Rebel Cause
Mattaeus stood on a castle balcony, its view surveying what was once a great kingdom---his father’s kingdom. A full moon painted the surrounding city in hues that were indistinguishable from that of day—the new king ruling only a great ruin.
Strands of black hair hung in withered curls around his undead face. Before he had turned, traces of magic ran through his veins, and after, he came in contact with another magic, a confluence creating a bridge between his mind and all like him. He was no longer a single point in space. His senses were a myriad. The hive mind was born, and his control was absolute.
Mataeus glanced southward as one of his soldiers sat alone on a distant hill. Through the soldier, he watched a blue orb streak across the sky. His sight was a kaleidescope of perspectives as three nearby formations also observed the thing, theirs being a view of convergence.
Too low to be a shooting star, he thought. The wish will have to wait.
The light effloresced, its blue pulsing, then detonating as it impacted one of his formations. Many of the perspectives fell away, others whiting out. Spikes of ice burst upward around the impact.
The hilltop soldier looked back the direction from which it came. A trebuchet of some sort?
Light particulates glistened as the effect subsided. A girl was soon revealed standing at the epicenter, a glaive poised to strike. Ah, of course. “Have you strength enough yet?” he asked, his voice leaving the mouth of a soldier near her.
The soldier’s perspective winked out alongside others.
“You are stronger,” he continued, his voice bouncing around as perspectives vanished. “Do you think of them still, Rapunzel?”
“That’s not my name,” she barked.
All of the nearby perspectives simultaneously drew swords and moved to encircle her. “If you can’t even accept who you are, how can you make progress?”
“Just give me what you said you would!”
“The silk? You have no more need for a ladder.”
“It’s not for a ladder. The man in the moon. He took them from me. And I’ll hunt down every last strand of silk.” She sprinted, closing on one of his perspectives, her teeth gritted. “Until I have rope enough.” Wink! “To lasso the moon.” Wink! “And yank his ass from the sky!”
“If you truly believe that, I have no doubt you’ll never stop chasing that reality. But it’s not the world we live in. You know our children are dead. You weren’t strong enough to protect them.”
Rapunzel had expunged nearly an entire formation of his senses, a single remaining in the top half of a bisected soldier. She hunched forward, drawing in gasps and watching as two more formations moved to collapse around her.
“I’ll never stop,” she said. “Not until I have them back.”
“Go, then,” he replied. A portal reached forward and swallowed her as she tried to get in a last word.
Mattaeus stepped away from the balcony and returned inside. If you can’t accept what is, then you don’t know where you are. How can you expect to reach any destination when you don’t even know where you’re leaving from?
He crossed an ignominious hall of stone—the corpse of what had once been his father’s throne room. Rows of undead soldiers stood before him, and with them, he saw himself ascend a dais to sit in a meaningless chair. He set his cheek against his fist, his elbow forming a kickstand on the chair’s arm, a head ornament, a king’s bobble, dangled from his opposite hand.
I think of them still, he thought. But I cannot feel them. No more than I can life in my father’s kingdom. I wish I could. But it’s not to be. I cannot give you more children, Rapunzel. The only thing I can offer is strength. Strength enough to endure. Strength enough to survive.
The soldiers turned inward, then filed out through a door on the opposite end of the room. Whatever future awaits this world, it resides in you. But no one can meet it until you defeat me. He watched the last of the soldiers depart. For what it’s worth, I’m rooting for you, Rapunzel. Long live the queen.
Constraints
WC: 712/750
Trope: Dueling POVs
Genre: Any
POV: 2 of 2
Vex Effect
Rebel Cause
See what I did there? XD
