Honestly, disappearing from the entire world for several years sounds really good right now. It's been that kind of day.

The man who walks up to the wall of tangled black brambles that guards the northern edge of the city is tall and well-dressed, with a very fancy-looking sword on his back. He looks like he is probably some sort of prince, except that there is no crown to be seen, and he definitely dresses like the sort of person who would wear a crown if he had claim to one.

He glares at the wall of thorns. The part of the wall directly in front of him bursts into white-hot flame.

The part of the wall directly in front of him is obligingly incinerated.

The brambles near it stir, then begin twisting and regrowing to mend the broken hole in the thorny wall. Not fast enough to stop someone from walking through, but fast enough that the wall should be back to its properly ominous and bethorned state within a few minutes.

He spreads out the fire ten feet to either side and keeps it going for several more seconds, until he can feel the edges of the magic start to spark and fray, the first warning signs of a spell about to escape the caster's control. Then he walks through the gap, letting the fire dissipate only after he's all the way through the wall.

The smell of stray magic lingers in the air, a subtle undercurrent mostly drowned out by the much stronger smell of burning brambles. There is nothing in the world quite like the smell of magic going wild, but he's heard it described as 'honeyed thunderstorms' and that sounded almost right.

Those brambles are so on fire. That'll teach them not to exist where Siran is looking.

The ruined city awaits. Buildings have buckled and sunk into the soft ground at odd angles, the once cramped streets now strange and claustrophobic. Past the smell of wild magic and burning brambles is the faint and subtle sickly sweet smell of rot that drifts on the air, like fermented fruit. Magic that went wild long ago, and lingers long past its time. The street is more green mold than paving stones, and like the urban landscape, buckles and twists upon itself. Barbed silver thorns glint out from beneath the green-grey mold. There are probably more hidden within the mold itself. He'll have to watch his step.

Ugh. He may have fucked up pretty badly but at least he's pretty confident the entire world is not going to smell like stewed spellfray a thousand years later. Who did this, and what the hell were they playing at?

He shouldn't use fire again so soon. Something else. The street freezes over, trapping the thorns under ice for as far as he can see them in every direction.

The path is summarily frozen.

In the distance, the too-tall castle stands out against the horizon, the most obvious place for where the curse was born. But it's a long way away, through twisted and buckling streets. Maybe it would be best to leave it alone.

There's a faint hissing sound, to his right. A small muddy creature pokes its head out from under a collapsed balcony, snarling with a mouth full of spine-like teeth.

He glares at it.

It does not have a very good sense of self preservation, and leaps at him accordingly.

He draws his sword. Doesn't even bother with magic. Not that the sword is perfectly mundane; its edge seems to ripple and waver, mirage-like, in the slanting afternoon light. Faint threads of power trail from the blade like ghostly smoke.

The effect when it goes through the creature is... messy.

The nearby architecture kind of needed another coat of paint, anyway. He's just doing his civil service.

There's some more hissing from a right-wards direction, but nothing else jumps out at him. Maybe they have a better self preservation instinct, or something.

Maybe so.

He keeps walking. The sword stays out.

That turns out to be a good idea.

The small muddy creatures apparently started collaborating, because now there's a swarm of them. Ten, maybe fifteen, leaping at him with unnatural speed from all around him. All at once.

He catches about half of them with one swing of his sword, spraying several more buildings with a fine mist of ex-creature in the process; but this still leaves a half-dozen creatures unimpeded, and he does not have time for a second swing.

Somehow he's not worried.

Half a dozen of the creatures attempt to see if he's part of a balanced breakfast.

They all get at least one bite in, and some manage two, before he growls and bursts into flame. The creatures are incinerated. When the flames die down, the unsettling aura around his sword is just a tiny bit brighter.

Also he's bleeding. Kind of a lot.

He starts walking again. The bite marks heal over with visible speed. They'll probably be gone in half a minute or less.

Nothing attacks him in that half a minute. This precedent will probably not hold.

The ice is definitely helping with the ground spikes, but not quite obviating them entirely. When he steps on a particularly buckled bit of street, it crumbles under his weight, sending his foot right into one of those silver spikes.

It slices through his boot as if there were no boot present, and it burns like it's coated with acid.

He snarls.

It hurts enough that he has trouble concentrating, which makes this a spectacularly bad time to do magic; he puts his sword away and grits his teeth and carefully disentangles himself from the thorn.

How careful is he being, really? Is he very, very careful? The ground is so slippery from the ice, and some of the thorns are hidden...

He is being very fucking careful, but ice and blood aren't the best combination, and he is not at his best. He falls again, landing hard on the section of street right next to the one that got him the first time.

A thorn would like to say hello!

This one is barbed.

Yeah well Siran would like to -

No he would not like to set it on fire, this is such a bad time to start throwing fire around, so soon after the last couple times and when he let the first one start to get a little wild and when he can barely think straight with pain and frustration -

He takes a deep breath. He stares at the thorn. It's the size of a pen, slender and glittering, sticking out of the back of the hand he put out to catch his fall. Scraps of skin and flesh cling to the barbs where they tore at him on their way through. It will no doubt be worse in the other direction. But sitting here dreading it isn't going to help any.

So he just yanks his hand off the thorn.

It's definitely worse. He hears the bones in his hand snapping before he feels it, and cradles his hand against his chest with a hiss of pain as the bones unsnap and the flesh regrows and knits back together. Silent tears drip from his face to mingle with the blood on the ground.

He has a few minutes of undisturbed peace.

His hand finishes healing, and the lingering pain fades almost completely, and he wipes tears from his face and then scrubs away the resulting smear of blood with a clean bit of sleeve, and then he starts to examine his surroundings in preparation for maybe standing up.

There's a faint whizzing sound from behind him, then a soft thump.

A winged insect creature with glittering iridescent chitin peers at him with large dark eyes, chittering softly. It's about six inches long, with six curved legs and small bits of fluff poking out of its carapace where the chitin meets wing. It's - kind of cute, actually.

"Fuck off," he says, and calls a blast of wind to blow it away.

It is sent end over end, chattering unhappily at this state of affairs. Half a dozen feet away, it lands, righting itself. The small bits of fluff floof themselves out more, and it looks affronted.

There's a moment of hesitation, then the creature tentatively hops another foot forward. It chitters again, giving him what could be interpreted as a concerned look. Concerned chitter?

He glares at it, then ignores it in favour of the slow process of standing up without falling over again.

It hops closer, again. Hop. Hop. Hop.

When it's about two feet from him, it stops, and chitters again. It tilts its head.

Then it screams, and the front of its head bursts apart faster than blinking, revealing a tangle of threads the same color as the fluff. A hundred little fishline-thin tendrils flare out from where its mouth should be and slice through the air towards, and then through Siran.

- he calls fire, instinctively, just wanting to destroy it as quickly and thoroughly as possible -

The magic spins out of his control almost immediately. He wanted fire? It gives him fire. The resulting explosion levels buildings for thirty feet in all directions in the few seconds before he manages to rein it in. The ice he called earlier is vaporized. Sand fuses to glass.

Siran himself is only slightly singed, but the air around him is so burned out that he spends an uncomfortable few seconds coughing and choking amid the rising steam, unable to draw a useful breath. And the creature is almost completely gone, not even a fleck of ash remaning to show where it once stood - but where its threads intersected him, they were spared just as he was. So now he's full of severed threads, stretching and sliding whenever he moves, cutting him if he strains them too badly. It doesn't even hurt that much, but it's horrible. And his shudders of revulsion just make it worse.

The crater around him is silent. If there was anything horrible in the radius of the explosion, they're either dead, trapped, or very quiet. Most of the street mold has been burned away, and some of the pavement, for good measure. The thorns are easily visible from between the cracks in the cobblestone, unharmed from the blast.

He's earned himself a reprieve, but he maybe shouldn't bet money on nothing having noticed that.

Yeah unfortunately he's a little busy right now.

If he sits very still and waits a while, his healing will figure out how to fix this, but he does not especially feel like waiting on that, so he very carefully summons some magic and uses it to pull the threads out one by one, wincing slightly every time. If he tried, he's sure he could destroy them in place somehow, but it would take more power and he might not be able to get them all before the magic started to go, which is exactly the sort of situation where he might be tempted to push it past the safety margin and end up with more magic than he asked for. Pulling too much fire usually causes explosions, which are at least straightforward; he has no idea what pulling too much pinpoint destruction would do and isn't keen to find out.

There are a lot of floof bug threads. He might not have time to pick out every single thread before -

He hears a faint hissing sound. Is that a horde of the mud creatures with the spined teeth? Because it sure looks like a horde of the mud creatures with the spined teeth. There are about five times as many, this time, and they are heading right for him, in a huge wave of seething brown.

Destroying the nearby buildings cleared the skyline, so he can also see what looks like more floof bugs flying towards him.

On the one hand, it's probably a bad idea to start messing with more complicated magic and its less predictable side effects right now. On the other hand, he really fucking hates those floof bugs.

Every floof bug in sight simultaneously turns into water.

Then he goes back to pulling out threads, because honestly right now he cares more about that than about being devoured by a pack of mud creatures.

Sploosh, go the floof bugs.

He has another few seconds of undisturbed thread removal before the pack crashes into him like a tidal wave. The pack of mud creatures do their absolute best to devour him.

He and the pack of mud creatures are all struck by lightning. It passes through him harmlessly. The mud creatures are not so lucky.

They definitely aren't!

There are a few stragglers that are outside of the radius of the lightning. They throw themselves at Siran in a suicidal fashion. It will probably not work out for them; mud creatures don't seem to be very smart.

He is at this point annoyed enough to crush them to death with his bare hands, despite the obvious riskiness of this method.

They have very long, very thin, very sharp teeth, and they are faster than he might expect.

Unfortunately for them, these are about the only positive traits that can be assigned to their physical abilities. Crushing them to death with his bare hands is easy; their bones snap like a bird's would.

He ends up with some nasty creature-bites, which he ignores, because pulling out the last few threads is so much more important.

Okay. There. Now he can get up and keep walking.

It's much easier to see the silver thorns, now. He can just avoid stepping on them, if he's careful. There's not even any ice to slip on anymore, though there is otherwise a bit of a mess.

A few floof bugs fly towards him. Otherwise, he seems to be free to walk.

He - carefully, and individually, and with minimal power - sets all of those floof bugs on fire.

They make a delightful popping sound as they burst into flames! Seems they're pretty flammable.

Good for them. Onward.

Onward!

He's exiting the outskirts of the city and entering the city proper, now. It's getting more and more claustrophobic, with narrow moldy streets and tall buildings in a terrible state of disrepair. He'll have to start watching his step again soon, but he reaches a bridge before the mold reasserts itself in force.

The canal the bridge offers passage over has probably seen better days. The water is dark and murky, polluted with refuse and debris from the nearby buildings. Glittering swirls of a pale blue and white substance coat the otherwise swamp-like surface, like droplets of oil floating in water. Some plants have taken root near the edges of the canal, including more of the silver thorns, but nothing else looks recognizable. To his left is a path that leads down to the water itself, meant to be some kind of dock. There are boats, or what probably used to be boats, before they were overgrown and rotted over.

If he watches his step, he can probably make it over the bridge safely. The thorns seem to have had trouble taking root in it, and while the bridge is half-buried in rubble, it looks sturdy enough.

Fine. Bridge.

The bridge does not collapse under his weight immediately.

Did that bit of rubble just move?

He has his sword out before he has time to wonder if he's being silly. And, knowing this place, he's not being silly.

He is not being silly!

Something like a frog's tongue darts out of the rubble and towards Siran.

It encounters his sword on the way.

The appendage vaporizes accordingly, and something in the rubble screeches in agony.

A bit of the rubble detaches itself and attempts to scurry away, the mottled colors of its skin shifting to match a different part of the bridge.

He snickers.

The mottled beast successfully scampers to hide on the underside of the bridge, making sad sounds of pain. It seems to have no trouble attaching its feet to the underside of the bridge.

He is free to proceed.

He proceeds in a somewhat better mood!

The bridge harbors no new terrors for him.

The street past it is covered in moss and mold, and is noticeably more overgrown than the previous city block. Silver thorns poke out from ugly grey-green gunk of the street, and now also from the walls of every building. Among the thorns are glowing flowers the color of flame.

Pretty flowers. They're probably horrible in some way. He sets one on fire just to see what happens.

It consumes the fire, brightening significantly and looking no worse for the wear.

Well that's not promising.

The flower stays at its new brightness level, but nothing else happens.

Uh-huh.

Well, what's the worst that could happen? It's fire. Fire is fine. He keeps walking.

The fiery flowers pulse dangerously with every step he takes, faintly at first, and brighter as he walks closer and closer.

Yeah he still cares more about avoiding the thorns.

He can avoid the thorns!

But he cannot avoid the thorns and avoid the flowers. When he steps too close to one, it explodes. Then the next nearest one explodes. The rest give in to peer pressure. It is all very fiery, but the fire is not the problem. The problem is the concussive blast from two dozen exploding flowers, one of them he supercharged himself.

He might have trouble avoiding the thorns under these conditions.

- but see, there's fire.

And just like he has an enchanted sword to absorb excess spellfray, he enchanted himself to absorb excess fire when he got tired of narrowly escaping death by spontaneous combustion whenever he lost his temper. Death by spontaneous combustion is no longer a concern, but fire still fuels him like spellfray fuels his sword.

He never figured out how to make it not hurt, or he'd go around on fire all the time.

The explosions tug at his clothes and ruffle his hair, but he keeps walking, unaffected. As far as he's concerned they might as well be a light breeze.

Then he will not have trouble avoiding the thorns under these conditions, and the flowers probably feel very impotent.

The fire also does a number on the moss disguising the thorns, so this street is now kind of toothless if he pays attention to where the thorns themselves are. He is free to walk unimpeded.

What lovely flowers.

And so impotent! So very, very impotent!

It's a lovely walk, until after he passes under an overhanging balcony, where he feels something sharp sting his shoulder, then numbness everywhere else.

He might also notice a total inability to move any of his limbs.

- what the fuck -

He doesn't have time to limply collapse to the ground, because he's being rudely pulled back, until he collides painlessly with a wall, then up. Through a stray set of silver thorns (which hurt just the same) that break off into him, and into the waiting jaws of something that blended in with the wall. From context, this is probably of the same species as the earlier beast that failed to accost him on the bridge.

It sinks sharp claws into his shoulders and begins attempting to eat him. Head first. It has rows and rows and rows of tiny, serrated teeth, and a mouth that opens far, far too wide.

And now he can move again.

Maybe he should just go around constantly on fire.

The creature gets in one bite before he magically tears it in half.

Yep, that's half of a creature like the one that he upset on the bridge.

Of course, now that it's dead, it is no longer keeping him here on the bottom of a balcony, and he and both halves of the ex-creature are unceremoniously dropped.

Without regard for thorns.

So of course he lands on thorns. Several of them. And there just - isn't anything but pain. He'd be setting things on fire if he could think straight to even the minimal degree required for that, but he can't.

After a while, there's a familiar buzzing sound from nearby.

He doesn't even hear it.

Does he hear the floof bug's familiar scream?

Or maybe feel the thousands of tendrils that are slicing into him?

He can tell that it hurts more but details are beyond him.

Well then. That sounds like it's kind of a terrible time to be him, doesn't it?

He manages, eventually, to form a thought that isn't ow. His healing has finally gotten him off the thorns and is now busy reconstructing half his lower back, among other things. There are some really unfortunate holes in his pants.

- of course one of those fucking horrible little bugs got him while he wasn't paying attention. He snarls weakly at it. It's probably not safe to set it on fire but damn is he tempted.

The fucking horrible little bug is having such a great feast! So many fluids to drink! Slurp slurp slurp slurp! Soon enough, it retracts its tendrils, quite full. It had been feasting for a while. It attempts to fly, and -

- It pathetically drops drunkenly out of the sky, wriggling its little legs uselessly. It drank a bit too much, it hadn't before been confronted with something that could dispense infinite life fluids. It didn't know anything about self control. Now it's too fat to fly. It isn't going anywhere until after it's done digesting.

He stands up, with difficulty.

He stomps on the bug.

It goes splat, and oozes red blood that's probably his.

At least it died happy.

Fuck this place so much.

His clothes are a total mess. He resists the urge to set them on fire, and instead repairs them with magic, badly. And then he starts walking again. He is going to get to that palace.

He is left undisturbed for a little while.

There are some more glowing flowers up ahead. These are blue.

He stands well back from all of them and shreds one with magic.

Icesplosion!

Now this part of the street is iced over, and slightly safer.

He can do the rest of them, too, then.

Lots of icesplosions!

These flowers: continue to be impotent.

What lovely flowers! Onward he goes.

The city is getting denser and its layout is becoming a bit more confusing and twisted. The buildings are tilted at more alarming angles, and bending, now. Like someone's taken clay and twisted it. So far he's been able to follow the main street, but it's starting to become harder and harder to tell what the main street is. He might run into a dead end or two.

Something moves, just at the edge of his vision.

- he instinctively sets it on fire, and only barely manages to dissipate the spell before it explodes. His sword glows brightly.

Something makes a dying sound! Probably one of the sneaky bastards. Nothing else comes out of the stonework to cause him trouble. For now.

The street up ahead dips down, and is flooded.

He freezes it over because fuck meeting whatever lives in that.

A bit of the ice cracks and swells, like there is something under there, and ice wasn't enough to kill it.

Oh. Great.

The ice sinks, then swells again, and a large creature bursts from the ice and towards Siran. It does not make it all the way to him, instead flopping pathetically in front of him, its large flat body not really built for land. The shape of it is reminiscent of a manta ray, if manta rays were made out of rotting, misshapen flesh, haphazardly stitched together with algae and vines and what looks to be some kind of sickly yellow mucous.

Stubbornly, it flops a little further up onto the land.

That's really fucking gross.

"You're really fucking gross," he tells it.

What happens if he rips it in half by magic -

Thousands of tiny flying insect creatures burst forth from its hollow carcass and swarm him, that's what happens.

Augh.

Fuck it now he's on fire and so are they.

They're covered in water and the same mucous substance that was holding their carrier creature together, which seems to be at least a little fire resistant. Not fire resistant enough of course. They start burning soon enough. They get a few thousand bites in, first. They're venomous, but the venom isn't paralytic, just painful, burning in his veins a little while longer even after they're all incinerated.

A few strays buzz around in the carrier creature, laboriously pulling the two halves back together, apparently uninterested in throwing themselves mindlessly at Siran.

He definitely shouldn't set the carrier creature on fire too.

He does anyway.

It doesn't explode, this time. It just - gets loose. Curving lines of fire whip through the air like angry snakes tethered to his hands and arms and shoulders, striking at everything in reach, and their reach is growing - ten feet, twenty, thirty -

- it's tempting to just keep feeding them. They express his mood very accurately. But the longer he keeps them, the harder they'll be to get rid of, and surely he will eventually meet something he doesn't want to light on fire, although perhaps not in this city.

The fire-tendrils melt brick and boil water while he thinks about it.

Lots of things burn. None of them seem like a particular loss.

There are a few pained screeches of murderous creatures dying, but really, that doesn't seem like a particular loss, either.

- no. Being too willing to destroy things is what got him into this mess in the first place.

He dissipates the spell.

Lots of things are very on fire! Or very melted after being on fire. A few buildings collapse even after the spell dissipates, their support system still irrevocably damaged.

For a little while there's silence, but for the crackling of a burning city.

It's very satisfying.

He makes a very solid ice bridge across what remains of the flooded section. He walks.

There's a roar that shakes the city to its foundation. For another second, there is silence, then a voice rings out, echoing to every corner of the city.

"Hssssssss loathsome pest, leave! Get out of my city! This does not concern you, you are not welcome here!"

- what, is the person who fucked up this badly still here? Or has somebody come along and claimed it? Or did the curse make a guardian monster along with all the other things?

Owner of the voice is not forthcoming on answers to any of these questions.

"There is nothing for you here, nothing of value, nothing to gain - turn around, now, and nothing will try to stop you. Leave!"

"Don't pay much attention to current events, do you," he says aloud, just in case it can hear him.

"I care nothing for the world outside, only for my city."

Apparently it can hear him.

"I contest your claim," he says, cheerfully.

There's a loud growl that shakes the city again, then -

"Why?"

"Because I'm the Emperor and I can do that. And because I'm in a bad mood and want to fight something. And because this place really pisses me off."

"LIAR!"

The word echoes across the city, sending another burned-out building tumbling to the ground nearby.

"I know why you're here, I know why you've come, you're here to steal away my bride - why else would you come, what else is there - you can't have her, she's MINE."

- at the first word, he snarls and draws his sword.

When the voice finishes speaking, he snaps, "Come here and say that to my face so I can make you regret it. Or are you a coward as well as a slanderer?"

Silence.

"I don't want anything to do with your bride!" he adds. "I bet she's one of those awful little bugs with the hundreds of bloodsucking stingers! You sound like the type to go for that!"

Silence -

- broken by a deafening roar and a large silver head bursting through a building. Lightning crackles around the serpent-like dragon that emerges and launches itself at Siran, jaws wide enough to swallow him whole.

He waits, holding his sword, and when it's almost on him he slashes at its face.

A significant portion of the dragon's jaw is now painting the nearby rubble.

The dragon hisses in agony, but otherwise doesn't give a damn. It has three quarters of its teeth with which to bite Siran, and does so, avoiding biting down on the sword itself. Its teeth feel like the thorns do, and then an impressive amount of electricity is channeled directly through Siran.

- he blanks out for a moment, overwhelmed by pain -

- and then stabs the dragon in the eye.

That eye gets obliterated. The dragon screeches in agony, then flings him at a mess of thorns to attempt to get the sword out of the gaping hole that used to be an eye.

This is perhaps a not wholly advisable course of action. Sure, it puts Siran out of commission at least for the moment, but that sword is awfully recalcitrant. It seems to find a way to do more damage whenever the dragon moves or touches it.

It takes a while, but the dragon is highly motivated to get this sword out of this eye, damage or no. Eventually the sword is out of eye socket, but so is just about everything else.

The sword doesn't much cooperate with being flung away to where Siran can't get it, but the dragon can hiss and begin raking up groups of thorns with its claws to cover it. That's almost good enough. The thorns don't seem to cause any sort of trouble to the dragon.

And meanwhile, Siran is slowly healing his way off that pile of thorns.

He stands up.

He catches fire.

He leaps lightly onto the dragon's back, still on fire, and shoves his hand into its remaining eye, still very much on fire, and grabs the edge of its eye socket and pulls with inhuman strength.

The dragon is officially done with Siran's shit. Siran is going to get to be the emperor of all lightning rods, and the dragon attempts to shake him off before another eye is obliterated.

He can be shaken off, but only after he succeeds in snapping off part of the dragon's eye socket in his hand.

Just to prove a point, the dragon proceeds to blast Siran with some more lightning, before hissing and fleeing the scene.

"You're ruining everything, you're delaying me, I have more important things to do than kill a pathetic worm like you," growls the dragon.

Which sounds like someone that's just trying to save face after getting their ass kicked, really.

"You're a fucking coward," he says, after a minute, when he has his breath back.

"I have more important things to do than your petty grudge match, you've delayed her awakening for years."

"Whose awakening?"

"None of your concern, ant."

Snarl. "I'm going to find you and tear you to pieces."

There's no reply.

He shreds the thorns around his sword with magic and picks it up.

Then he resumes heading for the palace.

The city awaits!

... It's mysteriously quiet and peaceful.

Good for it. No doubt something really horrible is about to happen. Siran is well past giving a fuck. He sheaths his sword and lets his clothes fall to pieces and weaves a new set with magic and walks.

He is unmolested until he reaches another bridge, this one over a larger, deeper canal. High buildings tower over the vulnerable looking bridge, suspiciously devoid of any thorns - this might be a good spot for an ambush, especially against him. What with the fire specialization.

...

He doesn't break stride. He doesn't even bother drawing his sword. He just walks onto the bridge.

He feels another sting, followed by paralysis.

Then the bridge explodes. Not a large, dramatic, fiery explosion, but precise, surgical. Each end of the bridge loses its structural support to hidden flowers that finally have stopped being impotent. He's dropped into the canal, where he is immediately engulfed by one of the stitched carrier monsters, to be dragged to the bottom and impaled on waiting thorns, stolen from the bridge.

But now that he knows to account for it, the paralysis doesn't actually stop him from doing magic.

He very deliberately does not use any fire. Ice, lightning, raw force - he does a lot of damage on the way down. The carrier monster might need backup.

It definitely does need backup, evaporating into thousands of insects that die very quickly to Siran's wrath, despite the tenacity of their bites.

But it has it.

Mud creatures swarm in around him to help drag him down, gnawing at his limbs with their needle teeth. They die in droves, but drag him further down all the same.

Eventually they get him on the thorns, and he is less responsive after that.

Once he's safely on the thorns, the mud creatures switch tactics, to stabbing him with as many thorns as possible.

Another carrier monster glides in, and he's further swarmed.

It hurts. A lot. He loses focus, overwhelmed by pain.

But as they hurt him more and more, he starts healing faster and faster. His body rejects teeth and thorns, first subtly, then with significant force.

They keep at it.

The perpetual drowning is like an unpleasant icing on the torturous cake.

It takes two hours. But he gets loose, eventually, his healing accelerated to the point where they can't even get a thorn into him properly.

His clothes are long gone. He can't see down here; he's going to have to find his sword by magic.

But it's been long enough. He's safe to use fire again if he's not stupid about it.

And pain-wise, after the last two hours, a little fire is nothing.

His skin ignites. Things touching him are vaporized. This includes enough water to produce a really memorable steam explosion.

He holds out his hand, and his sword leaps into it.

The things that were tearing him to pieces die in an expeditious fashion.

More attempt to swarm him, but this goes precisely as expected for them, in that they die. In an expeditious fashion.

Debris and boiling water rain down all around him as he walks out from under the ruined bridge. Mud cracks and bakes under his feet.

Standing on the far bank, he lets the flames subside.

"Are you fucking done," he growls.

Nope!

He is swarmed by a horde of floof bugs, with paralytic monster backup. They attempt to paralyze him and then slice him to ribbons.

The monsters' venom barely slows him. The bugs' threads don't even get deep enough to draw blood.

He walks toward the castle.

More mud monsters attempt to swarm him, to little use.

As he passes another bridge, more stitch-monsters beach and empty themselves of their swarm. These do about as much as the mud monsters, in that they do not.

They start attempting other tactics - floof bugs and climbing stalkers grabbing and entangling thorns and explosive flowers to throw them at Siran. Mud creatures attempt to physically hold him down. Stitch monster swarms attempt to invade his mouth and ears to eat him from the inside out.

He lights himself on fire again when the little ones try to swarm him. Otherwise he mostly ignores it all.

They switch to suicide tactics. Collapsing buildings on him, destroying bridges between him and the castle, flinging everything at him, all at once.

The city runs out of things to throw at him before he gets to the castle.

He smiles.

When he arrives, the dragon is trying to claw its way into the castle, to little effect. There are claw marks on the castle, especially at the front door, but evidently, the dragon was unable to enter.

"It's not supposed to be this way," he hisses, desperation coloring his voice. "Damn it, let me in, I can still fix this, I can wake her up, I just need to -"

"Just need to what?" he calls.

The dragon freezes. He turns his head to look at Siran with his only working eye.

"... What does it matter," he growls, "kissing her might as well be as impossible as killing you, you fucker, you've ruined everything. I could have fixed this!"

"What the fuck d'you think you're fixing?"

"Everything! The curse, this stupid body, her slumber - we were going to have forever, and now, it was all for nothing."

"This bride of yours," he says. "Has she, like. Met you."

"She would have forever to learn to love me," he hisses, which is an answer, isn't it. "She's mine."

"I contest your claim."

"Over my dead body!"

The dragon wreathes himself in lightning and launches himself at Siran.

"Happy to oblige," he says, igniting again and meeting the dragon's charge with a swing of his sword.

'Over his dead body' is relatively easy, really. He has an impressive healing factor, but it doesn't compare to Siran's.

What a pathetic dragon.

He yanks his sword out of the corpse and walks toward the castle.

The large set of double doors loom above him, scratched with years worth of clawmarks and sturdy in spite of them.

Then, with a rumble, they open.

Siran walks in.

He almost expects a trap, but - it wouldn't feel right.

Nothing jumps out at him from the shadows, though once he's through, the doors do shut behind him.

One set of corridors is lit. All of the others are shrouded in darkness.

Sure, he'll take the path he's shown. This castle hasn't done anything to piss him off yet, unlike the rest of the city.

The castle does nothing to piss him off, except maybe send him up a number of stairs.

An excessive number of stairs.

...the stairs are a bit much, but maybe it's feeling generous enough to put a bed at the end of them.

At the top of the tallest tower, lit unnaturally in a soft rosy pink glow and with a bright blue spotlight of light, is a large, comfortable looking bed.

It's got a girl in it.

She's very pretty, sleeping soundly on the far side of the bed, hands clasped over her chest. She doesn't stir at all at his entry, still as death itself.

...he blinks at her.

"If I'm supposed to kiss you," he says, "you're going to have to wait a few more hours."

And then he tosses his sword onto the floor and flops on the bed and is asleep almost immediately, nestled upon soft puffy blankets.

If she has any complaints, she's certainly not voicing them.

Peacefully, she sleeps on.

He sleeps. For a while.

But eventually he does wake up. His head missed the pillow and there are smears of blood and ash on the blanket wherever he touched it. He sighs regretfully at them.

There's a tray with what looks like breakfast, sitting on the bedside table. Scrambled eggs, toast, sausage, strawberries...

It smells delicious.

...

"Nice castle."

He sits up and sighs again at the general state of himself and takes a minute to make himself substantially more clean and slightly more dressed, and then he starts in on breakfast.

Tastes delicious, too.

No traps appear from underneath the toast.

How nice.

Okay. He gets up. He tries to clean the blanket; it doesn't quite work, but it's at least an improvement. He walks around to the other side of the bed and stares down at the girl.

...

"Am I actually supposed to kiss you."

No answer is forthcoming from the comatose girl.

The castle is also silent.

"Fine."

He leans down and gives her a peck on the cheek.

Nothing happens.

Sigh.

Okay, okay. He kisses her on the mouth. But he'd better not have to make a production of it.

Silence -

Then she inhales, eyelids fluttering. Clumsily, weak as a kitten, she raises a hand to rub at her face.

"Mmnh, what...?" she murmurs, drowsily.

Mildly disgruntled stranger standing over her in unfamiliar sleepwear, that's what!

He turns away as she wakes, looking for where he put his sword. It's kind of important not to leave that thing lying around. Someone might touch it.

She blinks at him, confusedly.

Then she eyes the bedroom. "... Can we not, with the cliche overdone romantic lighting," she mumbles, groggily.

The lighting promptly becomes much more sensible.

"Yay." She closes her eyes again and makes a wordless sound of protest at waking up.

Snort. Oh, there's his sword. He picks it up - it has graciously refrained from doing anything nasty to the floor - and sits down to remake its sheath, which is probably at the bottom of a canal right now.

The girl indulges in another few heartbeats of rest, then begrudgingly sits up, peering sleepily at Siran.

"You know," she says, "while 'stranger with a sword standing over me ominously' isn't the best wake up in the world, you're being very non-threatening about it. So, um. Thanks for that."

"You're welcome," he says absently, most of his attention on the sword.

She watches curiously, not interrupting a second time.

Nothing much happens for a minute, and then a sheath shimmers into existence, hiding the sword's unsettlingly wavery blade. He relaxes and looks up at her.

"Good morning."

"Good morning. Um. Might I ask - what the fuck."

"There was some sort of enormous serpent yelling about how I was going to steal his bride, is that informative at all?"

Slow blink.

"... Overly posh accent, creepily possessive of me, bit of a prick, not great at cause and effect?"

"Can't comment on the accent, I'm in translation and you lose some nuance that way, but the rest is right on the mark."

"That prick," she hisses. "Where is he, can I borrow your sword, if he's not dead I will make him wish he was."

"Yeah I already took care of that. And my sword's a bit temperamental, I wouldn't recommend touching it."

"Oh. All right. Thank you." She looks pensively at her lap. "How long was I - asleep, do you know?"

"...Centuries at least. Probably a lot more than that."

"Oh," she says, in a small voice.

"... Do you know if it was just me, or if he -" she closes her eyes and shakes her head, looking like she might start crying. "Why am I even asking, I know the answer, he was ranting about us ruling the city forever. Of course he dragged it down, too."

"Yeah."

"Fucker," she hisses. "Do you know if anyone else...?"

"Survived out there? Doubt it. It was pretty nasty."

She tries to form a word, but it comes out as a pained, furious whimper. Instead she closes her mouth and inhales in a stifled half sob. After a pause, she tries again.

"Okay," she says, sounding anything but. "Okay. Is there - is this castle safe from the, the spellfray effects, is there anything you need, anything I need to do...?"

"The castle seems like the sanest part of the city. It sent me breakfast." He waves vaguely at the tray, over on the other side of the bed. "I'm fine."

She nods. "Good."

Then brings a hand up to her mouth to stifle the sobs that soon follow.

...yeah.

He leans his sword against a wall and gets up and goes to stand by the window and stare out it. His clothes shimmer and reshape themselves neatly into something in the vicinity of respectable.

The once-sleeping princess is just going to quietly cry, that sounds like the thing to do.

Outside the window, the city has stopped smoking, at least. But that's about all that can be said for it, really. It was probably lovely, once. Now it's half collapsed, covered in grime and moss and with its canals an ugly shade of green and filled with refuse and bits of rubble. Before Siran even got to it. The parts of the city that he destroyed are - well, they're very evident. He did a lot of damage.

... Is that building moving?

...is it?

It's hard to tell, because it's doing it very slowly, but it seems to be slowly righting itself, straightening up from the angle it had tilted to.

Now that he knows to look for it, other buildings are doing it, too. One is carefully reforming itself from rubble.

"Huh."

Sniffle.

"Mm?"

"Your city appears to be gradually unfucking itself."

Sniffle. "Great, I can be queen of an empty city, that sounds fabulous -" she hiccups a little. "- sorry, I'm sorry, you didn't deserve that."

He huffs a wry vestige of a laugh. "That's debatable."

"You saved me," she points out, sniffling. "I'd still be fast asleep with my stalker peeking at me through the windows calling me his bride if you hadn't of come along. I - kind of don't want to be a bitch at you. Even if you might debatably deserve it."

"Well, fair enough. What's your name? I'm Siran."

"I'm Ivethis." She gives him a watery smile. "Hi."

He smiles back. "Hi. Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, too. ... Adjusting for circumstance, I mean."

Snort. "Yeah."

She sniffles again, and scrubs at her eyes.

"Why'd you even come into a cursed city? Not that I'm complaining."

"I was in a bad mood and wanted to fight something."

"... So you fought a cursed city?" she says, staring.

"I can't really say it was fun but it was definitely satisfying."

...

She giggles, a little.

"Remind me not to piss you off."

He smiles wryly, and looks away. "Yeah."

"Do you do this a lot, then, or was this just a special case?"

Snort. "No. I'm - I don't know what you're imagining but I'm probably not it, whatever it is."

"Damn, there go my visions of a sword wielding madman, throwing himself into cursed places to see them set right," she teases. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't push. We can drop the topic if you'd rather."

"It's, uh. Let's go with complicated. But I'm probably going to have to tell you eventually, if I don't just run off and leave you here, and - I'd rather not run off."

"Thanks. I would hesitate to go out into a cursed city, even if it's, ah. Unfucking itself. So if you run off, please drop me off outside?"

"You might like it better in here."

"... In the castle. Surrounded by cursed city. Alone. For the rest of my life. Okay? How bad is it out there?"

"It was pretty bad when I came in, and this place timeslips, the day I spent getting to the castle could've been a hundred years on the outside. Which might mean everything's fine now or might mean it's even more fucked, I don't know."

"Ah. Okay. Spellfray, or has everything devolved into horrible chaos and if I went out there I'd be chattel?"

"...some of both?"

"That's... great." She eyes him, looks about to ask a question, and then hesitates and keeps her peace.

"—mm?"

More hesitation, then:

"Did you have something to do with that?"

"You could say that, yeah."

"—My name's Siran Tavaryse."

"... You're an heir to that empire with the succession issues? It's still around?"

"It was doing really well, until, uh, recently."

"Oh. All right. Succession crisis?"

"In a manner of speaking."

He turns away from her, looks out the window again.

"I don't know when you knew Isettavar, but it's ruled the world on and off, mostly off. There was a long string of disasters before my grandmother was born, and she grew up in a world that desperately needed somebody to tell it to sit down and shut up and stop tearing itself to pieces, so she did. Reconquered everything, got it all straightened out. And my father built on that. And then - I'm the best caster you've ever seen, I can hang onto a spell long after anybody else would've been swept away - I went after him. I thought - I don't know what I thought. I don't think I even really want an empire. Which is just as well, because there isn't one anymore."

"Ah. All right. ... I'm sorry."

Snort. "I don't see what right I have to anyone's sympathy."

"I don't think sympathy works like that," she points out. "Granted, I have been stuck in here for thousands of years, so maybe it's different now. Do you have little offices that give stamps of approval to people applying for the right to feel sympathy?"

—he giggles.

"Taking that as a no."

"As such, I and my unregulated sympathetic feelings will damn well feel sympathetic for anyone I please," she sniffs. "Sorry."

"Well. Thanks."

"You're welcome."

"So. I have no idea what the world looks like out there, but last I saw it, it was a complete fucking mess."

"Right. Okay. So staying in here is probably highly recommended - you mentioned a timeslip, is it still active? I suppose you wouldn't know, would you."

"I would not."

"Do you suppose it'd be safe to go outside and check? Toss something that'll decay quickly over the border, see if it wastes away before our eyes? Because that's important to know."

"Not sure."

"What dangers would we be likely to face if it's not safe?"

"Nothing you want to meet."

Wince.

"All right," she says, tone turning more gentle. "Well, we don't need to figure it out now. But I would like to know eventually."

Sigh. "Yeah."

She does not offer to hug him, but she does visibly look like she's not saying something. Again.

"Mm?"

"Would you, um. Like a hug?"

"Yeah maybe."

She stands, joins him by the window, and gently embraces him.

Ivethis doesn't particularly want to look out at her ruined city, so she just rests her head against him and pretends her entire life hasn't been ripped away from her.

He shudders slightly, wrapping his arms around her. Her hair smells nice. He really doesn't want to cry on her but he's not sure he can stop himself.

She should probably enforce some kind of maximum hug time or something, but honestly, right now she just wants to be held and his arms feel very nice around her. So she just - stays.

It's a possibility that she might cry too, actually. Emotions are hard.

Feelings: why.

Ivethis concurs. Feelings: why.

How about they just cry on each other, that sounds pretty good.

It sounds kind of terrible actually, but, at this point, admittedly better than not doing that. Crying on each other it is.

"'Wanna move this to the bed so we don't have to keep standing?" sniffles Ivethis, after a while.

He nods.

Bed. Curling up amid slightly smudged blankets.

Ivethis is really not picky about the state of the blankets right now.

Cuddled crying: they have the technology!

They do!

Now that he is no longer a spite-fueled killing machine, it is very hard to keep from remembering that first floof-bug over and over and over again.

Ivethis cries in fits and starts, alternating between soothingly cuddling him while petting his hair, and quiet shuddering sobs while clinging to him. It helps to cry on someone, especially when you feel very, very alone.

Siran cries more continuously than that.

He didn't expect to miss his father, but he does.

Ivethis stops crying first, her fitful sobbing sessions lessening in length and frequency. She doesn't let go of Siran, content to be cried on.

Siran carries on for a while, but eventually trails off and goes quiet. He doesn't pull away.

They can just cuddle, then. She continues petting his hair, because doing that is nice.

Yeah, it kind of is.

Snuggle.

—he laughs softly.

"Mmm?"

"Oh, just - he kept going on about how I was here to steal his bride and my reaction was along the lines of 'I don't give a damn about your bride, I'm not entirely convinced she's not a lump of rock with a tiara painted on', and now here we are—"

She giggles.

"You've caught me. I'm secretly a lump of rock with a tiara painted on, what gave me away?"

"Lumps of rock with tiaras painted on are known to be very cuddly."

"Damn! You've learned the secrets of my people! Where did you find out?"

Helpless giggling.

"Clearly the tiara painting is very important to the cuddling process. Ordinary rocks aren't nearly so cuddly."

"Keep this secret safe, Siran. It's very important that it doesn't get out. Everyone might try to cuddle me, or worse." She lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Paint tiaras on their own rocks."

...he just shakes his head and grins at her, breathless from laughing so hard.

She giggles.

She is kind of tempted to kiss him.

That's probably a bit fast, and as much of a bonding experience as crying on each other for two hours is, she still doesn't actually know him that well. She settles for hiding her face in his shoulder. That seems like a good compromise. So he won't see the faint blush.

...hesitantly, he pets her hair.

Ivethis hums approval and snuggles closer.

Cozy.

—now he's thinking about kissing her. She's very pretty. Feelings. Why.

She is unaware of his feelings, and doesn't attempt to disentangle from the snuggles. They're nice. He's nice. She's a little fragile right now, and maybe flinging herself at the first passably nice person she sees, but, well. It's not the worst coping mechanism ever. ... Probably.

There are probably worse ones out there. For example, she might try to fight a city.

She is not going to try to fight a city!

But she is going to snuggle this man that did fight a city. It is because he fought a city that she can snuggle him, actually. Snuggles: the spoils of war.

Pretty good spoils. —no that's probably not a good train of thought.

Probably not!

She snuggles him anyway, humming contently.

"... Unfortunately I am getting kind of hungry. Which makes sense, considering that I haven't eaten anything in, uh. Centuries."

"...maybe if we ask nicely the castle will bring you breakfast?"

"Maybe! I don't know how this magic works. Uh, castle? Can I have breakfast, please?"

There's a pause, then one of the large bricks in the nearby wall slowly shifts up, and the one below it pushes outward. It contains a tray with more breakfast. Enough that Siran can have some too, even.

"Oh. Okay then."

...he smiles.

Ivethis gently disentangles enough to retrieve the tray from its perch and set it down next to them on the bed. Food!

"I really don't care about crumbs right now, do you?" she wonders. "The bed's a bit of a mess anyway. ... That was you, right, I don't need to ask the castle to draw me a bath so I can scrub myself raw?"

"Yeah, that was me. There's, uh, some scratch marks outside your window, but it looks like he never got more than a claw inside the castle."

She shudders, a little.

"The bastard being outside of my window is still too close for comfort," she mutters.

"Yeah. Sorry."

"Not your fault. Actually, you were the one that killed him. Nothing to apologize for."

He laughs. "Fair enough."

She scoots closer to him, but the mechanics of eating sort of make snuggling tricky. Right now, she'll fall in favor of eating properly and sort of skimping on the snuggling, instead of the other way around. She nibbles at food.

Nibbles. Companionable sitting-next-to.

"This is nice," she murmurs, after a little while. "It's nice to not feel alone. Especially, um, right now."

"It's—"

"...yeah."

... She can probably lean on him! That seems like a thing she can do while eating!

She attempts this feat.

Aw. He can put an arm around her and not mind nibbling slower nibbles.

Eeee.

She's tempted to try to make up for this by helping to feed him, but that is probably taking things too fast. Again. Instead she'll just eat and snuggle and smile at him. (... Only a touch adoringly.)

He grins back at her.

She kind of wants to kiss him aaaaaa.

"I um," she says, suddenly feeling very bad at wordsing, ".... feel I should come up with a topic of conversation, but um. I'm drawing a blank. Save me?"

"—Well now I can't think of anything."

She giggles.

"Oh well. I guess it would be unhealthy of me to just rely on you to swoop out of nowhere and save me. Even conversationally."

Giggle. "Yeah, no kidding."

"Putting aside healthy relationship dynamics and self reliance and the like, swooping in general sounds exhausting. Swooping out of nowhere regularly sounds moreso. It'd be terrible to ask that of you!"

"And, I mean, I wouldn't rely on me to swoop out of nowhere and save anybody."

"No? Well, fair enough, it seems like a lot of responsibility."

"I'm—"

He struggles with words for a moment.

"...I think I've somehow managed to trick you into thinking I'm a good person and I don't know how I did it and I sort of wish I hadn't."

"... I think I'm going to need more clarification as to what you mean? I - tend not to think people go into neat good or bad slots, even the dragon prick was probably nice to someone. Somewhere. Just - not me."

"I'm - you - I rescued you mostly by accident," he says. "I murdered my father for an empire I didn't even want and destroyed it in the process. And - you keep seeming to think of me as - the sort of person who does this sort of thing," with a vague gesture at the room, "and I am not, I'm not a rescuer, I am more often what people need rescuing from. I - I like you. I don't want to hurt you. I haven't been anything but honest with you. But - I feel like you're seeing me as someone I'm not."

"Okay. Um - fair enough. Aside from the... time you, um. Murdered your father for an empire you didn't want, what other things have you done that people need rescuing from?"

He seems to be having some trouble answering this one.

That doesn't seem like an 'I don't have an answer,' that seems like an 'I am having trouble saying the answer.'

"... Would writing it down help, maybe?" she offers. "Or. Does your translation do writing?"

"—it does, yeah. I."

He rubs his face with his hands.

She waits, concerned.

"...ugh."

He gets up. He paces. He goes to the window and looks out at the city.

"I used to torture girls to death because it was hot and I could."

"Oh."

Her mouth opens, but no sound comes out, and even if that were working she has no idea what to say. She's really not sure there's anything that can be said to - to that, really. She closes her mouth, suppresses the growing urge to hyperventilate and flee the room, and pretends for a few minutes that she's her mother. (And doesn't that hurt, her mother's dead, but she can't think about that right now she's busy -)

"W-what were the circumstances of -" No, that's wrong, you're looking for excuses, stop it, what's your real question, what is your first priority? "... Am I in any danger? From - from you?"

"I can see why you wouldn't take my word for it, but - no, I don't think you are. I don't want - I like you. I like this - thing we have - had - with the," he gestures vaguely, "crying on each other, eating breakfast together, that. I like it. I like the way you laugh. I want to see you happy. And, I mean, that's clearly not a guarantee, I'm demonstrably capable of destroying the things I care about for stupid reasons, but..." He trails off with an unhappy shrug, staring out the window.

"Wanting to try is better than - than not," she points out, softly. "Thanks for not, um. Throwing a fit at me not handling this with grace and." She waves a hand. "... I think my track record with men speaks for itself."

...snort.

"Okay, next. Next set of questions - are you, were those instances a, a one off or did you get into the habit, would you continue it if given the chance?"

"I blew up my entire life pretty thoroughly, I don't know what I'm going to do, at all, about anything. I don't think I'm that attached to torturing girls..."

She considers.

"... It sounds like you might need a better - set of things to do? Ones that make you happy in the long term, instead of in the short term and then feeling complicated feelings later. I don't know, did you find torturing girls as fulfilling as, um. Having breakfast together?"

...he smiles slightly.

"It's... a different kind of thing, really. I think I could've been pretty happy the other way but - having breakfast together is something I want in my life more than torturing girls."

"Okay," she agrees. "So, um. ... Have any hobbies?"

...snort. "Besides that one, you mean?"

Little giggle. "Yeah. Besides that one."

"...I'm not a bad dancer?" he comes up with after a moment. "But uh. It's mostly torturing girls and playing with magic."

"... Did you purposefully set out to have the sketchiest hobbies, or did it just work out that way?" she wonders, a little amused.

"It just worked out that way!"

"Aha. Well, okay. What is it about both that you, um. Enjoy?"

"...I like playing with magic because - it's fun, and I'm good at it, and I like pushing the edge of what's safe even though sometimes that means I light myself on fire, and I get even better with practice. I made a sword that eats spellfray, I don't think I could've done that if I hadn't been - good to start with and better because I do it so much."

She nods.

"Does the danger of it makes it more fun? Or is the danger just incidental?"

"...a little more fun, maybe."

Another nod.

"And the, um. Other hobby?"

"I like to hurt people," he says. "I like when I can do whatever I want to somebody. I like seeing them scared and in pain and knowing I did that. I like seeing how badly I can fuck someone up. I got really good at healing magic."

Yep, nodding again.

"So, power and pain, not just - one or the other."

"Well - either one's nice by itself, but—"

"Combined they're more satisfying," she tentatively finishes. "Is it the - the personal power over someone that appeals, or is the knowledge that you're getting away with, ah, murder a satisfying way to prove your overall power? That no one could stop you?"

"...mm... first thing?"

"Okay," she says. "Is it - um. Is it the taking of power over someone, or just the power itself? Would it be the same if it were consensually given? If someone wanted you to, um. Have your way with them."