Chapter Text
The gold chains that appeared to cover his left hand were the second-most surprising thing Roman had seen today. They looked like tattoos, but surely Roman would have noticed getting tattooed between when he last looked at his hand as he prepared for sword drills and now, in the middle of sword drills. Also, tattoos didn’t usually move like this. They didn’t usually move at all.
The most surprising thing Roman had seen today was his sword on the ground from where he dropped it. The chains on his hand at least explained why he’d felt like something was attacking his hand and had caused his disarming. Not his fault at all! No one could be expected to hold on to a sword when someone was tattooing chains on your hand!
Whatever these chains were about, they weren’t getting the sword drills done, nor were they getting his hair fixed up before going to see his friends. If anyone could tell him what this was all about, it would be Logan, and if anyone could make him laugh at the absurdity of it all, it was Patton. He should probably also stop by and see their leader, Thomas, who would be the one to make any decisions if Logan turned up some kind of meaning to the chains. The sword drills could probably be ignored for one day, but his hair? He needed to take care of that before anyone saw him.
Hair managed, Roman headed for Thomas’s throne room. Logan and Patton were already there, and to Roman’s surprise, both had the chains on their hands, too. More importantly, there was a scroll hovering in the room, a few feet from the throne, and Logan was staring at it with a puzzled frown. “Logan? What’s up?”
“This scroll, for one!” Patton answered, and Roman rolled his eyes fondly at the joke. “Logan’s trying to make sense of it – it’s written in a super ancient script and doesn’t make just a whole lot of sense just yet. Something about a bloodline and binding ritual?”
Logan cleared his throat. “I believe I have deciphered enough of it to summarize. According to the scroll, King Terrence made a pact with a being from another realm.” He looked between Roman and Patton. Roman had no idea who King Terrence was – sure, given where the scroll had ended up, probably one of Thomas’s ancestors, but not one Roman remembered offhand. Patton didn’t seem to have any more clue. Sighing disappointedly, Logan explained, “King Terrence reigned approximately one thousand years ago. He struggled to produce an heir who would survive to adulthood, but his youngest child, Dominic, mysteriously survived an illness that killed over half of the people who contracted it. It seems that this is the answer – in return for saving King Terrence’s line, the king bound his bloodline to the pact. Anyone with the bloodline could be chosen when the time came to call in the return favor – a marriage compact.”
Everyone turned to stare at Thomas. “Don’t look at me. I don’t have the chains, but I should have the blood.”
“I did say could be chosen, not would be,” Logan clarified. “The scroll does apologize for any long-buried family secrets coming out as people who didn’t know they were descendants of royalty discovered they were.”
“So, what, the three of us are long-lost cousins?” Roman said, staring at the chains on his hand. There were so many questions now, and he did not like some of the answers he was coming up with. To ignore having to deal with anything, he asked the one question he felt was important enough to be worth examining. “What happens now?”
“We’re cousins, but our last common ancestor may be ten or more generations in the past,” Logan clarified. “Hardly worth concerning ourselves with, unless you want to just assume everyone you meet is a relative. What happens next is we check for anyone else who has the chains on their hand, because we need to all be together for the next step.”
After fifteen minutes of searching, one more person had been found, and Roman had to roll his eyes. “I don’t care if it’s thirty generations back. I refuse to be related to that guy.”
“Love you too, Princey.” Remy held up his coffee and blew a kiss over the top of it. “What’s going on that means I can’t have my afternoon nap?”
Before anyone could answer, a glimmering line appeared in the air, colors flashing in and out as the line widened and opened some kind of gap. Logan nodded. “That’s the sign that we have everyone. The four of us need to put our chained hands in the gap. There’s no further instructions, so we’ll have to hope that it will either be obvious or there will be further guidance provided once this part is completed.” He reached out with his right hand, placing it in the gap. It immediately started to glow a deep indigo.
Roman followed suit – no sense letting Logan get all the glory! His left hand glowed red once placed in the portal. Patton’s right hand glowed a light blue when he added it. Remy hesitated, but eventually put his right hand in the opening with a flash of brown.
Logan was the first to receive an answer, as a hand bound in similar chains surrounded by a green glow reached out and clasped his hand. It was followed by a hand glowing yellow that took Patton’s, and one glowing orange that took Remy’s. Roman waited impatiently – if it didn’t work until everyone on their side was in place, surely it wouldn’t work until everyone on the other side was too, right? There had to be a hand waiting to take his.
When it finally came, Roman barely had time to register the purple glow before he could feel the chains expanding, creating a web over his whole body. It felt like his hand was fusing with the purple hand, as chains bound the two together so tightly Roman couldn’t even wiggle his fingers. Next thing he knew, he was standing in a room that very much resembled Thomas’s throne room, only black.