♤ The Hollow Prince ♤

~Introduction~

Hello! I'm YetAnotherPersona, and this is my third entry as part of team #ScrawlingSpades for the Cards and Souls event, for the prompt "Twists-n-Turns." I hope you enjoy it!

Click here to read the whole story (with improved formatting) on Archive of Our Own.

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~Info~

Artist: sinyxitka on Tumblr

Word count: 3817 words

Time taken: 4 hours

#WritersHub

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~Summary~

It's been six weeks since the Lightners were seen in the Dark World. Lancer is off on a wild goose chase, and Ralsei is feeling low.

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~Story~

“Lancer! Where are you?”

Ralsei hurries through the Scarlet Forest, kicking up bunches of crispy red leaves with each stride. It probably wasn’t wise of him to go off the path, but it seemed like the kind of thing Lancer would do in a fit of absent-mindedness – and since Lancer is the person he came here to find, he has little choice but to try and imitate his poor judgement. It’s not like Ralsei can get any more lost than he already was trying to follow the path. He could do without having to push through the knee-high leaves, though. Why is it always autumn here?

“Lancer!” he calls again. It’s basically a formality – the chances that poor Lancer will actually be nearby are slim, and the forest has a way of soaking up peoples’ shouts when they’re trying to locate each other. It’s himself that Ralsei should really be worried about now.

He comes to a halt and sighs. Rouxls told him that Lancer had gone to Seam’s shop this morning; Seam said he’d gone to the forest bakesale; the Hathy at the bake sale said he’d bought a hearts donut and headed into the woods. So here Ralsei is, looking for the missing prince and getting more “missing” himself with every ing moment.

He looks around briefly and, seeing no sign of Lancer, starts walking again – only to immediately trip over a concealed tree root and fall flat on his face, sending up a flurry of leaves.

“Oh, darn,” he grumbles, rubbing his foot. He wonders briefly whether the situation merits the use of a tier 2 swear word, but eventually contents himself with repeating “darn” a few more times. A gust of wind whistles through the trees, shaking down fresh leaves that carpet the ground and smooth over the trench Ralsei’s been carving since he diverged from the path. So now he can’t even find his way back to the place he’d already gotten lost at. Double darn.

“Lancer!” he yells at the top of his lungs. “Are you there?”

The wind dies down; the trees swallow Ralsei’s call, and silence returns to the forest. He picks himself up with a growl, and is just about to start looking for a way out when he hears a familiar sing-song voice in the distance.

“Ho ho ho! I’m lost and confused!”

“Lancer?” Ralsei calls, whirling round, trying to locate the source of the call.

“Ralsei?” comes the distant answer. “Have you come to get lost with me?”

Ralsei charges in the direction of Lancer’s voice. “Hang on,Lancer! I’m coming!”

“Oho! I’m going to head toward your voice!”

Ralsei skids to a halt. “Lancer, wait! Don’t move!”

There’s a pause. “I’m not going to head toward your voice! I’m going to stand here and tremble!”

Ralsei could have sworn he was heading in Lancer’s direction, but that last call sounded like it came from his left. He turns ninety degrees and shouts again.

“Lancer, can you hear me? I want you to describe your surroundings.”

“My surroundings!” says Lancer. “Let’s see. There’s a bunch of red leaves on the ground. Crunchy ones. And there’s trees! Trees with lots of right angles in their branches.”

Ralsei groans. “Are you on the path, Lancer?”

“The path! Yes!” Lancer replies. “By which I mean, no. I left the path to look for the meeting spot! An hour ago.”

“The meeting spot?” Ralsei asks. Lancer wasn’t meant to have any meetings this afternoon, least of all in the Scarlet Forest.

“Yes! I haven’t found it yet.”

Ralsei peers through the densely-packed trees ahead of him. Lancer’s voice is definitely coming from this direction, but if he were nearby his signature blue quiff would stand out like a lighthouse against the sea of red and brown. He must be a little way off, then.

“Lancer, have you ever played the hearts-and-diamonds game?” Ralsei calls.

“I have!” Lancer calls merrily.

“Excellent. I want you to play diamonds. Just stand still and answer when I call. Do you understand?”

“I understand!” chuckles Lancer. “Though it doesn’t seem very fair if I’m not allowed to move.”

“I’ll put a blindfold on,” Ralsei improvises. “That should make us a bit more evenly matched.” He could try and explain to Lancer that finding each other isn’t actually meant to be a competition, but he feels like that would put too much strain on his patience and his vocal cords at the present moment.

“Hearts!” he calls, listening out carefully.

“Diamonds!” Lancer responds immediately. Ralsei latches onto his voice and strides deeper into the forest.

“Hearts!”

“Diamonds!”

Ralsei cocks his head to the side. Was Lancer’s voice a bit to the right? “Hearts!”

“Diamonds!”

Definitely coming from the right. Ralsei adjusts his bearing slightly and continues.

“Hearts!”

“Diamonds!” He’s definitely getting closer.

“Hearts!”

“Diamonds!

“Hea- oh!” Ralsei spots Lancer in the middle distance, half obscured behind a tuning-fork-shaped tree.

“Dia-oh!” Lancer shouts. “Wait, what does ‘hea-oh’ mean?”

“It means,” Ralsei pants, dashing towards Lancer, “that I’ve found you!”

“Ohoho!” Lancer turns to face him. “That means you win! But hang on, where’s your blindfold?”

“Oh, darn,” Ralsei says. “It, uh... it fell off. I guess that means you win by default, Lancer. Good job!” He claps his paws together encouragingly.

“Oh, excellent!” Lancer crows. “Shall we play again? I can call hearts this time.” He makes to skip off through the trees.

“Actually, Lancer, I think we’d better leave the game there. The truth is I, uh, came here to find you and bring you back to the castle.”

“Oh,” Lancer pouts, stopping in his tracks. “I still haven’t found the meeting spot, though.”

Ralsei pauses, trying to decide whether he should help Lancer find his ‘meeting spot’ or whether he should demand they focus on escaping the forest. Nobody’s ever actually died after getting lost here, as far as he knows. The worst he’s heard of is Darkners winding up stranded for a couple of days before either escaping by luck or being rescued by another traveller.

Then again... nobody’s died *yet.* Ralsei doesn’t want Lancer to become the first. He doesn’t want to be the first, for that matter. And there’s also the whole governing situation to consider; Lancer is technically in charge of the kingdom now, and while most of the istrative work has fallen to Ralsei and Rouxls of late, Lancer is the person the Darkners put on the throne when they overthrew the King. It won’t do to leave the head of state lost in the woods for days on end.

Ralsei considers all of this in a moment, and asks, “Who are you meant to be meeting, Lancer?”

“Susie!” Lancer answers bombastically. “The scary ax girl who’s my friend!”

Ralsei’s heart skips a beat. “S-susie? She’s back?” If Susie is back, that means Lightners are falling into the Dark World for the first time in weeks. Which could mean something important is about to happen. It could mean a new prophecy is being fulfilled.

It could mean Kris is here.

“Susie?” Ralsei repeats. “Lancer, is Susie here?”

“I don’t know,” Lancer grumbles. “She was supposed to be. But I haven’t found her yet.” He turns in place and begins gliding over the forestfloor. “Which means I should keep looking!”

“Wait!” Ralsei clutches his hat to hold it in place and jogs after Lancer, fighting his way through the thick leaves. “How do you know Susie’s coming? Who told you?”

“Dad did,” says Lancer, and before Ralsei has time to recover from *that* bombshell he continues, “He didn’t mean to. But when I visited him in prison this morning he let it slip.”

“Let it slip?” Ralsei demands. “What did he say? Did he mention her by name?” *Did he mention Kris?* he almost asks.

“Oho, not quite!” Lancer chuckles, turning right and floating over the leaves so quickly that Ralsei has to break into a run just to keep up. “But he couldn’t have meant anyone else.”

“Lancer, can you tell me what he actually said? This could be important!”

Lancer turns again so that he’s almost doubled back on himself, and keeps floating. “I was telling him about all the cool and wise governing that we’re doing, and the idea you had about creating a tax code instead of just taking gold from people when the castle treasury runs empty, and he said ‘you may think you’re doing a great job playing ruler now, boy. I’m sure your Lightner friends will think very highly of it when show up this afternoon. But none of you can keep the tide of dark at bay forever.’

“Of course I asked what he meant, but he wouldn’t talk anymore after that; he seemed quite embarrassed. But I knew he knew the Lightners were coming. So I came here to look for them. And I thought Susie came here, too, but I can’t find her. And then you came and found me. Then we played heart and diamonds, and–”

“Thank you, Lancer,” Ralsei interrupts. “I understand. But have you, uh, seen Susie or Kris?”

“Well, no,” its Lancer, making yet another right turn at the next tree. “But when Susie and I were in our extremely villainous team dedicated to picking on heroic nerds such as yourself, we agreed to have our secret team hideout here in the forest, where nobody would ever be able to find it. Not even us! It’s perfect!”

“Ri-ight,” says Ralsei, his brief excitement quickly fading. “So, do you know for sure that they’re actually here?”

“Noo...” says Lancer. “I went to Seam’s shop to buy a treat for Susie. But he didn’t have any dark candy. So I came to the bake sale to buy a hearts donut, because I know she likes those almost as much as dark candy. Then the Rudinn at the bake sale said they’d seen someone with an ax going into the forest, and I thought ‘Aha! That’ll be Susie!’”

Another spark of hope ignites in Ralsei’s chest at those words, but quickly fizzles out when he re that woodcutters with axes have been going in and out of the woods every day for the last week. “Lancer...” he sighs.

“So I said to the Rudinn ‘was the person with the ax a big scary purple girl?’ and the Rudinn said no, but I thought maybe Rudinns just don’t find purple ax girls scary, so I decided to go into the forest and check anyway, just to be sure–”

“Lancer!”

“Yes, toothpaste boy?” Lancer grins.

Ralsei sighs. “Lancer, do you think that the King–”

“My Dad?”

“Your Dad the King, yes. Do you think he might have been... wrong about the Lightners visiting?”

“Hmmm.” Lancer glides to a stop, his expression pensive. “He predicted their arrival the first time. That’s why he sent me to stop them. You the time I set my bike on fire and drove it into you while you were explaining the legend to our friends?”

“I , yes,” Ralsei confirms. “But your Dad’s been in prison for a while now. He might not have the most, um, up-to-date information concerning the comings and goings of Lightners. Perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” agrees Lancer. “But! He was definitely acting like he knew something we didn’t. It can’t hurt to check the meeting spot, just in case.” With that he sets off again, still moving at a slight curve that makes it even harder for Ralsei to keep up.

“B-but Lancer!” Ralsei protests. “We don’t even know where the meeting spot is! You told me you’re lost, and to be frank with you, I’m lost as well. Just getting out of here will be difficult enough. Shouldn’t we make that our focus?”

“Well, my sweet-n-sour pumpkin,” grins Lancer. “As it so happens, I’m un-losing us at this very moment! Allow me to unfold to you the scrumptious mystery of the outward-spiral forest escape technique! Copyright of Lancer Industries, patent pending.”

“Oh?” Ralsei says, nodding for Lancer to continue.

“It’s simple!” Lancer exclaims, gliding steadily on. “You simply choose a starting point, and then walk round and round in a spiral shape until you’re not lost. As long as your spiral is getting wider all the time,you’re bound to find the path or hit the nearest edge sooner or later.”

Ralsei is quiet for a moment. He’d assumed that Lancer was simply wandering aimlessly, but what he’s describing sounds like a pretty decent escape strategy.

Lancer takes advantage of Ralsei’s momentary speechlessness. “I’ll make you a deal, my fuzzy friend: we’ll let the forest decide. If we get to the edge first, we can go back to the castle and print lavender-scented tax forms until we out. But if we find the meeting spot first, we’ll stay there and wait for the Lightners until sundown.”

Ralsei considers briefly, then says, “Deal.”

“Excellent!” Lancer does a little pirouette without breaking stride (not that he ever strides, exactly, but whatever). “Let us proceed to our destination!”

No sooner have those words left his mouth, than Ralsei notices the carpet of leaves he’s trudging through growing shallower. And after just a few more steps, the trees suddenly thin out and open into a wide empty clearing, floored with packed purple earth and devoid of any kind of foliage except for a big red shrub in the opposite corner.

“Lo and behold, we’re here!” Lancer declares. “This is the meeting spot!” He grabs Ralsei by the hands without warning and spins him round in a circle, whooping in delight.

“It is?” Ralsei asks. Lancer lets him go, and he looks around to get his bearings. The clearing is rectangular, and intersected by a narrow path that leads out from either end. Whether it’s the same path he was on before, Ralsei has no idea. This place could make a decent meeting spot, he supposes, but the shrub is the only distinguishing feature. “This is definitely it?”

“Definitely! This is where Susie and I tricked you and Kris into deg an ass-thrashing machine for us to use against you. See the hole in the shrub? That’s where Susie burst out after being craftily concealed by our cunning camouflage!”

“Oh yes,” Ralsei says – he does that occasion.

“So!” says Lancer. “It appears that Susie isn’t here...yet.” He rubs his chin. “Perhaps I ought to find a delicious pinecone with which to lure her?” He heads for the edge of the clearing.

“Wait!” Ralsei yells – it comes out angrier than he meant it to. “We just found this place. Let’s not get lost right away, okay?”

“Oh... okay,” Lancer says. “You’re right. We should stay and wait.” He sits down next to the shrub, his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap.

Ralsei surveys him, weighing up his options. The sensible course of action would be to cut his losses and try to get home; with enough pressure, he can probably even talk Lancer into coming with him. But a deal’s a deal: Lancer found his meeting spot, and it would be churlish to immediately renege and demand he abandon it.

Moreover (and as foolish as it makes him feel) Ralsei can’t deny that Lancer’s of his conversation with the King has stirred up a faint hope within him. Maybe Kris and Susie really are on their way. Lancer’s obviously missing them a whole bunch... and Ralsei misses them too, darn it. The chance to see their friends again is worth one wasted afternoon.

So yeah, maybe the King was mistaken, or just plain lying. Maybe the Rudinn at the bake sale didn’t actually see Susie. And maybe it’s foolish to sit and wait and hope otherwise. But there’s worse things than being a fool, and Ralsei is good at waiting. He sighs and sits down next to Lancer.

The two princes wait together in silence as the minutes crawl by. Not for the first time, Ralsei finds himself pondering his place in the world. His purpose – the purpose of every Darkner – is to aid the Lightners who enter their realm. It’s inevitable that he’ll miss Kris when they’re not here, and it’s inevitable that Lancer will miss Susie. To wish otherwise would be like wishing not to breathe.

And yet...

Is this really all there is to life? Serving as an acolyte to Lightners when they show up, and pining after them whenever they’re gone? Sure, he keeps himself busy day-to-day with the work of governing the kingdom, but in moments of quiet he always finds himself yearning for the moment when he’ll be able to show Kris and Susie the results of whatever project he’s working on. It seems a cruel fate, to be in constant need of recognition from people he so seldom gets to meet. But without that desire, what would he be? As painful as the long stretches of waiting are, the idea of a life without the hope the Lightners bring is unconscionable.

So he and Lancer sit and wait.

And wait.

And wait.

The afternoon wears on into evening, the two companions’ shadows gradually lengthening as the sun sinks down to the horizon. The forest is always prettiest at this time of day: the sun’s rays turn the golden leaves into halos around each tree, and the square branches block the light to produce fascinating abstract patterns on the ground. *If only Kris were here to see this,* Ralsei thinks.

The two Darkners wear away the daylight in patient silence, but their hopes are not rewarded. The sun has almost completely set before anymore words between them.

“Ralsei?” Lancer asks timidly.

“Yes, Lancer?”

“Do you think Kris and Susie are coming?”

Ralsei bites his lip. “I don’t think they are.”

“I thought they probably weren’t,” Lancer confesses, his voice quavering. “But Dad seemed so sure... I didn’t want to give up hope...”

“There, there,” Ralsei murmurs, reaching out to pat his friend’s shoulder. “They’ll be back sooner or later. Tomorrow is another day, after all.”

“Yeah,” Lancer says. “You’re right.” He glances around. “It’s getting late. Maybe we ought to return to the castle.”

“Mm,” Ralsei hums in assent.

Lancer stands, and then looks around sheepishly. “Do you, um... know which way to go?”

Ralsei calls up his memory of his first trip through the forest. “East, I think. There should be a door not far from here that’ll take us back to the castle.”

“Excellent!” cries Lancer, his melancholy evaporating like it was never there at all. “Then away we gooooooo!”

He charges east out of the clearing at top speed. Ralsei looks around one last time, sighs heavily, and sets off after him.

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That night, Ralsei visits the King in person. He finds him in the same position as usual: sitting on the floor in the middle of his cell, his eyes fixed on the bars.

“Good evening, little prince,” he says when Ralsei arrives.“I trust Lancer’s visit to the forest was enjoyable?”

“That was a horrible lie to tell him,” Ralsei answers simply.

The King chuckles. “Fooled you too, did it? My my, little prince. For all your talk of wisdom, you sure are easily taken in. You’re every bit as gullible as he is.”

Ralsei flushes. “How could you do that to your own son? Raise his hopes for no reason, just so you can enjoy seeing him disappointed. How empty and bitter must you be to do something like that?!”

“Empty?” rumbles the King. “It is not I who lives an empty existence, prince. I built this kingdom for the glory of Darkners. It was ours,and we reaped the rewards of our labour. But you... you have my people sweat and toil in service of Lightners who do not care for them, and who are never coming back.”

Ralsei stands in furious silence as the King leers at him through the bars. “You have poured your whole self into these capricious idols,” he continues, “and they have cast you aside like the plaything you are. And now you feel hollow, worthless without them. You walk circles in the Scarlet Forest’s maze, lying to yourself that they will come back for you. And when you finally lose hope, you will lose your whole self as well. You will be nothing.

“You scolded me for lying to my son. As if your deception is not far crueller! Lancer had promise; he could have been a great King. But you and the Lightners have turned him against his people, against his own father, and now he is just like you: listless, subservient, devoid of purpose. Do not deign to lay your misery at my feet, Ralsei; it is of your own making, and no-one else’s.”

Ralsei’s lip trembles. For a moment he’s afraid he’s going to start crying in front of the King, which he’d never live down. But a sudden realisation dawns on him that makes him momentarily forget his own sadness.

“It happened to you, didn’t it?” he asks.

The King doesn’t speak, but between the shadows the barscast on his face, Ralsei sees his jaw tighten.

“There was a Lightner whom you loved,” Ralsei states with complete confidence. “The way Lancer loves Susie. The way I love Kris.”

The king still says nothing. Ralsei doesn’t even hear him breathing.

“You gave them everything you had, and they abandoned you. The pain was too much to face. So you convinced yourself that you never cared for them in the first place, and made sure never to care for anyone else, either. Not even your own son.”

“How dare you,” the king growls. “I should blast you to dust for such disrespect.”

Ralsei is unmoved. He has heard many empty threats from the King since his defeat, but this one rings especially hollow; it only serves as a confirmation of what he’d already guessed.

“I feel sorry for you,” he says. “You’re so wrapped up inyour own misery that the only thing that brings you pleasure in dragging others down with you. But I have news for you: Kris and Susie are different. They’re not like your Lightner. They do care about this world, and they will return. Maybe not today, maybe not even this year. But eventually. And Lancer and I will be here to welcome them when they do.”

The king bows his head. “Poor, foolish prince,” he says solemnly. “You are deluded.” He doesn’t sound gloating, or even angry anymore. If anything, there’s a tinge of sadness to his voice.

“Perhaps I am,” Ralsei its. “Time will tell. But if this is what disillusionment looks like” – he gestures to the king’s hunched form – “then I think I could do a lot worse.”

And with that, he turns on his heel and heads back to the elevator, leaving the prisoner alone.

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~Postscript~

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this story, I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts in the comments below.

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~My Other Creations~

Story: Leaving the Underground

Story: Return to the Underground

Poem: The Card King's Recruitment