? A thought, not a memory or a feeling. It was a voice, but so muffled by the sound of swords scraping Charles almost hadn't heard it. It was close, the magnitude of this existence forcing Charles' to his knees. His stomach turned, it hurt, it seared and it ached every part of him. As the being grew closer, Charles felt crushed. He could not run, could not escape. Trapped, consumed, tunnel vision. The voice, like metal creaking as it bent; Footprints?

No, Charles cried, whispered. He had no control of his voice, and whether he shouted or not, for what reason, at what, he did not know. He wanted his voice to work properly, wanted to scream for the monstrous existence to recede, to step away. When nothing came out by a dry heave, Charles felt the world swirl, saw the emerald grass rushing forward at him. There was nothing he could think of, like this. Like being pulled apart and crushed, like being cut open and yet drawn in to tight. Too much of everything, of being of living of pain and sorrow. The pain, the pain, the pain of existence.

Never had Charles thought a creature of this kind could exist.

The black began to fold in upon itself. The grass was almost at his nose now, so close he could count the blades. Charles felt his consciousness fading, drifting away like dust in the wind. If he went under the waves of sleep he knew, knew, he would not re-awaken. No, he pleaded, whether in his head or out loud he never knew. All he could recall was a flash of silver, a sudden release in the oppressive power to be replaced with warmth, and the comforting nothingness of sleep.