Alfred's eyes snapped open as he finally awoke after nearly four full days of sleep, carefully held in Arthur's paws. For a moment, he tried to recalled the strange dream, but like grasping mist on the wind, it vanished as soon as he reached for it. Though, his train of thought was derailed anyway by the wetness he felt on his cheek, and a second later he found out what the source of it was.
Arthur, for reasons currently beyond Alfred's sleep addled brain, was, of all things, licking him, or at least his face anyway.
"Um, Artie? What are you doing?" He asked slowly, not sure if he should be uncomfortable about this.
Clearly not having realised Al was awake yet, Arthur jumps back, releasing his hold on the knight and looking away.
'O-oh Al, I uh, didn't know you were... I mean I was just... um...' he trails off awkwardly, not looking at the blonde as he shifts about uncomfortably.
But before Al can ask more, another answers for them.
"Stimulation right?"
Surprised by the voice, Al jumps slightly as he looks to his side, finding Mattie tiredly smiling up at him.
"Mattie!" He cries, happy that his brother made it through the attack alright and lunging over to hug him, "Man is it good to see you, and what'd you mean stimulation?"
"Good to see your finally awake too," Matt sighs, relieved, "And I meant the licking. Arthur's been licking your face to try to bring you round ever since he woke up. That's what it was for right? I've read about animals using licking as a way to stimulate breathing and regulate heartbeats and stuff, so I just assumed that's what he was doing." His brother pauses for a moment, looking thoughtful, "That, or he was grooming you."
"Arthur?"
'...I...it was just...um...' The wolf continues to mumble out, and for a moment Al forgot that Arthur couldn't understand what Mattie was saying, though he wished he could, it would make things so much easier.
"Hey." He says softly, drawing the wolf's attention back to him, 'Were you just trying to wake me up?' He asks gently, smiling up at him before frowning slightly, 'Or are you trying to say I need a bath again?'
'You always need a bath,' Arthur huffs, before mumbling quieter, 'And you were sleeping for awhile...'
Deciding to change the subject, Matthew switches to ask, "How are you feeling?"
"Weirdly, I feel fine." He frowns, trying to remember what happened, "That Guy, the Viper, he said I died, and then came back?"
"Gil said that too. He tried to get to you, but he was too late. But somehow you came back, thank the Gods." Matt sighs the last bit like a prayer of relief.
"Yeah... now that you mention it. When I was dead, I... I think... no I'm sure I heard a voice."
"A voice?" His twin leans forward, intrigued.
"Yeah, it called me son."
"Do you think it was dad? Like his ghost or spirit or something?"
Surprisingly, Al shakes his head, growing more certain of this by the minute.
"No it was a woman's voice... Mattie I know this is going to sound crazy, but..." He lifts his head to look his brother dead in the eye, "I think it was mom."
His twin frowns it thought for a moment, before pondering, "But how can that be? We never knew her, there's no way you could know her voice. But if it was her spirit, I suppose it could make sense."
Al nods too, but feels like he's forgetting something else.
But before he can say anything more, their conversation is interrupted by a new voice, grumpily grumbling along with multiple curses as Gilbert stumbles into the room.
"Fuuuuuck, why the hell did I drink so much."
He's squinting and looks like he has the world's worst hangover as he comes in, pausing as he tries to decide if he's just seeing double or if that is Al sitting up in bed next to Mattie. He blinks a few times, before his pained grimace twitches with the beginnings of a smile.
"Finally up eh kid?" He whispers hoarsely, the quietest Al has heard him since sneaking through the tunnels.
"How long was I out?"
"About four days, your wolf woke up yesterday, been guarding you and hardly let anyone near you since." He furrows his brow more, clearly the hangover is making it hard for him to speak even at this volume, "You really need to get a handle on him." He grumbles, before whispering even quieter, "And I'd avoid Liz for now if I were you, that woman does not handle hangovers well." Before turning to leave.
Once Alfred is back on his feet, and Matthew has fed Gil and Liz some weird concoction he claims can cure hangovers, they gather to decide on their next move.
"Alright listen up," Liz barks as she stands over the small desk in the tiny room, everyone crushed in around it while Antonio stands guard outside the closed door.
"With the Viper dead we've taken out a major player of the Order, but," she sighs, running a hand through her long hair, wings slumping slightly, "We've also created another problem. As ruthless as he was, the Viper maintained order in this territory. This," she gestures around them, "Vosil Cël used to be the Capital and home to the King of the old Kingdom of Meshar. But, twenty five years ago, the Blood Viper, backed by the Order of Noceum, lead an attack on Meshar. The King and his family were killed, along with anyone else who opposed them." She sighs, shaking her head at the senseless violence, "Now, with no royal family left and the Viper gone..."
"We've created a power vacuum." Matthew finishes for her.
Gilbert nods grimly as he folds his arms, "Right now, the Viper soldiers still in this region, as well as outside threats, will be looking here to see what happens next."
"Yes," Liz agrees, "We have the seat of power, but now the question is what we'll do with it? We obviously can't stay here forever, the longer we wait around, the more time we give the Order to strike back."
"But we can't just leave things as they are, can we?" Al asks worriedly.
"What else can we do?" Liz huffs, "Our aim is not to conquer, we have no need to maintain our hold of this land. Not anymore, now that our plans have changed. And besides, do you know how difficult it is to establish a new seat of power? Their royal family is gone, so there's no one left to take up this void."
Alfred opens his mouth to argue back, because he just doesn't feel right leaving when things are in such a mess —especially one partly caused by them, his honour wouldn't allow it— when the door suddenly opens.
"Actually, that's not entirely true." Antonio says as he comes in, carefully closing the door behind him.
"Antonio?" Liz asks, raising an eyebrow at him.
"Forgive my intrusion, but I think it is about time I told you the truth, Mistress." He nods to Liz, before taking a deep breath and begins to explain, "The royal household of Meshar is not all gone, I'm still alive."
He watches the group give him a mix of confused and blank stares before continuing, "Do you remember when we first met? I was but a boy in rags and you took me in, even though you were barely a woman yet and had nothing to your name as it was." His smile is bittersweet as he recalls the memory, "You asked my name, and I told you it was Antonio Fernández Carriedo but, that was not exactly true. You see, I lied, my full name is actually Antonio Hernández Carriedo, son of Alonso Ordas Carriedo, first Prince and heir to the throne of Meshar." He bows to the group as he says this, before straightening and continuing, murmuring sadly, "I lied, because I was on the run, my home destroyed, my family killed before my very eyes, and my friends taken from me. I had no choice but to hide who I really was, lest I be killed too."
He then chuckles, but it sounds forced and his smile is strained, "When you told me you wanted to go after the Order, and asked if I would follow you, I thought it was ironic, that I, a Prince, was swearing my allegiance to a commoner." Gradually, his smile becomes more natural as he reminisces, "But by then, I had stopped thinking of myself as such, and agreed. Do you remember, the vow I made to you then, in the back alley of that tavern?"
Liz nods, though her expression is careful not to give away anything of what she is truly thinking, "Yes. You swore to follow me no matter what, to Hell and back if you must. It was because of you, that I gained this monicker; Mistress. It was always what you called me, ever since I took you under my wing." She gives a lopsided grin at the pun.
Toni chuckles lightly, nodding as he smiles softly, "I could not help it, your face looks so much like my governesses did, the mistress of the palace they called her. I thought it fitted you well." He pauses again, smiling longingly at the memory, before he shakes his head and meets the groups stares seriously, "You do not need to worry about what to do. From here on out, Meshar is my responsibility. I am the only remaining member of my family, and as such, it is my duty to take up the throne once stolen from us and restore this land back to its former beauty, before the Blood Viper came and defiled it."
While the others are still clearly processing this, Liz nods in understanding.
"This is good. As one of the royal family the people will accept you better than anyone else, and this way we don't leave the region in turmoil." She frowns in thought before looking to Antonio and asking, "Do you have any way of proving all of this?"
"Don't you believe me?" He sounds a little hurt by the possible accusation that he is lying, but Liz just shakes her head.
"I know you Toni, I know when your lying, so I know that every word of this is the truth. But the people will need proof, not me."
"Oh." He frowns, before reaching down his tunic to pull up the pendent that he never lets anyone see, "This was a gift from my father, it bears the royal-seal, will it do?"
Gently Elizabeta takes hold of the pendent, turning it over in her hands as she studies the intricate markings of the seal.
"Yes, this is proof." She smiles warmly at him, "Welcome home, Prince Antonio."
"Whelp." Gilbert shrugs, breaking up the tender moment, "I sure as hell wasn't expecting this today."
Alfred was no less surprised by the news of Antonio's true identity, but was even more surprised by how quickly the news spread of his return to the throne, and even more so by how open the people were to all this.
A week later, and it was as if the Blood Viper never existed in the first place. Two days after sending out word of Toni's return, dozens of people started to flock to Vosil Cël, helping to clean up and rebuild, whilst any remaining Viper soldiers seemed to just disappear into thin air as jubilation swept across all of Meshar.
By the end of it, Alfred actually felt quite sad about having to leave, but they had to keep moving. Already, the Order has begun strengthening their defences, and if they don't make a move now, they'll leave themselves vulnerable to attack.
But through it all, Alfred has this niggling feeling that he was forgetting something important.
The feeling would come and go, more so when he trained with Arthur.
'Al? Is something troubling you?'
"What? Oh, no... well yeah kinda...I don't know..." He sighs, giving up on trying to freeze his cup of water.
Beside him, Arthur gives him a curious look.
'You seem distracted by something.' He observes, before shaking himself to try to get rid of some of the sand that has been continuously clogging his fur.
"Yeah, I feel like I'm forgetting something really important, but I can't for the life of me remember what." He huffs, leaning back on the bench as he watches a pair of girls working to restore the stone mosaics paths hidden beneath the sand.
'If you've forgotten it, how do you know it was important?'
"I don't know, I just do." He huffs, trying to think what it might be, but doesn't get long as he's soon hit in the face with a heavy sack.
"Don't just sit around all day kid, remember we're moving out today."
Al groans from the hit, but nods, getting up to follow Gil, Arthur trailing behind him.
Yesterday they had made their decision.
He, Arthur, Mattie and Gil would be heading north, to the Mighty Wilderness to find the Frost Siblings. While Liz is to return to Daská with her men to maintain the situation there, and guard against any attack coming down from Talmeré either by Saris or King Momarîs. Together, she and Antonio will now work to unite the southern Kingdoms under their rule, already plans are in place to make the alliance between Meshar and Daská official. The hope is that seeing this, the other two major regions, the Valechi territory to the west, and the Kingdom of Krineln to the north, along with the nomadic tribes scattered across the Western and Eastern Deserts, will join them.
As Al follows Gil, he finds Mattie putting the last of the supplies into a wooden cart with three horses tethered to a post near by.
"We good?" Gil asks as he tosses another sack onto the pile, gesturing for Al to do the same.
"Yup, we're all set." He nods as he moves to adjust the positions of the last few sacks, while Gil moves to untether the largest horse and get it harnessed up to pull the cart.
As they work, Arthur huffs, panting from the heat beside Al, which suddenly draws Matthew's attention.
"Oh, that's right! Al come over here a sec."
With nothing better to do as Gil seems to have things handled, Al walks over to his twins side, who is digging about in his satchel.
"What's up?"
"I've been doing some reading, and I found this spell..." he mumbles distractedly, before happily pulling out the same old book they stole from the Capital and flicking through it to find the right page, "Here, see?"
He shows the book to Al, but the text on the page is in a language Alfred has never seen before, the only think he recognises is his brother's handwriting on the sheets of parchment that sit between the pages, not that he can read that either.
"What is it?"
"Oh, right, I forgot you can't read it. Well, it's written in old Gorgorein and it details this super powerful ice curse."
"Curse?"
"Yeah!" Al gives his twin a cautious look and Mattie only grows more excited as he talks, "You see, there's this old legend about this lost kingdom who's king was supposedly made of living ice, and he would curse his enemies with ever lasting ice on their bodies, and it would start of small, but it'd grow and slowly consume them until they froze todeathandbecameincasediniceandwouldbecomeaneverlastingservanttotheKingwhocursedthemand-"
"Whoa whoa whoa, Mattie slow down." Al grabs his brother's wrists to stop his tirade that was becoming hard to understand, "Why are you telling me this again? What's so good about a curse?"
"Oh right." His brother grins a bit sheepishly at realising he had gotten carried away, "It's like this, see this curse causes ice to continually grow on the body of the one affected, but I was able to break it down and found that it's based on an older variation of a temperature regulator spell, the kind Gil uses so he doesn't burn to death out here."
"So that's how he's fine?!" Al cries, annoyed Gil forced him to train in such heat when he could have easily avoided all the suffering.
He can hear Gil laughing at him while Mattie blinks at his surprise as it it was obvious.
"Well, Yeah. Anyway, I was able to rework the spell, so it'll work as a more powerful regulation for cooling you and Arthur down."
"Wait, you can do that?"
Smiling proudly, Mattie stands a bit straighter as he nods, "Yup, basically I took out the curse parts of the spell, so it's harmless now. But it can only work on an ice mage user, and since you now share Arthur's ice magic, that means you."
"Sweet! Mattie your the best twin anyone could ask for!" Al cries happily hugging his brother.
"Well, it just made sense you know? Like how Antonio is more susceptible to the cold because of his fire magic, your more susceptible to the heat because of your ice magic.
Stepping back, Al grins wide, "Then lay it on us!"
"Right."
Arthur, who, given that he can't understand half the conversations Al has with people, had taken to staring up at the cloudless sky and daydreaming, as he often does now whenever Al starts talking to others. So he was rather caught off guard when a flash of light flickered around him, forming a ring of white light with unknown runes dancing within it.
He jumped to his feet and tried to back up, but the ring followed him. Instinctively he growled at it, hoping it would go away if he seemed threatening enough, but stopped when he heard Alfred laughing.
"Chill dude, just let Mattie work."
Only then did Arthur notice the look of deep concentration on the twins face as he spoke —though what, Arthur could only guess at— and spot an identical ring around Al.
He watched warily as the rings of light contracted, and the dancing runes flipped out of the circle to be drawn to both his and Al's bodies. The rune imprints on Al's skin and Arthur's fur glowed softly, before a rush of cool air blasted them, causing their hair and fur to flutter in the breeze as a cooling sensation tingled across their skin as the runes and circles then slowly faded out.
"There." Matthew grinned, only looking slightly winded from the effort as Al and Arthur marvelled at just how refreshing the air now felt.
"Now that that's sorted, get on the damn horses, we're leaving." Gil calls down to them, already sitting on the cart, the horses reins in hand.
"Right." Al nods, moving to mount up.
As they move out, they spot Antonio and Elizabeta with Gilbird on her arm waiting for them at the gate.
"Good luck!" Toni waves cheerily, using one hand to hold the old crown upon his head in place, while Liz nods to them as they pass, Gilbird taking flight to follow in the air.
Gilbert grins, whipping the reins, "Let's move out!"
In a darkened hall, whose size and grandeur stand as both a testament and threat to all who enter, a man sits lazily upon a mighty throne. With an elbow on the armrests of gold, head tilted and held up by his hand, and one leg crossed to rest on his knee, eyes closed and sitting there in all his robes and finery, he is the picture of relaxed.
Until he grins, something small but sharp, and danger exudes from his very being as he lazily opens his glowing red eyes.
Lining this grand throne room of his, and standing as stark contrasts to the swathes of gold and silver and shimmering gems of all kinds and rarities, is life-sized stone statues of fallen enemies, forever immortalized in their moment of death.
But what is of interest to him, is the lifeless woman chained to the massive central pillar before him.
Hungrily, he runs his eyes over her, flicking his tongue out to run over his pointed teeth as she jerks back to life, gasping in a desperate breath, and immediately glaring up at him.
"Well, Priestess?" He purrs, "What say your Gods now?"
Switching from a glare to an impassive look, she regards the man boredly, "They say as they have always said. You will not succeed." Despite the uncomfortable position of having her arms constantly held above her head and feet barely touching the ground, she shrugs, as if her situation was of little consequence to her, "Nothing will, and nothing has changed. How many times must I tell you this?" She sounds more exasperated than one might expect from someone in her situation.
Still with that lazy grin, the man sighs, not changing his position of comfort as he eyes her as a parent would a child who they have repeated themselves to a hundred times over, "As many times as it takes, until those Higher fools realise my true worth."
"And just as many times I shall tell you, they see you as they see all, beneath them."
The woman smirks, long blonde hair falling about her face as she lifts her head to follow the man's movements as he suddenly sits up, furious, "I am beneath no one! All are beneath me!"
"And yet, here you are." The woman smirks wider, deep violet eye shimmering with mirth.
The man's nostrils flare as he slams his hands down to tightly grip the arms of his throne, before suddenly becoming eerily calm once more, his posture relaxing as he sits back in his seat again.
"The Blood Viper is dead, Sadık is in chains, and Momarîs is becoming more useless by the minute. The grand Order has not had this much trouble in some time." He grins, but this one is wild and crazed, "And yet, I see through all your plans, time and again your little rebellionshave failed. So tell me, who really is in charge here?"
Through all of this, the woman remains impassive as ever, as if she is used to these rapid changes in the man, "As it has always been, The One Who Weaves the Threads."
"Wrong!" The man's eyes narrow dangerously, "I see through all, even they cannot control my path."
Finally the woman snaps, "You see only what you want to see! Even here, even now, your stolen eyes are but a mere shadow, an imitation of True Sight, just as all you have taken. You will fail, and we will live free once more. My sons will see to that."
A lopsided smirk spreads across the man's face as he raises his eyebrows at her, "What has been made can be unmade, no prophecy is absolute." Without taking his eyes of her, he calls out to the hall, "Vargas! Send word to the Siblings, they should be expecting guests soon, and order Saris to strengthen the Borderlines in the south again. This time against Fire magic."
A stuttering voice responds, "Y-yes my Lord!" Before the sound of running feet quickly disappears out the hall.
Seemingly pleased with this, the man smiles once more as he raises his right hand, blood red sparks of energy leaping about his finger tips, their light even more noticeable in the dully lit room, "Now, why don't you go tell your Gods to reconsider my offer again."
As he speaks, the sparks grow in size and number, collecting into a crackling ball of pure energy suspended in his hand, before he flicks his wrist, sending the orb hurtling at speed towards the woman. She, rather than show fear, only sighs in exasperation once more, before the ball hits. Her body jerks violently as her muscles spasm and a blackened hole is scorched into her chest, charring what little remains of her already tattered clothes, filled with identical scorch marks, killing her once again.
The man breathes deeply, grinning madly at the scent of burnt flesh. He leans back as his eyes glow bright, seeing beyond this hall to watch two brothers as they laugh together, riding through the desert lands.
"Hurry along now boys, don't keep me waiting. It will soon be time to pick your ripening fruits."
Authors notes: Ah see, plot! I knew we'd find it again.
But yes, things are a happening, as they tend to do, as the lads head off to find their next target. Plus not so subtle glimpse here of our big bad for this story as more mysteries reveal themselves.
And let me tell you, I'm excited for this; Wilderness = hell of a lot of monsters.
R & R people.
Until next time, stay awesome!