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thefanciestborrower · 1 year ago

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Haha lol Ice Emperor goes Brrrr part 4

Whispered voices filled the dungeon. Quiet, their words traveled only so far as an arm could reach, the murmur of something dark echoing in rolling waves that masked the truth of the matter.

A smile filled the dark, jagged.

In the same moment, a key jingled in a frozen steel lock.

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The life of an Emperor was difficult. Any mistake could be fatal for either his warriors or himself. He had to be on guard eternally, for usurpers would not miss the chance. So, it was a surprise when he drifted off, systems powering down one by one until the world faded into the background of routine system maintenance that he didn’t even remember ignoring. Caches of information were completely wiped from his memory, unneeded in their triviality.

It was mid reboot when the pain hit. It crackled up his circuits and splintered into spiderwebbed cracks, bleeding something sickeningly thick onto the ice of his throne even as he stood, one hand finding the blade of the weapon and halting it in its tracks. His vision returned in staticy, flickering images, glitching at the sides and blinding him to the identity of his attacker.

When the usurper hissed, The Emperor snarled a mangled word in return, ice blazing from between his teeth and rising in sharp, arching spires that hit the ceiling of the hall with such a thunderous noise that the sky may fall from the force of it. “Traitor!” The second attempt at speech walled off the entrance to the hall with a thick sheet of ice so dark that it blocked the light from beyond.

His assailant fell back, skipping down the steps with light feet and snapping vitriol at him in echoes of noise. Noise. Too much Noise.

The static faded in patches as he followed them down, ice cracking and breaking in his wake as his rage fueled the staff to spread his power. His gaze landed on the form of his attacker.

A woman. He remembered her as one of the formlings he’d imprisoned for questioning not days ago. Older than the girl the Boy brought with him by far, she was wrinkled in her age, tales of her adventures written on her skin in a mural painted in sunspots and creases.

The Emperor’s staff hit the ground, and it was over. Too slow to move, the woman faced the full brunt of a shard of ice. It hit her mid-chest, and from his perch atop the last step to his throne, he heard something crack. When the first drop of blood fell, he turned to sweep a harsh eye over the destroyed main hall.

Frozen spires raised high, burying themselves into the ceiling and sending shards of wood down upon him in flakes. Dark ice blocked every entrance, blocking off his army and shadowing the entry hall unpleasantly. The Emperor exhaled in a short, tense hiss.

A tiny hand pressed itself into his stomach, followed quickly by another as a soft voice not yet even broken by age piped up from his middle. “What happened?” He almost forgot. The Boy. A check at his side, and the removal of a blade the length of his own forearm revealed a gash crumpling the metal of his body. Sparks bled out in short, quick bursts, following the trail of an oozing, blue liquid. “Z—uh—Ice Emperor?”

“A traitor.” The weapon hit the ground with a sharp clatter as the ice softened, melting into nothingness as The Emperor stalked down the rest of the climb to his throne. “Nothing of your concern, Boy.”

“You’re bleeding.” Then, quieter, “I didn’t know you could bleed.” It wasn’t meant for The Emperor, he was sure, but the very concept of it made him quicken his stride some, turning down the winding corridors his personal quarters laid in. To some extent, he was glad his past self had the forethought to make the palace grand, yet not overly large, as he managed to reach his quarters in less than a minute by his internal clock’s timing.

Still, he managed a quick, raspy “don’t touch it” on his way, even as his pain sensors ran wild with their alarm.

Squirreled away in his locked room, he struggled out of his armor and shirt, grimacing at the blue fluid that dripped in sluggish pulses from the rupture in his side. The vague idea to simply open his front panel and retrieve the child was a dangerous one, he decided after no more than a moment’s contemplation. He had no idea what the blue fluid could do to the Boy, though he knew it served some purpose as a way to prevent his temperature regulation liquids from freezing, what the compound would do to a human was beyond him.

So, with the voiceless warning of his synthetic stomach cinching along its base to prevent any contamination, The Emperor arched his back and gagged, forcing the Boy back into his throat, despite his yelping protest. From there, it was a simple reversal of the process of swallowing, made infinitely easier and far less disorienting when his systems weren’t fighting him for it.

The Boy rolled into the back of his teeth with a squeak, The Emperor’s tongue holding him in place while he raised a platform out of ice from the ground, and, upon giving it a second more to think, placed his already-ruined shirt on top for good measure. The Emperor promptly tore his mouth guard off and dropped the Boy directly onto the platform, having to take care to not raise his blue-stained hands to help stabilize him.

He tried to ignore the little hiss of a sharp breath as the Boy looked down at the dripping gash along his side, instead turning to examine it with a sharp eye.

The metal was completely crumpled, for one. Pressed inward until it couldn’t dent any more and creating harsh, jagged edges where it broke. Inside, scores of wires sparked and sizzled when they made contact with each other, and it was only his built-in redundancies that left him mostly functional after so many had been severed.

Far in the back, hidden between plating, and protected by most of his other life functions, his synthetic stomach oozed blue near its base, dripping sluggishly from a single tube cut clean through. The Emperor clicked his teeth, frustrations leaking through the sides of his mouth in the form of cold mist. The wires were an easy fix—he still had some of the black adhesive he’d awakened with, and though he may need to find a suitable replacement soon, it would be enough to last him through at least another year.

The slit lining of his stomach, however, could pose a problem. For the moment, though, he busied himself with bending his metal skin away from his far more delicate insides.

“Are you okay?” The Boy’s teeth chattered when he spoke, but The Emperor could hardly work with him taking up his mouth. It would be a distraction. He didn’t look up, something in the back of his processor telling him it would make him feel bad for the child.

His front panel was beginning to ooze blue, as well, though he didn’t have a shirt on to ruin, so he supposed it didn’t matter. What bled would simply trail down his armor to be cleaned later. “I am fine.” In the corner of his vision, the Boy shifted, The Emperor’s discarded clothing pulled up to his shoulders as he quivered.

Right. He wasn’t supposed to look.

The Emperor turned back to himself, producing a roll of adhesive strips from a chest compartment before taking the time to slowly weave the braided wires back together, wrapping the entire thing when he finished. It left the things notably less flexible than before, and they tugged painfully where they were anchored if he moved too quickly, but he would need to have more copper thread manufactured before he could fix it properly.

He bent the last piece of metal skin back into place, and his front panel opened in the same moment. Wires and functional components cleared away at a hand’s push, revealing the oozing synthetic organ that sent warnings blaring in The Emperor’s brain. A slice ran from a quarter of its width, slit straight through the metal mesh that allowed it structure, and eviscerating the important tubing within. His mind, however, lingered little on that idea, instead forming a new one quite quickly. A few more inches, and the blade could have very well skewered the Boy.

He found words spilling from behind his teeth, quiet and… soft, almost as he all-but hummed. The nigh-noiseless atmosphere of the room was too much for him to break. “You may leave here.”

“Huh?” From the sound of it, the Boy jolted when he was addressed, the shift of cloth filling the otherwise-empty room as The Emperor scowled at his hemorrhaging stomach. This would not be a simple fix. He could feel it in the way his mind interpreted its warning signs as burning, searing pain that flared up his side in flickering waves. In the way the metal mesh and silicone combination laid in manufactured perfection.

He would have to burn it closed.

“I would not chase you down. An emperor’s palace is no place for a child.” Something made it feel right. A memory, perhaps. Buried deep. Someone he knew. “You are no threat to me, Boy. I do not think that you ever were, really.” For now, The Emperor staunched the bleeding with his ice, freezing a column up through the dripping tube. It was difficult. The liquid resisted freezing enough for frost to form on the surrounding pieces before it stopped, and the resulting cold was enough for his system to raise a plethora of new warnings. He did his best to ignore them when he turned back to the Boy. “You may leave.”

The Boy did little more than stare at him. For long enough that The Emperor wo—debated—if he’d frozen solid, the Boy’s only action was to stare.

Then, as if the Boy had lost any sense at all, he spoke as though he wasn’t facing an Emperor, flippantly replying “Nah.”

A huff of frost that crystalized along the Emperor’s newly-replaced mouth guard, light enough that it couldn’t spill over the edge. His irritation at a child could only go so far… well, this child. “You will not find your friend here.”

The Boy shook his head, and when he stumbled to his feet, he drug The Emperor’s stained shirt (currently being used as some combination of blanket and cloak) with him. His expression wrinkled his nose and raised a brow, almost as if he found The Ice Emperor silly. “I’m not looking for him anymore.”

A head poked out of his door was enough to call a servant for spare clothes, and only after the footsteps had faded did he turn back to the Boy, brow raised. “Why is that?” There was no way he could have simply given up. The Boy had too much drive behind his voice for that. Did he plan to break the prisoners out?

“I just don’t think I need to look for him.” The Boy’s smile was wide—all sharp teeth and closed eyes. The Emperor detected no lie in his voice. “I’m okay here.”

It was an effort to freeze the blue liquid off his hands… what had seeped under the gloves, at least, but once it had crystalized, it was a simple matter to remove. The Boy, however, cringed at the sound of metal on metal. “I suppose I cannot begrudge you that.” He could, actually. He was the Emperor, and his palace was his to rule. He simply… didn’t want to. A novel feeling, really, when it came to the inclusion of someone so… purposeless to his army.

A shirt and a new pair of gloves slid under his door atop what likely used to be a semi-decorative serving platter. Serving platters, however, had little use for a hungerless leader. The thought let something uncomfortable settle in the back of his mind. He decided not to think too much on it, and instead slipped back into his normal attire, armor and all. The weight of it was heavy across his shoulders, but in a way that was something… comforting, even if it did make the most horrendous clanging noises when he moved too quickly. “What’s your name, Boy?”

Why he asked the question, he couldn’t tell himself or anyone. Really, it slipped from him on a whim. The bright—soft. Kind—smile the boy sent him in return, however, was more than enough motivation to not regret it.

“Lloyd.”ice

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