The flesh was boiling off his bones. Each muscle, each vessel, each individual pore of his skin bubbled and burst about him. But Touslaine Verduryne could not deny a simple fact at the core of his suffering- he deserved this. He made the compromises, he made his horrid, wretched choices, he chose to abandon the very principles that should have compelled a man of the Verduryne name. The envy that burned at the pit of his wretch soul had spread, a cancer he refused to cut out. How could he, when all else paled in comparison to the dream that it spun? Of crowns and cake, of champagne that flowed like rivers and a place that glowed with the golden light of the blessed.

And an embrace he long awaited, a final reward at the end of a long, hobbling road.

No arms were here to take him. No song to comfort him.

All he had to his name at the end was a blade this throat, and two worthless words.

"I'm sorry."

Words are weightless, pithy, cheap. What good would those two words do to the dead? What good were they to the living? And yet still they escaped his lips. One last crow perhaps, forced from the pierced breast of a knight long past pride? Why did he even question this, as his form finally disapated into the void he now envied?

Touslaine Verduryne had lived his life. He was content with this outcome. His last sight had been of...

A sensation bloomed upon his forehead. A thick piece of cotton, soaked in ice cold water. It drooled and sluiced down his face. But something was off. He twinged, as if expecting his scar to smart beneath the water's cool touch. But the bite never came. Instead, rivulets that cascaded down his cheek seemed to run... short. He tried to compel his own hand to move, but the sharp sensation of torn mucle ricocheted up his arm.

"Mother, he's rousing."

The voice. It was a young still, but a refined gentility resonated through it. He knew it, though when last he heard it...

He raised his hand, pain be damned. The fingers that rest upon his throat were stubby, small, fatter than he knew. His eyes flew open, that familiar light burning into his retinas. He did not quite know how he reacted- he only heard a shriek of surprise he twisted body. His neck was still there, his head still attached to his body. His body was weighty, ungainly, unresponsive. Touslaine's body rolled across the ground beneath- no, this was not dirt muddied with the ichor of his allies. This was soft, downy, a sparkling sheen of white. This was... a bed.

He knew the shape. He knew the word. But the years had robbed him of the sensation. The comfort. And this covering rolled with him, wrapped him in its soft embrace- a blanket, filled with down. His limbs tangled themselves in the heavy folds of the cloth as a pair of hands pulled at the hem. Like a fish caught in a net, he was reeled back towards those hands, towards that voice.

"Stay... still!" its golden tones stang with a certain frustration as footfalls reverberated through room, echoing from an empty hall.

Touslaine spun, freeing himself from the haunted grip of his heavy blanket, his blood pumping through a head he was certain he lost. And yet from that phantom mouth an acrid taste tinged his time. He barely had the time toss his head over the side of the bed, and expel what was left of his stomach.

As the floor was cleaned of his sick, Touslaine could not help but marvel at the contents that had once called his stomach home. Bits of bread, the sickly green of a pea meal soup, bits of collard leaves. Past the copper that stained his tongue he could still taste the salt and herbs that were poured lavishly upon the last meal his body had consumed. His soft, unwieldy form that sparked with broiling veins and molten muscles did not feel like his own, and yet... the gnawing sensation clawed at the back of his mind. A familiarity, a deja vu that gnashed against his sanity. And worst of all were the hands that pulled him away from the edge.

"Settle down," her voice cooed.

It was wrong. Alien. Her voice was light, dainty, like faebelles in the summer wind. His eyes lingered down, afraid of what he would see if he allowed his gaze to tarry any higher. It could not be her. Touslaine desperately prayed for anyone else to be there. Instead, all he received was a stark reminder of just how wrong he was. A pair of smooth, warm hands wrapped about his own, pulling his attention to her.

"It's ok. You're ok. You're here."

Beside him sat a slight girl, barely ten years of age. Eyes that sparkled like the sun reflected from within, hair light as asp. She smiled, and it felt as though the meadows had bloomed through the bleakest of winters. Touslaine's heart hammered wildly as he took her in, as though she were a statue carved immaculately from the most gorgeous of marble. But when she was that age...

He had been but eight.

"Where... what...?" his tongue was heavy, his every breath squeezed from a throat too tight.

Was this the vision he was allowed before death? One last dream before he was swallowed by the void?

"You're home," she insisted. "The Verdant Manor," she squeezed his hand tighter. Anchoring him in the moment. Eyes clear and arresting. Back straight, posture perfect.

And yet he still could not bring himself to breathe.

Titles, words, all assigned upon her by years of memories he had harbored close to his heart came to him in a rush. If his stomach were so painfully absent, perhaps he would have spewed once again. The sounds that lilted off her tongue stabbed his mind with unerring accuracies, summoning emotions he had thought buried.

He could have lived in the moment. He could have lain there, accepted this as the finest end. All his life he dreamed she would gaze upon him like this... yet this was not the woman he knew. Her voice was too sweet, her eyes brimming with worry. No, this was wrong.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The girl seemed to say something. He tugged his hand away. No, perhaps it was trap- a temptation to drag him back into the vortex of life and death he had been on cusp of escaping. He knew what the real Princess thought of him.

She swung the blade after all.

"What are you... doing... here?" Was that truly his voice? This reedy, wretched strangulation of air through his vocal chords? No... it was as though he were forcing his words through...

The girl shrieked as his stomach summoned something despite his spew. In her retreat, he could not see what become of her, as she pulled away with far less polite a vocabulary. He felt an apology bubble up from the pit of his stomach, only to feel that acrid sensation drown his tongue once again. He attempted to choke to back down, as he began to shift in his bed.

"Don't," the void of soft dew attempting to coax him into silence, but a new pair of hands descended upon him. They pinned him back down into the embrace of clouds, his head cushioned and sinking deep into an ocean of luxurious down.

"You need rest, young lord."

The face that met his eyes glowed with the same resplendent light, though her eyes were grew and hair the shade of gold one would associate with an ocean of wheat. Rippling waves of amber and sun, bound in a ball behind her head. Lines were etched deep into her features as she pressed him upon the bed, waiting for him to sleep. And as the void consumed him again, Touslaine felt the names of those around him drift upon his tongue.

"Queen... Aureum..."

In the depths of unconsciousness, things began to realign once more. He could dismiss what he had seen as a dream- a vision of his past. Yes, he had been sick like this before- his veins ruptured, his body sluggish, weighed by fat. He had almost forgotten that saga, but there was a pleasant nostalgia to revisiting those days. Life had been so much simpler back then- no wars, no Monsteurs, and Magic was just a dream in the back of his mind. Yes, a pleasant reminisence at the end of a long, wretched road. He could not find fault in the remembrance. He even got to see Her again, before the ice of apathy and dulled the sun in her eyes. A pleasant... little...

Touslaine's eyes opened once more.

He could not tell what he was looking it- a melding of warm hues stared back down upon him, his head still buried in that soft cloud of comfort. He groaned, and began to twist his body. Muscles protested, pain lanced as if his veins were composed of glass. He felt the information flowing off his tongue, his memories flooding back to him.

"A forced expulsion of mana," he began, finding comfort in the mere act of simply knowing something in this soupy mess of a set up. He gripped upon that vein of knowledge, repeating what he could from the diagnosis he memorized. "Often lethal, the process can result in ruptured veins, and a compromised response system to additional diseases." He winced as he turned to his right, a hand finally passing in his view- his own. The palm was smooth, though red and peeling from the boiling of his skin. He once recalled his brother referring to him as a "boiled lobster" in this state. The flush to his cheeks indicated he did not particularly disagree with the embarassing state of his own body.

"A succinct summary." The voice cut in from behind him. At first, he attempted to spin back, but as he flopped upon his back, he whinged, electric sparks of miserable pain lancing through his mind as he attempted to bury his own vocal response to his suffering. His eyes moved instead- thankfully, their movement was free of the spikes and needs that accompanied the rest of his body's twitches. The woman with dirty blond hair was there, a book in her hand, her free hand rising up and adjusting her reading lenses. He could recall her name properly now. Magdelyne Vernaniam Aureum- third queen of Orneum Empire. At least... she would be. When did the Emperor take the throne again? "Don't move too much," she raised a hand. Touslaine paused- he had not even noticed how his body straightened, his hands flattened, and how his neck tilted in deference. Nothing about the woman seemed remotely... regal to his eye, but still shifted to greet her properly. As if it were an instinct, deeply engrained into ever muscle of his body.

"You've been unconscious for four days," she explained, setting her book aside. "Thankfully, through the grace of the gods, you'll make a proper recovery... so long as you don't stress your body like last night."

"I... died?" The words that left his tongue felt foreign, and yet they were the foremost notion on his mind. He had... died hadn't he? His head should have been hewn from his shoulders. His body dragged before a jeering audience, as a new sun rose upon the Empire he fought to defend. He had... done that, had he not?

The woman by his bed seemed to gaze upon him. With what look, he could not discern. Instead, she slid her seat closer, her hand reaching out and grasping Touslaine's own. Her other hand reached up, and clasped down his hand. It was... warm, the needles tracing up his arm. "Hmm... this does not seem to be the hand of a cadavar, does it?" she asked him, her fingers twining between each other and hold his hand in place. "The warmth? The texture?" she intoned, her eyes gazing into his own. How many had she seen like this? How many foolish young men, women, found themselves there, in the hold of a healer with her talent? "The dead don't normally get the privelege of touch you know. Their fingers don't twitch, and they certainly aren't this warm. No, in my professional opinion, this hand belongs to a boy who is very, very much alive."

There was a conviction to her voice. If he had been despondent, or lost in his death, perhaps he would have cried. Instead, the murky fog in his mind only intensified. Boy? Alive? "Mir... ror?" he asked, his eyes unable to pull away from the woman who so adamantly insisted he was alive. Was it the glow of her eyes? The genteel smile? Gods, he wished he had remembered such things before. If he had, perhaps he could have avoided...

The woman shifted her chair, slowly extracted her hands. She seemed aware of just how painful it was to feel something drag across his skin. From behind her, a familiar form approached- her hair was longer than he remembered, her face chubbier. Magdelyne's daughter... his eyes watched her, and raised up an ornate piece of silver and glass. As she held it up, Touslaine found himself disappointed in his brother's analogies.

He seemed more a suckling pig like this than a boiled lobster.

His face was bloated, perhaps a result of the violent reaction to his mana burn, but he could still see the fat. His hair was shorter, a rusty shade of iron tinting his follicles as the thin strands came to abrupt ends.

Touslaine could see, through the scrunched up vestiges of a face so fat and bloated, he eyes and nose- this was indeed his face.

He felt a wave of relief wash over him, a sigh escaping his lips.

Rusty red hair. Eyes as green as a rose's leaves. His face a bit splotchy... that's right, he had once been rotund. It would only take a moment for it to truly register in his mind that he was indeed Touslaine Verduryne.

The girl that handed him the mirror seemed hesitant to trust it his hand. She held it aloft, though she pointedly kept her distance. Touslaine's eyes darted just once to her face... but it was not a face he wanted to recall all that well. "Thanks," he subtly exhaled.

As he said, he found his hand buried in the folds his sheets once more. "What year... is it?" his voice quivered as he gave voice to that niggling whisper in the back of his head.

"753 by the Avernean standard. 953 by the-"

"Adden Dynastium," he completed the words. Yes, the 200 year schism between the holidom's recording of time, and the Empire's. Scholars could spend years to debating the source of such a gap- All Touslaine could do was chuckle. For all the ego of the Imperial family, they could not see their empire through eight hundred years.

The point was, he would die in a mere seventeen years. In a forest just south of his old home.

At the hands of the same girl who now subtly glowered from behind her mother.

An Amber Acolyte.

A Holy Healer.

A Resplendant Royal.

The Princess Wreathed in Gold.

The unclaimed Princess of Aureum hid behind her mother, as if hiding from the gaze of all the world.

The girl who would shattered the Empire was still splattered in his sick.