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armulyn · 1 year

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Four months ago, listening to dark and epic songs such as I See Fire and Battle Scars and with the Wingfeather Saga on the mind, I opened a doc and wrote, as you do, just to let off some steam. What came out was a weird amalgation of different AUs of the saga that I'd plow through five pages of each and then switch tacks.

None of them are complete, seeing as the Wingfeather Saga is so wonderfully (and infuratingly) written that any attempts to make things better usually end in the utter decimation of the plot, characters, and/or themes of the saga.

Now, a month and a half post my last edit to them, I decided quite elegantly and maturely, what the heck? and decided to try letting one out.

So, what if Artham actually did find the way back into the Deeps after finding the water from the First Well?

Fun fact, this is the 'The Warden and the Bear King' WIP from that ask game a while back.

[SPOILERS ABOUND. THROUGH BOOK 3 I THINK.]

Artham finds the cavern back into the deeps of Throg about two months after exiting, and rushes in without hesitation. Maybe it's the same one he left from, maybe it isn't, but either way it's twisting, unwieldy, and difficult to get the seed-husk of water from the First Well through unspilt. Hours he winds through passages, through burrows, and through endless doubts and shrieking voices warning him to go back.

He makes it to the dungeon eventually, and he freezes at the sight of it. Music is playing nearby— he'd thought he'd heard it ten minutes ago, but he'd told himself he was imagining it!— Sing the song the voices start, and against his will his lips start to move a bit... Terrified, he flees like mad, and he might have reached the surface once more had not a clatter from behind startled him.

He'd dropped the seed-husk.

Sprinting back, he frantically picks it back up, but nearly all the water has drained away, only a few drops left. He paws at it, trying to push the trickle of water back into the husk, the useless talons scraping awfully on the stone like nails on a blackboard. It's hopeless, so eventually he gathers his strength and tattered courage and presses on with what few drops he has left. He has to find Esben now, he tells himself, refusing the voices that press upon him at the name, for it is only a matter of time before he loses the rest of the water, the only thing that stands between him and utterly failing the High King yet again.

Back into the dungeon, closing his ears forcefully against the pulsing music, ducking behind cages when a Fang wanders through, searching for Esben. When he finds him, the king is in a newly reinforced cage, further back from the exit than it had been before. They've taken precautions, but precautions are nothing to a properly motivated Throne Warden, and the cage door cracks open within seconds.

"Esben," he chokes, and his brother starts. Esben's face is as he remembers it— bearded with fur, grey bubbled skin breaking out in patches, dazed pain in his eyes— but a wonder in them as well. "You... came back." he croaks, and Artham has to dash away tears to see the chains properly. He'll break them in a moment but first— "Aye," he says, "Now drink this."

He holds the battered seed husk gently to Esben's mouth. He watches carefully as his brother drinks the few drops eagerly— they probably haven't given him water for days, he fumes— and then leans back against the cage wall, exhausted by this small exertion. But there isn't time for rest or to wait until the water takes effect, and Artham hauls him to his feet. They stumble together from the cage, through the dungeon, Artham supporting almost all of Esben's weight, and thinking that if they happen to trip and fall then they would never manage to get up again. He prays with breath he can't spare that they won't trip.

Artham has always been tall, and his strength had been renowned in years past, but he has languished in a dungeon for— years, surely. He is stronger than Esben, but two months of frantic wandering, eating whatever he can and constantly moving hasn't improved his strength so much as his endurance. Thankfully, by the time the dungeon turns back into winding caverns and tunnels, Esben seems stronger, and can walk on his own. Neither of them speak in the pitch darkness, each moving as if in a dream with only each other to remind them they aren't. Artham holds tight to Esben's hand with his left arm, and the other wraps around Esben's side, even if his brother doesn't need his support any more. He doesn't want to imagine losing hold of his brother, here in the darkness. They stumble past a patch of blooming flowers and vibrant grass sprung from the cold rock where Artham had dropped the water from the First Well.

Under a pitch-black sky they stumble from pitted stone onto night-darkened grass.

They spend perhaps a week in the Blackwood, journeying west at a stumbling pace. They grow stronger, with daylight, food, water, and companionship. Sometimes other cloven shamble past them, but always wild and untamed. Artham and Esben don't have any water from the First Well left, nor anything else to envy, and so they're left alone for the most part. In the bright sunlight, Artham can see what he'd missed in the dark of the deeps. Throughout their steady trek, the water was working upon Esben, and his face seems clearer, the grey mottled skin gone and the patchy fur a golden-brown color that matches his hair. He looks a little odd, a little bulkier and more bear-like than before, but he has come back to himself, he is Artham's little brother, and he is not broken but healed.

The brothers have a lot of time to talk on their westward journey.

At first, Artham has trouble keeping back the high-pitched gibbering his voice and words keep trying to become, especially when Esben is quiet or contemplative or otherwise not talking. Esben is alarmed when it starts, which sets Artham off even more, which turns Esben’s alarm to worry, and it all ends in a mess of I’m sorrys and heart to hearts and confessions.

Once the brothers lose each other for an entire six hours.

Artham had gotten panicked, and in his sleep-deprived state he’d run away from the familiar man who called him by name with the blue eyes that filled with pain and memories at times— his fault, it was his fault—

Esben trails him at first, tracking his brother’s panicked flight through the loamy soil, but it isn’t safe to journey alone in the Blackwood, even in broad daylight, and soon he stops to consider his options, perched high in a tree where he had fled from the reach of a toothy cow. Artham would calm down soon, and probably panic and retrace his path. Esben was on said path, and if he kept shouting his name from the tree where the many creatures of the wood couldn’t reach him…

Artham refuses to stray more than ten feet from his little brother’s side for the rest of the Blackwood.

In the original story, Artham had stowed away on a Fang ship to Skree, following a tiny pinprick of light that told him the children of the king were there. He had nearly starved in the hold, but made it to Glipwood only five years after the fall of the Shining Isle. Now, with his little brother at his side, he has more to think of than himself.

They take refuge in an abandoned cottage a few hours from the edge of the Blackwood, shifting through debris for anything useful. Artham finds an intact glass vial in the kitchen, but the last of the precious water had gone toward Esben’s healing, and so he tucks it, empty, among their scant belongings in the hope it might be useful.

Esben had decided, in the first clear-minded rest after their exit from the deeps, that he was not going to ask Artham about what happened to Nia and the children. He barely remembered anything about that day, beside sitting down to lunch to the sound of Nia’s laughter as she tried to coax little Kalmar to eat. Janner had been excitedly relating some epic adventure from his day to his Uncle Artham, whose strained face of the past week eased somewhat while he listened.

Then the Fangs had come.

After Esben had been taken captive, ripped away from the room of the Fane of Fire and force-marched to the dungeon, he had caught sight of Artham being shoved into one of Rysen’s well-kept cells. Seeing the fear in his brother’s eyes, the Throne Warden had shaken his head, mouthing they’re safe. That was the extent to which they had communicated for the four years of captivity in the deeps of Throg, for Esben had not been bound for the cells but rather to an interrogation room, and they were kept separate on the march to Throg. In the deeps, they had not spoken at all, both consumed by the dreadful music and their own demons.

Esben had been given a front-row seat to his brother’s breaking, though they had only glimpsed each other once in a blue moon. He could hear the Stone Keeper taunting Artham with food, with freedom, with a snatch of sunlight. He could hear his brother shouting his name, and receiving no answer. He could hear his brother muttering in his sleep, in his waking hours, mumbling and shrieking as if the voices in his mind had taken over his speech.

Artham was the one they focused on, for they knew they could count on the king to break. What had the king ever done, besides rule from the protecting shadow of the Warden? What had the king ever done to protect the kingdom, while the Warden waged wars with his own strength and the strength of those loyal to him? What had Esben ever done, besides falling to the Fangs the moment he tried to fight without his brother by his side?

The Stone Keeper came and went from Artham’s side like a scuttling shadow, but she never paused by Esben, for which he was shamefully grateful. The dark of his cell and the silence was never broken save by what peeked in from without, as the days turned and his brother went mad and Esben began to think he was forgotten by even his captors. His only companion was the music that echoed in the dungeons and crept into every forgotten corner, and filled his head to chase away the silence.

His brother, Esben decides, has gone through enough. He isn’t going to ask and possibly bring back bad memories. He isn’t going to ask about the tears that had watered Artham’s fierce eyes even as he was shoved into a cell, even as he mouthed they’re safe. He isn’t.

Sitting at the dilapidated table of the abandoned cottage, Artham tells him anyway.

#the wingfeather saga #wingfeather saga #artham wingfeather #esben wingfeather #although forever incomplete i actually had fun with these #and quite like them #so here's one of my favorites #there's like. at least five separate AUs. that are literally all #'how many ways can I mix up who gets off the burning Anniera and how and how long does it take to find each other???'#also the Crack Armulyn Theory We Don't Talk About #wingfeather spoilers #present tense and pseudo-bulletpoint because weirdly that's the format that Works for AUs #don't ask me why #my writing #writing #the wip title for this (before the real one) was 'wingfeather bros' because i am abundant with imagination obviously

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