NEVEN

The last time I was here, in this city, I stood in an arena; ready to perform, to do my duty to the kingdom, to my people. I held a glaive in my hand and was so proud... until I wasn't. Until I looked down at my opponent and questioned all my actions. Until I came face to face with a creature of the Obscura and my soul awoke, but refused to speak until I listened. Icy stone bit into the ripped parts of his prisoner garb, the footwraps not providing any real protection, but at least Maria wrapped herself in a cloak of fur and flames. Neven tucked his feet closer, a rumble shaking his vocal chords when the blizzard howled for the lost spirits of Irimount. It sang out a hiss, and he released the excess through his nose at the sounds outside the holding cells. Far away from the center from the quiet mutter of the streets, a distant, shouting chord rang through the air. Snow gathered underneath the barred windows, and he tasted cold blood.

Traitor. Betrayer. Oathbreaker.

The last son of the Lotayrin's dragging the legacy through the mud. It cracked his heart apart as the faint ghosts of his parents stood over him the longer he sat in the dark, embraced by the chill of Naveera instead of its wondrous song he heard out in the frostlands. Time slipped past his fingers when his stomach screeched for reprieve of either water or food. Guards came by with platters of food, careful to put helpings in front of Maria, who held an uncharacteristic silence, but as long as no harm was brought onto her, he clung onto his dwindling dignity — his promise. Another guard came closer to him and dropped the platter of crumbs in front of him. Out of reach in cruel play. Neven sucked in the mist and sidled his way forward, jostling his chains when he tried to angle himself to pull it closer to him, only to have a translucent glyph steal it out of his fingers.

"Have you forgotten your manners already in the sunlands, Lotayrin? The disgrace of your name hangs on your shoulders. If you wish to so callously commit your family's legacy to the Obscura Black Holes, then wait for your penance to come and accept what is given to you."

He tucked his fingers into his manacled palm. "No, I have not forgotten." Another stretch. Another lost inch. A hopeless battle, he withdrew back against his wall with the platter forever out of his reach.

"Good to see Naveera starves its prisoners on top of freezing them," Maria hissed.

"Are you not fed, Sunlander?" the guard questioned with a point at her soup. "I suggest you eat it before the host decides to take it away from you. Though, I don't expect much manners from a barbarian of Haneka, and it seems Lotayrin has forgotten who he is and where he came from."

"You mean captor," Neven spat at the guard's feet, and their feathers perked straight in agitation. "Do not speak out for the rights of a Naveeran host and their guests. We are not guests in someone's home. We are your prisoners." He adjusted his heel to sit against the corner of the platter of stale, moldy crumbs. It clinked against the stone, and Neven puffed out his life with a slam of his heel into it, sending it flipping through the air before drawing out weak magick through his boot to slam it forward to hit the guard's face with an oh so satisfying clunk to their nose. Guttural hisses rang through his ears, and his neck squeezed around someone's hand when the guard lunged forward at the offense.

"You'll be one with the blizzard soon enough, Lotayrin," they snapped their fangs at him.

"We are already," Neven growled through the half-hearted, torturous strangulation. "What's one more soul for it to swallow?"

Magick cracked against his skin, and Neven held his breath to prevent the enemy from stealing it from his lungs. His head bounced against the pale brick when they let him go with a shove. Shadows wrapped around his mind, his parent's shapes growing through the mist when the guard picked up the platter and stomped out of the cell, their feathers high and ruffled. Music sang out from the peaks of homes, on the lower streets as his heart cracked under the foundations of an ideal. Never free from his place, he sidled forward to try and find the rest of the crumbs he scattered across the cell floor.

On his knees, enslaved to his name, he picked at the fingers and released his pride with only Maria to bear witness to his shame.

"Nev..."

My grievous shame.

Runes lit up around his shackles when he tried to bring forth his sapphire glyphs. It zapped through his bones, and he released another improper hiss, the wind caught in his feathers to create an ice carapace as the nights grew colder, unending. As he picked at the tough bread, he raised his head to the formless flurry. "Miso, Misa..." He prostrated himself to those he left behind in the ruins of Irimount with no burial ritual, their ashes scattered with the snow. Look upon your son... who tried to make you proud and in so doing... "You have to forgive me," he rasped at their stone expressions and tears carried his faith to join the cold dampness between the cracks as he gathered the crumbs from their boots and tried to pack it into one ball of stale dough.

"Nev, you're..." Maria's shape unfurled itself from the furs, but he swung his hand at her to prevent her from stealing the rest of his pride. Her hands went upwards, and she sank back down to her knees.

I am a miserable creature, Miso, Misa... a sorry excuse for a son and a wyvern I turned out to be. Straight against his own spine, he chewed underneath their dim, snowborn shadows. Droplets fell from his jaw and stained the stone below and patches of his prisoner garb. But how long have I been here? How long since I heard your voices? Can't you speak to me? A strangled chirp left his lips when he tried to push down his pride again, and he huddled himself into the corner, but they followed him with the insistence of another dream. I am... going to be an Ice Knight like Atoran of the Ice Glaive. To carry on his legacy, to not cast it to the darkness to be forgotten to die. I am the blizzard. I will never die.

Fenrer looked up at him with wide, fearful jadeite eyes who carried pain and wisdom of a thousand lifetimes beyond their own. In the middle of the red-brick house on the coast, the Hanekan boy broke into tears and clung onto his leg when Yuven was nowhere in sight. "You'll come back, right?" he questioned through sniffles and sobs of broken faith. "You have to, won't you?"

Against the stone, he lifted his head up again to stand in the Annex, where Fenrer, a twenty turns old child studied him without the tears of his childhood, but the same fear it carried. "Of course," Neven said to the floor, to the boots of his parents, to the two children he held in his arms. "I will return... I said I would. I'd hate to disappoint you. Hate to spit on the words on our crest. If I speak your name, will that be enough?" he questioned the song outside, resounding in his own tired soul.

"Nev, you're freezing and starving," Maria's voice shuddered the flurry, and he drew back when it fell apart to leave white snow on his lap when he drew himself out of the pile of snow slipping in a cascade from the window. "Look at me."

Neven tore himself through the snowblindness and raked his gaze over her. Her platter had disappeared, her golden locks dim and matted. Flames spun the umber irides which glowed against her skin. "Where'd your food go?" He pointed at where the platter once was. "You did not discard it? You must eat, Maria, it is the only way to give yourself enough energy to regulate your temperature." Feathers tickled his ears when he leaned on all fours and took in the cold to regulate it into heat deep within his screaming stomach. It bubbled, boiled under his skin when he let loose the cloud against the stone and the runes along the shackles burned.

"Nev, they haven't been around in what I think has been a few hours since they took the dishes away," Maria whispered, soft and drowned out by the howl of his dying people. "I can't say for certain though. You just ate the rest of the crumbs and..." Her shoulders hunched against her neck. "You've been... blathering for the rest of the time. I could barely understand your Navei."

Snow flurries. Neven shook out his head and tucked himself in the corner again. Weakness spread through his bones and drained out what little warmth he regulated back into a chill across his arms. Lights bounced in continuous motion against the shadows, and he held his breath once more when the cell doors swung open. "Are you ready to cooperate?" their captor asked when the Sentinel yanked him forward by the arm, and his knees cracked against the stone. "You need not draw out your suffering, Lotayrin."

"I am not going to give you Yuven," he hissed through his nose. "You loyalists... think you're so different from the people you claim to be against." He lifted his head against his sore neck and the Sentinel drove their scaled fingers into his elbow. "You're all the same in the end, aren't you? You wonder why the Storm Wardens keep themselves out of politics? Because nothing is ever different though you claim to tout different ideologies... all you're doing is bringing the darkness of the Derelicts closer to those you claim to protect." He shook his forearm, and bit on his tongue when the scales ripped into his garb. "I won't give you Yuven. I won't. He is free from this, from these games we've always played time and time again. You seek to destroy him for the fleeting memory of what we once were." Neven tried to pull his elbow back out of the Sentinel's grip, trying to wriggle himself free. "You want an answer to your problems? Try looking in the mirror."

Neven bared his teeth when a hand raised, but he froze when droplets soaked through his hair instead. It formed into a puddle underneath him, and he grunted when he was released by the arm and his face slammed into it. It clamped strands of blond together when he pulled himself out of it. Ice grew down his spine when his captors glared down at him.

"We'll leave you to consider your options, Lotayrin. You're running out of them."

"Options?" Maria snapped from her fiery, pale corner. "You are mistreating him! You are forcing him into a corner to get a response you want! That's not trying to find the truth! That's coercion! And what's to say you won't keep mistreating him if he tells you what he wants?" She tossed her hair over her shoulder. "Are you so stupid to not register what he's trying to tell you? Your promised prince hates this place! He hates what all of you stand for!"

"And where do you think he gained that hatred?" their captor asked. Neven went to lift himself up, but coughed when a foot went straight into his abdomen to slam him back onto the floor. "Lotayrin filled his head with it. If he was truly so devoted to the crown prince, he wouldn't have kept him from his birthright the Travon's stole. We are stuck under a line of tyrant's who murdered an entire family of Old Naveera. Here we have another line of Old Naveera, brought to the ground by a traitor." Navei came out cold and sharp, and the foot squeezed his chest, but he refused to squeak when they glared down at him. "How about this, barbarian? Speak and spit all you want, we won't lay a hand on you. Him, though?" Their fingers pointed down at him. "He does not have your protection."

Their heel smacked against his ribcage, and Neven rolled over when they left the cell in darkness again.

Traitor. Betrayer. Oathbreaker.

Someone called his name through the mountains as he rested on his side. He dragged his fingers over the stone floor, scraping against the small imperfections as water soaked through his scalp and tugged the dry cold closer to freeze the tips of his feathers. Strands fell across his brow in a soothing wave. Oceanic tides carried him through beautiful, sparkled tubes. Glyphs spun and created openings for him to surf through, to dance with the flow of time. On the crescent of their foaming hills, he flew. Wings glimmered, faltered, but he flew all the same. His feet stuck to the board beneath him when he rode down the evershifting world. His gaze caught someone else's who waited for him across the sands.

Yusari.

Love permeated around her and brought the wave he flew on closer. Hope tugged him closer to her outstretched hands where she wrote upon the pages of concern and longing. We'll see each other again. Environments flashed into the cruel sting of Naveera and the bones at his feet. Back to the beautiful rose of the sky when she waited for him, a smile on her face. He stepped too close to the jaws of the beast and he went forward into the ocean of snow.

Bubbles slipped past his lips when he fought for breath, for hope and love. Apathetic tendrils wrapped around his chest and tugged him farther from her, from his friends as a starlit stream tightened its lance through his soul. His name repeated, over, over and over. It failed to bring him air, life. His fingers drifted against the current when the abyss opened itself wide, the starlit strand fighting against the crimson tendrils made of the song's apathy.

Neven! Neven!

It screamed in his ears. In a myriad of lost voices.

He tried to sing, but found himself drowning instead.