Man Vs. Pen - Tumblr Posts

The Creation Theory and Context for “When Lightning Falls”

If anyone has been around these parts long enough, yes, this theory was dredged up from an old post’s comment section because it’s relevant to my upcoming Fall prediction fic, “When Lightning Falls.” And, yes, I'm aware that it could definitely be outdated by canon.

Note: One thing about the fic that is different from this theory though: Rhian is Good and Rafal is Evil. The Storian’s manipulation, puppetry, and intentional inciting of confusion don’t apply in the exact same way in the fic as they do in the theory. In the fic, the brothers were just created as replacements for the old School Master, to fill the role. That is the purpose they were created for. And, their purpose in life is to serve the Storian as School Masters. I will elaborate on that in a bit, if that comes across as unclear.

Also, in the fic, Rafal starts out only detecting a slight tear in the Storian’s veil, the elaborate illusion he’s been living in. I headcanon that, even as a child, he was the discerning, perceptive sort, and that almost nothing got past him. Unlike Rhian that is. Because with Rhian, you can pull the wool over his eyes, and he wouldn’t blink. It’s not Rhian’s fault though. He’s just moral and trusting, and thinks others are like himself.

⸻

Now, without any further ado:

I think magic is not dependent on soul purity every time. There are probably other unknown factors involved, like bloodlines possibly? I think in the case of canon, we just happen to see the exceptional cases, like Sophie and Agatha. They are pure, but they were created from magic, so of course, they would be more powerful than most. Partly, because of their souls' potential, and the unusual circumstances of their birth, I would guess.

This leads me to theorize that Rhian and Rafal must have also been the result of an unusual case.

(Thank you to @mariiwhalegirl for the prompting/inspiration!)

Before reading Rise, I thought vaguely that the brothers could have been born from magic, or that they were descended from an exceptionally magically-gifted bloodline. Now, these ideas are still possible, but since we don't know about any other pairs preceding them, we could assume that they are the first, created for the purpose of Balance. That's what I think after reading Rise. Because, all other Good-Evil pairs in the series were born after them.

They're more powerful as sorcerers than the average person (and maybe, less humanly flawed—however we decide to interpret that—hold onto that thought for a bit. It will come up later in this theory).

They are also more uncanny than the average family tree, which could have some black sheep members of the other side in it (where the branches have toxically mixed), but surely not of the same birth or even from the same generation. Like the few Evers in a Never kingdom, or the few Nevers in an Ever kingdom. But those are natural outliers.

I also remember that a lot of the time, being taken by the School Masters (this was probably from Aladdin's pov) was an honor, no matter what side you were destined for. It's almost entirely too much of a coincidence that the brothers’ job as School Masters, a job which existed before them, became their job. It's just too fitting.

So, with that, I propose that the Storian could have created, not borne them, for the sole purpose of taking on a job where naturally-born Evers and Nevers had previously failed.

They could be the only people in the Woods without real parents. No connection to anyone except the other of the pair. Besides, the aged man we saw in the prologue of Rise was only one man, not a Good and Evil pair. Using an already existent person, and removing their mortality didn't work, so maybe, a more enduring solution had to come from elsewhere, which led the Storian down the path of creation.

The Storian must have thought the brothers were the perfect fit for the job, like a god thinking their creation is flawless. But, the Storian probably forgot that despite everything and its creations' seeming invincibility, they were still human, still fallible.

The Storian must have thought no information would overturn its design of the system with not one, but the two School Masters intended for the role. Specifically, a system where the roles are reversed, and the two humans don't have the faintest idea that they are supporting the wrong side, if Rafal is Good and Rhian is Evil. That is still debatable.

Or, it might not have mattered who is which, Good or Evil, because the point was for their loyalty to their blood to override their loyalty to their side. So, by design, being loyal to a side that isn't theirs, that belongs to their blood (their brother), and never knowing this could keep them and the Woods in Balance.

They would be unwittingly supporting the other side, not their own, and thus, the risk of supporting their true side over their blood would be diminished, out of the question. Since they would never support the other side they believe isn't theirs. Since they are supporting their blood in a way by supporting their brother's true side.

To clarify, I mean, in supporting Evil, Rafal would be indirectly supporting what Rhian stands for, without realizing it, and Rhian would be doing the same, supporting Good which could be his brother's true side.

In fact, Rafal's seeing through the veil, the Storian's ruse, could be the reason why the Storian tried to distract him with fairy tales about himself, to get away from the real issue, and the hidden system falling apart. It could also explain why the Storian lashed out and cut Rafal's arm because now, Rafal's started on a dangerous and unstable train of thought, when he started questioning his Evil status and Rhian's Good status.

And, the Storian can't get Rafal to forget it, so letting it pass, or allowing for Rafal's self-destruction, whichever comes first, is the easiest way to wipe the slate clean. Except, maybe only one brother died by the end of the fated war, so the Storian's creations were harder to get rid of than it realized or ever anticipated.

(And, letting your creation think he’s going insane with paranoia usurping the seat of his mind is far less work than explaining yourself as an immortal deity. So, the problem will solve itself in time, albeit messily, and it will end in mortal tragedy. But who cares? As the Pen, it’s not your life at stake.)

So, the Storian could have spun an elaborate web of, not lies, but misperception to maintain the Balance. But anything built on an untruth isn't designed to last. Not that the Storian cared about its creations.

The Storian must have either decided to start afresh, like with a Noah's ark of destruction in some symbolic way by tearing down the brothers, or by triggering a specific sequence of the fated Great War. Or, it has mistakenly self-sabotaged itself and its Woods by letting its sentient creations become too self-aware, breaking from their originally-established, intentionally-switched roles.

Also, the Noah's ark thing: we've seen the Schools rising out of the sea (probably the Savage Sea?) in the trailer for Rise. I mean the new castle Schools, not the original manor by the way. So, that could be a parallel?

Also, there's the Abel and Cain parallel I've mentioned before. Abel and Cain are recognized as the first children borne by humans. And, Rhian and Rafal could possibly be the first children not borne by humans in the Endless Woods. That's why they could be an unprecedented, and thus exceptional case.

Lastly, it (the Storian’s system) could have been that the only way for Good and Evil to coexist stably: With an Ever to support Evil and a Never to support Good in such a high position. They would just have to be unaware of it to follow through with the job the Storian assigned them.

Basically, the theory here is that the Storian not only puppeted the brothers as they were, but that they are artificial souls, designed to be puppeted by their Master. They would be Masters in name only.

In actuality, they'd unconsciously be slaves to their creator.

In the end, I would call this theory: "The greatest trick the Devil Pen ever pulled was convincing Men that they were loyal to their own side."

And, Rafal did call the Pen "the little devil," so why not?

When Lightning Falls

This will be my last hurrah before the fall. So, happy reading! If it can be called that.

Summary:

A travesty and a tragedy, told in two parts. A flashback from Rhian and Rafal’s past as it ties to their present. From how they began and where they started to where they are now. From School grounds to the Great War in Neverland, suspicion and chaos abound. By the Storian’s reasoning and the Storian’s reasoning alone, where they began brought them to where their luck ran dry.

Context:

This, in a way, serves as both a prequel and a prediction fic. It’s sort of a two-shot, two-scene fic. Part 1 takes place when the brothers are around seven years old. And, the first part is largely based on my theory about the brothers’ origins. That theory is essentially about how the brothers could have been an exceptional case, born from magic, like Agatha and Sophie were, to be the souls that they are. And, not only that, they may have been created, not born, with a certain intent, so they could be used by a certain villainous pen.

Warning:

This fic is probably a bit less sympathetic toward Rafal by its conclusion than my usual writing is.

Important Note:

I have not yet read Fall. Please do not post spoilers in the comments, or send me any through PMs. I am trying to avoid all spoilers until I have the time to read Fall.

⸻

Rhian ran toward Rafal when he landed with a soft thud. His brother had been teaching himself how to fly lately.

Lightning cracked overhead, lighting up the sky and the manor, almost as if it were day.

“Fala, I’m scared.” Rhian pressed against his brother hard, and Rafal didn’t shove him away. Rhian continued hyperventilating, one breath after another, like the treads of soldiers, constant and quickening.

Rafal held Rhian in his arms like a vise, and squeezed him with a comforting pressure. Rhian’s shallow, rapid breaths receded, and his shoulders stopped shaking.

Rhian lifted his head from where his chin had been resting on Rafal’s shoulders. “Why do you think the Storian won’t let us leave?”

Rafal let go, and brushed his sopping, white hair out of eyes. He remained silent.

Rhian continued on. “School Master says It will let us explore the Woods when we come of age. How old do you think we’ll be by then? Not as old as School Master, right?”

“Not as old as School Master. Maybe, as old as the students.” The growing brothers almost reached the School Master’s waist, but Rafal didn’t think it meant much. The School Master was stooping more by the day. Hunched more and more drastically, like he was withering.

“And not as wrinkly, either” said Rhian.

“No, not as wrinkly either. He’s probably due to die a couple years down the line.”

“How do you come up with these things?”

“Everyone dies. You know that,” Rafal averred.

“I know, but I don’t talk about dying all the time,” insisted Rhian.

Rafal frowned.

“So, why do you think we have to stay?” Rhian asked again.

Rafal glanced around as if he were afraid someone would look over his shoulder, but all the faculty and students were inside the warm glow of the manor. He peered into the nearby windows on his tiptoes, gripping the ledge. Just to be safe, he told himself. Then, he ducked down lower.

Rhian observed him, and furrowed his brow at his brother’s classic paranoia. “No one’s out here, Fala.” Nonetheless, Rhian followed him, and sat on the wet grass, leaning against the wall beside Rafal.

“I’m just making sure,” Rafal explained. “I haven’t got all the facts yet. But, the last time I was with School Master for a lesson, he looked nauseous. He said that we were growing like weeds, and might replace him one day. His voice croaked, his bones creaked, and his hands shook. But he continued on with that lesson, and it gave me an idea.”

“What about? I was with the Dean for Etiquette that day. He says ‘Etiquette is what separates Good from boorish Never thugs,’” Rhian recited.

Rafal’s expression soured and he rolled his eyes. “Ok, at some point, we have to have a talk about not believing everything you hear.” He got back on track. “He told me that once, all Ever kingdoms were more closed off than they are now. The common people were called serfs, and they were bound to the land of their kings.”

“Are we serfs, Fala?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet. Maybe, one day, we’ll solve it. Find out what It wants. Leave the School grounds.”

“But, the Pen is Good, right? Doesn’t It want us to be safe? Can’t we trust It? Shouldn’t we stay?”

Rafal didn’t respond, grimly clutching the soaked knees of his pants.

A clap of thunder resounded, followed by lightning riving the sky apart.

Rhian raised his voice over the roaring storm, to reassure his brother. “Then, we won’t be a bother or a burden anymore! Maybe, It’ll give us an important task someday. We won’t be worthless anymore! Maybe, we’ll be useful.”

“Maybe,” Rafal said pensively, too wary to agree, narrowing his eyes in thought.

⸻

Rhian awoke in the night with a jolt and stood. He had repeatedly fallen in and out of a dreamless, jarring, electric sleep. But, unlike his sleep, this place was far from colorless. No, the entire alien island of Neverland brimmed with power and electricity. It was enough to electrocute a full-grown Stymph.

The greens were electrifying. Vivid, electric greens. Deep emeralds. Wintry radium greens. Salty, metallic, phosphoric greens. Vibrant patina. Phantasmagorical greens permeated every vine and leaf. It was like a Man-made world. The first he’d ever known. The humid, acidic atmosphere clung, stinging eyes, and biting at exposed skin. His hair drooped lifelessly, and he moped at its sorry state, trying to arrange his curls so he’d look marginally presentable. The oppressive moisture did no good. His every attempt fell limp, and he gave up.

Although unseen insects hummed incessantly, Rhian knew he must have been the only human presence for miles. He was alone, for now. Yet, he didn’t feel alone. The jungle thrummed with life.

The sky on the other hand was bleak, overcast, a deep, iron grey. Its distortions reminded Rhian of a warped mirror, like he was under a dome, to be examined by some cosmic forces above. Only, he couldn’t see without. Others could only look within. And, oddly, he couldn’t see his own reflection in the broken sky.

His and Rafal’s bond had fractured like the shattered sky above them, and Rafal had taken off in the night, in a fit. They were divided as the broken firmaments above were, lightning criss-crossing, momentarily scarring the sky. Rhian wished he had been able to string together words in some way to force Rafal to understand. They’d uncovered cracks and flaws, but there was something, maybe, several things Rafal wasn’t telling him. And, it was infuriating not to be trusted. Afterall, the Storian was to blame. It alone with its tales had bred a competitive spirit within them. Lost in his thoughts, Rhian decided to keep walking, find civilization, if there was any in this hellscape.

Instead, he trod upon a war zone.

Rhian shook his head. He couldn’t tell which side was which. It was complete and pure chaos. Worse than any chess-like, storybook-sanctioned maneuvers. Was anything fair? Whose turn was it? There were no turns he soon realized. Real war wasn’t founded on turn-based gameplay. Then, what qualified as an Attack or a Defense? Anything and everything, he expected.

A long shadow glided toward Rhian, as if it were clawing and reaching for him, and he looked up. His shadow touched Rafal’s.

Rafal approached, all decked in black, eyes cold, face hardened like a mask, chiseled and sharp. He now stood a few yard lengths away from Rhian on the crest of a low outcropping of cracked, old stone. Lightning flashed behind him, as if it were at his command. A cruel, psychological trick of sorcery.

Rhian shuddered, intimidated.

Rafal looked like a living ice sculpture in the dying light of the moon. Neverland’s forest was drenched in a frosty blue.

Clenching his fists, Rafal stuffed down his traitorous thoughts. Yet, in the heat of the battle, months of pent-up stress and frustration and rage and guilt and Storian knows what were boiling over, irradiated emotion he couldn’t contain. Fear and unfounded suspicion. Mistrust and deceit all swirling in a cauldron. Those Seers! He'd kill those Seers, every last one! Look what they'd caused. They'd made a madman out of him. But, what if he were fated to do so? They would laugh at him in their dying breaths.

It was the Pen's fault, a voice said. It was the Pen's fault then! Mistrust of himself, of Rhian, that was unfounded, and irrational, and ridiculous. It mortified him. Thinking this way.

He was shaking now, and for the first time, he felt cold. And completely numb. And then, he felt nothing at all. His senses deadened, like he'd been drugged, sedated, his body leaden, like he was no longer in control of his own mind. A passive observer. The Evil, his inclination, the stirrings were taking over. Consuming him. His own soul betraying him. No, he shook his head. It was the Pan. It was Neverland. It was the air. Nothing more. A shadow. Facing his brother would be light enough to clear the shadows away. Clear the fog of war away.

Rhian was sure something was going on within Rafal, but he couldn’t tell what. His self-destruction?

Rafal told himself, this was his only choice, his only option now, the only solution. He was the School Master, who alive, could maintain the Schools, who wouldn't create one mess after another. He was the Pen’s only option. The Storian would favor him. It had to. He’d preserve order, nevermind Balance or love. He’d use the Rules because the Rules had never betrayed him. Rhian had betrayed the Rules. Following them was the only viable end. Ending his brother and his reign was the only viable end. When he tried to love his brother, he was only betrayed, by the only love he had ever relied on, by the person who was his match.

He needed someone who could love while in pain, shared pain, to fuel the darkness pumping in his heart, someone who’d been denied their victories, their End by all the world. He’d give someone else an Ending. Another True Love. Someone who’d been repressed, never free, like himself, always living in Good’s shadow. Someone else due credit like him. Who deserved to be acknowledged, appreciated for who they truly were. Someone who wouldn’t hide, who could be their true self with him and he with them. Someone who could never be good enough, no matter how hard they tried. Never pure. Never Good enough. Evil’s love. For sides, not Balance. None of the grey, the doubting, the blood ties, the torn loyalties, the competitive priorities. Someone on his side. For once, someone who’d support him. See eye to eye with him. Offer him a perspective his brother couldn’t.

If he couldn’t find another equal, he didn’t even need love. He would much rather prefer to be feared, obeyed. At least those were constants, reliable. Yes, that was his decision. His plan. Find a replacement. Find a True Love of his own. Succeed where Rhian failed. Overtake Good, prove Evil could love. That Evil could replace Good, have everything Evers had. Lead by example. Overtake his brother in what he couldn't do.

Rhian shuffled anxiously. Rafal had a faraway look in his eyes, and Rhian wouldn’t hesitate to call the psychotic gleam in his eyes crazed. “Rafal?”

Rafal jerked to attention, straightening rigidly. It was as if he’d moved to consciousness. “Rhian,” he said inscrutably. “I know how to free us from the Storian’s grasp, Rhian!” Rafal shouted across the battlefield, his voice echoing. He steepled his hands. “We have to break the Balance. Again. But this time, on purpose. The Pen can’t condemn us as failures if we prove we have the free will to choose to break the Balance and our connection to it. We can be human.”

Rhian’s head swam. Here Rafal was, spewing nonsense and contradictions. This Rafal didn’t sound like the brother he knew. The one who worried about his well being and preserving the Balance. His eyes looked wrong. Like he was fully unfettered, and had no loyalties. To nothing and no one. Like he had floated away, and couldn’t breathe the thin air of the stratosphere. Neverland had taken a toll on him, and Rhian had been suspecting a tropical fever or some other cause of madness for days. But he had been too afraid to broach the subject. He should have.

“I can free you, Rhian! The only way we can be free is by trusting Death. Death is the one constant other than the damned Pen!”

The Ever-Never Army roared in the background, and Rhian was forced to shout. “There must be a more sensible path, Rafal! Rafal?”

Rhian’s brother had materialized in front of him, closer, and looked at him wide-eyed, hands twisting around, almost beckoning, with stiff movements. Like a puppet on a string.

“I'll rule the Woods, so the Pen doesn’t have to. No one will meddle with the tales. Only I will be the tales’ one Master.” Rafal shot a burst of black magic at Rhian.

Rhian managed to deflect Rafal’s magic at the last second with his gold fingerglow, an intense flare so light it was almost white.

Back and forth. Thrust and parry. Attack. Defend.

Black. White.

Black. White.

Black. White.

Their magic lit up the skies in the first and last fireworks display Neverland would ever witness. Any direct onlookers would have been blinded. When their glows made contact, all the figures in the forest were drenched in silver, like the pallor of the moon magnified. Oddly, the battlefield, the site of a war, became beautiful for an instant. The horror, gore, and radiance coexisted as one.

A shaft of lightning emanated from Rafal’s positioned fingers, piercing Rhian square in the chest as it crackled, and Rhian went deaf, crumpling to the ground, his chest turning concave as he leaned into himself.

Now, Rhian was splayed on the ground, streaked with his own blood, soaking into the soil. Rhian twitched a last time, and fell still.

Rafal grinned demonically, a visceral euphoria flooding his senses. They were no longer enthralled! This was it. His Ending and Its End.

He conjured a glossy, black crown, dark as pitch, with spikes that could lance through flesh, and crowned himself ruler of all the Woods. The metal sat cold at his brow. He shivered in anticipation, but got no response. The war raged on. What he didn’t realize was that the crown immediately rusted as he slid it on.

He felt his fingertips burn then, and watched as his hand shriveled. His long fingers distorted into misshapen claws.

Then, pain wracked his entire body as it contorted to match. His eternal punishment, if anything lasted forever.

He wasn’t free from the Pen. He was only bound to it more. So be it. Someday, he’d unchain himself. He felt nothing now. Had nothing to lose. Had infinite time. Nothing in his way. No one to hurt.

With the last vestiges of his magic, he conjured a silver mask, melded with the shadows, transformed, and fled Neverland at last.

⸻

Note:

Songs I was inspired by:

“Different songs” - Set It Off

What changed? What changed?

It's more than just our age

“Who’s In Control” - Set It Off

So tell me who's in control

Is it you? I don't know

This song is hypnotic and very much fits Rafal’s canonical interactions with the villainous Pen.

“Killer in the Mirror” - Set it off

As seen in the imagery about the Neverland sky.

“The Good, the Bad and the Dirty” - Panic! At The Disco

If you wanna start a fight

You better throw the first punch

Make it a good one

And if ya wanna make it through the night

You better say my name like

The good, the bad, and the dirty

[...] I know what it's like to have to trade

The ones that you love for the ones you hate

Don't think I've ever used a day of my education

There's only two ways that these things can go

Good or bad and how was I to know

That all your friends won't hold any grudges

I got the final judgment

“In The Dark of the Night” - Jonathan Young

Alternate titles I considered: “When Lightning Breaks” and “When Lightning Rives Us Apart.” Neither of these had as striking a link as the actual title has to Fall.

Also, I find childhood to murder and its aftermath to be a fun contrast.

Although I wrote Neverland in hues of green, it’s actually a bioluminescent blue island as I found out yesterday from more Fall promotional content. I find it interesting that Neverland is blue, actually. I wonder if a section of that landscape was lifted or squared off, and if the roots of all the trees were re-interred near the Schools to form the Blue Forest we know in the present. Or, could seeds from Neverland have been planted to grow the Blue Forest from the ground up?

Yes, I used the lightning motif. Love it. I used the duology trailers and cover reveals as inspiration. That division, that split, the fractures in the sky, in the Schools, in the systems, in the existing structures, in the relationships. It implies a lot I think, assuming the execution in this fic turned out all right. Just, the Ending is like tracing over broken glass, I’d say. It can never be repaired.

Again: I haven’t read Fall yet. I will post a notice when I have finished it. Please do not comment any spoilers, or send me any through PMs.

Also, I will write happier fics in the future. This was just a prediction fic, and I’m well aware I could be completely wrong on several accounts.

Rafal would say that.

Also letter openers. This applies to letter openers too. Almost anything can be an instrument of murder if you stab hard enough.

““Anyone who thinks the pen is mightier than the sword has not been stabbed with both.””

— -Lemony Snicket, When Did You See Her Last?

Smeared Hearts

Credit to @rosellemoon for this oddly, insanely compelling idea about the fluffy, rainbow Storian. I couldn't help myself, so I took her ideas and ran with them.

Here is the link to the original post.

@heyo-428 @cetastars @harmonyverendez Read this, if you’re still interested in the fluffy pen story!

Note:

I did toy around with the order of Rise’s series of events a little, and included elements of Fall. So, be warned: the continuity is by no means perfect, the tone is intended to be more comedic (and sometimes more modern?) than usual, and I wrote this more for the concept than the plot at first. You could consider it a loose chronological series of vignettes, if that’s easier to understand because it isn’t quite a full story. It cuts from scene to scene. Or, rather, it is a story with a lot of scene breaks. Also, this was kind of an impulse fic, so I didn't start with a plan until a little later, but I did edit.

⸻

When Rafal agreed to be named a School Master of the renowned School for Good and Evil, he hadn't expected to become a pet owner, or something of that ilk.

When he initially saw it... it was fluffy and rainbow. Oh, the indignity of it all, of his life. What had he agreed to?

He groaned. The Storian wouldn’t have been his first choice of godlike pens, but he supposed a magical, fluffy pen was better than no magical pen at all.

The Storian drew a heart on Rafal's hand. It was about the size of a coin.

He grimaced.

Why couldn't the pen have chosen a more tasteful mark? A crown, or an ace of spades perhaps. Even an abstract scribble would have been fine, preferable even.

When the Storian drew his brother's heart, Rhian had laughed at its tickle, and the Storian had taken his response as a sign that it was welcome to snuggle up with Rhian every night, beside him in bed like a beloved pet.

Rafal slept alone.

⸻

Rafal had lost all faith in the Storian.

The irritating pen knocked things from tables. It beat Rafal's dish-breaking record within a week. And, it mussed up his hair, and shed all over his robes, slacks, and jackets. If any comparison could be drawn, it was most like a recalcitrant cat, an everlasting thorn in his side.

He couldn't face his students covered in feathery scraps of rainbow fur! The Nevers would ridicule him.

Invest in a lint brush, he noted to himself. That would settle it.

And shave that pen to boot. Not that he could. The little devil was fast, and would punish him for high treason.

Rhian wouldn't mind, he told himself. But, his brother loved that worthless thing. Of course he would mind. The Storian was practically Rhian's child. Rhian's baby talk drove Rafal up the wall. He was so mawkish and cuddly with it, as if it weren't already a combination dust magnet and feather duster that aggravated allergies.

No way would anyone ever see him petting the thing. It was an object, not even a living object, just unusually sentient. It was a patently false imitation of a real animal.

Rafal’s Stymphs were far superior to the pen, and they obeyed him and his commands as any good pets ought to do. Though, he considered the Stymphs more akin to his faithful soldiers, pledged to serve his eternal cause of Evil than well… pets, or whatever the pen was to Rhian.

⸻

Lately, Rhian was becoming obsessed with the Storian, and it worried Rafal.

At least he wouldn't have to worry about Rhian getting attached, only to catch it belly-up, and be forced to fly to the nearest pet store and cosmetic apothecary to replace it with a magic-surgery-modified duplicate before Rhian saw. Getting the last fish to look identical had been one hell of a sleepless night he’d spent in a race to preserve Rhian’s feelings. He’d stayed up to ensure the new pet was in place, and had to bury the old one at the crack of dawn while Rhian was still asleep.

But, with a pen, that couldn't happen. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, he knew the worst had happened far too many times. Rhian tended to kill things with too much love. It was absolutely sickening. He'd overfed goldfish in the past, almost the Wish Fish too, if Rafal hadn't put an immediate stop to it, and he had overwatered various hydrophilic plants from humid, tropical climates.

Rhian didn't have the best track record when it came to pets. Or self-preservation for that matter. He’d struck up conversations with strangers left and right.

A pen could be good for him. It had no expiration date. It didn't even have a mortal life, so no matter how incompetent Rhian was, he couldn't kill it. No responsibility aside from keeping it entertained, no risk of accidentally killing it, something to distract him from Rafal's own wrongdoings. The pen could prove useful in that regard. Yes, he could live with it, he decided.

Then again, maybe the right question to ask was whether it had feelings. Could he insult the pen? And what would happen if he did? He was sure Rhian would be none too pleased. But what about the Storian itself?

⸻

Rafal eyed the heart on the back of his hand. It was glaringly obvious and far too… sentimental. He had to do something about it. Scrubbing vigorously hadn't worked. He'd only succeeded in scrubbing the skin of his hand red, raw, and dry.

Rhian had haughtily told him he needed moisturizer.

Rafal snapped back that he knew. “Go bother someone else with your fussiness, Rhian!”

In the end, he'd bought black, supple, leather gloves, fitting of his look. They molded to his skin perfectly, and they didn't clash with his typical mode of dress.

Rhian accused him of being needlessly "edgy." Well, there was just no satisfying him, was there?

But, Rhian was a squeamish fussbudget, and his opinion held no weight here. So, Rafal wore the gloves. And soon, the years turned to decades, decades turned into a century, and the Woods kept living.

⸻

Rafal wore his gloves every day without fail—until he needed the additional dexterity that could only be afforded by flesh and bone fingers while drowning in the sea amid Night Crawlers.

He tore off the gloves, and in his haste, flashed the rainbow-inked heart at James, James who began to snicker at the thing like it was the most contemptible mark in the world.

"Thought you were Evil. Eh, Master?" James taunted.

"Shut up. It's-it's Rhian’s,” Rafal lied, stuttering through his embarrassment. No need to explain a fluffy pen of all things to James. He'd only think Rafal a dolt.

The heart was so cloyingly sweet, but it still made him feel vulnerable when it was seen, out in the open.

Astonishingly, James’ previously murderous expression softened and its matching intent evaporated. "Guess you wear your heart on your sleeve then. Like the Good do, or as close to Good as you can get, huh? Wouldn't mind saving me then, wouldja?"

Rafal gave the heart a sidelong glance. “Fine,” he muttered unaffected with marked disdain.

In the end, neither of them made it to the underwater prison of Monrovia, which contained the infamous Saders, but no matter. They were both out alive, albeit drenched.

⸻

Suspended aloft, ever an eye, the pen bore witness to a stalemate between the School Master brothers and the Pirate Captain.

The Pirate Captain loped forward. “So, you've got a pen that draws maudlin hearts?” he drawled.

"Yes,” Rafal said through gritted teeth. The leather of his gloves was cracked and split by this point, and creaked when he held a staunch grip. He’d formed fists, but he held himself back. The man didn't deserve a blow to the jaw, yet.

Off to the side, James winced, and drew a great step back to distance himself from his sorcerer friend.

Ferret-boy lolloped into the fray. “Yer magical pen does what?” he piped up, as if he'd been deaf to the Pirate Captain's question.

Him on the other hand—he had it coming for him. Rafal bristled, clenching and unclenching his fist instinctually. His dispassionate gaze morphed into a glare.

“It be drawing that craven, girlish thing on ya hand? Gotta be stark raving mad fer that to ’appen,” Ferret-boy quipped again.

Rhian stiffened, face heating.

Rafal defended, “It's not stupid, fussy, or effeminate. Even if it is, it's my only tie to Rhian at the moment, and I, for one, would prefer to keep it, along with my immortality, if you'll excuse me, pests.” He nodded at James, and turned to leave.

The Pirate Captain lunged for the pen without warning.

The Storian darted away, answering with a sugary jingle. Then, it coiled like a spring, launched, and jabbed the Pirate Captain viciously in the chest.

"Oof," the bested Pirate Captain breathed, clutching his torso.

A true pity that it hadn’t drawn blood, Rafal carped internally.

Self-satisfied, the pen twirled in the air, and flew back to the brothers. It curled up in Rhian's waiting hands like an overgrown, weaselly, color-dyed rodent, its noodly form like a piece of rope gone limp.

Rhian headed back to the School, safely cradling the pen.

Rafal stayed back on the dock to deal with the pirates, and give James a proper send-off.

⸻

Rhian had never taken an interest in women’s undergarments until now, but he was desperate.

He had already sifted through the Beautification classroom’s storage, and had come up with nothing. So, now, he was knee-deep in Dean Mayberry’s dresser drawers that he’d pulled out entirely, and he found himself rifling through her delicates at an alarming rate.

He soon chanced upon what he was searching for, and fished out a pair of airy, white gloves trimmed in lace that she’d worn to a recent soirée. He pressed his lips together grimly. They would have to do. Hopefully, Rafal would be distracted anyway. His new attire could divert Rafal’s attention.

He reasoned to himself that a smudge meant nothing, and hummed to himself nervously. It couldn’t be covering up duplicity. That would be Evil.

He wasn’t Evil.

He buttoned the gauzy, eggshell white gloves up high with their glossy, pearl buttons. Then, he went on his usual rounds over the School grounds, pretending nothing was wrong.

Rhian should have known his brother would first set his eyes on his hands. His glove-covered hands.

⸻

As Rafal flew overhead, approaching the School's clearing, he roughly tugged on his gloves again. Then, he saw something had gone wrong as he glanced down at Rhian from afar.

Rhian clearly had a new, downy, swan-feather outfit, a cloak of pure, shining spun-gold, and something else. Something new. He was wearing dainty, white gloves.

Rafal caught sight of another, unsubtle change through the tower window. He was horrified to find that Rhian had apparently commissioned a golden cage for the Storian while he was gone.

Seemingly, Rhian now tended to it even more regularly, as if he were sure it would grant him a favor, like a genie or a magical creature of that sort would, once caught and released for a wish in exchange for its freedom.

How childish could his brother get?

The moment Rafal's boots hit the windowsill, he peeled off his leather gloves, and noticed that for once, from just minimal friction, the interference of the glove’s coarse fibers, the seawater and his sweat, his heart had smeared.

His heart looked more scrawled than deftly inked. It was a messy blur of rainbow splotches on his pale skin. It didn’t look right, smeared like a stain, an iridescent oil spill, formless and hazy, like liquified beetle wings and mercury.

It was supposed to be as permanent a mark as one from a branding iron. It was a fixed tattoo! It couldn't just be wiped clean away!

Rafal blinked, rubbing at his eyes, trying to clear his tainted vision.

The smudge stubbornly remained.

Something had gone wrong while he was gone. Something sinister.

Rafal stepped into the tower chamber, legging it over the windowsill. He did not observe the cloaked, vampiric man fleeing the scene, memento mori etched on his skin.

Rafal reasoned these circumstances out to himself slowly: Rhian had probably figured that because Rafal never took off his gloves, except in the dark, at night, to sleep, that he'd never notice anything was amiss. But something was. Something grave enough to compel Rhian to cover it up, to erase his mistake.

Their bond had been besmirched by something. By someone. A stranger Rhian had opened his heart to. But was their bond broken?

The implications sank in. If it was broken, he could now be killed.

Rhian flung open the door, and greeted Rafal with cheer, yet he seemed wary.

Uncharacteristically, Rafal reached out to Rhian for a hug, and used the rare moment of closeness to yank Rhian's glove off.

The seams burst with the amount of force he applied and the pearl buttons popped off, catapulted in all directions, clattering to the floor, bouncing and rolling between the stone tiles into every last crack and crevice.

Rhian gasped and tried to shove his hand into a pocket.

Rafal trapped him by the wrist.

Beheld, as sure as day, was a bloodred V slashed in ink, like a scar of rouge in Rhian’s disfigured, melted, rainbow heart stamped around it.

Rhian's hand turned gelid, clammy, and slick in Rafal’s grip.

Someone had replaced him, Rafal concluded, without a word.

Rhian did not even try to offer excuses. It would be too humiliating to explain how he’d let Vulcan violate him during one of their dinners. He blushed at the candlelit memory.

Rafal dropped Rhian’s wrist. “Woe are we,” he sniped bitterly.

Rhian’s eyes welled with tears, but Rafal wouldn’t look at him.

Rafal couldn’t look at Rhian.

In fact, both brothers had fallen silent as the pen scratched away, swishing back and forth like a pendulum.

Rafal glared at the fluffy pen that shivered and flounced and puffed itself up like a fox's tail in the breeze. From across the room he could sense the pen's swift movements as it whisked through the air.

Wisps of shed fluff floated in the sunlight filtering through the silver curtains in spotlit shafts.

He felt the swoosh of the pen's fluff.

It twitched like it was winking at him, and slunk towards his legs like a cat. The pen twined itself around his legs in greeting. For several rounds, it wound itself around him.

He stood uncomprehendingly until his rage got the best of him. He extricated himself from the pen, and couldn’t bring himself to care about brushing the fluff from his slacks.

Rafal jumped out the window, to fly off, and figure things out for himself. The crisp air stroked his bare hands for once, and the sharp wind ripped away the excess fluff, battering his clothes and rippling cloak.

Now, he had to keep his heart in sight at all times, until he reversed this curse. No matter if anyone thought anything while his heart was exposed. They could all go to Hell for all he cared. He was doing this for Rhian.

And to save his own lost heart as well.

⸻

He flew away at full throttle, landed, and set off at a brisk pace, slamming into a boy with golden curls, grey eyes, and a cherub-like face. The exact sort of fellow Rhian would crush on!

“Who are you? Are you the V?” Rafal demanded.

The boy looked confused, and narrowed his eyes, fuming. “Name's Midas," he gruffed, putting up a front. “Who're you?” He stabbed a finger at Rafal's chest.

“Your worst fears,” threatened Rafal placidly.

Midas’ eyes widened.

Rafal shot back up the silver tower, and hurtled through the window, Midas in tow, grasped in his iron grip over the starchy fabric of the boy’s shirt. Coolly, he tossed aside a squirming Midas, who scudded across the room, aided by his sorcery, and left the boy for a moment, vowing to deal with him later.

He turned to Rhian, who stood agape, next.

⸻

Rafal marched deeper into the stone chamber, snatched Rhian's wrist, and dangled his limp hand in front of their faces. “What's this?” he said quietly, menacingly, pressing down on Rhian’s pulse.

He dragged Rhian up to the Storian, and released him.

Rhian stumbled forward, only managing to stay upright with Rafal’s firm hold on his shoulder.

“WHAT'S THIS?” Rafal shouted at the trembling pen, now thrusting his own outstretched, ink-stained hand at the pen.

The Storian, previously backed up against a bookcase, leapt into its cage, and rattled around. It cowered at the back of the cage, against the golden bars.

“This can't be what I think it is. I love him,” Rafal assured the pen feverishly. He sank to his knees in desperation, casting his gaze up at the pen.

Rhian dropped to the floor with him, and looked pleadingly at his pet.

Long and sinuous, the pen performed a twist in midair with a light jingle, as if considering the chastened School Masters before it, contemplating their tale. It moved with broad brushstrokes, white streaks of erasure, fine, gossamer threads spinning through the air, weaving around the brothers’ forearms.

The hearts vanished off their hands.

Rafal flinched, and shielded Rhian.

Rhian quivered, his heart throbbing against Rafal's own pounding rib cage. He gripped Rafal's upper arms, bracing himself behind his brother for the worst, for his precious pet to turn on him.

Yet the pen forgave.

It hovered over their hands, and drew new hearts, the same as it had done a century before.

⸻

Note:

I'd love to know your reactions and thoughts, or if anyone laughed. What specific parts got a rise out of anyone? Did I manage to shock anyone, with anything? I’d love to know what. Feel free to comment anything and ask any questions if there’s confusion.

I hope everything’s up to par. Did anything (specific or not) feel out of character? I didn’t check the books, and I sort of forgot what Hook’s, the Pirate Captain’s, and Midas’ dialogue sound like. If anyone catches any inaccuracies, feel free to let me know. Also, if there's anything else wrong grammatically, or in terms of clarity, please tell me.

Man's Fallibility & Immortality

I found a practically perfect song, by my interpretation, to add to my Rise to Fall playlist. (I haven't cleaned up/updated the playlist fully, so I'm not posting the whole thing yet, but I think this particular song warrants its own post.)

First, listen to the song: Nothing's New - Rio Romeo

Then, what follows below is something of a tragedy-analysis, abstract, meta-thing/omniscient prose narration experiment. I don't know what it is—an outpouring of thoughts. It may strike a similar chord as my narration at the end of Simony and its epilogue.

(Simony was a prediction fic I wrote before the publication of Fall. An extremely erroneous one though. I still think it could work, but oh, how wrong I was.

The direction Soman took the plot in, just, it was unpredictable, even if I did enjoy the book. I still like Rise better than Fall though, of the duology. If Rise had just ended at the point of: Vulcan is dead, Rafal tortures his students, and the brothers gradually learn to trust each other again, that would've been nice and comforting, honestly. But no, substitutes, substitutes, substitutes! On both sides. Drives me insane. Ack! But, I have four, short fics planned that have alternate endings to Rise and to Fall, to make up for it. Well, one of them is so far a little longer, three chapters long.)

If anyone wants me to analyze the actual lyrics more closely, I'm willing to do that too!

⸻

The tales.

They are all the same.

Good winning, Evil winning.

What difference does it make after centuries, really?

Everything probably feels numb and empty after a certain point.

Like nothing matters anymore.

Undiluted apathy after that certain point.

When? I've lost track.

When losses and victories all ring hollow, and all sound the same.

The End.

That's all It wrote.

The sum of lives distilled down to ink and illustrations.

Nothing beyond that. No life, no spark.

What more is there? When nothing will ever satisfy the restless souls, not even an Ending all to themselves.

Just pages that will yellow with time even if the stories themselves are timeless because nothing changes.

Nothing ever changes.

There's no evolution.

Every tale is the same.

It becomes nothing after nothing, not victory after victory, when you're ageless like we are.

And how, if that's how it is?

Why bother?

Why bother at all?

It's a cycle that continues, with or without the brothers.

Ceaseless.

So, why should it matter?

It's the same with or without them.

Their position was always ceremonial.

After a while, anyone becomes tiring. Anyone.

And one person just isn't enough, when you have no one else.

No one else to shield you.

It gets old. The love just... fades, and wears out.

Perhaps, human love can only span for so long, and that's why humans are mortal.

Made mortal, and no one should traverse beyond that.

It always leads to hubris, and then, a fall.

An unnatural fear of death trained into them, when limits were never set, when power was never checked, when they expected to have all the time in the world.

Nothing is built to last. At least, not by the Storian.

It does whatever it pleases.

You can't extend a life past its time.

It will always end in ruin. Isn't that the lesson the storybooks teach?

A cautionary tale.

Again and again, the cycle continues.

Every failed holy-grail of immortality, every spilled cup drawn from the fountain of youth, every cursed head of lettuce, every white snake, every chalice of sleeping draught that led to execution after execution, every baptism that succumbed to primordial wickedness, every impoverished fisherman's hovel?

Why not a tale about two brothers?

One where two are felled.

To caution against mortal greed that even immortality can't peel away.

To caution against always wanting more until you're left with nothing.

Nothing at all.

Just like how you can't truly resurrect anyone as who they once were, you can't revive the soul that a person once was.

And you can't play at being God because it defies the rules of nature.

And all that we know about transience and permanence and how ephemeral everything else is.

Everything but Man, who vies to leave a legacy wherever he goes, at any price, even at the cost of his soul, not life.

⸻

Now, I do wonder if I made anyone emotional? I certainly tried this time around, to be a provocateur like Soman is. Tell me what you think, if you want.

The Stymphs' Symbolism and the Storian's Interference

All right, here's our equivalence:

The Stymphs = Fate

Ok, so, with the girls in book one:

Agatha and Sophie are carried off by a Stymph, and they are thrown into their respective schools. No choice. No say in the matter. They've lost their agency, completely.

They are mastered by a Stymph, by fate. Conquered.

Then, the shift happens. They become the masters of their own fate, in riding the Stymph, in steering on top of the Stymph, into the School Master's Tower.

By TLEA, again, their relationship to the Stymphs changes. They're a little beholden to them and fate, in becoming who they are. Fate and the particular Stymph's original actions, its involvement in their kidnapping, I mean, shaped them both, ultimately. The girls are also beholden to the Stymphs for helping them, by not obeying "Rafal" when they help the archer students and Merlin during the second Great War.

⸻

Then, for the prequels:

Who is master of the Stymphs? Rafal, of course.

Yet, Rhian is the "author of own misfortune," or fate.

Rafal is the original master of the Stymphs. In a way, Rafal was destined to become Fate, to become the Balance, had he managed to live long enough to be the One.

Because, he was about to be named the One True School Master, and through the Schools, he would have been master of the Woods' fate, been able to willfully control (or indirectly influence, through the curriculum, the students' educations, and how prepared they would have been, should their fairy tales begin) the fate of all the Woods, all its possible futurities, in theory, to an extent.

But, really, it's the Pen that is Fate, not Rafal himself, when it really comes down to the truth.

However, Rhian disrupted "fate," or the Storian's plans, by being the cause of his brother's death.

And, when he was left with the Stymphs he "inherited," he probably couldn't quite automatically rein them in. I think he had to tame them, or find a literal spell to mollify them with, to get them under his control. Probably symbolically because he was never meant to be Fate or the One in the first place.

And so, of course, Fate's attendants (the Stymphs) wouldn't have followed him willingly, at least, not right away because the ending simply wasn't meant to be, but just so happened to happen nonetheless. (I know the Stymphs' behavior actually must originate from the fact that Stymphs supposedly only like Evers, but I'm looking at this from an angle that's outside of the narrative, and I don't need to rely on the in-universe reasoning at the moment.)

Was there a line after the climax of Fall about this at all? About the Stymphs being disobedient toward Rhian or outright loud and unmanageable, or am I misremembering?

Anyway, Rhian became master of Fate, of the Woods, in becoming the sole School Master. But that only happened when there was no one else left to assume the role. He was the only option, sort of a second-choice. Or, possibly even third, when we consider Pan as the hypothetical third candidate to be the One. Rhian was the default, sadly enough, the lone, surviving one. He wasn't even meant to be School Master, the rightful One, yet he had to be chosen. The Storian was compelled to because there was no one else.

Thus, the "ownership" of the Stymphs and of Fate was transferred over to Rhian.

And remember, once, Rhian was Fate's personal punching bag. He suffered a lot, for his naivete, and from some external causes, like Hook and Vulcan, sort of, even if he was wrongly influenced by the end of it all. And yes, while many events were partly his fault, they also may not have been. The plot could have been the result of very poor happenstance and intersections of the times the brothers lived in, as, we can observe all the turbulence in Rise, during that one particular school year.

⸻

Oh! And I wonder if the Stymphs forevermore missed Rafal, their original master? Did they show any signs of missing him? I'm not sure.

But, I am sure that they knew Rhian replaced Rafal because they can read souls, tell them apart, they way they seemed to instinctually read Agatha's, Sophie's, and Aladdin's souls, to know which Schools they belonged to.

I don't think there's any direct evidence of the Stymphs' mourning though. Did they ever screech, or cry out, as if in pain, like deprived animals? I suppose I could imagine that plausibly happening, with how they were left behind...

Sources of Conflict, Secondary Characters, and Agency in SGE

The supporting cast of the prequels is awful as far as them as human beings with the barest shreds of common decency goes. I'm tempted to say they have no restraint. They are madmen—take the Pan for instance—unlike the Coven, Agatha (not that she's a side character), and even book one Beatrix, who all have some ethical standards and rationality to them. Really.

The brothers are the only "Good" characters, possibly along with Kyma, Midas, and Rufius, albeit, about two of these three don't have the most major impacts on the plot. (And classing either of the brothers as moral is a stretch by itself.)

Literally everyone is against them, if we're operating with protagonist-centered morality. The brothers have a solid relationship, and external factors tear them apart. It's a man vs. society/world conflict with them.

And, nearly all the supporting characters, the jerks in particular, enter the narrative by themselves. They are out for their own personal gain. Aladdin fits this description, to a point; he's on a fine line. And, Vulcan, Marialena, and the Pan definitely fit without question. They are invaders. I'd add pre-reformation Hook to the list, but to be fair, Rafal "recruits" him by kidnapping/human-trafficking.

In contrast, the main series cast of secondary characters are mostly decent people, which makes for a completely different atmosphere, however hostile the Schools may be with Evil Rhian at their head. These side characters were simply trying to live their lives, have a normal school year. Then, Sophie and Agatha arrive, and their appearance creates a major disruption.

Things don't go on as they normally would because they are meant to overhaul the status quo while Rhian and Rafal were meant to uphold it, which is an interesting juxtaposition by itself. The creation twins and the destruction twins. Both forces/freaks of nature, the pairs. Inevitably leading to upheaval and uproar. They're forces of order and chaos, plain as day.

Nearly all the supporting characters in the main series are ambivalent and are dragged into the plot/tale by the sheer force of Sophie's drama. She's the prime mover, with the magnetism of a black hole. She's the will of Man, the engine for conflict. The supporting cast is just trying to stay alive and exist alongside our all-consuming protagonists. They're not truly out to get anyone until they're offered the chance to leap at, until they're given any kind of motivation to take offense. They revolve around Sophie and Agatha and the tale, while the prequel side characters revolve around themselves and their own desires.

The main series' supporting characters aren't active agents in their own stories—unlike Marialena, Vulcan, and Aladdin, all with indisputably ulterior motives—they're along for the ride: the Coven, Tedros, even poor Agatha... The story revolves around Sophie and her decisions/actions. The conflict stems from them, her and Agatha.

Meanwhile, in the prequels, the conflict arguably stems from a wide array, a multitude of sources, and the brothers themselves are only one factor or source of conflict among all the rest. Rhian and Rafal are along for the ride in everyone else's games (the Storian's included). And the brothers are both active and reactive.

Their decisions matter, sure, but the determining factors are often out of their hands. For two immortal School Masters who would/should probably have control over a lot of the Woods/the future of civilization under usual circumstances, they sure don't have much agency on an in-narrative, plot level.

Look at Rhian, even on a lesser, personal level: his soul seems to override his self, sort of, and he ends Fall as if he's been possessed by his own inherent Evil. That's the most obvious example I can point to.

Basically, my point is that, unlike Sophie, unlike even Sophie and Agatha as a duo (and they are mere, seemingly powerless Readers), Rhian and Rafal do not orchestrate the events of their own plot nearly as much. You'd think the brothers, as aware of their genre and the workings of their world as they are, would have the advantage, but no.

They aren't the "authors of their own misfortune," at least not entirely. It doesn't matter how much claim free will seems to have. (It doesn't have much, considering we have a non-negotiable prophecy in play at all.) It doesn't matter how much the narrative claims they have free will (it doesn't really claim that to begin with). They're both far more beholden to the yoke of fate than Sophie and Agatha could ever be.

The dynamics in these pairs of twins are similar, on a small scale, but how they interact with their plots is different. Therefore, Man/free will/choice wins in the main series, and Pen/Fate wins in the prequels.

Lonesome Losses & Winsome Victories

Note:

The stanzas (when read top-down) go backwards chronologically, not forwards.

⸻

- S O P H I E -

THERE ONCE was a girl with eyes green,

Who became an illustrious Dean.

She dared not to fail,

In glass slippers, black veils,

And entranced the most murderous fiend.

.

.

.

- R A F A L -

THERE ONCE was a murderous fiend,

Ensorcelled by emerald green.

He fought and he fought,

Nearly prevailed all for naught,

When his visions had lost all their sheen.

.

.

.

- M A R I A L E N A -

THERE ONCE were visions to glean,

By a bespectacled girl with a dream.

She’d plot and she’d plot,

Sow Evil's forthcoming Rot,

And engender a bold, new regime.

.

.

.

- R H I A N -

THERE ONCE was a boy who did deem

Evil brutish and churlish and mean.

But felled again and again,

By his own wicked pen,

His soul’s fate he could never redeem.

.

.

.

- H O O K -

THERE ONCE was a boy well-redeemed,

Once hired as buccaneer dean.

He would deceive and seduce,

And elude, say “Adieu,”

All betwixt two brothers’ warped schemes.

.

.

.

- THE S T O R I A N -

NOW writes a Pen for to see,

A devilish force the Woods heed,

It recorded tales all anew,

Every time it did slew

Those too wary to serve it. Indeed.

.

.

.

⸻

If anyone would like an explanation as to why I chose the order I chose:

Sophie's Evil was unleashed by Rafal.

Rafal was set on the warpath by the prophecy and to some extent, Marialena herself, who could be seen as representative of the prophecy in a way, as a Seer.

Marialena sided against Rafal due to of her vision of Rhian as the One.

And Rhian was originally (partly) corrupted by Hook.

Finally, everything was orchestrated and everyone was driven by the Storian itself.

What do I have to say for myself? Always, the Pen is contingent on mortal men’s greed, it never will cede its ink and its sheaves!

I’m on a rhyming kick, haha. Thank you for reading.

Childhood Headcanons

These particular, sort of apocryphal headcanons (depends on who believes what after all) provide further context for the brothers' childhood under the constraints of my canon-divergent fic, "When Lightning Falls," that was proved wrong by canon after the release of Fall.

There's also an accompanying Creation Theory I made up, to provide context for the fic, which becomes especially relevant here.

And, if anyone's wondering, this post has been around for far too long—I just never posted it some while after the fic itself was done. I have a lot of stuff on backlog anyway, and figured I may as well edit and post this.

⸻

Note:

Most of these thoughts focus on Rafal, and there is a slightly dark undercurrent that runs throughout this post.

⸻

First, the brothers were originally foundlings, like in the fairy tales of yore.

Fittingly, they have been the youngest and the oldest beings ever to live at the School, at different points in time.

At first, they led a deathly existence, an insecure, unstable one, with potential death at every turn.

Rafal became used to death threats, and being called "demon spawn." He hardened in response. Ever townspeople tried to ward him off, but their feeble sigils did no good, did no true harm against him and his latent sorcery, even whilst he was still learning magic.

They were found, possibly, doddering around in the Woods, on the outskirts of the School, at somewhere from three to five years old? So, they conveniently have little to no memory of their existence beforehand, as vagrants, outcasts, rejects, waifs, who knows—they were alone in the world.

The twins crashed through the brambles, clothes torn, faces scratched, scrapes on their limbs, drenched by the rain, just... waiting to be taken in like strays, as if they simply... appeared.

Rhian trailed after Rafal who forged a path ahead, until they emerged in the light of a clearing, as if guided by the hand of fate, to the School for Good and Evil.

Shortly after their discovery, they became the youngest students to ever attend the school.

Of course, taking them in was the Good thing to do, but perhaps, if we let conspiracy run rampant, the Storian had a hand in the proceedings.

Oddly enough, the Pen just might have brainwashed all the faculty to come to the unanimous agreement of raising the brothers as their own, among the lot of them. How odd that they agreed for once, the one time in decades that Good and Evil have agreed on any matter.

It was probably done for the greater fate of the Woods, the way they were all swayed by the Storian, nearly unconsciously.

And so, they came to terms with the new status quo because there seemed to be something behind this decision of the Pen's, that was greater than they could ever know, or so they believed.

They accepted it. They didn't question it because it was so obviously the Storian's doing. Controlling their minds that had already been made for them. No chance to decide for themselves.

But, they let the Storian handle it, handed over all control to the Storian. Because, no one, not even the highest ranking sorcerer or fairy godmother of either School, or lord or lady could have taken issue with what the Storian did. No one went against it. No one could. Contradicting it would have been a death wish just waiting to happen.

And they all knew that. They knew that very well, considering the nature of the tales they taught.

Eventually, they came to the common conclusion that these children must have been their future School Masters.

Thus, they took the Storian's apparent decision to heart because it wasn't their place to step in.

No one could overrule the Pen, so they lived with it, and continued to train the mysterious, foundling brothers—while they worried for their lives and all that was to come.

That particular set of faculty became a little like the brothers' parents, until they died off, one by one, each from old age or the occupational hazards of working at such a School.

Their professional lives were demanding and they didn't pay as much attention to the brothers as they should have.

All they could do was follow through and hope the Pen had charted the right course, that it chose well in the end.

Even if they would never live to see the future, they were aware they had played a monumental role in securing safety and balance for the Woods, by acting as these children's first, human influences.

⸻

"When Lightning Falls" takes place around three years after the brothers' arrival, when they're about seven, so they've had time to have grown used to the schools.

Everything has become a bit mundane to them. There's nothing new because it's all they've ever known and grown up with, unlike the incoming students' experience of the manor every four years.

So, they've never been around peers their own age, which led to Rhian feeling special and becoming fragile with no challengers and to Rafal gaining a massive superiority complex.

During those years is when Rafal starts on his skepticism, early in life.

Rafal starts to question the Pen, and ask why of everything and everyone that can possibly answer him, or that would answer him if he persisted and probed enough, and didn't relent. And he threatens his way to the answers, to get his way, to figure out what makes everything in this world of theirs tick.

It's the only way he knows, to bribe or exchange, even unethically, or to beat and to hassle information out of others, to trap them in their own bedchambers or offices and not release them until they answered him or fulfilled his demands.

He learned the word "leverage" early on, and the Evil faculty thought he was a prodigy.

He doesn't know any other way because the Never faculty took him in first, claimed him as one of their own. They took a liking to him and his silence, over his crybaby brother.

Predictably, the Never faculty were rough around the edges and they never showed displays of pleading and begging, so Rafal never did that, even as a child.

He never learned the art of apologizing either. Everyone was remiss to let that pass by... but it was too late.

He refused to resort to such means as begging, to lower himself in that way, like Rhian would, even at such a young age, because he wasn't taught mercy. He was told kindness was a weakness and that justice was right. And so, even as a young child, he maintained an adult-like level of dignity in how he conducted himself, always.

Meanwhile, he'd look on at his brother, and wonder: why is he acting so childishly? Having Evil imposed on him forced Rafal to grow up sooner, before his time.

Evil taught him never to whine and whinge, to never cry to get his way. He could already get his way, by other, more sinister means. Cleverer, more artful, more guileful means besides, and in doing so, he could still feel superior, boosting his ego, inflating it and inflating it as a result.

So, that was what he'd grown up around. It was the natural way of things, to him.

At least, this is how children ought to be treated in his eyes, simple as that. And he turned out fine, didn't he? Of course he did. No question about it. He's him, and he's great. The best. Superior to all others, everyone else in his school.

He probably considered himself the smartest little boy alive, not necessarily the most knowledgeable, but the most clever or capable of outwitting others, of negotiating deals, and plotting schemes and doing other, crooked deeds. He thought himself smart in that artful sense, skilled to the point that he could outfox adults over twice his age, outdoing the teenage students in everything he did.

Oh, and if certain knowledge were established as forbidden? Rafal would still try all the more diligently to go after it. That's how he contended with all things.

And what of Rhian? To Rafal, Rhian was naive. Secretly, Rafal never considered Rhian his match. No way, no how. That brother of his couldn't tell Good from Evil in the simplest of challenges.

The Evil faculty were decently well-meaning, thinking Rafal would be good villain material, but again, they weren't exactly attentive or warm or caring like Good's faculty was in "parenting" Rhian.

They weren't neglectful either, but still, Rafal was left to his own devices outside of lessons, and he grew accustomed to being alone when Rhian wasn't around to play with him. Not that he really played that frequently.

Thus, time passed, and the staff believed the twins to be foundlings. That they were adopted, taken in under their wings. Children of the School.

In reality, the twins were children of the Storian.

Everyone knowingly buys into the lie because they didn't want to think beyond the present. They wanted to believe the brothers were of woman-born, abandoned, and insignificant. But, the truth could only be delayed, not buried.

The brothers are foundlings, they all said, persistently. That's what most of the faculty believed, and that's what the brothers were led to think.

Yet, a select few knew their actual purpose of existence: the brothers were not being trained up to follow the Rules of fairy tales themselves—they were being trained up to rule. (Or rather, "rule" as figureheads for the greater Pen.)

They were bound to the School grounds, and only a few people, none in living memory, knew they belonged to the Storian...

⸻

Any thoughts anyone?

Salt & Storybook

This fic is also available on Wattpad or AO3, if you would prefer to read it elsewhere.

⸻

@heya-there-friends and @wisteriaum Yes, the whump fic is out! And here it is!

Hopefully, if I meet your expectations, I’d be like a magician announcing an act:

Step up, one and all, Evers and Nevers, young and old—step right up to witness the death-defying struggles of one Rafal Mistral! The great Rafal, horrifically maltreated by his own Pen, tortured within an enclosure of his own “design!” After all, there is no rest for the wicked…

Anyway, have fun. I sure did. Ngl, whilst I wrote this one, it kind of became a laugh riot at Rafal’s expense. So, don’t kill me. I’ve done a lot of damage.

CONTENT WARNING:

If you do not like dark humor, graphic depictions of violence and injury, and/or do not like the thought of Rafal being physically tortured, please, do not read this fic, or read it at your own discretion. I do not want to upset anyone. So, that is why I’m telling you this now: that probably, by most standards, I’ve been really cruel to him.

The fic contains the following:

Alcohol, vandalism, book burning, physical assault and punishment (by the Pen), disproportionate retribution as revenge, some swearing on the milder side, depiction of injuries.

Thus, potential for violence in my TOTSMOV41 WIP aside, this is literally the absolute meanest I’ve ever been to Rafal.

And, Rafal is a bit of a silly goose (not in a good way) due to his impaired judgment. Though, I tried to keep him in character. Rhian should’ve grounded him in the absence of their parents. But it was too late.

Summary:

Rafal does some much needed “spring cleaning” to remove every trace of Vulcan from his tower and gets far more pain than he bargained for in return.

Or

Rafal has an idiotic episode after the resolution to the Vulcan fiasco while Rhian is oblivious.

Context:

This fic takes place during Rise, shortly after Vulcan’s murder and slightly before Rafal’s renovations to Evil and his torture of the Never students.

It is also somewhat plotless, so I could call it a character study. The exposition part towards the beginning was essentially my premise for writing the whump in the first place, which is why there is some lead-up prior to the action.

⸻

With an impish gleam in his eyes, Rafal blasted the glass display cases Vulcan had left behind to smithereens, spraying the stone walls and floors of his tower with razor-edged shards and splinters of glass.

Then, from Vulcan’s black desk, he dashed a cluster of black crystals to the floor for good measure.

The floor crunched underfoot with every step he took, a mosaic of inedible salt and pepper, as he whistled the shanty he’d composed, mentally gliding through the lyrics:

I asked the queen. . .

What is more pathetic than a Vulcan?

She said: Nothing I’ve seen!

He ground the shards into the grooves between the stone tiles, pulverizing most of what remained. The coarser flecks of glass dust caught in the traction of his boots, and it struck Rafal that he’d have to sweep up his mess before Rhian accused it of being a hazard to their eyes or lungs. Ah well. One more task to add to his steadily growing list. But it was all worthwhile.

No longer would his chambers be a stultifying “museum,” dedicated to the past exploits and conquests of that vile man. It was first and foremost his study.

Rafal sunk into one of the leftover black leather chairs, the one by the desk, and picked up the wineglass he hadn’t been attending to, swilling the garnet liquid around before taking another sip.

Just yesterday, when the brothers had supped together for the first time in six months, Rafal had gotten into an argument with Rhian about the restorations to be made to the silver tower and all the changes he’d already enacted in his School and its curriculum.

He would rather have lived in a bare cell than spend a minute longer in the company of Vulcan’s things, but Rhian had objected, saying the enemy’s furnishings were better than none at all.

And Rhian had further countered Rafal’s calls for immediate action, claiming they had all the time in the world, and to not be childish and impatient. With time, Rhian had said, he could devise a tasteful, new decorating scheme and between the two of them, they could even enjoy all the odds and ends Vulcan had left lying about in his wake.

Yet Rafal was having none of that. Their first order of business was not mindlessly pleasuring themselves but removal—no, it was the complete erasure and sterilization of the premises. That’s what would be done with the remains. Not the human ones though.

Rafal had eventually relented on that matter as Rhian had staunchly drawn the line at Rafal mounting Vulcan’s severed head on a wall as he’d once said. Thus, the head was discarded before it ever had the chance to rot.

Aside from Rafal’s efforts to claim a mortal trophy to no avail, everything else was proceeding smoothly—contrary to Rhian’s wishes. Rafal was still adamant that everything which so much as stunk of Vulcan’s musky cologne vanished from their sight as soon as possible. After all he’d endured to retake their School, he deserved to have his way, that much Rhian owed him.

Glancing out the window, he observed phase one of his plan already coming to a close as his chest swole with heady, vinous pride.

That very moment, thick, churning smoke laden with ash clogged the skies overhead, curling around Evil’s spires—physical proof he had retaken his School.

He stood up and inhaled the noxious fumes and drained the rest of his glass before setting it down again. He was recommitted all right. Here, he’d remain, ’til the end of time.

The spectacle far below was truly a sight to behold. Rafal had burnt the entirety of Vulcan’s life’s work in a great, purging pyre.

Gone now were the steaming, taxidermied bats, the mirror of molten, incandescent glass, the barechested portrait, warped and discolored, and more grotesque than ever, the deformed periscope Rafal had knocked the lenses out of, and the desiccated roses with their petals flaking off into the ether—it was all worthless memorabilia, everything, transformed into a charred, lifeless, amorphous mass that still smoldered this very hour, the objects caving in on themselves, the dying embers retreating into the disordered miscellany.

Rafal set his glass down, hesitated, and poured another up to the brim in celebration. The rising heat was hellish.

All that was left to do was buff away the gilded bats carved into the stairs and he would be rid of that loathsome viper forever. Then, his chosen renovations and agenda would commence, carried out by Humburg, his Stymphs, and the Man-Wolves.

But, he couldn’t get ahead of himself. He sipped from his glass, savoring the bitterness of the red wine, and set it down firmly.

Then he set to work, freeing the storybooks.

The benighted Vulcan had stowed the tales away in massive, black leather chests that had been ignorantly shoved aside, stacked slantedly like a slag heap in half-shadowed corners.

Coarse, drunken pirate. The imbecile was wholly unfit to direct the course of Evil’s future. Only Rafal could be capable of manning such an operation, charting such a course for the students once again under his eminent tutelage.

Hand aglow with black, he whisked his glass off the desk again, floating it over to himself, and took another swig before setting it on the floor beside him. He’d cleared away a small oasis for himself to sit in, until he swept up the shards decking the floors all around him.

The alcohol burned his throat, matching his surfacing rage as his head clouded.

No one would replace the storybooks on the tower’s shelves if he didn’t, he thought resentfully.

His brother had done enough damage already. Enough was enough. He wasn’t Rhian’s personal manservant. What a degrading role that would be.

But Rhian never remembered to clean up after himself, and the books had to get onto the shelves in some way or another.

Rafal exhaled. His brother was in dire need of a lecture, but first, Rafal carped to himself, the task of cleaning up lay before him.

He and he alone would restore the storybooks to their former, casual glory in their places of honor, just as the brothers themselves had been restored by the Pen.

Naturally, Rafal stacked all of Evil’s tales at the top of the tower’s shelves, for his own reference. Rhian surely wouldn’t quarrel with him after all the work was done.

Besides, it was true. Rafal was the only one willing to do it all. To forge order out of inscrutable chaos, mogrify the failed students at every class’ graduation, attend to the Stymphs, clean up the rubble, execute invaders, burn up the corpses—he took on all sins, all so his Ever brother wouldn’t have to lift a finger and stain his hands.

All for naught, was it?

No, Rafal consoled himself. Definitely not. Rhian couldn’t be trusted to do a thing.

Rhian was too cowardly and weak to handle the more gruesome chores on Rafal’s roster. He’d invited a numbskull substitute in, to replace his own brother with.

That batty substitute had no place in his School. Vulcan hadn’t even been a true Never. Not in name or in memory.

Rafal lifted his glass to his lips and tossed back more of his jewel-toned drink, blood and heat and vigor rushing to the surface of his alabaster skin.

If he had missed anything, every piece of evidence, every last little shred of a reminder would be burnt to the ground, even if it took both castles down with it, he decided right then and there. He would will it to happen.

He set his glass down on a stone tile.

No matter if the taxidermied bats could’ve raked in a tidy profit. He didn’t need material wealth when he had sorcery. The usurper’s mere presence had overstayed its welcome and Rafal intended to do something about it.

He picked up his drink again and downed half of it, swallowing the wine quickly as the rest sloshed onto the floor, glinting a deep ruby in the dim, afternoon light.

He scowled. More mess to clean up.

Rafal squeezed the fine, crystal stem of his wineglass with a vise-like grip. It snapped in two—just like how he would snap Vulcan’s spine in two, if the man ever dared return from the dead.

The glass had splintered under the pressure he’d applied, needly slivers sticking into his fingers, pricking his palm, until his pale hand was dotted with pinpricks of blood.

As always, the blood suctioned itself right in, drawn back by an invisible force, and the pinpricks sealed themselves up.

Rafal tended to cast off pain with ease, like it was just another one of his overcoats. By now, he was numb to little cuts like these, unlike his foolhardy yet absurdly delicate brother.

He scraped himself off the floor, up to his feet again, and staggered over to the last chest.

Then, he thrust the chest’s weighty lid back, and lifted out the first stack of storybooks.

His fingers grazed the gold-foiled title of the first book in the stack.

In a glaring, grandiose script, the tale’s cover read: THE UGLY DUCKLING.

Duckling.

Rafal grimaced as his temper flared, revulsion climbing up his throat. Then, his resolve hardened. He’d vowed to strip this place of Vulcan, and he would.

The other storybooks fell out of his grasp and clattered to the floor, face up at the one still locked in his grasp.

Duckling indeed.

Rafal flipped the front cover of the storybook open and tore out a single page.

The page sailed down and landed at his feet, settling lightly atop the broken display glass and fragments of wineglass.

Then, he grasped a stiff handful of pages, the heavy paper twisting, warping only slightly, and finally bending in on itself as he wrenched it apart from the book’s spine.

The paper’s edges sliced into his hand, drawing blood from cuts that vanished as soon as they appeared.

He let the handful he’d ripped out scatter to the wind.

Some pages flew out the window. Others dropped into the greedy, licking flames of the fireplace, curling in on themselves, blackening, joining the soot.

The rest of the pages, he extracted one by one, methodical in his process, tearing each painstakingly lettered sheet from its seams, which had been sewn together with care, as if he were plucking feathers from a wild fowl to be cooked—now, just a hollow, pageless shell of binding left in his hands.

Without a second thought, Rafal slung the storybook’s empty binding into the bright, steadily burning fire.

It caught on the fireplace’s grate, angled like a broken bird.

Rafal heaved a great sigh of relief. Gone. At last.

Then, fully satisfied with himself, he surveyed his efforts at cleaning up, even if the room looked worse than how it had begun this morning. Still, he cast his gaze over the terrain of reshelved tales, spilt wine, scattered glass and black crystal, and the few, loose pages pinned to the floor, wedged underneath the broken glass, fluttering in the breeze.

Despite everything, he felt accomplished.

It was only when he caught sight of the Pen, suspended and still, that he remembered he wasn’t alone. He was being watched.

Not long before, the Pen had stood, vertically suspended in the air over its lectern, its gleaming metal cool, but now, it scalded hotter and hotter, angrily searing hot as a branding iron. Then, it tilted, tip glowing red like a reproachful eye.

Rafal simply stared back, waiting for the Pen’s response. Yet, it did not move, a fact which puzzled him.

The Pen’s tip brightened to a blinding, radiant, white pinprick, as if it were readying itself to defend its tales from the scourge of Evil it had allowed to take up residence in its tower.

Rafal squinted at the light. What was it up to?

That was when he glimpsed something launching out of the fireplace in his peripheral vision.

The storybook’s binding rocketed out from its resting place, where it had nested in the grate, flying at him like a missile, sizzling through the air, like a shot bird with its flaming wingspan spread, its front and back covers open, its spine cracked.

A corner of the binding struck Rafal square in the eye. Hard.

Only one foggish, halfway lucid thought flashed through Rafal’s mind as he squinched his eyes shut: It was taunting him. Mocking his flight.

His face gnarled in pain as he doubled over before crumpling to the floor like an ungainly egret.

Splayed on the floor, Rafal hissed, clawing at his eye, knocking the smoldering mass away from his face. Then, he drew himself up into a crouch, his torso supported by shaking forearms, his hands pressed against the glass-strewn floor, jagged edges cutting through the fabric of his slacks at the knees and into his palms as he tried to sweep some of the fragments away.

Hell. Just Hell. He should’ve cleaned up sooner.

He supposed he was done with cleaning today, come what may, and that he should get started on the glass.

Yet first, Rafal strained his neck and examined his distorted, many-eyed reflections in the shards beneath him, prodding the skin near his wounded eye. His fingertips came away with bright blood.

A few areas of his face still bled slightly, gradually mending themselves, thin rivulets of blood trickling down his neck, criss-crossing in a fine, thorny latticework, ultimately staining his starched, white shirt collar.

He rose to his feet slowly and latched onto a shelf as he faltered for a moment, attempting to regain his balance. Then, he drew himself fully upright again, as if nothing had happened. And, with one hand still gripping the shelf’s edges, he unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, the one, restrictive one that always pressed against the base of his throat, so he could breathe properly and catch his breath.

Rafal sighed in relief. He’d served the absurd, seemingly arbitrary punishment the Pen had dealt him and it was now well over with.

Then, the Storian moved.

His every muscle tensing, Rafal clutched the shelf harder as it creaked under his death grip, his knuckles white as bone. About to bolt for the open window, he realized his legs were stiff and cold, a cramp shooting through his side from his last fall.

Straight as an arrow, the Storian tore through the air toward Rafal, dead set on harming him.

By some miracle, Rafal caught the Pen, letting go of the shelf as he dropped to the floor, not without taking the entire floor-to-ceiling bookcase down with him.

Rafal willed himself not to scream as his eyes widened in horror at a great shadow looming over him, deepening seconds before the crash as vertigo overtook his senses.

Were the pages whirling around him? It couldn’t be bats amid those ink-hatched illustrations. It couldn’t! Not when Vulcan was gone. Not when Vulcan was dead.

As it neared, the bookcase grew larger and larger in Rafal’s sightline, rushing forward rapidly, encroaching on him, almost eclipsing him. Blood roared in his ears and rushed to his head tossed back at a perilous angle, right before he shunted himself back, turning, his back towards the storybooks’ spines, as books fell out at random, several hardcovers hitting his flailing extremities as they poured out and passed him by en route to the floor, one solid thud after another.

The bookcase had narrowly missed his core, but it had trapped his legs, pinning him to the floor, slowly leaching away his vitality as his head swum and his vision dimmed, turning to a feathery blur.

All the bones in Rafal’s legs had shattered upon impact, when he made contact with the stone, bone spearing through his split skin, drenching his pant legs in hot, rapidly clotting blood as he choked aridly on what little spittle he had, too parched to scream, blinking away the blackness at the edges of his vision.

His bones immediately started to knit themselves back together, but refused to heal completely, for, the soul-crushing force of the bookcase still bore down on him, mincing all the unrepaired fragments in his legs.

Leaning on his elbows, Pen still clasped tight his grip, Rafal set his jaw, soldiered through his faintness, and tried to drag himself forward, out from underneath the suffocating weight of history, scraping slowly over the flagstones still littered with glass.

Suppose his bones joined the shards. Then what?

He freed his hips and one of his legs, struggling further, but found he was effectively immobilized for the time being. Only his ankle was caught now, but it would’ve been unwise to dislocate his leg from its socket by yanking it any harder than he was already.

The structure of the shelf collapsed further, the more he struggled beneath it, like a snare closing in on a bird, threatening to cut off its circulation—but if he could just loosen his foot from these damn planks, it…

It was like the Pen wished to teach him a lesson by entombing him, entombing him here, under the weight of every fairy tale he’d ever taught.

Rafal’s face burned.

EVIL SCHOOL MASTER ENCASED AMONG MANUSCRIPTS—he could picture the words emblazoned atop every paper in the Woods, documenting this final humiliation, all the next day’s headlines shouting and blaring in Rhian’s face.

The Evers would pop champagne bottles. His students would dance over his grave—dancing in the chequer’d shade… come forth to play, on a sunshine holiday—how’d that line go? And which tale was it from?

Wrapped in a delirium, he thought of the sprawling tale of Satan’s fall. Demon, chastened and exiled. Hell. What had he gotten himself into? Hell.

At least Rhian would mourn him, he thought grimly, and shook his head, his rage simmering. The boards wouldn’t loosen around his foot!

Rafal swallowed a heaving breath and let it settle in his chest like a stone. There he lay on his bed of glass, still holding the Pen, now hoisting it aloft, over his stone-abraded face, as it glinted in the light, his arms outstretched in a perverse kind of victory, absolutely sloshed and nearly slain, by his own shelf, by his own Pen, by his own hand.

Another thought surfaced suddenly, unbidden: He could lift it all with his sorcery.

But at that thought, the Storian sparked to life.

Hell. That Pen. To Hell with it.

The ancient script running down the side of the Pen glowed and cast shadowy glyphs across the floor, refracted light catching in the glass, piercing Rafal’s eyes, and the strange markings heated, the Pen’s shaft scorching against his palms, causing Rafal to loosen his grip slightly as he tried not to let go.

Yet, the Storian prevailed and wrested itself from Rafal’s grip, slipping out from his fingers with ease, likely readying itself for a second wave.

Gritting his teeth, Rafal steeled himself for action, both hands alit as he at once summoned the last of his magic, drawing from his deepest reserves, from his lifeblood.

Working through his total exhaustion, he managed to lift the bookcase up at a modest tilt, by only a few hairs’ widths—yet that was enough for him to crawl out from underneath it.

He hauled himself up onto his feet again with most of his weight distributed on his better-healed leg, thinking about slaking his thirst, punishment presumed to be over.

Just then, a cool gust of wind blew in, battering the diaphanous, silver curtains Rhian had put up, as if it meant to revive him, and Rafal turned away from the Pen to the window.

That was the moment the Storian chose to attack with a new vengeance, redoubling its efforts against Evil incarnate.

Some unseen force from within the tower flung Rafal across the chamber, casting him onto his side as he skid across the dining table, long limbs catching in the folds of the tablecloth, his obtruding form sending Rhian’s once deftly arranged table settings—now clashing utensils and dishes and glasses—flying before they smashed against the far wall along with Rafal’s skull as he clenched his teeth at the sheer percussive force of the collision.

To wit, it had to be the Pen. What else? Rafal griped. A fairy-tale punishment fit for a fairy-tale villain?

His ears rang with the strident sounds of shattering bone china and clanging metal, ricocheting off the wall as plate shards rained down on him, the whole tumult reverberating like he was trapped in an echo chamber with a cavalcade.

The din resounded as his side throbbed and he kicked blindly at the bonds of tangled tablecloth wound around his legs. Part of the white cloth had settled over his head, draping like a sheet, and he couldn’t see anything, couldn’t see any of the ruins about him, much less sit up.

Finally, he tore the cloth back viciously, reclaiming his sight in a huff. Apparently, a singular knife had skimmed past his heart and had instead lanced through the flaccid fabric of his shirt, burying itself between the stone tiles.

Rafal groaned and turned over rigidly, his shirt tearing around the knife blade as he settled for lying prone, bloodied cheek to the floor, small cuts abound, droplets of blood blooming across his shirt and the tablecloth.

Then, Rafal rolled his eyes back to the ceiling and noticed the Pen hovering above him. He dealt it a withering glare from below, not yet beaten into submission, and reached upwards with tremorous arms to grasp at it.

The Storian appeared to glare back as it flitted out of his reach, darting back and forth archly as if to tease him, rendering all his exertion futile.

That was when the Storian made to invoke a final crescendo to complete Rafal’s torture. It descended on Rafal with an exhilarating swoop as the School Master shielded his eyes, burying his face in his shuddering arms, bracing himself for excruciating pain, fervid blood coursing through him as he tried to propel himself onto his feet and act, but he felt as if he’d sunken into the floor. He couldn’t move!

And the Storian didn’t hold back.

Its nib ripped through the back of his shirt, tip to flesh, sharp as a spindle, glowing with white-hot ire. It then raked over his exposed back, his neck, and the back of his arms.

Eyes watering insanely, Rafal hissed and rasped for breath, abject fury surging through his veins. A strangled gasp left his lips—he wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been choked to death by his own slit throat.

One stroke after another, the Storian lashed across his skin, slashing with a capricious flourish.

He was sure that it intended to flay him alive, and he’d never gotten the chance to say goodbye to Rhian, he thought morosely, head dulling.

These cuts were worse than the time the vampiric, literal blood-sucking, ruby-throated hummingbirds of Akgul had swarmed him. The Never mining kingdom bred them specifically to flit around, slit the throats and tear to shreds the clothes of any passerby who ventured too close to the vaults which were filled to the brim with riches.

Those cuts had been shallow, mere scratches that had closed in a matter of seconds. These lacerations were flesh-deep.

And the Storian didn’t cease moving. Again and again, it slit open his flesh.

Rafal choked out another gasp and pressed himself into the serrated glass and crockery below him as if he could escape the terror above, and shifted onto his side, realizing his mistake immediately as he remembered.

The salt.

The night before, his routine dinner argument with Rhian had culminated in his act of hurling a glass salt shaker at his brother’s swollen head, for being pompous and self-righteous that day.

Naturally, Rhian had become upset last night—not just because he’d been clocked in the head and not just because Rafal had obstinately accused him of being an aesthetic-obsessed egomaniac—but because, of course, this all had happened after Rafal had already swept three dishes onto the floor that selfsame week and broken them.

Smashing the fine china had started to convert itself into a regular dinnertime event, much like an extravagant, exceedingly costly, burlesque sideshow. Predictably, Rhian had insisted that bone china plates were a rank pain to replace. And then, he proclaimed that if this, this breach, this delinquent conduct, continued, he would never dine with Rafal again. In sum, this was his tirade directed towards an unresponsive audience of one, one thick-skulled, unsympathetically glacial brother, all the while dramatically bemoaning Rafal’s dramatic tendencies.

Shortly after, both brothers had refused to clean up, each claiming the mess was the other’s fault, Rafal alleging that Rhian was the source of his provocation, that Rhian drove him up the wall and had thereby caused him to lose the plot—and break his tenuous accord with the Pen since it had last resisted his will over the matter of Aladdin’s placement.

And, the miserable result of these acts was that the salt shaker had cracked open and emptied all its contents—all over the very tract of tower floor Rafal had just rolled over onto. All due to the Pen.

Damn the little devil! Rafal fumed, writhing as his flesh was stuck by glass shards and the spilt salt needled its way into his fresh cuts, aggravating them. And his cuts weren’t healing! Instead they stung. Even the shallower scratches hadn’t closed.

The Storian sliced his front, nearing his throat, as he tried to suppress the feeling in his every nerve, awash with a sense of mounting dread as his own movements repeatedly caused him to be pricked by splinters of glass and the rough, tearing grit of the salt, recurrently entering his open wounds.

Why had he thrown the salt at Rhian when Rhian had simply asked him to pass it?

And now, he was paying for his deed. He’d only compounded this, this agony, and the Storian was making sure he knew it.

How much of an absolute sodding fool he was!

Rafal thrashed further, and spat blood in protest once more at the infernal Pen, choking on nothing but air as his tongue went dry and his voice died in his throat.

His eyes turned bleary and itched. It was as if he could feel his nerves drying out and dying with every passing second as the salt absorbed his blood, the skin around his cuts shriveling, even if the cuts themselves widened, rubbed, and stretched open by the salt and debris, which irritated him like sand would’ve, if not for the chemical burn—the prickling, electric flares of sharp, white-hot pain.

And yet, the corroding burn shocked him awake with a revelation, shearing through his senses that had been suffused with the duller pain’s veil.

What if this torment wasn’t just punishment for desecrating a storybook? It was a petty, Evil act, to be sure. But wasn’t that to be expected from him? Why would the Pen retaliate like this then?

And what if it wasn’t just punishment for vandalizing the Pen’s tower? What if he was expected to apologize to Rhian?

Never. What an indignity that would be, he rejected the idea like a foreign body, then stiffened at his first instinct.

But could apologizing be any worse than where he lay now? Perhaps, he should. If he lived through the Pen’s torment, he probably ought to.

In that instant, his vision whirled, reddening, and his body betrayed him, surrendering to the Pen as he blacked out.

⸻

Rafal’s breath hitched as he returned to consciousness. Had the Pen yielded?

He fought to turn his head as he glanced over at the Pen, watching him from across the chamber at a tilt.

Then, the Storian righted itself, stationed back over its lectern, dormant, as if nothing had befallen its master, once again turning a blind eye to Man’s treachery when doing so suited it, as it always did…

A fairy-tale punishment fit for a fairy-tale villain.

What scraps remained of Rafal’s shredded shirt clung to his lean frame. The fabric was soaked through with blood. He shut his eyes for a moment and inhaled. He’d have to peel it off in the bath, likely.

As he sat up, the muscles in his back twisted, exacerbating the pain of the gashes crossing his back, which still stung, continuing to bleed.

The blood loss wouldn’t be fatal, Rafal knew. But, he wondered whether the Pen would let it go on until he fell unconscious again.

His blood wasn’t clotting regularly and it was all the Pen’s fault, for its magical interference, preventing him from healing any quicker than he usually did.

At this rate, he couldn’t foresee the Pen granting him relief from these wounds—not when it believed he deserved to live so he could suffer. All he could do was staunch the bleeding.

Rafal clambered to his feet for what he hoped would be the last time, stumbling forward before he thrust out his arms to hold onto the edge of Vulcan’s desk and keep himself from falling.

He decided to seek out bandages, or rather, any strip of fabric he could tear, save for the tatters of his grimy, thoroughly bloodstained and oxidized shirt, which looked a rusted brown, far from its former, crisp, white state.

The curtains. The curtains would serve well enough. He hobbled over to them, lit his fingerglow to assist himself, and tore away a strip from the gauzy swaths of fabric, shooting the Pen another glare as he trod, breathless, towards the bathroom.

Once within the bathroom, he planned to run himself an ice-cold bath, but first, he’d run the cuts on his arms under the water for a while, to numb himself, so he could recover a greater range of motion.

No need to undress. His clothes were unsalvageable at this point, and he was certain his brother would agree.

Then, anticipating the reprieve of the biting chill, he bent over to turn on the tap, and did not realize that he’d overcorrected himself, headrush returning, knees buckling, as he pitched forward and slammed face-first into the faucet, passing out.

The bathwater continued to gush and his blood continued to flow forth, mottled bruises already forming across his severe pallor.

Rafal’s body slid partway into the tub, and he awoke minutes later, wracked with a dull ache, half his frame slung over the side of the tub, smeared with blood. His head jolted up, hit by the faucet a second time, as shock permeated his body, which was half-submerged in the frigid, faintly pink water. Not that he could truly sense the cold.

He tried to collect his bearings, but found he didn’t want to move any longer. Nor could he. But he figured he’d wait out the pain, or numb it. Whichever came first.

Albeit, when he sat up, extraneous heat still streamed through his body, radiating outward from his core to his extremities, and he doubted the swelling about his cuts would recede that soon.

Fortunately, he couldn’t catch a fever. He was immune to all illnesses… unless the Pen revoked his immortality. Though, he’d be fine alone. And besides, he had no time to brood.

Rafal stared down at the lacerations lining his forearms. New, youthful skin was already beginning to pave over his cuts, at an imperceptibly slow rate, even if the process hurt like Hell.

To pass the time and staunch the blood, he conjured up strands of gauze bandages that unspooled in midair, allowing them to turn rounds, to twirl and spin before his eyes for an infinitesimal moment before he seized them.

Then, he wound the bandages loosely around his arms, making a poorly-executed, overall hack job of it as his stiff, frozen fingers lacked the dexterity required to tighten them any further.

Well, that would have to suffice for his purposes.

But, no sooner than when he tied the last bandage did he realize the gauze on his other arm had to be replaced since it had leaked through, sopping red once again.

Nevermind.

A copious number of bandages dangled from his outstretched arms as he shuffled back into the main chamber of the tower like one of the undead.

There he sat as the day turned to dusk, stewing silently, tending to the rest of his wounds, awaiting Rhian’s return, applying layer after layer of rapidly reddening gauze.

At last, when he was partly wrapped up, he resembled a dehydrated corpse that would be preserved for the rest of time, forever bound to his duties, like one of the undead, who hadn’t the mind to know when to let go, tugged along by the colorless skein of an immortal life.

He didn’t bother to light a candle.

⸻

As Rhian ambled up the tower staircase, he hummed to himself under his breath and wondered if Rafal had left him any wine. His brother was often a spoilsport and Rhian wouldn’t have been surprised if Rafal had tossed their last bottle.

He took stock of his mental checklist while he continued on his ascent. He’d left Rafal alone for the day, after their tiff last night. Perhaps, Rafal would be ready to apologize. But Rafal was often stubborn, and Rhian suspected he was still sulking.

Brothers. They were such work.

The new furniture he’d ordered from Gillikin would arrive by the School’s shoreside tomorrow, so the place had to be spotless.

Without a doubt, Rafal had finished the spring cleaning by now. And petulantance aside, Rafal never could stand disarray, so surely, he could be trusted with that simple of a task.

Indeed, maybe the Pen really was on his side, and Rhian could check that item off his list now.

He set his foot on the next step, and flinched at a cracking sound.

Rhian peered down at a fragment of glass, cleft in two.

That was odd. Rafal had probably missed a spot when he’d taken out the rubbish, Rhian reasoned, his stomach turning with a twinge of anxiety. Nothing to fret about. Nothing at all.

Rhian knelt down and picked up the shards, stuffing them into one of his jacket pockets. He had to remind Rafal about sweeping up after airing out the place—speaking of which, not one of the windows Rhian had passed had been opened. The air was stale, and it seemed that Rafal had forgotten.

Rhian sighed. He would do it himself later, before his shower. He’d had a long day of curriculum reform as his brother had demanded he add a new section to Surviving Fairy Tales, about distinguishing Good from Evil, because, Rafal had jabbed, even Good’s Master direly needed a refresher when he’d invited the worst kind of Evil into their School.

As he proceeded on his climb, Rhian observed that the stairwell was coated in dust, like it had been beset by a cyclone of some kind.

Now, it wasn’t unlike the Nevers themselves to bathe in dust, but their School Master was definitely above poor sanitary practices, at least regarding himself, if not his renovations. And yet, every surface was saturated with dust, oddly granular dust, that drew blood when Rhian pressed a particle of it between his thumb and forefinger.

Rhian winced at the stinging sensation, knowing his pain would fade soon. Was this glass? He’d told Rafal he didn’t want to compromise their lungs! But Rafal never listened.

Rhian watched as the blood seeped back into his skin, that closed where he’d been pricked. Well… that was a comforting sign. His bond with Rafal was still intact despite last night’s conflict.

He made his way further up the stairs. It was a moonless night and he only had the stars to see by.

Stray storybook pages flapped in the stairwell, and the steps were riddled with more glass dust and drops of blood?

What if they had been besieged by another intruder? Another Vulcan? That would explain the glass. What if Rafal blamed him for allowing an uninvited guest to break in? Had he cast the entry-sealing spell when he’d left their tower that morning? Or had he been preoccupied by, by Storian knows what! He couldn’t remember now.

Heart thrumming, Rhian raced up the remaining stairs in a panic and flattened himself against the wall by the entryway to the tower’s main chamber, to listen.

All he heard was the echo of rustling paper and the cool night wind.

Rhian lit his fingerglow. It burned with warm, pure, golden light, gilding the stones around him. He would vanquish any threat that lay ahead of him. And if Rafal was there, they’d face it together.

Trembling, Rhian swept the presumably monster-clawed, blood-encrusted, silver curtains aside, unsure of what dark horrors he’d be met with in the confines of his own home.

Stepping softly over the threshold, he picked his way into the pitch dark chamber, gold fingerglow illuminating the space, as a scene of total carnage flashed into existence.

Rhian gaped as his eyes flicked across the blood-spattered floor, his light spilling onto it and bouncing back into his eyes. All he saw was pure upheaval. The fire had long since guttered out as it had consumed all of its kindling. An entire bookcase, overturned. Water, pooling out from beneath the bathroom door, circulating along the grooves between the stones. And the tales. They had clearly flown across the room, tossed about erratically, like they’d been subjected to a storm at sea. And—

His gaze landed on a stooped figure with a ragged, irregular breath, shielding its eyes from the sudden flare of harsh light.

Rhian’s breath caught. Was it a Night Crawler? Or some other lethal creature of the night? Some undead thing? He backed up.

Finally, Rhian’s eyes adjusted to the light—was that Rafal?

He squinted down at spikes of snow-white hair, matted with blood, then, eyes widening with recognition, surveyed Rafal’s baffling state of partial undress. Rhian’s distempered brother had propped himself up at the base of the fallen bookcase, and hadn’t risen from where he sat.

Rafal stared up at Rhian in the lit doorway without a word, his eyes hollow and vacant.

“I-I thought you were a monster.”

Rafal’s frown deepened. “Lovely,” he breathed hoarsely. “You’re not the first to think that.” He snuck a brief look at the Pen.

Rhian’s chest flooded with relief. It was only then, after Rafal had spoken, that Rhian’s fears had evaporated. He recognized his brother’s voice and was now certain he was with the living and not one of the undead, some sinister being risen from the grave with the intent of taking over their School.

“Where’s our intruder then? Have you burnt up the corpse?” Rhian wrung his hands, glancing around.

“There is none.”

Rhian paused for a moment, processing his brother’s words. “Then whose blood—” Rhian stopped, unnerved. “Yours? It’s yours?”

Rafal nodded, grim, and began to placidly wrap more bandages around his torso, tightening them with the aid of his sorcery.

With narrowed eyes, Rhian peeked fearfully at his brother’s back and almost passed out in shock. It was all cut up and bleeding, crossed by haphazard strips of overlapping bandages that hung off his arms.

Concerned, Rhian stared at Rafal, haunted by the bloody sight, until he found his voice. “Wh—” He swallowed the bile rising in his throat, trying to quell his nausea. “What happened?”

“The Storian.”

Rhian blinked at his imaginary monster, and gazed warily at the true monster, hard at work, diligently inking in a new tale, once and forever unmasked. It had been the monster all along.

What would they do now? Subdue it somehow? Though, Rafal’s trials were already over…

“Will it heal?” Rhian asked tentatively, wide-eyed.

“What do you think,” Rhian’s monster answered. “I’ll walk it off.”

That was when Rhian registered his brother’s resignation, and knew he should drop the matter altogether. But, he had one final question: “Why did it attack y—”

“Ice. Bring me ice.”

“But—”

“Now,” the Evil School Master cut out caustically. “And not a word about the Pen favoring Good.”

Stunned into dead silence, Rhian scurried away to fetch ice. The most damage always occurred within the shortest window of time.

Yet one fact held true in his mind: Rafal hadn’t learnt his lesson and never would.

⸻

Note:

I’d leap at any feedback you have! Please, if you’re up to it, I’d love to hear your reception of this fic, any thoughts, feelings, reactions, or concrit you have, any at all, especially as this is the most action and the least dialogue I’ve possibly ever written, given the unusual nature of the fic.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask. I’m almost always willing to elaborate!

In addition, I’m not of a legal drinking age in my country nor do I have any inclination to drink. So, apologies if there are any inaccuracies regarding the alcohol use. You can certainly let me know what the errors are, if there are any.

Did anyone catch any of the references I made?

In writing this fic, I realized it diverged a lot from my previous ones because it relies more on imagery than dialogue, so I personally had to really push the envelope with it. In fact, this was probably the most difficult fic I’ve written thus far because I think crafting dialogue tends to come to me more easily than action sequences do, and well, this fic is almost all action.

(And I wanted the fic to feel cinematic, as if it were panning over a train wreck or a hazard zone the audience wouldn’t be able to peel their eyes away from. Yeah, I know. It probably sounds strange, that the desired effect I had in mind while writing this was “vehicular collision,” haha.)

Trivia: My use of “Pen” versus “Storian” was very intentional here. For some reason, I just intuitively found that it made some kind of weird sense to call it “the Storian” when it had an active role and “the Pen” when it was an object acted upon or mentioned, with a few exceptions. It just felt right.

⸻

I even wrote a rhyme for the fic:

He gets bruised—he was struck.

He gets burned; he gets cut.

All done by a Pen

While he’d been drained of his luck.

And all befell him while salty and drunk.

⸻

Playlist:

“Fall Away” - twenty one pilots

“21 Guns” - Green Day

“Save You” - Turin Brakes

“Enemy” - Imagine Dragons & JID