Chapter Text
“This is insane,” Denki shouted over the wind as the exhausted pair crested yet another snowbank on their steady trek to the town.
“I know what you mean,” Izuku called back, squinting at the town lights spread before them. He was pretty sure they were close. The blizzard made it hard to see, but the snow was beginning to reflect more and more light so he was sure they’d happen upon a building any minute now. “Encountering this weather in summer is entirely unnatural.”
Denki paused. “That too, but what I meant was—we’re in the snow with no furs, and we don’t even have hats.”
“We walked out of a balmy forest into a snowstorm, and you think the weirdest thing is our clothing? ”
Thankfully, Denki dropped the argument to point at a building only a stone’s throw away, crowing, “Hey, that looks like a pub!”
Turns out Denki was right, and within the hour the two guests were completely settled—the barkeep, a surly older woman named Greta, had taken one look at the drenched strangers and had begun barking out orders for towels and room keys. Even their pack llama, Shouto, had been situated in a cozy stable out back of the inn. Izuku was grateful to the point of tears by the time Greta was pushing steaming mugs of mulled cider across the bar to them, but for the millionth time his ardent thanks was waved off.
“This has been a strange time for all of Elegia,” Greta admitted, frowning deeply. “Everyone’s had to come together. Just wouldn’t make sense to do otherwise.”
Izuku sat forward, eager for information despite his exhaustion. “By strange, do you mean the snow?”
Greta snorted. “Naw, it’s the market activity—of course it’s the snow! It’s summer, innit?”
Denki hid their eyeroll behind the mug they cradled with both hands, breathing in the steam. “Excuse us then for not knowing your weather,” they muttered into the cider.
Luckily, Greta chose to ignore that. “It’s obviously a magic incident, but it gets more complicated than that.” At Izuku’s raised eyebrow, she simply said, “Politics,” in a stage whisper. “Something odd happened up at the palace some days past, right before the storm. Apparently the royal family was involved, but I keep my nose out of that business, yunno?”
“Look,” Denki said as soon as Greta left to go talk to one of the locals, “The stable boy said that the blizzards mostly happen at night, so once the sun comes up we can check around and see what options we have for making it home.”
Izuku nodded. “The mountains are definitely the quickest route, but in this weather we might not be able to cross…”
“Well, hey,” Denki hummed. “We can always shell out for a ship to take us across through the fjords. It’s not even that far to the sea, so it should be easy.”
“The fjords ’ave been frozen solid for two days,” a very tall and broad-shouldered fisherman informed them when they asked around the docks the next morning. The man’s face was almost entirely obscured by his bushy eyebrows and mustache, making him look permanently grim.
“Is there no other way to get to the sea?” Izuku asked.
“The cliffs around the fjords run too high for too long to travel safely even in normal weather, let alone launch a boat from. There’s nothing goin’ in nor out ’till it thaws.”
“Right,” Izuku muttered. “Well, thank you.” He went to turn away, but the fisherman had suddenly turned to Denki.
“Young man, are those animal ears ya got there under yer hat?”
Izuku spluttered and stepped forward, arms flailing a bit as he struggled to dispel whatever was about to happen before—
“I don’t know, Madame, do you have human ears under yours?”
“Pardon?”
“Sir,” Izuku pleaded, hoping that the passive look on Denki’s face meant they would let it slide and not cause a scene. “They’re fae, it’s extremely improper to ask after their forest traits or assign them a gender—”
“Fae?” the man’s eyebrows rose a bit, which made him look less ominous, even though you still couldn’t see his eyes. “We don’t deal in magic in these parts much, so folks around here don’t know shit about this traits and gender nonsense.”
Izuku saw Denki’s tail swish out of the corner of his eye, so he scrambled to steer the conversation safely out of danger. “You don’t deal in magic in Elegia? What about the neighboring countries?”
The fisherman shrugged. “Most exports we have are low-cost, high quantity. Magic users are always in different trades, like diplomatics ‘n shit. All those are dealt with by the royal court, and them alone.”
“And with the mountains on either side and the sea less than a day south, there’s bound to be less tourism and immigration,” Izuku murmured, adding to his mental map of the surrounding kingdoms and cultures.
“Uh…sure, young m- UH, PERSON?”
“I’m not fae, but thanks? I think?” Izuku trailed off distractedly. “Where’d Kami go?” The docks were now empty except the two of them. The fisherman just shrugged, so Izuku sighed and headed back off towards the inn, watching the light foot traffic of townspeople for the swish of a tail or a gleam of blonde hair.
There was still something not quite right about the conversation he’d just left. A kingdom with limited experience with magic wasn’t unheard of, and everything the fisherman had said made sense, but there was just something about it that seemed weird… The storm! This winter was obviously the work of magic, and for it to be entirely targeting a land with no knowledge of—
“You’re right,” chirped a voice from Izuku’s left, startling him out of his thoughts. He turned to see an elderly woman seated on a chair on her front porch—it was no wonder he hadn’t seen her, as she was wrapped up in so many furs that she looked to be a mere pile of old blankets. She was waving a knitting needle at him jovially. “Only magic user is the daughter of the crown—strange, funny business, if you ask me. No one knows how she got it, but she’s powerful. Never used it much, but there was some squabble over in the palace a few days ago, and folks say the storm started just as the princess was seen fleeing the castle towards the mountains.”
The woman let out a small bark of a laugh and looked back down at her knitting, as though imparting one-sided conversations to passerby was just part of her existence in between her outdoor craft projects.
“The princess caused this storm, then? And it stuck?”
“Mmhmm!” the old woman hummed, not looking up from her work, needles flying at an alarming pace. “Ice and freezing wind, that’s her magic. People say it was gifted to her by the gods, but that’s baloney. Those of us old enough know that there was some odd political turmoil goin’ on around the time she was born. My guess?” Izuku startled as the woman suddenly looked him dead in the eye. “It was gifted to her by trolls.”
Izuku couldn’t help his surprised snort of laughter, but he did his best to disguise it as a cough. “Trolls, ma’am?”
She nodded sagely. “Trolls. They’re known for their strong and mysterious sorcery. Folks say they mostly deal in mind magic, but if you ask me, it’s much more than that.” And again she was back to her knitting.
Izuku blinked, collected himself, and tried to continue the conversation. “So the princess left for the mountains?”
The woman nodded, jabbing one of her needles to gesture towards the mountain range to the north of the palace. “Ran across the fjord and up yonder. If you’re so curious, you should talk to Jimmy the fur trader; he came back to town yesterday full of a tale about an ice castle by the North Mountain.” The woman huffed a laugh. “It’s rubbish, of course.”
Izuku blinked, unsure. “An ice castle is beyond belief?”
The old woman glared at him, irritable. “Of course not! But it’s rubbish because everyone knows Jimmy don’t know how to climb well enough to get anywhere near the North Mountain.”
“Ah, I see,” Izuku mumbled hesitantly. “Where could I find Jimmy, to talk to him?”
“Aye, he’s just over there talking to that mouse-tailed fella,” was the immediate response, startling Izuku as he followed the woman’s gesturing with his line of sight to spot Denki across the square chatting with a gentleman at a rather crowded market stall. True to trade, the stall was completely decked out in furs—a fortuitous business to be in during this weather, to be sure.
Izuku thanked her and left to join Denki at the stall. When they spotted him, Denki grabbed him and physically pulled him into the conversation. “Deku, guess what! The magic storm was made by the princess! This guy here said there’s even a castle—”
“So you’re Jimmy, then?” Izuku asked the man, whose entire face fell a bit in exhaustion at the question.
“Jimmy?!” Denki snorted, thankfully quiet enough for only Izuku to hear. Izuku ignored them.
“I see ye’ve talked to Ingrid, I s’ppose,” he grumbled, glaring at the rocking chair of blankets several yards away. “She does love ‘er gossip, she does. Name’s Jorgen.”
“Jimmy it is!” Denki managed to chirp before Izuku slapped a hand over their mouth.
“Ingrid said you saw this ice structure up by a North Mountain? How far into the mountain range is it?”
Jimmy/Jorgen grunted, breaking his glaring match with the old woman. “It’s usually the most trech’rous part of the mountains in the summer, an’ it’s the tallest peak by far. But with what’s happened, the snow fell a weird way, y’see? Easy hike all’er way up, just follow them killer icicles backwards-ways.”
Denki clapped their hands together, loudly and suddenly. “Welp! Have fun chasing those killer icicles! I’m going to head back and see if Rita has any more cider back at the inn.”
“It won’t kill you to call her Greta, Kami,” Izuku sighed. Denki wasn’t the most religious of fae when it came to rules, but they loved using nicknames....mostly to fuck with people. “Wait,” Izuku said aloud, as he realized. “You don’t want to come with me?”
“Deku,” Denki laid their hands on his shoulders and looked him in the eye, trying their utmost to look as serious as they could. (Izuku could still see the laughter in their eyes.) “I know that this hero thing is your shtick, but we’re already on our way back from an adventure. What part of that screams let’s climb an extra mountain to you?”
“But Kami,” Izuku reasoned patiently, “Even the fjords are frozen. Crossing the mountains is a two-day journey at least, and it blizzards at night. Trying to reverse the winter can only benefit us.”
“Unless an ice princess decides visitors are unwelcome and kills you.”
Izuku rolled his eyes. “I’ll meet you back at the inn tomorrow at noon, ok? I’m taking Shouto with me.”
“And if you die, I’ll be meeting Shouto back at the inn tomorrow,” Denki nodded with a teasing wink.
Shouto seemed more than pleased to be back out in the snow, though Izuku suspected the llama was mostly grateful to be away from the gawking stable boys. (“I ain’t never seen anything like this in all my years,” one had said, thoroughly inspecting Shouto’s oddly split-colored coat. “It’s like fire and ice!” “No! Strawberries and cream!”)
Shouto did love the snow more than was normal, though; on their way out of town, he kept diving into the softest snowbanks he could find just to roll like the world’s most gangly, wooly puppy. And every time Izuku tried to grab his harness to drag him away, he would just nip at his brand-new coat sleeves in warning. In this weather, Izuku couldn’t afford to ruin his coat…also, it was nice to see the llama enjoying himself.
Izuku waited until they’d crested the last hill at the base of the mountain range before he stopped to remove his pack of provisions.
“Alright, Shou, time to focus,” he said conversationally as he slung the pack across the llama’s withers. “We don’t know how the magic has changed the paths, so we need to tread carefully.” He was careful to secure the pack snugly to Shouto’s harness, testing its hold to ensure it wouldn’t chafe his back as they hiked.
“Ready?”
Shouto stared right back at him, blinking those spidery eyelashes, and cheekily bared his teeth at Izuku in a mockery of a smile.
Izuku would take that as a yes.
It didn’t take them long to find their first sign of magic.
Of course, Izuku reasoned to himself, all of this snow was magic, but there was a difference between the results of a magical snowfall and this. Even without feeling the magic, the ice was obviously unnatural. It almost glowed with its blue hue, for one, and it looked more like water, frozen in time, than it did ice. It was a wave splashing against a giant tree, arched up and around to either side. Eerily, it seemed to have been captured mere seconds before impact with the ground around it.
For all the ice that covered Elegia at the moment, this ice told a story.
“And it could tell more,” Izuku mumbled aloud, tearing off one of his gloves and pressing his scarred hand to the surface, closing his eyes and reaching out with his magic.
There was a slight delay as he summoned his power, but once it hit him he gasped with the force of the magic echoing from the ice. Normally products of magic only held an echo, an imprint, but this…
There was a huffing and grumbling in his ear as Shouto stretched his neck around and forcefully nudged his hand off the ice, causing him to stumble back into the snowbank and onto his ass. Izuku wanted to snap in retaliation, but…he turned his hand over, staring at it. It was already blue and purple in color, from just that short amount of contact, and his bones ached. He summoned just enough magic to warm it up again and shoved it back into his glove before looking Shouto directly into his soulless llama eyes.
“That’s fae magic.”
A core value in every fae nation is the pillar of Truth—it’s the fae religion, in a way—so closely tied into their way of life and their customs that their beliefs were just as much a part of what made them Fae as their bloodline was. And though legends persisted that this meant fae could not tell lies, and that fae used their Truth to be tricksy and cunning, that wasn’t the fae philosophy that Izuku had been raised around.
Izuku’s human village lived their lives intertwined with the fae that occupied the neighboring forest. He knew fae customs like the back of his scarred hand, and growing up he’d gotten along better with the fae children than his own people. They were the ones that named him Deku—the fae language had over 20 words for shrubbery, and “deku” was the most petite—since the fae had a cultural taboo about using real names outside of immediate family. True to fae customs, the name Deku was just part of his identity now; it represented how living alongside the fae and their magic had shaped and crafted his soul into who he was now.
To the fae, Truth in regards to others was relative. The Truth they worshipped like a deity was the Truth of one’s own soul, a quality they’d go extreme lengths to preserve. The fae believed in absolute freedom of expression, and rejected categorization as a way of self-identification: there was no gender, no age, no obligation in family bonds. And this Truth was their magic, to an extent. Fae-born magic really wasn’t fae in nature unless it was an extension of the soul: that’s what kept it alive. Human sorcerers relied on books, ley-lines, gods, and poultices, having to return to the earth what magic they borrowed. But fae souls were magic, and fae magic was soulful, and fae magic was alive as long as it was free.
The further up the trail they travelled, the more magic ice they came across. When they reached the “killer icicles,” Izuku knew they must be getting close.
“I’ve never seen fae magic like this before,” he mumbled to Shouto, who just snuffled at him in reply. He ran a gloved hand over the icicle closest to his face. He could feel how close the magic ran to the surface, entirely present despite how many days ago it had been made. Despite the magic thrumming beneath his fingers, Izuku could tell there was something wrong about it. He knew that a fae’s magic could be weakened or corrupted by having a weak or twisted sense of self, but that mostly happened with fae that left their people and religion behind; Izuku had heard that most of those fae abandoned their natural-born magic entirely and either apprenticed under human sorcerers or integrated into non-magic society. But this… He let his hand drop from the icicle and continued his steady trudge up the mountain.
In comparison to every other magic he’d seen in his life, this ice felt like a monument to death.
The first thing he saw, of course, was the castle. The second thing was the dragon.
Shouto grumbled when Izuku shoved him back on instinct, and glared at him with pursed lips from where he’d toppled into a snowbank. Trying to avoid being spit on, Izuku shushed him while pointing at the dragon.
It didn’t quite seem alive; the glittering behemoth was all icy spikes and brittle, reflective blue scales, curled entirely around the base of the castle like a rocky moat made of glass. Its head rested precariously across the front steps before the castle doors, its closed eye directly in the path of the bridge that arched up from the cliffside.
The only sign that it wasn’t an inanimate statue was the plume of icy humidified breath puffing from its nostrils every few seconds.
Izuku crouched down next to Shouto and began digging through his pack while he mumbled aloud. He wouldn’t be able to make it into the castle if the dragon remained asleep, and even though there was the possibility the—creature? ice golem? spirit?—wouldn’t be hostile, he knew better than to take that chance against something that large. Especially considering it was a dragon. Guarding a castle. That was made by a princess who he knew nothing about.
“Maybe I should have gathered more data before coming here,” he concluded as he pulled a pre-mixed poultice from Shouto’s bag. As he stared at it and contemplated its usefulness, he slowly became aware of how still Shouto was sitting. And of how quietly the llama was breathing.
Shouto was never quiet.
Izuku looked up and locked eyes with the dragon, which was suddenly very much awake, and seemed very much alive, and had lifted its head all the way up atop its long, crystalline neck to watch them with an intense focus.
The dragon definitely couldn’t reach them from where it was sitting, but when Izuku stood and chanced a few tentative steps forward towards the cliffside he saw the dragon shift its weight slightly onto its haunches, moving to stand up.
Izuku took another step forward, and the dragon curled its spiky lip a bit, showing just the very tips of extremely sharp-looking icicle canines.
Izuku was recalculating, wondering if he should engage or retreat—he figured that it would make a bad first impression with the princess to fight her dragon, which was clearly meant to ward off visitors—but before he could decide on a plan, Shouto chose for him.
It’s a blessing and a curse among llama herders that llamas don’t know fear. Or rather, when they are afraid, the last thing on their mind is to run, hide, or tremble. Entirely embedded into a llama’s instincts is the notion that the best defense against a frightening predator…is to frighten them back.
Shouto must have felt threatened, because in the anticipatory stillness of the mountainside, he hollered, and charged right past Izuku towards the creature whose muzzle was nearly twice his size.
It was only natural that the dragon spooked. After all, llama alarm calls sounded like a particularly loud squeaky chair, and with the cliff drop in between them and all, the resulting screeching echo was enough to make one’s ears bleed.
The dragon was on its feet, a bone-deep growl building from its chest with the force of approaching thunder, and with a mouthful of glittering teeth on display as it snarled. Izuku’s entire body was lit up with green lightning, one poultice in hand, and Shouto had planted his feet at the cliff’s edge to continue bleating for the entire mountain to reverberate around them.
After a short, tense moment in which the dragon satisfied itself with the knowledge that Shouto could not cross the chasm, the dragon then looked back at Izuku. Watchful. Wary.
Izuku’s mind was racing, but nothing useful was buzzing between his ears. There was no retreating now, and there was no point in moving forward if he couldn’t gain the trust of the princess.
What would All Might do?
Izuku was completely blanking. He itched for his notebooks, or for more options in poultices or weapons, but all of those were in the half-latched pack Shouto was carrying, and Izuku was certain that if he took a step towards the llama, the dragon would consider it a threat.
He glanced at the poultice in his hand, which was little more than a complex mix of herbs and berries wrapped tightly in burlap. It was essentially a horse tranquilizer, which would be activated on contact with water and could be held under the nose or mixed into food.
The best he could hope for would be to daze the dragon long enough to calm it down. And that was assuming that snow would activate the herbs well enough to do the trick.
Keeping an eye on the dragon, Izuku slowly crouched to begin packing snow around the burlap, aiming to form the perfect snowball projectile. Time to pray.
