[Wild Roses] The Wars
Title: here things begin
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses Wars; Etienne, Nicolai
Prompt: 29A "defying gravity"
Word Count: 1723
Notes: Part of the dragon arc. Follows from collared. I think this is the first time I've actually written Etienne, and certainly the first time writing this particular set of brothers interacting.
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Nicolai's letters, Etienne had thought more than once, wouldn't take much work to become either code or easy to transmit by flags. While the messages themselves were always immediately clear, the nuances and interpretations often weren't; Etienne spent more time than he was comfortable with guessing at his brother's motives, what was going on in his head.
Of course, he'd spent his entire life doing it. Nicolai spent as much time complaining about all the fiddly annoying details Etienne wanted as Etienne spent complaining about Nicolai's inability to think in anything but icicles or sword-thrusts.
Not being stupid, he obeyed the unspoken command in the latest letter--even brought it with him so there wasn't even a prayer of a chance that someone else would find it in his absence. Which Nic hadn't mentioned, but Etienne had a well-developed ability to read between his lines. Though he had to admit the face of the message had left him confused, this time. There was none of the triumph of a new spell, or the anger of another angle of inquiry's closing. Wondering what was going on, Etienne followed the stripped down spell without more than adding a card for the Keep's gates to his case.
As the trees coalesced around him, fading out of the spell's transitory mist, he wished--yet again--that Nicolai would include tiny, unimportant details like 'You'll be arriving in the Dragon-spine Mountains' in his messages. A 'bring walking shoes' or Winter, a 'Bring something to shoot with', anything for warning, but no. No, Nicolai liked to surprise him.
Or honestly didn't consider it worth mentioning. Which was a slightly terrifying possibility--especially so when he cast the second section of the spell from the letter and a white-gold thread unrolled up-slope, towards the bare face of the nearest mountain and what looked uncomfortably like caves.
Swearing to himself that this time he'd actually say that he wasn't even half the mage Nic was, Etienne tucked the letter into his pocket, next to the card-case, and began to pick his way carefully up after the thread that marked his path. He'd been lucky; the letter had arrived after he'd gotten back from a wander through the harbour, and he hadn't yet changed shoes or clothes. It left him sweaty with exertion and wishing he could remember how to hide coats away in necklaces or bracelets--not that he was wearing either at the moment--but no blisters on his feet.
He was hungry by the time he could see that the thread was leading him directly into one of the caves' entrances. His hair was also glued to his neck, so he paused to scrape it off and up into a ragged, sweat-limp foxtail. When he looked back down the slope he'd climbed, he saw that the thread was disappearing behind him, maybe rolling up or just fading out as he passed. Which implied he was going the right direction; Nic's spells always got messy if you cast them wrong. Or exploded if you got them really wrong. Etienne hadn't asked if it was meant to be an object lesson or some sort of side effect, but it made the most basic forms of diagnosis incredibly easy.
'So,' he concluded grimly, 'I'm meant to head for that cave. The one with the clear, easy sight lines for something with wings, all the trees in the area scrubbed down and stunted by winds and snow, and the summer's growth not high enough to hide me.' Reminding himself that he loved his brother, really, and that Nicolai had much, much easier ways to kill him if he really wanted to, Etienne scowled at the cave, and got moving again.
Twenty paces from the cave's entrance, the spell collapsed; in the seconds before the roaring started he couldn't figure out if it had been his unconscious doing or if the spell had hit completion. And then he was looking up, unable to move, as the dragon exploded out of the cave, wings flaring wide.
He'd heard that roar--once--from much, much farther away. That was the challenge to the intruder, the death-song of the enemy, the 'I will eat you, mammal' of fangs as long as his forearms and claws that would--
"HEY," he heard Nicolai roaring from somewhere behind the dragon, voice echoing in the cave, and he had time to think 'I am going to die and it is going to be Nic's fault' before the dragon's wings just about knocked him off his feet as they stroked down, counterbalancing the arrested rear as it tried to balance on its hind legs.
"DOWN," Nicolai added, and the dragon dropped to its haunches, canting one wing up as it did so Nicolai could duck under and come out to stand between its forefeet, between it and Etienne, looking at the dragon.
Heart hammering in his throat, all Etienne could think for a few seconds was that was not the way Ulysse had handled the last time. That had involved a lot more lightning and storm-fueled roaring back, and a lot less . . calling a dragon to heel like a misbehaving hound-pup. "Nic, that is a dragon," he said, voice shaking, and his brother shot him a irritated look over one shoulder.
"I'd never have guessed," he sniped back, then looked back up at the dragon. Which was looking disgruntled and like it would still prefer to use Etienne's thighbones to clean between its toes.
White light flared in one of Nicolai's hands, casting afterimages too bright to actually parse as a proper pattern, as he pointed first to the dragon's chest and then twisted his arm back to point at Etienne. "That is my brother. Mind your nonexistent manners."
The dragon hissed down at him, then tossed its head and twisted around, wings slicking back along its spine as it re-entered the cave. He could see the tip of its tail flicking back and forth, cat-like, as it faded into the shadows beyond the cave's entrance light.
"I see you got my letter," Nicolai said, turning around to actually face Etienne. "Come inside--"
"Dragon, Nic--" Etienne repeated, starting to feel cold as the breeze curled around the terror-sweat on his skin.
"He won't mind," Nicolai replied, gesturing a come-here that was only just barely not a spell, not a command. "And all the food's inside."
"Nicolai Sabaey, I'm not thirty," Etienne growled. "You just got me nearly killed by a dragon you didn't bother to even mention when you sent a letter that all but said 'Come here as soon as you get this' and nothing besides! I--"
"I forgot a spell-link, alright?" Nicolai interrupted, neatly cutting the wind out of Etienne's sails. "I thought--well, doesn't matter what I thought was going to happen, as it didn't. Come in anyway--I don't want to talk about what I asked you up here for in the open."
Wishing he hadn't inherited the Sabaey curiousity streak, Etienne nodded, slowly, and let Nicolai lead him into the cave.
There was a several pace long dark spot, between where the light from outside faded and his brother's lights began; Etienne could only assume it was to hide the lights from outside eyes. Dragons rarely bothered with such, preferring to cast patterns into the walls themselves, or the ceiling. Assuming, of course, that reports from [Autumn] extended to their wild kin, and that the lights he thought were his brother's obvious, easy work were that, and not a dragon's lookalikes.
He was deeply uncomfortable with the number of assumptions he was having to make, and couldn't help balking when they arrived in a wider, bigger carved-out cavern and the face of a second dragon snarled down at him, expression all but identical to the one Nicolai had chastised at the entrance to the system. Nicolai hadn't even paused, gesturing him towards a smaller, brighter section, which gave Etienne enough time to recognise that the second dragon was stone, not scales and flesh.
" . . Trying to discourage visitors?" he ventured dryly, looking up at the stone face, and Nicolai paused, looking up himself.
Made eye contact with the statue, then shook his head, looking down to Etienne again. "You're my only visitor," he said, a small, odd smile curling around his mouth. He gestured Etienne forward again, and Etienne actually noticed a new bracelet around his brother's wrist that time. Cataloged it as woven, but couldn't determine material before he was stepping into what appeared to be a replica of Nicolai's personal library, tucked up in a cave in the Dragon-spines.
Shaking off the surreality as much as he could, he threw himself down into a plushly upholstered armchair, skidding it back a hand's span on the rug, and looked up at his brother.
"What if I told you the King was dead?" Nicolai said, standing at the edge of the rug with his hands in his pockets.
"I'd reply that I hadn't heard a Winter-cursed thing about it, and we have a problem with succession," he said back, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his thighs. "No-one's the obvious choice to follow."
"And if I said that nobody's heard about it, and exactly?"
"I . ." Etienne trailed off as Nicolai summoned him food and a dark beer from somewhere in the library, a light-boned table trotting out after the plates and the bottle so he had no excuse to mar the chair.
"Think about it," Nicolai urged as he settled into the chair opposite Etienne's, watching Etienne eat with a born mage's patience for energy consumption. "The King's gone, and if you ask the Hands they just get all silent and tight around the eyes."
"Do they know?" Etienne asked, swallowing, and treating the whole line of inquiry as academic, because it was easier that way.
"Not for certain--he's ignored messages and key-pings before, remember?" Nicolai curled his lip. "And he's gotten worse about it since his latest wife died."
Which was true. Etienne had never been sure if that was actual mourning for Amarante Lassiter, who'd been sweet but not sharp, or if their father had been angry that her assassinaton had succeeded, in spite of their uncle and the Hands.
"All right," he said, leaning back and taking a long swallow of beer as he melted into the chair's embrace, "what's our angle?"
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses Wars; Etienne, Nicolai
Prompt: 29A "defying gravity"
Word Count: 1723
Notes: Part of the dragon arc. Follows from collared. I think this is the first time I've actually written Etienne, and certainly the first time writing this particular set of brothers interacting.
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Nicolai's letters, Etienne had thought more than once, wouldn't take much work to become either code or easy to transmit by flags. While the messages themselves were always immediately clear, the nuances and interpretations often weren't; Etienne spent more time than he was comfortable with guessing at his brother's motives, what was going on in his head.
Of course, he'd spent his entire life doing it. Nicolai spent as much time complaining about all the fiddly annoying details Etienne wanted as Etienne spent complaining about Nicolai's inability to think in anything but icicles or sword-thrusts.
Not being stupid, he obeyed the unspoken command in the latest letter--even brought it with him so there wasn't even a prayer of a chance that someone else would find it in his absence. Which Nic hadn't mentioned, but Etienne had a well-developed ability to read between his lines. Though he had to admit the face of the message had left him confused, this time. There was none of the triumph of a new spell, or the anger of another angle of inquiry's closing. Wondering what was going on, Etienne followed the stripped down spell without more than adding a card for the Keep's gates to his case.
As the trees coalesced around him, fading out of the spell's transitory mist, he wished--yet again--that Nicolai would include tiny, unimportant details like 'You'll be arriving in the Dragon-spine Mountains' in his messages. A 'bring walking shoes' or Winter, a 'Bring something to shoot with', anything for warning, but no. No, Nicolai liked to surprise him.
Or honestly didn't consider it worth mentioning. Which was a slightly terrifying possibility--especially so when he cast the second section of the spell from the letter and a white-gold thread unrolled up-slope, towards the bare face of the nearest mountain and what looked uncomfortably like caves.
Swearing to himself that this time he'd actually say that he wasn't even half the mage Nic was, Etienne tucked the letter into his pocket, next to the card-case, and began to pick his way carefully up after the thread that marked his path. He'd been lucky; the letter had arrived after he'd gotten back from a wander through the harbour, and he hadn't yet changed shoes or clothes. It left him sweaty with exertion and wishing he could remember how to hide coats away in necklaces or bracelets--not that he was wearing either at the moment--but no blisters on his feet.
He was hungry by the time he could see that the thread was leading him directly into one of the caves' entrances. His hair was also glued to his neck, so he paused to scrape it off and up into a ragged, sweat-limp foxtail. When he looked back down the slope he'd climbed, he saw that the thread was disappearing behind him, maybe rolling up or just fading out as he passed. Which implied he was going the right direction; Nic's spells always got messy if you cast them wrong. Or exploded if you got them really wrong. Etienne hadn't asked if it was meant to be an object lesson or some sort of side effect, but it made the most basic forms of diagnosis incredibly easy.
'So,' he concluded grimly, 'I'm meant to head for that cave. The one with the clear, easy sight lines for something with wings, all the trees in the area scrubbed down and stunted by winds and snow, and the summer's growth not high enough to hide me.' Reminding himself that he loved his brother, really, and that Nicolai had much, much easier ways to kill him if he really wanted to, Etienne scowled at the cave, and got moving again.
Twenty paces from the cave's entrance, the spell collapsed; in the seconds before the roaring started he couldn't figure out if it had been his unconscious doing or if the spell had hit completion. And then he was looking up, unable to move, as the dragon exploded out of the cave, wings flaring wide.
He'd heard that roar--once--from much, much farther away. That was the challenge to the intruder, the death-song of the enemy, the 'I will eat you, mammal' of fangs as long as his forearms and claws that would--
"HEY," he heard Nicolai roaring from somewhere behind the dragon, voice echoing in the cave, and he had time to think 'I am going to die and it is going to be Nic's fault' before the dragon's wings just about knocked him off his feet as they stroked down, counterbalancing the arrested rear as it tried to balance on its hind legs.
"DOWN," Nicolai added, and the dragon dropped to its haunches, canting one wing up as it did so Nicolai could duck under and come out to stand between its forefeet, between it and Etienne, looking at the dragon.
Heart hammering in his throat, all Etienne could think for a few seconds was that was not the way Ulysse had handled the last time. That had involved a lot more lightning and storm-fueled roaring back, and a lot less . . calling a dragon to heel like a misbehaving hound-pup. "Nic, that is a dragon," he said, voice shaking, and his brother shot him a irritated look over one shoulder.
"I'd never have guessed," he sniped back, then looked back up at the dragon. Which was looking disgruntled and like it would still prefer to use Etienne's thighbones to clean between its toes.
White light flared in one of Nicolai's hands, casting afterimages too bright to actually parse as a proper pattern, as he pointed first to the dragon's chest and then twisted his arm back to point at Etienne. "That is my brother. Mind your nonexistent manners."
The dragon hissed down at him, then tossed its head and twisted around, wings slicking back along its spine as it re-entered the cave. He could see the tip of its tail flicking back and forth, cat-like, as it faded into the shadows beyond the cave's entrance light.
"I see you got my letter," Nicolai said, turning around to actually face Etienne. "Come inside--"
"Dragon, Nic--" Etienne repeated, starting to feel cold as the breeze curled around the terror-sweat on his skin.
"He won't mind," Nicolai replied, gesturing a come-here that was only just barely not a spell, not a command. "And all the food's inside."
"Nicolai Sabaey, I'm not thirty," Etienne growled. "You just got me nearly killed by a dragon you didn't bother to even mention when you sent a letter that all but said 'Come here as soon as you get this' and nothing besides! I--"
"I forgot a spell-link, alright?" Nicolai interrupted, neatly cutting the wind out of Etienne's sails. "I thought--well, doesn't matter what I thought was going to happen, as it didn't. Come in anyway--I don't want to talk about what I asked you up here for in the open."
Wishing he hadn't inherited the Sabaey curiousity streak, Etienne nodded, slowly, and let Nicolai lead him into the cave.
There was a several pace long dark spot, between where the light from outside faded and his brother's lights began; Etienne could only assume it was to hide the lights from outside eyes. Dragons rarely bothered with such, preferring to cast patterns into the walls themselves, or the ceiling. Assuming, of course, that reports from [Autumn] extended to their wild kin, and that the lights he thought were his brother's obvious, easy work were that, and not a dragon's lookalikes.
He was deeply uncomfortable with the number of assumptions he was having to make, and couldn't help balking when they arrived in a wider, bigger carved-out cavern and the face of a second dragon snarled down at him, expression all but identical to the one Nicolai had chastised at the entrance to the system. Nicolai hadn't even paused, gesturing him towards a smaller, brighter section, which gave Etienne enough time to recognise that the second dragon was stone, not scales and flesh.
" . . Trying to discourage visitors?" he ventured dryly, looking up at the stone face, and Nicolai paused, looking up himself.
Made eye contact with the statue, then shook his head, looking down to Etienne again. "You're my only visitor," he said, a small, odd smile curling around his mouth. He gestured Etienne forward again, and Etienne actually noticed a new bracelet around his brother's wrist that time. Cataloged it as woven, but couldn't determine material before he was stepping into what appeared to be a replica of Nicolai's personal library, tucked up in a cave in the Dragon-spines.
Shaking off the surreality as much as he could, he threw himself down into a plushly upholstered armchair, skidding it back a hand's span on the rug, and looked up at his brother.
"What if I told you the King was dead?" Nicolai said, standing at the edge of the rug with his hands in his pockets.
"I'd reply that I hadn't heard a Winter-cursed thing about it, and we have a problem with succession," he said back, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his thighs. "No-one's the obvious choice to follow."
"And if I said that nobody's heard about it, and exactly?"
"I . ." Etienne trailed off as Nicolai summoned him food and a dark beer from somewhere in the library, a light-boned table trotting out after the plates and the bottle so he had no excuse to mar the chair.
"Think about it," Nicolai urged as he settled into the chair opposite Etienne's, watching Etienne eat with a born mage's patience for energy consumption. "The King's gone, and if you ask the Hands they just get all silent and tight around the eyes."
"Do they know?" Etienne asked, swallowing, and treating the whole line of inquiry as academic, because it was easier that way.
"Not for certain--he's ignored messages and key-pings before, remember?" Nicolai curled his lip. "And he's gotten worse about it since his latest wife died."
Which was true. Etienne had never been sure if that was actual mourning for Amarante Lassiter, who'd been sweet but not sharp, or if their father had been angry that her assassinaton had succeeded, in spite of their uncle and the Hands.
"All right," he said, leaning back and taking a long swallow of beer as he melted into the chair's embrace, "what's our angle?"