#starchild is slowly hardening even though he now has a servant/sort-of companion

[mxliv-oftheendless]

Green Wounds, Ch. 4

And we’re back with Green Wounds! Here’s hoping Tumblr makes it easier to post this one... because I swear to God it should not have been that hard to post the KISS Unsolved story. But we’re not here to gripe about Tumblr. We’re here to see what’s up with Starchild! 

Hoo boy, I am actually excited for y’all to read this chapter. Some heavy shit goes down in this chapter and it was insanely fun to write it! If you guys have seen Maleficent, then you already know what’s gonna happen... 

Read on and enjoy! 

Starchild stayed in the ruins for a month, sending Peter every day to spy on the ongoings of Jendell. King William died after a fortnight—at which Starchild felt a rush of satisfaction—and his successor was to be crowned in some weeks after his marriage to the king’s daughter, Jeanette. But Peter never saw anything of Ace.

Peter flew down behind Starchild, who was staring out in the direction of Jendell. He was often staring out at the kingdom whenever Peter saw him. He wasn’t sure what Starchild did while he was off spying for him, but he hoped it wasn’t just staring out obsessively at the kingdom.

Starchild waved a hand and turned Peter back into a man. Peter immediately crashed painfully to the ground, letting out a groan of pain. He really hated being a bird—it felt like a betrayal to his feline species to have the form of one of their favorite animals to hunt. “Why do I always have to be a bird?” he grunted to Starchild as he picked himself up. “Can’t I be a cat?”

“Flying is faster,” Starchild replied bluntly, not turning around to him. “Did you see anything?”

Peter shrugged. “I saw a bunch of servants carryin’… carryin’ multicolored skin? And some of it looked like animal fur. What was that?”

“Probably clothes. Did you see what they did with them?”

“Uh, no, I didn’t. Other than that, I didn’t see anythin’ else.”

“Did you… see Ace?”

“Uh… no. I didn’t see him.”

He couldn’t see Starchild’s face, but from the way he spoke he sounded like he was frowning. “Fine. Go get some rest, and go back in the morning.”

“What do you even want to know about this Ace guy, anyway?” Peter asked, by this time very curious. “I thought you didn’t like humans.” Why would he? Humans were dirty, inelegant creatures. Not at all like the sleek, civilized superiority of the cats. “Plus, he stole your wings. I would think you wouldn’t want anything to do with him anymore.”

Starchild finally turned to look at him over his shoulder, and Peter was treated to an icy glare. “I don’t like humans. And I also don’t employ you to ask me ridiculous questions,” he said just as icily. “I have my reasons.” He turned back around. “Just… Just leave me alone. Go hunt or something.”

“… Could you turn me back to normal again?”

Without replying, Starchild waved his hand and Peter was (thankfully) turned back into a cat. Peter quickly slunk off to hunt, not wanting to be around the faerie longer than he had to be. 

-*-

What Peter was unaware of was that Starchild did not actually spend all day on a ledge in the ruins, staring out at Jendell. His days were usually spent going around the ruins, sometimes exploring and other times simply wandering. Occasionally he ventured out of the ruins into the fields.

On one such time, he was wandering along the edge of a field nearby a forest when suddenly rustling made him turn his head. There coming out of the forest was a red fox. When Starchild saw the tip of one of the fox’s ears burned off, he realized it was the fox he had encountered at the glade. Had it been following him?

Starchild frowned at the fox. “I thought I told you to go away,” he said to it, even though in the back of his mind he thought, You’re talking to a fox. A FOX.

The fox tilted its head and stared at him, with the same piercing, exposing stare. Starchild wanted to hit the fox with magic again, but this time stopped himself. Instead he tightened his grip on his walking stick and glared back at the fox. For a long, long moment, neither fox nor faerie moved. Then Starchild curled his free hand into a fist, his hand glowing dark purple, and ground out, “Go. Away.”

After a moment, the fox lowered its head, turned around, and disappeared back into the woods.

Starchild turned and walked back towards the ruins. He wasn’t sure why that fox had appeared to him again, but he didn’t like it at all.

As Starchild spent more time alone, away from the Moors, and as his mind descended further into obsession, he gradually began to lose more of the faerie he had been before Ace stole his wings. And as summer turned to autumn and the world turned steadily colder, so did what remained of his heart.

-*-

Finally, after a month of hearing nothing and seeing no sign of Ace, Peter saw something.

He was perched on a window that looked into a gigantic room with a platform on one end, the platform housing two regal-looking chairs. A huge crowd of elaborately-dressed people was gathered in the room, waiting for something.

After a while, the doors to the room opened, and the crowd parted, leaving a path through the middle of the room to the chairs. Men wearing armor marched into the room first, then stood in line on both sides of the path.

Then a beautiful dark-haired young woman entered the room wearing a lavish dress that, honestly, made Peter wonder how she didn’t trip and fall in it. All the people in the room bowed to her as she passed, and Peter couldn’t help but notice that the young woman seemed a little out of her element as she nodded her head in return. She walked up the platform to the chairs and sat down.

More footsteps filled the air, and Peter turned to look at the entrance again. His eyes widened slightly.

It was a man, with dark hair cut to his chin and a rather odd face. He was wearing the lavish clothes and animal furs that he had seen before, but Peter recognized him immediately. This was Ace, the man his master was so obsessed with.

Ace walked up the platform, but instead of sitting down in the other chair, he instead went to stand between them. Another man came forward, carrying a golden crown in his hands, and as Ace knelt down Peter realized what was happening.

The man placed the crown on Ace’s head then stepped back, bowing his head. Another man spoke. “I present to you, the first of his line,” he said to the crowd as Ace stood up. “His Royal Highness, King Ace.”

Excited murmurings went up in the crowd. Ace looked out at the crowd and briefly nodded his head to them, then turned to sit down in the chair alongside the young woman, obviously the Queen.

Peter turned around, spread his wings, and flew off back toward the ruins. A large part of him didn’t particularly want to tell Starchild what he’d seen, but he really had no choice. At the same time, Peter also remembered the story his master had told him, about that Ace taking his wings, and actually felt a twinge of indignation. Taking a faerie’s wings so he could have some crown on his head? That was just low, even for a human.

-*-

Starchild had gone very, very still by the time Peter finished his report.

“Someday, y’know, I’ll live there, in the castle,”

Of course. How could he have so stupidly forgotten the one thing Ace had always wanted?

He finally spoke, his voice shaking… with what, he wasn’t sure. “He did this to me… so he could be king?”

He didn’t want to cry anymore. He had cried more than enough tears over Ace and his betrayal. What he felt now was rage.

Deep purple magic began to materialize around him as his anger rose higher and higher. His breathing turned ragged and his shoulders shook. The grip his hands had on his walking stick tightened until his knuckles turned white, and for a moment he imagined it was Ace’s neck.

He turned his head to the sky, and let out a long, primal scream.

The deep purple magic shot up into the air and broke through the clouds, twisting into a column of purple light. Purple lightning bolts shot out of the column and struck stones around the ruins, exploding them all to rubble. For a moment, Starchild stared up at it, frozen, eyes blazing.

Then he lowered his head, and the magic dispersed. Sheer rage was still surging through him, and inhuman growling came from the back of his throat as he breathed raggedly.

I’ll never hurt ya Starshine This is true love Starshine Let me help you I’ll keep you safe

I love you, Starshine.

Lies. All of it had been nothing but lies. And he’d fallen for all of them.

Behind him, Peter spoke up. “What now, Master?”

Snarling like an animal, Starchild turned around, his eyes wild with rage. He wordlessly waved his hand, turning Peter back into a cat, and stormed off. With every step, stones flew out of his path, and as he passed under a still-intact entryway, the entire entryway broke apart and flew in all directions.

“Well, when I become king, we can change all of that.”

“We could really unite the two kingdoms?”

“Sure! We’ll do it together, Starshine!”

He wanted to travel back in time and berate his child self. How could he have been so naïve as to think Ace would be any different than all the other arrogant, selfish humans?

As Starchild left the ruins with Peter bounding after him, leaving them in much worse shape than when he’d arrived, the one coherent thought that broke through the anger consuming his mind was Get back to the Moors.

He couldn’t live like this anymore; hiding away in pitiful ruins (human ruins), scavenging for food, waking up screaming and crying every night from the same dream… and letting Ace go unpunished for what he’d done.

He was tired of humans controlling his life. And he was not going to let another human shatter him again, or take away anything else he cared about.

Get back to the Moors.

-*-

He walked all through the night, and would have continued into the day if Peter hadn’t insisted on stopping to rest. So he begrudgingly stopped and let Peter take a brief nap, before setting off again. The entire time, his anger never faded, not even a little. If anything, it increased. The ground would lightly rumble under his feet, any plant growth he passed would burst into dark purple flames and die, and dark clouds seemed to follow him overhead. He passed between two small divides made of stone, and with every step he took the stones were flung out of formation into all directions behind him.

It seemed to take an eternity, but finally, Starchild saw the familiar standing stones up ahead. He was nearly there. He came to the boulder he had perched on just over a month ago, and climbed to stand atop it. He opened his mouth and began to shout in the tree language, his voice projecting out into the forest. “Border guards! I summon you here now!”

For a long moment, there was nothing. Then he heard rustling and heavy footsteps, and turned just in time to see Gene appear from out of the trees. Upon seeing him, Gene froze in surprise, then began to growl at him, demanding to know where he’d been. Starchild ignored him and looked out into the forest, watching as more and more of the border guards emerged. When they saw him, they all began asking him where he had been, what had happened to him… and what had happened to his wings. They were all especially shocked to see him without his wings.

Their constant questioning about his wings did the most to make Starchild’s rage flare up again. His hand tightened around his walking stick, glowing faintly purple, and he raised it up in the air then banged it down against the boulder. “QUIET!”

Purple magic shot out from the tip of his walking stick, hitting all the border guards. There was instant silence.

Starchild looked out at them all, then began to speak, his voice the most powerful it had ever been. “I know you all have many questions. You ask what happened to me, and my wings? I will tell you what happened. They were taken from me… burned off my back by the same filthy human that now sits on the Jendell throne! He tricked me, made me think he wanted to help me, even made me think he loved me,” he spat out the word like it was poison, “all so he could steal my wings and become the king! He blinded me with all his lies, but I see him now for what he truly is—a greedy, selfish, arrogant piece of filth, just like the rest of his kind! Have any of you ever wondered why we continue letting humans invade our home? For centuries, it has been war after war after war, with the greedy humans forcing us to defend ourselves. At the end of every war, they say there will be peace, but they lie! Not even a month ago they tried to take the Moors again, not even thirty years after the war that took my parents’ lives! They don’t stop… they will never stop!

“Why do we let them attack, and always force us to defend? We have always been nothing more than sitting ducks! Well, I say, not anymore! The Moors cannot survive with us simply trusting in one another; we need clear and strong leadership. And although my wings are gone, I am still protector of the Moors. I can give us that leadership! But I cannot do it by myself. You have all fought by my side in defending the Moors, and I cannot think of anyone better to help me! Join me, and I will make sure the Moors are never defenseless again!”

Starchild looked out at all the border guards. “What say you?” he asked of them. “Who will stand with me?”

For one long moment, there was silence. None of the guards moved, or spoke, only stared at him.

Then…

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Starchild turned his head. At the front of the group of guards was none other than Gene. He held his spear out in front of him, and was banging the end of it against the ground. Then Starchild heard another tapping spear join Gene’s, then another, then another… until every single one of the border guards were banging their spears against the ground.

The corner of Starchild’s mouth quirked up into a miniature smirk. He turned around and walked out of the clearing, the border guards falling into step behind him.

-*-

Clouds rolled over the sun, and the sky went utterly dark over the Moors as thunder rumbled. The glowing lilies floating in the lake one by one winked out. The Fair Folk looked around in surprise and confusion… then turned and froze when they saw Starchild come out from among the trees, the border guards behind him. Gasps went up when they saw the faerie, and someone cried out, “His wings!”

For their protector no longer had his large black wings. And although he looked the same, save for a black jacket and black boots, his features were no longer soft and gentle, and kindness no longer radiated from him. His features were now sharper and cold, and what the Fair Folk felt from him now made them all incredibly afraid.

He walked past them all toward the very center of the large lake island. As he did, the branches on the trees grew longer, growing and connecting with branches and vines that grew out of the ground. The branches and vines twisted together, forming the back and seat of a makeshift throne.

Starchild walked towards the sprouting throne with his head held high, and the look on his face perhaps would have been solemn if his features weren’t so cold and stony. Each step was slow and deliberate, to better make the Fair Folk realize what was happening. He didn’t bother turning his head to look at them as he passed, but could feel the shock and terror radiating from them all.

When Starchild lowered himself to sit on his throne, he understood for the first time in his life why humans loved power so much. He ruled over the Moors now, had a different power that wasn’t magic, that would allow him to get what he wanted… and knowing that made him feel more powerful than he’d ever felt in his life.

Peter jumped up onto a stone beside him, and Starchild lifted a hand to run his fingers over Peter’s fur. He finally turned his head and looked out at the Fair Folk, taking in their intimidation and fear. Every movement was smooth and calculated, and every inch of Starchild gave off the impression that he could easily rip them apart if they even thought about protesting this new reality. To his satisfaction, the Fair Folk all averted their gazes whenever his eyes met theirs.

To his left, Gene pointed his spear at the Fair Folk and growled threateningly, the other border guards following suit. Shaking in fear, one after another the creatures began to bow, until all of them were bowing in respect to Starchild.

Starchild looked out at them all, and for a moment, he felt a flash of something akin to guilt. The old Starchild would have been appalled at the thought of doing this, and would (ironically) rather cut off his wings than impose his own authority on the Moors.

But that Starchild was a fool; a naïve, starry-eyed fool who thought he’d been given true love’s kiss. He had been content to cry, wanting nothing more than to wallow in misery and sob over Ace stealing his wings and ripping his heart to pieces. That Starchild was dead. And this one, this new Starchild, did not want to cry. He would not cry anymore.

What he wanted now was vengeance. 

And he would get it, one way or another.

Lightning flashed, illuminating Starchild’s cold face.