The Halfyn Heir had been inside of Xêvioso’s cube that had transported all of the Vodun’s forces to the Une-verse before the cube was shattered and scattered the entirety of the forces across the Une-verse.
When the Heir comes to after the cataclysmic crash, he is on a planet of ice that reminds him of the home world of his love, the Ice Prince, only this world of ice is overgrown with the mycelium of Une.
His body aches as he stands, he’d crash landed hard onto the icy surface. He is in a crater of ice that he flies out of with the help of his elemental mastery, summoning the winds to lift him up high enough to see the damage below. He looks around for any sign of life, and as he surveys the land of ice that is bitterly cold but still fertile enough to sustain the frozen mycelium hanging over the frozen landscape, he knows that he is on Juoil, the home planet of the Ice Prince, only a version of it corrupted by Une.
His impact on the surface had caused a mountain of ice to crumble and it left a sizable crack in the surface of the planet. The Heir finds himself fascinated by the large hole in the surface. He feels something familiar emerging from it, a power that he knows intimately, and before long, he watches the Ice Prince levitate up from the hole in a swirl of frost and wind before the Heir.
“This can’t be,” the Ice Prince says with disbelief and the Heir has a look of disbelief on his face as well. “The Ascendant said that I lost you, so long ago.”
“You loved me even in this reality?” the Heir asks.
“I loved you and you left this sanctuary even though it was the only place we could be safe. The cold weakens her enough that my wards on this planet are hard to penetrate. And you left me here to fight a war that you could not win.” The Ice Prince is crying tears that harden into ice crystals. “You promised you would come back to me, but I knew it was a lie, and for so long I’ve protected beings under the ice because what else can I do? I am tired, but I can’t stop or they all die the slow death that she brings. And I am nearing my end. I hear her voice like a buzz in my head, I can just stop fighting her and it will be easy. You are long gone, too much trouble for her to tame, and I was readying myself to meet you again in death, but then you arrive here and shatter my ward. What are you? Did she send you? Did she remake you as a final gift? I will accept. Une! I accept. I will drop my wards, just let him be mine again!”
The Halfyn Heir is mortified by the story, and even though he knows that the being sobbing in front of him is not the love he left, it feels exactly like him. He even cries like his Prince, tears that freeze into snowflakes, and the Heir can only soothe him. He takes the weeping Prince in his arms and they embrace this way for a long time before either of them speak again.
“Promise their deaths won’t be painful,” the Ice Prince says eventually. “Promise that it will be swift and not tortuous.”
“Une will have no more than she has already taken,” the Heir says in a low tone. He is angry, his jaw clenched, brow furrowed.
The Ice Prince looks at him with confusion as the Heir explains the uncanny circumstances that brought him crashing down on this corrupted Juoil. The Ice Prince shakes his head slowly, tears streaming his cheeks as he puts a hand to the Heir’s face.
“I love every version of you, but it seems that every version of you puts everything else before me.” The Ice Prince kisses the Heir gently. “Did I love you in the reality that you left?”
The Heir nods, but he is confused by the Prince’s words.
“And now you are here, deep inside of the reality that she first claimed, unfathomably far away from the one who loves you most. If he is like me, every second away from you flays the edges of his sanity, and he is slowly unraveling. But no one would ever know because his burden is his own, and the unfathomable one that you gave him. I bet he smiled when you were called away to this incredible duty to all of reality, and he used your courage to fuel his own, I’m sure that he is a positive force in your reality, propping it up somehow. And he will only complain to the silence, because it does not speak back, which means that there is no one to hear him. Which means his laments go unheard, worst of all by you. Always chipping away at his sanity. Since I have you now, answer me this, brave Heir of the Elements, do you love him? And if you do, how could you do this to him?”
The Heir is assaulted by the Prince’s words, and it is worse than a physical altercation would have been. The Heir recognizes this too, his Prince was made a warrior poet of the planet Bromeraj where words are used to construct powerful spells, so the Heir knows that the Prince is capable of battling with words. But he doesn’t allow the nihilism of those words to reach his heart. His Ice Prince had shown him long ago how to defend against weaponized words, thoughts and feelings expressed deliberately to provoke specific emotional responses, and he would not allow this sullen and defeated iteration of his love to pummel him with faulty reasoning and righteous bitterness over tragedies.
“You are not my Prince,” the Heir says softly, putting distance between them. The Heir had never seen his Prince as he looks on the corrupted Juoil; he hadn’t really looked at him before this moment when he pushes away, he’d mostly been captivated by the eyes that were exactly as he knew them. This Ice Prince is tall and thin, his skin dark, but ashen. He wears a tattered white cloak that gives him dignity, the bearing of a ruler, and he has a long staff in one hand. His face is handsome but still very tired.
“I am your Prince, just as you are my Heir, my…”
“Don’t!” the Heir yells and it sounds more like the crack and rolling of thunder and electricity sparks from his eyes that turn yellow-white. “Only my Prince utters my name and you are not him. You do not know me even if I share the true name of your Heir. You would say my name in conflict, and it will not end well for the mage who tries to take my will, even if you have my lover’s face, his eyes. I did not come here to fall into one of Une’s traps, and even though you are not corrupted by her, you are definitely one of her traps, perhaps her most deadly.”
“Your Prince trained you in sharpening your words, I see,” the Prince of corrupted Juoil says with a weak smile. The smile seems to cause him pain. “I never got the chance, my Heir was ill equipped to face Une, but he answered the call nonetheless. How formidable are your words, most handsome Heir?”
The Heir is triggered by this. It is a subtle trigger, but it nags at him, nonetheless. His Ice Prince knows that he is hostile to flattery. As the son of the Royals, he is used to false flattery to gain his favor, and many have tried to use him in complicated schemes to get to his mothers, so he has always been wary of anyone offering compliments too freely. It bothered him when males he found attractive complimented his looks too much, it made him worry that they would use his feelings against them, even if that worry wasn’t always rooted in any sound logic.
“I am always arrested by the attractiveness of my Prince’s face,” the Heir says to the Prince of corrupted Juoil, “even aged and seasoned as the version you display.”
The Prince laughs uproariously and the Heir wonders if he also cries.
“You two must have been together for a long time,” the Prince says when he settles. The Prince is sad and wistful as he stares at the Heir. “I can see myself in you, the two of you had time to leave impressions on one another. I am envious. My Heir and I were always separated, his impression on me was permanent, but limited. I would love to meet your Prince, to see how you impacted him.”
“He is amazing,” the Heir says. “Maybe you will meet him in the future, when we have cleansed this reality and every other of its foul ruler. You do not have to cower in the ice, Prince of the White Corruption. There can be a future for you and everyone that you protect if you will only find your will. Is it truly lost to you as it seems?”
The Prince looks down and his tears resume, forming more tiny crystals of ice as they fall from his face.
“It has been so long. So very long. So long under ice, so long warding and scraping by to survive in hiding. So long without you…” his voice breaks for a moment. “My will is so fragile and if I lose it, everyone below dies. Thousands have thrived here, babies are born and I see them grow older. It helps to sustain me, but my will is fragile. I am ready to be done, to find my Heir in the time after so that we can finally rest together. We deserve that.”
“Can you truly rest knowing that the one who took your Heir from you still lives and thrives?”
The Prince thinks a moment and then shakes his head.
“I can’t kill Une. You could not kill Une, you have already died trying. Don’t do it again. Go back to your Prince.”
The Heir is confounded by this version of the man he loves.
“I cannot let you give up,” he says angrily. “I did not come here to die, or to watch others die, especially you who has my lover’s face. I did not die fighting Une, I will not and I didn’t come here alone. There are others more powerful than me and we will rally to end Une once and for all. You have incredible power to have protected so many for so long. You must stand with us, your wards are obviously significant and can be a great help to us. Help me find the others and let’s put your reality back to what it was. My friends have done it before.”
The Ice Price of corrupted Juoil is still very skeptical.
PRL Serials 