#i've never seen otherwise in art but the book is pretty sparing with details; it could easily be a fanon convergence thing

[astriiformes]

Messed up that for Pal I'm probably going to have to find a way to temporarily make my hair brown, aka my actual hair color

[shootingcookielover]

Warnings: Uhhh Remus being Remus, I think, otherwise... Kidnapping, I suppose and... Attempted murder?

--

Prince Roman had come to face the Serpent, had come to cut the beast's head right off. And he was going to! Becaus he wasn't scared.

At all. Remus was wrong.

Remus was always wrong.

So Roman entered the caves, sword firmly grasped in his hand. When he reached the biggest cavern, he stopped. (It wasn't because he was too afraid to go further, there couldn't be any bigger caves than this one. Surely.)

He drew in a deep breath and yelled, voice barely shaking from anger, not fear: "Serpent! I've come to slay you, foul beast!"

His words echoed along the vast room around him and he felt very small all of a sudden.

He couldn't hear anything but his own echo for a bit, but when that finally died down, his heart sunk into his stomach.

Some kind of... Scratching sound was heard, but also that sound that a body makes, a body that's dragged along rough stone. (He remembered vividly that time Remus had pulled one of their servants' kids on the ground for an entire day. Roman had found it odd and a bit off-putting, but they had seemed to both enjoy themselves, so he had left them to it.)

But there was also the distinct ruffling of fabric and, on rare occasions, a blink of something yellow reflecting what little light there was.

Roman should have brought a torch, he thought, but it was too late now. He gripped his sword tighter, raising the tip against whatever may come from the darkness.

His heart dropped all the way to his feet when the serpent stood to it's full height in front of him.

Whereas before the vastness of the cave had made him feel inferior, now he felt so utterly and incredibly small, he could barely breath. He took a hesitant step back, but no more than one.

Somewhere deep in his brain there was still that thought, that stubbornness, that he wanted to prove he wasn't a coward. It kept his feet rooted to the spot, even as his sword shook with his fear.

The serpent let out an amused chuckle that sent spikes of terror and adrenaline through Roman like fireworks.

The beast shifted again, but it was too fast and the cave too dark for Roman to know what it did.

Not until giant fingers grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him off the ground with ease.

Faced with a situation like this, some fight bubbled up inside him. He thrashed weakly, quiet pleas and sometimes threats falling from his lips, but nothing he did affected the Serpent.

The fingers only gave him a bit of a shake and the sword, already held in a fumbling, weak grip, clattered to the ground, alongside his crown. The only token still connecting him to his kingdom, tumbling off into the darkness below.

Any and all fight left Roman as the beast flicked it's wrist just so that he was atop it's hand.

It had raised him towards it's face; half of it oddly human, while the other clearly wasn't.

"You've come to slay me?", The creature questioned, one hand dramatically indicating itself. "I'm almost flattered!"

Roman didn't know how to respond, couldn't, even if he had known how to. His voice seemed broken and all that fell from his lips were fragments of sentences never quite formed in his fear-addled mind.

The Serpent hummed and Roman felt his breath catch, felt his heart studder and his adrenaline spike. His mouth clicked shut and he was afraid. So, so afraid.

"Well, assuming you have given up on that, quite frankly, impossible endeavour...", The beast's eyes moved across Roman's comparatively small frame. Took in the details of his hair, left a mess by the crown he'd worn before. Took in the red sash neatly tied across his torso, the white clothing and the obviously expensive brown leather boots. "I think I'll keep you."

Finally, with the last bits of desperation and terror and utter confusion, Roman managed to ask a question. "W- what?!"

Not a long question, but a question nonetheless.

The Serpent chuckled, not answering the Prince's question, not even with one of it's own. Instead, the beast reached out with a finger of it's unoccupied hand and gently stroked Roman's head.

"You're cute."

Not even a repeat of his earlier question made it past his lips this time. All he managed were distressed gurgling sounds that were vaguely worrying, but not enough so that the Serpent noticed.

It slithered off, into the depths of it's domain, carefully clutching a tiny human in it's hand. A human that realized with sinking dread that, no, that cavern hadn't been the biggest one.

Not by a long shot.

--

His steps were soft and inaudible in the damp air of the cave. Instead of a lit torch he carried with him a lamp, not yet housing the flickering light of a flame.

He didn't intend to draw any attention to his presence, not now anyway.

He was here for one purpose and one purpose only; to get his moron of a brother out of trouble. That idiotic twin of his had somehow thought that running of to fight a gigantic Naga was a good idea.

Roman didn't even know the creature's name, for the stars' sake!

Remus stopped in his tracks to stare at the darkness in contemplation. Logan was rubbing off on him.

A giggle escaped him as that thought was accompanied by the most pleasant of visuals his mind could conjure. Oh, how he wished Logan would make more of those delightful screams he seemed to be bursting with!

A joyful skip to his walk, Remus continued down the tunnels. Knowing his brother, Roman hadn't bothered to step out of the main cave into one of the side ones.

And people thought Remus was the dumb twin.

Maybe he was, he mused, as he skipped along and kicked some water up from a nearby puddle. He was following his brother into certain death, after all.

At the mouth of the fourth cavern, Remus stopped. Perhaps to revel in the delicious thought of a cavern-monster that just waited for travellers to step past it's mouth, so it could crunch them with it's rock-column teeth before swallowing them.

Or, perhaps, because he caught sight of something. Of something familiar.

Through the thick darkness he could make out the vague shape of a crown and a sword. While he'd never been quite as good at vision-enhancing magic as his brother, when he fell to his knees next to the items, he knew they belonged to Roman.

He didn't mind the cave's dampness seeping into his pants from the ground, didn't care about the chill digging it's way into his legs, settling into his bones.

He only cared about his brother.

With shaking fingers he reached out, one carefully tracing along the edge of Roman's most priced possession - a katana that had been custom-made just for the prince.

It was sharp as ever, giving Remus a small cut along his fingertip. He didn't care about that either.

He numbly picked up his brother's crown and sword, gathered them into his trembling arms.

"Roman...?", He whispered into the cold, uncaring darkness of the cave-monster's belly.

He received no answer, of course, and he hadn't expected to. Not if he was being entirely honest, and there was rarely a time were Remus was anything but entirely honest.

His legs shook when he stood, they didn't shake anymore when he stepped out of the cave.

Warm sunlight chased the cave's chill right out of him, but there was something deeper, darker it could not even reach. Something that had settled into Remus' soul the moment he'd pieced together that he would actually not see his brother again.

Logan sat not too far from the entrance to the tunnels, a book propped up on his lap. Remus would have found the sight endearing, had he not been carrying the last remains of his brother.

The royal advisor looked up when he heard Remus' steps. With quick movements the book was packed up and Logan was on his feet, approaching the dour looking Duke.

"Is Prince Roman--"

"Dead.", Remus said, not caring that he had cut the other off. He stared down at the items in his arms. In the daylight it became even clearer that these were Roman's.

That tiny scratch in the metal right beneath the third crystal, the one Remus had made and always refused to answer Roman about. The small chunk of metal that had come off when Roman had fallen out of that tree in the courtyard, the one that looked a bit like a hunching figure.

The crystal that looked just a bit too smooth, a bit too round, a bit too different from the others.

"He's dead.", He repeated, as if needing to clarify. "Roman is dead! Killed by a snake or a cave or maybe a fallen rock!"

Remus clutched the crown and sword tighter.

A hysteric laugh bubbled forth from the prince at that.

"Could you imagine that, Logan?! The great prince Roman crushed into tiny little pieces of flesh and meat and bone and skin and brain, all scattered underneath a rock?! Inside a cave? Never to be seen again?!"

He laughed more, he felt light-headed, tears were falling from his eyes. "Buried under tons and tons of earth, never able to get a proper burial pyre!"

Logan placed a calming hand on Remus' shoulder and the Prince's laughter ceased. There was only pain in his eyes, not a trace of mirth as he looked into Logan's eyes.

"That thing killed my brother, Logan.", He mumbled, arms tightening around the sword and the crown once more, not caring that the blade cut into his arm.

"I'm going to get my revenge. I'm going to kill it, too, Logan. I'm going to cut it up into tiny little itsy-bitsy pieces while it is still alive, to hear it scream and cry and yell and beg in agony for it's worthless life, but I will not spare it. I will never spare it. Do you understand, Logan?"

The royal advisor could only nod, already he was forming plans in his head on how to best help the prince. The only prince, now.

Remus gave a mirthless smile and walked past Logan into the forest, soon disappearing from the cave's field of vision.

He left only a small trail of blood behind.

--

So uh

The fic I made to go with that piece of art up there that was pretty much just a doodle

Uhhhh yeah hope you like it. I'd like to continue it, but I know I won't have the motivation/energy to see it through to the end so. Uhm. Maybe there'll be more, but probably not.