There once was a king,
One caring and kind,
Who ruled all his people
With their smiles in mind.
It was a wonderful land,
That loved sugar and jam,
Until a young mage, a terrible night,
With will not brought violent blight.
Endless storms, endless tragedy,
Struck the kingdom with barbarity
The king, he failed, his people in agony
And so he chose to end with an apogee.
For solutions he looked,
until an idea was born:
He’d ask those above
Through a spell long forlorn.
His crown required, with intent benign,
Golden ring like eclipse shine,
With malachite against vermillion,
And a brilliant piece of carnelian.
Alone he sat upon his throne
Made of stern marble and stone,
Almost as if they were one,
And thus, he began.
For a solution he asked,
To the gods of the past,
And so his kingdom he got back,
With their sugar and jam.
Even though, it had a price,
For it all, his life.
The king was gone, such was true.
But the land they did restore,
Granting peace forevermore.
The room was dark, as all secret hideouts are, though outside raged an incredibly nice day. The sun shone brightly, like a mother seeing a daughter come back from war, and the last preparations were being made for the Festival of Days, to celebrate the wonderfully calm year the kingdom had had.
Arthur, meanwhile, was finishing a salt symbol on the floor, at the same time that Amie finished organizing some materials.
“D’you have everything?” the former said, still focused on the salt.
“Yes, yes. Three pieces of marble, the feather of a rooster, and copper powder,” the other replied, almost knocking over one of the marble pieces, “Let’s hope this works. I’m not going back to the stables or stealing my dad’s pottery.”
“It will, don’tcha worry. I read the spell a hundred times, I know how to do it. Now, put the things here”
Amie did as such, and thus, the spell to turn the palace servants into chickens for a bit was ready. Before sitting alongside his companion, he smiled. It was quite uncommon for a royal heir and his Mage-In-Waiting to be so close, so casual with each other. Normally, the latter would only speak to the former to teach, or to reply overly properly to a mundane question. He was happy Arthur was so improper. After all, who would he have to prank the staff with otherwise?
Then, sitting on the edge of the complex salt symbol, and lit only by the faintest candlelight, they started reciting the incantation in unison.
The flame of the candles stretched upwards, almost caressing the ceiling.
The copper powder jumped and ran, spiraling around the symbol.
The marble then flared, with a light that swung between comforting and menacing.
Lastly, the feather stood. It slithered, almost as if moved by an invisible calligrapher. It got close to Amie, then Arthur, then back to the center of the circle, where it rose to their eye level.
That should’ve been where the spell was completed, and its effects activated.
But instead, the space between them shattered.
Cracks spiraled from empty space, they swarmed every corner that they could, overlapping furniture, ignoring depth. Amie was paralyzed, trying to somehow understand what was happening, not noticing the cracks that snaked through and over him.
Arthur lunged towards him, casting the strongest protecting spell he could manage with his pocket wand. Pieces of reality were ever-smaller, being increasingly conquered by lines of destruction.
As everything turned white, the pair hugged in a desperate attempt of comfort.
Afterwards, once it was over, they woke up on a misty coast.
It took Arthur a few seconds to get up. He glanced around, not fully sure what had happened or if it was real. Amie laid beside him, still unconscious. In the distance, through the fog, he saw a sight as confusing as it was horrifying: The kitchen. A short distance from the shoreline, the palace kitchen slept half-flooded in the sea.
The sea was also incorrect. It was opaque, and deeply dark. It felt like it was watching him as much as he was watching it. He was trained to spot dangers, to keep his protégé safe at all costs. Here, though, the danger was both overwhelming and impossibly lacking. Every detail of that calm beach kept him on edge.
He gazed back, away from the sea, to a small cliff that gave way to an incommensurable forest, one with trees large enough to hold up the clouds and with trunks wide enough to have a plaza inside.
Then, he spotted another terrible, terrible thing: The dining room, ensnared in branches and almost collapsed, with seats having fallen to lower parts, and with the table snapped in half.
Slowly, he tried to retrace the events that had occurred. A prank with his friend, a dumb sigil-based spell, and then… the Cracks.
Remembering it hurt. Not in the way of the pressure and fear, but literally. Remembering the fractures carried with it a feeling of his very psyche being torn and cut into millions of pieces.
“No matter,” he thought. “I just need Amie to be safe.”
A thought more horrible than the ephemeral cuts and ominous scenery ran through his mind. Was the prince hurt? Was he even alive?
With a trembling hand, he checked for a pulse, and was flooded with the most powerful relief a poet could describe. Even more, the slight touch was apparently enough to wake him up.
After a few moments, he jumped up with the same nervousness Arthur had had, though unlike him, Amie at least had the relief of his friend’s comforting, obviously fake smile.
“What… happened?” the royal asked.
“I don’t know, Amie. The spell must’ve gone wrong,” he replied with droplets of doubt.
“Where even are we? Where is everyone?” the question was asked even knowing it had no answer.
“I don’t know either, but I doubt it’s safe. We should seek somewhere less…” his eyes darted around, almost demanding to find a threat, “...exposed.”
The two got up from the wet sand. Their clothes were dirty, dirtier than any etiquette manual would allow, but that could not be less of a concern at that moment.
They climbed the rocks, and decided to head to the forest. Amie stopped below the ruined dining room. He had just eaten breakfast there not more than an hour before, and now it was somehow caught thirty meters above the ground between impossible trees. The two didn’t exchange any words, but their looks conveyed everything they wished to say.
From seeing the kitchen and the dining hall, the boys had reasoned that the rest of the palace ruins would be spread in rough accordance to how they were laid out before. Thus, Amie had proposed they search his room. If not for protection, then for familiarity.
As they walked through that impossible forest, they caught glimpses of different rooms: Hallways, bedrooms, and such. Yet strangely, each one had piles of white powder waiting on the floor.
What they couldn’t see, not even once, was a single animal. There was only a silence that begged to be interrupted by fluttering birds, and bushes that wished to be inhabited by rabbits. But alas, not a single living thing was within those woods beyond the Royal Prince and his Mage-In-Waiting.
After what Amie estimated to be an hour, and Arthur guessed to be twice that, they reached the Prince's room. It was placed almost like a cave, with two walls missing, snuck into a crevice in the rock. The furniture was almost unrecognizable, like a very untalented interior decorator had tried their hand at it.
Everything, except the bed; Even if it was missing the silken covers, and the lower left leg was nothing more than splinters, it was still a piece of familiar solace.
Both sat down on it, the cushion revealing to have been a sponge to the humidity of the place. Neither said a word, almost keeping the courteously ominous silence of the forest.
Just then, Amie’s stomach growled. It did so inappropriately, with a pitch unbecoming of a prince.
“I’ll… I’ll go try and find some food. And water,” said Arthur, with his eyes fixated on a cracked tile.
“Yes, of course. Thank you,” replied Amie, his view just as fixated on a broken drawer.
Arthur stood up, but didn’t move. He glanced at the Prince, with his shining golden crown on his head. That crown, dressed in vermillion gems, encased in aurate metal. That crown, a symbol of divine favoritism.
Amie looked as Arthur left through the cave entrance, and how he waved his wand into a complex localization spell. He watched as the particles of the spell gathered into an ethereal white compass arrow, and how it pointed into a thicket. He saw his friend leave, following the magical guidance. He observed the quiet forest, in its unmoving grace, once his friend left.
Arthur’s steps had a strange rhythm to them, with branches and muddy stones cracking and complaining. Accompanying it was the low, intangible buzz of the magical arrow. He walked for a few minutes, only thinking of how to continue given the circumstances.
They didn’t know what happened, much less how to reverse it. For now, all Arthur could do was secure supplies and secure shelter. Amie’s room could fulfil the latter, and hopefully, whatever he was being led to could fulfil the former.
After enough time, he arrived at a small stream. The water was a transparent dark-blue, and sang beautifully. But above anything, it moved! Something in that forest beyond the two boys lost within it that moved!
Arthur undid the locating spell, and stood quietly beside the water. His mind recalled the times where his mother, the palace maid-master, would take him to the pond in the royal garden, and read to him every kind of fable written. He thought of trickster foxes, of gullible frogs, of wolves dressed as grandmas… Every kind of animal that should’ve inhabited that forest.
Because that’s what the forest was: A fable. A place where animals act out tales to teach children dubious lessons. But this place had no animals and no lessons, only mist and branches.
Regardless, he was neither mist nor branches, and he needed water. He shook off the nostalgia, and realized he had no way to carry the water back. He could form buckets with a spell, but that would only further drain his energy, and would require far too much concentration. To think better, he sat on a moss-covered boulder that laid on the riverside, where he saw a room half-sunk into the water: The pantry!
“Finally!” he thought. “Something good!”
He jumped up from the strangely comfortable rock and got close to see if he could see anything of use. He spotted a couple buckets bobbing up and down in the middle of the flooded room, and after a few seconds of hesitation, decided to leap onto the small parts of the floor that weren’t knee-deep in water.
After stumbling a bit, and getting his favourite pair of shoes wet, he got the buckets, as well as a couple pieces of bread and cheese. He leapt back, more successfully this time.
While filling them up, he focused on the sound of the water. It was calming, and constant, and familiar. He would’ve liked to stay longer, to appreciate the melody a little more, but he had to go back.
But before he did, he turned back to see the stream, and remember the foxes, the frogs, and the wolves, and his mother.
When he came back, he noticed Amie picking mushrooms off the roots of a nearby tree. Arthur let out a small chuckle, and said:
“Plan on making poison? ‘Cause I’d prefer poisson.”
Ami, not expecting his friend to return so soon, almost tripped from the surprise.
“I-I knew they were poisonous! I was just, um, analysing them! Yes, I was analysing them.” Amie could be the most magically talented prince in recorded history, and a wondrous cartographer, but he made for a terrible liar.
“Judging by the bunch of ‘em you’re holding, and what Imma assume is a stove over there, it looks like a very weird analysis.”
Amie was flustered, and didn’t manage to reply.
“Anyhoo~” continued Arthur, “Could you purify this while I make your abomination of a stove usable?”
Amie obliged, and started a rather simple cleansing spell on the water. The little bits of dirt and mud and sugar slowly came out of the liquid, one after the other, on a single line. It was a long, tedious spell.
Arthur, meanwhile, set out to replace the too-wet branches and the barely-stable tripod with proper materials. Getting the right branches and rocks wasn't easy, by any measure, but he could manage.
After about two hours, they were both finished, and set out to have dinner. Arthur made simple sandwiches. It wasn't the royal banquets Amie was accustomed to, but he'd rather eat something than hear the complaints of his stomach.
"So… What happened?" asked the prince.
"I dunno. The spell went wrong, obviously, but I dunno what," replied the mage, at the same time he took a bite out of his sandwich. «What good is decorum now?» was his thought process.
"I keep trying to think of it, but-"
"But it hurts to remember, yeah?"
"For you too?"
"Yep. But I still can't figure out how we messed up so badly. A spell like that can't-" he reconsidered his words, "Shouldn't be able to do something like this, even if done incorrectly"
"Well… If it's a spell that did it, could it not be a spell that fixes it?" Amie made a commendable effort to show more hope on the idea than what he actually felt.
"Could be, I don't see why not."
"Then how about we try some tomorrow?"
"Sure, but we gotta rest up first." Arthur had finished his sandwich, and was already walking towards the bed.
"Yes, yes. Let's rest."
Both boys laid on the large bed, ready to sleep. It wasn't nighttime, but it was noticeably darker, similar to the first hours of dawn. Arthur had thought of mounting watch, but the utter lack of any danger (nor hint of it) made him decide to rest.
The night went by, forgetting to provide dreams.
Arthur was the first to wake up the next morning. By force of habit, he got up to make some tea, forgetting that such a thing surely didn’t exist anymore. Still, he drank some water from their reserves, and got to work.
The spell that caused all this was sigil-based, so it must follow that another sigil spell could fix it. At least, that’s what he thought.
First, he prepared an area near the open side of the room. He cleaned the leaves and sticks that carpeted it, then made sure to flatten the dirt into a nice circle. Once it was done, he carefully carved the appropriate logographs into some rocks, and placed them on the edge of the circle.
If Arthur knew his companion well enough, Amie would surely want to use Catalysts, which would be hard to find. To save time, the mage went to find them in the few hours it would take his companion to wake up.
Such spells require symbolic objects that represent what they’ll affect. For this, he’d probably need wood, moss, and a piece of the ruins.
Wood was quite simple; just scraping some bark off the nearest titanic tree would do. Still, when he got close to one, he just stood quietly by it. The trunk shot upwards, like a pillar of the hidden sky. It lacked a canopy, or rather, most things a tree should have. It was missing leaves, it forgot to have squirrels, it was empty of birds. Only moss and wood that stretched into the mist. He took a fallen branch, instead of disrespecting the silent behemoth.
For moss, he needed a proper piece, one appropriately verdant and with the correct consistency. Luckily, there was an overabundance of moss in that forest. He walked around for some time, taking small clippings from various patches. Sometimes, he even got near some, closed his eyes, and smelled it, imagining it to be a flower. After enough time, though, he finally found the right one resting on the side of a peaceful boulder.
Last was a piece of the ruins, which didn’t require as much fanfare: Taking a brick from the nearest wall would do. And regardless, he didn’t want to linger on the memories those structures brought.
Now, the only other thing he needed was salt. “Salt is the quintessence that joins all!” is what manuals would claim with too much enthusiasm. Luckily he had wandered into the same brook from before, and the pantry had an enviable collection of condiments. He got the salt, as well as some other supplies, quite quickly. Still, he stayed near the water for a little bit longer.
It brought him comfort: The gentle movement, the quiet noise, the few leaves that swam along the stream… And the thought, once more, of his mother.
He closed his eyes, and imagined her arms embracing him. Saying she’d make some cinnamon pie. Saying everything would be fine. Saying he would be fine.
Saying Amie would be fine.
Amie awoke to the sound of Arthur preparing a spell circle. He didn’t move, instead silently watching his friend work. After some time, he got out of the humid bed, with as much theatrical exaggeration as he could manage.
“Goodness me! It seems as though mine venerable Mage has thus forgotten his sacred task of bringing me breakfast!”
“Well, thine venerable Mage was occupied getting the spell materials, thine Most Greatest Highness,” Arthur quipped back.
“Wait, really?”
“Yep. Also got more bread n’ jam, if you’re hungry.”
“Oh! Thank you!” Amie got up, and opened the bag Arthur had carried them in. “Don’t mind if I do… Would you like some too?”
“Already ate. It’s ‘bout midday anyways, so hurry up. I wanna see if this works.”
Amie complied, and stuffed the food down in a manner that would’ve horrified any and all etiquette instructors. Soon enough, both boys sat at the edge of the salt symbol Arthur had made. The branches, moss, and ruins rested in the middle of the salt rune like a careless cat. The rocks with carved logographs watched them like a judgemental choir.
“A reparation sigil?”
Arthur nodded.
In unison, they started reciting the corresponding incantation. It was short and ugly; a couple words from a forgotten language strung together into a single sentence. They said it over and over until the objects began to react.
The moss shuffled, morphing into a sphere, a formless mass, and then a ring.
The twig twitched and spasmed, until it stood perfectly upright.
The piece of ruins was the most sluggish to react. It dragged through the dirt, until it hastily jumped above the twig.
The logographs started glowing, a hint of hope shone on their faces.
And then, the space between them suddenly shattered, flinging the objects in different directions.
The Cracks appeared briefly, just long enough to refute the spell. The pair fell to silence, until Arthur composed himself, and modified the sigil.
In an improper break of their hierarchy, he ordered the prince to take his position once more.
They tried the spell again, only to get the same result.
“Let’s try again,” said Amie.
Their third attempt was met with the same fractured rejection.
“Again.”
A fourth, fifth, and sixth attempt took place.
“Again!”
The rest of the week was spent with attempt after attempt, spell after spell. They only stopped for meals, or the briefest of breaks. Really, the only thing to stop them fully was running out of stamina.
It was the 8th of December by the time they decided to take a proper break. Or, at least, that was Arthur’s guess. After so many spells, he was much too tired to keep track of time.
All of their attempts had failed: Every last one, every convoluted method, every Frankensteinian use of magic, every exhausting form of enchantment either of them could come up with. All of it for nothing, all of it resulting in Cracks.
It still hurt to think about them, even if they only appeared for less than a second. They tore the mind, ravaged thought, like a wolf given endless sheep to devour.
The mage was sitting alone on the dirt, with his back against one of the wooden giants. He held his shining opal necklace between two fingers, inspecting it. It was a symbol of his status as the official tutor of the prince, inscribed with a magical signature.
«How could I fail so thoroughly at a spell?» he thought. «I’m a prodigy, for goodness’ sake! A prodigy wouldn’t struggle this much, nor would he mess up so incredibly so as to end up like this!» screamed his mind. He was happy Amie didn’t know mind-reading spells yet.
Meanwhile, Amie was inside their shelter, eating a toast with jam, which was as absurdly mundane for a prince as it was absurdly luxurious in that very moment. It had taken Arthur an entire evening to procure both the berries and the bread, all to satisfy an offhanded comment from his protégé. Amie quite appreciated the result, even if he didn’t properly thank his companion for it.
The last few days had been exhausting, both physically and mentally. «Hope can almost endlessly drink from failure. Almost,» quoted the prince in his mind from a novel he had read long ago. He looked towards the forest, half towards his friend, half towards the endless trees. Were those trees? Neither could make out a canopy, and given the weirdness of that place, they might as well just be wooden pillars with nothing on top.
Regardless, they hadn’t been able to do anything for a week, and both were running out of ideas. Just then, a thought snuck its way into Amie’s head:
“What if… We explore a bit?” Amie was quite quiet when speaking, but he didn’t need to speak louder, since the forest was quieter.
“Hm? Explore what?” Arthur barely raised his eyes from his opal.
“I don’t know. Just… Explore around. Perhaps that will give us some more ideas.”
“Sure, not like there’s anything better to do.”
In less than an hour, Arthur had finished gathering what they’d need for the outing, while Amie had gotten some paper from what was left of his nightstand and found a branch someone with very poor eyesight could confuse with a pen. He wanted to try and make a proper map of that place, since any other attempt to stave off boredom was just as unsuccessful.
They started by walking to where they guessed the library would’ve been, based on the palace layout. The mud and moss and bark all seemed to be watching as they departed.
For the first hour or so, the forest stayed mostly the same: Tree trunks that stretched endlessly upward, moss and mud battling for the ground, and the occasional boulder sitting quietly. The only interruption to the uniformity were the ruins: Hallways that forgot to lead somewhere, walls that protected against nothing, and windows that failed to stay intact. But most inexplicable of all were the piles of sugar: Some of them laid on the floor tiles, neat and tidy; others, less careful, were thrown over furniture. But they were always there, always present, all accompanying some kind of palace remnant.
All while Amie mapped the uncanny scenery onto his makeshift notebook, finely avoiding to step over unfavorable debris.
Eventually, they reached what could -with some creativity- be called a clearing, and in it was the Library engulfed in tree trunks. Some books near the edges were embedded in wood, and others laid lazily in the mud; the former making for a carpenter's dream and the latter for a librarian's nightmare. Of course, Amie declared they’d return later, once they had explored more and he could store a more thorough map on the (now half-collapsed) geography section. Arthur just sighed and agreed; Amie would hardly change his mind anyway.
They kept walking, seeing more ruins and more sugar piles. They started following a brook that snaked through the forest, until it led them to the most interesting place so far: A small cliff, decorated by a stepped waterfall. Each pooled step had with it the overly-elaborate tiling of the ballroom peeking from within the water. That was, of course, all that remained of the place now.
Arthur was the first to jump, landing on the nearest piece of floor. Amie followed, using a weak levitation spell. Both boys went down the cliff slowly, narrowly avoiding falling into the water with each step.
Once down, Arthur decided that following along the cliffside would be wiser than getting lost farther into the unmarked forest. Which implied they weren’t already lost to begin with.
Regardless, they pressed on along the stone wall, spotting more ruins here and there. They also started playing a game of counting how many trees they spotted, but gave up after Amie saw the hundred and eleventh.
Luckily for them, it didn’t take much longer for the forest to give way to an endless field of grass as tall as their waist. It was the first time the trees had the courtesy to let anything else take center stage, though they could’ve chosen something a bit more interesting. Still, the pair appreciated the change.
In the distance, considerably deep into the sea of grass and barely peeking from behind the fog, they could make out a particularly large, isolated ruin. After a moment of thought, Amie decided to approach it, with Arthur following suit.
After so much time enveloped in the forest, it felt weirdly exposed to walk through the field: It felt like anything could jump out at them at any moment, even though they both knew there was nothing there beyond themselves.
It took some time, and many complaints, until they reached the ruin. It turned out to be the throne room, with the stone-and-marble seat almost intact.
And upon it, in the most pristine and organized way imaginable, sat a single pile of sugar.
It was then, with the pile of sugar seeming to half-heartedly stare at him, that Amie had the most horrifying of realizations.
His legs gave out, his eyes still only concerned with the throne. Arthur, almost by reflex, caught him before he fell to the ground.
Amie almost couldn’t process the idea. It had barged into his mind like a thief, and instantly stolen any kind of composure from the prince. He tried to say something, but no words managed to escape his mouth.
Arthur, meanwhile, tried to figure out what had happened to his companion. The mage’s eyes darted across the room in search of a threat that could’ve startled the prince, only to be met with silence and fog and sugar.
And then, he looked at the sugarpile, and had the same exact realization. His stomach turned to a knot as the idea sinked in and snuggled in his thoughts like a vile cat finding a place to sleep. It was too terrible to keep hidden in his mind; he felt it snake through his throat, over his tongue, and beyond his lips, until two words managed to stick together: “They’re people.”
The sugarpiles were people.
And of course they were! How else could every single one manage to be where a person would? How could they be strewn over furniture as if they were cleaning it once? How could one be perfectly sitting where Amie’s father would be?
But worse, more terrible and horrible and vile and abhorrent and unbearable, was what it implied: There was no one to return to. As far as they knew, not a single person remained in the entire world. They were, as deeply and thoroughly as possible, alone.
Alone in a forest decorated with ruins and sweetened cadavers.
They returned to their shelter in a daze. They hadn't said a word on the way back, nor did they do so once they arrived. Their eyes avoided every pile of sugar on the way, but they couldn’t stop their minds from wondering about them: Did they pass Mathilda, the soft-spoken cutlery maid? Did they encounter Eugene, the stern-eyed gardener?
Had they found Arthur’s mother?
The mage fled from the thought every time it came to mind. He made what he knew to be excuses and lies: She was certainly out for groceries, right? Exceptionally, of course. No maid-master would go out for groceries. But surely today had been an exception. Perhaps she wanted to get some air, yes? Yes, yes, of course. She wanted to get some air, and had gone out of the palace for groceries as an excuse to get some air. And since she was out of the palace, she was clearly outside of the area affected by their spell. Because unequivocally, positively, absolutely, the spell had not affected anything beyond the palace. Because the blackened sea beyond the forest and the beach wasn’t full of ruins and sugar. Because two children couldn’t have destroyed everything, right? Right? Yes, surely. Surely.
“Arthur?” Asked Amie, without looking.
He took a second to react. He wasn’t even sure where Amie was, which was incredibly inappropriate for a Mage-in-Waiting. Even then, he didn’t manage to say anything; just slightly turn his head.
“I was thinking…” Amie considered his thoughts, how to phrase them, “What if we make a reversal spell?”
The mage kept silent. Temporal spells are not only difficult, but unreasonably dangerous: One mistake, one miscalculation of ingredients or one misstep when gesturing, and the effects for the caster could be catastrophic. Still, what other option did they have? It was no longer a matter of going back, but one of turning back.
“We could try… I’ll go gather the materials. Can you do the sigil?” said Arthur.
“Yes, of course.”
And thus, Arthur set out to collect the menagerie of things needed for it. It was much harder than a simple reparation spell: It required symbolism, precision, obsessiveness.
He searched for the materials empty-minded, like an automaton from the mechanical festivals. By nightfall, he had bricks and glass to represent the objective, mid-grown mushrooms for change, bark for old, dirt for a base, and a variety of other materials.
He also had gotten sugar. “The past requires a memory and a remnant entwined,” claimed the magical encyclopedias in a vain attempt to avoid saying it required corpses. He made sure to do a funerary prayer for each sugarpile he disturbed, and ingrained each in his memory: “The One Cleaning a Window,” “The One Between Three Trees,” “The One Sitting by the Fireplace,” and so on.
When he returned to Amie, the prince had already finished the entirely-too-complex reversal sigil: Perfect concentric circles attacked by tangents, separated by the most precise angles and lengths, all pluckily carved into the dirt with a stick. Against a crooked nightstand was an instruction book for the spell; neither had memorized it, neither thought they’d need it.
After carving supporting runes into nearby rocks and placing them accordingly, they got to work.
Thus, kneeling on opposite edges of the complex symbol, and lit by the uniform light that got through the fog, they began reciting the long incantation in unison.
It was ten continuous pages of various forgotten languages strung together like a patched-up blanket. To any reasonable scholar, it was a terrible spell: It had no harmony nor cadence to its wording, it had no elegance in its consonants nor grace in its vowels, it combined orthographies and accents in every clashing way. But a spell as egregious as it was, as resisted as it was by the laws of reality, as disagreeable as it was to being invented, could only be the result of combining the works of millenia of mages. All of them dead, of course. Arthur thought if they’d be added to the list.
But then again, who was there to keep track anymore?
The first page was about greetings, Orocranic words slow and eerily uneventful. A branch twitched, a shard of glass changed position, but little else moved. Their fingertips slightly stung, but they continued.
The second page was one of niceties, or at least so guessed Arthur - his knowledge of Lers-Jécoux was poor and patchy. The leaves moved themselves like an ant line, forming into a manifold of green against the dirt. Their knees numbed; they didn’t notice.
The third page was one of requests, at least according to what little Üll Amie had taught Arthur. Bricks undid themselves, and formed a beaded ring above the leaves. Their palms felt warm, warmer than they should. They continued.
The fourth page, in Cuòwù, was one of parameters. Mushrooms grew and shriveled in alternating turns. Their chest felt like it was being pierced by the blade of a titan. They continued.
The fifth page was in Zbyśnie, and was of exchanges. A translucent fractal started to form between them; a mirror of could-bes. It felt like their lungs were aflame. They continued.
The sixth, seventh, and eighth page were of specifications in languages with forgotten names. The orbit of bricks spun faster, the twigs unraveled into strings, the fractal between them spiraled and grew. They couldn’t distinguish where the pain came from anymore. But they had to continue.
The ninth page was of apologies. The fractal unfurled, it spread tiles on the floor, it sculpted columns out of trees; a mirage of the palace. They were almost done, just a few more moments of pain before all was well. They continued.
The tenth page was of farewells. They said the first six words, and the next twelve. But as soon as the nineteenth word began, the forming past Cracked. The fractal receded, the illusion shattered. Cracks coiled and expanded in the blink of an eye. Both boys were blown back. Amie fell into the mud; Arthur hit his head.
When both boys composed themselves, they realized their shelter had been destroyed: The cavern it sat on collapsed; the roof of the bedroom caved in. The bed was nothing but a mangled mess of broken wood and ripped spongy mattress.
Their only source of comfort, of familiarity, of a sense of protection was gone, ravaged beyond any and all kind of repair by the Cracks. Their supplies were buried under ruble and stone, too. Their gambit had failed, and taken with it any progress they had made since arriving to that broken forest.
Eventually, they decided to move to the library. It provided less cover, but it still was one of the more habitable bits of the palace ruins. They didn’t have to carry much, given most of it was now buried in rocks.
“At least we can read to pass the time, now…” mentioned Amie, almost whispering, while Arthur attended to the small wounds the spell had left. The mage did so both due to duty, and to distract himself from his own wounds.
Once done, Amie went to sit on one of the half-standing couches on the most intact corner of the ruin. A sign on the shelves helpfully labeled it as the Fairytales & Nursery Rhymes section.
Arthur, meanwhile, went back to the brook. They both needed what little food was left in the pantry, and Arthur doubted his friend would think of going to get them himself. If he was honest with himself, then he’d knew he wasn’t leaving to collect supplies. He was leaving to be alone for a little while, to spend a small time alone and without having to care for a prince who never thought of helping. To have an hour to himself, without having to think of what Amie wanted or could want, without having his guard up ready for any and every little thing.
Before he realized it, he was at the brook again. The water flowed peacefully, it flowed without minding what terrain was in front of it, without caring what ruins it flooded and what or who could need it.
He looked at the pantry. It was less bountiful than before, of course. The bread had started to mold, the cheeses grew mosses and fungi. Still, some food was still edible, and the mushrooms that had appeared could be eaten too.
He stared at the ruin silently. He listened to the flowing water. He thought of a spell to bring the food to him. He raised his hand to cast it.
He stood silent, motionless, by the edge of the water. Finally, he stepped forward. He let the water hug his ankles, he allowed himself to enjoy the cool flow regardless of how damaged his shoes would get.
He carried every item back to shore, then returned to the pantry for another one, careful of never carrying more than one. After all, what other excuse could he use to extend this?
Eventually, he was done. It was only then that he used his magic to carry them all at once back to the library.
Arthur returned to see Amie reorganizing the books from tallest to shortest.
“Most of them have water damage,” explained the prince, “So reordering them is best to pass the time.”
“I… See,” said Arthur leaving the supplies on one of the less-exposed tables. While he was assuring their survival, Amie was concerned on how to stave off boredom.
“The spell guides are still legible, though,” continued the latter, “We could read through them to find a new spell to try.”
“Yeah, sure,” replied the mage, his eyes avoiding Amie.
“Great! I’ll take the upper ones, you do the lower ones.”
The upper halves of the shelves had, of course, notably fewer volumes than the lower halves. There was no malice to it; Arthur knew Amie had a tendency to choose the “upper” of any two options with little afterthought. Arthur complied.
The evening was spent combing over explanations of spells to sweeten tea and incantations to make chairs more comfortable. Some volumes mentioned rewinding incantations, but all that could be useful required far more materials than they had or was far too weak. One manual had a section dedicated to reconstruction spells, which only contained the phrase “Casting of the aforementioned category of spell is reserved for the outstandingly dim-witted, for risk of its failure far outweighs the benefits.”
“Goodness, why are mages so stuffy?” commented Amie.
“Because we’re responsible, Amie.” replied Arthur.
“I wasn’t talking about you, Arthur!” exclaimed the prince, in theatrically exaggerated annoyance.
“I’m a mage, so I’m included.”
“Well, yes! But- C’mon, you know I didn’t mean you specifically!”
“It’s improper of royalty to use contractions when speaking, Amie. You know that.” He didn’t look at him.
“Wh- What do you mean? Why would etiquette matter now? Why would youcare?”
“Nothing. I’ll start going over the next book, this one’s useless.”
“Alright…” muttered Amie after a moment.
Arthur got up and retrieved a thick encyclopedia titled “Absolute Compendium of Magical Stratagems: Final Edition.” It was the fifth ‘final edition’ of the series. Both kept reading in silence, not even the forest dared make a sound.
The silence was kept for what must’ve been hours, until Amie ventured a sentence:
“Arthur… Is something wrong?”
“If you mean with me, no, there isn’t,” he didn’t lift his eyes from the book, “If you mean everything else, yes.”
“I’ve known you since I’m six, I can tell when something’s on your mind.”
“What I have on my mind is ‘what spell will get us out of here.’ You should be thinking the same.”
“Arthur, please! What’s gotten into you?! It’s not like you to be…” he hesitated for a moment too long, “... sarcastic. Tell me what’s wrong, please!”
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Everything, Amie! Everything! Look around you, for God’s sake!” he threw the book away and stood up, “We’re trapped in a bizarre forest surrounded by corpses! And I’m trapped making sure you don’t kill yourself!”
“What..?”
“Ever since we got here, you’ve done nothing but demand and complain. I’ve gathered all our supplies, I’ve collected all our water, I searched for all the materials we’ve used for spells! And the one time you tried to do something, you nearly poisoned yourself!”
“I-I never meant to-”
“Of course you didn’t! You’re used to being pampered! You’re a prince, it’s normal that you don’t realize how much work goes into your whims. And normally, that’s fine! There’s a hundred or more servants in the palace. But now, I’m the only one here. I’m the only one to pamper you. And I just-” he paused; flushed, teary-eyed, “I just can’t keep this up. I can’t be all buddy-buddy while being your servant.”
Amie stayed silent. There was too much he wished to say, and too few words to say it. Arthur continued.
“And it’s not your fault, of course it isn’t, but I can’t pretend like I’m fine, either! I have a sworn duty to protect you. And I will. I’ll get your food and water and supplies for spells, but I can’t keep being your friend.”
“I-I can change! I can help, I can-”
“You can’t! I’m not asking you to change, I’m not asking you to help, I’m asking you to understand. Maybe when we get back, we can be pals again. Maybe we’ll both forget and all will be well. But now, I can’t keep all of this up.”
“Arthur, please! I-I..”
Arthur sat back down, and reopened the book he was reading before.
Amie cried.