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The soft rumble of running water filters faintly through the foliage of the underbrush, just on the edge of the Ironclad’s awareness. Instinctively, his mental trajectory through the forest changes.
The Regent's thronebearers halt as soon as they notice him starting to peel away.
A star-bright eye peers at him curiously. "Where are you going?"
"Water." The warrior rasps. "Hear it."
"Hmph.” The princelet sits back, seemingly satisfied. “Lead the way then, Brute."
He grunts in acknowledgement, and keeps walking.
Somewhere along the line, the way brute fell from the monarch’s (questionably-existent) mouth started to sound less like an insult, and more like a genuine nickname. In fact, just now, his tone could almost be considered fond. It doesn’t even take any guesswork on the Ironclad's part. Be it delight or disdain, his Majesty genuinely makes no attempt at disguising his emotions, not even by the slightest degree.
The warrior didn’t know how to feel about it, when he first noticed the change.
He… doesn't quite know how he feels about it now.
But he decided that, until he did, he’d make somewhat of an attempt at patience for the princelet.
Just out of courtesy.
Eventually, the forest vegetation starts to thin, earthen mulch giving way to damp stone. He finds the source of that rumbling in a small, rocky clearing, where a wellspring bubbles forth with glowing water that casts the surroundings in soft, emerald-hued light. The tranquility permeating the air feels out of place, especially in a place as perilous as the Spire, to the point of unease.
Nevertheless, the Ironclad feels some of the tension in his body ebb away.
“Senses sharp as ever, I see,” the Regent muses, hopping off of his throne. His minions scuttle off to find somewhere close to set the throne down and wait. “Despite my best efforts, I feel as though I cross paths with such resources at the whim of the Spire. And yet you always seem to know where such things are. How do you do that?”
The warrior shrugs.
“Senses sharp,” he echoes, already unstrapping his pauldrons. The monarch lets out a beleaguered sound when he says nothing more, but he doesn’t press.
“As frustratingly vague as ever,” his Majesty huffs, making his way to a spot where the stream is pooling in a particularly deep bend. His pointed footsteps ring sharp and bright against the stone bank, in counterpoint to the soft burbling of the hidden spring. “I’ll pry a full answer out of you one day! Just you wait!”
The Ironclad would respond, except he’s not listening anymore, discarding the rest of his armor in a pile on the ground, before walking directly into the water and dunking himself into the shallow stream.
The Regent lets out a yelp as he plunges in with a great splash.
The lazy current swallows him up without complaint. He knows this wellspring—not in his head, but in the steel jaws of muscle memory.
The spot he’s chosen is shallow enough that he can lie on the stone bed that cradles the stream, but deep enough that he can be submerged, the weight of his aching body no longer his burden to bear. It’s cool, underwater, easy to hide from the humid heat of the jungle and the inescapable burn of his flesh, with the mild chill of fresh groundwater gliding over his infernally-heated skin.
Quiet, too. Only the soft, hushed murmur of the spring and the dampened thrumming of blood in his ears. Blurred sight, no smell, and if he opens his mouth, the water that trickles in is clean and sweet on his tongue, rinsing away the taste of blood and ash.
Here, the Ironclad—tired, hollowed, fractured-vessel creature that he is—can pretend that he is being dealt a kindness.
So when his body reminds him that he is also a living creature that needs to breathe, he ignores it.
He ignores it, until the pricking in his lungs grows from a spark of discomfort to an undeniable hunger, raking desperately at the inside of his ribs, by which point he finally admits defeat, and—
inhales as deeply as he can
—sluggishly raises himself out of the water.
His body pries his jaws open to take a greedy inhale, and the world comes back in a sensory rush of detail, water sluicing away from his body. The bellows of his lungs begin their work anew, inflating and deflating and reinflating until his furnace body is burning once more.
“Finally!”
Right.
The warrior isn’t travelling alone.
The Regent has settled himself on a shelf of rock jutting out into the water, sitting with a bottle of glowing water in his hands as he watches him with an inquisitive sort of exasperation. “Why in the endless cosmos did you do that?”
No clue as to where the bottle came from. He still can’t figure out where the space-brat keeps his things. The last time he’d offered him a bag, his Majesty had simply claimed that he was ‘above physical modes of storage,’ whatever that means, before insisting that the Ironclad keep it for himself, and tottering off on his throne.
Water drips into his eyes, pulling the Ironclad out of his thoughts. He blinks it away as he moves to sit in the water. But, just as he tries to think of a response that doesn’t put his already questionable state of mind in even more question, the monarch snaps his fingers.
“Wait! Don’t tell me! You’re cleaning—no—bathing yourself!” he exclaims, leaning forward, eager to share his guess. “That’s what Preonians use water for, right? Other than drinking it? I don’t think you’re drinking it. If you are, I must say, you’ve certainly chosen to do it in the most unique way I’ve ever seen!”
“Do…?” The princelet’s sudden scrutiny all but startles the question out of him. “Do you… not?”
“Nope!” The Regent chirps. “Superior lifeform that I am—as all my kind are—we do not need to drink! Or eat, for that matter. We can choose to, though, for recreational purposes.”
Well, the Ironclad figured that was the case, but that wasn’t what he was asking about. His answer comes swiftly, in what his Majesty says next.
“As for hygiene, we don’t use water. We actually don’t have water on our planet at all! It’s too close to our star for it to gather on the surface the way it does on yours. We simply… We use—there’s this… hm.” The little prince narrows his eye. “Your language doesn’t possess the words for a one-to-one translation. It has to do with certain substances that induce specific chemical processes, heat-treatment, and a very specific kind of silicate dust. Does that make sense?”
Barely.
The warrior thinks he’s overheard the Necrobinder use the word ‘chemical’ once while she was deep in discussion with the Silent.
“...Not bathing,” he responds, instead. “Just… cooling off.”
It’s true enough.
The Regent lets out a long hum of consideration. “I see. That makes sense, I suppose. Is that why you haven’t taken off your clothes?
The Ironclad holds out his arm.
“Didn’t bother.” Faint vapor is already curling off of it, even as water drips from it. “I dry fast.”
“Ah.”
Speaking of drying.
The Ironclad should take his helmet off so his hair can dry properly. Pain is nothing, but itching is hell. He can’t remember it, but something in his bones is telling him that he’s made the mistake before, and it made him want to scalp himself. While he’s at it, he might as well give it a rinse and redo his braid as well. His fingers find the lower lip of the metal plate over his face.
He stops.
The Regent is still staring at him. Deep unease prickles over the warrior’s skin.
“Stop looking,” he bites out.
His Majesty blinks at him, before tipping his head, almost innocently, gaze unwavering. “Why?”
The Ironclad stills.
The question almost fails to register.
“Why should I?” the Regent clarifies, almost impatiently, after he doesn't immediately respond.
Why should—?
Rage. It scorches at the back of his throat, white-hot and sudden, catching on that single fraying thread of discomfort like an ember on a droughted field. A thick billow of steam rolls off of his shoulders as the blood in his veins boils brighter all at once.
Set it all on fire, it begs, insisting that he end this strange, strange nothing-interaction that they’ve been having in a great, roaring blaze. This idle chatter is useless, after all, and if it’s useless, it will burn. It would be so easy, a smoldering threat spat at the monarch’s feet, or even a simple physical blow. He’s in reach, it would be easy to grab him and break him, scorch that delicate clay shell of his. And he would deserve it. Who does this brat think he is, questioning him so—? So…
…Mockingly?
No. That’s not it.
The Regent is not so subtle in his mockery.
He clenches his fists into the loose, wet gravel of the stream until he feels his knuckles creak. The blinding anger falters, for a moment, before trying again.
This strange, oblivious creature that sits before him has no right to ask him for anything. The warrior shouldn’t have to explain himself to a haughty whelp who knows nothing of what he is, what he’s been through—
The Ironclad takes a deep, careful breath, and holds it. He holds it until his lungs hurt again. Until the inferno in his skull is so starved of air it has no choice but to dim and retreat.
The monarch fidgets where he’s sitting, still waiting for a response, but the warrior keeps his mouth shut until he’s sure that the part of his mind still gnashing its teeth won’t drive him to say something foolish.
“What will you do?” he asks slowly, in an effort to get his words out evenly. “If I refuse to answer?”
The Regent’s eye twitches, obviously taken aback by the question.
“...Look away, and then stew in my disappointment at the lack of an explanation?” he responds, his answer colored with deep, apparent confusion. “What else is there to do?”
The warrior’s answer is immediate. “Keep looking.”
Now it's the Regent’s turn to still.
He clearly didn’t need incendiary rage to say something foolish, if the look the monarch is giving him is anything to go by.
“Brute…” he starts, a tone to his voice like he’s been ambushed with the task of explaining that leaves are the color green without being condescending. “My ability to comply with a request—your request! For privacy! Which clearly matters a great deal to you!—does not hinge on whether or not you sate my curiosity! Not in the slightest!”
His Majesty pauses, and then squints at the Ironclad. “It does matter to you, yes?”
The Ironclad nods.
“Then that’s that.” The Regent claps his hand together. “Should I take this to mean you don’t want to answer?
The Ironclad nods again. The monarch hums in displeasure, but he does as he said he would, and shuffles about in his spot until he’s turned away.
That was. Odd. There’s a bafflingly complicated knot of emotions in his chest, for how bafflingly uncomplicated this was. The warrior puts it aside, tucks it all into the helmet he pulls off his head and sets it on the bank of the stream. His braid falls over his shoulder in a damp coil.
As a testament to just how messy it’s gotten, it doesn’t unwind, even as he tugs the cord holding it together loose. He stifles the urge to sigh, making a cursory attempt to pick it apart, before giving up and dunking his head underwater again.
It takes a few goes, but eventually, when he lifts his head out of the water, the curtain of hair falling wetly in front of his face is relatively tangle free. The water offers him a glimpse of his reflection as he wrings the excess water out of it.
Still red. Still empty. He doesn’t remember what color his eyes were.
Ugly, cracked, doll-thing. Unfired pottery that thought it could be the kiln.
(The Necrobinder had once asked him if his helmet was enchanted. She found it curious, after all, that nothing could be seen through the two gaps in the metal plating except that burning, pyre-red light.)
(She hadn't done anything wrong. She didn't even push. He should've just nodded or made a sound and let her reach her own conclusions.)
(She did not deserve the way he responded. And he does not deserve the way she forgave him after.)
He looks at the Regent again. He’s still turned away, seemingly preoccupied.
The Ironclad lets his hair fall back over his face like a shroud. Something in his chest cautiously goes lax.
“...You can look now.”
The monarch jumps at the sound of his voice, scrambling to turn back around. It turns out he’d taken off his shoes and rolled up his pants while he was figuring out his hair. He scoots a little closer, dipping his feet back into the spring.
His gaze falls on the warrior like a tangible weight.
“Your hair is more silver-y than the Silent’s.” Is the first thing the princelet says.
The Ironclad’s not sure how to respond to that. “Mm.”
“Hers is more white,” he continues, kicking at the water a bit. “I think I like yours better.”
“...” Well, he doesn’t know how to respond to that, either.
His Majesty makes an aborted motion, as if he was about to say something, but decided against it.
“Water seems to be a fantastically versatile substance.” He asks instead. “What else do you use it for?”
That sounds like a question better suited to literally anyone else. What in the world would he know about—
“Smithing,” he replies, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he realizes they’re there. “For quenching metal.”
The Regent’s legs stop, interest written in every line of his posture. “Elaborate.”
He does.
The words come from somewhere that even the warrior can’t define. Somehow, he knows that if he tries, it will vanish. He knows it like he knows where to cut to bleed the fastest. So he doesn’t try. He lowers his head, lets his focus haze over (because it’s the closest thing he can do to closing his eyes anymore), and allows words to spill from that nowhere spot at the bottom of his cracked-vase skull.
The Ironclad speaks of ores pulled from mines dug into mountains coated in ice and frost year-round. Quarry that is crushed and packed into crucibles shut into roaring furnaces kept alive by hand-pumped bellows. Liquid fire vanishing into molds, solid bars pulled out in their place. The ringing of hammers as a bar was flattened and shaped and heated and hammered until the body of a blade was wrought into shape. Sputtering, bubbling, hissing steam as it was finally plunged into warmed snowmelt to harden and… and…
“Brute—?”
And…
(Ancients, and then what? It’s there. It’s right there. It’s in the spasm seizing the muscle of his palms, echoing a soreness that doesn’t exist. It’s so close he can smell it. Taste it. The heat, the soot, the iron coating his teeth and tongue—)
“Warrior, you’re bleeding!”
The Ironclad inhales sharply as he’s snapped out of his daze.
Mistake. Rather than wellspring water, he inhales his own burning blood, doubling over into a violent coughing fit. It stains his hair, smears under his nose as he scrubs a hand across his face, choking on the way it scorches his throat. Of course, it’s already clotting, sizzling into something thicker and stickier as he coughs. The Regent stands in an instant, asking something in a fretting sort of panic that he’d find funny if he was able to pay any mind to it. He wheezes, thumping his hand against his sternum to spit the last of it—
WHAM!
Something slams against his back, right between his shoulder blades, shoving him back into the water. For a blissful moment, the world is quiet again.
When he resurfaces, the princelet is looking at him with an expression he’s never seen before, hand still outstretched.
“I… er…” His Majesty sheepishly pulls the offending appendage behind his back, as though hiding it would do anything for the situation at hand. “I was… I’d only meant to… Ah… Oops?”
The Ironclad only stares. The monarch’s shoulders start to hike upwards.
“The Necrobinder would… strike the Silent’s back whenever her body was struggling to expectorate. So I thought…” the monarch continues, trying to explain. When the warrior still doesn’t respond, he flusters even further. “You have more mass than her! You can’t honestly blame me for thinking you would require more force, can you?! Are you waiting for an apology? Well, fine! I apologize! But! You must acknowledge that I was coming from a place of deep concern and… and… Are you laughing at me?”
He is. It’s barely a laugh. Low, raspy, hissing-breath snickering. But he can’t help it, the look on the princelet’s face—
(A millenia of suffering, and slapstick is what gets him. The absurdity of it all makes him laugh harder.)
The Regent’s shoulders go back down, yet another expression he’s never seen before crossing his face. “Well. I suppose it’s good you can find the humor in this whole debacle. Can you breathe now?”
The Ironclad mops a hand down his face, letting the current carrying the last of his blood away, and nods. His Majesty hums. “So I did help.”
…Sure.
(He did. He does that a lot. In that roundabout sort of manner, by being the way he is in all his bizarre, naive, explosively incandescent glory.)
A treacherous idea surfaces in his mind.
“Stronger than you look,” he says hoarsely, crossing his arms on the edge of the rock. The monarch flits back over to sit down again.
“Hmph. It was merely a manipulation of the inherent gravitational force between us. It was meant to be slight. Simple, for the likes of me, so you can understand my embarrassment at fumbling such a small task. Though I presume you have no idea what I mean.” The Regent goes back to kicking the surface of the stream as the warrior shakes his head no. “As I suspected! This planet hasn’t even calculated the gravitational constant yet. It’s only natural that the law of universal gravitation is still unknown. For you to grasp such a concept we would have to discuss gravity itself. And for that, stars, I’d have to explain the fundamentals of physics as a whole. That’s not even getting into my technique for bending it to my— …Your hand is on my ankle. Warrior, why is your hand on my aaAUGK—! ”
With a loud squawk, the princelet is dragged off of his perch and into the stream.
“YOU—!” The monarch splutters as he shoots to his feet, soaked silk sticking to his body, water running down the grooves of his shell in rivulets. Unrepentant, the Ironclad leans against the rock to watch him seethe. “You will PAY for this!”
The warrior is too busy chuckling at his Majesty’s state to defend himself from the vicious way he slaps water at him, sputtering on whatever gets through his hair between every shaking huff of laughter as he angrily splashes through the thigh-deep water. He makes a token attempt at fighting back, raking a hand through the current to fling water his way, but that only eggs him on, the Regent paying every drop that hits him back tenfold.
Soon, they’re both drenched to the bone (and shell).
“I yield… I yield— ” the Ironclad manages between snickers, putting a hand up, trying to drag the mirth threatening to crack his ribs back under control. Ancients, his face is sore. And there isn’t even a bruise to blame for it.
Abruptly, a weight drops into his lap, clay-wrought hands fisting the front of his shirt. His hands instinctively fly up to grab the princelet’s waist.
(Not his wrists. Not his arms. Not his neck.)
“Wretched brute! You. Are. Infuriating!” The Regent hisses, yanking them closer and dominating his field of view with the light of his star-bright eye. “Childish! Puerile! I cannot dry off the way you can! Now I will have to traverse the next few floors WET. I could smite you for this! I should smite you for this! Be thankful that I find you too valuable a companion to reduce you to an atomic smear on the ground!”
Every point of contact feels like a brand.
(Even surrounded by running water, the stellar heat of the princelet’s body is seeping through his clothes. Some unseen hand reaches into his chest, wraps fingers around his unceasing heart and squeezes until it threatens to pop. Words are sludge. Whatever he meant to say dies a slow, meaningless death as his tongue fails him like it has before and will continue to, until the day he finally accepts that speech is wasted on him and he pulls it out of his head.)
He swallows.
“Ha! I see my mercy has rendered you speechless! Let this be a lesson to you! My patience, vast as it is, has limits!” The monarch leans back, hands gripping the warrior’s collar more loosely, seeming satisfied enough with just directing his tirade at him. “...Is such roughhousing common on this planet?”
All he can manage is a vacant nod.
“I suppose that’s yet another thing you lot use water for, then.” The Ironclad is only barely able to remember what the princelet is referring to. “How novel.”
Sighing, the Regent lets go of him, flattening his collar back down with a little pat. His fingertips linger at his collarbone. “If you enjoy this kind of fooling around, I suppose I could be convinced to partake every so often. Though, next time, I must insist that you warn me! No more of this ambushing nonsense!”
His Majesty punctuates the demand by lightly pounding his fist against his shoulder.
(In some fit of feverish derangement, the Ironclad wonders if his fingers would touch, if he squeezed hard enough.)
Enough of this.
The Regent lets out a little “oop!” as the warrior stands unceremoniously, hauling the monarch along with him as he gets out of the water. Placing him firmly on the ground, he turns away to wring out his hair and rebraid it. There’s nothing much to wring out, his roots have long since dried already. The rest of it will dry soon enough.
He wrings it anyway.
“Did… Did I strike you too hard again?” The Ironclad’s fingers stall halfway through the braid as his Majesty’s voice reaches him. “Or, was it something I said? Again?”
“...Why?” He asks around the cord clenched between his teeth, before taking it and finishing the braid off. Something bumps the back of his arm. It’s his helmet, being offered to him from behind. He takes it, tucking the braid into a plaited coil as he slides it back on.
Turning to don the rest of his armor, he’s greeted by the sight of the Regent fiddling with his fingers.
Distractedly, the Ironclad is struck with the disjointed thought that the Regent is actually quite small. With the way he’s usually lounging in that throne of his, along with that larger-than-life demeanor he carries himself with, the warrior keeps forgetting just how small the princelet is. Especially now, those fancy clothes smothered flat against his form, the fabric clinging wetly to his shell.
“The water on your clothes is evaporating at a faster rate,” he points out candidly. “Like earlier.”
Ah.
“Doing it on purpose,” The Ironclad says, at a normal speed and a normal cadence. He scoops up one of his vambraces and doesn’t strap it so tight his fingers tingle.
“Oh! I didn’t know you could do that.” The princelet chirps.
Well. Neither did the warrior.
As soon as the last bit of armor is strapped into place, the monarch calls on his minions and hops back into his throne. They leave the wellspring behind them, letting that unusual little bubble of peace vanish back into the forest as they search for the way out of this floor to continue on their ascent.
Guilt nibbles at the edges of his thoughts, as the Regent complains about his state the entire way there. If he were a good man, the guilt would be for pulling him into the water at all.
(And not for being pleased that the princelet’s state means he will keep filling the silence with his voice.)