Chapter Text
How long had he been trudging onward through this storm?
He couldn’t feel his feet anymore, though they were certainly made of lead from how they dragged, step by exhausting step. His face and lungs might as well have been on fire: the blistering wind froze his sweat and tears until they burned.
With the wind to his back before, the trek to the castle had been relatively easy and envirorating: he leapt and climbed and raced with anticipation at the opportunity to prove himself. Of course he was afraid for his father, but how could he despair, when he knew that the princess had promised him aid in his fight against the black rocks?
But now, with the wind at his face, and the climb inland as the elevation rose further and further from the ocean, and the dreadful understanding that his trust had been betrayed…
She’d lied.
The princess would not give him help. It would have been understandable, given the circumstances of the blizzard, but she didn’t even listen to him! She didn’t even let him stay with the evacuees until the storm had passed and the roads were clear, and she certainly made no effort to confirm that she’d come to his aid once safe travel was again possible.
He was alone.
A sudden gale threw him backward hard on his back along his footsteps in the snow, flinging the makeshift alchemy staff from his hand.
There seemed to be an unearthly howl on the wind, a roar that echoed out of legends.
Varian clenched his teeth, pounding the snow with his fist beside him, releasing a half-strangled cry that challenged the monster in the wind.
Jumping to his feet and taking up his staff, he shouted directly into the storm.
“You cannot have me! I will survive and save my dad! I’m stronger than you, storm!”
In answer, a laughing barrage of flurries forced the boy to his knees.
“I know better!” he growled back through gritted teeth. “This storm is not of nature. Well, I am NOT AFRAID OF MAGIC!”
A manic laugh exploded past his teeth, and the boy began to shiver violently, hugging himself for warmth.
“First the princess, then the soldiers, and now the weather? The whole universe is out to stop me from destroying those stupid black rocks!” His laugh melted to a sad chuckle, and he pressed his weight onto his lifeless toes, forcing himself to rise and continue his luckless journey. “My dad was right. It’s always Varian versus the world.” His laugh at his own joke was hollow and he shivered violently. He had to be almost there. Was the village over the next ridge?
“No problem. I got this. No problem. I got this. No problem…I got this…”
The wind howled. Was there…a child’s laughter in the storm?
“No problem….got…I got this…”
Were those lights ahead finally Old Corona? It was so hard to see into the flurries.
“Got…I got…problem…no…no…”
“Varian…”
“Go away and let me sleep.”
“Varian!” A girl’s voice called out from somewhere overhead.
That wasn’t dad.
Varian woke, jolting upright with a start. He lay on a floating plateau of sorts. Overhead, purple clouds shifted in strange patterns that had absolutely no business in the sky.
“W-where am I?”
A massive, floating face in the sky appeared before his vision, approaching rapidly. He crawled away backward from the unsettling specter.
“W-wha—who are you?”
The face sank below the platform, and Varian stood to follow its movement, only to be greeted by a grinning female child who hovered, ghostlike, and rose from the void as though from the grave, pivoting upward to alight a few inches from the surface of the platform.
“A friend,” she replied, “at least, I’d like to be.”
“I don’t have friends,” Varian huffed, half to himself. “Not anymore.”
“Hmm?” the girl intoned, passing through him like a spirit. Varian didn’t elaborate, either. Dream, ghost, or demon, he owed no explanation to this thing.
“A pity,” the girl clicked her tongue. “I only wanted to help you.”
“Nobody helps me.” He turned away.
The girl behind him sighed audibly. “If you say so…”
The purple clouds above rushed downward all around him, encircling and swirling and growing white like snow…
Shaking his head furiously to clear the whatever-that-was from his thoughts, Varian gasped when he realized he’d arrived at his front doorsteps. What on earth was that? He shook his head again, fumbling up the stairs, slipping on the ice-slicked flagstones and tearing a gash into his knee.
Pain flooded his senses for a moment and he gasped, still trying to shake the unsettling memory of that ghostly girl. He was having hallucinations? Risk of hypothermia and shock were certainly high. He needed to tend to himself, but nothing mattered until he could help his dad.
“Dad! Dad! I’m back!”
Varian peeled himself off the frozen stairs and threw the door open, letting in the snow but hurrying anyway to his laboratory. It was deathly cold inside.
“Dad! Dad, the princess refused to help, but I—“
Before him, stretched tall and jagged like frozen flame, a glowing amber column filled the dark space. And at its center…
No.
NO!
…
“Don’t worry, dad, I will get to the bottom of this! I promise. I’ll set you free. No matter what it might take, no matter what comes of me…I will make you proud.”
Varian felt the last of his tears falling, stinging down his cheeks in the cold. He lowered his gaze with grim resolution.
“Anybody who stands in my path…will pay.”
He knew how important it was to take care of himself after the cold exposure, but his feet felt frozen in place before his father. This was it. The Varian that had left home seeking help had died in that blizzard. The boy who had returned…was a different person entirely.
He clenched his fist at his side, sensing the childish fear and horror surging again to the surface. Weaknesses he could no longer afford. Still, he’d been alone before, but this…
He bit his lower lip, squeezing his eyes shut.
He was so afraid.
Varian woke the next morning curled into a little ball at the base of the glowing structure. Sniffing, he looked up at the dreadful prison, tears threatening to swell up once again. He shook his head furiously against them: in so doing, finding his sinuses painfully blocked, a weight on his chest, and a fire in his throat, not to mention his throbbing knee where he’d slipped.
Great, just great! Yet more grievances to add to his ledger against the princess.
He was just willing himself to stand, when a sound behind him made him yelp with a little undignified sound.
“Who’s there?”
Against all probability, the little ghost child from his earlier hallucination floated through the closed laboratory door, into the room.
“Stay back!”
The girl smiled.
“I’m warning you!” he cried.
She shook her head sadly.
“Varian, please.”
“How—how do you know my name?”
She smiled again, fondly. It made the boy’s skin crawl. Unfortunately, the chill through his body also shifted something in his chest, and he fell to his knees in a violent cough.
“Oh you poor thing!” the girl whispered, inching closer cautiously. “I promise I only want to help you. Can you afford to turn me away?”
Varian finally composed himself enough to think, and looking up at the girl, he sensed no hint of the unsettling feeling from earlier. She smiled down reassuringly, and he nodded, weakly.
Hovering closer, she reached out her hands, laying a noncorporeal, yet slightly warm, touch on his chest and forehead.
Almost immediately, heat began to emanate from her tiny fingers. The sensation was so welcome, the boy couldn’t help but melt into the feeling of relief.
“I have to warm you up slowly,” the girl explained, apparently concentrating on her work.
“Who are you?” Varian repeated.
“I told you,” she reminded him. “I’m a friend. Well, I’m really much more than that, but I didn’t want to frighten you.”
“I’m an alchemist,” he explained, before coughing hard and hacking up thick phlegm onto the floor.
Disgusted and gasping for breath, he collected himself enough to continue, “the only thing that frightens me is answers withheld by those who think they know what’s best for me.”
The girl smiled kindly. “That’s my boy.”
Varian raised an eyebrow. “Your…?”
“You’re right. I’m sorry I did not tell you earlier, and I apologize.”
The boy tilted his head, the heat from the girl’s hands slowly increasing in intensity. It felt so good.
“Were you able to read the note—?”
“No,” Varian answered, looking up sadly at his father’s frozen pose, hand outstretched with a paper upheld.
“Pity. It would have been better for you to hear the truth from him directly. It was always a fault of his to hide from the truth rather than facing it.”
“You—do you know my dad?”
“You could say that,” she answered, smiling again. “I am your mother, after all.”
“M—my—my mother’s gone! You are not—“
“Ulla was your mother, but not in blood,” the girl explained sadly. “Let’s just say you’re a very, very special boy. Extraordinary, in fact. More than you can possibly imagine.”
Now recovered enough to stand, Varian stumbled to his feet and pushed himself away from the girl, shaking his head and holding himself tightly as though to lock in the remaining heat.
“I can see you don’t yet trust me, and with good reason. But I can prove to you that what I say is true.”
Varian remained silent, but he nodded, inviting her to continue.
“Have you ever looked inside that chest in your father’s room, Varian?”
The boy withheld a gasp. He did not want to cough again, and he felt uncomfortable revealing his thoughts.
“Speak, stranger,” he commanded.
Of course he’d looked inside! Many times, in fact. He’d memorized the contents of his dad’s mysterious chest, stealing glimpses whenever his father was away, trying to piece together the puzzle that was his dad’s ambiguous past.
“Good,” the girl smiled grimly. “Then you know about the armor, and the graphtic.”
Varian was careful to maintain a mask of skepticism, keeping his responses internal.
“You still haven’t told me who you are.”
“I’m getting to that. The black rocks were studied long ago by the ancient wizard, Demanitus.”
Varian had to fight against his distaste for “wizard” as a title that probably was code for “inventor” or “scientist.”
“Demanitus,” the girl continued, “chose to ignore the problem rather than face the terrible responsibility of wielding the immeasurable power of the rocks via the Moonstone, a celestial relic counterpart to the Sundrop, which I believe you are already familiar with?”
Varian nodded, trying to hide the red anger that rushed to his cheeks at the recent memory of Rapunzel’s betrayal.
“The rocks can only be controlled by those in possession of the Moonstone, or…” she looked pointedly at the young man before her, “…by those with dragon blood.”
Varian sighed in disappointment, letting out a breath he’d been holding in.
“While storytime has been so incredibly fascinating ,” he grumbled impatiently, “I don’t really have time for ghosts and fairy tales right now. Unless you can actually help me free my dad, or if you happen to have seen where Ruddiger tucked himself to stay warm during the storm, I literally do not care what you have to say. So, since I still don’t know who or what you are, and frankly I don’t have time to wait around for you to get to the point, I’ve decided to chalk this all up to side effects of exposure. So, begone, or whatever. I have work to do.”
The girl smiled sadly, nodding her head and vanishing into the air.
“Good riddance,” he huffed, looking around. “Where you at, buddy? Come on out! I need my lab assistant to help me make ham sandwiches for breakfast! Ruddiger? Where are you?”
Despite searching for over an hour, the raccoon was nowhere to be found. Finally sighing in resignation that his friend had at last moved on to greener pastures, Varian shook himself of his disappointment and set to work against the amber.
The following week was horrible. Absolutely nothing Varian tried against the amber seemed to have any effect.
At least the strange girl made no more appearances.
On the sixth day of failed attempts to break or dissolve his father’s glassy prison, Varian decided that the snow had cleared sufficiently to attempt finding help once again.
Stepping outside for the first time in days, Varian was disturbed to find the black rocks had grown utterly rampant, practically barricading many sections of Old Corona.
From morning to dusk, he frantically tried to find help in the village, but the few families who remained were busily packing their belongings to flee to the new land promised by the king.
They wanted nothing to do with the boy, turning him away and letting their farm dogs chase him off.
By nightfall, Varian was hungry, humiliated, and seethingly angry. He’d already gone through most of the food from the pantry, and unfortunately, the recent freak blizzard had all but destroyed the crops in his father’s fields.
Adding insult to injury, Ruddiger still hadn’t appeared.
Early the next morning, Varian strapped on his thickest boots and once again made the difficult trek to the capital.
Now that the blizzard crisis was over, perhaps the princess would finally be able to help him. It took a lot of effort to swallow his bitterness and continue across the bridge to the island, but he forced himself forward, step by burning step.
Once in the city, Varian was reminded of how hungry he was by all the delightful smells of bakeries and restaurants as he passed. Reaching into his pocket, he fingered a few coins he’d found in his father’s room. Hopefully it would be enough to purchase a bread loaf, at least.
Attila’s was closed for the day, so Varian dragged his feet to a nearby street vendor catering warm pretzels. As soon as the woman saw him approaching, she raised her nose, huffed angrily, folded in the sign on her cart, and pushed it away down the street.
Confused, Varian began paying better attention to the people around him, and as he continued nearer and nearer to the castle, his shoulders rose higher and higher in anxiety.
He was certainly used to dirty looks, but this was another matter entirely. People gasped and narrowed their eyes at his approach. Parents shielded their children away, and passersby whispered together in hushed tones.
Passing by a noticeboard, Varian finally began to understand. There was a new wanted poster among the flyers, and it bore his name and face: “Varian of Old Corona, Wanted for Questioning by the Crown.”
What on Earth?
“Hey, hold there!” cried a guard, hurrying his way down a narrow alley. “Halt!”
Panicking, Varian grimaced and took off running for the castle. Maybe if he could get to Rapunzel, she could explain things and everything would be sorted.
“Stop! You! Someone, catch that boy! He’s the one who attacked the princess during the storm!”
Varian ran harder, though the hunger and untreated wound on his knee made him stumble weakly as he ran.
Finally in sight of the castle gate, Varian raised his hand and called out, “Rapunzel! Please, you have to let me see her! Please!”
A group of six guards stepped onto the path before him, halberds raised, blocking his way.
“That’s far enough, boy!” commanded the captain of the guard.
By the look on the man’s face, Varian knew better than to continue. Several hands reached out to seize him, and Varian ducked away, twisting in his path and tearing away down narrow alleyways in hopes of getting away. He’d never felt so afraid in all his life, chased by guards throughout the streets of Corona. He finally had to hide in an empty barrel behind Feldspar’s cobbler shop, and he waited there until it was well into night before he was brave enough to venture out and creep back home.
It was a moonless night, but he forced himself forward, stumbling often in spite of knowing the path well.
He must have been halfway back through the forest when, surprise surprise, the ghost girl appeared once again, floating alongside him.
Varian rolled his eyes as he walked. At least her glow could have helped to illuminate the path, but nooo, all it did was to take away from what little night vision he’d been relying on.
“Unless you have food,” he grumbled, “you’d better get lost. I’m not in the mood for more probable schizophrenia right now.”
The girl chuckled.
“You know, I’d hoped to undo Corona’s prejudice against the odd and powerful,” she said. Varian shivered, and could do nothing to hide it, but he did not look at her, instead trudging ahead as before, tripping every few steps and nearly falling many times. The girl grinned.
“In Quirin, I saw a willingness to change.”
Varian’s eyes widened. He could not stand how uncomfortable the girl made him feel when she spoke of his father.
“But,” the girl continued sadly, “when he saw your oddness growing up, I realized he had only ever wanted to change me.” Her voice crescendoed in emotion as she spoke. “Eventually, he drove me away, forcing me to not see my own son. So, I too went for help. I sought King Edmund of the Dark Kingdom, but he had been warned of my approach and denied my supplication, instead imprisoning me there. I am actually still a prisoner of the Dark Kingdom to this day. In fact, the only reason I can project my avatar to you, is because we share the same blood. Dragon blood.”
Now fuming, Varian halted in his steps and bellowed at the specter.
“Stop it! You’ve mocked my pain for long enough. I may acknowledge that magic exists, but it has no place in my life. These stupid rocks have caused me enough pain as it is.”
Undeterred, the girl continued.
“Dragon fire might undo the amber that surrounds your father, but you will need my help to free your powers which Quirin has repressed for so long.”
“Go away!” Varian cried desperately, shoving at her, though his hands only passed through her ghostly form like mist. The vision faded before his eyes.
“I will do as you say, my son,” spoke the girl, her disembodied voice echoing eerily in the dark. “But I will always be here when you need me. Unlike the princess, Zhan Tiri always keeps her promises.”
Glad to be rid of her, Varian huffed angrily and completed the lonely trek home.
It was only two days later when the masked men appeared.
Varian was out scavenging through the abandoned houses, looking for anything to eat. There was still no sign of Ruddiger, and he was starting to worry that something terrible might have happened to the little raccoon during the storm. He could only hope his friend was safe.
His scavenging bag only had a few small, stale loaves that even the refugees had turned up their noses to and left behind. Varian hoped that a little rehydration would help make the bread edible, if not gross and soggy.
He noticed no sign of intruders as he mounted the steps to his front door, but then again, he was awfully hungry and couldn’t really focus well anymore.
Stepping over the threshold, Varian let out a startled yelp as he found himself seized by several strong, masked men and dragged into his laboratory.
There must have been ten men lining the walls of the room, several with notebooks and pencils, jotting down notes from their observations around the grim space. All Varian’s equipment and supplies had been upended and thrown about, and a bitter chemical smell permeated the air.
The man who held him threw Varian forward against the amber pillar, and the boy cried out when his shoulder collided with the sharp edges.
He tried to scramble away, but men on either side seized his biceps and pressed him harshly into the jagged mass at his back.
Then they questioned him.
“How do you know Princess Rapunzel?”
“What do you know about the dark rocks?”
“What was in the potion that caused this?”
“Why did you attack your father?”
Each time they questioned him, Varian clamped his mouth shut and refused to answer. The masked men yelled in his face and squeezed his arms so tight they’d bruise, but Varian wouldn’t make a peep. He did everything he could not to cry, but soon enough, he was sobbing and tears were streaming down his cheeks.
Why were they here? Were they from the king? He thought his father was friends with King Frederick. Why were they doing this to him?
“Where is Quirin’s graphtyc?”
Graphtyc? Varian furrowed his brow in confusion before realizing they probably meant the sealed scroll fragment from his father’s chest. Now he smiled.
“I’ve hidden it!” he bellowed at them, finally breaking his silence. The man who was questioning him paused for a moment before making a fist and punching Varian hard in the gut. Doubling over in shock and pain, the boy was suddenly glad to have not eaten anything for days; otherwise, he’d have probably thrown up.
It was also lucky he’d taken the scroll to one of his favorite thinking-spots the evening before, when he’d given up on experimenting for the day and decided to take a stab at translating. If these men were asking for its whereabouts, it meant the scroll was important, as Varian had guessed, and that they hadn’t found it yet.
Instead, Varian raised his head to the stranger’s masked face, glaring upward through disheveled bangs.
“I’m not telling you anything!” he hissed.
“Suit yourself,” answered the man, signaling for his companions to release the boy. Varian fell to his knees at their feet, still gasping for breath after that punch.
“I hope you don’t have any plans to leave, boy,” warned the man before him. There was something eerily familiar about his voice.
“We’ll be back.”
With that, the man turned heel and left, followed by the others. By the sound of their steps, two of them had positioned themselves on either side of Varian’s front door.
No doubt the others weren’t far off, either.
Varian pounded the floor silently with his fist, biting back a scream. How could they? Did these monsters really think they could keep him prisoner in his own house?
Varian shivered, imagining how the other rooms must be just as ransacked.
He could only hope that his father’s things, and the family portrait, were undamaged.
Varian wasn’t sure how long he knelt there on the cold laboratory floor, but eventually the hunger was bad enough that he raised his head and decided to see if he couldn’t locate that stale bread he’d scavenged earlier.
But as soon as he looked up, his expression fell. For before him, was the girl again.
“My poor child,” she whispered, leaning forward to brush a warm, incorporeal hand over his cheek, “what did they do to you?”
Something genuinely tender in her voice broke him, and Varian soon crumpled, sobbing again and shaking violently, his face pressed into his hands.
“I don’t know what to do,” he hissed. “I’m so hungry, and so alone. No-nobody seems to care if I’m alive or dead.”
“That’s not true, Varian,” the girl answered gently. “I care!”
“Well then where were you?” Varian demanded, looking up. “How could you let all this happen? When I was mixing that compound, why didn’t you stop me?”
“I didn’t know,” she explained, raising her hands in supplication. “And even if I did, would you have listened to me?”
The boy blinked at her through teary eyes. She stared back, raising an eyebrow, an expression Varian knew well. If she really was related, that would certainly explain his own fiery attitude.
“I promised to help you, and I will keep that promise.”
“B-but how? You’re not even really here!”
The girl smiled. “Oh Varian, I can help you help yourself. Now listen carefully, and I will tell you what we’ll do.”
That night, using the secret passages beneath the village, Varian followed the ghostly figure to a hidden cache in a pocket cave a farmer had turned into a cellar. The larder was fully stocked, with fresh apples and cheese, smoked ham, and traveling bread. Varian shivered to think what might have happened to the farmer to make him leave these treasures behind, but he helped himself to the food and packed up as much as he could carry.
“This way,” the girl called from down an adjoining tunnel. “I know a place where we’ll be safe.”
Stumbling after her, Varian held aloft his makeshift alchemy staff for light, adjusting the heavy pack of provisions on his shoulders.
He did not notice the little, furry animal that watched him sadly from the dark, masked eyes sad and dejected, shaking and hissing silently at the ghostly girl.