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“I always knew we could do great things if we worked together.” Mozenrath smirked down from his horse as Aladdin rolled his eyes. “Well, ‘work together’ meaning ‘you forced to obey my every whim’, but, you know. Semantics.” He punctuated the statement with a graceful flick of the leather gauntlet.
Aladdin considered making a smart remark in return, but the flick of the gauntlet came with a small swirl of flame, so he decided it could wait until later. Preferably once he had figured out a plan to escape, and how to foil…whatever Mozenrath was up to this time.
He was sure to get a brilliant idea.
Any moment now.
Any…moment…
He was taking Carpet for a walk just outside the walls of the palace garden when he was kidnapped. It was a Tuesday, which probably meant Assorted Mystical Objects—Theft Of. Unless it meant Taking Over Agrabah For Fun And Profit, but they were headed into the desert and away from the city, so probably not that.
Aladdin blinked and squinted into a rippling heat mirage of distant crumbled towers, then sighed and tugged at the glowing threads around his neck. It didn't accomplish anything—he was still forced to keep following Mozenrath into the desert, just like the last twenty times he tried—but it was something to do.
Sometimes it felt like Mozenrath was only targeting Agrabah because he didn't have anything else to do. The few times Aladdin had been to the Kingdom of the Black Sands, he saw a cold, dull place despite all its fearsomely beautiful cliffs. The city's architecture was once rich, but apart from the fortified palace most of it was in a state of collapse with no remaining human population besides a few wandering bandits and Mozenrath himself, whose humanity was…arguable.
And, much as he always gloated when they confronted him in his domain, Mozenrath wasn't stupid enough to be happy only sitting on a pointless throne with nothing to talk to but a flying eel. So it was no wonder he was frustrated, even if he only had himself to thank for it. He had to set some kind of goal for himself, and unfortunately for everybody he happened to notice Agrabah, its genie, and the genie's companion.
Endless entertainment. You're welcome, Mozenrath. We're here all week.
Aladdin even felt for him sometimes. When Mozenrath wasn't in the immediate vicinity, anyway. It was hard to forget the rare, more human moments, when he realized how close in age they actually were: the real fear in his wide dark eyes as he dangled over a broken parapet, or the humiliated fury as he realized he had been tricked by a more dangerous wizard.
Aladdin wondered, sometimes, what exactly his problem was. The smoldering anger that rippled from him couldn't have come from nowhere, and his greed for power came with a sharp desperate edge. Aladdin could relate to that, a little, after growing up on the streets fighting for any angle he could.
But when Mozenrath was actually present, he could be relied on to ruin any attempt at sympathy.
Abducting someone via a portal and dragging them through the desert with a magic tether around their neck just tended to have that effect, somehow.
Maybe the palace guards had a point about Aladdin going on unsupervised walks being bad for security. Or, since they often tended to do a 'casual check of the palace treasury just routine sir' right after he returned from an excursion, maybe they were just jerks.
But he was getting the feeling this happened to him a lot.
Mozenrath didn’t seem to be in a bad mood just yet—his occasional mocking remarks were still merely snide, and not vicious, and he seemed to need Aladdin alive for something. But Aladdin knew it would still be a terrible idea to start needling him.
"So what is it today, just bored? Mad the genie went on vacation and you couldn't kidnap him? Two for one at the Black Sands shaved ice stand?"
It had always been a terrible idea to make fun of the guards in Agrabah before he ended up as part of the royal family, too.
Aladdin wasn't expecting Mozenrath to stop, and since he was looking out for rocks in the sand he almost walked into his gold-embossed black leather stirrup as the horse abruptly halted.
For some reason, looking up at Mozenrath under the sun, he suddenly felt something jolt in his chest.
It had to be the heat.
He had long been aware that Mozenrath was good looking, of course—good looking in an infuriating, slightly unnerving way. But they were rarely in each others' company long enough for Aladdin to think about it in detail, since usually they ended up too busy chasing each other around in Mozenrath’s latest scheme to steal the genie. He tried not to think about it, usually, since it was part of the long, long list of things Mozenrath was insufferably smug about and Aladdin wasn't about to give him more ammunition.
Aladdin was panting, but even the bright heat of the sun or the exertion in his heavy robes seemed to be having no effect on Mozenrath. His face was as pale as ever—not in the way of the foreign tradesmen who sometimes visited the court of Agrabah, but as if something had pulled the color away by force. It would have looked wrong, on anyone else. It still looked wrong on Mozenrath, but in a chilly, fascinating way.
Aladdin realized how long he'd been looking around the time Mozenrath's eyes narrowed.
“What are you looking at?”
It would be a terrible idea to insult him.
“Your stupid face.” Aladdin folded his arms and glared up into Mozenrath’s eyes. They were dark brown and he felt nothing in particular about them.
Mozenrath snarled and slashed with the gauntlet, and Aladdin gasped as a sweeping rush of dark energy knocked him to the ground.
It was a little bit worth it, he decided.
By the time Aladdin picked himself up, Mozenrath had swung down from the horse and was stomping to the top of a small rise. Aladdin followed as the threads of magic around his neck tightened insistently.
"If you must know, I need to get into a vault that can only be opened by someone 'pure of heart'... and according to what I’ve heard about you and your genie, you come pre-approved. And you didn't seem to have anything better to do."
Mozenrath smirked over his shoulder, and Aladdin found his gaze catching on his mouth for a moment. He looked down before Mozenrath can notice.
"I've really got to get myself corrupted one of these days," Aladdin muttered to himself, kicking at a small pile of sand as he climbed up the rise behind Mozenrath.
“And here we are.” Mozenrath swept his hand at the scenery below: not more sand, as Aladdin had assumed, but a sudden gash in the landscape, a ravine easily thirty yards across and as many deep, carving down through stone that gleamed orange under the sun.
Aladdin took a cautious step closer to the edge, watching a few rivulets of sand trickle over the cliff at his weight. What at first he thought were a multitude of small caves worn into the walls were actually the worn, weather-beaten remains of windows, walls and columns, all carved into the rock itself.
“The Red City.” Mozenrath sounded proud of himself—maybe he’d dragged Aladdin along partly so he’d have someone to impress. He would do that. “Took me most of this year to find it. We’re headed for the temple.”
Aladdin made a mocking bow that Mozenrath didn’t see, since he was too busy staring at the largest of the doors cut into the cliffside. “I go where you command, my liege,” Aladdin said, pushing as much sarcasm as he could into it.
“But you go first,” Mozenrath said with dark cheer, “to check for traps.”
“Of course.”
After they scrambled down over the cliff side and through one of the upper windows, it took another hour of climbing and hiking to get to Mozenrath’s destination. Apparently he couldn’t just teleport there through one of his portals, in case the Red Temple’s vault noticed someone less than pure of heart was in the vicinity. The threads tethering Aladdin and a small glow around his gauntlet were the only magic he was using after starting the climb.
Mozenrath paused on the landing of a broad twisting stone staircase that curved down the wall of a cavernous vault, so deep that even with the light from Mozenrath’s glove it was impossible to see the floor below. He finally looked slightly winded. Aladdin tried to catch his breath as well, slipping his vest off for a moment to wipe sweat off his face.
He wasn’t quite sure what it was in the end that made him move: a slight disturbance in the air animating his old thief’s instincts, perhaps. He was definitely moving before he heard the rumble of rock, but for some reason he ran towards Mozenrath, which was a terrible idea, instead of back up the stairs, which actually made sense.
“Watch out!”
Aladdin grabbed the back of Mozenrath’s heavy robe and pulled him towards the wall, shoving him under the cover of a small ledge and throwing himself down beside him.
“What the devil do you think—” Mozenrath snarled, starting to shove Aladdin away, then froze as a shower of rocks crashed down from the roof of the carved temple to land where they had just been standing.
Mozenrath’s flesh hand was strangely cold against Aladdin’s bare skin. He wasn’t sure where the vest was, but he dropped it when he ran for Mozenrath so it was probably rockfall confetti by now. He had a whole wardrobe, back at the palace, but he’d really liked that vest.
The frozen confusion on Mozenrath’s face softened his usual cold expression briefly, the golden glow from the gauntlet highlighting the curve of his cheek.
Aladdin reminded himself he didn’t think about how good looking Mozenrath was. As soon as he was sure the rocks wouldn’t start falling again he scrambled to his feet and moved as far away as he could without falling off the staircase. “Just, uh. Just checking for traps. Like you said.”
Why on earth did he save Mozenrath? He hadn’t been thinking at all when he moved, but why would his first instinct be to save the man who did nothing but cause trouble for him?
Mozenrath looked equally confused. Luckily he didn’t demand an answer, because Aladdin had no idea what he would have said. Instead he blinked a few times, the magical light he was holding reflecting like flames in his dark eyes, then retrieved his usual smug expression. “You make such a better minion than a prince, don’t you think? Let’s go.”
Climbing over the new wall of shattered rock was slow going, since the rubble kept slipping, but finally they made it over. At the bottom of the staircase was a door, and then more stairs—they had been underground the whole time, of course, but now Aladdin was fairly sure they were below even the level of the bottom of the ravine. The final vault was freezing, but Mozenrath seemed to notice the cold as little as he had the heat earlier.
“And this is where you come in.”
Aladdin rolled his eyes and shoved at the door Mozenrath pointed at, barely even glancing at the gilded symbols carved into the stone. It moved easily, sliding out of the way as if it had been carefully oiled for centuries instead of wearing away underground after the city was deserted. “Happy now? Anybody could have done that.” Enchanted vaults, in his experience, usually were considerably more dramatic, and had more echoing voices yelling threatening things. Maybe the pure-of-heart clause was a dud, or the enchantment was past its use-by date.
Mozenrath leaned through and grabbed a roll of parchment from a shelf in the small vault. Aladdin looked over his shoulder out of old habit, wondering if there was anything interesting he could fence, then remembered that turning up at the palace with unidentified and potentially cursed gems from an abandoned underground city was probably, as ideas went, a bad one.
“Very happy. Or...I would be, if I was ever happy.” Mozenrath smirked as he turned, once again far closer to Aladdin than he had ever expected him to be, and Aladdin once again found himself staring at his mouth as he took a step back. There was another rumble from the upper vault. “And there’s our exit music.”
Despite saying ‘our’, Mozenrath clearly did not see their departure from the vaults as a team effort. He barely seemed to remember Aladdin was there, but Aladdin would take that over Mozenrath deciding that now that he was no longer needed he could trap him in the vaults to suffocate, so he didn’t do anything to remind him as he followed Mozenrath up the stairs.
It was harder going up than going down, and as he climbed out the uppermost window to make his way over the rim of the cliff, Aladdin nearly slipped. Suddenly he felt something like thin threads around his waist, tingling against his skin as they pulled him over the edge onto the sand.
Mozenrath’s hand was clenched into a fist inside the gauntlet, his arm curled as if he was pulling on the air.
“What—” Aladdin stared at him.
Mozenrath shrugged and took a step back, glaring at him coldly. “Who knows when I’m going to have another enchanted vault to open,” he said scornfully. “Do you know how hard it is to find someone pure of heart around here? Might waste years finding one to import if you offed yourself.”
It was sunset now, the last rays of the sun making the cliff city look an even more brilliant red, as if it was burning inside the earth. It was also getting cold.
“Need some light to look at this,” Mozenrath muttered, turning the scroll over in his hands and slowly unwinding the jewel-crusted sash it was wrapped in. He snapped his fingers in the gauntlet and Aladdin yelped, rolling aside and scrambling to his feet as a ragged bush erupted into flames next to where he had been sitting. “Oh, you were still there.”
Aladdin thought about making a smart reply, but decided it was about time to have a good idea for once. Instead, he watched closely as Mozenrath finished unwrapping the parchment bundle and read through the first sheets.
He couldn’t let Mozenrath keep it, whatever it was. Anything Mozenrath was willing to put himself at risk to obtain was far too dangerous to leave in his hands, and the way his smile thinned and sharpened as his eyes focused on the writing told Aladdin this was something Mozenrath had wanted very much indeed. And last time Mozenrath wanted something it was another genie-devouring device, so this was probably more of the same if not worse. He was always searching for new magical tools to use against Agrabah, and Aladdin might have helped him find this one, but he was at least going to make sure he didn’t make it back to the Black Sands with it.
If he could just have an idea…
After finishing his initial examination, Mozenrath rolled the parchments back into their scrolled bundle and wrapped the fabric around it again.
Aladdin watched carefully to see exactly which pocket Mozenrath slipped it into—the dark heavy sweep of his robes might have disguised the movement for anyone who wasn’t already an experienced sleight-of-hand thief, but Aladdin followed every movement of his flesh hand and was sure he could follow it if he could only get close enough.
Suddenly, he had an idea.
It was a terrible idea, but at least it was an idea that existed.
“So, is that it?”
Mozenrath looked up, his dark brows raising mockingly. The fire was between them, throwing ember highlights into his dark eyes. “What, you wanted a tender farewell?”
“Yes, actually.”
It took one step to close the distance: Aladdin expected Mozenrath to lash out before he could make it even that far, but then his left hand was around the back of Mozenrath’s neck under the heavy cloth of his headdress, pulling their faces together.
Mozenrath’s lips were cold and still under his, his eyes flown wide. The gauntlet didn’t move, and Aladdin could even feel the threads of magic around his own neck dissolving as Mozenrath lost his concentration. His flesh hand grabbed Aladdin’s upper arm in a cold vice, but instead of shoving him away he pulled him just a tiny bit closer.
Aladdin pressed into the kiss, feeling Mozenrath’s lips slowly warm as he moved a little in return. He must not get kissed much if he didn’t know what to do about it, he thought absently, a little surprised. He’d always assumed Mozenrath knew how to have a good time, even if he was stuck in the Black Sands by himself now.
But at least he was confused enough Aladdin could accomplish his other objective. If only Aladdin could remind himself what that was, since his mind was currently full of how perfectly Mozenrath’s lips fit with his.
Aladdin slid his other hand under Mozenrath’s cloak and around his waist. He felt Mozenrath gasp into his mouth just as his fingers closed around the parchment and shoved away, diving to the ground and rolling as a slash of magical energy whipped over his head.
“Too slow!” he shouted, and threw the parchment into the fire.
Mozenrath snarled in rage, his gauntleted fist clenched and the back of his flesh hand pressed over his mouth.
Maybe it hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.
The next sweep of dark magic threw Aladdin over the cliff edge.
Nope, definitely a truly terrible idea.
Especially since now he was going to die before he could kiss Mozenrath again.
Just as he was bracing to hit the bottom of the ravine, his back struck something warm and...carpet-y. He rolled over. A tassel waved at him in a distinct air of relief. “Carpet! You were looking for me!”
As they swooped up back over the edge of the ravine, Carpet banked out of the way of a spray of magical bolts. Mozenrath was mounted again now, his flesh hand yanking on the reins as he fired another bolt at Carpet.
Aladdin waved down at him mockingly and watched Mozenrath glare in the sunset light, the rays shining on his dark robes as the cold desert wind whipped at the fabric. “See you next week!” he shouted, and ducked as another bolt flew over his head. Mozenrath usually had better aim than that, he thought.
Maybe he was still getting over the kiss. Or maybe he was relieved he hadn’t killed the only person he ever went on road trips with.
But that would be ridiculous, Aladdin told himself as Carpet sped back over the dunes towards Agrabah.
He also told himself he wasn’t wondering how soon Mozenrath would turn up again.