#needed to be one more sentence but NovelAI is not good at endings ime

[summoner-kentauris]

writing doodle with novel ai. hidden zacal backstory, with a surprise ending. retrospective angst

-

He is the most beautiful man you have ever seen, but you don't know that yet. You don't yet know that a single smile from him feels like a blazing beam from another, nor that the skin on the back of his hands is sot and he likes to let you touch him. You don't know he is the love of your life - you won't know that until it is far, far too late.

All you know now is this:

Someone is trying to kill you.

It's just a shadow in the corner of your eye, at first, then a small dark spot on the floor where someone should not be standing. Then it moves, and you are both fascinated and horrified by the way the shadows shift around its form as though they were dancing away from something. It makes no sound save for a soft creaking noise, and then nothing else. For every time you look at it, you see different things; at first glance, it looks like one of those strange fairies you've always heard about but never seen before, but when you stare long enough to make out more features—a face, a nose, a mouth, short, pale hair-

It's a person. No, it's a *child*. Like you.

You should be afraid. No one save your servants and your family are allowed in these chambers. No one.

Well, they and your guards.

Who are absent, now, as it is deep in the night.

The shadow - the child - stares. There is something there; a faint glow in the darkness, a colorless light. A voice, speaking a language you don't understand.

Then it says two words in the same tongue. Two little syllables. Three if you count the accent: "Kill him." And then the light vanishes, leaving only the darkness, and the creak of some old chair, and the shadow on the wall.

And a small child, crumpled on the ground.

It takes you three days to realize what has happened.

Three days. Three nights. Three mornings, three afternoons where you wake up with your blankets pulled off, or find yourself alone in bed while the rest of the household sleeps.

This was what Father calls an assassin. ''Kill him,'' he said.

He meant you.

-

You find your way down to the dungeons with effort. A prince has command of his castle; but you are prince in name only, for now, a child to be coddled and cared for and kept away from the things even adults dare not to think on. When you get to the dungeon, however, you find the door open. You enter.

The cells are empty. The places where prisoners were, you assume, supposed to have stood are bare stone. There are no chains, no spikes, and no corpses on the floor. No blood.

The story books you read, and sometimes have read *to* you if you're feeling patient, all agree on the point - dungeons are awful torture-y places where bad things happen to bad people. You're not sure, but you're fairly certain an assassin is a bad person. Even if he is a child. Even if he did faint.

Even if there was something familiar about his eyes.

''Kill him.''

Those two syllables, uttered in a strange accent. They must mean something.

Something terrible.

"I suppose," you say aloud, turning to face the empty cell opposite you, "that I ought to go and talk to my father."

There is no reply.

You turn back again, and walk out of the dungeon.

-

Truly, though, you know better than to ask your father for anything. He is a just, reasonable king. He wouldn't take nicely to the empty-headed wanderings of a child. He's busy. You can't take up his valuable time.

If you are going to find the child, you're going to have to do it on your own.

(Even then, you spare no thought that he might be dead. Somehow, you've never once quite believed that.)

First, you check the kitchens. If anyone is hiding in the shadows of the pantries or lurking in the corners of the ovens, they hide well. You search the house as thoroughly as you are able, calling for the boy, asking if he is hurt, but no one answers.

You have to be careful when checking the armory. If Captain Anna sees you, she'll ask what you're doing. You can't lie to her, which means she'll find out, which means... well, probably that she'll tell your father. You wouldn't want that. Besides, you find no one in the armories either.

You check the stables for someone hidden under the hay, but you find no one there. You search the woods and the gardens. You look in every room, and in every closet. You check every nook and cranny, and then you check them again. You wonder how many assassins lurk in the castle, armed and ready to fight. You are climbing up the outside wall of the castle, trying to get a view of the moat when it happens. You slip. Your foot catches in a broken tile, and you tumble.

Some moments last a lifetime. Waking up the morning after laying a sword at a friends neck, and realizing with horror what you'd done. Watching a town you were meant to protect go up in smoke behind you. Reading the funerary rites of a world you've never known before. These moments will haunt you, endlessly turning over and over again. They will last lifetimes each.

Falling from the parapets is over in a second.

You are standing, you are wondering, and then you are lying on the ground below, surrounded by cobblestones, dirt, and bits of moss. It's late afternoon. Perhaps later. Your head is ringing with pain, and there's a large lump forming above your temple. Someone is holding your arm and someone else is saying something. Something about a healer.

A hand touches your forehead.

"Hold still," says a voice. You were sure you were looking at sky a moment ago. Now, though, in only a heartbeats space you seem to be looking at broad wooden rafters of the healer's ward. Teleported? No. No, you would have noticed.

Someone is pressing something cold against your brow. "How do you feel?"

Your lips move, and you try to speak. But nothing comes out right. You squeeze your eyes shut and shake your head.

The Captain's voice, from nearby. You turn your head but something stops it. A brace? Pain? Things are starting to fuzz.

The captain is talking. But, not to you. No. NO.

You recognize the voice she's talking to.

Your father.

"I don't care," he's roaring, "That's not what I asked!"

You have to see her. To know that someone who cares about you is suffering, *because* of you, because of your foolishness, your weakness-

Your neck spasms. The pain jolts down your spine.

"My liege, please... I didn't mean—"

"Shut up! What do you think this is, some kind of game? Do you think I'm amused by this?"

She sounds like she's crying. That must be wrong. She cannot cry at such a time. The Captain is strong, and brave, and careful and looks out for you and for your sister and, oh gods, if Father ever sends her away—

You wrench your head another tiny bit. You squint through watering eyes. You see the edges of the Captain's hair, the glint of your father's ceremonial axe, your neck is screaming but if you could only - just - a little bit - more...

You twist one last time, gasp at the pain, and then at the surprise.

There, on the bed beside yours, is the shadow. The child. The assassin.

He's sleeping, but not well. He's breathing, but not deeply. There are numerous glowing glyphs pressed into skin that glow starkly through his simple healing shift. Worse than that, though, is the smell. Not a sick odor, but an old, familiar one. Blood and sweat and fear and despair all rolled together in a single horrible scent.

You look at him with a mix of amazement and dread.

There he is. And there you are. And in that moment, the two of you are exactly the same.

-

You won't remember that moment. The bump on your head will take care of that. Neither will he. He will be taken away for several weeks to work on a gate whose existence you won't learn about until much later. When he comes back, he will be tired, and ill, and will be returned to the healer's ward without a second thought. You'll end up there eventually, too, and will strike up a conversation with the healer's aide who looks so terribly familiar.

And it will go... well. Even though your father is furious and screams about the whole affair, even though the Captain will scold you repeatedly afterward, and your mother will fret and worry and finally, after much hesitation, tell you to go visit the boy and bring him gifts. Even though the child will be terrified of you when you arrive, and will start trembling as soon as you sit down next to him, and you will wonder if you should simply leave. Even though he will stare at you with wide, frightened eyes as you tell him a story about the heroes of old, and will stare, and stare, and then eventually shake his head and say you've got it all wrong and will tell *you* the story instead.

And eventually, you will find yourself sitting with him, listening to him laugh, and laughing with him, and you will realize that the boy is a brilliant, brilliant child, and that the world is a brighter place because of him.

And eventually, it will be the first time he told you a joke, even though he'd been born into a life of agony and death.

And eventually, it will be the last time.

...I tell you of these things because for you, it is not yet too late. For now, there are moments left. Moments where you can save us both.

For you, there is hope.

You, and you alone.