Got another lil sumtin sumtin for y'all lol
Also I swear I'm horrible with getting back to each comment, but I do read and try to drop a like on each one y'all leave cause y'all are absolutely an amazing lot of readers
Thank you, as always, for all the love on this one
Oh and new readers, karibu karibu (means welcome, a hospitable greeting in my native tongue Swahili)
This one's a longgg one (and an only slightly edited one but I'll get back to it lol),
so per usual, grab a seat, pour a drink, spark a j, and...
Enjoy, lovelies!
xoxo

P.S. the song that this chapter is named after is referenced above and updated on the Spotify playlist. I think no song has ever encompassed Caspian better tbh so give it a listen if you'd like :)

Caspian

I could feel the night befalling us.

The noise outside Dreska's home closer to the shoreline and the markets themselves, had grown louder. I could hear the people now, whereas when Alistair and I had first walked down that very path that should have been bustling with townsfolk, we could see the people, but we sure as hell hadn't heard anything that matched the volume of Azul's citizens.

I thought of what Dreska had said about the night, and how it wasn't safe for The Holy Men. After Alistair had taken his leave, I had spent more time speaking a bit more freely with Dreska of just what had happened to this land.

I knew of the turmoil between the citizens and this group of purification believers, however since my time at sea, and simply moving through ports as nothing more than a merchant, I didn't believe things could get this tense.

Dreska explained that with this selection ceremony, the people of Azul had felt like the last of their intelligence was being tested. The Holy Men had only gained the access they were now losing to Azul, with the promise to the people that there would be no longer a monarchy. Kings and Queens wouldn't be chosen by their bloodline...

Well now these very same men had somehow found themselves from an hagiarchy back to the same pattern of the hierarchy they had worked so tirelessly to burn.

"I still don't understand how Hodrus has found himself here. On such the wrong side of the pendulum. He had never been the most intelligent, however a decision such as this one should take no pondering. Have you seen what they've since done to the Oakrids?"

My eye's found Dreska's who was standing just an arms length away. He was helping me fasten a broach below the button that held this cloak together, in hopes it could keep the thick material securely on my larger build whilst we navigated the night.

He had explained to me that where I was to meet Hodrus, was where he went every evening. It was the clearing of a small lake near where our palace once stood, but the arena for the councilmen stood in its place.

I was trying to understand the purpose behind it for him. The sentiments this place must've gave... but when I thought of a man who had joined The Holy Men still visiting a place that sacred to the Lockehearts, it made my blood boil. I was conflicted, not knowing how to view my brother now. All I could do was simply wait for him to show me.

"Yes," Dreska nodded as he stepped away slightly, finishing the tedious task of getting the pin's needle through this thick material. "It's... It's-

"Abhorrent." I finished for this man, though even that word felt like a drop in the sea for all the tarnishing The Holy Men had once done to such a beautiful landscape. I knew Dreska had kept his orders to remain by Hodrus's side... but at what cost? At what expense did he then determine his own duties were better upheld, then the very land that had served its people plentifully for many years?

I tried to contain this anger, fury, for I knew that whatever a reunion Dreska may have once hoped for... this had been the farthest from it.

I allowed him to first take all the precautions needed as he looked through his window for any citizens who may have wandered past the path and into this otherwise secluded stretch of cottages. Once he was sure it was safe to leave, he made sure all his lights were off before he led us out into the darkness.

This cloak successfully concealed the stark white hair that would've otherwise flowed well past my shoulders, making Dreska and I's figures one with the night sky itself. We quietly slipped past any main path lit with torches, keeping to the less traveled trails as Dreska led us deeper into the more forested area. It ran parallel to the way Alistair and I had come.

I still knew where this clearing was, yet the paths Dreska took had confused my focus until we reached a section of the forest where these trees grew much larger than those around them. As this clearing came to view, I noticed there was a man sitting in the darkness, staring out to the glistening lake as he sat perched on a large rock nearby.

"Hodrus!" Dreska whispered to the man quietly yet sharply, beckoning his gaze towards us. I couldn't tell whether he had been too lost in his thoughts to not hear us approaching, or whether my brother still hadn't attended to what should've been sharper instincts for a Lockeheart.

He slowly turned around as Dreska and I approached.

"Dreska." I heard the man say. Even with age and whatever else he had done, I could hear my brother's voice clearly. "I told you not to address me as such. Not around anyone, nor in the comfort of privacy." He had slowly stood to his feet now.

"The person I've brought to meet you knows of your name before the one you carry now."

But Hodrus had already spotted me behind this shorter man. I found my hands slowly raising to the hood of this cloak before I gently pushed it back, revealing my face to him. As he stepped further into the smallest light the moon provided through curved length of these tree branches, I saw his too.

Or rather... I saw what Dreska had tried to describe to me. A face I did not recognize.

He had dark brown hair now, having stripped himself of the prideful color of our family. That alone had made him almost completely unrecognizable, however there was one thing he didn't give. Perhaps one thing they couldn't take... and that was the paleness of his eyes.

Once those eyes found mine, Hodrus stepped past Dreska to me.

"Caspian?" He whispered quietly. "How... What is this?"

That question had been for Dreska, however I was the one who answered it. "One could say the same when met with the sight of you."

Hodrus hadn't even registered the biting tongue of my voice, the disapproving tone as I stared at his features in utter disbelief. His brown short hair. He could never grow his hair to the length of mine, or even our fathers, so that wasn't what caused immediate hesitancy. It was that he had it in him to strip him of that white, pure color.

The thing that made us a Lockeheart, besides the blood running through us.

Instead, Hodrus reached forward to quickly pull my taller frame into his, his large arms wrapping themselves around me as he held me to him, and for a moment, when my eyes couldn't see the man he'd become, I felt the man he once was. The man I was forced to say goodbye to... and I found my hands wrapping themselves around my older brother in return.

"This can't be." He whispered into the air as his voice easily reached my ears. "This can't be." He found himself whispering again before he eventually pulled himself away.

Once the sight of him returned to me, I found it difficult to merge the man he looked like now, with the young man he once was.

"I thought you to be dead."

I slowly shook my head, giving myself a moment to collect my thoughts. Rather, to gather the emotion running through me.

"I-" I started, but Hodrus reached out to pull me in for yet another hug, this time with his hands wrapping around me much more tightly. I welcomed the hug and held him just as tight before he found himself eventually letting go again.

"I thought the same of you." I was finally able to admit to him. "I thought you and Dreska had perished after that night."

Hodrus had turned now to lead us back to the stone he sat on, but Dreska stopped me before I could join him.

"I will leave you two to talk. When you are finished, come find me again towards the first path that led us to the entrance of this forest. Hodrus will show you the way if you do not remember."

I nodded quietly to him, allowing him to take his leave from this clearing as I soon after joined my brother.

"Dreska and I managed to make it to the shoreline. We had taken the opportunity to use a spare boat discarded there, whilst The Holy Men further occupied the palace."

Occupied, I thought to myself, turning away from my brother to the small lake in front of us. That wasn't the first word I would use when I thought of what The Holy Men had done to the palace. To our home. That would would never leave my lips if ever asked to describe the horrors of that night.

"You and Lemont then? You made it out as well?"

I almost found myself answering with aye, but I caught that word before it was spoken. "Yes," I nodded to him. "I don't remember how, but Lemont had safely taken me from the fires. We had remained in the woods until we were sure it was safe to depart to the small town just past our borders. Tulsend."

Hodrus nodded to me. I caught it through the corner of my eye, yet my gaze remained on this still water. There was no right way to explain how Lemont and I found safety, for so much of that night had been lost to my memory.

"We spent many years working in and around Azul, before we finally took to the sea as merchants."

I watched as the corners of Hodrus's lips turned up into a slight smile. "Lemont must be completely taken back to discover-"

"He's dead." I interrupted my brother.

It lacked a gentler tone I meant to carry in my words, however I couldn't let Hodrus go on. I found it easier to take the wrap off that wound and allow the natural air to heal it faster.

Hodrus kept his gaze on me, but I still kept my gaze ahead, refusing to look at him.

"I'm sorry, Caspian." He spoke.

"Just the natural process of things." I replied. "He had served me, and served me well... right up until."

Hodrus nodded at that, before he finally ripped his gaze from my exposed face, and followed where mine was, cast towards this very same water. I noticed now that the water was different from what I had once remembered. Less clear, even in the moonlight.

"You..." I heard him say before he trailed off a moment. "This face... I know it is different."

"Are you?" I had asked that so suddenly, I was sure I had cut off some additional words Hodrus had meant to say. "When I look at you," I continued, "I see a man who's lost everything sacred but those eyes. A man who's shed away every part of him he could."

"If I could change these eyes, I would." Hodrus replied, which made the hands that had slid themselves into the pockets of this cloak, close into a fist. "I still haven't touched magic like you have. My weapons couldn't conjure themselves as well as yours could then, and they still can't now. This face was changed by a surgeon, therefore they couldn't take the eyes."

There was anger returning to my heart once more. "The fact that you would give them up at all, disgusts me." I found my words bitter, yet they only echoed the bitter taste left in my mouth by the very words he spoke.

"Caspian," I heard my brothers voice soften some as he turned to look at me again. "You must know that that world is long behind us now. It no longer exists."

That finally forced my gaze to his. To this man I knew was my brother, but as my eyes truly studied him, I realized I knew even less of who he was now than I thought to be true. Hell, than I thought could be true.

"This is not the same brother who was ready to fight for our home that night. You are no longer the man Dreska was forced to drag out of that palace in an effort to keep you alive."

Hodrus placed a hand briefly on my thigh, before he brought it back to his own. "That's because I'm not the same man, Caspian. In order for Dreska and I to live, I had to become something else. Someone else."

My gaze separated from his, before I focused again on this still water. With each moment I looked to him, and with each word he freely spoke, my fury was growing. I could feel my face remain composed, but my eyes felt like they were on fire.

"You become the very thing that ruined us." I told him.

"I became the very thing that held power." He replied with, to which I scoffed.

"Look around us, brother," I beckoned this slightly older man, "Look at the tress. Breathe in this thick air. Even this lake we once knew so well has been muddied with the soot from your men's work in these forests. They've stripped away everything natural about the land itself."

And my brother's next choices of words made my heart almost completely shatter.

"To build, is to destroy, Cas. To improve is to let go."

Those words drew my eyes back on his. Back on the very thing I should've recognized, and yet I now understood what Dreska had meant. There was no life behind those eyes. No purpose. I knew because those eyes reflected my own when I found myself knocking on death's door.

"No." my words held nothing but firmness as they contested my brothers. "To grow is to pull from the past, and adapt. To let go of it completely and willingly, is disjointed thinking that leads to the repetitions of the past itself. What The Holy Men did-"

"They did it in the interest of the people." Hodrus insisted.

"No," I found myself standing even firmer on these words, "they did it in the interest of themselves. The selection process has proven that to be the most true."

Those words flared something behind Hodrus's dead eyes, yet he dared not act on it. Instead, he tried to take the path of reason. A path that didn't exist here.

"I am about to be in a position that holds real power, Caspian. Imagine the good we can do. Imagine the greatness you and I could accomplish together? The public's opinion of The Holy Men may be skewed for now, but this selection process is for their benefit. They will now have one leader who walks these streets amongst them, not a family that hides inside that palace."

"The only thing you've convinced me of, brother," I felt my gaze sharpened towards his, "Is that you did not know of the diplomacy our father and mother carried then, and you surely do not know of it now."

Those words had angered him. I could see it in the other features that were not of his own. "Father carried on the work of his own that came before him, and mother didn't know the first thing of magic. She didn't know how to correctly raise us."

That drew fire in my own eyes, to which I watched as Hodrus shifted back slightly at. "Caspian, your eyes-"

"I held our dying mother in my own hands. Her blood seeping through the uniform of our nation's colors." I could see her now. I recalled the memory so painful, it released something inside me. "Her last wish to me was to find you... those were the last words she spoke before she took her final breath, and this is how you repay that love? This is how you treat the own being who gave you life?"

"Your eyes, Caspian." Hodrus whispered with slight fear now laced into the word of his own. "You've... you've touched a different kind of magic."

I shifted my gaze to the lake in front of us once more in an effort to calm my raging heart.

"You come before me with magic, and yet you have the gall to defend a woman so helpless? One who couldn't even defend herself with magic of her own? At least I've grown strong- earned my power, whether it be of the Lockehearts or of The Holy Men."

"No," I spit out harshly. "But defending a woman who stayed to fight knowing what her fate would be. That is a woman I will defend until I take the last breath of my own."

This anger... this fury... it wasn't subsiding. I could feel the burning of my chains now against my covered arms, as they begged to be released.

"When we were younger, I once thought you to be uninterested. I thought that mind was perhaps too curious, that it longed for something else behind those palace walls." I found my feet pushing me to stand with orders I would soon have to obey. I couldn't stay here with my brother any longer, for I knew not what I would do to him if I did. And I was even less sure of what I would remember. "Now," I continued, turning to the man who still remained perched on this rock. "Now I realize that that wasn't uninterest. Now I realize that was willing stupidity."

Those words alone pushed Hodrus to his feet, his eyes coming to life with that anger though his body forced himself a moment of calm. Neither one of us wanted to hurt the other, but he knew that if I drew my chains, he would not win.

"You think the edge you need comes from the magic you don't posses. From the same magic that you would will, had your blood revealed it to you, as a weapon against the people we swore to protect." I took a small step back to create more space between me and this slightly shorter man. "What you fail to realize is that I could still cut you down without it. That skill came from the countless hours I trained with our father. The countless books I wasted no time of mine discarding, much like you had."

My feet carried me another step back towards the way in which Dreska and I had come.

"But there is one lesson I want you to heed. One that you spent years failing to understand, but will soon learn this night." I hadn't even known where my feet were taking me, but I knew I needed to leave both this place and this man.

"And what is that?" Hodrus spat at me with words that mirrored his true anger. It mirrored the blackness of what his heart had become... or perhaps the darkness that lived there all along with the light of my family once blinding me from it.

"Our father instilled the art of war in me... yet as I spare you now, I want you to know that this decision was made with none other than the humility taught by our mother. Something she had tried so desperately to teach you too, and now I can clearly see it was something you lacked the depth to learn."

I finally turned my back to my brother as I started to leave this clearing completely. I knew he would not have a response to my teachings on this night. It angered him, but not enough to see who I'd become if my own fury got the better of me.

"Wait!" Hodrus called out quietly yet urgently as he watched me slowly disappear back into this darkness, my hands having already pulled the hood of this cloak over my head, and most of my face. "Dreska had asked me to guide you back... These forests are no longer carved the way they once were."

I hadn't bothered to turn again to the man I thought I once knew when words slipped past my lips.

"I know that all too well now." I replied. "They aren't what they once were. Just a speck of paint left from the portrait of something so beautiful... so now I need some time apart from you and Dreska. Some time to reflect on the decisions of you both that led us here."

My mind hadn't even known in which direction I should go, but my feet carried this tired body with bold determination. The determination to spare my brother before it was too late to save myself from who I'd become.

"Hodrus... Zirion... whichever name you've chosen to take in light of the one I once knew... I suggest you take the time to do the same."

And those were the last words I left with the man I may have never recognized, before I left this clearing entirely.

The burning in my eyes didn't subside until I had found myself deep into the forests we both once knew, and I could no longer feel that stranger I once called home near my now changed soul.

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