Chapter 65: Frederic's Dream
I apologize for letting you wait. RL has it's need. But I am here now with a chapter I hope you'll enjoy.
«Wow, it's so beautiful!» Arianna said as the snow kept falling. «I don't recall the last time it snowed this much.»
Frederic eyed his surroundings. He and Arianna were both dressed for travel, and they were inside the wagon on that cliffside, just like the day of their anneversery where they had gone away for some days. Looking out the window, Frederic frowned as he saw that it was indeed snowing heavily. A bit too much for his taste, and is made him worried.
«Hm. Looks like it's more to come. I don't know, Arianna, maybe we should return to the castle.» he said as he looked at her.
Arianna rolled her eyes and gave an overbearing smile at him. «Hmm, Frederic. I know you're worried about Rapunzel, but she's going to be…»
They heard a crack in front of them, and they were brutally thrown backwards in the wagon. They heard Maximus neigh and as they looked up they spotted a massive clutch of black rocks sprouting up in front of the wagon, separating the wagon from the horse. The sharp spikes were grabbing a hold of the wagon, no longer with a horse in front of them, and lifting it up and push the wagon backwards, causing it to tilt over, with them inside.
The next moment, Frederic tried to gather himself and get a hold of his surroundings.
A shattered door… a broken wagon… snow… lots of snow. Only now, things were different. He noticed at first that he wasn't wounded. His ancle was just fine.
His first thought was relief. Thank goodness, then we have a better chance. But then he heard a chocked moan, and he turned around to find his dear Arianna, curled up by the wall of the wagon, wrapping her arms around what appeared to be a wounded leg.
He panicked. «Arianna!» he uttered and hurried over to her. «Are you alright?»
She tried to draw her breath to reply, but it became half-hearted as she hissed with pain. «I am hurt, Frederic! I need help!» her normally calmness was replaced with fear.
It was quite unlike his normally certain and headstrong wife to be so desperate for assistance, so it had to be serious. He gently touched her cheek and smiled. «Don't worry. We're going to be alright. Are you cold?» he said, noticing her blue lips.
She nodded, hatching teeth. «It's freezing and I can't move.»
«Don't worry. I'll find something.» having nothing else near, he took of his hat and placed it underneath her head as a makeshift pillow. She seemed greateful for his attempt and smiled slightly back.
«I will be back!» he assured her. Then he climbed out the broken door and had a look around.
It was all white around him, and suddenly he found that he wasn't at the mountain shelf, but at a bigger earia, all covered with snow with no familiar landmark. For some reason he couldn't see the mountain that they had fallen off anywhere behind him. There space behind them was just as empty as the front. The wagon and them were the only ones around in the snow landscape. They were completley abandoned. There were however black rocks sprouting out several places, an especially huge group of them were near the wagon.
«Thank goodness we didn't lant on that, or else…» the thought made him shiver more than from the cold.
He sighed heavily and jumped down and tried to have a look around, hoping to find anything to orient. But it seemed to be nothing but snow and black rocks. Maximus were nowhere to be found either. They were alone.
«Hello?» he called out. His only reply were his own echo. Or a murr? He could swear it was something in the wind making a sound, like some hollow whisper with a slight threatening tone. Frederic felt a clutch of fear grip him. But he ignored it, he had to move on.
But a sudden sound made him loose his focus. He turned around to see where it came from. It was coughing. He followed the direction where he thought it came from. It sounded familiar somehow…
«Hello?» he called out again. «Where are you?»
Then he spotted something, about twenty feet away, he saw a being lying in the snow. It was small enough to be a child, so he immidiately feared the worst. What was a child doing here all alone out in the cold?
He hurried over to the figure, knelt down and grabbed a gentle hold on the figure's shoulder, rolling him around to see the figure's face.
He ghasped in shock.
It was Varian. He was lying all still, but he couched harshly, clearly sick. No wonder, as he was only dressed in his ragged shirt and pants, his apron slacked at one strop and his goggles broken at the glass. He looked weak and miserable, skinnier than ever, grey in his face except from his harshly red nose and blue lips. He looked like he didn't have much time left and no wonder, as he had no chance of surviving out here.
«Varian…» Frederic lifted him slightly up from the ground and held a hand around the boy's pale face. «Are you alright? Speak to me, son!»
Varian gasped for air with harshly crocked voice. «D-D-Da-ad…» he gasped for air and couched again. «Must… save… dad… Please… He's all I have…» his weak voice drowned in his own harsh couching fit. Then he fell down in his arms, like a ragdoll with no limbs. Still. Cold.
«Oh, Varian…» Frederic whispered, pulling him closer as he felt his eyes starting to sting. «What have I done to you?»
The boy didn't respond, and didn't even notice it when Frederic lifted him up in his arms. He looked so lifeless that he feared he was too late. «Come with me, son. I'll take care of you! We'll take care of you!»
«Fred?»
He turned around to the sound of his wife's voice, and was surprised to find not just the wagon right behind him, but Arianna sitting outside it as well. How had she gotten out by herself? And how was it that the wagon was so close by? He could swear he had walked a bit.
When she spotted him, she looked heartbroken. «What are you doing with him, Frederic?»
«I… I found him in the snow…» he stumbled. «Arianna, we have to help him!»
«But I need help too, Frederic! Are you choosing him over me?»
The desperate and dissapointed tone of her voice grasped his heart like a claw. The question got him numb. He looked down at the numb boy in his arms, all still now, his black bangs rustling in the harsh frozen wind was the only thing that were moving on him now.
«I… I…»
«Dad?»
The sound of his daughter's melodic voice caught him off guard. He suddenly spotted Rapunzel standing there beside his wife, ressed in her pink winter attire, her tied hair blowing in the wind.
«How could you? Have you forgotten what he has done?»
«Bu-but-but… Rapunzel, you said… you asked me to… I-I promised you I…»
«Your Majesty!»
Frederic got shocked to see both Nigel and the Captain of the Guards appearing at his left side. Where in the world did they come from?
«This is outragious! The kingdom must come first!» Nigel said firmly.
«I have come to take him back to the dungeon!» the Captain said coldly, holding up a pair of handcuffs ready to be used. «That's where he belongs!»
«No… NO!» Frederic paniced. «I cannot let you…»
«Why are you making so much fuss over him? He's just a stupid kid!» Frederic got startled and turned to his right, finding Eugene and Lance standing near.
«He's dangerous and should be locked up!» his future son-in-law continued.
«Yeah, nothing bur troulble.» Lance chimed in, completley nonchalant.
Frederic got angry and started at them. «He is just a child! He shouldn't be in prison!»
«Eeh…» Lance begun. «Isn't he a little older than a child?»
Frederic felt his blood boil. «And isn't that my hat?»
«FREDERIC!»
The sudden loud voice, laced with a hint of metallic echo in it, came from above, and before he knew it, a giant metallic fist slammed in the ground, separating him from the group of people, and threw him backwards. Varian rolled out of his arms and into the snow.
«Varian!» Frederic cried after him, horrified when the gigantic metallic hand grabbed the boy in it's giant fist, lifting him up. He saw that the hand belonged to a gigantic, black automaton. Only this one was at least three times as big as the one Varian had fought with that day. Varian's lifeless body was lifted up towards the head piece of it.
«NO! LET HIM GO! DON'T…»
A sudden thought hit Frederic where he lied. If Varian was there… who was… controlling the automaton?
He looked up to find that Varian was indeed not inside the giant black automaton. There was another face he saw inside the red eye; a face he knew far too well.
Quirin!
He lifted up his son, looked at him, then he turned his angry gaze towards him and started yelling. «WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY SON?!»
«Quirin, please…» Frederic stumbled as he tried to get up. «I never wanted it to get to this! I swear, I never wanted to… Please let me explain…»
He heard some mechanic rustle, and then some kind of hatch opened from inside at the top that he put his son into way more gentle than he imagined the giant metallic machine were capeble of doing before he closed it, and he saw the automaton's free hand suddenly come towards him. Frederic panicked and turned around to flee, but the hand grasped around him faster than the blink of an eye. He felt the cold metal grip around him hard and lift him up, squeezing him in the process so he had trouble breathing. He was lifted up so he stood as much face to face as he could, the same way as Varian had held Cassandra on the battlefield that day, but now it was Quirin and him. His old friend looked at him with nothing but rage in his eyes through the red glass.
«I AM HOLDING YOU RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS!»
«Quirin, please! I never wanted it to come to this! I never…»
«SILENCE!»
Frederic thought he would be crushed now. But instead Quirin walked clumsingly towards what he realized was the cliff that he and Arianna had originally landed on with the wagon.
«QUIRIN! NO! NO PLEASE!»
«THIS IS WHAT YOU DESERVE!» Quirin roared before he used all the machine had of force and threw Frederic off the cliff. Frederic found himself in free falling, crying out loud as snow and wind blinded him, although when his view suddenlycleared, he saw to his horror that he was about to fall into a group of long, sharp black rocks.
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«Frederic, what in the world?!»
«H-huh… What-what, whah…?»
Frederic fumbled, unable to get his surroundings. The first thing that hit him was that the snow was gone. He was surrounded by his own blankets twirled around him while he laid on the floor. Beside his bed. Goodness, had he fell out of his own bed?
He looked up and found his wife looking down at him, confused, frightened and a little sceptical.
«What happeend, Fred? You were having such a fit!»
«I-I did? He tried to sit up straight, but the blanket were practically wrapped around his feet, like a caterpillar. He clumsingly tried to free himself, and ended up pulling off both his socks in the attept. After much frustrated struggling he managed to free himself and climbed up in bed again, feeling his left side felt sore after most likely landing on it.
«Shall we call for Phineas?» Arianna asked worried.
«What? No no no, I'm fine, I'm fine, just… a little embarrased.» he said as he laid back on his pillows again. «By the heavans… I haven't fallen out of bed since I was a child. I'm terribly sorry if I woke you up.»
«That's alright, but you had me rather concerned for a moment, the way you were tossing and turning around. You were screaming rather lound too.»
«I was?» he got worried.
She nodded. «What were you dreaming about?»
«Well…» he hesitated to tell her everything, but told her some details. «It was the day of our anneversery, on that cliff in the blizzard; only it was… it was like someone had chopped the whole scenario up in peaces and… and put it together so it was completley different. Nothing happend the right way. Suddenly Rapunzel was there, Eugine and Lance, Nigel and the Captain…» He desided against telling her about Varian, thinking the topic would be a trigger to quarrel.
«And Quirin?»
Frederic froze. «How did you know?»
«You were crying out his name!»
Frederic felt how his mouth suddenly became rather dry. «He… tossed me off the cliff…» the words slipped out of him before he could react.
Arianna's eyes widened. «Why would he do such a thing?»
«I AM HOLDING YOU RESPONSIBLE!»
Frederic shook his head, trying to shake the voice out of his head. «I don't know… like I said; nothing made sence in that dream. But then again… it was just a dream…» He turned away as he rose and got out of bed, pushing his feet into his slippers.
«Where are you going?» Arianna asked concerned.
«I just need some fresh air.» he said and put on his robe. «I won't be long.»
He walked towards the balcony and opened the door, closing it behind him. Walking towards the railing, he gazed upon the city. It was a clouded night, and he spotted some stars peek between some cracks between the clouds and the moon made a tranceparent shine through them. The night was quiet, but he heard a couple of birds jibber in the dim shades. He couldn't see the horizon through the clouds, but there was no sign of light, so he suspected it was still in the middle of the night.
He drew a deep breath of the chill night air, and made a heavy sigh. A gust of wind suddenly made him shiver. The cold reminded him of the frozen atmosphere in his dream… the snow… Varian, lifeless in the snow. Suddenly he felt a deep desire to go and check up on the boy, but desided against it. It would be better to wait till the morning. If there was something, Phineas would indeed had let him know. The thought of something og wrong with him…
«WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY SON?»
Quirin's harsh cries echoed in his head, and he wanted to believe it was the cold in the air causing his eyes to sting, but he knew it wasn't the case.
«I will make it up to you, my friend!» he mumbled to the air. «I will make this right! I don't know how… but I will!» he looked up at the sky, where the moon was starting to peep out between two clouds.
«You have my word!»