"Survivor"

Year 764 of Octavus

 man wandered through a colossal throne room whose windows looked out up at a grey sky. His footsteps echoed in the hall while his luminous sword sang over the enemy's blood. His enemies' blood dropped down onto the crystal floor as the man advanced through the lonesome room. His eyes fell upon the meritorious throne, which hovered over the room. Longing and nostalgia gushed over him along with triumph.

For roughly a hundred years, he has shed blood for this moment. To reclaim that which belongs to him. This was his birthright. He descended upon the throne with a sigh and leaned against the hilt of his sword. A smile gradually began shaping itself on his weary face, whose visage was smeared with blood. His long hair was far from its original, white color.

A laughter began to sound deep within the man's throat. His head was thrown back, and the laughter, raving and deranged, resounded in the throne room, and the walls shuddered at his lunacy. The man finally silenced when the pain caught up to him, and he closed his ice, blue eyes in a grimace.

He felt tears furiously burn behind his eyelids. The hall was hollow. He had triumphed in the war just to meet the silence which lay over the city. The snow fell over the land when the sky cried with the Ice mage on the throne. He had reclaimed his homeland. But there was no one left who could celebrate with him. He was alone—ruler of the Eitir kingdom.

*****

Year 782 of Octavus

Akana glanced out over the white valley from the sleigh. He never saw snow before as he was from Auon. A land that consisted of a desert with only a few stones furnished the scorching dunes. This kingdom was the opposite of his homeland. The snow-covered the ground all around the year and any sunlight were scarce in this land.

The sleigh shook when it hit a bump. The roof over the sleigh sheltered him from the cold, and he was tucked in a multitude of furs he has never seen in the past. He could only assume this was to preserve warmth in the ghastly cold. Not that Akana suffered from the cold from where he rested.

Akana could not comprehend how something could freeze under the two suns, whose travel across the sky marked the time of the day. Still, he could only assume it was his Auonian perspective that limited his understanding. After all, he came from a country covered with scorching sand.

The young Auon loathed to need to leave his homeland, but this was an opportunity that did not come frequently. The king of Eitir had entered Virtus Scolaris, school renown in the Nine Kingdoms, around nine years ago. It was now time to have a ward, and he searches through the Nine Kingdoms for one who could impress him enough that he would give them his attention.

Status bore no importance as the king had offered to pay the tuition for his ward. Of course, this was an opportunity that did not escape his family, who did not have the wealth to send him from his homeland for a proper education.

They didn't want him to be a regular Watakau-Mechanist like them. Akana could not fathom their reluctance to let him follow in their footsteps, but he did not refuse to receive an education at Virtus Scolaris. However, he pondered how the primitive Mechanists of the other kingdoms could teach him anything about the mechanism which he did not hitherto know.

Aoun’s cannot use magic, so they rely on logic and technology to compete with the other kingdoms. They remain the only ones of the nine kingdoms who have vehicles of pure mechanics. They are not hauled by animals like the rest of the world but are powered by solar energy.

Aoun’s five merchant princes have also made the land leading in economics, and the cities of Auon are wealthy. Akana was from the nomadic clans who live on the mechanical vehicles "Watakaus" that move indifferently over the sand dunes.

The Auons were outcasts, despite their superior technology. They were perceived as aberrations and were proclaimed as callous monsters.

Akana lifted his hand against the frosty glass window. He let a finger gently glide along the frozen surface and began to hearken a crackling noise. Water began to flow on the window glass when the ice melted, and the sleigh immediately became warmer. Akana removed the hand from the window and now looked out on the landscape without hindrance.

"No magic," Akana thought without doubting his own thoughts, despite the achievement he just performed. He could now see the extensive ice palace, which held his future on the horizon.

*****

Sidastir looked out over the eager crowd with callous eyes when he leaned indifferently on the throne's armrest.

His throne rose above the crowd, and whose eyes followed him with both esteem and dread. The back of the throne formed itself as branches, growing towards the ornate ceiling and from them hung crystals, shaped like leaves.

The throne room was humongous with soaring ceilings shaped like snowflakes. The light from the sunstones gave the hall a beautiful visage similar to the halls described in a fairytale. Sidastir has never utilized the room for anything other than executions. He assumed this was a memorable day, if only because this was a rare event. Trolls and fairies have solely inhabited the palace since the passing of his people. The first one too dumb for an interesting company, and the other to aggravating.

Sidastir found the new company amusing and wondered if he should put an enchantment over the palace so no one could depart from it, but concluded his palace had enough ice statues without having him freeze his guests. Which most likely would have been the result of his hex as he doubted the guests would have appreciated his little mischief.

Guests started to showcase their talents after their names had been called. The majority of them displayed abilities in magic while a few sang or demonstrated their talents for the duels. The young king found the show amusing but was unimpressed with their talents.

He had not initially appreciated the idea of a ward, who would share his chamber at Virtus Scolaris, but had come to appreciate the idea of having a person so close to him. Companionship was something he severely lacked.

Considering what he had seen this evening, he started to abolish the idea that a ward would be something beneficial to have. He sighed and contemplated turning them into walking ice cubes after all.

"Akana of Auon." The next name was shouted. Sidastir raised his gaze. An odd name.

"Auon... Bears no surname? A peasant, in other words,"

Sidastir expressed an interest and peered out through the throne room. The hall filled with a murmur as no one stepped forward. The troll, who proclaimed the name, cleared his throat and shouted the name louder.

"Akana of Auon!"

No one answered the call. Everyone began to loudly utter their discontentment as they were clearly displeased with how a humble peasant could dare undergo the Frostking's trials and not arrived at the ball to demonstrate his abilities.

Sidastir found that this was the most entertaining event that occurred throughout the evening and would just interrupt the troll, who had taken it upon himself to continue roaring out the name and tell him to announce the following participant when the door was flung open.

All fell silent while a young man strode with hasty steps towards the throne. His skin was jet black, and so were his eyes, while his hair hung loosely from his head and fell all the way to the waist. His hair was pure white and descended like a frozen waterfall over the shoulders. His unusual appearance agitated all in the room, but it was not his uncommon hair, which astonished Sidastir.

It was his attire or rather the lack of it. The boy was dressed in a pair of sandals and a cloth of linen wrapped around the waist and then went up over his right shoulder, nothing else. Everyone in the room had such thick clothes on them that looked absolutely absurd. All except Sidastir that His ice elven blood allowed him to be immune to the cold.

"You summoned me, your highness?" said the boy with an elegant bow and showed absolutely no emotion on his unusually beautiful face.

A face that, without a doubt, could compare to Sidastir's own unusual beauty. Sidastir allowed a faint smile, which he knew was more threatening than affable, to run over his lips. Gradually, he allowed the cold from his own body to flood into the throne room.

The people in the throne room began to shiver and pull themselves closer to each other for warmth. Even the trolls, who possessed a certain resistance against severe cold, began to freeze.

He wanted to see this marvelous boy in front of him trembling

"Did the room become colder?" thought Akana when he noticed several of those around him began to chatter their teeth, but Akana just rejected the idea as it was only natural to freeze in an ice palace. He turned to the king, who had leaned back as he gawked at him with a frown.

He possessed the same white hair as an Auon but had snow-white skin that matched the hair. Akana first assumed that the king was an albino, but he assumed this was not the case as the king's eyes were ice-blue instead of red. Which was the customary color for albinos from what Akana had read? His face was softly shaped, but with a sharp chin and narrow nose. The prominent cheekbones gave him a foreign appearance. Akana assumed the king could be called handsome, even if he always had difficulty seeing what beauty is. Artworks were completely incomprehensible for the Auons. A waste of time, so to speak.

"I guess your highness has never seen an Auon before," he assumed, thinking it was his appearance that the king had marveled at.

The folds in the king's forehead became deeper. He let a finger run over his lower lip while he examined the Akana.

"He seems not to have invited many other races besides Patricalis and Relevis to the Midnight ball. I wonder why the ball is called as such. It is not midnight. Maybe the ball shall continue to midnight?"

"Are all Aouns like you?"

The king's voice brought back Akana from his wandering thoughts.

"Like me? All have black skin and white hair, your highness," said Akana and thought that the question seemed to be preposterous but abstain from uttering anything. His future relied on the vagaries of the king, and it was unwise to infuriate him.

"I did not speak of your appearance, Auon. I'm talking about your abilities to handle the cold. You seem to not even pay attention to frost gale I just evoked in the throne room," the king said with a stony voice.

He began to look irritated. Akana frowned at the king. Why would he do so? What is the logic behind his actions? These questions remained unanswered, but Akana decided to answer the wayward king.

"My countrymen would not be able to handle the cold as well as I do, I guess, given that they come from a country that consists of deserts. Winter does not exist in Auon," said Akana but disliked where the conversation topic began to lean towards.

The king leaned contentedly back as if Akana gave him the correct answer.

"Then I presume you have magical abilities," he said, but it did not sound like a question.

"Of course not, your highness! Don't be deceived by this pagan creature. Auons possess no magic!" exclaimed a bulky, older man on Akana's left side.

The king hissed and snapped with his fingers. The man didn't even scream before his entire body was frozen in ice. Only his eyes darted over the room in horror-filled movements.

Akana was astonished that the man had survived in such a condition. His following thought was to try to calculate how long the man would survive in such a state.

Sidastir rose from the throne, and everyone's eyes turned towards him.

"Is there someone else in the room who would like to interrupt me?" he asked with a frigid voice, whereas he beheld the numerous people who began to tremble in fear.

They shook their head and dared not even say nay to the question. Sidastir was about to speak again when a voice sounded across the hall.

"Thirteen minutes."

All had turned to the Auon, who had examined the frozen man with a distant gaze.

"What?" Sidastir asked and glared at the boy, who now turned towards him with an odd facial expression.

"He will survive 13 minutes in his current state," clarified the boy, who, for some strange reason, seemed satisfied with his reasoning.

"And what did you want to convey with that information?" asked Sidastir, who wondered if he had overlooked the whole point with the boy's statement.

"Nothing. I was just curious how long someone could survive in a frozen state. I have concluded it should take around thirteen minutes, with his body mass and age in the calculations, before he dies," said the boy and shrugged to display his indifference.

Everyone stared at the boy as if he was deranged.

"Let's see if your calculations are correct," Sidastir said at last and tried not to burst out in laughter when the frozen man managed to get out a wail in horror from his frozen vocal cords.

"Best to avoid it. Bodies tend to rot, and the smell is hard to remove from the room," the boy casually established.

"Don't worry. Frozen meat does not rot," Sidastir replied and couldn't help but smile when he saw that the boy seemed more interested in this revelation than what he was by the man.

Sidastir snapped his fingers, and the frozen man fell in a heap to the floor. He lived. Sidastir didn't want to scare off the young boy.

"The ball is over. Banish yourselves from my kingdom," he growled, and everyone rushed out of the throne room.

Sidastir grabbed hold of the boy, who turned to leave with the rest of them.

"Not you; I have other plans for you."