Work Text:
“Aa-aa! Nana-bwa! Mwa!”
“Dragon Lords above, are you always this loud?”
Purple eyes gaze adoringly up at him, or rather at his hand from where it shakes the wooden rattle, small beads rocking around inside.
“Wah!”
“Wah,” Ferstus echoes, almost mockingly. “I could have been outside, playing Fire Foot, but no, I’m in here, watching over you because Mother needs to do things.”
Baby Titus just squeals and makes grabby hands for the toy his older brother dangles above him, oblivious to the other’s irateness.
He’s really been a little too hopeful. His friends did say siblings, older or younger, were all spiky tree leaves in the butt. But as the firstborn son of their Barbarian class village chiefs, Ferstus was sure that the seven years difference between him and his little brother would not leave him to thinking Titus was bird poop. He was much more mature than that!
Except he realizes that Venestro was right, and loudly sighs for the hundredth time in an hour as he props his hand on his cheek, gazing longingly at the rays of light streaming in from the open window. He does hope that his best friend had some of his hair burnt off though. That would make his day if he ever got out of here.
“Ewah! Ebwahh! Babble!”
For a moment, Ferstus doesn’t register the sound, until he replays the memory. Then, with his brow quirking, he looks over and into Titus’s crib. His baby brother is laughing and shaking the rattle Ferstus has dropped in his boredom, his amethyst eyes wide and shining.
“Babble! Babble!”
“Babble?” Ferstus echoes confusedly.
Then his brother grabs at his long hair, and promptly stuffs it into his mouth.
“Guh! Hey! Don’t do that-”
But when he tugs his blue locks out, Titus lays with a face of innocent shock. Then his face crumbles, and he starts wailing. Loud cries, nearly shaking the walls of the nursery.
Ferstus has to gasp for a moment, and nearly wonders if Titus had any ability of sound magic before his brother starts squealing in utter sadness and he’s leaning over into the crib, murmuring, “Okay, alright, babble, babble. Babble.”
He offers his hair again, and his brother looks too happy with snatching the strands and sticking them back into his mouth. He smiles gummily. “Babble!”
It’s a moment where Ferstus has to admit that he prefers seeing Titus happy.
“Babble,” he says, with a tone of finality.
————————————————————————
When the children of four years race, eleven-year-old Ferstus is sitting next to Mother and Father on the raised seats when they see Titus fall, and skid his knees, a dozen of steps behind the rest of the bounding children.
A gasp goes up behind the leading family, a child of the chiefs, falling? Was this a bad omen?
Maybe Ferstus would swear up and down later on that he only didn’t want to disappoint the village to his friends, but all he really saw in that moment was Titus’s face as he began to cry, and he was launching himself off the platform.
With a burst of wind magic he is skidding to his brother’s side, and like a miracle, Titus stops crying. His eyes widen at Ferstus suddenly appearing before him, and his older brother doesn’t waste any time in pulling him to his feet.
“Here’s what you’re going to do, Babble,” the older boy whispers, clenching at the younger’s stubby hands.
Immediately, Titus’s eyes sparkle. Ferstus will probably never understand why his brother loves that nickname with such passion, but never for a second does he think about not saying it ever again.
“You’re going to run, and you’re going to run like hell. Run like how I just ran to you. Run as fast as you can, show those suckers what a chief’s son is!”
He raises Titus’s little fist into the air, and on his own, his little brother lets out a booming “Yeah!”
Though it sounded more like “Wyah!”, but Ferstus is beaming as he releases the other’s hand, and pointing down the dirt track.
“Now go, my brother!”
Titus is off like a shot, bounding and leaving clouds of dust behind him, waves of dirt even flying into Ferstus’s eyes.
But the older boy is able to blink the debris out just when he sees the flames burst from his brother’s heels, white hot bursts of light with orange sparkles, propelling Titus forward.
Titus’s laughter could be heard all across the field as he rolls to a finish into the violet ribbon at the end.
Ferstus sits there, with soil in his sapphire hair, his purple eyes wide, as he realizes that his brother was a fire-user. His brother uses fire.
Pride swells up in his chest, and he can hardly breathe, but he’s got the gusts behind him, together they launch him clean over the crowds, and Ferstus is at Titus’s side and pulling him into a hug, long before their elated parents reached them.
————————————————————————
“Good morning, young Ferstus,” the baker greets as the thirteen-year-old glides into the shop with the bell jingling overhead. “I have your order ready right here.”
He pushes the woven bag across the counter to the boy. “You’re growing up so quickly. Soon, you’ll be leading the village, and it only feels like yesterday that your parents announced they were having a little boy.”
At the parental twinkle in his eye, Ferstus feels a twinge of embarrassment from the attention he was receiving, but he bows and accepts it nonetheless, speaking his thanks and his wish that the baker spends his day well, and makes his way outside.
“So what else happened?” Venestros is immediately pressing on him when he reappears into the noon sun.
Ferstus is automatically reminded that he was supposed to be recounting the events of yesterday, when he was invited in by Father himself to watch the proceedings of the Council.
But the meeting was a tense one, the men and women quietly whispering among themselves until a lady finally stood up, her brazen voice ringing out across the hall. “The winter has come early, much earlier than predicted in our records. Do we have reason to suspect that we must have somehow upset the Ice Dragon Princess?”
A hush followed, and Ferstus didn’t miss the way the look his parents shared.
“That’s all that happened,” the chief’s elder son finishes almost lamely. “Mother said that they would look into it, and then the meeting ended. Adjourned.”
Venestros lets out a quiet hum, stroking his chin where some hair was forming, his expression pensive. But in the end, all the insights he was attempting to come up with only end with an underwhelming, “Weird.”
Ferstus could only nod, before he notices the messy mop of hair at the edge of the town clearing, Titus’s rapidly waving hand, his shouts of “Brother! Brother! Did you get the food?”
Venestros lets out a chuckle. “Can’t believe he likes you so much. I can hardly stand Vaela.”
“Yet all she does is try to dote on you like the charming elder sister she is,” Ferstus says dryly before waving to his friend and running to follow Titus into their favorite woods.
They’re about thirty bounds in when Titus finally starts motioning to the bag Ferstus was carrying, “So hungry! Wanna eat, wanna eat!”
“Okay, alright!” Ferstus laughs as he locates a nearby felled tree, propping his back on it and fishing through the package’s contents until he pulls out a bun covered with powdered sugar. “Here you go, I got your favorite.”
Titus munches on it with all the negative finesse he has, and Ferstus could only snort as some of the sugar ends up in his hair. Titus is going to be in so much trouble when Mother sees him. Ferstus conveniently forgets to clean it off.
“What is a Barbarian?”
It looks like Titus wants to go for the big questions today. Ferstus smirks down at him.
“A Barbarian? It’s a class. Mother and Father are the leaders of it, and you and I are both Barbarians too. We can use all sorts of magic, and a lot of people hate us because they’re jealous of us. They call us thieves, barbarians, but instead of thinking they’re mean, we actually find it nice that they call us that. That’s our name.”
Titus nods excitedly, absorbing the information as he chomps on another bun, white freckles appearing on his cheeks. Ferstus wants to roll his eyes.
“But if we can use all sorts of magic, why do we like fire?”
Ah, that takes Ferstus a second. A long second where he feels a tug in his stomach, and he gazes down into his palms. Titus doesn’t seem to notice the action, but then again, it was only for a second.
Ferstus’s throat feels dry when he speaks.
“Fire, to a lot of people, is a really bad thing. But to us, the Barbarians, we like it, because we’re considered bad things too. They don’t like it because it’s different, but we like different.”
He waits for the question that’s soon to come. Titus’s eyebrows draw in, and he cocks his head at his brother.
“But you use wind magic. Mother and Father don’t seem to like that very much. But isn’t that different?”
Ferstus tries to stop his bitter smile, but he thinks he fails, judging from Titus’s expression. “Yes, I know. They’re not really following the rules they made.”
Fire never sat right with him, it was too explosive in his hands, too powerful to control. Wind magic was as hard to learn as it is, and it’s only because he’s spent constant night hours awake trying to learn how to blow open a book and flip through its pages without even touching the cover.
“But I’m following them?” Titus finishes.
Ferstus tries not to sigh. “Yeah. Mother and Father like you a lot, because you use fire.”
He gives his little brother a hair ruffle, grinning when the other sticks his tongue out at him. “And I like you a lot too, Babble.”
Titus’s expression immediately softens at the nickname, and he scoots closer to Ferstus on the tree.
It’s several beats, several long moments where Titus studies the flames that spin around his fingers, before he closes his hand and looks up to Ferstus.
“What’s your hair?”
The older looks at him, perplexed. “Huh?”
“How are you tying it like that?”
Ferstus understands, and he reaches over his shoulder to get his hair over and against his chest. “Oh. This is a braid.”
Titus’s eyes are immediately shining. “A braid! Can you teach me?”
Ferstus doesn’t hesitate, feeling warmth creep up his chest as he loosens the tie.
“But your hair’s not long enough yet.”
“It’s okay! I want to tie yours after you show me!”
The older brother doesn’t permit himself to speak after, feeling a lump in his throat at Titus’s words. So happy, and full of love.
————————————————————————
When he’s fourteen, everything he ever knew changed, forever.
When the winter arrived, it stayed.
Their crops frozen, their food dwindling. People were falling ill, shivering as the wind blew snow through their doorways.
Every fire user had banded together to fight back the cruel weather, and though Ferstus didn’t have power over that element, he did his best to blow back against the snow with his wind, even when it threatened to pile up until his neck was covered.
Shivering, he clears the trees again with a wave of his hand. Everything hurt, and he felt so cold.
“Brother!”
Titus’s voice could barely be heard over the blizzard, but Ferstus felt him when he latched onto the older’s leg, and felt the sudden bout of warmth that followed.
His brother was using his fire magic to keep them both warm. Ferstus couldn’t tell if the blizzard or Titus was making his eyes water.
When he blasts a good chunk of the snow away, he falls to his knees. Titus is immediately wrapping himself around his brother, and heat envelops Ferstus seemingly entirely. He holds his little brother just as closely.
And none of them would be aware of the danger that awaited them last night.
Huddled for warmth under the blankets surrounded by all the lamps in the house, Ferstus startles awake when he hears the screaming.
Screaming, in pain, and fear.
He hears his mother wailing his father’s name, and that’s what gets him to tumble out of the bed without hesitation, launching himself out of the window and to the ground today.
And he’s not prepared for the sight that greets him.
Everyone.
Venestros. Vaela.
The council members.
The baker.
Father.
And Mother.
Frozen over.
He stares into the colorless eyes of the Ice Dragon, her snout right in his face. Puffs of frost curl over him. The dragon’s expression is menacing.
Ferstus can’t breathe.
“Brother? Brother!” Titus is spilling out of their house, and it’s too late for him. Ferstus whips around, tells him to run, but the Ice Dragon is already turning her head, and unleashing her snowy breath.
When Ferstus’s little brother’s fearful expression is stilled in the coldest blue, he snaps.
“ NO! ”
He doesn’t hesitate. Not even a heartbeat passes before he’s channeling all the wind behind him into a powerful kick, right into the side of the dragon’s face.
Her head is jostled to the side, and Ferstus doesn’t give her time to recover before he’s launching himself at her and aiming another hit towards her eye.
But she’s faster than him. So much faster.
Her tail whips against him, catching across his cheek. A spurt of red flowing from his face as he falls into a tumble on the icy ground.
The air is knocked out of him as he collides with the stiff earth, but he can hear the rustling behind him and only has just enough time to roll before her claws dig into the dirt from where his stomach is.
His palm comes out and he’s blasting a twister under her stomach, but it fails, and doesn’t throw her off balance.
Her talons trap him, only a hair’s breadth from slicing his chest open.
He’s lost.
As her jaw opens, Ferstus closes his eyes, and braces himself.
But the freezing never comes. Only a low growl, the screeching of an inhuman voice.
“You have purple eyes. Are you the son of the village chiefs?”
For a moment, he is completely still, arms still covering his head. Then he’s looking up, seeing her pale eyes scrutinizing him.
He doesn’t respond, but the Ice Dragon doesn’t seem to need his answer. Claws gnash at the dirt near his head, before drawing away. The beast sits back on her haunches, scales glinting.
Ferstus doesn’t waste the chance. He jumps to his feet, feeling the wind under his fingertips begin to stir. But the dragon doesn’t seem fazed at his hostility.
A rumble from her throat. “You are much stronger than your peers. You’re stronger than your parents, as well.”
Ferstus hisses. Was she toying with him?
The Ice Dragon turns her snout up, and to the side. Her tail whips forth, aiming, aiming towards Titus’s statue-
“You bitch! ” Ferstus roars, and he’s darting for his brother instantly, parrying the barbed tail away with his fist, ignoring how it slashes a line through his clothes and into his side.
Breathing heavily, he looks up at the dragon, glaring as hard as he can, and he’s only able to discern the sound of her growl, the tone. She was satisfied.
“I am taking you for my own.”
He doesn’t register what she means, not until her talons are suddenly digging into him, clenching around him, lifting him up into the air.
“ What- unhand me!”
He is raised above her head. Her pale eyes are glittering.
“You shall be my servant.”
His arms are trapped by his side, he’s weakening as the cold surrounds him and sinks into his skin.
But he still spits out, “ Never. ”
Her eyes turn sharp, and she moves fast, so fast, Ferstus only feels the tail’s tip stabbing right below his heart, and it’s freezing, everything is freezing-
Then it pulls out with crimson staining it, and he’s let go, collapsing onto the ground. He’s only aware of the pounding in his ears, his pained wheezing.
“Have it your way then,” the Dragon Princess snarls. “By the end of the day, you shall freeze like the rest of your beloved village. Or you can come with me, and spare your people from my icy destruction.”
Clenching his fists, he pushes himself up, staring up at her, he can barely see her through the snow still falling.
“Spare...my people?”
A pause, and then she bares her teeth. Ferstus slowly realizes that it was a smile. The most manic smile.
“Yes. What do you choose?”
Again, he doesn’t say anything. He only thinks of Venestros, of Vaela, of the baker, the councilmen, the children playing Fire Foot every day. Of Father and Mother curled up on their breaks by the fireplace. Of Titus with his powdered sugar buns.
The Ice Dragon must have seen it in his eyes, but with a flick of her red stained tail, the snow pauses.
Then it utterly vanishes.
Everyone around Ferstus is back to normal, the ice melting around their forms and they fall to the earth, asleep.
He gapes at them, at his father and mother as they lie there, perfectly alright, at Titus, who collapses but looks completely unharmed.
“You have until sundown,” the Ice Dragon announces. “By that time, I will put a spell. Everyone in this village will forget you, entirely.”
Breathless, he can only stare up at her.
“Say your goodbyes. You won’t forget them. With how much you feel for these humans, you’re utterly useless if you’re not reminded of how many lives you put at stake if you dare disobey me.”
His heart’s not working anymore. This couldn’t be happening, no.
“What is your name, Barbarian child?”
He doesn’t say it. He realizes his voice won’t work.
But the Ice Dragon does not push for it. She only rises to her legs, and with a swish of her tail, she turns towards the forest.
“Sundown. If you’re any later, remember how close I came to killing your younger brother for good.”
Then she’s gone.
When the people of the village finally come to, none of them remember that they have ever gone through a horrible winter, only fussing over Ferstus’s wounds, healing them immediately.
But he realizes that in the spot below his heart where the dragon stabbed, was frigid, painful, no matter what the healers did. Ice magic, inside him. Caging him. Tethering him to the Ice Dragon’s will.
————————————————————————
He doesn’t have the courage to let Mother and Father know. He can only watch as they head to bed, kisses on each other’s heads, their arms around each other.
Venestros knew something was wrong, but Ferstus couldn’t bring himself to speak. His friend would forget it, anyway.
His friend of twelve years would forget him.
The realization creeped in, slowly. By midday, Ferstus could not even look at the baker as he came in. He couldn’t look at the children as they laughed and played.
He couldn’t look at Titus when his brother wished him goodnight, arms embracing him and squeezing.
He only feels his heart drop when Titus jumps back with a look of surprise.
“You’re cold! Are you sick?”
Ferstus looks somewhere over his ear, knowing that was the Ice Dragon’s magic, spreading over his entire body. Taking everything of him.
“I’m alright.”
His brother studies him for a long time, maybe the longest he’s ever looked at him, and Ferstus wonders what he sees. If he can see the pieces chipping away from him. His harrowing defeat.
“If you say so,” Titus finally says after a long silence. “Rest well, Ferstie.”
Then he’s running up the stairs.
Ferstus stands at the threshold of the door, looking up to where he last saw his brother.
“Goodnight, Babble,” he finally whispers.
He steps out.
————————————————————————
The sun is a warm orange ball against the horizon. Ferstus looks at it as it sets beyond the trees, feeling something in his heart, breaking. Maybe his entire heart was breaking.
He only looks back once. He looks at his house, at the village, everyone settling down for the night.
By the next day, they will have never heard of Ferstus’s name.
He hopes… he hopes he’s doing the right thing.
The Ice Dragon Princess awaits him, just a few steps beyond the trees. Upon seeing his face, a low rumble erupts from her throat.
“You’re right on time.”
She stalks forward, and Ferstus tries his best not to flinch when her claw presses against his chest.
“I bestow the power of ice and snow to you,” she announces, and as those words reach Ferstus’s ears, he feels the freezing needle in his chest dull to just a slightly uncomfortable sensation. “Now, you are truly my servant. Witness your transformation.”
With a wave of her talons, a jagged ice mirror appears in front of the boy. He almost doesn’t recognize himself.
His robes have turned white as snow.
His face, pale, snow plastered along his jaw.
His blue hair, bleeding into the color of alabaster.
He was changing.
He was the Ice Dragon’s.
The only thing that stays the same, the only thing that doesn’t turn into the color of ice, were his eyes. His amethyst eyes.
“Shame,” the Dragon Princess murmurs. “Though I would assume it’s because that’s your familial trait. All of your family has the same color of eyes.”
Ferstus, despite himself, remembers Titus’s gaze as it sparkled at him.
His heart shatters in his chest.
“Cover them.” With another wave, the Ice Dragon materializes a hood, attaching it seamlessly to his robes, and with a flourish it is stretched over his head, pushing strands of hair with an unfamiliar color into his face.
It’s then that he realizes that he was crying, as his hair sticks to his face, his chest aches.
Closing his eyes, he tries not to sound too pained.
“Why do they have to forget me?”
The silence that follows is grating on his ears. His hands are fists at his side, tingling with the frigid energy forced into him.
With breath like a solid, the Ice Dragon Princess scoffs, and the action’s with such a patronizing tone and Ferstus wants to hide.
“Would you rather they die because they’re busy trying to come after you?”
Like lead in his chest, Ferstus thinks of Titus, bleeding, at his feet. His eyes vacant.
Numbly, he shakes his head.
“That answers your question.” The dragon’s tail swishes as she turns around. “To my palace.”
There’s the sudden wind in his ears as snow forms around them, into a small twister. Ferstus can see his village through the trees. He wishes this was a nightmare, and that he’s going to wake up.
He remembers Titus’s smile.
When he closes his eyes, it’s the memory he latches onto, and he listens to the wind as it gusts across the leaves overhead.
When he opens them, he hears the howling, unforgiving wind that he does not know, and he looks upon the palace of ice, looming above him like a mountain.
“Welcome to my home,” the Ice Dragon gleefully introduces. “I’ll show you to your new room.”
Ferstus hasn’t seen it, but he already hates it.
————————————————————————
The last thing the Princess says to him is, “Cut your hair.”
He blinks at her dully. The day passed by slowly, his steps in the frozen hallways unsteady, empty.
“It reminds me too much of your Barbarian ways,” she snarls, and that’s the explanation he gets before she glides out of his room, door locking shut.
He stands there for a few moments, in the chilling quiet.
Then he’s pulling his braid over his shoulder, stares at it through his index finger and thumb. Completely white, it doesn’t look like it belongs to him. But it does.
He wants to hate it. But all he can think about is Titus, beaming, demanding for him to teach him how to weave the strands.
His hands were so small in Ferstus’s own.
He feels numb when he finally opens his palm, tingling his fingers, and tries to create a knife.
He hopes for steel, but it comes out as the ice he so hated, the ice in the walls around him.
Looking at himself in the mirror made him feel even colder.
As his blade is about to slice through, he thinks of how his hair was the style that Barbarians called the utmost honorable. A style that showed how every family member was a strand, interwoven with others.
Family was important, and family made each other stronger.
Away from his family, Ferstus felt so weak.
His knife finally slices through, and his braid falls into his palm.
When he looks up at himself, he sees himself crying again.
The tears don’t make it down his cheeks before they freeze.
He doesn’t throw his hair away.
With both of his hands, he freezes it. Into a block of ice.
Then, he takes out the necklace from under his shirt.
Opening the locket, he sees his family. Himself, with a hand on Titus’s shoulder, smiling at the photo spell.
Clenching it to his heart, he’s well aware that there’s two things that are dearest to him. That he has to keep safe. Like the village that was his home.
————————————————————————
“You’re improving way too fast.” Guinera gives him a suspicious look as she lands on her feet from the block she had to perform. “On Bruma’s good side, and incredibly skilled in her magic. You’re gonna take all our jobs.”
“I don’t care,” Ferstus hisses back, intercepting her next strike. “I didn’t want to be here.”
“Neither did we,” the girl shoots back, and tries to rush him. With a stomp on the floor, Ferstus barely misses her head with a giant ice spike.
“Dragon Lords,” Guinera hisses, staring at the offending object. “How?”
“Wasn’t even aware the princess had a good side,” is all Ferstus mutters back.
Six months. It’s been six months.
He doesn’t want to think about the ice that he learned to control so well, too well. Doesn’t want to think about how he’s so much more comfortable using it than even his wind.
He hates using the monster’s powers. Hates using it on the missions she sends him on. Hates how the magic is everywhere around him. Hates it so much he constantly wonders if he should even try to summon one flame, no matter how hard it was to control, and melt the whole palace down.
Hates his hair, hates his skin, hates his robes, his dreams are nothing but full of snow, Titus, crying-
Guinera goes flying and Ferstus is distantly aware that he’s the reason why.
But when he tries to hold out his hand for her, she slaps it away, and gets up herself.
Ferstus hates it here.
————————————————————————
After a while, he stops counting. He stops staring out the window.
Every day feels like a blur.
Two years.
Sometimes, he wonders if he could sneak out. If the princess was ever away long enough. Just sneak out, try to prove to himself that there’s no way they could have forgotten him.
Yet, deep down, he knows they have.
A dragon never lies.
Princess Bruma doesn’t give him time to even formulate a plan.
She’s summoning him to her chambers every night as of late. Curling herself around him and breathing flurries into his ear. His nails leave indents on his palm when he clenches his hands.
“You’re on her good side,” Guinera had said. “She likes you, a lot. It pisses me off.”
It’s worse when the dragon turns into her human form.
A teenage girl completely colorless, draping herself around Ferstus on the cushions. Her grip like a prison.
Ferstus often wants to vomit on her face if it means she had some color.
He’s sixteen now, he realizes as he stares into his mirror. His jaw, taking form. His brows, filling out.
He’s growing up.
Titus is nine years old now.
Living happily in the village, probably showing off whatever fire tricks he has gained.
Ferstus misses him.
————————————————————————
Five years, and Princess Bruma is going to war.
“Blasted brother,” she hisses, stalking all around Ferstus’s chambers. “Thinking he can take whatever he wants from me!”
He doesn’t really care what she got mad over. The blizzard in his hands is the only thing he’s paying attention to.
When she tells him that he will be her right hand man, he doesn’t feel anything, only resigned.
Guinera will definitely be angry.
On the battlefield, Ferstus doesn’t kill.
He just thinks about how far from home he is when he freezes another soldier into the ground.
They start calling him the Snow Legionnaire.
Nineteen years old, Ferstus just calls himself tired.
————————————————————————
When he’s twenty one, one of the kingdom’s territories is invaded.
He’s sent without hesitation, Bruma snarling proudly after him.
On autopilot, with his hood over his eyes, he confronts the invading party.
He dodges the shapeshifter when she comes at him, basilisk fangs opened wide and snapping.
A sheet of ice appears under her when she hits the ground again, and she goes sliding away.
The illusory twins were not often something Ferstus deals with, but he still gets the upper hand on them, dispelling their multicolored smoke with no hitch in his breath.
But when he comes face to face with the fire user, their flames almost blue against his skin, he sees their eyes.
He sees his eyes.
His purple, amethyst, violet eyes.
His burning fist nearly collides with Ferstus’s jaw before the latter snaps back to attention, grabs his arm and flips him onto the earth.
The pained yelp was almost unmistakable.
“Babble!” The shapeshifter shouts. “Are you okay?”
Babble, Babble. Ferstus’s eyes are stinging. Babble.
His brother.
Seven years - Titus is fifteen.
“Good Dragon Lord, that hurt!” The boy springs to his feet, pointing an accusing finger at Ferstus, and his floppy hat looks so ridiculous on him and so much like Babble and the man who was once a boy with long braided hair, turned into a warrior of frost, wants to cry.
“We’re no match for him!” One of the twins yells, helping Titus to his feet. It helps make Ferstus aware that he was still staring at them, rooted to the spot.
“Ugh, no, one more hit.” Titus struggles to his feet, blue flames dancing.
“Babble, you idiot, stop!” The girl yells, but Titus is running at Ferstus again.
The forgotten brother sidesteps the next hit, then the next, not wanting to hit Titus, he will not hit him.
When his hood is blown back, the very thing Princess Bruma did not want, Ferstus didn’t really care. He just wanted to see his brother. His brother, almost the same height as him, so much older, growing up.
But when Titus sees Ferstus’s gaze, he stops.
He goes still.
Hope flares into Ferstus’s soul.
Do you recognize me?
Do you know who I am?
Do you remember I’m the first person who ever called you that baby gibberish?
Titus, it’s me.
“What kind of name is Babble?” is the only thing Ferstus could force out.
He watches as the other boy’s face turns a shade of red. “You can’t fool me! It’s a cool title! You’re just jealous!”
I love you, bro. Ferstus couldn’t help but smile sadly.
Titus’s face becomes a balloon at the ice user’s expression, and he’s bringing his palms up to try and singe Ferstus into actual ashes when the girl from before charges up and literally drags him away.
“Let’s get out of here!” she yells, and their little troop bounds beyond the gates.
Ferstus stands there, for a long moment, thinking of how Titus’s braid was the last thing he saw.
His heart lays heavy in his chest.
His little brother’s grown so much since the day Ferstus first saw him in their mother’s arms.
And he was of the age to start his journey as a Barbarian child, to go out and take a quest.
The rest of those kids, the girl, the twins, Barbarians as well.
The jacks of all trades.
“I want to go with you,” Ferstus whispers into the silence of the air.
But…
You don’t remember me.