It’s a long journey to make, from the meadows of the Dusk Court to the lake that Camdis Lohir had told him of.
Not for the first time, Charlemagne wishes for wings; how easy it would be, to dive among the clouds and soar over the peaks. There would be no world closed off to him. Even the desert would be escapable in a few wingbeats with a favorable wind, and what could Bexley threaten him with then? Wings were freedom, but the unicorn had only his feet.
Those, at least, were less clumsy than they had been at home. His time here had changed him, made him stronger in the places that had once just been lean. The scorched places on his coat and tail where the maze’s wyvern had caught him were almost indistinguishable from the rest of him, now, though the shaman still dogged his dreams with his laughter like the closing of a crypt.
There was another wiseman he wished to see, one who had been far kinder.
He isn’t sure how many days have passed by the time he finally spots the lake ahead, calm and bright as a mirror. It’s another hour or two by the time he finally reaches it, the pebbles on the shore crunching beneath his hooves, and the long summer day is giving way to evening as he stands and stares out across the glasslike expanse. It is so very different than the sea, and perhaps this shouldn’t give him comfort, but it does. It is peace he seeks, after all, not the feral beauty of the crashing waves.
“It is called the Vitreus and it is something out of the heavens. I will find you there and we can talk more of what you wish to be, my boy.” The words are as clear in his mind as the words of the Shaman - Wrong, in that papery voice of a skull - and Charlemagne cannot quite suppress the hope that rises in him as he watches the reflection of the clouds drift by in the surface of the water.
All there was now was to wait, and rest, and hope, and so the young unicorn dozes off, like a sentinel on the shore who can’t quite manage his job.
"Caligo bless the Crows," Came the stallion's low grumble as he gazed down at the sleeping form of Charlemagne. One of Raglan's little fellows had sprinted up to him while he was holed up in one of the city's many bookstores, silvery eyes squinting at old scrolls and ornate spines. He had been searching for any tome that might hold information on the gods' tangible forms, on what they looked like, on how they behaved, on what sort of contact they had made with mortals in the past recorded millennia. Yet, when the lanky filly had squeaked his name in her cherubic voice and told him of the Dawn Court child that smelled of salt and sand and mountain passes, of the lad's golden crown and ivory splashed skin, Camdis Lohir had rushed from the shoppe and toward the lake.
It hadn't been a terribly long journey, the stallion's muscular legs eating up the distance with each cantered stride and the cobbles quickly changing to grass. He had approached quietly enough, but Camdis had never been one blessed with a penchant for silence; his hooves were too big and his body too heavy. Looking behind him, he saw the swath of flattened grass where his mane and tail had pressed the stalks earthward. At least the boy wont have to worry about losing his way if I vanish into smoke, thought the Exile King drily.
Turning back to the snoozing lad at his hooves, Camdis lowered his great horned head and lightly nudged at Charlemagne's shoulder, a murmured "Wake, my boy, there's a feather bed and a hot meal waiting for you at the keep. Come now, rise." Straightening and stepping back, the Stained Hand stepped back and waited.
He hadn’t meant to sleep, hadn’t meant to drift off until first his chin dropped, then his head, then the rest of him, easing into the warm pebbled shore of the rocks and letting the lapping of gentle waves ease him into slumber. It had been a long journey through the mountains, and for the first time in weeks no dreams haunted him, no wyverns or dead-end mazes, no sharp laughter or crackle of fire.
Only peace and quiet and darkness, until a nudge on his shoulder makes him jump.
It takes him a moment to find his bearings, but as he blinks his green eyes open and the dark stallion comes into focus before him, his heart skips into a quicker rhythm and he climbs to his feet.
“Camdis Lohir! You came.” He’s briefly embarrassed at the wonder that glances over the last words like sunlight on the lake; if he has learned anything in his season in Novus it is that friends were no certainty. And yet here the stallion stood, his figure as imposing as his words were kind, and Charlemagne finds himself smiling, relieved, even as his cheeks flush at being caught sleeping.
He does not miss the similarity from their first meeting (with only the roles reversed) but he says nothing of it. It’s a coincidence he keeps like a secret, and wants no one - not even Camdis - to chase away any meaning.
At the mention of hot meal his stomach rumbles, but there are other needs he must satisfy - his curiosity is hungrier than his belly, even after the trek across Novus. “Did you find the Relic? I didn’t see you in the maze…” In truth, he had seen no one but the Shaman. But there had been traces of others there; the ghost of a scent, or a voice like a whisper through leaves. The unicorn’s gaze skirts across the Regent now, searching for a trace of injury and relieved to find none. Surely that was no surprise; if he had gone into the maze, doubtless he was more capable at handling whatever he’d found there than Charlemagne had been.
