the golden age

[deepest_magic]

When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.

Comments

[deepest_magic]

And when the work is all caught up with - Isabella does a lot of careful recordkeeping and filing, and has things to copy out of her notebook and organize -

Some creatures are putting together a music festival. It's a few hours' ride away; would the queen like to come and bring her harp? The queen would. She kisses her spouse goodbye - "Love you, Jamie!" - and gets on her horse and heads to the festival. There are piping satyrs, singing badgers, harpsichord-duetting peahens, a giant with a set of drums, dwarves with brass ensembles and centaurs forming string quartets. And Isabella on harp.

[pythbox]

The venue is beautiful. A shallow amphitheater constructed on a little island in the middle of a sparkling lake, with grass and wildflowers growing among the audience seating and one-fifth of the circle of benches interrupted by a dense stand of trees. The outer rows have a good view of the lake beyond the stage and the creatures sitting opposite. The day is clear, the sky a cheerful shade of blue, and the sounds of the water quiet enough that they do not at all impede enjoyment of the music.



And then, partway through Isabella's performance, abruptly and without warning, the water around the little island freezes over.

[deepest_magic]

Everybody, in a word, freaks out. Isabella plays a couple more notes, but soon flattens her hands over the harp strings to try to hear what the creatures are so alarmed about.

She hears "Winter".

She reaches into her bag for cloak and bow.

[jackfrostbite]

A man in a black surcoat blazoned with a silver snowflake strolls out of the trees, laughing wildly. His skin is blue, his hair blue-black, and all of him glitters like ice.

This has predictable effects on the already panicking creatures.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella's cloak settles around her shoulders.

She shoots him; she gets him in the shoulder.

She reaches for her scepter to bring it to her lips and speak to James.

[jackfrostbite]

He yanks the arrow out of his shoulder and keeps walking, unconcerned by the fountain of sparkling black blood that arcs out over the amphitheater and freezes everything it touches - grass, the ground, assorted instruments, unlucky creatures slow to flee. The flow abates after a few seconds, down to a mere gush from a pressurized spray, but in the meantime Isabella is splashed with burning-cold fluid. And Winter has nearly reached her.

[deepest_magic]

Ow.

Her cordial's in her bag. She bolts towards the slow creatures, reaching for it. Sprinkle, sprinkle, sip.

She needs her air walking shoes.

"FLY," she warns the creatures, "HELP EACH OTHER, DON'T TRUST THE BRIDGE IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO -" He set up an ambush, there could easily be something wrong with the bridge, but there's a lot of wings here.

Shoes or warning James -

"FIND KNIGHTS," she says, still running away from Winter and rummaging in her bag for her shoes. Here's one, here's the other -

[jackfrostbite]

And Winter's hand closes on the back of her cloak and he yanks her off her feet. He hasn't even drawn a blade, though he carries a sword at his side and multiple visible daggers in assorted places - he hauls her toward him, reaching for her scepter.

[deepest_magic]

The scepter is the most important thing, after maybe only the cordial, without it she's cut off why didn't she have a pin of knighthood without it she can barely walk. She reaches for it too. "JAMIE -"

[jackfrostbite]

Winter is stronger, has better reach, has more experience in close-quarters scuffles - he wrestles the scepter away from her in mere moments and tosses it away into the picturesque bushes. His icy blood stings her hands. He picks her up and slings her over his uninjured shoulder.

[deepest_magic]

She's holding her shoes, she's wearing her bag. She puts the shoes on her hands and claws at the air. It's solid, like that, but slippery.

[jackfrostbite]

He heads for the shore of the island. Most of the other creatures have fled by now. Those who remain are in the process of fleeing.

His blood freezes the water's surface solid enough to walk on. He catches one of Isabella's hands, pulls the shoe from it, tosses the shoe out over the ice - it hits the edge of the wide frozen ring around the island. When he gets the other shoe, he throws it in the other direction, and it reaches open water and floats there.

If James is mobilizing forces - and she must be, if Isabella reached her with the scepter, if anyone has found a knight - she does not seem to be mobilizing them fast enough.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella grabs her cordial and sprinkles it on his bleeding arrow wound.

[jackfrostbite]

He grabs the cordial from her hand too, and shoves it into some pocket or other, and then he draws a dagger and stabs himself in the same spot again, with a little giggle. And now he is holding a dagger.

[deepest_magic]

Shit. What does she have - besides skin that's freezing to her clothes - her pocketknife manifested a tuning wrench, maybe it has something for ice monsters - it turns into a small ice pick. That will not help, injuring him will not help. Lighter. She pulls her lighter and attempts to set him on fire.

[jackfrostbite]

"That doesn't wo~ork," he singsongs, twirling his dagger in his free hand while one arm continues to keep hold of Isabella. And indeed, the bit of his hair exposed to the flame melts, but refreezes almost instantly.

"Would you like to know all the ways it's impossible to kill me?" he continues, in a bright brittle voice.

[deepest_magic]

She puts her lighter back in her bag. He can't possibly know what her Christmas presents are, but he seems pretty generically invincible and she's quickly running out of tools, no wonder he hasn't taken the bag or broken her wrists or anything yet.

[jackfrostbite]

"I don't die if you set me on fire," he says. "I don't die if you build a fire bigger than I am and throw me in. I don't die if you cut my head off or put a sword through my heart. I don't die if I drink molten lead! I don't die if you lock me in an oven, and I don't die if you crush me under an enormous rock, annnnd I don't die if you hold me underwater and cut my throat, I just end up trapped in ice for a year! Isn't that lovely?"

He does not sound like he thinks it is lovely. These are the emphatically fake-cheerful tones of someone sarcastically remarking that it's just wonderful how their house has caught fire and burned to the ground taking with it all of their belongings and their elderly grandmother and the family pet.

[deepest_magic]

Well, of her options, which largely consist of "talking to him" and "not doing that" -

"What does happen if you cut your head off?"

[jackfrostbite]

"It grows back. I end up with a head made of ice on the ground and a head made of me on my shoulders."

This discussion has taken them to the shore of the lake. There are no creatures around.

His second shoulder wound is starting to heal - he wades the last ten feet to the rocky shore, then puts the queen down on a wet rock and splashes water on the injury so it ices over and stops bleeding.

[deepest_magic]

...He just puts her down?

He'd certainly notice if she started unfolding her pocket house's door to hide in it, and she's not sure he couldn't just beat down the door from its magical freestanding position it gets if she doesn't unfold the house all the way. What if she shot him in the eye - or can she pin him by his clothes to something, long enough to shuffle away -

- no, realistically she can't fight him.

Lighter comes out again. She flicks it on and then flings it at the nearest cluster of plants, some shrubs that start where the shore stones end. Convenient fire. Leave a clue in bright gold to show the knights where she was last able to leave a trail.

[jackfrostbite]

Winter looks at her, and looks at the fire, and makes a thoughtful 'hm' sort of noise, and then picks her up again - removing her bag in the process - and throws her into the fire and her bag into the lake. It catches on a jagged rock and sinks only so far.

[deepest_magic]

Between the armor cloak and the low temperature and politeness of the fire, Isabella is only overwarm, not burned. She picks up the lighter, holds it open with gold flame still burning.

She sits in the fire, hood up, cloak around her, teeth gritted. If she gets out of this she is taking a rose pin and who cares if it's redundant or stupid to be a knight and a queen, have a pin and a scepter, Jamie, Jamie -

[jackfrostbite]

Winter steps into the fire - his clothes catch in a few places, but meltwater from his body puts them out before they can be too badly damaged.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella flings the lighter at a nearby tree.