L'Enfant Trouvé
Chapter 1
It would be a lie to state that he likes children, and yet it would be a lie to state that he dislikes them as well. He merely has no strong feelings towards them. Or so, Athanase would like to tell himself, and on any other day it might even be true. He has had children in the past, not of his own blood, but little creatures that he had picked up off the side of the road, from a market square, the gutters, really wherever his feet took him. Had dusted them off, polished them until they shone like jewels and sent them on their way, there had not truly been any emotional attachment, not the kind that would cause the children to return and visit, not what is shared between a true parent and child. That is the only explanation that he deigns to give himself when the hours grow long, and in the depths of his whiskey he ponders as to why those countless little ones never returned. He did not love them and somewhere in the deep cervices of their mind, they too had understood and left him to his solitude. It was simply better that way.
And so, on a normal day he would have kept walking turned a blind eye to the small hands gripping the bars of the cage and made his own way to freedom. On a normal day he would not be standing barefoot in the pits of a dungeon, blood dripping down his back from the countless lashes of a whip, from his ears where they had ripped his earrings free, his face where a back hand had caught him off guard. Would not be looking into the lost eyes of a creature barely taller than his shoulder, whose skinny frame had to weigh less than five stones. His heart does not accelerate when he sees the despair in the child's face, he feels nothing at all other than a faint twinge, his consciousness rearing its ugly head. The metal stands no change against his brute strength, magic flowing down his arms and augmenting it until the metal expanded and ripped from its moorings. The bracelets around his wrists spark in protests, little flying slivers of silver embedding into his skin, but if there is anything that Athanase is good at it is ignoring pain.
"Come," the words escape in a rasp so horrendous that instead of emerging the child – a boy he thinks – jerks back and retreats into the shadows, large eyes in a gaunt face staring at him. Athanase stares back, foot tapping with no small amount of impatience. "Or die," he eventually settles on and turns to resume his task of finding the exit. It is rendered quite difficult by the fact that the walls all look the same, a blank uniform stone with not so much as a break in sight.
"You're going the wrong way," a voice points out helpfully and he about-faces just in time to see the child disappear back into his cell. Athanase stares after him for a long moment, exhaling slowly as he drags him himself through a ponderous count to 20, and by the time he's been through it in both Latin and Greek he thinks he might have found his stash of patience.
"Child," he starts, pauses – sniffing the air – and continues in common, "child. I am leaving this place, if you know the exit come along, I will protect you." Starts to walk in the opposite direction, steps slow and measured in the hopes that the boy will take the bait. As he moves, he flexes his hand, trying to determine which of his fingers are the source of the near constant throbbing emerging from it. For several minutes there is silence, and then the rapid skittering of feet reaches his ears. Athanase slows further still, out of courtesy for shorter legs and not because walking on bloodied feet hurts. Keeps a portion of his attention of the child, the rest of it dedicated to any guards that might have the misfortune of crossing their path. However, it is the child who firsts alerts him to one, a loud yelp falling out of his mouth as he stumbles back from an open door.
Athanase does not stop to think, does not wonder how he missed the threat, and instead moves. One foot finds the wall and he pushes off it, moving to quickly for even the blood coating his sole to slow him down as he pounces. Knee connecting with the jaw of the beleaguered guard, hands grabbing the side of his face, slams him directly into the ground. There is no time for a clean kill, no time to be discreet, Athanase breaks his neck without remorse and leaves him to gasp his dying breaths out in endless agony.
"Wow," the child's voice comes again, and this time there is something like respect seeping into it. "You're strong." He sticks closer to Athanase's side after that, which while smarter is certainly less helpful as he now has a small creature underfoot when he fights and brutally dispatches the next two guards they encounter.
"You're really strong," he says again, mouth open in some sort of perturbing glee as he stares at the mangled corpse of what was once a man.
"Close your eyes next time," Athanase replies after a long pause, wiping the blood off his face with an equally bloodied hand. "You don't need to be seeing this." The look he receives in response in half deadpan, half disgust, and one hundred percent unimpressed. It is in hindsight a silly concern when he thinks about where exactly they are.
"I've seen a lot worse," the child says haughtily, and though Athanase doesn't doubt his words, it doesn't make him particularly happy to hear them either. "Besides, if I closed my eyes, I'd be a target." Skitters ahead before Athanase can remind him to stay back and says in a loud voice. "There! The exit!" He sounds so unbearably pleased with himself, hopeful even, that Athanase almost feels bad for having to point out the thin red beams of painful death separating them from their goal. Not to mention the visible silver plaques embedded in the ground, and while he can handle a lot of pain, Athanase recognizes a bad idea when he sees one. The child might make it out – human as he is – but he would not be able to handle more than a few steps.
"We're not going that way," he says instead, and hauls the child back by his shirt, retracing their path until he finds a different corridor to turn off into.
"The exit was right there!" The boy protests, kicking helplessly and hissing like a feral cat when Athanase does finally deposit him on the ground. "We were so close!"
"Close to dying," Athanase mutters back. "There were –" hesitates, his knowledge of common failing him when faced with the more complex nature of a laser beam, and he settles for the much simpler "guards" instead. Starts searching his shirt in, making a noise of annoyance when it unravels instead of providing him with the thread that he needs.
"You didn't have problems with those guards before," the child points out, still sounding quite cross. His feet scuff at the ground, arms crossed in front of his skinny chest. "You slaughtered them."
"I'm not bullet proof," Athanase replies, sparing him a brief glance, before making a quit noise of delight at the discovery of actual string in his pants pocket. He's not quite sure how it got there, perhaps belonging to a previous inhabitant, but that hardly matters when it is just long enough to serve his purposes. He can feel the weight of eyes glaring at the top of his head, judgmental and full of questions, and when he glances up again it is to be greeted with the most dubious of expressions. "I'm not," Athanase repeats, purposefully misunderstanding the look. "I've been shot before; it was not pleasant."
The judgmental look only grows more intense and the child scoffs, turning his head away in a flurry of messy pink locks. The upward tilt of his nose is snobby and Athanase almost thinks him some noble brat for heartbeat, but the thought fades rapidly, in favor of securing their escape. Curls the string around his fingers and whispers a word of power, feels a thrill of sheer joy and relief when the string lights up in response and out of the wall across from him shadows emerge. Groping hands of black ink that meld together until they have formed a rippling doorway, the depths of which no mortal eye can plumb, a deep inky see of darkness. "Your exit," Athanase says softly, eyes stinging with the burning pain that continuously emanates from his wrists.
"My WHAT?!" The child screeches, voice gone all high pitched with fright and he gesticulates wildly, pointing at the teaming mass of shadows and then back towards the way they'd come. "That's not – WHAT THE FUCK?!"
"Your exit," Athanase repeats. "It's a portal, it will take you to safety," his voice quietens in response to the yelling, and just barely manages to keep his hands steady, afraid of ruining the strands of luminescent threads that form a cat's cradle between his fingers. "You need to hurry, all that screaming will attract unwanted attention." There's blood on them, dripping from a cut on his palm - the result of an ill-timed sword strike - it catches on the threads and hangs in the balance like fine pearl shaped liquid jewels.
"I'm not going into that thing, it'll eat me," is the hissed answer, accompanied by even more flailing. "We should go back to the gate. The actual gate."
"There's no time," Athanase says, and huffs out a breath of air, trying to rid himself of the bangs sticking to his nose. It's mildly effective, but when he blinks the boy is still standing there - eyes wide, pink hair sticking out every which way from his head, stick limb figure in a baggy robe - he hasn't moved an inch. "You need to go," Athanase forces himself to repeat, the weight of the unfamiliar language heavy in his tongue. "Go now or die. They're coming." It is only a partial lie, the guards seemingly unaware of their presence just yet, but Athanase isn't willing to risk the blessing of a few extra seconds. Not when he still needs to craft a portal for himself right afterwards.
The child's eyes widen fractionally, and he swallows audibly. Athanase can hear his pulse beating under his skin, as rapid fire as a scared rabbit's heartbeat. By all means the child should have fled the moment he first opened the portal, and yet, here he lingered still caught in a moment of stupid stubbornness. "Come with me," the child says abruptly, voice squeaking out like a puppy who had yet to figure out how to bark. He's certainly as stupid as one.
"No," Athanase replies, and counts to ten in a desperate bid for patience. "You need to go, it's not safe."
"They'll kill you," the child retorts, stating the words as if he thinks that Athanase would ever have a reason to fear death. "I've seen what they do to witches."
"Fortunate then for I am not a witch." Athanase replies, and allows a smirk to unfold across his face, a challenge written in the slant of his bloodied lips. The child looks utterly unimpressed, his highborn brows furrowing and lids lowering utterly the expression that he emits can only be one of pure deadpan. There is judgement in those pink eyes, and Athanase resists the urge to squirm as they rake of over his body and somehow find him lacking.
"No," the child says with a huff and a sneer. "Any lowly hedge witch can create glowing string; a real mage would have brought this whole building down on our heads and squashed those stupid lab coats like bugs." Turns his nose up as if he has the right to judge when his life is only guaranteed by the fraying threads of Athanase's morals. However, as tempting as it would be to simply be rid of the nuisances his morals are as deeply imbedded in his soul as his pride, and together those two form an immovable force.
"Would a hedge witch be able to form a portal such as I have," he hisses back, and the cat's cradle glows brighter in return. It is perhaps not the wisest of moves when pain immediately flares up his arms originating from the silver manacles still clasped tightly around his wrists. A hedge witch would never have been able to muster up the power to set them free when bound so cruelly, Athanase thinks but does not say, the child wouldn't understand anyway.
"It's glowing strings," the boy insists. "Real mages can produce flames and fire and –"
Whatever he is about to say is lost in the sudden clanging of a bell as the empty cell is discovered, or perhaps it is the three dead bodies, Athanase isn't entirely sure, he wasn't exactly discreet during his rampage. Either way, the time for games and taunts is long gone and the boy needs to go. Though he can no more leave him here to perish then a mother cat can abandon her kittens to the fire, he can't exactly bring him with him either. The realm that he plans to flee to has the tendency of turning humans into flavorful packages of death and pestilence. It is no place for a child. Chances a glance over his shoulder but the hall behind them is still clear, only the distant ringing of the bell heralds the danger. "Enough pontificating," he snaps. "Through the portal with you." Looks back at him, expecting to see reason finally dawn in the child's eyes once he understands how close they are to being captured, instead all he sees is stubbornness.
"Rock paper scissors."
"What?"
"Rock paper scissors with me," the child repeats impatiently. "If I win, you won't leave me, if I lose you can stay here. Fair?"
Athanase rather thinks that that is the stupidest idea he has ever heard in his long years of existence, but if it'll get the child to obey, then he'll play the game. Sensitive hearing picks up on the sound of footsteps. Dozens of them, rapidly approaching and he curses, snapping his gaze back to the boy. "Fine, count us in." There is a grin, wicked quick and gone all to soon, as the child does exactly that. Athanase hardly has a chance to realize his mistake before it is too late.
"Scissors!" The child crows gleefully, eyes alight with manic glee, his small hand flailing about. "I win!"
There is no time to argue semantics, to point out that the game had been rigged from the beginning because Athanase couldn't close his hands due to holding the cat's cradle open, there is only time to body slam the boy into the wriggling mass of shadows emanating from the wall as the first guards round the corner shouting.
Athanase has gone through portals more times than he cares it remember. It is the same every single time. The feeling of nothingness as he plummets through the void. No sound, no peripheral vision, only the endless weightlessness of dropping towards his destination. He's never done it with magic nullifiers burning his wrists, nor with a screaming child clinging to his shirt. He supposes that its some mercy that he cannot hear the boy's shouts, only peer into his wide-open mouth as tears and snot run down his face. It is not an endorsement of parenthood, especially when the boy rubs his snotty face all over his shirt and starts screaming all over again, it is almost impressive how he never seems to run out of air. Athanase considers trying to soothe the child, and makes the effort to lift his arm an inch or two before the pain becomes to much and he gives up on thinking, mind wandering like a fish struggling to find its way home amid the riptide of pain.
The landing comes as unexpectedly as it is jarring and all the air rushes out of his chest in a pained wheeze, that leaves him blinking back tears. Feels his fingers encounter grass and dirt, grainy to the touch, and it is only then that he remembers. Recalls how in all the chaos he had never focused on a destination for their teleporting, only the thought of getting away from there, and returning to someplace safe. There are not many places that Athanase considers to be safe and even fewer that would be safe for a human child, in fact there are only two. One being the place that they had just fled and the other being Oriflamme kingdom. Blinks up at a blue sky, clouds making their way across it in a slow meandering paths and it is impossible to tell which one they might have landed in. He hopes for his own sake that they've entered the kingdom, though his presence might not necessarily be welcomed he won't at least be executed on sight and that alone is a small mercy.
Looks down at the head tucked under his chin, and feels a little more tension ease out when he realizes that the boy is safe if unconscious, another blessing as he hadn't been looking forwards to the screaming. All that remains then is to convince his muscles he really ought to sit up and figure out there location, perhaps there will be a nearby town he can dump the child on. A loud barking derails his thoughts, and sheer panic pushes him to his feet, swaying like a drunkard, the child clasped to his chest a hand preparing magic that he's not entirely sure that he can cast. There is a beast bearing down on him, fluffy golden fur, floppy ears, and a tail that seems to be powered by its own source of magic. He braces himself, preparing to leap out of the way, toes digging into the bare earth -
"Athanase?"
The sound of his name catches him entirely off guard. A moment later his ass hits the ground as huge paws land on his shoulders, and the ferocious beast starts to determinedly lick his face. It is not pleasant by any means, and he squirms, swatting at it with desperate hisses until it is gone as soon as it had appeared.
"It truly is you," the voice comes again, and there is only one person who speaks his name with that accent, holds it in his mouth as if it is something precious and not a curse to be spat. "Heavens have mercy on my soul, I thought you were dead."
Athanase squeezes his eyes shut, desperately wishing for this to be an illusion, for his magic to be playing tricks on his beleaguered mind. But the dog is woofing happily, and he knows it now, remembers the puppy that had once stumbled out of a summoning circle and launched itself at its master with more glee than sense. Familiars cannot be replicated, this he knows as well as he knows his own magic, and the sting of his own missing panther is as abrupt as the rage he feels at himself for having inadvertently sent him to the last place he had ever wanted to go. There are tears burning the insides of his eyelids he notes, or perhaps it I s blood from his numerous injuries. Deliberates for a moment, shoving the child off himself and fleeing but there is not a part of his body that does not ache or burn, and he doubts that he could make it far. Not fast enough to avoid Ruthven's whip at any rate.
"Athanase," that voice comes again, saying his name so softly as to almost be mistaken for gentle, and fingers brush across his cheek, over the bridge of his nose, down to his jaw where a thumb maps the contour of his lips and Athanase forgets how to breathe. The touch is reminiscent of days of old when he would perch on the windowsills of the castle and peer out into the rising sun. When that voice and that hand would come find him, trace along his cheek as it is doing now – a secret moment of intimacy shared only with the dawn – and draw him back into himself. "You're a-alive." It cracks on those two words, and something cracks in his chest in return, causes air to resume flowing towards his lungs and he swallows hoarsely.
Opens his eyes to see a familiar face leaning over him, worn down and wrinkled by age, laugh lines where there were none before, scars as well, across the broken slant of his nose and disappearing beneath a dark eye patch. Hair that used to flow long and free now contained in an elaborate braid that stings slightly to see when his own hair was brutally severed naught but a day before. The hand is still pressed against his face, ink-stained fingers resting right over the drum of his pulse, below his jaw and it should be terrifying. In his state, the wrong move would be more than enough to kill him, and yet the concern swimming so evidently in pale eyes is enough to temporarily waylay his fears. "Hello August," he says instead and passes out.