The road smiled at Lancer, riding alongside him, a fiery horse in flight beside him. But with every inch away from the palace, away from Rouxl's duchy, his cuts still smiled at him, grimacing. So he fought back against it. Dismayed at the fact that his MP3 was dead and gone until the next charge, he still smiled, whooped, yelled out various phrases in Latin he'd heard time and time again about victory, about triumph. "Sic semper tyrannis!" "Si vis pacem, para bellum!" He almost yelled out, "Deus Vult", but he knew that the news crew would be spilling in a giant sigh of rush and hurry as soon as he'd said that.
He passed by the spot where he'd met Ralsei for the first time. At first, Lancer thought Ralsei was the funniest little boy he'd ever met, other than himself; Ralsei had paraded in, telling everyone how he was a true prince. THE true prince. But prince or not, he could charm the words, draw the gold out of any situation, becoming a registered poet in his own duchy within the hour. That and the ability to tell a joke, the ability to still the belt and replace it with balm, was the force that guided Steed towards the end of the kingdom.
It took an hour or two for Lancer to reach the other end of the kingdom, running out of fuel once and casting a very, very, very opaque layer of shame on himself when he asked for gas with not his forgotten money, but with his status. Having nothing to do during the journey, he ended up singing all of the Led Zeppelin songs he knew before noticing Steed smelled like the flaming arrows the French soldiers back in his ancestry used. So he parked off to the side, trying to stay away from the mud, playing a game of solitaire for a little while, his heart beating in a twisted thud when he played the king of spades.
Ten more minutes of blistering, blustery sun, ten more minutes of Steed sputtering along underneath him, and Ralsei came up across the corner, waving, his red scarf battering itself across Ralsei's neck from either the constant gusts of wind that seemed to blow through Ralsei's duchy or the gusts Steed to create whenever it he rushed past anyone that dared to go in his way.
With a slight hesitation, Lancer cut off speed, turned down the handle that meant a temporary relinquishment of his freedom. He was greeted with Ralsei's cries, borderlining on piercing, just high-pitched enough to be childish and just subtle enough to be sage. He tromped up the path, not seeming to care that his foot were making a squORCH, squORCH, squORCH, on the ground, head held at Lancer's eye level, back not daring to sag anywhere below ninety was the exact way that Rouxls had taught him how to walk, the exact same way that Rouxls still chided him on. Maybe constructing his poems brought him that sort of grandeur.
"-and you'll NEVER guess what I saw as I was getting water near the Entrance, Lancer!"
"Huh, what…" Lancer was too busy with his kickstand, too busy with trying to bear and beat the battering gusts blowing through his hood.
"An opening!"
Lancer stopped, everything in him as frozen as his veins whenever he would come home to his father, awake and alive. An opening? There hadn't been an opening, at least one he'd heard of, since the time Rouxls had guided him into that same library and read him out of his textbooks. In fact, there had been a few times where they'd partied, prayed, begged, even had Masses together for an opening. Because if there was an opening, there was hope.
Hope that whoever, whatever came down from the Upper World could tell them how to get back. Ralsei was the last one who had went through one of these openings, his memory seeming to be devoid in that aspect, but photographic anywhere else.
But why did any of that matter? If there was an opening, it meant a new potential friend. Someone to look at all of his puzzles, someone to listen to all of his Led Zeppelin albums with him, every single note.
Lancer shifted his weight from left to right, evolving into a little bunny- hop before he started to jump up and down, laughing, laughing. It was what some people dubbed as "on the spectrum", but what most dismissed as childhood. It was more meaningful than worded happiness, more wordless than delight.
"Are you ready?!" Ralsei exclaimed, clutching onto royal soldiers without one word of protest. That tended to happen when there was no camera crew or escorts around. "I can't wait to show them all one of my poems I've been cooking up!"
Lancer laughed, although it was a little bit out of politeness. "Places?"
Ralsei's brow rose up, making just a few wrinkles. "I think we need to practice for a little-"
Lancer punched him, with all the cheer of childhood, in the arm. "Aw, c'mon! We've been practicing for years! C'mon, c'mon, places…"
They heard a clattering in the distance, the quietest of echoes off of the rocks. In no time at all, the two children were screaming, screeching with childish delight, laughing, going into their places, Lancer sprinting to Steed before Ralsei could say anything else.