Chapter Text
Beldaruit took one look at the child in the coffin. Then, he couldn’t look away.
He watched the tiny chest heaving, rising and falling with the effort of short, wheezing breaths. Muddy, foul smelling water spilled over the bony limbs covered with bruises and abrasions. The frail frame trembled violently, one remaining eye glassy and looking at nothing, staring into the distance beyond the dead tree branches and even farther beyond that.
They were so small. Couldn’t be older than maybe eight years old, but they looked terribly small and delicate, and Beldaruit wouldn’t be surprised if they turned out to be even younger.
How long had they been there? Who left them here to die? Who could do this?
The questions swirled in his head. It was merely a quirk of fate that he and the Knight Moralis ventured into this part of Thristas on this day. Were they to come merely a day later, they would be too late. The child would surely be dead.
They weren’t late, though. Thank the stars. The child was battered and weak, but they were still alive. Breathing.
They were alive and they would not die, not if Beldaruit had anything to say about it.
“Give them here,” he choked out. The Knights stared a him. “Give them here,” he repeated, more urgently this time.
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The Knights Moralis answered Beldaruit’s questions with a level of exasperation and boredom. They told him the child was a girl, but that the child seemed somewhat thrown off by that statement. Then, that they were about seven years old, and that they had no name.
Then, they told him that their plan is to erase the child’s memories once more, and then chuck them out to the unknowing world again.
Beldaruit saw white. He argued, fiercely and relentlessly, and made a fool of himself. He didn’t care. In the end, it was Vinanna who let him into the cell.
It was dark and damp. Beldaruit immediately hated it, and he decided he despised anyone who it was who had decided that it was a good place to keep a child hostage in. Like some sort of... criminal.
He ignored Vinanna’s snide remark as he walked over to the child and set his sealchair on the ground in front of them.
Their eye was red, face puffy and swollen. No one even bothered to bandage their wounds, which scabbed over and in places were covered in ugly, yellow pus. Beldaruit swallowed, and tore his eyes away to look at the child’s face instead.
“My name is Beldaruit,” he introduced himself with a gentle smile. He offered them a hand.
“I don’t know my name,” replied the child, eyeing his hand warily.
“That’s okay. One does not need a name to be worthy of pleasantries,” he assured them, “Tell me, child, would you like to study the way of the witch with me?” The child hesitated. Then, they tilted their head and looked at him. Beldaruit looked into the blue eye, so reminiscent of the sky, and waited.
Finally, the child took his hand.
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“I don’t like that they call me that,” the child told him the very same day, as he carried them to the Healing Spire.
They were so small that they weighed almost nothing. It was alarming how easily he could just pick them up with no concern for his bones.
“Call you what?” he asked, tilting his head ever so slightly to take a look at them.
“A girl.” They grimaced.
“Alright,” Beldaruit hummed. “Would you rather I called you a boy, then?”
For all he cared, they could prefer to be called a dragon, as long as they managed to somehow find he strength to stay alive despite all the odds stacked against them.
From the moment he saw the child in that coffin, he knew that even if everyone else left, he wouldn’t let that child go. He simply couldn’t. No matter what. He couldn’t tell them that though.
Not yet, at least. It would terrify them to be put under such pressure.
Beldaruit himself knew how terrifying holding out for the light that might not come feels. He didn’t even want to think about how scared that child must have been before he came to take them with him.
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The boy was crying.
His white hair was a mess against the pillow. He was trembling, gasping for air, and snot ran down his chin as he hiccuped. He’d woken from a nightmare, and Beldaruit only knew because he heard him whimper as he passed to check on him before retiring to bed himself.
Beldaruit had no idea what to do.
When he’d decided to take the boy in, he expected there to be difficulties. A child with no name, no past, no eye. He was bound to be a traumatized bundle of nerves, he knew, but it didn’t make it any easier.
And yet, this wasn't something that Beldaruit was used to, and he didn't think he ever could become used to. The image of a child sobbing on his knees, with tears streaming down his face and hands fisted in his hair was something that Beldaruit would forever hope to never witness again. No child deserved something like that.
Despite only having the boy around for a week or so, he had seen him cry plenty already. It was never like this, though. He knew how to soothe him when he was scared and quietly crying in the corner of the room or hidden beneath blankets. Managing a full-blown panic attack was harder.
Up until now, the boy spent the majority of his time under Beldaruit’s care in the Healing Spire, recovering from his injuries. He had nightmares, and he had cried, and he was sick, but it was managed by doctors and nurses. Beldaruit was only allowed to watch from a distance, as the healers worried over his health as much as they worried over the boy.
It wouldn’t do any good if he caught an infection from a sick child, and as helpless as he felt, Beldaruit understood his restrictions.
Now he was the one the boy was relying on. He had to do something.
It would be cruel to leave him to cry it out until he passed out of exhaustion. Beldaruit could not leave a frightened child alone.
“Oh, love,” he murmured as he helplessly watched the child struggle for air. Earlier, he attempted to rub circles across the boy’s back, but it just made things worse. He recoiled and curled up on himself tighter, a new wave of terror taking over him.
He was just... so lost and confused, and Beldaruit’s heart ached to cradle him close and give him some warmth to cling to. It seemed too soon for that sort of comfort, though. He had to respect that and come up with some other way to distract him and help him come down. But how...?
His gaze wandered over the walls of the still-empty room. It was a muted bedroom, with not much personality to it, but he didn’t want to decorate it when he didn’t even know what the boy liked. The boy himself didn’t know that, and it made it all the more difficult.
Suddenly, Beldaruit realised that the room was bare and muted and, oh, so painfully boring for a child. And with that realization came the much-needed clarity. He was a witch. He could make pretty, distracting things spark to life and waltz from under his wand.
There was no need to touch the boy, if he could put on a show.
Thankfully, he always had his palmquire with him. He didn’t have to think long about what kind of spell to draw – within seconds, he scribbled a few sigils and closed the circle. The paper crumpled in on itself and loudly erupted into a cascade of glittery, glowing stars that hung in the air, reflecting off one-another and casting speckles of light on the walls and the ceiling.
He added a sound to the spell on purpose, and it worked. The noise instantly caught the boy’s attention. His head snapped towards Beldaruit, and then he noticed the spell. His eye widened, tracking the colorful, blurry shapes chasing across the walls. It wasn’t elaborate, but it certainly was pretty.
And it was bright, and the boy hated darkness.
“Wha...” he sniffled, pulling himself up to sit. He wobbled on the edge of the mattress, and Beldaruit caught his elbow before he toppled off the bed.
For a second, he was sure that the boy would recoil and panic again. Instead, he fell right into Beldaruit’s lap, his head nested upon white expanses of Beldaruit’s skirt.
Qifrey blinked at him before his gaze wandered towards the spell mirage again. Tears were still rolling down his cheeks.
He wasn’t calm yet, but he was distracted, and Beldaruit could work with that.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Beldaruit mused softly. The boy mumbled something and turned his face into Beldaruit’s skirt.
Beldaruit froze.
Then, he dared to run fingers through the snowy hair. The child leaned into the touch almost subconsciously, and Beldaruit let out the breath he wasn’t aware he was holding.
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The child still had no name, but Beldaruit felt weird about picking a name for a living being that could already speak and think for himself. The boy was no pet, but a human.
Still, Beldaruit procrastinated the ordeal for as long as he could, before it became ridiculous. Weeks passed, and there was only so long one could go without a way to call them. At some point the census administration started bothering him about it.
The boy needed a name and a birth date in order to be put down as the Great Hall resident, and in order for Beldaruit to adopt him, because he was insane like that, and decided he would do it in addition to becoming his master.
He wanted to make sure no Knight Moralis or Wise could take the boy from him, even if their cruel remarks came to fruition and the child actually went blind and thus unable to practice witchcraft.
Picking a birth date was easy. The child did not care for it, and so they settled on opening the calendar on random page and blindly poking it with a wand until it landed on an actual number. November 19th. Good enough.
The name was a bigger deal, though, and after considering all the possible ways of picking a name for an orphan, Beldaruit eventually just put an open registry of his own family tree on the table.
“Familial ties do not matter a lot to witches, but some houses care a lot about their lineage,” he explained, running his finger over the tangled lines of connections and letters covering the pages. “It’s a tradition in some houses that a child is named after a member of their family. And since you’re to be my family soon, I’d be honored if you decided to pick any name you like from here. How does that sound?”
The boy looked between him and the book. His brows furrowed.
“Okay,” he said.
After a solid few minutes of staring at the registry, he put his finger on a name underlined with blue ink. He dabbed at it. “This one.”
Beldaruit looked over his shoulder. Qifrey. He frowned. It was not a bad name per se, but Beldaruit had expected something more... modern, if he were to be honest. He himself had a rather unique name, but he was witch-born. He worried that the boy would be looked upon even more if he chose something so... outlandish.
“Are you sure?” he asked, “It is quite an unusual name for a young boy.”
The child looked at him again with a neutral, near blank expression.
“I don’t know what it says,” he admitted.
Beldaruit blinked. Then, he laughed.
Of course. The boy didn’t know how to read, no one ever taught him. How could he expect him to pick a name from a book? And to think that little rascal hadn’t said a thing, and just blindly obeyed him. Heavens.
“Why did you pick this one, then?” he asked, struggling to contain his laughter. The boy shrugged.
“It has blue next to it,” he explained solemnly.
As if it was the most obvious thing in the entire world.
Beldaruit wheezed so hard that his ribs hurt. Honestly, he deserved that for assuming a seven-year-old fished out from a sinking coffin with no memories whatsoever would know how to read. He deserved it even more for never bothering to check if he actually could, but he was just too busy with everything going on to carry on a proper reevaluation of the boy’s development.
“Okay, okay,” he breathed. “It says Qifrey. Do you like this one or would you like me to read some more names for you?” he asked.
The boy pondered for a moment, his expression unreadable. He repeated the name aloud a few times, and then nodded.
“I like it,” he decided.
“Alright, Qifrey it is, then,” Beldaruit said, and reached towards the half-filled form he still had to deliver to the civil administration offices. He looked at the empty rubrics, and then motioned at Qifrey to come closer.
“Come, I will teach you how to write your name,” he said, patting his thigh.
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Qifrey was a bright boy, and he learnt quickly. He made progress in sprints and jumps, but all his brightness could not save him from being a child. And by extension, Beldaruit could not be saved from the worries of parenthood. .
At first, he was happy to see that Qifrey had made a new friend. Olruggio, the boy from Ghodrey, seemed nice enough and he certainly didn’t mind (or didn’t know, Beldaruit wasn’t sure) that Qifrey was an outsider. Sure, the boys had a bit of a kitten fight when they first met, but they were boys, and some of that childhood rowdiness was somewhat acceptable and even expected.
Besides, despite Qifrey’s initial insistence that Olruggio was *not* his friend, Beldaruit could see that the boy had grown fond of his new acquaintance, and he not-so-sublty encouraged their shenanigans.
Predictably, as it often was with all good intentions, it came back to bite him in the a– to gnaw at the legs of his sealchair. Qifrey’s and Olruggio’s so-called adventures became a recurring cause of headaches for him.
First, it was just roughhousing. Then some wandering, but nothing alarming. Then, one night the boys simply disappeared.
It was safe to say that Beldaruit was worried sick. He and the other boy’s master, an older witch whose name Beldaruit knew but it simply refused to stick, spent hours searching all thorough the Great Hall’s length and width, leaving no stone unturned.
Eventually, some kind soul had mentioned they noticed a white-haired boy sneaking out through the Window Way.
Beldaruit felt as if the ground became solid again, no longer threatening to swallow him whole. After that clue, finding Qifrey and Olruggio was a quick work. It was the first time Beldaruit was truly frightened for the safety of the boy, and it surely wouldn’t be the last. Still, even despite scolding him up and down, voice stern and strict with words, he couldn’t help but sigh in relief and tug Qifrey close to his chest. Of course, he flinched and pulled back, but not before Beldaruit could feel the warmth radiating off his skin under his fingertips.
In the end, the whole ordeal was shorter than its consequences. And these were dire, because his boy had gotten sick, and Beldaruit had gained a few new wrinkles, his brows furrowed in worry for days on end.
Qifrey was never of great health. Found half-drowned, malnourished and battling off several infections, there was no possible scenario in which a child so young could just walk out of this kind of state with no lingering ailments. He got better, but his immune system stayed rather weak. Not as bad as Beldaruit’s was, but bad enough that he couldn’t help but fret over his apprentice whenever he as much as sneezed one too many times.
This time his worry was palpable and rooted in real fear, because the morning after their nightly escapade, Qifrey had developed a fever. Beldaruit had gone to check on him after he hadn’t come down for breakfast, and he found the boy flushed with fever, sweaty strands of hair clinging to his forehead.
The boy moaned and whimpered in his sleep, clearly out of it and restless. Beldaruit internally cursed himself out for allowing the boy to be so reckless, for not paying more attention.
This was his fault.
Well, perhaps not entirely. The boys had gone off on their own, after all. Still, Beldaruit had known how adventurous his apprentice could be, and by then he also knew that Olruggio was no better.
Even worse, he had encouraged it, wishfully thinking that a little mischief could do the boy some good. Instead, all he got for it was a fever and very apparent sickness. For a moment, Beldaruit felt a twinge of dramatic need to wail in despair, to mourn their shared recklessness.
Instead, he pressed his palm against Qifrey’s forehead and immediately frowned. He was burning up.
He meant to be careful, barely caressing the skin, but Qifrey still hissed at the contact. Beldaruit could only guess that his fingers felt like sandpaper against his oversensitive skin. Qifrey stirred awake and blinked blearily, trying to get a better grasp of his surroundings.
He squinted when the light hit his eye and whined.
“Dad,” he mumbled miserably. Beldaruit stilled.
Dad. Qifrey had called him dad. He would likely forget about it by morning, and then never admit to it even under torture, but he did. Beldaruit felt his heart swelling, threatening to burst. Dad.
“Oh, my poor baby,” he whispered.
He took a hold of Qifrey’s hand and squeezed it lightly. He instantly noticed how sweaty and clammy it was, but he paid it no mind, instead rubbing soothing circles across his knuckles with his thumb. Qifrey’s fingers tightened around his, tight, and he winced, but he didn’t pull away.
He was used to pain, and this kind of pain in particular was the one kind he didn’t despise as much, so he squeezed back, humming softly.
Qifrey ended up being sick for weeks.
The fever took all too long to plummet, even with the help of medicines prescribed by the doctors in the Healing Spire. During these few days, Beldaruit was a nervous wreck. At first, he simply worried. Then, when the fever had gotten bad enough that the boy had to be taken to the Healing Spire, he was genuinely scared.
He spent his days between whatever work that still needed attending and the side of Qifrey’s hospital bed. The boy had spent most of his time there asleep or delirious, babbling nonsense and apologizing interchangeably.
Then, after the fever was finally gone, he came down with a cough so violent that he ended up retching whatever little fluid or food he could swallow. Pneumonia, healers had said. The diagnosis made Beldaruit dizzy. People died from that. He’s had friends in the past who had died because of similar illnesses.
It was a terrible time, and if Beldaruit was religious and believed in any gods, he surely would have prayed. He wasn’t, though, and instead he could only soothe the boy as he trembled, whispering reassurances and kind words.
Olruggio visited every few days, but at first Qifrey was so sick that he didn’t even care. Then, he only brightened up briefly whenever his friend visited, before falling back into the embrace of restless, uneasy sleep.
When Qifrey finally got better enough to go back home, he’d looked like a proper ghost. He lost weight again, and the shadow under his eye darkened, his skin pale.
He was weak, but begrudgingly, day by day, he recovered.
Within a few months he was himself again. Yes, he complained more about the stuffiness of mist that served as the Great Hall’s air, he whined about occasional pains in his bones and looked offended by the very concept of running at times, but he started being moody and having an attitude again. He even started hanging out and sneaking about with Olruggio, and Beldaruit couldn’t even pretend to be mad about it.
Of course, he worried, at first, that the boy would get sick again. It seemed as if the long illness did nothing to knock the ideas of escaping the Great Hall out of his head.
Still, he missed this version of Qifrey so much. He would shave years off his lifespan if it meant he would never have to see Qifrey so miserable again. Twice in barely over a year of knowing the boy was completely enough, thank you very much.
Time passed, and Qifrey returned to his studies with passion, and went out on his adventures and came back from them with joy. He talked constantly, usually about Olruggio. He smiled more, and even laughed sometimes.
And so, eventually, Beldaruit allowed himself to relax.