#thanks for the prompt! <3 I wasn't expecting anyone to suggest the webnovel of my life ToT afraid I can't write tcf since it's been years :(

[butterfirefly]

@cat-tyy I have. no idea what I just wrote. Enjoy.

“AAAAH!”

“Zion. Zion! Let’s calm do—oof.”

“Zion-ssi, I think—‘ack!’—it would be best if you—‘Did you just bite me?!’—both just stayed still—‘Get away from me!’ ‘I can’t!’—for a moment,” Eugis finishes weakly.

She glances to their right where Serpens is fretting over them (one more than the other, actually, but that’s not the point), looking very much like a weeping angel.

“Do you want me to calm your mind, Zion?” he offers tearfully, his palm alight with divine power.

“No. Just get him away from me!”

“I told you, he can’t,” Humanus interjects, fending off Zion’s pinwheeling arms. “He’d have to slice us up first.”

Zion pauses in his assault against the crown prince and takes a moment to absorb his words. He then turns to Serpens with conviction.

“Will you be able to do that painlessly if you used a divine blade?”

Serpens begins to sob.

Eugis watches Zion hug him as best as he can and silently brings her hands together, asking the goddess Luxmea if she could perhaps break the spell presently so they could all be rescued from their current predicament.

You see, at the moment, Zion and Humanus are—quite literally—attached at the hip.

It all began with Humanus bragging about his tree house.

“It was our favorite hangout back when we were little,” he said around a mouthful of cookies.

“Really,” Zion said doubtfully.

“Yeah. We used to play there all the time.” They both turned towards Serpens.

Serpens took a sip of his tea and placed it back on the table without a sound. “We did.”

“Can we go see it?” Zion and Eugis asked in tandem, the former asking Serpens and the latter asking the actual owner.

Humanus clapped his hands excitedly. “Sure! Let’s go right now.”

“Ahem,” Winston cleared his throat. “Sunbae, I believe you said you were ‘swamped with work’ today.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Zion said with a flippant wave of his hand, already pushing Serpens towards the door. “I’ll just do it later.”

Winston mutely held his gaze, and Eugis once again found herself marveling at how Zion could brush off the pressure coming from the 7 foot-tall knight without breaking a sweat.

“Let’s go!” he cheered, and on they went.

They arrived at the base of a magnificent tree behind the crown prince’s palace. The sight of it sent a pang to Eugis’s heart, the towering trees of her own kingdom brought to the forefront of her mind. Dozens of feet above the ground, a tree house sat snugly between thick branches, looking well-maintained and not at all like it had been abandoned for a decade.

“Is this sturdy enough for Winston and me?” Zion asked, inspecting the rope ladder that hung before them.

“Pretty sure it can handle Winston’s weight,” Humanus said with a quizzical tilt of his brow. “But why do you say it like that?”

“What, you expect me to climb this myself?”

“Uh, yeah? Serpens and I did it all the time when we were kids.”

Zion stared at him incredulously, then began pointing at all of them starting with Humanus. “Divine power.” At Serpens. “Divine power.”

“Elf!” Eugis said helpfully once it was her turn, earning an appreciative nod from her friend.

“Muscle,” he continued, pointing at Winston’s scowling face. Then at himself. “Puny human.”

“It’s just a ladder,” Humanus said, unmoved.

Zion took a deep breath, and Eugis hurriedly grabbed him in a bridal carry before he could start insulting his future king. “We’re off first~”

And with the help of her wind spirit, the two of them shot up in the air towards the open doorway of the tree house, Zion screaming all the while and clutching at her neck hard enough to tickle (he was puny like that).

By the time the rest of them had reached the tree house, Zion had regained his wits and was back to being his jovial, energetic self.

“Look at all this stuff!”

“I know, right?” Humanus said, dragging Zion towards a rocking horse bedecked with jewels. “Here, this was one of my favorites.” As was typical, he failed to notice the mildly disgusted look Zion threw his way when he caught sight of the colorful gems and missed his muttered “Rich people”.

Serpens, not wanting to be outdone, quickly searched for other toys to present to him. Winston opted to pretend to stand guard near the entrance, resignedly looking on as his illustrious master tried to get Zion off the rocking horse by tempting him with a miniature holy sword.

Eugis took it all in with a contented smile. With a happy sigh, she calmly walked around the spacious room, studying each item and wondering which of them Serpens could have genuinely enjoyed. She gravitated towards a shelf full of books, running her fingers against their spines and picturing a young Serpens reading them (prolific her imagination though may be, she couldn’t quite bring herself to imagine Humanus ever cracking open a book outside of his princely classes). Picking a book at random—a tome bound by warm brown leather, the color of Zion’s eyes—she perched on the windowsill and began to read.

It was several minutes later when the outside world filtered into her senses.

“Serpens, what’s this for?” Zion asked, holding a nondescript key in his palm.

“Um... I’m afraid I don’t know.”

He turned to Humanus next. “Your Highness?”

“Hmm?”

Zion held the key towards him and repeated the question.

“Huh...” Humanus said, pondering for a moment, taking it from Zion’s hand and turning it this way and that, before giving it back with a shrug. “Dunno.”

“But this is yours, isn’t it? It was in your toy chest.”

“Must be, yeah.”

Zion clicked his tongue.

“Did you just—”

“Never mind, Your Highness. I’ll figure it out myself.”

Contrary to his words, Zion immediately asked for Serpens’s help, and together they began to look about the room searching for its lock. Eugis joined them soon after—

“Perhaps it’s for a secret door that leads to the heart of the castle, but His Majesty the king had thought you unprepared for such knowledge so he asked a mighty wizard to wipe it from your memory!”

—and Winston saw it his duty to help his master as well. They scoured every inch of the tree house, leaving no furniture or stuffed animal unturned.

Finally, after nearly a quarter of an hour, Humanus let out a triumphant shout, holding something up as he sat on the floor.

“Found it!”

“Don’t be so proud, Your Highness, you were supposed to know to begin with.”

Humanus threw Zion a hurt look. “At least congratulate me...”

“Yes, yes,” Zion said obediently, already sidling up to him to see it for himself. “Congratulations, Your Highness. You’re very smart. Good job remembering what you forgot.”

“...”

Eugis approached them and stood over them to find the keyhole... in the middle of a toy knight’s chest.

“What the heck is that?” Zion asked as he knelt next to him, resting a hand on his shoulder for balance and looking at the strange doll askance.

“It’s a doll I commissioned,” Humanus explained unhelpfully—Zion’s distrustful gaze turned to him. “Why are you suddenly looking at me like that?”

“... Anyway, is it a wind-up toy or something?”

“A what?”

“Never mind. Just put the key in the keyhole already.”

Zion handed the key over to him, and the three of them—Serpens had joined Eugis to stand over the two, and Winston had gone back to his station next to the doorway—watched in rapt attention as Humanus slotted it into the keyhole and gave it a single twist. There was a soft click, and for a short, awkward moment nothing happened, and Eugis was left wondering if the crown prince of the kingdom had somehow commissioned a fraud.

But then a blinding light swallowed Humanus and Zion whole, and she could do nothing but cry in alarm as the two disappeared in a flash of green.

The brilliant light disappeared as quickly as it came, and an unbelievable sight revealed itself before her.

Eugis stared in abject horror.

Serpens started mewling.

Humanus screamed so loudly Euges’s ears folded against her head of their own accord.

And Zion stared down at his—and now Humanus’s—body and was only able to let out a soft “what the fu-” before he promptly fainted.

Eugis must’ve dissociated for a bit, because she can’t recall what happened while he was passed out. But now Zion’s awake, and Eugis is lucid again, and all she can do as they wait for the magic scroll to expire is to prevent her friend from committing regicide.

She gently encloses his wrists in her grasp to stop him from pulling at Humanus’s luscious goldfish locks again.

“It was supposed to be a prank, but Serpens never asked what the key was for and after awhile I just forgot!”

“You forgot you commissioned a doll to be booby trapped with a merging scroll?!” Zion all but shrieks, his voice reaching new decibels and causing Humanus to hold up a glowing hand against the ear closest to him. “Get on your knees!”

“What?” Humanus asks in bewilderment, then repeats it a second time with more fervor when Serpens—as if on instinct—folds his legs beneath him and raises both arms above his head, his angelic face full of contrition.

Eugis lets go of Zion with a sigh and watches him comfort the now crying Serpens. She’s quite certain elves don’t get migraines—she hasn’t had one herself despite having lived for hundreds of years—so the building ache behind her eyes must be a side effect from the scroll’s magic. Right?