#the beggar prince

[fictionadventurer]

Fairy tale asks: 12, 14, 15, 19, 20

12. Fairy tale retelling you wish more people would read

Exile by Loren G. Warnemunde is a Christian fantasy retelling of "Maid Maleen" that makes some excellent choices in adapting the fairy tale and has some pretty cool worldbuilding. The allegory's a touch too overt, and the beginning where Maleen refuses multiple excellent opportunities to avoid going in the tower is frustrating, but the stuff inside the tower is cool enough to make up for it. Unfortunately, it's book one of a trilogy, so I can't say how well it does with the rest of the fairy tale.

It's by an obscure small press, and the Kindle edition has significant formatting errors, so the best bet is buying a new paperback copy, which makes the series more difficult to obtain. But I wish it was easier for other (and me) to get their hands on the full story.

14. A retelling that twists the plot of the fairy tale

So This Is Love by Elizabeth Lim imagines what could happen if her stepmother kept her from trying the slipper on, and Cinderella left home to find work in the palace instead. It's supposed to be a retelling of the Disney movie, but everything's out of sync enough with the plot and characters there that it works better as a retelling of the fairy tale, and it works pretty well. It imagines that "Cinderella" is the backstory to a "Cap-O-Rushes" type of this fairy tale, which is a cool twist, and there's a lot of fun political intrigue and some solid side characters.

15. A retelling that changes the genre/setting of the fairy tale

"A Cinder's Tale" by Stephanie Ricker in the Five Glass Slippers anthology is my favorite sci-fi "Cinderella", and was such a huge inspiration for my own sci-fi fairy tales that I have to mention it here.

19. A fairy tale you'd like to retell

How about I list some fairy tales on my current retellings ideas list? (Several of these are active drafts).

East of the Sun West of the Moon

Thumbelina

Tattercoats

The Goose Girl

Jorinda and Joringel

Princess and the Pea

Cinderella

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

The Farmer's Clever Daughter

20. Talk about any retelling you want

The Beggar Prince by Kate Stradling was the rare Stradling I liked before rereading it. It gives us a Thrushbeard and princess who fall into this marriage situation, and a Thrushbeard who makes some significant mistakes (while making his actions entirely understandable). It also has a great explanation for several of the princess's behaviors throughout the fairy tale (such as her refusal to marry any of the men). Yet even though I like this and Maid and Minstrel, I still find myself wanting another "King Thrushbeard" retelling from her, because she always seems to assume that the princess is an innocent who's forced into this marriage market against her will, and I'd like to see a take where she acknowledges that the princess could have flaws that spark the need for a character arc.

[highgardenart]

Prince Viserys Targaryen

“Viserys was cruel and weak and frightened, yet he was my brother still. His dragon will do what he could not.”

[thenightisland]

thinking about the fairy tale trope of a kiss from your true love having magical properties and how often these kisses are used to wake up characters who are asleep or in some state of suspended animation or give them back something they lost. thinking about fitz walking around half-forged and detached from his own emotions until the fool kisses him and gives him back all of those memories and emotions effectively “waking him up” again and giving him back something he'd lost. and by thinking i of course mean i am screaming incoherently.

[askchevaliermichel]

Dear Prince Chevalier,

Since you are rich, may you donate some of it to me?

Pretty please ...

I'll bring you books....

Thank you 😉

@askclavislelouch supplies my personal library with a sufficient amount of new titles. Without requiring any "donations", as you've put it.

[rambleonwithrosie]

I'm sure there's more but these are some of the really notable nods to other classic children's stories and Disney princesses that they put in the live action Cinderella

An old beggar woman

This scene with the fairy godmother first appearing like a haggard beggar before revealing herself as a beautiful enchantress is such a nod to the opening of the Beauty and the Beast cartoon. She's got the heavy hood like the stained glass crone-enchantress does and you somehow know what's at stake from the moment she asks for the milk. Cinderella of course shows the kindness that the young prince failed to do even though she's having the worst day ever and this lady is not just haggard but uncouth and a little bizarre. She passes the test and looks beyond the externals to the heart.

A prince in the forest

Handsome prince riding his horse through a forest and comes across a beautiful and mysterious girl... Is it cartoon Sleeping Beauty or live action Cinderella? I love that they not only gave Prince Charming/Kit a personality and a plot but that when doing so they mapped a lot of Prince Philip onto him (the best actual royal Disney prince imo) he's got a good relationship with his dad but also stands up to him on things like marrying outside of his class and having different visions for the future but you can tell Philip and Hubert care for each other and have a similar relationship to Kit and the king. Both the king and King Hubert say almost the same lines about "you can't marry a girl you just met once in the forest" they even give him some Hubert-esque facial hair and Kit gets to do a bunch of gallant horseback riding scenes just like my fav prince Philip

A Secret Garden

Now this isn't a princess nod but most children have read the Secret Garden or watched one of the many film adaptations. What I love about this being part of the story is that without explicitly stating it, anyone who's familiar with the Secret Garden, will know the backstory it's inclusion implies. It's their way of telling us Kit spent time with his mother here and it's special to him and he's sharing that with his mystery princess because he trusts her. "I've never shown this to anyone" plus the carryover of what we all associate with a "secret garden" gives us all the subtext we need to know that the garden was his mother's. Add to that Ella's hesitation to get on the swing it's almost like she knows too. It's just woven into the film where this all is so self evident without anything having to be said overtly. Absolutely masterful storytelling weaving in all these elements from the staples of childhood stories to add a texture to this adaptation where you know more than is said due to the cues they give the audience that tie in with other familiar stories

[hatsumishinogu]

Ouji to Kojiki I

[thelastofthebookworms]

My tag for this series is 'fairy tales'.

[amiharana]

sad boy hours. revalink but it's the bts smeraldo story.........

[the-winters-prince]

Artos says Lleu is beloved by the people but the boy's been bed-ridden for most of his childhood so what exactly did he do to gain public favor🤔

man, Artos' propaganda department must have been working over time

[tobyfoxmademeascaly]

Really though i do think we’re sleeping on the Gender Potential of alisaie “Like A Prince From A Faerie Tale” leveilleur. She’s gay. Her unofficial uncle is Urianger, a man with such gender as beggars belief. She was a weird friendless tomboy in school. Let her embrace the Gender Oddness that comes from these things

[leilawanderingaround]

What's better than a man who finds you every time you die?

Kremnos have long lost its glory and yet, Mydei will always find you nearby. Fate has forced you to play many roles, be it a blueblood noble or a beggar on the street, begging for scrap to survive. Your appearance too, never remained the same. There will be times when you have a higher nose or sharper eyes. Your skin too varied in colours, sometimes adorned with freckles like stars or scars that prove your worth in the world. Sometimes you might be so short that you can't reach the top shelf by yourself, sometimes you can tower and manhandle him with ease, standing above the crowd.

You can be shy today but then you will be the boldest, bravest person he ever knew. A genius who moves is calculated with precise or a warrior at heart who charges first and thinks later.

The you that you are today will never be the same as the first you that he fell for. The new you will never remember loving him like the last one. And yet despite that, the crown prince will definitely find you on the castle ground where you two ever first met. He trusted that you will be there waiting after he lost you to the cold embrace of time.

Because he knew that you will always kept your promise of finding him. And you knew that he will always crawl back to you, greedy of your love.

[hwasoup]

Tale As Old As Time

Playlist !!

songs used for inspo: Prologue (the enchantress), Main Title: Prologue, Act 1 Pas d'action rose adage

art credit goes to Marbipa

Warnings: none for now

words: 518

chapter 1>>

Prologue

Once upon a time… in a faraway land, a young prince lived in a beautiful castle...

The prince was spoiled, foolish, arrogant, and unkind. He exploited the nearby villages to fill his castle with the most beautiful things whether that would be jewelry, furniture, and women. He would have extravagant balls in his castle and even mistreated the servants who served him…

It was a cold and snowy night. It was the prince’s 20th birthday; he held a party with all the riches anyone could imagine. He danced, wined, and played around with his objects. The prince enjoyed his birthday lavishly while not caring that his servants were being almost trampled on. The party continued on for hours until there was a knock on the castle doors, he opened the door and looked down to see a poor beggar woman. “Please sir…accept this single rose in exchange for shelter from the bitter cold” she weakly said. The prince huffed and laughed in her face “As if, I don't need a rose from such an old woman from you…besides I have all the roses that I could ever have...” 

The guests in the party laughed along as well as they mocked the beggar woman. Before the prince was even able to close the door on her, she muttered something softly “do not be deceived by appearances for beauty is found within...” The prince looks at her annoyed and dismisses her again. Then all of a sudden, a bright light emanated from the old woman, her ugliness melting away, her form changing, her appearance suddenly becoming more youthful to reveal a beautiful, giant, and terrifying enchantress. The prince in shock fell on his knees and stared in awe as all of his guests screamed and ran away from the castle, away from what the enchantress might do. “NO, NO... Please… HAVE MERCY ON ME... I WAS WRONG” the prince said, as he wept and begged for forgiveness. However, it was too late…the enchantress could see that there was no love in his heart, she pointed the rose at him and as punishment she transformed him into a hideous beast. The prince cried in agony as his limbs and appearance changed, he became larger, furrier, his hands became paws, his crimson eyes became red, his cries became roars. The enchantress also placed a powerful spell on the castle and on all who lived there. 

Ashamed of his horrid appearance, the prince shunned himself inside the castle with only a magic mirror as his only way to peer into the world outside the castle. The rose that the enchantress offered, was in actuality an enchanted rose which would bloom for many years. If the prince learned how to love someone and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell from the rose, the spell would be broken. If not…he would be doomed to become a beast for all eternity. As the days turned into months and eventually years… the prince fell into a deep despair and lost all hope 

.....For whom could ever learn…to love a beast?

[lovelytsunoda]

(what’s the story) morning glory // lando norris

summary: noel gallagher’s daughter has a reputation for two things: being the funniest woman on the internet, and really having a thing for american guys. to the delight of all, she shows up at one of her dads concerts with a boy from bristol on her arm.

pairing: lando norris x gallagher!reader

yngallagher just posted!

northern quarter, manchester, united kingdom

liked by oliviarodrigo, heatherbarongracie and 3,457 others

yngallagher break through the barrier - tina turner

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user mommy? sorry, mommy. sorry!

user she really is that bitch

user real question: is she united or city?

-> yngallagher would you hate me if i said neither?

yngallagher just posted!

manchester, england

liked by noelgallagher, rollingstone and 4,170 others

yngallagher acquiesce - oasis

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yourbestie SLAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

noelgallagher it was an honor sharing the stage with you, my wonderful daughter

-> yngallagher awe love you too dad!

user is it just me or did it look like she was blowing kisses to someone off stage?

-> user no ur so right someone was definitely there for her

user yn could single-handedly bring oasis back together

entertainmentbuzzmanchester

liked by 984 users

entertainmentbuzzmanchester YN Gallagher spotted last night in the VIP area of her fathers Manchester show cozying up to this unidentified man. Gallagher, who performed at the show, was later seen leaving the arena with the same man.

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user has she finally found her american prince?

user we’ve lost her to a fucking yank y’all! the hold that eighties matt dillon had on her was too much!

stacey_spacey I’ve seen that shitty haircut somewhere before

yngallagher posted to her story!

landonorris so born jovi is better than me?

yngallagher maybe maybe not ;) listen i'm ready to hard launch whenever you are, but don't feel like we need to rush things

yngallagher you have my dad's approval, and where i come from that's like being knighted

yngallagher just posted!

liked by noelgallagher, caitybaser and 2,391 others

yngallagher my daddy likes him so you guys should too :) silvo dump is incoming, just have to get some film developed

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user hottie

user now that's defo lando norris fight me

-> user idk bro it seems like a reach to connect them together

-> user yes but have you seen the twitter thread by user stacey_spacey? she makes some good points

noelgallagher im just gald you aren't dating an american. i wish he was from manchester, but beggars can't be choosers

noelgallagher im just kidding, darling. glad youre happy xx

yngallagher just posted!

tagged: landonorris

liked by landonorris, stacey_spacey, noelgallagher and 5,000 others

yngallagher . . . surprise!

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user holy shit

charles_leclerc what the fuck

-> oscarpiastri what the fuck

-> carlossainz55 what the actual fuck

-> alex_albon what the literal fuck

-> yngallagher why are you guys being so mean to pookie?

stacey_spacey i was right HAHAH

landonorris you're my wonderwallll

-> yngallagher i love you too my sexy loser boyfriend

-> oscarpiastri what is wrong with both of you

user lmao why is everyone so shocked?

-> maxfewtrell when i saw them together at silverstone i was certain it was like a joke or a pr thing?

user he looks like he negotiated with god to be allowed on earth

[bitchfitch]

Idk man. You're doomed

you're five the first time a knife is put in your hands. A man who never bothered to give you a name tells you how to hide it. How to use it to defend another. How to use it to take your own life should you fail.

You're six, then seven. The other boys your age run in the streets playing games together. You've never spoken to any of them. Your go with the man who isn't your father to a funeral for a man who wasn't your brother. A woman gives your not-father a knife identical to the one you've now carried for years. Your not-father tells you today is a day of pride. Your not a brother fulfilled his purpose without his blade ever having to taste his own blood.

You see the body through the throne rooms doors. It looks like a marble statue. Bleach white and perfectly still where it lays at the foot of the King.

You're ten the day you meet your purpose. Another boy. The adopted son of the thing in the throne room. He's the prince. You will die for him. He looks at you with hate in his eyes the first time you're in the same room as him.

He tells you to run. He doesn't want you. He doesn't want to be the prince. He hates the King and misses the family he was taken from. He's scared. He doesn't want to kill you.

You don't run. You can't. You have nowhere to go and know nothing but your purpose. Protect him. Stand beside him. Grow up with him as his dearest friend.

He's not allowed to play with the other children either. He's not allowed to play.

All of his free time is eaten up by studying because every second he doesn't have his nose in a book he's on a pedestal with strangers knelt beneath him. Their hands cupped as they pray to him for his father's blessings. You see the prince spit blood when he leaves the room before the throne room. He chews the inside of his mouth raw to stop his fiery tongue. When you go to lay in your bed on the other side of the room from his he rants into the night about the nobleman beggars and their demands and how his father never stops talking.

You're twelve. You both notice that you've gotten a hair taller than the prince. He challenges you to a mock sword battle about it in the secrecy of the bedroom you share with him. His eyes alight and alive with all the fire he keeps covered through his days.

You're fourteen the first time you use your knife. A beggar grabbed the prince by the hem of his robes after the holy child failed to soothe his woes.

The guards were on the man in a split second, dragging him not to the dungeon, but to you where you stand at your purpose's side.

The prince doesn't watch. He stares over the crowd that always filled the hall before the throne room.

You kill for him. The beggar's pleads lost to deeply engrained training. His blood stains the hems of the prince's gowns.

He draws shut the curtain between your halves of the room that night. He asks you leave to take your breakfast elsewhere the next morning. When you meet him at his pedestal he sits with the hems of his robes wrapped tight around him.

He talks to you again weeks later. He sobs through the night when you fail to do as you're told when he once again demands you flee the only life you've ever been allowed to know.

You're seventeen. Your prince gains a brother, he's four. His parents beg he not be taken from them. Your prince can't look at them when he voices his and the child's new father's will.

Your not-father asks you take careful record of every moment of the child's life. You will have another not-brother soon and he must be a match for the new prince as you were for yours.

The boy cries from the room beside your's and your prince's for days until he turns the same stoney cold you're so used to seeing from your prince.

Your prince asks you if you hate him. You tell him no.

You're twenty-four and he's sick. Weak and stumbling over his words like he hasn't slept every hour his father wasn't using his voice these last weeks.

You've never so much as brushed the hair from your prince's face. He was holy, and you are not. To touch him would be to defile him.

You catch him when he faints on the walk between your shared chambers and the dreaded preyer hall.

You carry him to the medical ward surrounded by guards. The physicians can't touch the unconscious prince either. Not without for forfeiting their lives as you have. its decided that, as you have already sealed your own execution order, you would be permitted to continue touching him. Moving him. Helping the doctors examine him. Your foul hands against his skin that feels like cold stone. You help him eat, you hold him upright so that he may drink. He's barely aware of what is around him he still manages to protest every time you draw to far from him.

He orders the guards to leave. Spits that you are to not be touched. His limited energy wasted on pleading for your life.

For days you stay in that limbo with him. A condemned man and his ever weakening purpose.

The doctors have an idea that may save the prince but it's so profane they hesitate to offer it.

The solution to his sickness was obvious to them from the first few minutes of examination, but the clergy had had to argue it for days without the prince being able to tell them his father's will.

Ultimately, it was decided that it was the prince himself who should make the call.

He laid against you, his head tucked up under your chin with his hand over your heart as though his presence there would save you from the consequences of holding him.

The prince could be saved. All he needed was a blood transfusion to replenish his weak veins. But there was no donor holy enough. To take profane blood into his divine body would ruin his potential as host.

One side of the clergy pleaded with him to let you carry him to the throne room, pass the doors you only ever saw through once, to the foot of his father's divinity. There, all he would have to do was his slay his one human connection. His only friend, his only true family, and replace his father as host. His and your purposes fulfilled. Your execution given purpose beyond punishing you.

The prince's jaw worked in that subtle way that meant he was biting his cheek bloody again.

What was the purpose of his younger brother if not this? The prince would have the fouling transfusion, and he will be prince no more. His brother taking his place as mouthpiece and future body for their father.

The clergymen bickered in the room with you both. Your prince, weak and so sick as to not be able to stand, took your knife from your belt and ordered you hold out your hand for him.

He held you by the wrist as he sliced across the heal of your palm. The pain was made numb by your every thought melting at the sight of him pressing his lips to the wound to drink down your filth.

The transfusion was performed without further delay.

You were donor. He was able to walk back to your rooms with only an arm slung around your shoulders for support.

He was prince no more. Touching him was no longer a sin punishable by death. Your execution cancelled after he threatened to kill himself to take generations of holy secrets to his grave in vengeance.

He told you to call him Cadfael when you laid in your bed with him pressed close to you. His hand over your heart like he feared it would cease beating if he moved it. No one has spoken his name since he was stolen from his birth family.

You're 25, he's still so sick. Weak, cold to the touch, exhausted. You donate blood over and over until the doctors refuse to take more from you. Your symptoms aren't as severe as his, they go away when you have time to replenish your own supplies. He gets worse the longer he has to go between refillings.

He refuses to take from the people who once worshipped at his feet or the prisoners in the dungeons or the good samaritans who simply want to help a sick man. He's so scared of earning a reputation of literally stealing others blood for his own benefit. He only takes yours because you threaten to bleed yourself to death for his sake if he doesn't. He knows you aren't bluffing. It's always been your purpose to die for him.

The new prince can't hear his father's will. The boy, only twelve, sits on his brother's pedestal as beggars talk past him to the profane man knelt behind him. Cadfael whispers their fathers will into his young ears so he can be the mouthpiece he was supposed to be.

The clergy fear what it means for the fate of their country if the king rejects his younger son. The elder has been ruined, surely the King wouldn't see him as fit host? Why won't he accept the boy he had ordered stolen from his profane blooded family those years ago?

Cadfael whispers the answer to you the first time you ask. His words kept safe in the darkness between your bodies where you lay under the covers of your bed.

You are his only bond to his humanity. The only thing he cares about. the only thing he would morn losing. You're purpose is to die for him, his is to live for you. You were never seen as profane by the king who had slaughtered its bondee over and over again. Every time it took a new host, their loved's blood is what nurtured the transition. You were never something profane to it.

Cadfael is still holy and pure.

It scares him. He refuses to let the clergy know. He's had so much more freedom. You have had so much more freedom. You both saw the city streets for the first time after he got sick. Talked to people other than the clergy and eachother. Were he not ill, you would have run away together to be normal men. He talks about a house on a beach with a dog. He'd spend his days transcribing texts as all he knew to do was repeat other's words, you would work something simple and physical. A blacksmith or a farm hand pulling shellfish from the sand.

His father is still talking about the day Cadfael would enter the throne room and kill you.

You're twenty-six. He's been getting sicker and sicker. His weakness growing, your blood doing less and less to heal him. He breaks down sobbing in front of the beggars. All his father would say was that the time for Cadfael to ascend to the throne drew near.

Cadfael would die soon. The line of succession would be broken, their god left without a host when it's current body finished rotting away. For his people's sake he had to fulfill his and your's purposes.

He crawls, he can't stand, to his brother's feet. His hands cupped in preyer to their father as he begs to just be healed. It has healed so many others. Why can't it just heal him? Why does he have to die young without having ever gotten to live a life as anything but a mouthpiece for the monster behind the throne room doors?

his father answers him, and he cries how unfair it all is.

He refuses. He demands you take him to your shared room. You carry him, he hasn't walked on his own in months.

You're twenty-seven. He can't sit up anymore. He looks like a corpse in your bed as he rambles for you to transcribe his sacrilegious plan. His father's words slip out between his sentences. It begs you with his mouth to bring him to ignore his desires. To carry him to the throne room and fulfill your purpose. Save it. Save it. Save it. Its son's plan will be its slow death.

The plan is completed, the recipe is engrained in your mind.

You carry him to the throne room. He feels like air in your arms. His skin stretched tight against his bones. His hair thin and stringy. his eyes glazed. The blankets you wrapped around him in a desperate attempt to keep him warm must weigh more than him.

The doors open for you both. You see the king for the first time. Your not-brother still lays at its feet. He didn't have a name either. You place your purpose beside the throne. his father turns its rotten head to watch you as you clear away your not-brother's bones. The dry flesh that still stuck them flaked like snow as you piled them amongst the bones of countless kings and queens and their beloved bonds.

Cadfael speaks for the first time in days. It's his father wasting his limited energy to beg you spare it. Cadfael is just one man, as are you. To do as he asks would lead to the deaths of countless others. This world needs it more than it needs either of you. Its blessings. Its protection.

You draw your knife, identical to the ones that had been used within this room countless times. And fulfilled your purpose.

You killed for your prince. Cutting the king open to spill its milk white blood, its entrails pulled from it like it were a simple animal being cleaned for consumption. its heart pulled from its chest. It beat in your hand. a tangled knot of bright light.

you took the bag of prepared components from where they were tucked against your purpose's chest. He only needed a sliver off the king's heart. He swore that once they were done it could be returned to the king without a single soul having to suffer for this misdeed.

You carved off what he needed, placed it within the bag, and returned the heart to its host. Within seconds its innards engulfed it and pulled it back through the gash in its abdomen. Your prince was right. he almost always was.

When you return to him he fights to hold out his bone thin arms to you. The cure needed blood. He is so weak and frail and blinded by his sickness that all you have to do is run the dull side of your blade against his wrists to trick him into believing he's been cut. You hold his hand as you slash your own arm open. You've already devoted so much of your blood to him, what's a little more? You couldn't bare the idea of bleeding him.

He intones the spell, his voice weak.

when it is done the bag glows with his cure. Your hands shake, the constant stream of your life pouring over the bag had drained you of so much energy. You bring the cure to his lips and he takes it from you like he had taken the countless tiny pieces of food you had managed to feed him these last few years.

You wipe your blood from his face as he goes still.

You tend your own wound before picking him up and carrying him from that place. The clergy shriek at you for what you've done. Not a single one will dare draw near you and your prince.

He sleeps for weeks. Your wound scabs, then scars.

When he wakes his eyes are clear. He smiles at you. He tells you his father is furious with you both with a grin so giddy that you can't stop yourself kissing it from his lips. He's still so weak. but his sickness is gone.

He learns to walk again, though he can never go more than a few steps. He eats his fill. He gains his weight back. Every night you hold him through he feels like a different man. His bones covered once more, his skin holds warmth his smile bright and alive and him.

You're twenty-nine when he demands time away from you for the first time since you killed a man for him.

He locks himself in the spare room that has become his study. Leaving only when he was requested in the preyer hall to speak for the father that still needed him.

Days pass, and when he comes to you again he demands to know if you trust him. Of course you do.

He feeds you the second dose of his remedy. Your blood feels on fire. when you wake from what felt like the pits of hell he told you you would never die. Never age. Never grow ill. It was your reward, he says, for all your years of service to him. He tells you to flee, or to stay beside him for the rest of the unnatural lives you have carved off of God for yourselves. You tell him to stop wasting his breath on asking you leave his side.

You're thirty when word spreads of what you and he have done. The beggar's in the prayer hall plead not with the king, or the younger prince but with the traitor behind him. Their god would leave them to die- Cadfael can save them. Cadfael can heal the sickest of the sick. Cure all disease.

The man who once dreaded that he would be hated by his people for accepting their blood as a cure to his ailment bled himself near to death as he made panacea after panacea. Each one using a tiny sliver of his father's heart. Each one promising a lifetime of health.

The healed sleep fitfully for weeks in the palace infirmary. Their skin darkening with burns as they whimper and scream in their sleep, before turning to flaking white ash in the hours before they woke up shrieking their agony. Smoke poured from them as they burned alive.

Their screams never ceasing. They can't die. They just keep burning.

Cadfael doesn't know what he's done wrong- The fires spread. He's never used his father's gifted magic. Never dared to invite that parasite further into his body. In that moment it fails him completely.

Instead it's something unholy and rotting, his cure still buried I'm his gut, that makes the room flood with water.

The burnt still writhe. He orders the halls cleared. The dungeon emptied. He can do nothing with his workspace flooded. The burning need to be kept doused and drowned while he fixes what he's done.

He doesn't know what went wrong. He spends weeks going over every step. He interrogates you. Your blood burns, but the flames never engulf You- Why? Why why why?

He tries fix after fix. Prisoners are brought in and used as guinea pigs. He has to fix what he's done. The fires grow, the dungeon has turned into an endlessly boiling cave lake. The burned scream. He swears he can hear them from the other side of the castle.

He stops eating again. He doesn't have time. He has to fix what he's done. You watch him regress. The fire that was Cadfael turns from that of a hearth to that of an inferno. He loses himself in his studies. Piece by piece as the obsession consumes him like the tides steal sinking ships.

He doesn't burn. Why doesn't he burn? It's cold water that fills him. It has nothing to do with his place as prince- All the ingredients were the same. Why was he spared? Why were you? His father refuses to answer his questions.

This is what the king warned them would happen. Two lives saved and countless others ruined.

You watch him change. His obsession makes him ruthless. A few more test subjects- that's all it'll take and then they will all be saved.

The beggars stop coming to pray to him. Fear spreads. The prince has gone mad.

You watch him lose all he weight he managed to game back. He becomes weak as hes too engrossed in his studies to eat. You try to discourage him, to bring him back. He banishes you from his study and doesn't emerge for days.

He smells like rot when he does. Wild eyed and barely able to stand as exhaustion finally drives him to crawl back to your shared room. He sleeps in your bed. He hasn't slept in his own in years. Even now it doesn't occur to you to take his instead of laying beside him.

You're thirty-two when the rebellions begin.

Thirty three when you join as an Informant. Cadfael is so busy with his fruitless searching that you can come and go without notice.

Thirty-four when the palace is stormed.

You knew the plans of the rebellion ahead of time. Your work with them being what would be your purpose's salvation.

He never wanted to be prince.

In the fear and panic you break away from the plan. You take him by his hand and lead him down the paths you never told the rebels of. Deep beneath the castle, in the cisterns that had been drained to flood the lowest floors in an attempt to contain the ever growing number of burned. Your exit is close. You'll go somewhere on the coast. Strangers in a new town who fled to escape the turmoil in the city. No one will know it's the mad prince who walks with you.

Cadfael follows. You tell him your plan and he kisses you. It's perfect. On a coast he would have an entire ocean at his disposal to continue his work with.

The burned kept safe until he could fix what he's done. His research conducted in secret.

His research continued.

You were five years old when you were given a knife and told your purpose. Protect and serve and love the holy prince.

Cadfael, the boy, the man, the prince, the brilliant, is dead. You realize that he has been for a very long time.

The monster before you killed him and wears his skin.

He's facing away from you, that head of bright red hair bleached white, the skin across the sliver of exposed neck the color of fine marble instead of warm pallor.

You were never supposed to see him consumed by the King like this.

His blood is cold when it pours over your hand. Your blade piercing the thin muscle just below his shoulder blade and delving between the ribs you used to count while you held him.

He gasps. you burry you face in the crook of his neck. He smells like rot and ashes. He feels like your prince long dead as you hold him through those final moments.

You're lauded as a hero when the resistance fighters find you still holding him in the bowels of the place always meant to be your mausoleum.

They pull you from him, and his spell finally breaks. His rotten body disovels into a flood like his experiments always turned to flame.

[hatsumishinogu]

Ouji to Kojiki III (end)