Chapter Text
Legends say thousands of years ago, a great and mighty dragon took to the skies in search of more power. She was able to break off a piece of the sun with her right claw, and a piece of the moon with her left. But she could not hold on to such magic, and they dropped down to the earth. The dragon was furious and searched far and wide across the land for her lost treasures. They say she is still searching and one day will return to claim what is rightfully hers.
~Xavier, probably
The blizzard had blown in with near supernatural speed and ferocity, but Varian barely felt the chill as he trudged towards the capital. It was hard going, he was so small and light that every gust threatened to send him tumbling back the way he came. But he persevered. He had to seek help before it was too late. He had to find Rapunzel. He'd seen the black rocks react to her, so she might be the only one who could save his father.
When he reached the castle, he begged and pleaded for her to come. She refused.
Guards flanked him on either side, dragging him away from the princess and towards a room where other citizens were huddled from the storm, telling him to sit tight like a good child until the storm was over. He didn't have time for this! He squirmed and wiggled and wrestled until they could no longer hold on to him and dashed back out into the freezing cold. If Rapunzel couldn't... wouldn't help, then he'll have to figure out a way to save dad on his own.
If he could even get back, that was. In the few minutes of seeking counsel, the weather took a turn. The wind whipped stinging shards of snow against his face, plastering his long black bangs against his skin. Even with his goggles pulled over his eyes, visibility was so low he could barely make out the path. He couldn't feel his feet anymore. Or his fingers. But he couldn't tell if the numbness came from the cold or the increasing dread.
A sudden neighing next to him would have nearly startled him into falling over if strong hands hadn't grabbed him in time. He was easily lifted up onto the saddle as if he weighed nothing and wrapped in a coat far warmer than his own theadbare cloak.
"C-C-Cassie..?" He couldn't stop his teeth from chattering, now that they'd unclenched to speak. He looked up into the olive eyes of his friend, her scowling pale face framed by a fur hood. How did she find him? Did she follow him? He hadn’t seen her at the castle, but he was so tunnel visioned with finding Rapunzel, he hadn’t really paid attention to anyone else that was there. "Wh-what are you--?"
"You idiot!" the older girl snapped. "Why did you run back outside!"
"M-my dad!" He pointed in the direction he was headed. He could still see in his mind’s eye the amber-colored substance expanding out from the black rocks and slowly creeping up his dad’s arm. If he couldn’t find a way to free his dad, to break the rocks’ hold, they might have to end up amputating. His stomach wrenched and own limbs grew even more numb at the thought. He couldn’t let that happen. Dad already worked so hard on their farm, if he lost the use of an arm on top of that… He couldn’t let it happen! "I h-have to get back! Please!"
Cassandra glanced over her shoulder back at the castle, eyebrows drawn together in concern. Varian knew what she was thinking. It was much, much closer than the village.
"PLEASE!!"
She sighed at the desperation lacing his voice. Even if they returned to the castle, she had a feeling he'll probably just run back out again the first chance he got. "Fine. Come on Fidella. If we hurry, we can probably make it before the worst hits."
Varian pulled the coat tighter around himself with one arm, the other wrapping around his friend's waist. He whispered endless thank yous to her, to Fidella, to anyone that was listening as the horse snorted and took off. The journey back took far less time on horseback, and soon they were cresting the final hill before his village. As they neared, Varian didn't even wait for Fidella to stop before sliding off the steed and running into his house.
"Dad! Dad! I'm back! I--" He didn't bother to close the door. The blizzard was nothing compared to the icy chill that ran down his spine at the sight before him. The amber had grown far more than he expected. It had expanded into a large twisted mausoleum, his father's suspended body trapped inside with a pained grimace on his face. "Oh no! No, no no!!" He felt his mind separate from his body, one lost in a fog of panic while the other moved automatically towards the nightmare. He pounded. He pawed. "Dad! Daddy!! No, no, no, no!!" He dropped to his knees, feeling like his entire world was crashing down with him.
He barely heard door quickly clicking closed behind him or the soft gasp. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. Was this how his father felt? Inside that tomb? Struggling desperately for air while a thousand pounds per square inch of pressure kept his lungs from inflating? His mouth hung open, jaw quivering violently. Several seconds later, a gentle hand touched his shoulder, and somehow that was what finally relieved the pressure. He drew in a loud, ragged breath and screamed.
He didn't know how long he huddled there sobbing and wailing in her arms. After nearly half an hour of punching, clawing, slashing with swords, slamming with hammers, even prying with crowbars, not even a molecule of the substance had been chipped. Ultimately, he'd collapsed in despair, and that's when the waterworks had started. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he was being illogical carrying on like this. His father didn't need tears, he needed solutions! The sooner he could get control of himself, the sooner he could start figuring out how to break the amber. But this familiar part of his brain was drowned out by the whirlwind of emotions that just couldn't seem to leave him be. Guilt. Denial. Shame. Anger. Fear. Agony. Guilt again. Over and over they cycled through him like a perpetual wheel violating the laws of thermodynamics.
"It's not my fault..." he whispered.
"Nobody said it was. It was an accident."
"I couldn't help him," he whimpered. "I couldn't save him."
"The rocks are magic. There's still a chance."
"Magic," he spat. "This is all HER fault! If she had just COME..."
"You know she couldn't. She couldn't even leave to go rescue her parents."
"Dad... I," he sniffed. "I want my dad..."
"I know, Varian. We'll get him back."
"It should've been me..." he cried. "Why couldn't it have been me...?"
"He wouldn't have wanted that."
"It's not my fault..."
"No, it's not."
The perpetual wheel kept spinning. Anytime he tried to settle on an emotion to cling to, she just calmly refuted him. At some point, Ruddiger had come over to curl up with them. He'd like to think the raccoon was trying to comfort him, but it could just as well have been for the body heat. Huh. He guessed it was night now. No wonder the temperature dropped lower. The wind outside had stopped howling at least. That was good, he supposed. He was tired of shivering. He was tired in general.
He felt Cassandra move to get up and found himself moving with her against his will, pulled to his feet and guided away from his father. He didn't want to go, tried to resist, but she just kept leading him away and he found he had very little energy left to fight her. Up the stairs and into his room where he was nudged onto his small but simple bed.
"I need to check on Fidella. I'll be back. Stay put."
"...It's not my fault," he muttered into the pillow. His eyes drifted closed.
It was all his fault.
Varian woke up late morning with startling clarity. There was no hazy sleep-brain fog, no brief blissful moment of ignorance before reality set in. No, the moment he was pulled to consciousness, he opened his eyes and sat up with a heavy heart.
"Dad..."
At some point in the night, his shoes, snow-soaked cloak and scarf, and the warm coat from Cassandra had been removed and placed to dry on a nearby chair, and he had been tucked under the blankets. His goggles and gloves rested on the nightstand next to him. He slipped out of bed, ignoring the sharp chill of the floor against his bare feet. Birds were screaming outside his window in the harsh light of the midday sun as if the blizzard of the century hadn't just happened the day before. As if the worst day of his life hadn't just happened.
He was halfway down the stairs when he heard a knock at the door followed by soft voices. By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, Cassandra was just bidding someone farewell and closing the front door. She turned and gave him a quick nod and a tight smile. She was in her usual grey tunic and leggings, and he could see her fur coat draped across the couch in the main room where she likely spent the night.
"There's breakfast for you in the kitchen," she said, moving to usher him towards the meal.
He didn't budge. "Who was that?" He idly wondered if it was the royal guards, if they had come to arrest him for what he had done to his father. It’d be what he deserved.
Cassandra sighed. "Your neighbors. Between the black rocks and the storm, the soil here is unusable. Everyone's picking up and moving south to prepare the land for next season's crops. That land's not great, but at least there are fewer of those rocks down there."
"They're heading for the castle," he said flatly.
"What?"
"The black rocks. I'd been charting them. They start at the flower monument and move in a straight line from there. Their path is taking them directly towards the castle. To... her." Deep down, he knew Cassie was right. Rapun- The princess had an obligation to the safety of the kingdom first and foremost and it was unreasonable to have expected her to drop everything in an emergency to run off with him. But reason and emotion never really did get along even in the best of people, and he found he was no exception. He felt hurt and betrayed and no amount of rational argument could convince his heart otherwise. He clenched his jaw tightly and turned for his lab, not wanting to spare the princess who'd abandoned his dad another thought.
"Oh no you don't." Cassandra grabbed him by the shoulders and steered him back towards the kitchen.
"Cassie, stop! I need to start working on how to free my dad!"
She wrestled him into a dining chair. Before him was a plate of sliced bread and apples. "You haven't eaten since I found you yesterday. Food first." He glared up at her. She crossed her arms and glared back. "Varian, it's been nearly a whole day. If the black rocks are keeping him alive in there, then he can wait until you’ve eaten. And if not-" She pulled back her words as fear seeped across Varian's face. "What I mean is... We don't know how long it'll take to get him out of there. It could be hours or even days. You'll need to keep up your energy if you're going to be working all day at it."
He turned his glare to the plate in front of him, picking up a piece of bread and giving it a nibble. Damn her for using his one weakness - logic. He watched as a small paw snaked over the edge of the table and stole an apple slice.
"And for goodness sake, put some shoes on!"
He did end up working all day. Cassandra stayed with him the entire time, only disappearing back into the main house every few hours to fix him a meal or fetch some snacks. She was quiet, content to keep watch over him as he poured through analysis, calculations and notes to get an idea why the chemical reaction happened the way it did and how he might undo it. Occasionally she'd try to answer a question if he happened to mumble it out loud. Other times she'd find and bring him a requested book from one of his book piles. It was difficult as he didn’t even know what the black rocks were exactly. He just knew they weren’t “magic.” Perhaps it was deep underground seismic activity that was pushing the rocks to the surface, and some sort of strong magnetic frequency generated by the properties of the healing flower that connected the site of the original flower to the princess. That would certainly explain the pathing. It would also explain the reaction the rocks had to the princess’s proximity. It was a good theory on the how and the why but not really on the what, which was the information he needed. The indestructibility was harder to explain. He had already ruled out most commonly known elements against the black rocks' structural makeup and was making headway into the rarer elements prior to the... incident. There wasn’t time now to continue with that extensive process of elimination, so he needed to build upon the existing chemical reactions he'd observed and work from there.
Night came, and Varian was worried that Cassandra might pull him away and force him to stop working, as his dad often did. Or perhaps manhandle him to the kitchen again. But she just slid some slightly stale biscuits smothered in honey at him. Thankful and relieved, he kept working as he munched.
By the time the sun started lighting the sky again, he had slowed. His head was nodding. He stared down at the pencil in his gloved hand. It had paused in the middle of a word. What had he been writing again? How long had he been standing like this, trying to focus?
Abruptly, the pencil was yanked from his grip and a gruff voice startled him back to alertness. "Alright, you're obviously about to fall over. Go get some sleep. We can start again after you've rested."
"We?" Varian blinked as she once again led him to his bedroom. He'd been too preoccupied before to really think about it, but he was actually surprised Cassandra was here. There really wasn’t any reason for her to stay after the storm had lifted the evening before. He hadn’t expected her to still be in his house that morning. And he definitely hadn’t expected her to still be here now. "You're staying? What about your chores back at the castle? Your lady-in-waiting duties?"
She hesitated. "Well, I do have to make a trip back to take care of some stuff and let everyone know where I am. I was gonna do it while you slept. But don't worry, I'll be back by this evening." She smiled gently at him. "After all, what is an alchemist without his trusty assistant?"
He smiled back, just a tiny, awkward smile, but his first since the amber. "Thank you, Cassie."
"What are friends for?"
Over the next few days, they settled into a routine. Varian would sleep through the mornings while Cassandra returned to the capital to do her lady-in-waiting duties for Rapunzel. Close to afternoon, she'd bring groceries and any alchemical supplies Varian requested to Old Corona and get in a few hours of sleep while Varian prepared their meals for the day and fed Ruddiger. Then they would both go down to the lab and work through the night. He explained to her his process of testing the black rocks and amber, and she brought news from the city. Apparently the blizzard was suspected of being supernatural in nature, the work of some demon of sorts. Rapunzel managed to banish it by finding an anti-magic-weather device hidden deep underground. Varian was skeptical and quick to point out there was no such thing as magic, bitterly adding it was probably just an excuse she made up for abandoning him when he needed her. Cassandra didn't acknowledge that line of thought. You'd think meeting a princess who grew seventy feet of blond unbreakable hair in minutes would be pretty convincing on the existence of magic.
It went like that for about a week, with Varian growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress. More and more he found himself glancing over at the grim monument sitting in the middle of the room instead of working. The longer he took, the more his guilt chipped at him, paralyzing his process.
It had not gone unnoticed, and Cassandra was starting to get worried about the kid's emotional state. Being around the trapped man made her feel sad and extremely uncomfortable, and she didn’t even know the guy. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how it was making Varian feel.
"Just a thought, but maybe it'd be best if we...?" Cassandra hinted, holding up the edge of a tarp that had been shoved into a far corner after catching Varian staring at the amber again for the fifth time that half hour.
He tore his gaze from the amber and stared at the tarp instead. His heart skipped a beat. Was she suggesting they cover him up? They couldn’t do that! Only dead bodies were wrapped in a winding-cloth. And this wasn't the same. Dad wasn't dead. He was just in suspended animation. How could she even-? But raising his eyes to Cassandra’s worried expression, he understood and felt even worse - the sight had been distracting him too much lately. Not that dad was a distraction, no! He just... He just...!
Cassandra waited patiently while the boy had a minor meltdown before making an executive decision. She dragged the tarp to the amber and shook it open. A rustling above them sent both their gazes upward. Close to the top of the amber, a small distance from Quirin's frozen outstretched hand was a piece of paper, its bottom corner stuck within the substance. As it fluttered in the small breeze caused by the tarp, they could make out writing.
Son,
Varian gasped and sprung at the amber, but slid back down the slick surface. Cassandra was quick to help, hooking her fingers into a little makeshift foothold to lift him up so he could stand on her shoulders. It took a bit of reaching, but he was able to grab the paper and rip it down.
"He must've written this while I was gone. Before he..." Varian cringed and glanced over at his father.
Cassandra took a step back to give him space.
Varian closed his eyes and clutched the note to his chest in an effort to steady himself before taking a deep breath and focusing on the words. The handwriting was clearly his father's, but hurried and messy, as if he didn't know how much time he had left to get everything down on paper.
"Son," he read out loud. "I love you." His voice cracked and he paused, quickly overcome with sorrow once more. These could be his father's final words, and his heart ached knowing the most important thing he had to get out first and foremost was that. Varian swallowed thickly, trying to quell the tremor in his voice before continuing.
Son,
I love you. I said you weren't ready, but there is no other choice now. This storm is not natural, we are all in danger. Protect the princess at all cost!! The long-haired dragon is returning. You must seek out the Brotherhood and warn them in my place.
Adira - Forest of No Return
Hector - Great Tree
Edmund - Dark Kingdom
The rocks will guide you, trust in them. Be safe. I know you can do this. I'm so p-----
The last line of the letter was scribbled even more erratically than the rest and ended abruptly with an ink trail that smeared across the bottom half of the paper. He had no idea what most of the information meant, except for one thing. The most important, it seemed, from the way it was heavily underlined. Varian and Cassandra stared at each other, coming to the same conclusion at the same time.
"We have to get to Rapunzel!"