Chapter Text
Scott is starting to think having magic is a lot like being sick. Whenever he’s ill, all he can think of is wanting to not be sick and miserable again. Now that he’s got powerful ice magic he longs for the time when he didn’t carry the cold with him wherever he went. Wishing that the persistent buzzing under his skin and in the back of his head would just go away already.
The gravity of just how powerful his magic is did sneak up on him. One moment he was having his fun creating thin ice on lakes that he dramatically ran around on as an outlet for the stress of… everything with boots that didn’t originally belong to him. And then he had started freezing water unintentionally more often, just creating absurd amounts of snow and ice even in places without water. At least after letting the problem go on for long enough, he went to actually go confront it. Thus leading to the current issue at hand. The big, really bad, incredibly horrible problem of accidentally freezing the most experienced magic user in the region
It was a combination of many things that set off the spark. Scott’s magic had been very subtle at first, just adding a bit of permanence to an already existing enchantment. The potency of it was slowly growing stronger each day, bringing snow storms that couldn’t be forecasted and ice spikes that rose from the ground out of nowhere. And now the culmination of frustration at himself for not being capable of solving the problem himself and the frankly unhelpful teachings and pushing from Gem stewed into a disaster contained in the under construction entrance hallway of the magic academy.
There was a flash. His vision had gone out temporarily from the blinding white. It felt like his head and heart exploded with an overwhelming force, rendering him immobile for a few moments as the world slowly faded back in around him.
The hall was coated in ice, with jagged spikes that could have speared through the walls had they been of a weaker material. Scaffolding that had once separated the room from the foyer had been completely blown away along with the sparse decorations that had been lying around. A place once designed to be welcoming is now a mark of disaster.
The worst part of it was the state of the two people inside the room. Scott is out of it, stumbling until he’s back standing up barely cognizant of the world with his ears still ringing. He hears someone very faintly above the fading static and starts to look around only to be abruptly hit with reality as Gem comes into his view. She slips a little trying to stand back up when holding herself up with her staff. Quite a few ice spikes are all pointed towards her, likely only inches away from going through her. Her eyes had dulled into a teal shade.
Scott’s heart can’t possibly beat any faster. He reaches out towards her and takes a step, before going back and retreating from her and settling with calling out to her. “G-Gem?”
Gem, ever the optimist, doesn’t start shouting or questioning. She merely forces a weak smile and pats her hair and clothes before reaching out to him even after he pulls back. Her voice is weak. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“No. It’s not okay.” He starts, words beginning to flood through with no hesitation. His wings brush up against ice and he flinches. “This isn’t okay. You’re not okay. I’m not okay! This isn’t okay!”
“It’s fine. I can fix it!” She continues forwards, he takes even more steps back.
“I told you I could hurt someone. All I’ve done is hurt people!”
The sound of creaking ice fills the room. Or maybe it’s the roof about to collapse. He doesn’t stick around to hear her response. What he needs to do right now is to get away from her. So that he at least can’t do any more damage.
His head is pounding by the time he gets back to Rivendell.
He hadn’t noticed it right after the incident, or as he frantically flew to his part of the mountains. Now as he’s landed in the snow right outside his house though, it’s in full force. It’s probably the worst headache he’s ever had in his life, an almost unnatural intense pressure that feels like it’s taken physical form and is trying to claw its way out. It aches along with the rolling of the dark storm clouds that now blanket the skies of his kingdom. The initial snowfall is almost peaceful, if it wasn’t for the fact that he was probably about to cause a catastrophic blizzard. Part of him really wants to just lie down and sleep in the dark for the next month, but he knows he shouldn’t, that he can’t stick around. The snow always gets worse around here while he sleeps.
The thing he has to do now is leave. Get as far from here and the other empires as possible. He feels sick with guilt from everything that already happened, and would like for nobody else to suffer because of him. The truth is that he’s unstable, and therefore unsafe to be around. It’s best for everyone if he just… went on a break. Go to an icy place where he can’t possibly do any substantial disruption of the environment and lay low for a few hundred years. At least until he has a better grip on his powers.
The red crystal on his neck jeers as he removes his cloak. Ah yes, he nearly forgot about the demon imprisoned in his jewelry. Xornoth had been particularly loud since the freezing incident, taking what was likely a lot of their remaining power to somehow get across the pleasure they likely felt at their brother being an absolute fuck-up. He holds it tightly in a fist, so hard it feels like it might shatter.
His first thought is to remove it from his person and put it somewhere safe. He obviously isn’t very safe to be around right now. What if he loses it? Or if he’s too reckless and it cracks and shatters? Yet, he feels like he shouldn’t leave without it. Maybe he’s making a big mistake, maybe his guard was let down just enough for the corruption to get in his head, maybe he’s being foolishly sentimental and doesn’t want to let go of his sibling again. So instead, he keeps it with him.
He’s probably made some enemies today. This crystal can't get into the wrong hands.
From there he prepares for an impromptu vacation to get purposefully lost in the woods. Or wherever he ends up. He removes all of the royal garb on his person and gives a particularly distressed look around to the deceptively perfect gold and quartz crown. Proper winter gear is in order, so he brings along new boots, gloves to cover his frozen fingers, and a thick cloak with fur trim.
Scott’s reflection in his wardrobe mirror catches him off guard, heart stopping and then pounding in his chest now that he's looked at himself. Specifically his eyes, once a neutral blue, are now brightly tinted, almost glowing. Closer to the shade of his hair. There were bits of ice stuck everywhere on his head, and he spends perhaps a little too much time neurotically poking at his ears and hair to get what he could out. Unfortunately the ice was pretty stuck and he only succeeded in further roughing himself up.
There’s little more preparation to be done, just quickly gathering some items that he might need out in the wilderness and could probably use to keep himself sane. Not too much, though. Can’t be too reliant on outside help.
He takes a look back inside his house when he’s in the doorway about to leave. It’s not good for him to linger for so long, but he wants to bask in the final comfort of it for just a second. A shaky deep breath, closing his eyes so he doesn't have to watch the door close.
The peaks behind the kingdom are utilized for his take off, a high vantage point away from the temperate lands below. Hopefully far enough to not leave any snow behind on the temperate wilds.
Flying through the cold mountain air used to be a comfort. It reminded him of sneaking out at night to look at the stars when his room was too small for his still growing wingspan. The sky here was a safe place no matter how heavy the storms were, hard to navigate for others who weren’t used to it but a place he could travel with his eyes closed. It’s been destroyed, His wings, now coated in a heavy dusting of ice will never feel like they have the room again to stretch again. They feel uncomfortably heavy. Strong winds knock him off course for a moment.
Maybe deciding to fly long distances wasn’t a good idea while he had a horrible headache, but he needed to get out of there, away from anything and anybody he could hurt. He follows the colder landscapes hoping to not tarnish the world around him. He digs his somehow not fully frostbitten fingers deeper into thick gloves.
It takes a long while to find the environment he’s looking for, especially because a storm has followed him and it now thrashes the world, but it’s more so a bonus for his purposes. A barren snowy tundra with occasional ice formations that's thousands and thousands of meters away from any other civilization.
While he is literally given power by a god and likely already pretty deep into hypothermia he doesn’t want to take the chances of it literally killing him. Instead, he constructs a small shack in a hillside that’s protected enough from the elements before setting down fully. There’s a makeshift fireplace, but he doesn’t light it. Ultimately, he lies down in a quickly made bed before he even thinks of what lies ahead for him.
When he wakes up, it’s because of the pain. His headache has somehow become worse than it was before, making it hard for him to process what was going on. He doesn’t even remember that he’s out here instead of still in his house until he notices the cabin walls and it makes him feel all the more pathetic. Fallen so far from the once proud king of an empire, a champion of a god. Now he’s nothing more than an unstable mess with a presence in his head.
He slowly and carefully puts a hand to his head as if the pressure could stave off the ache, but he feels something solid. At first he brushes it aside as a chunk of ice stuck in his hair, because there’s a lot of that now, but when he pulls his hand away and sees the formerly white glove stained with red, shiny flecks like gold leaf coming with, and he panics. When did he get a head injury? The room gets colder, but he can’t feel it.
Pressing his hands back to where it hurt, he flinched back as not only did that make it feel worse, but he could tell that whatever this thing was it was in his head. Literally. Fear continues to set in even deeper, an injury like this is something he can’t properly treat. His hands begin to shake along with his rapidly destabilizing breathing. Some frost builds up on the floor around him.
He doesn’t know what to do. He’s regretting going all the way out here, regretting going to Gem for help, regretting finding that hidden altar of Aeor. He doesn’t want to be stuck out here, but he can’t go back. Not if he wants to accidentally damage something. Hurt someone.
It’s getting increasingly harder to breathe still. The already small walls of the cabin are feeling more and more constricting, like he’s now a bird in a small cage trying to stretch the awful feeling of being stuck away and just failing to find any comfort. He needs to get out of here- he wants to be alone but he doesn’t, he doesn’t want to burden his friends but he doesn’t want to die, to disappear. There are crystals accumulating at the edges of his eyes.
He doesn’t even get the chance to stand again before it goes dark.