Trial Zero: Lunaris Carcerem
The stars glowed in the silent night sky overhead, the full moon's rays cutting through the darkness and casting a single shaft of light across cell block A-113. The young prisoner's chest rose and fell softly, and as Cassandra stretched and patrolled the block, she was mildly surprised to see the once-alchemist asleep more peacefully than he'd been in any of the other nights in the last tide she'd had to take the shift.
Then, she stopped in her boots, mid-quarter turn.
His hair glowed with a soft but blindingly snowy white shine, and in the fields, she could just barely make out the outlines of the rocks ebbing and flowing across the Old Corona countryside like a stormy tide. Watchful luminescent eyes sparked fearfully in the opposite corner of the cell, little paws bounding lightly to the door of the entrance upon seeing Cassandra, a silent plead to awaken 24601.
She blinked, and
The cell block was as quiet as it had ever been, the rocks as still as they had ever been, the young boy's ruffled locks perhaps overgrown but still the same raven-black and cerulean- streaked as ever. The moon's full effulgence had since moved on. The boy's breath hitched in his throat and the tearstreaks running down his cheeks began to fade.
It must have been nothing more than a trick of the light.
Cassandra walked away.
Trial One: Lunares Stratera
"And then, the Earl of Weselton tossed the purloined purse-and the time-turner, if you recall-to his accomplice, Captain Clovis. Flynnigan Ryder, with a millisecond to act," said Varian, casting a hefted coin purse into the air and lightly stepping over stacks of books to swing over his desk with an air of practiced grace, papers fluttering to the ground as he landed, "lept before Captain Clovis, flung his arm out in a single stroke to block him, and caught the time-turner's purse on the tip of his sword afore it landed the arc." The enthusiastic teenager accentuated the story by indeed catching the loops of the purse on a wooden sword he'd drawn just as seamlessly as the rest, his back foot poised against a shelf of beakers that clattered at his touch but didn't break.
Flynn and Lance themselves whistled appreciatively as Varian's face flushed a cherry-blossom pink and he laughed softly, lowering his sword.
"Hey, now!" applauded Lance, running a finger along the chalk-dust landscape of the fictional kingdom's Aureole dancing across the walls, "Sounds like these books are still just as awesome as we remember, eh, buddy?"
Flynn chuckled, sitting on the edge of the desk with his eyes sparkling in boyish delight. "Even better, I'd say. Almost as awesome as us, eh? Hey, kid, do the Ryder of Seas thing again!"
Varian giggled, resketching the dragons arcing over the Forest of Fallen Stars and shaking the chalk dust off his gloves.
"What, the-" he said, clearing his voice and standing straighter, "I stand for the call of adventure, the tide and the windswept of skies, for my heart is the heart of a Ryder, and the call of adventure is nigh!"
The last line echoed in chorus by Lance and Flynn, the two friends cheered with unburdened excitement. Flynn laughed animatedly, swinging his boots with glee. Varian crossed back to tap the loose papers against his desk and giggled with a light smile.
"So, any reason you needed to ask me about Flynnigan Ryder and the Labyrinthine Destiny, or are you two just hiding from the castle?"
"Wh-what? You know, Goggles, I am astonished that you'd think such a thing." retorted Flynn confidently, a playful smile dancing at his eyes.
"I could have lent you the book."
"Aww, but you do them so well!" trailed Flynn, gesturing to the laboratory set up as a scenic (if imaginative) replica of Aureole's kingdom, "Besides, Lance is illiterate."
Lance cuffed his friend's shoulder. "Remarkably so, Eugene here is also illiterate wherever a rulebook is concerned. And also when Rapunzel is negotiating trade agreements with Neserdnia in the royal court, and the king isn't feeling so friendly."
Flynn stretched and nabbed one of the loose papers off the desk, highlighted with Varian's trademark looping scrawls and singed edges. "So, we thought we'd come see what we could do, catch up on Aureole, lend our immense talent and wit to...asphodellic dichloridiafluoramech?"
The alchemist's attention sparked. "Ooh, I could use a hand on that one."
"Like finding a catchier name?" Lance suggested, leaning over, "Something that's not so long, but maybe more memorable….like Strongbowlium."
Varian, crouched by the lower shelves to hold a beaker to the light, shook his head. "Em, I'll take that under advisement." he said, grinning sheepishly, "But if you could, ah, hand me that phosphorus selenide solution up there? It's the purple one, second from the left."
Flynn leaned over Lance's shoulder, causing him to jostle the bookcase. "Ohhh, so that's what that one is. See, I was hoping it'd taste like, whatsit,", he said, snapping his fingers, "Wisteria, in that cake, but it just-"
Varian stood up sharply, knocking his head against the top of the lower shelves.
"Exploded." he finished, lightly stepping up and taking the flask from Lance's hand and tucking a middle-shelf beaker under his arm, "Surprisingly common with unknown reactants."
The top shelf was positioned at a near forty-five degree angle, but if Varian noticed, he didn't pay it much mind. The curious thing, Flynn noted as his young friend continued to talk happily with Lance, was perhaps the vials themselves.
"Annnnd….there! One trial of strong-shelled hyperreactive Strongbowlium complete!" remarked the alchemist, tossing the ball experimentally.
Flynn stretched his legs, tired in spite of himself. "Hey, kid, one question…" he said, gesturing to the vials the moonlight shone across, "How'dja get these to stay standing, with, y'know, the minor detail of gravity in the way?"
Varian grinned, clearly amused, and standing on his toes, lifted his hand to the edge of the shelf, standing it straight once more. "Ah, I don't really know. Not everything that should fall does, which is lucky, I guess, or you'd never be able to walk anywhere in here. Must be an alchemist thing, I guess."
Flynn shrugged and ruffled through the remaining files.
"Hey, good a reason as any. Looks like the next on the list is….ooh, is this one like slime?"
And the moon's rays passed on.
Trial Two: Lunares Praesidium
"Wither, and decay,
End this destiny,
Break these earthly chains,
And set the spirit free,
The spirit free."
Rapunzel sang in the still glow of the night, a deep and infinite obsidian running through her hair and pooling in her eyes like black waters. The incantation sang through Varian's bones with an ethereal afterecho, and before his eyes, the amber he'd tried to long to crack was melting. Quirin was, at long last, free.
But Rapunzel was not.
It was a sensation more than her song, more than her light or more than the shiver colder than the frosts of Old Corona intertwined in the melody, but he could feel it nonetheless; how the incantation was threaded within her magic, held her as strong and as tight as a siren's lullaby. The thought hit him on the peripheral of his senses, calling like a frog from the bottom of a well-the water-but it vaporized to naught but steam once it hit her, almost exactly as he'd been expecting.
"You didn't give up on me, I won't give up on you." he said resolutely, pressing his hands to his chest.
-the incantation's melody fluttered like the feathers of a dark angel, filled everything and nothing and anything in between, pushed at the essence of reality, pressed in his heart and flowed through his veins-
He grasped Rapunzel's shoulders at once with a hold stronger than ever, and his gloves melted off his hands like water. And all as his promise had been pledged, the light returned to Rapunzel's eyes, the gold flowing back through her hair.
Everything was alright. The Hurt Incantation had been silenced.
His hands still felt the light prickling of a force that could never be harnessed, only quieted.
Trial Three: Lunares Somnia
It was difficult to be heard, at times.
Luckily, Varian knew exactly the princess who would always listen.
The first time or two had come as a misstep; he'd fallen asleep at his desk, the graphtic's key held tight in his hands, when the lantern, cast from his hands, floated softly in a dream's illusion of reality over the bright Corona castle's skies. The girl with golden hair looked up with delight, then alarm as it sailed into the darkening thunderclouds, until the whole of the Corona she knew disappeared to a wasteland, her sunny hair the only thing still shining.
It was then that he'd known it was not his dream he acted on, but Rapunzel's.
Once, he only acted as an unconscious bearer, knowing enough to express himself to the ally but not enough to express anything besides a raw, unfiltered message speaking almost directly from an essence that felt of, but not entirely, himself.
Come out, Rapunzel. Face your destiny.
He had awoken with a start, knowing, somehow, that she had too.
But as the time had passed, and he had grown to think it was only a too-close coincidence, he found himself once more standing in a plane between reality and illusion. The essence was frigid, like a midnight's breeze, but he felt nothing.
And there she stood.
Though only her blurred outline was seen, something sparked his instincts almost immediately that it was her, though he dared not step forth.
"Varian?" she said softly, words echoing and swirling through the aether like butterflies.
"Rapunzel." he responded to the stillness, and then, with a swelling like the tide, "This is not the last, Rapunzel. There is more you have yet to see."
A thickness in his throat as if he were a messenger for something greater, "There is more you may never see nor understand."
"What have you come for?" she asked, though she said not a word.
He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, his heart pounded with energy. The grass blades around him rippled like a stone cast into still water.
"I know not." he said softly, the touch at his wrists fading, his essence feeling much more like his own once more, "What may pass must be beyond either of us."
And he awoke, his heart beating harder than ever.
Trial Four: Vi Lunares
"Cassandra!" said Rapunzel, her hair loose behind her, and her eyes still blazing with a queen's courage, "You may have fallen, but I will do my best to lift you back to greater things. I know this isn't your true destiny, and..I think you know it isn't yours, either."
Cassandra's gaze softened for only a moment.
"I think you've gotten enough in your own destiny without mine, Rapunzel." Cassandra snapped, outstretching a hand. Black rocks spiked along the path, positioned exactly in the right trajectory to pin Varian and Flynn against the cliff's face….
"No." Varian said quietly, an impulse more sudden than a snap compelling him to throw out his hand, splaying his fingers as Cassandra did and throwing his arm hard against Flynn's waist as an afterthought.
The streak in his hair glowed an ethereal alabaster for no more than a few seconds, and the rocks stopped in their tracks, the strap of Rapunzel's satchel caught on the closest.
Flynn watched the streak in Varian's hair return to the same blue it ever was. With no more than a beat ("Hey, Blondie's got magic hair, Cass 's a moonstone guardian, I'm a prince, and the frog adopted a dragon. I'm done, not another one before teatime."), he patted Varian on the back.
"Thanks, kid."
And, drawing their swords, Rapunzel's army strode forth into the battle.
Trial Five: Solar Eclipse
No more than three years older, but having aged far more in the same time since he'd met Rapunzel, Varian straightened his tie and held his hand softly to the glowingly jubilant, happily married Queen Rapunzel of Corona.
"May I have this dance?" he asked with a gentle smile as she placed her hand in his.
"Of course!" she said, her cheeks aflush with her love and a light grin playing at her sun-freckled face for her friend, "Awww, Varian, I didn't know you were one of Eugene's groomsmen."
The alchemist chuckled lightly, twirling her on her heels. "Well, besides being his best friend and all….I did bring the cookies, so he really had no choice but to accept."
"Varian…." she said with a playful sternness.
"What? They were good!" said the newly (and thankfully, entirely unreluctantly) crowned King Eugene, twirling a peppermint-dusted Celtic Knot in his fingers, "I mean, really good. Have you tasted these, Blondie?"
Varian laughed and broke from Rapunzel to nudge Eugene. "I mean, yeah, but aren't we forgetting the entire, oh…", he said with a teasing flippant hand wave, "Saving Corona thing? And being your best friend?"
"Lance is my best friend."
"And being your best friend?"
Eugene laughed, ruffling Varian's hair. "Ha, can't keep anything from a smart kid like you, Goggles. Speaking of which…"
Varian sighed, running his fingers through his hair. "I know. Decided lack of lab safety protocol in the royal wedding dress code, wouldn't you say?"
"Let's just hope nothing totally crazy happens from here to tomorrow, then." quipped Eugene as the stars began to dapple the evening sky.
The seventeen-year-old rolled his eyes. "Last I heard, crazy was what Rapunzel did best."
"Hey!" tittered Rapunzel as Varian grinned, "That may be true, but you two are just as much so."
"Is that so?" replied the boy as the kingdom dance's tune began, Eugene stepped nimbly to his partner, and Rapunzel rested her hands on her friend's shoulders.
"I'd say you're pretty good at having fun too." she retorted with a smile, sticking out her tongue in a very ladylike manner as Varian chuckled and nodded with a reluctant agreement.
She stepped lightly on her toes, shifting to the elegant Box Left and Forward Progressive as Varian followed in the early light of the tune.
"I've seen the girl who has crossed mountains,
And showed all the stars how to shine" she sang gently with the lyres, beaming like a brilliant sunrise.
"I will fol-low her through field and glen,
And I wish that she'll be mine." Varian finished melodically with her, the same smile on his face. Rapunzel skipped happily, pirouetting so jubilantly in the waltz that if her hair could still shine, it would have been blinding.
"And we will cross the seven seas,
We'll dance on wings of gold,
For our light could glow, my dear,
And magic will never burn old!"
At this last step, Rapunzel dipped Varian back in her arms, both of them carrying the last note high and strong. The parting crowd around them halted in silence, and in the stillness, they realized the cerulean streak in Varian's hair was glowing with what could only be called magic.
Standing to his full height, Varian glanced at Rapunzel and they both shrugged.
"Must be an alchemist thing, I guess."