LAUCAN

"Open the heavens with the splendorous melody, its ringing echo, in the icy whispers of the tundra, hear its voice, feel its truth, believe in her. In you. Children of space and time, hear the call forevermore."

It followed the small chimes of a child's music box sat in his two palms while he himself sprawled across the private dance floor. Aerial silks folded around their rafters, unused and left abandoned as everything else had been; where no Naveeran troupe gave it meaning — life. In truth, his lessons failed to stick and he had no more knowledge to fall let alone fly. Guardians sat in the wall crevices, their eyes following him whenever he turned, each one with the traditional weapons of Naveera — icesteel chakrams and glaives, forged in the coldest of a forges flames. Knights and dancers. Two sides of a single coin. Underneath a wilted snow rose, wyverns reigned. Laucan tucked his legs close together. Ice-cold metal drove a wedge into his brow, but he sat there all the same, listening to the melodic passage within the music box while the humming all around him tried to match its dissonance. He heard the call, but found himself trapped to answer it.

But I must answer it.

Crimson worms fluttered at the edge of his view when the hum shifted into a piercing shriek of a crescendo. It faded into the deepest pits of the Infernal Abyss, and the music box slowed to a frozen stop. The wyvern's curved tail clicked against the last pieces of the crystal comb. Ascend to the firmament, bloom over the tundra and fly to the song of your soul.

The final, long gone passage, forgotten to the masses.

Every piece of his downy feathers fell along his ears when he tried to block out the incessant noise. A softer hum lost in the allure of sirens of the sea. Ghosts of Father's court swung around him in the mist splattered with light pinks. Another flick of one of his longer feathers, he tore himself to his feet when it grew into half-wyvern's, half humanoid shapes. It pleaded for him to set himself free, to fly, just like Mother's lullabies. Deep within the notes of the song, an answer behind closed eyes. If we tremble to its song, then will we ever be free? He put his back to the pink mist and shambled out of the dance hall, into the dark, quiet corridors of his palace — his home he never left; until the Summit, until he met King Reyn, who his people thought as a barbaric beast worth less than the snow on their soles. But what promise can I make when my people hate me more? Hate me for the sins I carry? Ice gathered over his knees when he allowed his body to take control when he wasn't able to do anything right.

I ascended the wyvern's steps, I beheld the white nothingness that awaits us — and heard nothing until now. He walked past the ghosts, with Father's desiccated corpse always in the corner of his view as he stopped in front of the throne room. White doors lined with stringed pearls and opals, a testament to Avaerilian penchant for hiding the grim underneath beautiful art. In lovely lies. He pushed open the doors, with the court lost in their revelry, he ascended the steps once more to face his shadow built in the shape of Yuven Traye.

I wanted to save us — our culture, our language, everything we are, before we are buried. He shadowed the throne which built itself into icy crystals along the wall, with barricades built in a vain attempt to keep out the blizzard. He raised his hands to his head, tearing off the bloodsoaked, pale-blue crown studded with crystal jewels. Wyverns blew upwards into the peaks, where decorative feathers fell along the sides.

Each one, a memory, the soul of his people.

He tucked into his own neck when Father's death rattle reminded him of the truth.

We're not wyverns, we're not even vipers. We're corpses.

Sing.

Shockwaves wrapped around his spine in the tug of motion, and he set the crown on the throne Yuven Traye sat upon — the blood feud neverending. It oozed in the smallest cracks of the walls, splattering the snow and thickening it for slaughter. Sing, it begged him. Each word, a tenant of Naveeran philosophy. In their voices, power, in their souls, wyverns. Worms laced with black streaks wriggled over the crown when he tried to reach his hand out to it in his last light of defiance.

Hear me.

But who is that voice calling to me? Laucan twisted on his heel and walked through the multitude of ghosts his ancestors left behind. I hear you. I feel your song, just call out to me further. You're too far away, I don't know where you are.

Listen.

How can I listen when you won't acknowledge my own? Laucan drifted out of the throne room and back into the royal wing, following the siren's song. I hear you. I comprehend your song. You want me to fly. I'll fly. He sank into Father's shadow when his bony footsteps followed behind him, carrying the weight of two families. He tore his fingers from his own palm, releasing the tension to the world when it drizzled out his fading glyph. Wings of fluffy feathers and white hues writhed in his side view, trying to flap in resistance to the futility in front of him. It screeched and broke apart the melody. Shut up. He slammed to a stop. We must listen to it, this is the answer we've always wanted, isn't it? Tears swept down his cheeks when he drove his fingers into his feathers, tearing some of the down asunder to let it fall to the ground below. Agonized ripples struck him in the chest, but the chorus in the distance deafened it. This is what this has led to, no matter the consequences... this will end. He lifted one foot in front of the other as Father's flesh-flaked fingers pushed him forward, and through the glass, large teeth beckoned through the mist.

Hayvala's voice called out to him, but she too was so far away, farther than the hum. And I want her to live, to see the sun, to feel the warmth it brings to the sunlands. He raised his fingers through the rays when he stepped off the train and basked in the greatest marvel in all of Aztryxer.

The sun, constant, defiant to the end, rising over the horizon with the passage of space and time. It rang out a clocktower, shuddering with the crimson bells when the black wyvern swallowing the palace continued its distant song, swallowed by the blizzard when he went face-first into the glass, pressing his hands against it.

Sing. Listen. Fly.

"Ascend to the firmament," Laucan finished its tune and hobbled his way to his quarters. Outside, the black wyvern reflected him, mouth agape and lower jaw split to swallow mountains whole.

I am Evyriaz.

"The King of Naveera," he echoed the passage, a support to the deep melody.

Though the dusk may seek my soul...

"But I... am a sword of light," Laucan found his voice wavering, where confusion danced with the tug of his soul, the white-scaled wings writhing in pure agony. "I am so close." He gasped and tried to swat the wings out of his way when they wrapped around him tighter. "So close to an answer to the question I've been asking." He sobbed when his heels cracked bones, and pillars fell to the wind-sheared frostlands. "Tell me what it is." He opened the door to his room, bathed in dark and once splattered with the blood of family, carved into the remnant of the Traye's, their refusal to die. "I can almost hear you."

Take wing.

Glyphs opened the balcony doors.

His fireplace spluttered to the last dead coal, leaving a field of smoke in the wind's wake. Over the abyss, the pain filled his temples when he reached out his hand to the stars. I am so close. One more step, he pushed his knees against the barrier from his flight. If this is what it takes... He lifted himself onto the railing, where the wings gasped for life. On a grand spire, a ruined, dead city, the golden light. He nudged himself forward to smite the crimson rivers soaking his land. Another inch, and he could fly higher than he imagined, to touch the sun.

To learn how to fall, instead of desperately trying to fly.

He went forward into the abyss.

Spears of light slammed into the walls of the palace when the world shattered and went into slow motion. The view shattered, the wings broke. Beneath him, the sheer drop into the palace grounds below. Glyphs sprinkled with yellows spun in front of him, where a visage of Yokonei Traye swung himself on his own glaive, a harried expression on his wise features, a dead man with golden wings. Laucan swung his arms out when the fallen knight used the glyph's spring loaded momentum to drive himself over the edge, where his arm crashed into his stomach and the hum turned into a thick scream.

Ink swam into his view when he tried to open his eyes.

"Your Grace?" Yokonei asked through a thick blanket of ice. Laucan tore open his eyes, where the worms slithered in the presence of light. Two faces merged above him. Yokonei Traye, and the young Lord Vlasiz who rested one elbow over his knee, his long feathers fluffed out against the cold. "Your Grace?" his voice, too distant, but it silenced the wondrous hum waiting for him.

But that's not how the song was supposed to go...

Laucan sank into the puddles of pitch.

"Laucan!" a woman's voice screeched.

Water rippled underneath his heels, and he dragged himself up to the vanity in the mirror. On the other side, a tiny little hatchling of a wyvern cowering its snout under its own wings. Its scales and feathers shivered with fear, with weakness as its tail lashed back and forth and it squeaked for family. Shadows coursed over it, the self-same maw outside the windows gaping wider to swallow the little wyvern.

"Laucan!"

In a sudden burst of light, the predator screeched and splattered blood when a golden lance rammed underneath its jaw, and Laucan jolted back to his reality. Hayvala loomed over him, tears soaking her cheeks as she clutched his shoulders. Lord Vlazis wrapped himself in several layers of furs, flanked by two grumpy Sentinels. Hayvala's voice blurred in his mind when the melody persisted, and he winced when she tapped his cheek. "Laucan?" she said through the spatial distortion. "Talk to me. Let me hear your song, your voice."

I... think that wyvern has my voice...

Laucan closed his eyes.

"No!" Hayvala dug her fingers deeper into his collarbone. "Say something, I can hear you, Laucan!"

Her tears spurred him to return, to turn his back on the humming answer. "Why wouldn't you hear me?" he asked, his voice wispy as Hayvala leaned closer. "I just wanted to hear it, Hayvie..."

Hayvala lifted her gaze to the balcony doors with the same harried confusion on Yokonei's face before. Laucan frowned through his confusion when she bit her lower lip, shattering the facade of power and perfect grace she shoved in front of the lords who played their useless games. "What answer were you hoping to find?" she rasped. "In throwing yourself off the balcony?"

...what?

"I wasn't..." Laucan twisted his head around at the howl of the wind. His curtains draped with the flow of the snow, and all the apparitions took flight into its embrace.

"He's probably confused, Your Highness," Lord Vlasiz said dully.

I'm helpless.

Laucan resisted the urge to scoff and push everything aside when Hayvala cradled him in her arms and held him close before turning to Lord Vlasiz. Her feathers stood on the ends, past her moonshed locks when she nuzzled his brow before breaking from him once more. "There is no need for hostility towards Lord Vlasiz, sers... it is clear he is not to blame for this. Lord Vlasiz... thank you for saving my baby brother."

Lord Vlasiz hunched his shoulders, another player of the game in the end when the Sentinels bowed their heads and gave him ample space to escape. "I live to serve the crown, Your Grace."

Serve Naveera.

"Please escort Lord Vlasiz back to his quarters and have the palace kitchens send him a warm evening meal," Hayvala instructed, and she whipped back to him without waiting for the Sentinels acknowledgement of her order. "Laucan, I don't know what you were hearing but..." Lips sucked in, she held him closer, and he drifted into Mother's warm embrace. "Don't listen to it. It doesn't have the answer — it's leading you to death."

"It was the same song Father heard..."

"No," Hayvala insisted with a small shake. "No, this is different, little one. This is not like Father's doomsong. Just ignore it. For me."

For you.

"Hayvie?"

Hayvala tipped her head closer to him.

Laucan brushed his fingers through the thick night furs. "I... think I need to sleep."

"Of course, Laucan, can you—?"

Ink washed back into his view, the softer hum from the music box echoing through his ears, with Mother's voice lulling him back to sleep in his cradle.