these walls that still surround me | Glowfic Constellation

once-dreamed-of

The cursed city he was looking for isn't here.

It's more upsetting than it has any right to be. He's had an upsetting week, but still. Normally, looking for a cursed city and finding only bare dirt would be cause for celebration. Now, though... he had a goal in mind, a place he wanted to go, a thing he wanted to do, it wasn't by any stretch of the imagination a good goal but it was something, and instead of doing it he is wandering through this unmarked desolate wasteland because the cursed city he was looking for did not have the consideration to stay put.

He kicks a rock.

The rock flies through the air, tumbles, bounces, kicks up a puff of dust, and—vanishes?

Maybe the cursed city is still here.

He proceeds cautiously toward the rock's last known location.

Not, however, cautiously enough.

One moment he's taking a careful step forward; the next he's—a puff of dust. Too many pieces, separate but connected, each in a different place and moving in a different direction. Some of him is frozen and some of him is on fire and some of him is being crushed and some of him is exploding and none of him is okay.

He feels his sword die, and that's when he knows he's really in trouble.

It takes entirely too long for his immortality to figure out what the hell to do with this situation. At first it does the exact worst possible thing, and heals all the separate pieces in their separate places, keeping them intact enough to continue hurting but not reuniting them so they can stop. Eventually, though—after enough time that he loses all hope of counting it—something shifts, and he's whole again, lying facedown on cold hard rocky dirt. It's colder here, and the ground is uncomfortable, and he hasn't got any clothes because they all disintegrated, but he has a hard time caring about any of that next to the unimaginable bliss of not being in pain.

Maybe he will just... lie here for a while. It's not like he has any pressing engagements.

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and-the-beast

Vigdis is hunting. It's her first summer of being allowed to hunt things properly, with horses and dogs and bows and arrows, not a child trapping rabbits or shooting down birds, not a mad wolf tearing through the countryside. This is a real hunt, for real animals. Probably stags, but she wouldn't say no to a wild boar. That'd be kind of awesome, killing a giant wild boar on her first real hunt, at least if the boar didn't kill her. Hell of a story for whichever one of them walked away, though.

She doesn't find a boar. She finds a naked man face-down in the dirt. He's probably a lunatic, but she can smell that he isn't dead. For a moment she wonders whether he's a wolf, like her, but the timing's all wrong, the moon won't be full for another ten days or so. She hops off her horse and hands the reins to one of the men with her. Her retainers advance with her, close enough to help her in a fight but far enough not to crowd whoever it is they've found.

"Hey," she says to the naked man. "You doing OK?"

once-dreamed-of

"I've had worse days."

He tries to move. His limbs are stiff with the memory of pain. In theory he should be fine, perfectly healed, but in practice it seems his ordeal has left more than the physical kind of marks. Even speaking takes an unreasonable effort.

"Where am I?"

Not home, he thinks. He doesn't recognize the language, when he concentrates well enough to hear it.

and-the-beast

"Akershus. Where're you supposed to be?"

once-dreamed-of

"Nowhere in particular, I suppose."

With considerable difficulty, he sits up. His thoughts instinctively reach out to call his sword to him—and nothing answers. Right. His sword did not make it through that experience still meaningfully intact.

Does he dare try to use magic like this? After everything that's happened, in the condition he's in, without his sword around to mitigate his mistakes?

...No. No, he does not.

He sighs heavily. "Any chance you could help me find some clothes? I'm a bit useless at the moment but I can owe you a favour for later."

and-the-beast

She stares at him, slightly amused, lets out a sputtering half-laugh, and points at one of the men in the group that's taken to following her around.

"You. Go back to the palace and get this man some clothes."

once-dreamed-of

"Thanks!" he says cheerfully.

and-the-beast

Well. He's not a wild boar, but he isn't boring, either.

"I'm Vigdis Yngling, Shieldmaiden and Princess of Scandinavia. What about you, you got a name?"

once-dreamed-of

"Siran. Siran Tavaryse. Arguably a prince."

and-the-beast

"Of where?"

once-dreamed-of

"Well, there you have the 'arguably' part."

and-the-beast

Another half-laugh. It's not even odd, really; there must be lots of former princes of conquered lands wandering around these days, though most of them aren't wandering around Akershus and most of them aren't lying naked in the dirt. One assumes.

"Where were you prince of?"

once-dreamed-of

"Isettavar."

and-the-beast

"Never heard of it. Oh well."

She waits for her rider to return, then throws a set of clothes at Siran.

once-dreamed-of

"I didn't expect you to."

He puts on the clothes. His mood seems much improved, but he's still moving a little clumsily, and it takes him a couple of tries to stand up.

and-the-beast

"How'd you wind up face-down in the dirt, anyhow? Not a good place for anyone, let alone an arguable prince."

once-dreamed-of

"Oh, I did something stupid. Actually I did several stupid things in a row."

and-the-beast

"Well, at least you know now. Can you ride? You don't look - super confident about the whole standing up thing."

once-dreamed-of

"I am... probably capable of not falling off a horse," he says, not super confidently.

and-the-beast

"...you can just ride behind me. I don't think there're any giant boar around here anyway, s'not like we'll be missing much if we turn around and head home."

They'll be missing a bit. But sometimes you go looking for stags and the gods hand you a naked man who thinks he's a prince, and you ought to at least figure out why they handed him to you before you go ignoring him.

She helps him up onto her horse and rides at a gentle pace towards the palace. Her actual retainers follow. Most of the rest of the group breaks off to go rejoin the hunt, since that is in fact what they came here to do.

once-dreamed-of

"You're very helpful. I appreciate it."

He turns out to be fully capable of not falling off a horse.

and-the-beast