LAUCAN

Flames fluttered in the blue pearl light of his fireplace. Efram left no snow bunnies to plague the corners of his room. His coldsteel chakrams hung on the mantle, unused for most of its creation since Magistera Titania's passing into Avae'londu. It was his hope she journeyed to the land of mists and their ancestral fae lineage. He piled papers from outer lords sending dignitaries to petition their needs to the royal family — his family, who ruled for centuries upon centuries, but the Trayes claimed them usurpers and traitors. Blood sprayed on the snow, until him and Hayvala were all that remained of the conflict between two branches of a family. Yuven Traye haunted his nightmares, a thirst for revenge, but the longer he tore through his tomes on the subject of Irimount's disastrous collapse in the hands of a cult and the deep seated corruption within the mountain.

It doesn't make sense.

It all went back to the death of Yokonei Traye, the disgraced oathbreaker, made an example to the Traye Loyalists, and their song died in the flurry. He tapped his foot on the leg of his chair, sorting through the deaths and lives of all the counties in his care. Ones who long since disappeared, unlikely to return in the next century. Others, struggling, half-buried underneath yards of white dunes almost as high as the Aethejin mountain pass and Whitehaven fortress — the last entrance and bastion in and out of their frozen home. But Father ordered the great gates closed... all on the other side couldn't return home... but what home is there to return to? Slowly, we are buried, with Irimount tucked underneath the highest peaks. It was his last hope for the trade deal with Haneka and King Reyn, but the reaction from the older lords unsettled him — their upturned noses at the thought of entreating with the 'oceanic barbarians'. King Reyn leaped to his defence against Yuven Traye, the forgotten prince of Irimount, and for a moment, he understood what happened the last time Naveera attended the King's Summit. I once questioned what Father said, that said 'barbarian' could defeat the Knight Valiant so readily, so handily, but having seen for myself... it is not so unbelievable.

He sat in front of the empty parchment he meant to send to the King of Haneka — the Dragon King. Though he was the one referred to by the address of Naveera, he quivered under the true might of a winged being full of grace. He, on the other hand, stumbled around and held onto his older sister's guiding hand, burdening her when she dealt with so many other problems. Laucan chewed on his cheek and folded his legs, dreading the other contents within the wrapped scrolls.

But... what can I do?

Warm embers sputtered in the safety of the fireplace, snuffed out from the unending chill in the air. Efram had left him for his other tasks around the palace, alone in the room spattered with blood. Memories danced and writhed with names, and he tried to shove it out of his mind. If what Lord Lazron claims is true—but no, Hayvala said to let her handle it... like she handles everything else. Blackwall's words hung in the balance of their world. She'd tell me if she had problems, right?

He lifted his head to the balcony door where he stood over Volaris, straight to the walls around their city with their anchor points to create the ancient barrier — their last protection against the endless blizzard, where clocks refused to work, compasses trailed off no beaten path. A gentle bell tolled through the blinds, and somewhere on the streets, someone played a harp to sing with the toll.

He listened, he tried to feel it deep in his soul, to hear the song of his people and the land below. It chittered and scolded with Father's cold voice, berating him for his failures and mistakes — a strong leader held themselves above the songs, flying higher to overpower them with their own sole-important note, but there was no thing closer to his understanding of the song when he danced. Father never liked that... but for once, I'm glad Magistera Titania took me on as her apprentice... trying to teach me, though I failed to learn, it seems, how to fly.

He refused to make the same mistake the second time around.

Someone knocked on his door, "Your Winged Grace?" Efram asked on the other side. "Are you busy?"

"No." Laucan tucked the inkwells into the sections underneath his desk and put the quills behind them.

"Keeper Blackwall wishes to discuss something with you."

I won't make the same mistake again.

"You can let him in." Laucan got out of his chair to stand tall on his two feet, but his knees shivered with the cloak of flurry when Efram opened the door with a swift bow, and Keeper Blackwall followed suit with his own bow, though held himself higher than Efram. "Keeper Blackwall, have you done your cursory examination on the world crystal?"

"I have, and you'll be pleased to know my research on both the crystal and your sister's condition proceeds apace. I have even delivered her first batch of medication and ingredients to the palace physician," he said with an unbending smile. "How are you today, Your Grace?"

"I'm well, thank you."

"Shall I prepare some chocoberry tea, Your Grace?" Efram questioned.

Laucan smiled at Efram with a nod, and waited for him to bustle out from behind Blackwall before returning to the matter in front of him. "If it is proceeding apace then...? You have figured something out from it?"

"Multiple things, but it has raised more questions than answers, but I've always enjoyed a challenge in knowledge, and the Keepers of Pyon are not wont to give up so handily when faced with their first hurdles," he remarked and headed for the balcony. "But, pray forgive my candid nature, Your Grace. I have come across such a hurdle that might be..." His Navei fell out of his mouth in cold, but no less accurate distinction, and once more, Laucan wondered if all on the other side of the mountain could truly revive his kingdom with their own welcoming arms. "It might be a little difficult to get past without certain measures, if you'd allow me the chance to tell you about them."

"Oh, of course." Laucan nodded at the seat at the window, and Blackwall sat at his silent decree. "Is it something you need? I can see if we can get access to it."

"Not something, but first, I must ask you an equally difficult question, King Laucan." Blackwall set his hands in his cuffs. "It was four turns ago your father lost his life to an assassination plot?"

"Of the Traye Loyalists, yes..." Laucan sucked in his lips and drove his teeth into them. "I was twelve."

"So young to behold a sight such as that," Blackwall said with a frown.

It seeped into his night boots. "Yes. I still... have nightmares about it sometimes," he admitted, unable to measure the cost of his words when cornered by a desiccated corpse. "I never could figure out how the loyalists even got inside the palace, and past the guards."

"Yes, well." Blackwall leaned on the cushion. "It is a difficult situation to unravel, for certain, but I think that's where it starts, Your Grace. In my study of the world crystal, in search of your lost history, one could argue there is historical basis in the assassination of a king, I'm sure your father is not the first, nor will he be the last — done by those who felt wronged, dictating their actions by their bloodline." He sat up straighter. "You might need to sit down for this, Your Grace. I would have you recount to me what you saw that blizzard night. It is imperative to unravel the world crystal, and I would greatly appreciate your assistance — you, after all, want the answers more than even I."

Laucan sat down on the souffle across from him. "I... I can try, but it's a little hazy."

"Your aura will enlighten me more than your words will, so recall to the best of your ability."

Laucan swallowed the mist stuck in the air of the past. "It was past the twelfth toll," he fought for the memory of crimson mist. "It shames me to admit it, but I was not supposed to be out and about, I snuck past a knight without the intention of heading to Father's quarters, but in attempting to avoid the patrols that's where I ended up. In the royal wing, on a day where the blizzard forged through Volaris, almost burying us."

"I noticed the anchors within the towers dotted through the city, Your Grace," Blackwall said.

"Yes." Caution dripped down his tongue.

"Though they were of a design I had never seen before."

Laucan studied the Keeper of knowledge, but held onto his own. "I do not know how exactly they work, but... many say it might've been a blessing Father died. He died, and they lit up again." It burned and drained his power when he stood in the crystal lake, giving his timeless magick to spread it as a barrier of protection, but none save Hayvala knew the exacting truth. Father claimed to choose to light the ancient barrier — but the truth was more simple and damning for a Traye Prince to learn in seeking vengeance. "Due to their failings, I suppose maybe it's not so unbelievable that someone snuck into the palace to... do the deed. It was dark, hard to see. Lamps could barely stay lit." He eyed Blackwall. "What do you think?"

"I need to hear more to share my findings of the world crystal."

Laucan nodded. "I walked to Father's room," he explained. "And..." Vomit rose back into his nose and breathed through his song. "I could barely recognize him. It was like something completely... it almost looked like how you'd describe a Derelict attack, but then that wouldn't make sense. It wouldn't just leave after supping on magick blood, would it?" It shivered his mind to try and drag himself through the murk. "I saw—well, I thought I saw them, the person who did it, but it's so strange..." He dug his fingers into his head. "The balcony door wasn't open, but mist filled the room." He swore a sense of victorious realisation swept through Blackwall's brown swirls, but his expression schooled in an instant. "I could've been seeing things. There was so much happening all at once. I cried out, I think a knight came to retrieve me, but the entire room was caked in the blood of my father, and on the wall, drawn in it..." He swallowed the bile, then stood up to show instead of singing the death knell of words.

Blackwall never faltered in his attention and listening to his sordid tale, so he passed him the book of all the old families of Naveera, and the page burned in his memory with violet-tinted hate.

Two wyverns wound around a thorned rose, breathing icy flames into the petals to bloom them around the runic circle, entwined with thorns. Their feathery wings stretched to encompass the might of the Traye dynasty, who claimed the throne as their birthright since antiquity. Their tails merged with the stem of the snowrose on set aflame to sprinkle snowdust.

Splattered with the blood of his people.

"The Traye sigil," Blackwall commented. "Are you certain this is what your assassin painted on the wall?"

"Yes, without a doubt."

Even in the haze, it seared into his bones.

"Then, I think I can enlighten the confusion after all." Blackwall closed the book. "I cannot rightly say what happened that night, but I think you are not wrong in your assessment, Your Grace. I do not believe someone snuck into that palace that fateful night. I believe something was summoned, a twisted, demonic curse made manifest into his greatest enemy, to kill your father."

"What?"

"Of course, it's just speculation, but as an Aurus, that is what it sounds as to me. Your assassin was not a person — it was a curse taking the shape of a person attuned to the summoner's rage, hence the reason you cannot recall their features, though you distinctly remember what they left. That could be any of your Traye Loyalists, so pinning them down would be difficult enough." Blackwall handed him back the book. "A death curse — quite an impressive feat of necromancy, to feel that much rage and hate and pour it into magick."

"Isn't necromancy raising the dead?" Laucan rasped. "Isn't that... the Elder Convocation forbids such things like necromancy."

"It depends on what you define as the dead, and it is forbidden in the sense you cannot bring the dead back to life, that is what makes necromancy illegal, a dark art. You could summon any manner of spirit and consider that necromancy. It is the technical term for it. I do not believe the object of summoning was a draugr, but someone's heartfelt rage poured into a spirit vessel."

It was a thin relief, for draugr feasted as much as Derelicts, but it brought him more dread than before. "That much hate... was it a collective summoning?"

"Possibly."

In the throne room, a man of white hair threw himself at the king for the loss of a brother, but realised in an instant the mistake Laucan made in trying to protect his family. Behind a shield of time, Father sat back with barely concealed rage and disgust. He bit down on his tongue and shook his head.

"Back to the matter at hand though," Blackwall said. "I require something, and maybe someone. I cannot unfog the mist without Anima branded magick. It is a powerful object, the crystallised form of history. None in our age save an Anima could hope to breach its boundary and seek the truth, but through that truth is a connection. I need not only magick untouched by the obscurity of history. I need a Traye. For I believe the key to your forgotten history lays in the memories of Irimount — the sole survivor."

"You don't mean—" Laucan choked.

"I do mean Yuven Traye and Adara Sazaka."

Laucan slumped deeper into his chair.

"I will give you time to consider it, though, but I cannot go further without those two key ingredients, so to speak." Blackwall stood up and left him in the shadows. "One other matter, I am all but certain the pressure in the palace worsens your sister's entanglement. I thought to ask her what she wanted from the crystal."

"She told me it was to learn Naveera's history..."

Blackwall smiled down at him. "I will tell you what I told her — an innocent question, with so much buried underneath it. If you don't want her condition to worsen, I suggest removing her from the pressure, the contagion of auras constantly around her, but again, I shall leave that to you, Your Grace. It is a long road to heal her, that not even the mightiest of Aurus can hope to achieve."

Fenrer Pyren fought in the field of the dead and brought the souls across to the kingdom of crystal. Laucan had never seen a ritual done by a single Aurus with such efficiency and dancing grace.

"Could he do it...?" he whispered.

"Hm?"

"Fenrer Pyren, if you need a strong Aurus, could he save her?" he asked, fervent for his prayer. "Could he help?"

Blackwall tipped his head. "Hm... though he is powerful, he is largely inexperienced and may make it worse on your sister for it."

His hope dwindled. "Really?"

"It is imperative we unfog the crystal, which may require Yuven Traye and Adara Sazaka," Blackwall said. "If you have a means to retrieve them..."

Laucan mulled it over. "The Iceshards..."

"Ah, I've heard of them. Your Grace, I do need them alive."

"What?" Laucan shook his head. "No, the Iceshards are... they're more mercenaries, and they're in the employ of the crown-well, were in the employ, but their contract ended with Father's death, but..." The plan swirled in his mind. "Maybe..."

"Think on it, King Laucan, it would not do you to be so hasty," Blackwall said with a smile. "I have other avenues of inquiry to make before we resort to that method. Enjoy the rest of your evening, and thank you for enlightening me on that sordid state of affairs."

Left with the bloody sigil, he sat in the chair with the empty garden in his peripheral. He opened the book to the Traye sigil, tracing the circle with his finger

Set alight the snowrose, and make it bloom in the flames of wyvern fire which forged Ezcalizere... the silver blade said to rise to be taken by the Snow Prince against the tide of darkness...

History faded, and he would not let it be forgotten again.