Chapter Text
"A halfblood for an heir, and an elda at that. This country’s gone to hell."
The Prince keeps his posture straight, his head facing forward. It takes a concerted effort to maintain a relatively stoic front, his fingers curling against the hem of his tunic as he walks past. Despite his best efforts, his pace quickens just a bit as he moves through the hallway.
The palace normally brimmed with life, the sound of footsteps echoing down tiled halls as servants sweep through, cleaning supplies in hand. They lean close together, hands raised to their lips to hush their whispers as gossip flits through one ear and out the other. Sometimes, the silence was broken by the clinking of armor as guards left for their posts. Despite all the noise in the palace, it is the loneliest place in the world.
The Prince glances at the shiny checkered floors reflecting the light from the windows, where his gaze was naturally drawn. He finds glimpses of buildings and roads, of small flecks of people from a distance; meandering or moving with purpose in the course of their daily lives. He sees the bright blue of an unblemished sky, sunlight blessing the capital city with its grace.
There is noise outside, too. The occasional shout that slips through the cracks, faint bouts of laughter and conversation between children and adults alike. There’s a lightness to it, a fluttery feeling that simply isn’t present in the confines of the palace. The people of the royal capital have found comfort in the same mundane that snakes around his throat and squeezes.
His lips press more firmly together, a quiet war to keep his placid smile from straining. The windows show him a world beyond, saturated with color. A world he has never been allowed to see.
A world that doesn’t accept him.
Despite his best efforts, the Prince bites his bottom lip.
"He was born out of wedlock, anyway. A bastard doesn’t belong on the throne."
His teeth press harder against his lip, the mounting pressure a distraction from the venom he overhears.
"No one's going to bend the knee to some elda brat."
His shoulders feel heavy, like rough hands have settled atop them, actively pushing him down. As if to say, lower your head, and you have no place here. He takes a deep breath through his nose, fingers curling toward the palms of his hands as his nails begin to dig into the skin. Every servant that passes by makes the tension coil in his gut, waiting for them to open their mouths, to raise a hand, to do something to make the discontent constrict around his heart. His pulse pounds in his ears, a blessing that drowns out the noise that he might hear, but a curse that robs him of his thoughts. His stride hastens, the need to flee thrumming through his veins.
The colors of the palace have long since dulled to a monotone, an array of dark browns, grays, and blacks offset by the occasional white. His vision swam with a grayscale, the monotony of shoes clicking against tiled floors and the wisps of voices carrying down the halls buzzing in his ears, lulling him to an almost lethargic state. Every step was met with resistance, an opposing current trying to shove him back.
There are eyes on him, from every which way. Always waiting for an opportunity to descend upon him. A pack of vultures, watching with sneers hidden behind a façade of niceties, eyes crinkling at the corners with barely-contained malice.
They gaze upon him with civility, but their eyes tell him that he will never walk among them as equals.
"He’s an omen. Just watch, the kingdom will be in chaos soon enough."
The taste of iron floods his tongue as he bites down just enough on his lip to wound himself. The Prince walks on, trying to keep his lip from quivering.
The silence the Prince finds himself in does little to ease his discomfort. Wrapped up in blankets, tucked away in his chambers in the depths of the palace, he sits awake. A bird in a cage, bereft of a chance to stretch his wings, and without an audience to which he may sing.
The only reason they haven’t done worse beyond their barbed comments that coil around him, worming their way towards his heart is because of the royal blood flowing through his veins. Blood that was as red as the rest of them, yet by virtue of his family, he was considered a blight.
If adults were entirely unashamed to insult him behind his back - or even to their faces - then surely there were people out there who had it worse. People without the luxury of a title to shield them from the poison of the opportunistic and the malevolent.
The phantom scent of smoke coats his lungs in a smothering fog, drowning him. Flashing through his mind is a pained smile, belonging to a woman with blue eyes. They were the color of glistening ice, yet they offered the warmth of a hearth. The fires raged around her just as they did in her eyes, but the light soon dimmed before being extinguished entirely.
A tussle of silver, and a loss engraved onto his heart.
The Prince sucks in a breath, recoiling as if he were slapped. He stares down at his hands, a grimace that has no place on a child's face etching into his features like an aspiring scar. He can just about see himself in the dark of his room, the distant streetlights from outside doing little to illuminate his small prison. The air is stifling, vestiges of cold cruelty seeping in from the cracks of the rest of what was supposed to be his new home. If he thinks any harder, he will choke, and so he clutches at the only bright thing in the room.
The ebony cover is accented by gold markings, glimmering in the light he had like a beacon piercing the darkness. Feeling the leather in his hands, the tension in his frame was swept away by the same movement that exposed the pages of a dream once held by an ambitious man. In a passing of the torch, his father had gifted him this book, and even years later it remains his greatest treasure. The boy sits up straighter, a spark igniting the light of life in him as his eyes sweep over the text that he has carried in the recesses of his heart.
An ideal world. A utopia. Futures decided by dreams and merit, rather than birth. A system that hears the voices of the people, empowers them, equalizes them. A world where innocent souls wouldn't be strung up on gallows, their desperate pleas on deaf ears and their kin unable to see past a rope that most assuredly awaits them.
A world where he wouldn't be locked away like a dirty secret. A world where he would be free to roam. To breathe. To fly.
His book is radiant in his hands, the only splash of color he's embraced since he first came to the palace. In this moment, indulging in fantasy, he's weightless. His breaths come easier, unrestricted by the vice that taints every corridor. With every flip of a page, his room bleeds away, replaced by a white void that serves as his own sandbox. The sheen of the floor ripples with every small movement, pure and colorless, something to be painted over. As the Prince looks up, he finally allows himself to relax, to let his body settle without the hound of responsibility and prejudice bearing down on him with sharpened fangs-
"The elda are a tainted tribe," a genteel voice cuts through his moment of peace, ostentatious robes staining his peripheral, "they are nothing but heretics who threaten the peace of our fair country."
A flicker of black shards dust the corners of his vision, unseen. Small fingers tighten on the parchment, a twitch in the boy's expression as his haven is intruded upon.
"...Am I just naïve?" The Prince asks aloud to no one in particular, the purest white of his solace beginning to dim into a shade of gray, "should I not be dreaming like this?"
"What makes you think that?"
The Prince jolts at the new voice, his head snapping up. He shifts his posture to glance behind him, faced with the apologetic smile and mismatched eyes of citrine and tanzanite.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you," the Traveler soothes, his steps slow and steady as the Prince's alarm dissolves into something gentle. With every click of his heel, the space brightens back to a brilliant white. The floor ripples, iridescent, a sea of stars beneath their feet. His hero stops an arms length away from him, but the Prince leans forward and gestures eagerly. With that, the older boy settles into the space beside him as if he always belonged there.
The Prince scoots a little closer to the newcomer while flecks of golden lights sprinkle their way into the space.
The Traveler would never sneer at him for what he had to say. The Traveler would never put him down for his ideals, because the Traveler was the type to listen and understand. The Traveler was safe because he was from the book, and the book was home.
"I..." His voice still catches in his throat, the book lying limp in his lap. "I dream of a world where birth doesn't matter. People can believe in their futures." He looks up at the Traveler with eyes that glint with unshed tears, and he leans closer when a gloved hand comes to wrap around him. "It's the same world my father dreamed of, but that...hasn't worked out."
The hero does not comment on the way his voice cracks at the end, which brings him a small measure of relief. His frame trembles ever so slightly, but that was okay because he doesn't have to keep his expression in check right now. He doesn't have to pretend to be blind to the storm churning in his heart, and that makes it harder to hold back.
"What do you think when people are scorned and wronged?" The older boy asks after a moment, his expression steady and composed in a way that says it's okay, breathe, I'm here.
It keeps the Prince afloat. It was harder to spiral when the older boy remained steadfast. It gives him stability. Breathing room. A chance to think. The Prince tentatively returns the hug and the Traveler holds him tighter.
"...I think that things need to change," he says at last, his voice a little shaky as he wonders just how many people have succumbed to hunger, to cruelty, to poverty, for their birth. How many souls have surrendered to the embrace of grief? How many more lie in anguish, bitterness blooming in their heart and spurring them onwards down darker and darker alleys for the sake of survival or vengeance? Hostility and wariness flow freely, feasting on the blood of the people. How many skeletons does Euchronia rest upon? How many more will be carelessly tossed onto that pile?
Of course, the Prince doesn't have to voice any of that aloud. The Traveler smiles, something small but proud, and it sparks something in the depths of his heart.
"That's exactly why the world needs dreamers like you," he says with such certainty that the Prince doesn't even think to question it. He merely blinks up at the hero with blue eyes shimmering under the glint of a dream piecing itself back together. The Prince has had many lessons - on the kingdom, on etiquette - but for every exercise he has had involving potential problems that he must solve, he has always spent far too long in his head.
“I don’t think I’m good at that yet.”
The hero actually chuckles, the unbridled mirth in his voice makes a flicker of sunlight slip into the space of dreams, highlighting the only occupants. "True change is slow," he murmurs, casting his gaze up at a hypothetical sky, where the clouds roam. "It takes a lot of people to make a big change, but all that effort might not do much at the start."
The Prince nods, his brows furrowing as the calluses from sword-training and quills ache on his hands, accompanied by phantom scoffs and dismissals. "When you put in effort but don't get much in return, it doesn't feel great."
"No, it doesn't," the older boy nods, "and when people don't think there's a chance, or that it's not worth it, they don't usually try."
The floor beneath them ripples as the Prince crosses his legs, cradling the book in his lap. He stares down at his reflection, distorted by the movement before calming into something anchored. He eyes the boy beyond the veil, of bright eyes and...
Hope.
"Change starts with a dream," he whispers reverently.
The Traveler grins, full of the spirit that the Prince has been denied a chance to express.
“A dream that you’ll have to spread.”
“Can I really reach people with it?” the younger boy frowns, “even with what I am?”
“You are a boy who wants to make the world brighter,” the Traveler replies firmly. “There is nothing wrong with you.”
The Prince thumbs at the cover of the book, worrying his lip. His teeth brush over the part he had punctured earlier that day, and he winces.
His hero raises his arm to stroke the younger boy’s hair. His gloved hand is warm and gentle, and the Prince leans into it without a second thought.
“You will find people that see you the way I do.”
Tears prick the corner of the Prince’s eyes, but he smiles. It’s small and soft, a hint of sunlight through the clouds.
“What if people don’t want to believe? It won’t be easy.”
"It won't, and that's why it means so much that you try," comes the immediate reply.
Pain has cemented itself as the land's lifeblood. There will be people out there who have been too burned by the world. Betrayed, backstabbed, stripped of their ability to trust and believe. Words alone won't spread the spark that lights the torch. No, if he is to make a difference then he must act in the people's interests. He needs to...he needs to be able to lead. To be the lodestar that guides people along a path of hope, towards a future untainted by uncertainty of whether or not they'll even live to see it. He needs to serve, to help when issues arise and the people need assistance. Someone like...
He looks up at his hero, the Traveler, who wanders through the world of his book with a devotion to seeing the world in all of the shades it has to offer. The Traveler, who finds trouble because he would stop to help anyone in need, regardless of their differences because compassion was hard to come by. A traveler and a hero both, exactly as the Prince envisions him to be. Exactly as the Prince needs to be.
"A king," the older boy muses, "can be both of those things."
The Prince sits up straighter, wide-eyed and full of wonder at the idea of having the freedom to live in the world he's been kept from for so long, no matter what cruelties it would bear against him.
The Traveler quirks a brow, smiling in amusement as he playfully ruffles the younger boy's hair. "What do you think is the most important quality of a king?" he poses, but there's no hiding the weight in that question. It's a comfortable burden that the Prince can roll around in his mind, savoring all the complexity that unravels.
He thinks of his father, sluggish in a way that suggests he's always carrying something too heavy for him to hold. Of violet eyes that can't meet his blue, too wracked with guilt to face the son he was unintentionally chaining. A father who grows more lifeless with every visit from the Sanctifex, and a father whose voice has dulled into a blade too blunt to leave an impact. A father who no longer takes the plunge, who would look at the book in his hands and abandon it on a shelf, resigned to collecting dust for the rest of his days. The more the Prince ponders, the more he sees the chains coursing through his father’s veins, a deadly poison eroding what once was a light in the dark.
As much as he loves his father, he cannot become a king like him.
The older boy has switched to rubbing small circles on his back, a warm presence at his side that reminds him that he's not alone.
He thinks of Alces, the gruff man who trains him in the sword. A mercenary with scars that speak of the trials he’s faced, and a technique that declares that he will be prepared for the next.
He thinks of Russell, the elderly eugief in charge of his lessons. Every word from him is careful and measured, a patient tutor with all the wisdom of age and experience, and a man who guides him towards the knowledge he will need to earn his place on the throne.
He thinks of the book in his hands, of the eloquent words within well-loved pages speaking to a better world. Of the starry-eyed allure for the future that his father once held, now passed down to him. The utopia painted within a vision that spurred him onward.
He thinks of the Traveler at his side. A hero that holds out his hand to any and all that may need it. A hero that listens with bright eyes and intrigue, full of love for the world and what it can be. A traveler tolerant of all the colors that make up the world, painting a new mural with every life he embraces.
He thinks…of himself. On what could be. Of the colors that swim in the space around him, dotted with warm hues that raise the cold undertones. His imagination brims with life, spawning a fantasy that slowly blends into reality, searching for a way forward.
Yes...he must be a king that serves his people, every virtue another point atop the heavy weight of the crown that he must hone.
"There’s just one thing you’re missing," the Traveler interrupts.
At this, the Prince blinks. He peers up at his hero, an intensity in his gaze that borders on pleading. With a slight chuckle, the Traveler gently taps on the book in the boy's lap.
"A king must never give up on his ideals," he emphasizes, his expression hardening into pure conviction.
The Prince lets the weight of those words settle on his shoulders as his eyes widen, breathless, before he turns back to his book with something more deeply rooted in the depths of his heart. The realization should strike him, blurry images of a young man slowly receding into a cage where he is trapped and abandoned. Of a raging fire that tore through a home, and the threads of a woven dream beginning to snap under the weight of grief.
A woven dream that he had plucked for himself, before its picture could be damaged beyond repair.
His father may be letting go, but the dream lives on.
"I have my work cut out for me." The words slip from the Prince's lips without much of a thought.
His voice is a little shaky, but that’s fine. Here, embraced by the warmth of his heart, he does not need to be unflappable.
"You do, but I have every bit of faith in you."
Clutching the book to his chest, the dreamer looks up at his dream.
"But you'll be there, won't you?"
'I cannot do this alone,' his eyes convey.
The Traveler smiles at him like he's more precious than any jewel. "Of course I will," his hero remarks, as if it was always set in stone. "We need to work together for our dreams." Resting a hand on the young boy's head, he tilts his own. "If there's ever a moment where you falter or doubt yourself, just look behind you. I'll be right there, smiling."
A weight roots itself into his chest, dragging him back down to a cozy embrace. Like the warmth of a hearth, he finds himself enveloped in a soothing tapestry of gentle reverie. His eyes feel heavy, but he doesn't try to resist the pull. The last thing he sees before his eyes flutter shut is the Traveler, his eyes half-lidded but glinting with the promise of tomorrow. A whisper flutters through his ears, coaxing him forward.
"As long as you keep dreaming, I'll always be there for you."
With a jolt, the Prince finds himself back in his room, light streaming through the windows. He looks down at the book in his lap, feels the weight of a grandiose dream that cherishes each and every one of the lives that make up Euchronia's people, and finds that the air in his room isn't nearly as suffocating as it had been last night.
There's a knock on his door that he recognizes as his cue to wake up and be dressed, so he surrenders himself to routine once more with a notable spring in his step. Being a dreamer means seeing the world as it is, and what it could be. With one last glance cast at a golden cover that shines with the promise of a brighter future, the Prince dares to keep dreaming.