Yo! Welcome to yet another new story!
This is a commissioned story, like Familiar. It's something I've been working on with a commissioner who wishes to remain anonymous, and so they shall. I really like this story, it's got a great feel to it. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do!
Now, without further ado, and whatnot, let's get into it!
Start Chapter 1
There are many a tale from the dawn of humankind that have long since been forgotten.
Such things make sense, of course. Humankind has been wiped from the face of Remnant twice, the first by the brother Gods, and the second by the twin immortals, whom fought against one another numerous times, yet whose wrath once shook the very world to pieces.
A tale from before either of those cataclysms, a tale from before the Brothers' departure, from before the union of Salem and Ozma, however? No such tales exist within the world of Remnant any longer.
But there is one, perhaps, that is worth reviving here. One which has been long forgotten, even by those who participated within its creation. A tale that, while not entirely true, for no tall tales are, is still worth hearing.
The tale of the Mad King, Jaune D'Arc; uncle to Salem D'Arc.
/
This tale begins rather simply; a set of brothers are born to a King and Queen, more than a decade apart. The first is of little import in this tale, and his name has been long forgotten to time, forgotten even by his daughter, who yet draws breath to this day.
The second brother, however, is the villain of our story. Jaune D'Arc is born the runt of the proverbial litter. An accident, one not even meant to exist.
Where his brother is big, and strong, and powerful, he is lanky, and weak, and pathetic. Where his brother is heroic and beloved, he is dark, and oft forgotten. Where his brother's magics are fearsome and powerful, his are underwhelming; only a shadow of what his line is supposedly capable of.
Such things are not lost on Jaune. Of course they aren't. The second son to a minor lord of the Land of Light, the domain of the God of Light, one of the brothers. Their kingdom, if it can truly be called that, contains only a few thousand people.
Of course, to the average peasant of the time, such is still monumental. And for Jaune D'Arc, it is everything.
As a boy who exists in the shadow of his brother, and then as a man who does the same, Jaune D'Arc relishes in the royal blood flowing through his veins. He relishes in the fact that he is second in line to be king, for he has nothing else. His brother has already said that he wishes not to rule their kingdom for his entire life once their father eventually abdicates the throne.
And then… it will be Jaune's turn.
Or at least, that had been the expectation.
Yet when the throne is abdicated, when Jaune's brother takes the throne, he takes a wife as well. A wondrously kind woman, with whom he sires an heiress.
Her name is Salem.
And suddenly, Jaune's brother's attention shifts.
Raising his daughter takes priority, especially after Salem's mother passes away of plague. The two are nigh-on inseparable, and though Jaune initially suspects nothing to be awry, when it comes time for his brother to abdicate the throne…
It is Salem's name that is brought up to fill it.
Jaune is furious; terribly so. He argues with his brother for hours on end, reminding him of where they'd always stood on such an issue.
But Jaune's brother had not been blind.
He had, in the time he'd spent alongside him, seen what kind of man Jaune had been fast becoming. He had seen the darkness in his heart. If he were to be king, then he would most certainly abuse his position.
He shall not be king. That is his brother's decree.
Jaune attacks his brother in a fit of blind rage, and is, for his efforts, banished from the kingdom of D'Arc.
He is thrown from the gates by his brother's guards, and told never to return.
A mercy that Jaune D'Arc likely wouldn't have given out himself.
Licking both his wounded body and pride, Jaune D'Arc flees the Kingdom. He moves out to the countryside, and recovers over the course of many moons.
His hate festers, however. Unable to accept what has happened.
And then, an idea strikes him.
Jaune D'Arc begins to spread rumors in the peasant village he's ended up in. He tells them of the evil king and princess who have risen up in his Kingdom, and stolen it away from him. He tells them of his own birthright, how he had been meant to be the one true king of the D'Arc Kingdom.
And though he has never been quite so strong, or heroic, Jaune D'Arc has always been quite clever.
The people of the countryside believe him, and Jaune D'Arc promises each riches beyond their wildest dreams if they will but help him reclaim his kingdom. Many agree, but Jaune is not yet confident in his chances. No, he will need a veritable army to finally claim that which is rightfully his.
So, he goes and collects one.
For two whole years he scours the countryside, spinning greater and greater falsehoods about the King of the land of D'Arc, about his own claim to the throne, and about the evil princess who has stolen it away from him.
And eventually, when he's gathered a strong enough force, Jaune D'Arc returns.
He sweeps the D'Arc kingdom's feet out from under it, and slays his brother within his old throne room. He'd planned to do the same to Salem, to slay her as well, and then take his rightful place on the throne…
Only for the dying words of his brother to convince him otherwise.
"Please… spare Salem… spare my daughter!"
Jaune D'Arc does just that. He will not have her in his kingdom, but just as his brother had long ago done to him, he sends Salem away. He will not give her the same opportunity to spread information about the countryside, to rise up against him, however. Instead, he sequesters her into a tiny tower, and locks her away there.
And that perhaps should be the end of this tale. The Evil King Jaune D'Arc takes his throne via lies and deceit, and rules with an iron fist until his eventual death. But that is not the case.
For there is a young knight of a neighboring land, one whom wields modest magics, but possesses a stalwart soul, alongside a brave, kind heart.
His name is Ozma.
And this section of the tale, you likely know.
Ozma frees Salem from her tower, and the two of them fall madly in love. But as they attempt to make their getaway, King Jaune D'Arc orders them to be captured, and, his earlier mercy betrayed, executed.
But Salem and Ozma join as one, and together, they defeated the Tyrannical King Jaune D'Arc.
That, likely, should've been the end. But Jaune D'Arc has something up his sleeve; something none of them had expected.
For he has been researching magic, and its varying uses. And from it, he has discovered something that he is determined to utilize.
A type of magic that will allow him to become something more than human.
He activates this transformation, and his form changes. Horns sprout from his skull. Great wings erupted from his back. His teeth grow longer, his eyes sharper. The sclera of his eyes turn black as night, and his ears sharpen at the ends.
He has become a creature of the dark.
Inevitably, he has grown far more powerful. But Salem and Ozma, their powers combined, are still more than his match. Where he tries to overwhelm them with pure, brute strength – something he's always lacked, and something he's always thought a necessity – Ozma and Salem fight back with careful cunning, and sure planning, something Jaune had once commanded.
And the dark king is defeated.
His powers, however, begin to run wildly out of control once his body has been weakened; the cost of his transformation now evident. When Ozma attempts to strike the finishing blow, to end the life of Jaune D'Arc, the man's wounds instead close.
He has become something stranger; almost alien.
Something outside the laws of the Brother Gods
And so, the Brothers come, their arrival heralded by a grand light, and a yawning darkness. They bring about a terrible punishment upon Jaune D'Arc. They take up a mirror that had long hung within Salem's tower, and trap the Dread King within it, locking him away for what is meant to be all eternity.
Jaune D'Arc screams that he will have his vengeance, that they cannot hope to contain his fury. And perhaps he is right, over a long enough period of time. Perhaps, one day, he will go free from his prison.
But in that moment, none listen to him. Not even the gods, supposedly omniscient, pay him any heed.
He has been defeated, and soundly so.
A hex is placed upon that mirror, putting the trapped being within into a deep slumber, and then that mirror is itself placed inside a box, locked tight. It is flung into the farthest reaches of the world, into a land of snowy peaks, and frozen tundra.
And there, it lays, entirely forgotten.
A mirror, which holds within an entity from the dawn of time.
Eons pass without a single thought spared towards the Dread King, and perhaps rightly so. It will be only a few years before Salem herself will disobey the Brothers' laws, and be cursed. It will be only a few centuries before she raises an army, and attempts to dethrone the Brothers.
It will be only a millennia before Ozma and Salem join, hand in hand, and attempt to bring order to the kingdoms of man.
And yet, lurking within the cold confines of the land that will, one day, come to be known as Solitas, deep within the frigid icebergs, and wedged inside a great vein of Dust, sits the mirror of the Dread King, long forgotten.
And it is here, over a hundred thousand years after his initial confinement, that our story truly begins.
Because a drill pierces through the rocks around that vein of Dust. Pickaxes come up and down around it, and pull it from out of the crust of that which remains, the realm now known as Remnant.
And when the foreman who looks at it, his long coat emblazoned with the sigil of the SDC, notices that their drill had connected directly with that very mirror, and yet left not a scratch…
He thinks that perhaps he might send the item higher up the chain of command.
This item, it seemed, is worth noting.
It takes a few months for it to eventually find its way into the hands of Jacques Schnee himself, who seems perfectly content to place the object within his study, perhaps on his bookshelf, and forget about it entirely.
And yet…
Instead, the SDC's false patriarch decides that he can use this newfound item in a different way.
A gift for his upstart daughter, whom he's only just reclaimed. A way to remind her of her imperfections; of the marring upon her face – the scar down her left eye. A subtle way to bring her ballooning ego back in line.
Yes.
He will give the mirror containing the Dread King to one Weiss Schnee.
And the rest, as they say…
Is history.
/
Weiss Schnee had gone through in the last month or so what most people would agree was a bad time.
The place she'd come to think of as a second home, Beacon Academy, had been attacked and nearly destroyed. Her closest friends, those she'd loved more than near anyone in the world, had been beaten and scattered. And then, just when she'd thought she might be able to assist in picking up the pieces…
Her older sister, whom she'd trusted, had dragged her back to Atlas; back to the Schnee manor.
And now, here she was, being made to sing in a charity concert for Beacon Academies' recovery, in front of several hundred rich donors, while others, likely some of the members of her team, attempted to actually fix problems in Beacon and Vale.
It disgusted her. All of this… this posturing… it disgusted Weiss. Could they not donate without making a show of it? Could they not do the right thing without cajoling?
Yet here she was, with nothing she could do but attend.
There was a knock on her door, and she turned to see Winter, of all people, stood in the doorway.
Things between them had been… for lack of a better word, strained for the last while or so.
Weiss had been firm with her sister during their time training in Beacon for the festival that she wished to remain within Vale until her education had concluded, at the very least. And yet, her sister had gone against her wishes, and taken her back to Atlas without her consent when she'd been unconscious from utilizing her summoning.
She loved Winter; genuinely, without any of the baggage that she felt for the other members of her family, but…
Even so, she was angry with her.
"Weiss." Winter nodded her head, either uncaring of the awkward air hanging about the space, or simply doing her best to barrel through it. "You look wonderful."
Weiss had dressed up for the charity concert – not by her own choice, to be clear, but because her father had not given her a choice – in something somewhat fancier than she'd normally wear. It was very similar to her newest combat outfit, with long, sleek sleeves, but it differed in that this had a flowing gown instead of the others much more reasonable combat skirt.
Winter had never been a fan of combat skirts; the reasoning behind which evaded Weiss.
"Thank you, Winter." She sighed, trying her best not to vent out the anger she was feeling upon her sister, who had evidently come here to wish her well. "I take it you will not be staying to watch my performance?"
"I've Specialist business." Winter spoke, and she was almost certainly telling the truth. She'd only been growing more and more busy as the days following the attack on Vale continued onwards. She'd not told Weiss much, but apparently, her work related to the hacking job done on the Atlesian mechs. "I apologize. If I could stay, I would."
Weiss didn't truly mind that much that Winter wouldn't be around. She'd not be putting her soul into the music either way. This… if she had any choice in the matter, she wouldn't be singing at all.
She told Winter as much, and her sister did smile; she'd always had the same problems with their family that Weiss had.
"A word of warning; one of the butlers told me something rather interesting as I was passing by the servant's quarters."
Weiss arched an eyebrow.
"Apparently, father means to give you a gift this evening."
Weiss' eyebrow went far higher on her forehead.
In a normal family, that may not have seemed so terribly odd. Gifts were exchanged for all sorts of reasons, and gifting Weiss something just after she'd finished performing in front of a large audience of rich backers would allow Jacques to perhaps pretend like he was a decent father.
But it was just so… unlike him.
"Thank you for the warning, Winter." She smiled over at her sister, feeling aggravated and exhausted in equal measure at the fact that someone planning on giving someone else a gift in the Schnee family was worthy of warning. "But I must go on stage. Father will have words with me if I do not."
Winter nodded her head, and then she departed soon after.
In truth, Weiss didn't need to take to the stage for another fifteen or so minutes, but…
She just wanted some time to herself.
It was odd how stifling the Schnee manor could feel, despite the fact that it was the size of Beacon Academy, a building which held two to three hundred people – and could likely hold well over double that if it wanted to – quite easily.
She often felt at her least lonely within the manor when she was, paradoxically, alone. At least here, locked away in her room, she could act as herself, and not merely as a pawn in her father's ever grander schemes. At least here, she could remain silent, instead of performing like a prized songbird in front of hundreds of attendees.
At least here, she could reminisce about her time in Beacon, and not have to worry about anyone seeing the tears that gathered in her eyes; unshed.
/
She sung adequately.
To pretend like the performance had been anything other than that would be a disservice to her own musical career.
Still, the sycophants that she had been performing for did not care for quality; not truly. Oh, they'd pretend to. They'd only see the most expensive shows, and eat at the most expensive restaurants, but Weiss was nearly certain that if she were to have an average singer perform for them while they were blindfolded, they'd have scarcely been able to tell the difference.
It was all a game to these people.
"Thank you, thank you," Jacques somehow managed to steal the spotlight even from her own performance, stepping on stage and taking up Weiss' microphone. "Another round of applause for my daughter."
The crowd applauded again, and Weiss gave a fake smile, and curtsied.
"Now, in recognition of Weiss' accomplishments this past year, and of course for singing here tonight, I've decided to gift her with something truly special. Woodrow, if you would?"
Jacques personal butler, Woodrow – a silver-haired man with a kind face and gentle demeanor – stepped up to Weiss holding an object covered with a silk sheet. He held it out to Weiss, and she took it when she was urged to.
"Well, go on, Weiss." Her father ordered her to, and so she pulled back the veneer.
And beneath was…
Admittedly, even if Weiss could instantly recognize the purpose of such a thing, she could not help but be wowed by the sight of the mirror in front of her.
It was an incredibly ornate thing; the edges seemed to be lined with some kind of silver, inlaid with gems of various types. All of the gems were bluish in color – likely lapis lazuli, if she had to guess – and seemed to catch the light wonderfully.
She knew her father had gotten her this purely because she had had the mirror in her own room taken down when last she'd been within the mansion. He probably still thought she cared about the scar on her face, like she had when he'd last known her.
This had been, in the eyes of the masses, a wonderful gift. To anyone who knew the Weiss Schnee of a year ago, it would've been a grave insult.
That was her father in a nutshell, though.
Still, the Weiss Schnee of the current day did not care about her father's pettiness, and instead held the mirror so that the others in the room could see it – as she was expected to, given this was all a show to her father. Many 'oohed' and 'aahed', and eventually, Weiss was satisfied with the reaction.
"Please have it brought to my quarters at your earliest convenience, Woodrow." She told her father's butler, and the man nodded his head to her.
There was another light round of applause as she was made to hug her father – as dry and ineffectual an affair as it was – before the two separated, and began mingling about the crowd.
And then, of course, Weiss met that infernal man, who disparaged Beacon, and her own career as a Huntress. He disparaged everything the people of Vale had fought and died for.
So yes, Weiss had summoned a Boarbatusk on him, and then promptly had quite the evening as a result.
At the end of that evening, she'd had her title of heiress stripped away from her, and had been left alone in her room to both seethe and sob.
She felt well and truly pathetic, then.
She wished she was still with her team; with Ruby, and Yang, and Blake. She wished she still had her friends, Sun, and Neptune, and Ren, Nora, and Pyrrha.
And yet, instead, here she was. Trapped alone in a manor that she hated, now confined to it under the excuse that she wasn't feeling mentally stable after the fall of Beacon, and…
And Gods, but she hated it all.
It was that thought that had her standing up from off of her bed, and looking to the opposite wall, where, just as she'd asked, Woodrow had already hung the new mirror for her.
It was far smaller than the full body mirror she'd had before, one which was easily two meters in length. This one was only around half a meter in diameter, but it was gorgeous, well and truly. She could appreciate that, even with how broken she felt.
There was some irony in the fact that she walked over to it, and stared at the person looking back. The Weiss in the mirror had puffy red eyes, makeup streaks down her cheeks, and a wobbling lower lip.
She looked sad, and lost, and broken.
Hah…
"Mirror, mirror, what's behind you?" She sung her very first song, the first song she'd ever released to the public. It felt appropriate. "Save me from the things I see… I can keep it from the world, why won't you let me hide from me?"
She thought back to the person she'd been then. She'd been… fifteen? Sixteen, perhaps? It hadn't truly been that long, but…
She couldn't have been more different now to the conceited, haughty girl she'd once been.
Now, she was a confident Huntress in training. Someone who could go toe-to-toe with the evils of the world, and come out the other side on top.
And here she was, being treated like a lunatic, trapped within a gilded cage.
The moment she had that thought, however…
Something happened.
She heard a rumbling, and when she looked up, it was to see the mirror hanging on her wall shaking. It was vibrating hard enough that Weiss briefly feared it might somehow dislodge itself from what was holding it to the wall – likely an adhesive of some kind, given Jacques would never allow anyone to nail anything to the wall in his mansion.
That proved to be true, as a few seconds after, the mirror fell, and hit the floor below. Weiss yelped quietly, and hopped back away, expecting glass to have broken off from the mirror when it broke.
And yet…
There was no glass.
In fact, the mirror seemed to be in perfect shape.
And it had stopped shaking.
Weiss was… hesitant, to say the least, as she reached down towards the mirror, and slowly drew it up into her arms.
And what she saw was…
Rather shocking.
For in the mirror, looking up at her with sharp eyes, and a dark expression, was a man she'd never seen before.
There were a lot of things wrong with that statement, and Weiss decided she'd go over them all. The first, and perhaps most obvious of all, was that there shouldn't have been someone inside her mirror. That was not what mirrors were for.
The second thing was the man's appearance. He had flaxen blonde hair and pale blue eyes, and seemed to be around twenty-five years old. That was around where the comparisons to a normal human being ended, in Weiss' eyes. She had briefly thought he might be a faunus, given that he had obvious horns growing from out of his head, but she soon realized that he had too many irregular features for that to be the case.
He had the horns, surely, but also long, sharp teeth, slit pupils like those of an animal, and, from what little she could make out of his body, he also seemingly had batlike wings jutting from out of his back.
Which was simply too many different things to have going on all at once.
So yes, that was the second thing.
The third thing was that the man was talking to her.
"Hahaha…. Ah, finally," He threw his head back and laughed, and in Weiss' opinion, it was one of those laughs you might hear in a cartoon, so utterly ridiculous that it couldn't be taken seriously at all. "Finally, I am returned! Girl, the power of thy song has restored me to consciousness! It seemeth the Gods' prison was not so perfect after all, just as I foresaw!"
Weiss couldn't help but feel like her response; which was to chuck the mirror into the opposite wall and run to the other side of the room to grab Myrtenaster, was entirely understandable.
What was less understandable was how when the mirror hit the wall, it left a sizable dent in it, and suffered no damage at all.
Was the mirror indestructible or something!?
"What trickery is this!?" The voice of the evil-laugh guy echoed out from Weiss' carpet, where the mirror had landed face down. "Hello? Hello!? Tis black like the night! I cannot see a thing! Foolish girl! Thou will releaseth me from whatever ocular spell thou hast casted upon me!"
Weiss was panting, even as her rational mind attempted to explain away what had just happened.
A gift from her father that had suddenly started talking and laughing evilly… which was more likely; that he'd found some kind of ancient artifact containing an evil demon guy…
Or that he'd done all of this to scare the crap out of her with some fake, trick mirror.
It annoyed the hell out of her. It didn't feel at all like something her father would resort to – essentially a mean-spirited prank – and yet she wouldn't put it past the asshole, either.
"Yes, yes, very funny." She groaned. "Let's all have a laugh at Weiss after her academy got blown up and a bunch of people died. Really, super cool."
"Art thou not going to release me!?"
…Although this mirror certainly seemed awfully talkative for having already spooked her.
"You got me." She told it, waiting for it – or perhaps the person controlling it? – to laugh, and then stop doing… whatever it was they were doing. "You can stop now."
"Stop!? Tis thee who must stop! Cease casting this inane magic, or I will have thee executed!"
Maybe it was just the night Weiss was having, but she found herself growling out under her breath. "And just who is it that you think you are!?"
It was as if that was the exact thing the man had wanted to be asked, because his complaints ceased, and he instead released yet another ten-or-so-second-long laugh.
"I am Jaune D'Arc! Ruler of the D'Arc Kingdom; Prime King among the Lords of Light!"
Weiss had to take a moment to just… absorb what she'd just heard.
And then she couldn't help but ask, "…Who?"
That seemed to take the proverbial wind from Jaune D'Arc's proverbial sails.
"What!?" He shouted back at her, evidently annoyed.
"I've never heard that name, nor that title, before in my life."
"Thou… what dost thou mean thou hast never heard that name before!?"
Weiss just rolled her eyes. This guy was really keeping the performance going.
"And I would advise you again to release me from whatever blinding magics you hath casted upon me! Do so, and I shalt forgive thy transgressions!"
Weiss' 'blinding magics' in this case being the mirror lying face down atop her carpet.
She sighed, but ultimately acquiesced to the request, walking over and picking the mirror up off the ground.
When she did, she saw that the man was smiling once again, albeit somewhat dimmed to how positively elated he'd seemed before.
"Ah, good, thou wizened up to the fact that thou could not hope to contain my majesty! Intelligent and beautiful; perhaps I shall take thou on as a concubine once I subjugate this world beneath my heel!"
Weiss arched an eyebrow at him. "I will turn you over and lock you in my closet."
"Aha…" Jaune D'Arc laughed awkwardly. "But of course, I understand. Thou would prefer the position of queen. Rather bold, if I must say, but I suppose I could make such arrangements."
Weiss was halfway to her closet by the time the man's pleading stopped her.
"L-Let us not make any such hasty maneuvers!" He implored her, and Weiss just shook her head, groaning out under her breath. "Thou hath my apologies. I simply assumed thou would wish to wed a prime specimen such as myself."
Weiss didn't even have the energy. She simply ignored that comment.
"Okay, fine. Let's say I take you at your word that you're some…"
"Lord of Light; ruler of the realm of D'Arc."
"That," Weiss hissed out. "Explain to me why you're in a mirror, exactly?"
"Ah, a fine question, oh angel of freshly fallen snow." Weiss' left eye twitched. "The truth is that I was cheated out of what was rightfully mine, and when I fought to reclaim it, I was unjustly ganged up upon, beaten down, and imprisoned in this horrid vessel!"
Weiss sighed. "Explain to me why you are in a mirror with a few more specifics?"
"Well, I suppose I can acquiesce to thy request. Leaving out some of the more… boring sections, in essence, my older brother refused to grant me the throne when he abdicated it, instead gifting it to his evil daughter. They then had me banished from the Kingdom for so much as kindly explaining why I felt like I should be the King, and not her. Can thou believe their nerve?"
"Next?"
"My, but thou art quite frosty," Weiss took a deep, steadying breath, and resolved not to chuck the mirror out of the window. "Fine, fine. Anyhow, I assembled a fighting force of peasants and rabble – unfortunate that I had to resort to such paltry allies, but I had little other recourse – and toppled my brother from his seat of power. I then magnanimously allowed the young princess to leave, and even had a mighty tower built that she could live within. She proceeded to repay me for my kindness by coming back with some knight from another kingdom – who she'd likely seduced with her womanly wiles –" Weiss took another breath, really starting to consider the window as an option. "And attacked me. Me! After all I'd done for her, and for my Kingdom! Hah! The absolute nerve!"
Weiss' eyes were closed. "And then?"
"Well… the specifics of the particular battle itself are unimportant." Jaune D'Arc gave a fake cough, and Weiss just rolled her eyes. "But in essence, they cheated, and just as I was about to turn things around, and soundly defeat them, the Brother Gods turned on me! They had me confined into this mirror, and then cast some spell upon me to cause me to fall into a deep, deep slumber. After that, I know not what happened. I assume they burned my kingdom to the ground, and completely ruined the entire world. Just a general guess."
Weiss massaged the bridge of her nose. "I'm sure."
"Ah, I am gladdened to hear that thou agree with me."
"That– sure, fine." She decided that discussion wasn't worth having. "So, that's what happened, then? You had your kingdom stolen from you by… an evil princess, her knight, and the actual brother gods?"
"Indeed! Truly diabolical!" Jaune D'Arc made a tutting noise as he shook his head from side to side. "Now, tell me, young woman, have the former two already met their ends, or will I be given the pleasure of bringing them to justice myself!? Oh, and the Gods, where might I find them!? Do they still lurk within their previous lairs, or have they moved to different frontiers!?"
Weiss wasn't quite sure how to word what she was going to say next.
Eh. Screw it.
"I don't know who the people you're talking about are. As for the Brother Gods, they're just myths."
Jaune D'Arc's face was frozen in rather intense consternation.
"That– what–"
"In fact, I have no idea who the Lords of Light are, either, or this Kingdom of D'Arc you're talking about."
"What!?" The man laughed, as if she were telling a particularly terrible joke. "Surely, thou jest. The Lords of Light are those trusted to rule the lands by the God of Light! Those who have been chosen to lead the people through divine right! Although of course that utter bastard betrayed me, locked me in this terrible prison for months, perhaps even years! They will have to be punished as well!"
Weiss sat silent for a moment.
And then she said, "I have quite literally never heard of any of the things you're talking about right now."
The man in the mirror was silent for quite a while after that. There was this look on his face like he was thinking hard about something.
"…The landmass thou art standing upon in this instance; what is it called?"
"…You mean Atlas? If you are instead referring to the continent, then you must mean Solitas."
The man's expression stayed the same.
"And have thou ever heard of Lux-Iris, the capital of all mankind?"
"…I've heard of such a place in old fables? Some scholars say that that's where humanity first lived alongside the brother gods. But that… most people don't even believe those stories. And even the scholars that do believe in them say that such places would've been eons old; existing hundreds of thousands of years ago."
The Dread King, who had apparently only been bested by two people named Salem and Ozma – whoever the hell they were – pursed his lips rather awkwardly as he placed his hands in front of his mouth, seemingly in deep thought.
"Hm." He muttered.
"That is not good."
End Chapter 1
Alright, that was the first chapter of Mirror Mirror! I hope you guys enjoyed it!
This is, as you might be able to tell, a comedy first and foremost. It will have an overarching plot, and potentially more going on, but you'll just have to find out on that end, won't you?
As this is a commissioned story, there will be no set update schedule. For the moment, I will say that chapters will, likely, release biweekly, or every other week, but do not hold me to that lol. Now, I will say that I asked the commissioner if they were alright with me putting the next few chapters up early on Patron, and they were cool with that, so...
If you want to support me, and get access to the next THREE chapters of this story right now, far sooner than they'll release on FF or AO3, then consider checking out my Patron! There's an e in there after the r and before the o. I assume you know what I'm talking about, but FF and AO3 don't like me typing that. It's just website dot com /Deferonz!
Want to support me without signing up for a monthly payment? Check out my Kofi! just website dot com /Deferonz
I'm currently taking drawing commissions, and one-shot writing commissions! Feel free to send a dm to this account, a review or comment on this story, or reach out to me through other means!
That's all from me! See you... uh... well, eventually!
