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It felt like a lifetime since he'd seen the infirmary in the Dragon Academy. Literally hundreds of kingdoms away, thousands of miles if he gauged accurately. It brought immense relief, even if momentarily. He'd been in Autumn, in a dream world where none of the last ten or eleven years happened. For a while, he'd started to believe that the last decade had been all a dream, and performed his routine obligations like a cog in a machine.
He hated doing them but they were the only things that gave him something to think about. Mother made sure of that. To him, all those readings, practiced orations, mock trials, perfected music performances, rites, social engagements he had to attend were a means to an end. A way to get his mother to stop reminding him about noblesse oblige (of all things), purity, reputation, continuing the lineage. It hurt his head and his heart just thinking about it. Before he found out what each one of those actions entailed when you were not seated at the round table.
And when he did stand up this time around, they did what they always did. Every instinct he'd thought he'd outgrown came careening like a train track that jumped off the rails. And the whole time he'd cowed, he hated himself stronger than he did when he found out he'd murdered an ambiguously guilty mark. All days he nursed this ache in his stomach, but couldn't bring himself to do anything. Not even drive a pen in to stop himself from hurting peasants and political enemies of the Kingdom all those actual years far in the past.
But then he heard the voices, the ones that he couldn't place for a second and distinct from the ones that usually accompanied him, the ones he'd kept a lid on for almost his whole life. The intrusive thoughts, the childish wishes, the selfish desires he was taught to rise above. And from the faint cracks in the walls that gave him glimpses of the world outside the proverbial cave, he found the strength to speak up and endure everything they did to him. Then he heard Water, and the illusion fell apart as his parents, his relations, the family friends, the courtiers, the servants, everyone continued talking even when he didn't listen. And when he asked what they said, it was like time made a loop since such oversight on his part would have realistically landed him another earful. Maybe extra hours working on the latest legislation he would cushion the brow beaten people from as best as possible before proclaiming it from atop a podium. Maybe another day stuck in his room or wherever his mother absolutely needed him to be for something.
But after he heard that he felt, and that everything that happened in the 'dream' held weight somewhere outside the place he was locked in his whole life, he scaled the castle facade down into the gardens. Then he ran into the woods, then towards the nearest way out when he appeared inside one of the buildings once he passed the first trees, and kept running past the streets in the fancier districts of his birth city, past the venues for wilderness events everyone he could have made friends with once frequented to make connections, past virtually every place he remembered having to interact with people. Even when his lungs felt like they were burning and rotting from the inside, he didn't have to stop, and neither did he want to even when his limbs started to feel like they were going to fall off from overuse. Eventually, he found Keelie in front of an empty bread stall under his bedroom window and got taken to a void by a bright light. Avid had people who cared about him and that made him care more than enough about them to want to be there rain or shine, all the while preparing to give himself away if the ruling clan of Autumn wants the avid one back even if he wouldn't be retaining his original position.
For several seconds, the clarity of his vision oscillated between a foggy white texture like what you'd see on a canvas, or a cloud you've climbed a mountain high enough to touch, and clearness. He felt weak, weaker than that one time he'd been starved for a week in an earl's cellar. He breathed, deeply and loudly enough for himself to hear through the ebb and flow of his vision that affected his hearing and sense of temperature.
A hand clutched his shoulder, the one that felt covered, the grip strong before loosening into a gentle drape that slid slowly across and lifted what must be a blanket. As the hand grazed his arm that... didn't feel to be wrapped in bandages anymore, he stabilized. He saw the crisp lines between the shades of white in the ceiling, the second floor that seems to have been installed as a way to monitor patients from afar in case of infectious diseases. He slowly pulled his gaze down and found the empty beds on the other side of the bright but cool room shaded from the heat of a sun high in the sky, and by the foot of his bed sat Marmalade wrapped in a blue blanket.
"Snowflake," he croaked. The exasperated and annoyed look she shot him made him wonder why neither she nor her brother showed up in his nightmare world. They'd been mean to him, for most of his time here, and if there were people with the means and motive to violently murder him, it'd be these two if they suddenly decided they wanted revenge after all. They chose mercy, but them waking up and plotting his murder wouldn't be out of place in a nightmare sequence where he isn't strongly compelled to protect himself. He grinned before getting serious. "What's going on?"
No comeback, no pleasantries, no checking up on him beyond looking to Nurse Violet, who just turned back to whatever she was mixing after one cursory glance at him. "We were poisoned, and don't interrupt me, but the suspicion is that we got targeted by rebel forces." Avid never opened his mouth because of the promise, but Marm didn't speak again until he stopped changing faces. Her tone and voice have also departed from her usual demeanor. "Those same rebels captured Pyro and Maddy a long time ago and the Professor is keeping us under lockdown to prevent more kidnappings. Apart from a few selected students, no one is allowed to cross the bridges at the moment." No stranger to sudden changes in his life, Avid knew how to project reassurance as he looked at her and nodded. "And leave this to the authorities but, people are saying AJ is collaborating with the spies, who are assumed to be connected to the rebels and the Storm in someway, and she's being questioned." She sighed. "We might need to fight again soon."
He'd woken up at noon, and Water was of course one of the students cleared to go in and out of the Academy as he pleased, within reason. Intriguingly, AJ was one of the students who got afflicted with the poison rot that she allegedly planted and only beating Oli and Avid to waking up, which was fair considering he deliberately led people to fear him. And she better pray he doesn't get confirmation that she was indeed involved because if he was targeted, it wasn't for a moralistic reason. If the likes of Graecie, Amber and Marm had been on the hit list, then the criteria can't be people with bad attitude, people with dangerous powers, and people who are adept at magic.
He asked the nurse for something to write in and where the clothes he passed out in were, spiralling him down a madness where Marm had to force him to take tea on steroids on behalf of the same professional that barely even did anything the entire time she was here with them, in a place more dangerous than a pit of vipers. Per standard procedure when the outbreak got serious, the staff had gotten rid of the unimportant belongings of the infirm and didn't say a word about that. But Avid had known what to watch out for and what to ask about thanks to his unfinished education and in exchange for him and Marm shutting up about personal belongings having been replaced, she offered a favor within her capabilities.
This was systemic corruption, but one that neither of them had a real choice getting into otherwise they could spark something that breaks the camel's back. It wasn't worth killing the Nurse, no matter her ineptitude, over and he will deal with her once the dust settles and they don't have the threat of external political forces dangling over an entire school. After thirty minutes, he got Marm to not accept handouts you wouldn't stake your life on and sat on the desk set under the window over the head of his infirmary bed. While Water was out on errands, Avid was waiting for Oli's tests to finish and Marm was going to search the library again after lunch.
"I don't want to be rude, but my body is a very touchy subject and I'm sure you can see the connection," he told the nurse.
"I understand, completely," she said with a forced toothy smile. "But you can't walk around in that... If you want, just wrap yourself in blankets, then." And that was the last time he listened to her. In Autumn shorthand cursive, he wrote what he actually thought as he smiled wryly at her. On the other side of that same page in the attendance book Marm handed him, he wrote his theories as Keelie nibbled on the remains of his plate. He had to eat to have enough energy for the tests but would rather have survived on vitae til he got to camp and hunt in the Resource World.
AJ, Amber, themself, Graecie, Marm, Michela, Molly, Oli.
By using his favor and sweet talking the nurse, he inferred that,
Death by poison, Fairy flight, Temporary physiological boosts, Blessings battlefield control, Lightning point-and-shoot, (unknown), (unknown), Push people away.
Had a bad reputation and hated by dorm mates, Vengeance killed her and freshly resurrected in Opening Day of tournament, Tried to kill student in love with, Loved by all but maybe some were jealous, Sister of Water but kinder, Doesn't interact much with other students, Clumsy and reckless.
Definitely taboo but caster is known to have it, Non-taboo, "Dark"/"Corrupting" magic caster is trying to minimize or present in good light, Not taboo but might deliver wielder to terrible fate, Definitely taboo, Eclipse magic - maybe taboo, (unknown), Unsure.
Unknown but has troubled street urchin vibe, A fairy but otherwise unknown, Would be targeted if found and has many enemies, Left The Flock, orphan in the Summer Capital, Unknown but veil wearing indicates sanctity, Seamstress, Tinkerer.
He drew a line under where he cussed Violet and wrote,
Order of collapse: Michela, Molly, themself, Marm, Oli, Amber, Graecie, AJ.
Culprits suspected to be Storm Kingdom - infiltrator agents or rebel collaborators. Three spies are in the academy. Two students (Pyro from Vulpes, Maddy the dragon speaker from Lupi) captured. Suspected to have been the ones to poison Graecie and Amber.
In this situation, he's glad people haven't been pointing fingers, yet, to his knowledge. But,
...Kara snake mage and Capt. Sparkles (allegedly justice) previously captured.
For a second of breath, he wondered what his trackers wrote about him running away. Then he wrote with indents under the paragraph of the Suspects' crimes,
Chest of poisoned apples planted in Graecie's room, and the kitchen. For who? Water?
And before that, poisoned the kitchen where ingredients for the Lupi Party were sourced. The kitchen poisoning suspected to be AJ.
"If that's AJ's name, then you know you shouldn't be involved in whatever this is, don't you?" Water said behind him. He stood to sit on the table, turning the chair around. Water accepted it without wordlessly.
"Who are you, and what have you done with Water?" Avid asked, smiling at the nice feeling when Water didn't feel like being prickly.
"I've just been out on the longest trek in my life, the farthest I've been out of the Capital, and I slept. No dreams, and with a lot of exhaustion, but I slept," he said. "Don't ruin this for me, you burnt marshmallow. I haven't had coffee since I ran out halfway there. But my sister is back, so I am in a good mood."
"You came to visit me."
"And you need to put some clothes on."
Glancing around, the nurse was gone and Avid doesn't hear if she's on the second floor listening in on them with a magical hearing cup. Then he spoke softly, "Don't tell anyone, since it'd do more harm than good, but they burnt all our belongings and hoped no one noticed the discrepancies. I'm not touching anything and I'm not changing out of these scrubs til I can go back to my dorm. I'm just waiting to be tested."
"I didn't take you to be observant."
"You barely know me, Water. But it's not that interesting. I don't know if the others are blind or convinced themselves the stuff they got were their originals, but they got the material and shape of my pants wrong, the features of the tunic that made looking at me uninteresting."
Water scoffed. "What's interesting is how you told Ash all about how hot you were."
"He was stealing my vibe." Avid shrugged. Then got serious. "Water ...is there a fight in the horizon?"
"That's not what you were going to say."
"That was silly, and this is more relevant to what's going on now."
"It's nothing we know about right now, nothing we can do about. Right now, besides AJ, we're concerned about Legs because something is going on with him and the Dragon Crypt."
"Oh, no." Avid still remembered how it felt before they donned the Forever Skull Mask, what it was like wearing that and the ecstacy that rushed like a wave but now he wasn't sure anymore if he actually got anything from it. He wore it when he learned his newest blood magic Skill but that didn't go away when he threw the mask in magma. And how he felt after all was said and done.
"Not to mention rescuing Pyro and Maddy, and almost all of Vulpes is still missing. El's dorm is as empty as if she'd never come here, while Elaina said her friends, that were also friends with Pyro, planned to go with him. So they might also have gotten captured at a later date."
"So where are the rebels?"
Water fixed him a grumpy state. "Sorry, but I am not going to tell you because given that they are working with the Storm, maybe, this can easily blow way out of proportion. And if you are who you say you are, then you know why we can't risk them finding you out."
"But they've already targeted me."
"You are a blood mage."
"Won't it be more suspicious if I don't fight, then? Hmm? Speaking of," Avid tore the sheet next to the one they wrote on and copied it. "A gift."
Gingerly, Water took the sheet and scowled. "How do you read this?"
"I copied it in this language, what's so hard about reading it?"
"I don't want to offend you, but your handwriting is ineligible."
"It's cursive." For the longest while, Water stared at him and he was starting to wonder if Water knew what cursive was. In his kingdom, it was the script of the people with enough time to write long, carefully worded letters. And although many commoners knew it across almost all the places he'd been to, especially among the middle economic classes when those did exist in a society, not everyone did. In this place, he wouldn't be surprised if the Queen doesn't use it since none of the libraries had anything written in it. This was awkward. "I ...I can teach you."
Water bristled and looked away. But he isn't turning away. "I'll ...consider it." He said. "I better go. You look great in faded grey." Water flinched, and Avid knew he couldn't hide his face.
"It's not what you said," he told him, stuttering on those words. "It's just that... do you have five minutes?" They both sat down on the nearest bed, his, facing each other.
"Light grey, and auburn, were my House colors. Are you familiar with that concept beyond how they are used here?"
"Yes, your House is the family you belong to, and the family you owe your loyalty to. Or rather, would have own."
"It's more complicated than that, but that's enough for you to know what you need to. Your House trains you, they are the people you call to for aid should you need it for anything, they shelter you when you can't get a place of your own, and they provide education, opportunities, bridges but there's always a price. And since you know what place my House would be, I was trained to maintain the system that kept us in power, do anything to keep our place, protect us from everyone else even if the people inside hate you and want to kill you or don't really feel at all grateful for anything you do." When he looked at Water, not a sign of tension was present in his face or body language. "What did the nobles and royals here do to oppress the people?"
"Well, they overtaxed the farmers more and more each year, making things much more expensive for everyone but especially the downtrodden like me and Marm, before it collapsed. There was a time, a few years after when you would have fled, when there was nothing on the markets, despite the goods being in sight, none of them were selling anymore and the Crown wouldn't let them or anyone sell. Then there's the orphans who we, oddly, never saw again ever since they got relocated and I have to believe that's what happened. They find any excuse to put the poor in prison when brawls arise in the streets, and don't protect us when we ship crops, grains, and other goods between the Capital and the villages. I imagine the only difference between them and you is that you couldn't really have seen to any of that if you were stuck inside your castle for years."
Avid chuckled and looked to Water's shocked face. "Light grey was the color of the official papers, the type you pass around in the highest offices or tack on public notice boards at strategic points. And the ones I'm around were either as shiny as a silver platter or as stark as iron. Auburn was the color my family often wore out in public, the most striking color among the trees in the land, the color the most closely resembles blood, the color that came to symbolize us." He took Water's hands and tightened as if he was holding onto someone falling off a cliff. "I lied to you, technically, when I said the Land of Eternal Fall was a small town. It wasn't in any way small but all I ever saw was the Capital and the woods where I learned a lot about how to do what I did from all the times my parents took me there for leisure since they liked it too. Those times were the only-" he coughed. "I'm sorry we're going off topic."
"It's okay."
Avid shook his head. "Your time is precious. As young as 8, the same age you and your sister fled the matron and the other orphans, I was given responsibilities. Fiancé, hearings to preside over and sometimes even judge, laws for me to sign, projects to oversee, everything - all in the name of preparing me for the throne that I loathed more and more every second. And I failed so many times and every time, I saw the consequences of- of the punishments for the guilty party that I was forced to pronounce even if it wasn't what I wanted, if it was what the law, that I was supposed to be in control of said. Of being forced to sit still trial after trial, especially when the system had been so obviously leveraged against helpless people, and never being listened to if I went against the grain. Of the laws they pushed me to sign, made me see the good and bad effects of in their entirety, and forced me to solve because I was responsible no matter the circumstances of that signature." Water pulled him in and despite his tumultuous history with the person that gave it, it was one of the deepest and most sentimental hugs he'd had. It beat even Graecie's. He pulled away and slung a hand over Water.
"Shu-"
"No," Avid snapped, tears flowing through his cheeks like rainwater streaking across dry tiles. He pulled away and looked at Water, face matching the gravity of what Avid allotted to what he was saying, and eyes looking at him with concern, not judgement. "And it was worse from what you described these royals did, because while I was there and after I left, my kingdom had been expanding. I stopped looking at maps years ago so I wouldn't know but they had to have stopped because that degree of growth is unsustainable, but I don't really care if the dynasty collapses. While I was there, ethnic cleansings happened under my watch and I am responsible even if I wasn't really there and the only one I knew about was one I witnessed while passing through a place trying to get to the borderlands up until survivors I found told me all about them." Water clamped his mouth, shut and clamped harder when he fought back. Looking at his face, he was glaring at Avid and turned his head down the corridor where Nurse Violet was walking towards them. Avid stopped fighting and sobbed.
Whatever the nurse thought about him, Water was consoling him and whispering cold comfort into his ear. Eventually, she left and whatever was on his face, Water told him that he was certain as the sun that no one heard anything, that no one would suspect the nature of what he just told him. He breathed unevenly, and kept breathing until he got ahold of himself again.
"You know why I want to be Graecie's friend, besides her pure ki- niceness?" He asked as loud as he could muster, because his best might not be enough. He looked up to a face full of sorrow and Water's own tears that he was barely holding in himself. He tilted his head, downwards. "There were four of us. But only I survived. Incurable genetic sicknesses are common among powerful families, that I think you'd be surprised if you'd had my background how perpetuating the causes of them is not a crime. I was the oldest, and the miracle survivor. Before that, I shared a bedroom wall with a girl and we were never supposed to know about each other but I heard her voice. She was taught that prayer made pain go away and part of that pain no one did anything about was looking for finding someone else. I heard them tell her she must have been imagining my voice. And she was kinder than the other one, who I discovered by rushing out my door when it was opened for a tutor and making it just far enough to hear him cuss at someone. My parents told me while I was hiding my relationship with Daniel. Please don't tell her."
Halfway through the last rant, Water had ducked his head and his eyes now looked vacant, as if Avid drained him in a worse way than the Corruption could. He'd opened his mouth, but it might as well have been full of sand for all the good that did. Oh, he was so selfish! He wasn't deserving of death because joining all the innocents and helpless he'd killed was an insult to them. "I would tell you to tell people, get everything out to stop it from consuming you more than it already has. But there's no one you are sure you can trust here. Even me. I'll try to keep it but no promises, because Marm is my first priority."
"As you'd told me." Then Water kissed him, just a peck on the lips, but it came with a tight hug. A hug that threw them off balance and pressed Water's weight onto him. Immediately, he jumped and crawled backwards until he fell off the bed. Avid stood and held out a hand, which Water didn't acknowledge and took him into his arms to pull back into sitting. Whatever the reason, Avid looked shock.
"You'd still ...stand by me, even knowing all that?" He whispered.
"I took you back even knowing you were a prince, back when I thought you were no different than the ones that roamed this capital," Water said. "I took you back when you left me in the middle of nowhere, which was my fault. And I took you back after you tried to kill me in the scariest way possible, to me. That you left and show immense remorse is all I need to know to decide whether I want to be your ...friend. And you are my best friend."
"What if I'm selfish, like how I am telling you all this, alone?"
"Reaching out for emotional support, when you don't know who to turn to, and have no one else to go to, does not make this thing that you're doing selfish."
"One more." Avid said, hard as a rock. Water nodded. "When I was thirteen, my parents made me execute an innocent boy for the crime of their father, a merchant that stole from his own merchandise to supplement the food he got for his family. Sounded iffy even to myself at the time, but I did it, because they were there. I'm a coward, and I kept being a coward when I didn't straight up defy them to save him until it was far too late. And speaking of, after that boy who was the same age as I was, I never knew and I never inquired about what happened to the father, but not that long later Daniel replaced the man in that stall. I saw him from my window, from up that tower, and I wanted to check on him, and of course he feared the boy who killed the son of the previous bread seller. But since the first day, I was infatuated and for whatever reason, he hung out with me. We knew the consequences, we knew it was forbidden because of gender and class, but we set up rendezvous. I snuck away when no one was looking for me, he braved all the judgement walking up to the castle to deliver special bread for the prince landed him. For an age I didn't know whether he was meeting with me because he was scared I might do something if he refused, or what, if he did think well of me, exactly he thought. And I didn't do enough to save him, do you want that to happen to you too?"
Water slapped him, on both cheeks with both hands. It stung, and the man pinched those same stinging cheeks. "Listen," he said, loud enough for anyone under invisibility to hear. "I and my sister are already committing treason harboring your secret, but it's not like whatever the academy has in store for everyone will be any less dangerous. Don't worry about it, okay?"
Avid was floored. And after a minute, he said. "If push comes to shove, I don't want anything to happen to anyone that I could prevent, so out me. You hear?" Water sighed. "I had a dream." Avid said insistently.
"Oh?"
"It was- while I was passed out, I dreamt. About what could have been, had I not run away. I was as good as a hollow shell, a perfect vessel to live what life my parents wanted me to be," he said with intense revulsion. "If dreams are prophetic-"
"Nonsense! Everyone has had dreams while they were Corrupted."
"But-"
"Avid, you are not going back."
Halfway around the world, the King stared at the most recent poplar tree in his wife's grove, resentful of the soul the totem in its roots was connected to and fearing the way the tree was changing. Many scholars came and went trying to understand and the day one of them found out what this sacred forest was originally for, the Queen restricted access to the Great Conservatory. Adopting a godchild or nephew and installing them as heir apparent wouldn't resolve this when your in-laws' ancestors built society on legalistic, sympathetic magic and family values.
"It's dragon magic," the Queen said, dumbfounded, reading passages of the report again and again. After listening to her rant about his tree for the last decade as vitality flickered every now and then, as it sprouted branches with the wrong leaves that turned into the right colors or decayed and fell anyway, as the roots twisted the wrong ways or poked out of the ground, as the wood softened and hardened with a new mutation every few months, he learned to take everything in stride. The saddest part about this is the conclusion of a hunt that has garnered the Queen's interest for such a long time that she left his stewardship alone.
Everyone knew where someone made a deal with the Devil in an all-or-nothing gambit for a strait, after all. And who better to rescue the weaker and younger but more legitimate crown prince, to guide him back into the good life, to decide who he marries, decides who gets to be the mother of his future daughter-in-law, than the cousin that took his place?