He had expected this, even if he’d hoped against it. As soon as he passed into the first dark hallway of the maze, the air seemed to grow close and still, the sound of the breeze cut to a distant memory. Shadows pressed up around him and the sky itself seemed to darken. Charlemagne shivered, and at first did not realize that the temperature had dropped; it is only when one (slightly frantic, trembling) breath fogged the air that he realized it was cold, here. Every breath after came with a puff of steam, a trail that faded as it led away. Still he continued, thinking of those he had met so far, thinking of his parents, who only wanted him to be their kind of brave. Thinking, too, of magic, and of fate, and of the kinds of stories he had only been told as a boy. Stories that the figure that met him when he rounded the next blind curve would fit in perfectly. The shock of hearing his own name from those lips was lost in other, more immediate surprises: to find himself addressed at all, to meet such a strange figure thin as a winter apple, skin sucked tight to bones. There was no question in the unicorn colt’s mind that this was the Shaman he sought; he froze, trembling to the tip of his horn, and had only just processed the order before the figure turned and melted away into the mist. “Wait!” Charlemagne cried, and took off after him, already chastising himself for crying such an order to such a mystical figure. At first he thought he’d catch him easily; there was the echo of hooves on cold, hard-packed earth, the flap of a fabric from a creature he didn’t know, whispering around the next corner - When he couldn’t catch up, Charlemagne at first consoled himself with the thought that perhaps he did not want to. It was all so strange, and he’d never been in a fairy tale before. They didn’t all end well. But he could still hear his name fall from those lips like a charge, and he could almost picture the relic (in his mind, something old and dull gold, subject of a thousand stories he wish he knew), and so he walked on, steps light and blood warm. At first, he thought the sound behind him was the Shaman, crossing back through some unknown pathway. But the unicorn froze halfway through his turn, one ear flicking back, his head bowing to his chest and nostrils flaring. It was a very big sound he heard, a rustling of shoulders forcing themselves through narrow hedges, a scraping of clawed feet on frozen ground, a huff-and-hiss of breath. Should he run? Or call for help? Surely the Shaman would not let him die. You called the name of heroes, not of food for whatever it was, emerging from the shadows just over his shoulder. Charlemagne was seized with regret that he had spent all his time in the library, hiding from his sparring lessons. If only he knew how to use his horn like the weapon it was. What good was his knowledge now? The warmth of its breath seemed to stir the fine hairs of his tail; he could smell rotting meat, and the acrid scent of his own sweat and fear. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see it now: huge, squared shoulders, long sinuous neck, the whisper of its tail on the ground behind it. And wings, where it ought to have had front legs. It was nearly as tall as the hedges, and it looked like something out of a myth. If unicorns existed, why not wyverns? Immediately he knew this was nothing he could fight. It was so very big, and he so very small — and maybe his size could aid him, where it had always been a subject of mockery. Just as the beast drew in its reptilian head, forked tongue flicking over slitted nostrils as it prepared to lunge, Charlemagne bolted. For he was good at running, and good at hiding, and he prayed that once again he could avoid what he believed he couldn’t face. @Random Events |
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