He dreamt he sat on the throne, above them all, a sun around which the world revolved.

The crown atop him was of gold. Horned with silver, and encrusted with rubies.He touched the top of it, and felt the silky red cloth that hid behind the gold and silver.

It was his crown. He was prince. He was ruler.

And he ruled.

Long, shimmering lines of supplicants stretched into the horizon: knights in unscarred plate laying their swords at his feet, begging for the honor of his service; high lords bending their knees until they touched the marble, whispering oaths of fealty.

Beyond the arched doors, the exultant crowd made their roar known, their cheers echoing in the hall.

And they had reason to cheer.

He dispensed justice with a flick of his wrist, ruling with a wisdom his father taught him to wield.

Peasants wept with gratitude for his aid; merchants bowed low for his protection; even the bickering lords left his presence satisfied by the weight of his word.

He was the Good Prince. He was the Just. He was the Kind.

Rows of smiles paraded before him, a kaleidoscopic blur of happy subjects praying to the Five to grace their savior. Basil felt his chest swell with a joy so profound it made his eyes sting. He turned his head to the side, searching for the shadow that always stood behind him. He wanted to see if his father was watching. He wanted to see if he was proud of the what his son had become.

But when he looked back, there was only empty, freezing air to welcome him.He looked around but he searched for naught, anxiousness beginning to nestle in his stomach.

How long?How long had he been alone?Where was he? 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

His son called for him, once, then again and again, but his voice was swallowed by the deafening cheers coming from below the dias, he remembered they were farther away.

He raised his hand to silence the masses, to still the roar so he could hear a footstep, a breath, a cough.But it was for naught.

He ordered them to be quiet; he begged them , asked for it, demanded it.

But they were deaf to his desires.

Panic clawed at his throat when the crowd got closer and closer, the door that kept the hall barred suddendly burst open with more and more of them.They did not look so welcoming as they did before.

He looked for his uncles for protection, for the leggionaires to shield him from them, but the stone sorrounding him was bare. He was alone on the height, trapped in the center of a storm that wouldn’t stop screaming for their prince.

The name they called was not his father’s. It was his.

"Basil! BASIL! BASIL!"

He was prince.

The crowd began to surge toward their prince, their faces losing their clarity until they were one and all, and all and one, a wall of reaching hands and hollow mouths.

He screamed for his father, for his uncles, he screamed for the gods but no one answered. In the depths of that terror, he remembered a softer light.

A memory of lavender and silk, and of warm hands. He called for his mother. He cried for her, the tears hot and stinging, blurring the gold of the hall, as he pressed his eyes shut in fear, suddendly recalling he was still a child.

And then his prayers were answered.

A hand laid upon his shoulder. It was firm, caring, and possessed of a familiar warmth that stilled the trembling in his limbs.

"Mother!" he gasped, turning toward the touch with a sob of relief. "Mom! You’re here!"

He pressed his face against her palm, rubbing his head against her hand as he had when he was a small child. The advancing crowd froze, the roar of the voices dropping into a sudden, suffocating silence.

Yes, this was where he should have been, with his mother.What business did he have to be prince?He was but a boy.

But when he raised his eyes to look upon her,hoping to see her smile, the relief turned to ash.

The woman standing over him was no longer the noble, and kind princess he remembered.

She appeared starved to the bone, her skin pulled tight over her cheekbones like wet silk against wood. Her eyes were not the warm pools he remembered, but hollow pits of shadow, puffy and raw from weeping. The silver laurel she always wore was perched crookedly against her temple, the metal tarnished , rusted and yet still sharp.

"Mother?"

He reached up, his small hands fumbling with the heavy gold on his head.No, it was no longer gold, it was iron. No gems nor sapphire were thrusted into that ornefice of gold, there was the only iron of the sword and helment.

It suddendly too heavy for his brow.

Why did he want that crown?It was cold. He did not want to be prince. His father was prince. Where was he?Where was his father?

"I don’t want it. Mom, please, I don’t want to be. Take it off!"

He tried to lift the crown, to cast it away, but his mother’s hands moved with a sudden strength, he would never have expected from her arms. Her fingers clamped onto the iron band, and instead of lifting it, she pushed. She shoved the crown down with such force the metal bit into his brow, pinning his head against the throne, right where he was destined to be.

The crowd, which had stood in silence, began to roar again, louder ,colder , stronger.

He frayed his hands against his own mother, beating her hands away, trying to slip away just as he did when he escaped the court.

But more and more hands joined, pinning him to the throne, until he could only struggle powerlessly.Their fingers reached for his wrist, his foot, his check his neck. The cold of their touch seeping into his skin.

The crown, which had sat so light and noble upon his brow, suddenly developed teeth. It began to nest within his skull, the frigid metal seeping through his skin, shearing through his hair, and grinding into the bone.

He felt the metal throb against his brain, the pulsing agony that made him scream, though no sound escaped his throat. He wept, but the tears were red, trailing down his cheeks to stain his chest.Running down his legs like water.

Cold metal burst outward from his face, slivers erupting from his ears and tearing through the roof of his mouth, splintering his teeth and severing every nerve.He felt every second of that.

The more he struggled, the more the spectral hands pinned him down, forcing the crown deeper until he was more metal than boy.More metal then flesh. Only metal. Only prince.

He was cold. So much cold. It was ice; the crown was a circle of frozen death.

And all the while, the crowd cheered and hailed his name.

"Basil! BASIL! BASIL!"

He was prince.

They bayed for his name as molten iron trickled from his nostrils. They prayed for his soul as his skull split open, his life’s blood gushing out to glisten like rubies in the light of the open window. He stopped seeing, for his eyes had been taken. He stopped hearing, for his ears were plugged with heavy, silent metal. He could no longer speak; for his mouth was no longer his own.

He could only feel the hands, thousands of them, touching him, holding him, rough and gentle all at once. They were like the winter wind. He craved warmth. He craved the fire. He wanted to curl into his father’s arms and have the man lie to him, tell him that everything would be alright, that the world was soft and the crown was a fairy tale.

He was just a boy; he would have believed the lie gladly.

Instead he awoke with a jolt, crying into the hollow silence of the night.

The realization that it had only been a nightmare brought no relief.

He was no fool. The fact that his father was not there was proof enough it was not real, yet the terror remained rooted in his chest.

He knew that was just a dream, and yet somehow he could not regard it so.

He did not try to go back to sleep. He couldn’t. The bed was damp with his sweat, and every time he let his eyelids flutter shut, he felt that creeping, metallic chill upon his hair just waiting for him to fall in sleep’s embrace.

Having them open or closed did not change much.He could not see a thing.

Darkness owned the room. He had woke before the sun.

The candles had long since drowned in their own wax, and he could only barely discern the silhouettes of the tents through the window, the howling wind outside whipping the rain against the stone.

He missed the light. He missed the fire. He didn’t care about the strange things that happened when he got too close to the flames. They weren’t real. They couldn’t be.

He was a boy that prayed to the Five. Demons had to quarrel with the gods to take with him.

His father was well. His mother was safe. His uncles were back, even Jarza had returned to the fold only days ago. Torghan had embraced him with a laugh and made his swing his axe.Asag had delighted in telling him stories. Edric...well he just drank and passed him a sip of wine whenever his father wasn’t watching.

Everything was as it should be. There was no roaring crowd, and his father was still the Prince. Why wouldn’t he be? He had never lost a battle. He was the son of the Weaver and the Warrior both.

He would march on his enemies and bring fire to them. Yes, fire.Terrible fire, cruel fire.

Those things weren’t real.

Those were lies of the dark. He wasn’t evil. Uncle Jarza said fire was the Great Devourer, a thing of ruin, and Basil was not ruin. He hated fire, he would spurn it to his dying breath.

He was a good son.

Yes and he would make a good prince.With no fear whatsover of the fire.

For it was only that.

Simple fire.

But it would still be long until he would be prince, his father would live a long life.

He had to.