This chapter was so much easier to write (and fun to reread to edit).
Lots of Denmark and Norway interactions, so enjoy!
Chapter Nine: Disgruntled Explanations
Rage exploded within Mathias, "What the hell do you mean by that?!" He roared, jumping to his feet.
Lukas blinked slowly, entering Mathias' range in an unspoken challenge. "I cannot allow you to leave and risk you spilling my location or secrets to the village."
"That's bulls-"
"In return" Lukas interrupted, stepping even closer. His heart fluttered within its bony cage, and the sorcerer tried his best to ignore it. "I will tell you anything you desire to know. About myself, about Arthur—the dragon—or anything else."
They were about a foot away from one another now, Mathias glaring down and Lukas staring with his head tilted up.
'I could grab him right now' Mathias thought, lip curling in the beginnings of a snarl.
'There's no guarantee you could escape the ropes, though. Would the spells fade if the witch died?' His mind countered.
'I could grab his throat and threaten him until he releases me, then kill him' came his response.
'Or you could play along, learn what you can, and wait for an opportunity to destroy him' his conscious shot back.
The tall blond narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, studying the sorcerer with the masked face and beautiful eyes.
"Very well" he growled, holding out his hand, "I'll make that deal with you, witch."
Lukas snorted, ignoring the outstretched hand. "I am not a witch, boy" he scoffed, "witches work with potions and poisons and medicine. Their powers allow them to create and infuse magic within consumable brews. I" he stressed, wrinkling his nose slightly, "am a sorcerer. I am able to infuse my magic within words to create spells; to control things and force my will upon them." He finished, finally taking the hand.
His stomach fluttered and his mind sent a spark of mistrust down his spine, but he ignored both and waited for Mathias to make the next move.
He stared, almost dumbfounded, at their connected hands a few moments before shaking them up and down once before retreating.
"Fine. Sorcerer." He grunted, "And don't call me boy" he spat, "I'm far larger than you."
"Physically, yes, you are larger and older" Lukas conceded, "I am, however, far older and more mentally advanced than you."
With a sour scowl on his face, Mathias flopped back onto the bed and stared at the sorcerer, trying to hold on to the fleeting feelings of anger and aggression.
"It is late" Lukas stated, collecting the empty bowl, "Unless there is something you wish to know, I will take my leave."
Mathias tensed, a question jumping up his throat, but he swallowed it down and stayed silent. He would brood and think for the night, not gossip with a sorcerer–'witch' his mind hissed– about his curiosity.
Lukas hovered in the doorway a moment before exiting, shutting the bedroom door behind him.
Mathias was alone, even though he desperately did not wish to be. Instead of letting his thoughts consume him, the spiky-blond stood up and began to examine the parts of the room he could reach.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOo
Lukas inspected the blade in his hand for what felt like the hundredth time, his eyes trailing over it but not truly registering it. No, his mind was more focused on the fact that he was feeling and had been for most of the morning.
Emotions that he hadn't felt in centuries were swirling and worming and crawling all throughout his body: fear, annoyance, anger, curiosity, sadness, joy, confusion…and many others Lukas could not quite remember.
His heart was no longer icy; his mask had crumbled long ago and he felt cold. Exposed. Lost.
'How did I deal with this the first few years of life?' he questioned, setting the sword down to cradle his head in his hands. He grasped at his hair and fisted his hands within it. It was soft; it comforted him and dampened the chaos flowing within his body.
"Did that boy cause this?" he whispered to himself, staring at his reflection in the sharpened metal. Painfully expressive eyes stared back at him, as if in a silent challenge.
"Curarentur cum amore verus" he murmured, removing one hand from his hair to rest it above his heart. "'Healed with true love…'"
"Am… does this mean I'm in love with that man?" he rasped, a large amount of fear coursing through his body, making him feel nauseous. "The man who made a sport of harassing and attacking me these past few years?"
Lukas' eyes shifted to the closed bedroom door, his body began to tremble and he felt dread rise like bile in his throat.
It couldn't be true. Yet, in the back of his mind, he knew it was. He had somehow fallen in love with his tormentor and, thus, his cursed heart was beginning to melt. His dam was cracking, allowing long forgotten emotions to flow through him once again.
'Will the spell break by simply me being in love with him?' Lukas thought, frowning, 'Or does it have to be a mutual feeling that's acted upon?'
"Knowing our mentor" he hissed, picturing the old sorceress in his mind, "It would not be as easy as it simply being one sided."
His mind then jumped to Arthur and Alfred. Was Alfred infatuated with Dragon Arthur, or Arthur himself?
Lukas returned his gaze to the polished, enchanted sword. "If I can make Alfred and Arthur fall in love…" he trailed off, running his fingers delicately along the blade, "Then I can break the dragon's spell and the curse, all at once."
His lips twitched into a soft smile. Yes, he would focus is attention on saving Arthur instead of the man imprisoned in his bedroom.
'But, how can I push Alfred and Arthur into truly falling for one another?'
OoOoOoOoOoOoOo
Mathias was lying on the bed, staring up blankly at the polished wooden ceiling. His mind was virtually empty, the only thought meandering through was about how bored he was; how much he desired some form of stimulation.
He was used to being around many people and interacting with them daily. His village was rather large, after all.
Two days had passed since he had entered the sorcerer's – witch's' his mind injects with practiced ease – house and became trapped. Tied to a bed with nothing but his mind to occupy him.
Mathias spent most of the first day exploring the room, finding nothing more than objects one expected to find in a bedroom. Nothing magical or dangerous. Well, nothing within his reach, at least. There was one corner of the room that his bondage would not allow him near.
Speaking of the ropes, they baffled Mathias at first and he spent the better of three hours trying to figure out the enchanted braid.
The rope stayed taunt and the same length as long as he remained on the left side of the room, opposite of the doorway. They kept him just shy of the wardrobe and did not allow him anywhere near the mysterious chest in the corner. If he ventured onto the right side of the room it shrunk at least a foot, keeping him well away from the door. The rope did, however, allow him access to Lukas' bookshelf.
Similarly, as he found out when his bladder was close to bursting, the ropes would expand many feet and allow him to completely enter the small, closet-sized bathroom adjacent to the entryway.
Mathias spent a few hours trying to trick the ropes with no success. After a while he simply settled to looking out the window; it faced north, from what he could tell, and occasionally he was entertained by a pair of squirrels or some traveling deer. A fox even scurried by, at one point.
Here he was two days in, completely bored and out of things to explore. Lukas had entered the room once since the first night, bringing Mathias a pouch of dried meat, bag of dried fruit, and a small basket of fresh fruit. He parted with a dull "Shout if you need anything" before exiting and not once reentering.
With a defeated groan, he opened his mouth and let out a grumpy call: "Oy, sorcerer!"
It took Lukas about five minutes to finally nudge open the door, the mask constructed over his face gave him an icy air of indifference.
"I'm bored as hell" Mathias huffed, almost childishly.
"And what, pray tell, do you expect me to do about that?" Lukas slowly drawled, eyes giving away only exhaustion.
Mathias didn't say anything and simply stared in silence at the smaller man. Studying him, almost. Leaning against the doorway, Lukas crossed his arms and tilted his head down—almost drowsily.
"How old are you."
Lukas blinked, lifting his head to look at the man who finally broke the long, uncomfortable silence. "Pardon?"
Mathias scowled, rolling his eyes, "How old are you. Like, actually and physically."
"Ah" Lukas grunted, looking around and stopping to stare at the empty fruit basket. "I was a few months shy of nineteen when I was cursed" he glanced up to meet Mathias' eyes, "which occurred nearly five hundred years ago."
"So, are you like, immortal or something?" Mathias asked, shifting to lie on his side to better face the sorcerer.
Lukas sighed, running his fingers briefly through his hair. 'I told him I would answer any question he had. I suppose this counts' he mused, the corner of his lip twitching into a tiny smirk.
"Or something" he replied, shifting to lean on the opposite side of the doorframe, "I was cursed by an angry sorceress; causing what I suppose you could call immortality.
"I can only assume this, but once the curse gets lifted the immortality will too. So, in a sense, I am not completely immortal. Only temporarily" Lukas concluded.
"How did it happen?" Mathias asked, keeping his eyes trained on the wall beyond the sorcerer.
"Arthur and I did something stupid, and had to face the consequences" Lukas stated with a shrug, "our teacher found out what we had done and punished us for lying about it."
He paused, closing his eyes. "Cor glacies pro adiutor, cor ignis pro mendax. Curarentur cum amore verus" he repeated; the curse forever imprinted onto his mind.
"What?" Mathias grunted, sitting up to look at the apprehensive sorcerer.
"That was her spell" Lukas murmured, voice soft and remorseful. "'A heart of ice for the helper, a heart of fire for the liar.'…" he trailed off, throat drying out and keeping him from translating the last bit.
Lukas placed his hand over his heart again, almost forgetting of the other's presence, "Art stole an advanced spell book from our teacher" he murmured, almost too quietly to hear; Mathias had to strain his ears and fight the urge to move closer.
"We tried a spell and ended up setting fire to a forest…" he let out a shaky sigh, "We should have told her, but we tried to hide our mistake. Arthur lied to her, and I tried to back him up."
Silent fell between the two and spread throughout the room. Mathias was slowly processing the new information in his head, matching and rearranging his past theories and knowledge to wrap around the new facts. Lukas stared at the other male through his bangs, studying him cautiously and silently.
"That seems like a pretty shitty consequence" Mathias finally huffed, avoiding the sorcerer's eyes. He could feel them, piercing and calculating, making him feel vulnerable and subdued.
After only receiving a soft grunt, the nineteen-year-old finally shifted to look at Lukas, "I mean…"
"I am not sure" Lukas interrupted, something flashing quickly through his eyes, "that you understand. This was a very long time ago. Many things have changed in five hundred years; the prevalence of magic, culture, longevity, and the desires humanity holds.
"I was considered an adult, back then. One who should have known better than to lie to our teacher—a woman who was kind enough to choose Arthur and I, out of many others, to teach magic to. It was a fair consequence, given the circumstances." Lukas explained.
Mathias nodded as the short lecture concluded, conceding with a "fair enough."
Once again, a pregnant pause expanded through the room.
"I have a few more questions" Mathias stated after a while, gaze hardening into a slight glare. "Is Alfred a threat to village, and, is your friend Arthur truly that… that beast, on the mountain."
OoOoOoOoOoOoOo
Alfred hummed quietly as he slipped through a stretch of pine forest. The spongy needles softened his footfalls and accented the spring in his step.
It had been a few days since he had last seen Arthur, and he was excited to finally have the free time to visit him again. He had been working hard in the village, socializing and earning his stay.
However, seeing as the village's attention had turned from curiosity towards him to worry towards the missing Mathias, Alfred used it as an excuse to visit Arthur. And, of course, keep an eye out for the missing blond.
Regardless, it was a beautiful day and Alfred couldn't be happier.
What do you mean suspicious ending, that's totally not a suspicious ending. Alfred'll be fine, no worries guys!
Arthur has a heart of fire and Lukas a heart of ice - now you know where the title from the prologue came from (if you didn't figure it out right away, that is)
I can't believe I was a sophomore when writing this...
~Cheetay