Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Once upon a time, there lived a very wealthy and powerful evanuris. This evanuris had many children. Many sons, and many daughters. Being a woman of intelligence, she had spared no expense in their education and refinement, and was quite dedicated to ensuring their future prospects.

Her daughters were notoriously beautiful, and her sons exceptionally handsome. The youngest was the most handsome and intelligent of all. These blessings had given him an over-abundance of pride, particularly as perceived by his envious siblings; and so he was called Pride by his peers, who wished to see him laid a little bit low. The nickname became so persistent that not many ever used the name his mother had given him.

But despite his proud nature, the young prince was sensible, as well. Where his siblings often sought great conquests, and rushed headlong into battles and their efforts to prove themselves, he was more patient. He was kind to the servants and apprentices, and always courteous to his tutors. He observed, and in his observance, sought to attain greater wisdom and insight to the world. It seemed to many that he was quite set to succeed.

Nothing stays the same forever, though. Silver will tarnish, the bloom will wilt, and every sweetness is tempered by the bitter taste of tragedy. The powerful evanuris lost her standing, and all of her properties, save for a small and remote country house. With a bitter heart she told her family that they would have to retreat there, until she could conspire to regain her position and restore them to their rightful place. Her children wailed and railed against the notion. They balked at the idea of having to work for a living, and make their way far beyond Arlathan and its amenities.

Pride, too, was grieved at their loss of status. But he had been kind to the servants and apprentices in his life, and so he knew much more of what hard work entailed than his siblings did. I shall learn from this experience, he resolved. And when the others protested and sulked and chafed under their new limitations, he kept his chin up high, and asked their mother how he might help.

The country house was only hard living by comparison to what the family had been accustomed to. Pride rose early in the morning, and made breakfast. He cleaned and swept and tended the hearth, and made dinner as well, and committed himself to the care and maintenance of the building that had become his family’s only remaining home. He did, indeed, manage to learn many things. He learned what it was like to go to bed with a back aching from a day’s labours, and a stomach less full than it might have been. He learned how difficult it was to scrape ash from beneath his fingernails, and to patch a broken roof, and clean an outhouse.

And if he lamented the reduction to his leisure hours, he at least kept such lamentations mostly to himself. He missed his paints and his easel, his instructors and lessons, and more than anything, he missed his books. But there was little to be done for it. They could only make do until an opportunity presented itself.

And in time, one did! It came in the form of a missive, little more than a year into the family’s exile to simple living. Word of an opportunity for the evanuris to regain her power had come, provided she could make haste back to Arlathan, and exploit the weakness of one of her long-standing enemies.

Pride’s siblings were most excited by the prospect of returning to their former glory. And indeed, in their excitement, they almost began to behave as if glory had already made its way back to them. Before long they were demanding that their mother return with ridiculous gifts from the city. Magical runestones and star-woven fabrics and enchanted wines. Luxuries they had missed, and had begun to fear lost to them forever.

As the list of requested gifts grew and grew, Pride remained silent. Though he could think of many things he might like - books and paints, canvases and brushes - such boons could wait until their future was secured.

Still. When his siblings had at last completed their demanding lists, their mother looked towards him.

“And what will you have, my Pride?” she asked him.

“Your success; and regardless of it, your safe return,” Pride replied.

This made his mother smile. For Pride was not humble nor selfless, but rather, he was clever, and that pleased her greatly.

“That is a gracious answer, my dear. Still, it is a poor mother who brings cartloads of gifts for all her children save one,” she replied. “At least name a token. A book, perhaps? Quill and ink?”

Pride considered this. He believed, in that moment, that his mother would bring him whatever he asked for, above and beyond the luxurious demands of his siblings. And he was correct, for of all them, Pride had proven the most sincere. But in so realizing this, he did not wish to ask for anything difficult to acquire, or that might distract his mother from the importance of her task.

“A flower,” he finally declared. “I would be most pleased if you brought me back a flower.”

There were abundant wildflowers that grew along the roads between the cottage and Arlathan. Often blooming at the feet of eluvians. One would not be difficult to acquire; and many could be crushed to make dyes and inks, as Pride had learned to do for himself in the absence of shops to supply such things. Or simply dried and kept as a delicate bookmark, and reminder of his mother’s regard for his good character.

His mother smiled, and swore it would be so.

She set out upon her journey. But though she was clever and shrewd, and did steal some spare advantage and fortune once again, it was not significant enough to bring her family back into Arlathan yet. 

Her return trip she made empty-handed. The machinations within the city had seen several of the eluvian networks close, and so she was forced to take an old road, disused and overgrown. It passed through tangled knots of the old forest, a path that had gone years without being seen by the eyes of elves. 

The weather turned foul well before she reached the next eluvian. It put her in a position of some concern, and so when she saw a light gleaming in the distance of the wood - a flickering warmth, like fire, rather than the glow of natural phosphor - she weighed her options, and then went towards it. But she did so with caution. There were stories of strange elves who had once lived in these woods. Wandering savages, upon whom some unknown misfortune had fallen. Though the evanuris had little fear of wild or savage things, it did not do to underestimate them, either.

Still, she was quite surprised to find herself reaching the ruins of a castle.

The once-proud building looked like it had not seen much care in a very long time, though it was not entirely dilapidated. The outer walls had fallen, and many of the smaller buildings looked to have been reclaimed by nature. But there were torches lit, and the largest building was in much better condition. And still lived-in, it would seem.

With caution still foremost in her mind, the evanuris approached, and knocked upon the main door. Or at least, meant to. It swung open before her knuckles could touch the wood with silent swiftness.

But there was no one inside.

The sconces were lit, and the place was clean enough. Icy rain was pouring down in sheets outside. The evanuris made a choice, and stepped into the warmth of the building. Better to brave the mysterious castle than the elements, she thought.

The door closed behind her of its own accord.

Carefully, she called out. There was no answer. She strode forward, searching the rooms and rehearsing her apologies, but none seemed to be occupied, apart from housing some rather nice furnishings. She found a warm hearth, and then a dining hall with a liberal spread of dishes. Roasted pheasant and herbed potatoes, and a loaf of fresh-baked bread. It seemed the sort of setting a person intended to return to, and so she waited.

And waited.

But as the night drew on and the food grew cold, she grew hungrier, and no one came. No one answered her calls. So at last she gave in to temptation, and sat, and ate. Even cold the meal was still quite good and filling. When she was finished, she found that the door she came in by would not open, however.

Being a patient woman, she was not immediately alarmed. If it was a trick, she was too tired to deal with it presently; and if some spirit meant to deceive her, it would find itself facing quite a challenge. 

The next door she tried did open. The evanuris discovered that the doors opened quite selectively thereafter, until she came to a room. A guest room, by the look of the furnishings. The bed had been made and the sheets turned down. A fire crackled in one corner, warm and cheery. The scene was inviting enough that she gave in, and fell upon the mattress, and slept like a stone until morning.

Then she woke with a stranger’s words ringing clearly in her mind.

Take nothing of this place when you leave.

“I thank you for the warning,” the evanuris said to the empty walls. “You have been a most courteous host.”

So saying, she rose and made ready to leave again. In the dining hall she found that more food had been set out; and for this she thanked her mysterious benefactor as well. She ate, and made her way back into the courtyard, and then out towards the road again. But there she paused.

Along the crumbling outer walls of the castle, she saw the most beautiful flowers blooming. There was magic in them. She could see it, though not too clearly. It threaded through the stems and petals, and wove its way back towards the ancient building like the sprawling threads of a spider’s web.

There was power there. And wealth in the castle. Such a strange thing, for a castle to be left with so many treasures lying in plain sight, and yet unplundered. Even accounting for the remote location, a building of that size and wealth… surely there would be people who would know of it. Why leave all the delicate furnishings and tapestries to rot? Why ‘take nothing’?

It is a curse, she thinks. Though some benevolence may have spared her, some malevolence may have driven the foul weather to bring her there by equal measure. And yet, in such things, a skilled mage may often find opportunity.

Taking a risk, the evanuris leaned down, and picked one of the flowers.

As she did, she thought of her son’s request.

All at once, the air seemed to change. A breeze brushed past her. The magic in the flower flared and changed, closing like rings around her fingers. She stilled as she felt hot breath pouring over the backs of her shoulders.

“You should not have done that,” a low and grave voice informed her; rumbling like the growl of a mighty beast.

She began to turn.

“No!” the beast snapped.

She stopped.

“Do not look upon me. I am sorry. I tried to warn you. But there are rules to these things, and now they must be paid. You’ll have to return to the castle, and stay there. But it’s better if you do not see what company you keep. I have no wish to frighten you.”

The evanuris smiled.

“I am not easily frightened, child,” she declared, and turned despite the request.

Behind her was, indeed, a massive beast. There was a lupine quality to its face, but it was tall and stood upright. Its body was covered in long, dark fur. Twisting horns grew from the top of its head, pale and carved, like those of a halla. Its hands, however, were scaled, and oddly humanoid; marked with long black nails.

The true incongruity, however, were its eyes. Not a beast’s eyes. But an elf’s. Rounded and softened in sympathy; braced for some inevitably dramatic reaction.

An expectation the evanuris saw fit to disappoint.

“There. That was not so bad, now was it?” she said, instead.

“You are not afraid?” the beast asked.

“And why should I be? You have treated me quite well.”

The beast, it seemed, did not know what to do with this development at first. Poor creature, the evanuris thought. But then it rallied, and lifted itself up to more of its considerable height. With a single swipe of its claws it could have sent the woman sprawling. It was a frightful sight; but the eyes were its undoing. There was no malice in them.

“Why did you pick the flower?” the beast finally asked.

“I did not realize it was considered part of your holdings,” the evanuris lied. “My son requested I bring him back a flower from my trip. These seemed so lovely; I could not resist the temptation.”

Now in this, the evanuris saw a spark. Only the faintest one, there and yet gone again, but she recognized it. As one who had known misery and struggle, she could not fail to. The look of hope, however brief, is almost always distinctive.

The beast buried it, swiftly.

“You have a son?” it asked.

“I have several,” the evanuris replied. “My youngest is the only who would care to ask for flowers, however. He is a considerate and insightful young man. Very observant. The others have… different virtues.”

“I am sorry for you, then,” said the beast. “For you will be going back to none of them. Such is the curse of this place. Now that you have taken something from it, it will not release you until you give it something in return. Not unless the curse is broken, and it never shall be. Since you have plucked a flower from the ground, the price of what you took is a life. If you try to leave, I will be forced to kill you.”

The evanuris raised an eyebrow, for of course she had no intention of spending her life in a dilapidated castle in the middle of the forest.

“What if I can offer another life in my own stead?” she wondered. And you might think, at this point, that she was regretting her decision. But far from it. The pieces of a puzzle were slotting together, and she was beginning to see the patterns of this curse, and how they wove into the creature before her. The opportunity she had first perceived grew even clearer.

“An animal you caught would not work. This place considers them part of itself as soon as they come into it, and they would be beyond your reach otherwise,” the beast said, regretfully.

“I have several children,” Mythal mused. “I am their only true support in this world. Our family has fallen onto hard times. Without me, they will surely become destitute.”

“I am sorry,” the beast said again, with sincere remorse.

“As ruthless as it may seem, it would be better to see only one of my children suffer, rather than all of them. As their mother, I own their lives. Let me give you one of them, here to stay in your company, so that I might continue to support the rest.”

At this notion, the beast looked horrified.

“You would truly…? You would condemn one of your children to a lifetime in this place in your own stead?” the creature demanded, and there the evanuris saw the first flash of temper in it. A fire in those gentle eyes.

She met it coolly.

“Would it work?” she asked.

“I… do not rightly know,” the beast admitted, with a note of disgust in its tone. “I suppose I could accept your offer, and we may see if the castle will let you leave. If not, you will know when I come to kill you.”

It sounded slightly less broken up by that prospect than it had before.

The evanuris, however, could see the magic working already. She meant to keep her bargain; and she knew that had some influence on things. A life for a life. One precious blossom for another. She tucked the flower into her pack, and nodded to the beast.

“Then I vow I shall send one of my children in my place, to pay for the life that was stolen,” she declared.

So saying, she turned, and carried on down the road. No thundering footsteps followed her. No twisting vines or reaching tendrils clipped at her heels. The magic in the flower dimmed, like a beacon. A waiting promise. Any effort to leave it behind, the evanuris knew, would see it right back in her pack; and if she failed to uphold her end of the bargain, then the flower would claims is price, and the magic in it would steal the life from her bones.

A most interesting turn of events, she thought.

When at last she returned home, her children were greatly disappointed at her limited success in Arlathan, and the distinct lack of gifts about her person. Still she embraced them all, and then held Pride most tightly, before reaching into her pack and producing the flower.

“It hardly seems fair. No one else got their gifts,” Pride mused, as his siblings sent him poisonous glares.

His mother’s expression turned to sorrow.

“You will not thank me for it, when you hear how I have come by it,” she warned.

The whole story spilled out of her, then. The broken eluvians, the foul weather, the mysterious castle, and the beast. Their grim bargain. When she finished there were tears in her eyes, and her children were horrified.

“I should return,” she declared. “In truth, I only made the bargain so that I might come and tell you where I was, and warn you that you would all have to make arrangements for my absence.”

At this, at last, a great clamour rose up. Her eldest children had barely tolerated their current loss of status. Without their mother, they would only fall further, and none of them could stand the thought. And though they were selfish and often conceited creatures, it must be said that they did love their mother, as she loved them. So their outcry was tremendous, as they began to envision ways to thwart the curse, or kill the beast, or somehow ferret out an escape from this bargain.

It was Pride who quieted it.

“I will go,” he said.

“No,” his mother refused, gently. 

“It was my gift that caused this trouble. I should be the one to walk into this cage,” he insisted.

Pride would have said these things even if he had wholly believed his mother’s story. But being more observant than his siblings, he had gleaned that there was more going on than was readily apparent. It was his suspicion that, whatever her denials, his mother wanted him to go to this castle, and meet with this creature. Some part of him supposed it was because of the magic involved. Pride was very clever about magic, and spirits, and curses, and spells. Almost as clever as his mother.

It seemed likely, then, that she had seen some potential gain in all of this. And it was Pride’s task to try and seize it.

His siblings all fell silent at the resolution behind his offer. Though he was not popular with them, the prospect of having him leave forever put some contrition in them. Particularly when their mother at last conceded to let him leave.

So it was that Pride enjoyed a few days of uncommon kindness and courtesy, as one might expect to be paid to a person diagnosed with a terminal illness. He got his affairs into order, and packed his things; and it was good, he thought, that they had become so poor, because the difficult decision of choosing what to take and what to leave behind was considerably easier when all of one’s belongings to fit security into one small aravel.

His mother accompanied him for half the trip into the wilds, before pointing out the road that would lead to the castle.

“Now, my dear,” she said, as they were at last alone, and beyond the earshot of both their kin and this beast. “I would offer you some advice, but in this task, I suspect, your own instincts will suffice. I shall return, after some time has passed, and if you think it necessary, I will find a way to kill the creature and free you.”

Pride nodded, and kissed her cheek, and carried up the road on his own.

He saw what his mother had seen before him; though the weather was far clearer for his journey than it had been for hers. The castle was ruined, but not wholly. He unhitched his small aravel by the stables, and fed and watered his halla, and found that fresh grass was growing in a pen more than fit for it. His mother had insisted he keep the animal, as a precaution. It was a swift runner, and a level-headed animal, smarter than most.

That task done, he set about doing a sweep of the grounds, and the overgrown buildings, and the magic he could find, before making his way into the keep. He discovered that almost every door would open to him. The place was not at all unpleasant, and had, by his estimation, once been very opulent. There was of course the dining hall, and the guest rooms, and a large bedroom that had been set out for him. There were sitting rooms and conference rooms, studies and libraries, and even a music room. There were no servants, and no spirits that he could perceive.

By the time evening fell, he was quite tired from his trip and explorations, and equal parts wary and fascinated. In the dining hall he found that food had been set out for him. It was a very fine meal. Finer than the one which his mother had enjoyed. There was roast venison and all sorts of savoury accompaniments, sweet rolls and soup, and a small cheese wheel, and crackers, and wine. He wondered where it all came from, for surely the castle grounds could not produce all the ingredients needed for such things.

After eating, he found his answer in a cellar stocked with goods that seemed as if they were perfectly preserved from the time when the castle had been in full use; and if he read the spells on the room right, that was precisely the case. Much of it looked utterly untouched. He supposed that if the beast did not eat such things, than there would have been little need to disturb it all.

Though that, in turn, made him wonder who had prepared his meal, and how.

When he made his way back up from the cellar, Pride strode into the main hall.

“If you would not mind,” he said. “I would like to greet my host. It seems we are to live together for some time, after all.”

There was a pause. It might have seemed as if no one had heard him, but after a moment, the light in the room began to dim. The shadows grew deeper. Many might have attributed the effect to their own eyes playing tricks on them, but it was not, and Pride knew better.

In one of the deepening corners of darkness, between the sconces on the wall, something very large moved.

“I am sorry for all of this,” said the beast, in a gentle rumble.

“If that is true, then perhaps you might release me?” Pride suggested. He did not really think that the beast could. From what his mother had described, it did not seem to truly wish to keep anyone captive. But this seemed as good a way as any to find out.

“It is not up to me,” the beast confirmed.

“Are you not the master of this place?” he wondered.

The question earned him a soft huff.

“In the sense that a prisoner might be considered the master of his cell,” said the beast. “Then yes, I am. But I do not control it. I cannot tell it to let you go.”

That was interesting to Pride, who was beginning to wonder what this beast really was. Another prisoner of some sort of trap, it seemed. But set by who? And to what end? What point was there in trapping a beast in a castle?

“Perhaps you might tell me what curse has hold over you?” he asked.

The beast shifted in the shadows again.

“I cannot speak of it. That is part of the curse,” it admitted.

“Then it seems we have reached an impasse on this topic,” Pride noted. 

“I will do what I can for you,” the beast promised, and though its voice seemed naturally inclined to rumbles and snarls, with some effort, it gentled into something much kinder than its appearance would suggest. “There are many things in this castle. You may go anywhere you please, save for my chambers. If you wish for something, simply ask for it; and if it is in my power to give it you, I shall. You may speak to me, if you like, or you may ignore me. It can grow lonely here. I would not deprive you of the only company I can offer you, but there is no need for you to look upon me. Imagine me in whatever shape would cause you the least discomfort.”

Pride knew, then, that the beast had spent a long and lonely time in this place. Perhaps being met only by travellers who feared its shape. Who fought, or fled at the sight of it. A deep well of pity rose up in him. It did not do for thinking beings to spend long stretches of time so alone.

“I fear my imagination trends more towards creative horror than comforting delusion,” Pride told the beast. “If you leave me to guess what you look like, then I shall picture the most frightening and wretched thing my mind can conjure. I doubt will sleep well with such thoughts. I would greatly prefer to simply see you as you are… but if that is not to your own comfort, then I understand.”

There was a pause that lasted long enough for Pride to become convinced that the beast would deny him. In truth, he had heard his mother describe it already. Horned and tall and covered in long hair; the description did not provoke great fear in him, though it did make him somewhat curious, as he had never seen such a mismatched creature.

But at length, the light grew again, and the beast walked out of the shadows.

Pride did not flinch, nor even feel inclined to. It was, indeed, a strange creature, with many predatory qualities, but not frightening to him. Frightening to Pride was the snapping, snarling jaws of the ill-tamed hounds that had chased him as a child. It was the violent rage his father showed when he raised a hand to the servants in their old household. It was intent that frightened him, far more than appearances.

And in many ways, the beast was easy to look upon. Its fur was clean and looked soft. Its carved horns had a graceful twist to them. Its eyes were, by his estimation, its best feature by far, as they were fascinatingly misplaced from the rest of it.

After a moment, Pride bowed.

“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, my lord. I am called Pride,” he declared.

“You may call me Beast, and I am no lord on any account,” said his host.

“That does not seem the kindest of names,” Pride noted.

“Be that as it may, it is the only one I accept,” Beast replied.

So began Pride’s stay in his new lodgings. Beast left him shortly thereafter, but true to its word, almost all of the castle was left open to Pride. He explored it well into the night, and found that all the fires in the castle burned with magic rather than oil, but that the lavish furnishings and trappings were real enough. Among the places he gained access to, there was a treasury. It was filled with enough wealth to have seen his family buy and keep half a dozen households in Arlathan for centuries. But given what he knew of the curse, he did not wonder why it had not been stolen. Any thief bold enough to brave the castle would only be forced to pay back whatever they took, or else be killed.

He wondered, instead, whether the wealth of the treasury had increased over time, as would-be raiders found themselves instead emptying their own pockets in an effort to equal whatever item they attempted to steal. He imagined that would be a very perilous fate; staring down a creature that was bound by magic to kill them if they failed.

The next morning, he found breakfast had been laid out for him. And when he called for Beast, and requested that it join him, it did.

“I come from a large family. I am unaccustomed to dining alone,” he said, even though that was not strictly true. He often dined alone in the early mornings, before fixing breakfast for everyone else. The peace and quiet of the routine pleased him. But before his family’s situation had changed, he had eaten with all the others, so it could fairly be said to have not quite become a custom yet.

Beast obliged him with conversation, but did not eat.

“If you cannot speak of the curse, what can you speak of?” Pride wondered.

Beast, perched at the far end of the table, seemed to hesitate. The hunch of its shoulders might have read as hostility, if not for the uncertainty in its eyes.

“Many things, I suppose. I fear I do not have much idea of where to start. It has been a long time since I attempted to make polite conversation,” it said.

“You are doing quite well,” Pride assured it, for that was true. There were many in ‘polite’ society whom he had known to show far less graciousness. “But I shall take it upon myself to find us a topic. Let me see… I have noticed that there are no spirits here. Is that incidental, or do they avoid this place?”

“They avoid it,” Beast told him.

“I suppose they fear becoming tangled in the curse,” Pride suggested. When Beast only nodded, he considered a different line of questioning.

“This food,” he said, gesturing towards his plate. “Did you prepare it?”

Beast ducked its head.

“I hope that doesn’t unsettle you. I’m quite hygienic, I promise.”

Pride was unsettled, though not for the reasons Beast suspected. If his host had been preparing the food, then, he supposed, it had also been doing the other tasks around the castle. Cleaning and turning down sheets and dusting and maintaining the furniture. He knew how such work could fill a day, and perhaps Beast welcomed the distraction, as Pride sometimes did. But it seemed to him an awful imposition as well. As much as he may have been a prisoner, of sorts, that was not Beast’s fault.

“It is delicious,” he said. “It seems I must apologize. My presence here must be making quite a few demands upon your time.”

Rapidly, Beast shook its head.

“No!” it blurted.

Pride was taken aback enough to blink. The Beast flinched; there had been a growl to the fierce denial, and it was only as it came through that Pride realized his host had likely been making a very conscious effort, all this while, to speak as softly as possible.

“I am grateful… no, that is not right,” Beast murmured, grumbling lowly at itself. “What I mean is, I am very deeply sorry that this has happened to you. But your presence here is not unpleasant for me.”

He supposed that compared to loneliness, his arrival might indeed have been a pleasant change of pace.

“Be that as it may, I would like to help from here on out,” he insisted. “If we are both to be prisoners together, it is only fitting that we share the workload.”

Beast regarded him uncertainly for a moment.

“If that is your preference,” it finally declared.

“I shall begin straight away, I think,” Pride decided with a smile, and gathered up his breakfast dishes.

And so it went, that Pride took one some duties of the castle. Though Beast still kept the majority of them; some because it seemed to please it to perform them, and some because they required a level of physical strength which a single elf could not manage, but which a mighty beast could do with ease. The two took meals together, though Pride was the only one who ever actually ate. As the days slipped past, he attempted to piece together more of the curse on this strange place, and Beast seemed eager to offer whatever information it actually could.

Although perhaps, Pride thought, that eagerness had as much to do with simply being able to have conversations as anything.

He learned that Beast had not always lived in the castle, but not where it had lived before. That the place had once been a hub of activity, but that this was very long ago (and it must have been, by Pride’s reckoning, because any such hub would have surely been mentioned by his history tutors otherwise). That Beast was not quite certain how many years had passed since it first fell into ruin, nor how many years it had lived there for.

Beast spent most of it’s time in the gardens and on the grounds, tending the many plants that grew. Even the weeds and wild, tangled vines that had overgrown some of the smaller buildings and stables were treated with surprisingly delicate claws. Pride wandered, investigating some of the books in the library - though they offered him precious few insights to the mystery around him, being primarily written in a language he did not speak - and figuring out where the borders of the castle lay.

It was strange to realize that his stay was truly not much of a trial at all. In fact, he found it rather more pleasant than his life at home had been. There were no contentious siblings, and fewer chores, and more mysteries to investigate. When he asked Beast for a quill and ink, and parchment to write on, these things appeared. When he asked about paint, that too was provided. The confinement grated upon him, but it was eased by his confidence in the notion that he could solve the puzzle of this curse, and eventually break it. When he considered it in those terms, his incarceration seemed almost more like a pleasant vacation.

And Beast was better company than he would have ever expected.

At least, most days that was true.

Three weeks into his stay, however, Pride woke one morning to find no breakfast waiting for him. It was no trouble. He simply went to the cellar and retrieved some for himself. But Beast’s absence worried him, especially when he set about searching and calling, and received no answer. Beast seemed able to roam a least a little bit beyond the borders of the castle. He wondered if it had gone off scouting the forest, and lost track of the time. Or if it had become injured, somehow. The latter was a frightful idea. There would be little Pride could do to help.

But his search eventually turned up his host, safe and sound, shortly before noon. Beast was sitting on one of the crumbling outer walls of the castle, staring off into the distance. When Pride called out, and still received no answer, he approached it with caution.

“Are you well, my friend?” he asked.

There was no answer.

Slowly, he reached out, and moved a hand into Beast’s line of vision.

At last, something in it’s eyes flickered, and it blinked at him.

“Oh,” said Beast. “Pride. I am sorry. I lost track of the time.”

“I imagine that is quite common, when one is used to living all alone,” Pride said.

“Yes. Quite common,” Beast agreed, and rose up from the wall.

But though things then seemed to return to something of a routine, Beast remained distant, and much more quiet than usual. By the time dinner came, it had scarcely spoken more than a handful of words, and seemed easily distracted and lost in thought.

It was an awkward thing to eat in silence, in the company of someone who neither spoke nor ate themselves. But beyond that, the behaviour was peculiar, and worrying. When at last the meal was done, Pride asked Beast to retire to the sitting room with him. He set up the hearth himself, and once the fire was going, he sat in a chair opposite his host, who could only fit in the largest wingback. The firelight cast shadows, and along the walls it seemed to him that many beasts roamed through the disjointed parts of the one seated across from him. Shadows with long horns, or lupine faces, or clawed hands. He waited to see if the Beast would fill the silence between them.

At length, it did.

“I fear I am not much company today,” it said.

“You have been a very accommodating host. But I do not expect you to provide me with constant entertainment, nor bend to my every whim,” Pride replied, for indeed, it troubled him greatly to think he may have over-taxed his friend. “I am only concerned for you. But if you wish for quiet and solitude, then you may have those things, in whatever quantity you desire.”

“I have had my fill of quiet and solitude. More than anyone would ever want,” said Beast. “Yet I do find myself tired, I suppose. You are marvelous company, but I am badly out of practice at keeping it.”

“Then do not let me hold you here. Take your leave, and rest,” Pride insisted.

Beast did not leave, though. Not straight away. Instead it stared into the fire a moment. Pride considered that perhaps the polite thing would be for himself to withdraw, and had decided upon just that course of action, when at last his friend spoke again.

“I used to spend my days surrounded by people,” Beast said.

Pride sat very still.

It was a delicate thing, to get Beast to speak of its past. He had gathered that the curse did not punish Beast for speaking of it, but rather, that it simply prevented his friend from uttering any phrase or sentence at all that alluded to it. Sometimes Beast’s muzzle would open, and no sounds at all would come out. Sometimes, only a few would. Aborted sentences and unfinished thoughts were often left to hang in the air between them.

Any admission on Beast’s part of a life before the castle seemed to sneak past this restriction, and he had come to admire Beast’s ability to talk around the subject. To say something without saying it was a skill invaluable to most anyone born into high society.

“What kind of company did you keep?” Pride asked, carefully.

“Not other Beasts,” said Beast. “There weren’t… they were not other beasts.”

‘There weren’t’ was the sentence that had been stopped. There weren’t what? Weren’t any other beasts? But why should the curse prevent that sentence from being spoken, unless the existence of such beasts was part of the curse?

All in a rush, then, Pride realized another part of the puzzle. There weren’t any other beasts before Beast had been cursed, because being a beast was part of the curse. This realization excited him greatly. Of course, thought Pride, that explained the strangeness, and how his friend could talk, and think, and do things like keep house. They were not some strange species of creature. They were an elf, trapped in the shape of some terrible guard animal or monster.

Perhaps as punishment for something; though he could scarcely imagine his friend committing a crime worthy of this fate. But then again, Pride supposed that time could change people in many ways.

“If they were not beasts, what were they?” Pride asked, eagerly. Whatever answer Beast gave would likely tell him where Beast came from, and perhaps hold yet more clues to what manner of curse was upon it.

A light came into Beast’s eyes, then. It seemed to him that his friend had understood his own epiphany. Pride was not certain if speaking his realization aloud would make things more difficult. He supposed it would be better to keep quiet until he knew for certain, lest he risk challenging the curse in some way.

“They were wild folk. Nomads,” said Beast. “That was long, long ago, when such people were more common. But they lived freely, and roamed far until… until something befell them, and they were… no longer free.”

Imprisonment? The curse? The thought filled Pride with sorrow. If it was the curse that had happened, and only Beast remained, then that hardly implied a happy story. Though he did not suppose he would find a happy story here in any case.

“I am sorry,” said Pride.

“It was long ago,” said Beast. But it nodded in acknowledgement, and gratitude for his sympathy.

Only then did it take Pride up on his offer, and retired early for the evening. The next day proved as quiet as the last. But gradually, Beast became talkative again. The oppressive mood over the castle lifted, and Pride found his conviction to remove the curse had doubled. He was lonely enough with only Beast for company. That Beast had endured so long with no one, no one at all, made his heart ache with sympathy.

Weeks turned to months, though, and Pride’s own confinement began to chafe at him terribly, as the mystery persisted and so did the curse. It occurred to him that Beast was not a foolish sort of person, and likely would have attempted all manner of things to counter the curse, if possible. Perhaps it was conceited to think that he could manage in a few months what his friend had failed to do in many years; and yet still, he found himself thinking that he ought to have devised a solution by now.

It was the confinement that was making him impatient, he supposed. In Arlathan, Pride had wandered the city very often. In the country, there had been fewer places to go. But there were also wild roads to explore, and there was the market to visit, and no one was truly trapped upon the grounds. The castle offered a surprising number of diversions, but that could not change that it was always the same sets of rooms, and gardens. The same walls and the same courtyard.

He did not speak of his growing discontentment, however. A few months of confinement seemed like a petty complaint compared to years of it, even if Beast could sometimes roam a little further. That puzzle was enough to occupy him again in and of itself. He suspected the truth lay in the way that the curse seemed to be - very slowly - expanding. Eating up more of the forest. And as the magic of it was bound within his friend, as the border began to stretch, Beast was able to push further and further outwards. For it was part of the curse, whereas Pride was only a prisoner of it.

That, he knew, was very concerning. It was a slow growth, but it was still a growth. Such a thing, if left unchecked for too long, might swallow the forest whole one day. It could trap anyone who wandered incautiously through, and the more it trapped, the stronger it might become.

Pride was six months into his stay when he woke one morning to find there was no breakfast again, and that Beast had gone to sit out on the walls once more. He left his friend there until noon, and then went to see if it might enjoy some company, or prefer solitude for the rest of the day.

He sat down on the wall next to Beast, and he found he could not help but wonder what manner of elf it had been, back when it had been an elf. How much had the curse changed his friend? This stray thought flung him into a contemplative mood, and so instead of speaking, he looked out towards the sky and forest as well. Yet his musings did not yield many potential forms. For some reason, all he could think when he attempted to imagine his friend as an elf was of a pair of familiar eyes in a slighter form. A silhouette, otherwise featureless.

In the end it was Beast who broke their companionable silence.

“I want to thank you,” it said.

“What for?” Pride wondered, for he could think of no specific thing he had done, of late, that would merit especial gratitude.

“You’re a kind and understanding sort, so I hope you won’t take it poorly when I say that I have become quite taken with you. Even to the point of falling love with you,” Beast announced.

Poor Pride was quite taken aback at this assertion. To anyone who might have chanced to watch the two interact over the past six months, it would not have seemed terribly surprising. For Beast, who was normally so wary of being seen, and so unaccustomed to the company of others, had adapted very quickly to Pride’s company. And though it would have hastened to try and make any guest as comfortable as possible, it took special pains with Pride. Indeed, if he had ever felt so inclined as to ask for the moon, Beast would have laboured to build a ladder towards the sky, just to try and carry it down for him.

But Pride had seen none of this, for he had been too busy trying to solve the mystery of the curse, and in turn, too enthralled with Beast’s own company, to consider the esteem he was being held in.

“I don’t expect you to return my affections,” Beast hastened to assure him. “In fact I know that you don’t, and that’s alright. I’m only telling you because I never thought I would ever get to feel this. I never thought I would have the chance to fall in love, or to find someone who meant as much to me as you have come to. More than anything, I wish to break the chains upon you, and I think I have finally found the means of doing so.”

“You have found a way to break the curse?” asked Pride. He was, it must be said, a little overwhelmed by the depth and nature of Beast’s confession.

“No,” said Beast. “But I have found a way to free you from it. You do not belong here, trapped in these walls.”

“I do not think you belong here either,” Pride ventured. It had always seemed to him that Beast was not suited to the castle. Like it was a wild thing, and therefore belonged in the wilds. He had supposed, at first, that this was because it was a beast. But at that moment, he considered instead that perhaps it was more because Beast was not a beast, but rather a person under a curse. People are not meant to be caged and trapped and chained. Pride believed that with every fibre of his being.

Beast turned, and looked at him. Its expression was not quite a smile, but it was the friendliest one Beast could manage, with soft eyes and just the slightest tilt to the corners of its lips.

“Your mother is coming. Let me free you now, and you can return home. Consider it a holiday,” Beast suggested. “And if you return, it will be as one who is forewarned and forearmed against this place, and may come and go freely. Is that not much better than languishing here as a prisoner?”

“But what of the cost?” asked Pride, for he knew that any magic Beast was speaking of would demand its price.

“Oh, it is only a little thing,” said Beast. “Not truly worth the value of your life. But then again, your life was worth far more than the flower, too. These things are often easy to fool. What I can give it should suffice.”

Pride was uneasy. But he was not certain which, among the many revelations offered today, was making him so. That his mother was coming; that he had somehow forgotten her promise to come; that Beast loved him; that Beast had divined how to free him; that all of this carried some stray but strong ominous note, that his thoughts were too jumbled to pin down.

“I should like to know this ritual you have planned, and what precisely it entails,” Pride at last decided.

Beast opened its mouth, and no sound came out. If Pride had not been quite so out-of-sorts (in truth, for some reason, his heart was still hammering over the love confession) he might have noticed that Beast’s throat did not tremble with the effort of trying to speak. That the usual strain in its eyes was not present, nor was the tension in its neck.

But he did not.

Beast sighed, and offered an apologetic shrug.

“It seems you will simply have to leave it to me,” his friend declared.

Their conversation was brought to a halt, then, by the distant sounds of an aravel, carrying down the overgrown forest road.

Beast stood.

“I must go and prepare for your leaving,” it said. “So I suppose I should say my farewells now.”

Pride’s heart gave a quite terrible lurch.

“Save them,” he asked. “I will come back, and see you again soon. Perhaps you will even be glad for the break, and the chance to rest.”

“Perhaps,” said Beast.

Then it did something it had never done before. With a gentle hand, so eerily like an elf’s, it reached over and touched Pride. Its palm rested on his shoulder, just as anyone’s might have, with all the warmth of affection and the solidity of his friend’s great strength.

“I can tell you this, before you leave. Do not come back before a week’s time has passed,” Beast said. “If you do that, my efforts will be for naught, and you’ll be trapped again. You may stay away as long as you like. If you decide not to return, I shall understand, and you can carry on with your life knowing that I am here and thinking only fond thoughts of you. But do not come back before the week is out.”

“I will return after one week precisely,” Pride promised.

Beast’s grip tightened.

“Thank you,” it replied.

Then it leapt over the wall, with more prowess than any elf could have managed, and in a whirl of claws and fur, was gone. 

Pride went to the ruined gates to wait for his mother’s arrival. He was excited to see her, and share what he had learned. And yet still, a sense of disquiet would not leave him. He begged his mother come into the castle with him, to say hello to Beast. But though he searched and called out, he could not find his friend. They checked every room, but Beast’s chamber was locked, and all others were empty.

“Your friend is quite shy,” Pride’s mother recalled. “Perhaps I have scared them off.”

“Perhaps,” Pride conceded, though he thought it rather more likely that Beast had become embarrassed over its confession, and was hiding for that reason.

With slightly more time to think, Pride felt badly over his response to that. He thought to himself that he ought to have said something kinder, or more reassuring. Beast’s love was surprising to him, but not disquieting as it could have been. He did not for one moment think his friend would act untowardly over it, and he felt a strong admiration in return.

To let Beast spend the week wondering if it had given offence, or ruined things between them, struck Pride as rather cruel. So before he left, he wrote out a note, explaining what a dear companion Beast had become. He made very sure to emphasize that Beast should not worry that he had been anything but touched and flattered at receiving its regard. Then he slipped the note under the door to Beast’s chambers.

On the journey home, Pride told his mother much of what he had gathered. His mother, in turn, apprised him of all the goings-on that had happened in his absence. Things had begun to improve for his family. They had not yet regained their status in Arlathan, but many machinations were being planned. 

Pride found himself wondering what Beast would make of his family’s politics. Beast had not seemed to know much about such things. Indeed, Beast had not even known the name of the great city of Arlathan.

As his mother spoke, he found himself comparing her anecdotes to this thing Beast had said, or this thing Beast had done. He spoke of how Beast could scale the walls and carry great weights, and yet be delicate and precise as an artist when handling the shoots and vines of the castle’s gardens. How what books he could read in Beast’s libraries were old tales and natural journals and arcane texts; many with ideas that were badly outdated, and that Beast had discerned quite a few of their flaws independently over time.

“You do seem quite taken with the beast,” his mother noted.

“Beast, not ‘the’ beast,” Pride corrected. “My friend is no creature, but an elf. And what else would I speak of? I have had no other company these past few months.”

“Well, that will change now,” his mother assured him.

Indeed, they were shortly before their country home by then. But Pride found he was not as glad to see the place as he might have expected. His family greeted his return with many questions. He had forgotten quite how demanding they could be, and how fond they were of cutting insinuations and snide remarks. Even in friendliness, there always seemed to be a hidden insult somewhere.

Pride was fond of games of politics and subtlety, in many ways. They could be exciting. But the vitriol of his family’s home made him feel more like he had come into a nest of vipers, needlessly biting and hissing, and after only a few hours he found himself fully sick of it.

He retired for the evening as soon as he was able to. His mother had kept his room for him, but it was cold and a bit musty from disuse. The change of scenery was pleasant. And yet he found himself wishing that he could have set out only for a day, and returned to the castle and to Beast’s company in the evening.

It is only for a week, he told himself.

His dreams seemed inclined to torment him, however. As he slipped off to sleep, he found himself dreaming of the castle. Only it was not the warm ruin he recalled. The walls were high and cold, and there was an ominous chill of malice to the place. Foul weather assailed it. An old beggar woman, wrapped in a tattered cloak, knocked at one of the side doors.

He watched from behind her as the side door opened, slowly. Some conversation was exchanged, though he could not hear it past the wind. Then the door was held open for the woman to make her way inside.

Before she did, she turned, and locked gazes with Pride.

A human, Pride saw. One of those from faraway lands, where the magic was strange, and the customs as well. Her face was lined with signs of mortality that rarely touched his own people.

The moment passed. The old woman went inside, and the door banged shut behind her.

He woke upon the sound.

It should be known that Pride had a certain gift for dreaming. As the son of an evanuris, such would only be expected of him, and in this respect he subverted no expectations. So when he woke, he did not think to himself that his dream had been only a strange trick of his mind. Instead, he thought to himself that it was the magic of the castle which prevented things relevant to the curse from being made clear. Beyond its walls, there were no such restrictions.

This revelation excited Pride greatly, and he knew then that his dream had been a vision. Perhaps a memory of what had happened, or a symbol of it. On that thought he fairly flew from his bed, and dressed, and took the stairs down two at a time. He made himself a quick breakfast, and was still hastening his way through eating it when the rest of his family began to rise.

His siblings were quite incensed to discover that he had made breakfast for himself but not for them.

“I had assumed that, in my absence, you had learned such things for yourselves,” Pride chided in return, when they aimed to reprimand him.

This did not do much to improve their dispositions towards him.

“He has spent all this time living with a beast, and it has made him beastly,” one of his sisters asserted.

“It has certainly raised my standards for dining companions,” Pride replied. His mother seemed quite amused by him, though no one else did.

That started up an argument, though. Soon enough, as things often do, one argument bled into another, and then someone brought up something else that had offended them recently. Then someone else brought up something that had offended them, in turn, long ago - and yet had never been resolved to their satisfaction. It was an exhausting and accusatory affair. Pride had been used to such arguments being near-daily occurrences before he left, and six months ago, would not have batted an eye at such things.

But that day he found it all too tiresome, and petty, and he wished Beast were there to catch his eye across the table and be equally disgusted by it. Except that he would not have wished his family’s arguments upon Beast at all, for his friend hardly deserved to endure such vitriol.

And perhaps neither do I, Pride thought to himself, watching his siblings squabble with new eyes.

As they carried on in their argument, he made his way to the front door, and gathered his coat, and left.

To his siblings it seemed he had stormed out, and they were all very indignant about it for a moment, and ruminated more on their brother’s new streak of impolite behaviour, before swiftly returning to their own arguments. But Pride did not slam the door. Nor did he thunder down the garden path in some fit of pique. He took his halla, and rode straight into the nearest village, and thence to its library and archives.

He spent the rest of the day pouring through the records of the region, looking for any information pertaining to a time when humans had lived there. Or at least, had visited it regularly. He found nothing in the past one hundred years, nor in the past two hundred years, nor three hundred years. The little township had quite an in-depth records keeping system, but a very poor organizational one. It meant there was a great deal of information to go through, and no convenient way to manage it.

Pride hefted tomes and sifted through travel records, and though he found nothing, he did not let himself become discouraged. He was convinced that he had landed upon a vital clue, and he needed only to discover how it fit into the picture of Beast’s plight.

In his searching he quite forgot about lunch, and nearly about dinner. It proved a force of effort for him, in fact, to leave the archive as it closed, and he arrived home late and with his mind still churning over all the possibilities he could consider.

Again, as he lay down to sleep that night, he found himself thinking over the castle, and Beast. Though he supposed it was not so much the castle itself that he missed. Despite its many diversions, the place was often drafty, and his own efforts to diminish some of its austerity with paintings and murals had only just barely begun to make a dent in it. Neither was his family’s home terribly unpleasant, in and of itself.

No, what he missed, he supposed, was the peace, and the good company, and the sense of being welcome.

His second night home, Pride found himself taken by a vision again.

This time he was inside the castle once more. The kitchens, in fact. He recognized them, though in his dream they were much more active and lively; full of servants and bustle, and roaring ovens, with plucked geese hanging over an open flame, and at least a dozen stew pots bubbling. The old human woman was there, in amidst a slew of elven servants. She had been given a chair, and a glass of water, and a crust of bread. One of the head servants was speaking to her, in the slow tones of someone trying to reason with a person they believed to be rather thick.

“No, ma’am, you do not wish to speak to the lord master of this castle,” the servant said. “Lord Corypheus is not one to be kind to beggars or wanderers. If he finds we have helped you, in fact, it will see someone punished. Please, I beg of you. You may stay here the night, for I fear it would be the death of you to turn you out, but stop asking to see the lord. It is far better if he never knows you are here.”

“Is he truly so cruel?” the old woman asked, with a steady and sharp voice that did not sound at all befuddled to him.

“Yes,” said the servant, with impatience that implied some repetition on this point.

Then the flurry of kitchen activity at last caught up with him, and he was called away. As Pride watched, the old woman stood from her chair, and slipped away into the throng of servants with scarcely a whisper. He himself had trouble tracking her as she crossed the room, until she opened one of the doors leading out towards the main halls, and stopped upon the threshold.

Again, she caught his eye a moment, right before she slipped through.

“Where did that woman go?” the head servant asked, with a note of alarm.

Pride woke from his dream, and once again, nearly leapt from his bed. He took his breakfast on the road this time, and was out of the house before the rest of his family had even woken. The village archivist was disgruntled to have a visitor to their libraries first thing in the morning, but Pride ignored their unhappy grumblings, and flew through the doors as soon as they were open.

The dream had given him the best clue yet; the name of ‘Corypheus’, which sounded very strange to him, but was still something to go off of. He turned his way through the genealogies of all the noble families of the region, and enlisted the archivist’s help. The archivist, too, thought ‘Corypheus’ a very strange name. Still, it was not until mid-morning that Pride considered the full implications of that. Though odd names were not unheard of, the structure of it was so unlike an elven name in any regard, perhaps, he thought, he was going about his search all wrong.

Perhaps it was not the name of an elf at all; just as the beggar woman had not been an elf, either.

“When was the last time a human, who might call himself a lord, would have owned land in these parts?” Pride wondered.

“A human lord, in these parts? Never,” said the archivist. But then they paused, and reconsidered. “Well. No, that is not quite right. I suppose in the Wandering Days, it might have happened. But that would be well before anything our records might keep.”

“The Wandering Days?” Pride asked, for he had never heard of any such era.

A light was in the archivist’s eyes now, though. The intensity of Pride’s search had an infectious quality, and in their heart of hearts, the archivist was somewhat fond of mysteries, and the riddles of the past. With a snap of epiphany, the older elf vanished into the stacks, and returned with a worn and weathered book from ages long past. It was no record, no genealogy, no list of births or death certificates. It seemed, instead, to be a more patchwork collection of things. Letters, and fables, and bits of old stories translated off of rock carvings and weather-worn shrines.

“Back before the rise of Arlathan, and before the time before the rise of Arlathan, was a time we call the Wandering Days. Not very much is known of it, so it is not often spoken of. But one thing we do know is that during that time, humans came from the north and flooded in great numbers into Thedas. They tried to conquer us. Eventually, a plague crippled their forces, and most of them that did not withdraw were killed. Or so it is said. The whole campaign happened so very long ago, any elf who might recall it has long since died or passed into endless dreaming,” the archivist explained.

The book, then, was a collection of knowledge that came from that time. What the libraries had been able to piece together, from the fragments of history. Pride was fascinated enough with it on its own merits. But the thought that poor Beast had been living in the castle for that long, well, it must be said that it broke his heart to contemplate it. He found himself hoping that perhaps that had gotten onto the wrong track again.

As he poured through the book, looking for clues, however, he began to suspect that they had not. For the elves which lived in that time had certainly been wild enough, and the descriptions of the people matched much of what he had seen in his dreams. As evening drew closer he begged to borrow the tome from the archivist; who, though highly reluctant to loan it, was eventually won over by Pride’s charm and persistence, and repeated assurances that it would be returned in perfect condition.

At home Pride sequestered himself into his rooms with the book, and took his dinner there, and ignored his siblings’ jabs about his unsocial behaviour. As he searched for any mentions of a Corypheus, or a lord living in a castle manor in the deep woods, his siblings spoke among themselves in aggravated tones.

“I do not think he has become uncivilized,” one of his sisters said, at length. “I think it is quite the opposite. He has spent all that time living in that castle, and here we thought he must be miserable, and felt sorry for him. But I think he quite enjoyed that state of affairs. I think that beast of his spoiled him, and made him feel as if he was a lord; and now he has to come and live like commoners with the rest of us, he cannot stand it.”

“He has always been too proud, of course,” one of his brothers murmured.

Proud and spoiled, it was agreed, and naturally it was their duty as his siblings to make certain that their brother was neither such thing.

“Here, now,” said the first sister. “It occurs to me to rethink this whole affair. For did not our mother say there were many fine things in this castle? Our brother has mentioned some treasures in passing, too. Why should all of that be left to the wilds for him to spoil himself with when he goes back there? Why should he keep it all to himself?”

One of the brothers hesitated.

“It is cursed, though, and guarded by the beast,” he pointed out.

“That gave me pause, before. But hearing our brother speak of this beast, does it sound frightening to you? I would wager that if were to approach the creature in friendliness, it would let its guard down. And then it would be a simple thing to end its misery, and how could it chase us down to kill us if it was already dead?” asked the sister.

The others agreed that this was a good point, and then their grumblings turned to scheming, as each of them began to think of all the things they could do with the treasures of the castle, and what might be the quickest way to kill the beast. Some of them supposed that it would be wisest to accompany Pride when he returned, and thereby avoid the worst suspicion. Other argued that Pride might interfere, and make things difficult. Their squabbling proved a rare boon, as none of them reached an agreement that night.

Poor Pride, up in his room, had no idea of the direction his siblings’ minds had turned. He read until his candles burned low. Then he climbed into his bed, and found himself wondering if the libraries of Arlathan might not have more information. Perhaps he could go there, before his vacation was done, he thought. As he slipped off into dreams, he imagined himself rushing back to the castle, having devised the means of breaking the curse, and hearing Beast cry for joy.

Indeed, in his dreams, then, he did return to the castle. He found himself standing in its main hall. But it was not Beast’s main hall. This one was wide, and marked by an austere throne. A human sat upon it. He had unpleasant countenance, Pride thought. It was not so much that he was bad-looking, because there was nothing wrong with his features. But the twist to his expression was uglier than any crooked teeth or disfiguring scar might have been.

The old human woman was standing before his throne, in her tattered cloak still damp from the rain.

“Thief,” the lord said, his voice dripping with contempt. “You come into my home, uninvited, you steal food from my kitchens, without my leave, and now you have the audacity to make demands upon me?”

As he spoke, his tone rose, until he was booming and roaring.

“I make no demands,” the old woman said, as placid as if she was faced only with a surly child. “As I said, I offer only a warning. Mend your ways, or pay the price. The choice is yours.”

The lord sneered, and gestured sharply to the guards along the edges of the hall.

“Take the old crone to the dungeons. She can feed my spells tomorrow. Then find out who let her in, and have them flogged,” he ordered.

Before the guards could move, however, the old woman thrust aside her cloak. She straightened, and the figure revealed was not feeble or bent after all. Instead she was sharp-eyed and eldritch. The clothes beneath her cloak were very fine, and her stature was very proud. Pride found himself thinking of the evanuris, and the countenance of those who wielded powers far above what most ever knew.

“So be it!” the woman said.

The air cracked, and the guards fell back. It was clear they held no great loyalty to their lord. Fear bought their obedience; but the strange woman was as frightful as anything.

The lord rose from his throne.

“My lady!” he exclaimed. “Forgive me! I did not recognize you. Why did you not declare yourself sooner?”

The man, Pride thought, was clearly backpedaling as fast as he could.

“Because it was a test, Corypheus, and you have failed it,” the woman declared. “And now you must pay for your failure. As beastly as you have become, so a beast you shall be. Here to remain, in twisted form, for all the rest of your days. Let you live in your opulence, and have no use for it. Let your treasures remain always here, to remind you of their true lack of worth. Let you suffer, now, as you have made others suffer, and let your true nature be known.”

So saying, the woman waved her hand, and magic filled the air.

Pride was quite taken aback, of course. To think that Beast had once been such a wretched person… he could scarcely comprehend it. It did not seem to fit. Yet, his assumption was refuted almost as soon as he had made it. For though Corypheus did indeed find himself distorted into a terrible creature, it was not Beast who toppled from the castle throne.

Instead it was a hideous thing of warped and twisted flesh, still recognizably Corypheus, and yet as monstrous as a man of his countenance probably should look.

Despite the mystery of the moment, Pride found himself relieved.

“No!” cried the lord. “No, what have you done to me?!”

The old woman raised her chin.

“I have granted you suffering,” the woman declared. “But left you hope. There is one chance. To break the curse-”

Of all the rotten luck, then, Pride woke. He gasped and surged up in bed. For one horrible moment he quite forgot who he was or where he was, and then he realized he was in his room, and that he had been woken by a sharp knock at his door. Having stayed up so late, he had slept in, and one of his brothers was doing a very inelegant job of waking him.

Pride was furious as he surged from his bed.

“How dare you?” he demanded of his brother. Who, in fairness, though somewhat impolite, had not seen anything particularly wrong with knocking on the door. But the young man soon recovered from his surprise at having his normally reserved brother all but bearing down on him in the hall.

“However it is done in castles in the wild, most civilized folk generally prefer to be up before noon,” he quipped, before making a hasty retreat.

Pride slammed his bedroom door shut then, which was not at all a usual habit for him, but he felt that special exception could be made in this case. He was tempted to simply climb back into his bed, and go back to sleep. But he had promised the archivist he would return the book that day. And besides which, his dream had given him something new to work with already.

He dressed quickly, and headed back into town, and rather than simply relinquishing the text, he opened it on a table before the archivist. The page he chose was a description of a carving that had been discovered, on stone blocks near a forest path that could have been close to the castle. It depicted a group of hunters fighting a misshapen monster, part human and something else, with claw-like hands exposed ribs. He had blown past the description at first, for the monster had sounded nothing like Beast.

But it did sound quite a bit like Corypheus.

“Do you know anything more about this?” he asked the archivist.

The older elf paused, and considered.

“After the human invaders were thwarted, most of the elves living in this region were made up of fractured, wandering groups. They were called the Dalish, I believe. Ah, yes. Yes they were,” the archivist mused, paging through to another section of the book, and landing upon a weathered description of a merchant’s encounters with bands of wild elves. “They persisted for quite a long while. Even after the rise of Arlathan. Eventually, though, the growing need for agricultural space saw most of their hunting grounds diminished, and they were either killed or absorbed into proper society. Though, you still hear stories. Especially around these parts. Rumours of rogue bands, out in the deep woods, eking out a living away from prying eyes.”

The archivist seemed, by Pride’s estimation, to be quite taken with the idea. For his own part, he found himself thinking of Beast’s description of the people it had once lived with. Wild and free, until they were not.

But what did it all have to do with the curse?

Pride searched for more answers, but to his great frustration, found none. When he returned home, his siblings seemed very keen to question him, too, asking him all sorts of things about the castle and Beast and what his stay had been like. Pride liked answering questions, but their sudden interest was baffling to him, if not a little suspicious. He retired early, and set his head down upon his pillow with the full intent of dreaming and finding more answers in that fashion.

Of course, in the way of such things, as soon as he became intent upon sleeping and dreaming, nothing could have been more elusive.

Instead he found himself turning over and over in his mind all of the new mysteries he had uncovered. A lord had been cursed in Beast’s castle; but the lord had turned into a different sort of beast entirely. So what was his friend, then? Just another victim of the curse’s strange rules? Would Pride also have turned into a beast, if he had remained in the castle long enough?

There was a strange thought. He wondered what it would be like, two beasts living out there, with nothing but the wilds and one another. He was surprised to find that the notion seemed strangely romantic to him, until he thought about how long all that might carry on for, and how dull the castle would become, and how much he would miss being able to travel and see other things.

So then he found himself thinking of travelling with Beast. When the curse was broken, he wondered, would they be able to? Would Beast turn back into an elf, or remain as it was? If it remained as it was, Pride supposed travel would be hard. Poor Beast would feel bad every time it startled someone, and some might get it in their heads to be violent towards his friend. People could be foolish like that. Though perhaps a disguise would help.

Such musings eventually did taper off into sleep. It was late at night once they did. Pride dreamed of the castle again, but to his disappointment, he did not pick up precisely where he had left off.

Instead it seemed that quite a lot of time had passed. The castle was in ruins. Its lord skulked through the halls, muttering to himself. Blood stained the stones, written in forbidden runes and letters. In the main chamber there was a litter of elven bones that made Pride’s stomach churn.

A few servants yet remained. Hollow-eyed and quiet, like ghosts as they slipped through the halls, flinching at every loud sound or perilous roar from their master.

Pride was quite aghast. For he realized all at once that the old woman’s curse had snared up the castle servants as surely as its master. She had bound him to his treasures, doubtless thinking the man did not value lives well enough; but the master had counted lives among his treasures. Not for the worth of his servants’ well-being or happiness, but for the power of their blood, and the boon of their sacrifice. Such things were valuables as surely as any coin in the treasury.

With a queasy stomach, he wondered if the old woman had known. Either way, it seemed Corypheus had spent his days trying through dint of forbidden magic to break the curse upon himself; despite having been told plainly what would be required to do so. Whatever it was, it was apparently beyond the monstrous lord.

Pride did not find that epiphany heartening.

As he watched, though, it seemed a ripple of interest began to pass through the servants of the castle. Whispers spread that a party of elves had been spotted, heading their way. One of the poor wretches even braved the ire of their lord, so valuable was this information.

“Master Corypheus,” the servant said, all but shaking with fright. “There are strangers approaching the castle. They have young women among them, and fair-looking menfolk. Perhaps if we made some effort to… disguise some of your more upsetting rituals, and you were to try and be… be kind to some of them…”

Corypheus growled, and glared at the servant.

“And what do you suppose would come of such things?” he asked, low and bitter.

The servant shook.

“All you need do is but win one of them over my lord. Just one. Surely…”

“Have you seen me lately, you witless little rat?!” Corypheus roared, so loudly that dust shook from the walls. “If none of you can even feign admiration for me-”

In an unexpected twist, then, the servant’s head snapped up. She stood a little taller, and swallowed. Pride thought to himself that it was not so much bravery that had stolen over her, as a sudden rush of indifference towards either pain or death.

“With respect, my lord, we all know you far too well. But these strangers do not. There is nothing to love in you outwardly or inwardly, but you have some small gift of charisma. If there is any sense left in that poisoned skull of yours, I suggest you use it, and lie through your teeth,” said the servant. Her hands still shook, but she stood still, waiting for the consequences of her hard words.

She did not wait long.

With a roar Corypheus put a fist full of claws through her chest. It was frightful and violent, and Pride could only watch as the poor servant was then picked up, and dashed against the wall, where her neck broke. At least her suffering ended, then. Though if Pride had held any small sliver of pity for her lord, it died with her.

It seemed her words had gotten through in some respect, despite the punishment they had provoked, because a moment later, Corypheus began to bellow for his remaining servants. The trembling elves were set to various backbreaking tasks, cleaning up the hall and scrubbing away evidence of the failed rituals. Even so, none of their efforts could bring true warmth to the place. Not like what had trickled into the castle when he had stayed there with Beast.

By the time the travellers arrived at the castle, there were no overt traces of death and ritual sacrifice left to linger, at least. Pride found himself staring intently at the group. Elves, all of them, dressed mostly in leather and hide, with clan markings on their faces and weapons at most of their backs. One of them – a young woman – stopped amidst the cautious procession into the courtyard. As their leader called out a greeting, she looked towards the sky. She was, Pride thought, rather lovely. But more than that, he was struck by a strange sense of familiarity he felt towards her.

There was something…

Something in her eyes…

He craned, trying to get a better look at them, but just when he might have, she turned away.

Pride woke, slowly. The morning was grey and quiet. It was early, still, and there didn’t seem to be a single sound in all of the world. He was struck by the odd thought that this felt like the morning of a funeral. Or a ceremony, to see an elder off into uthenera. As if something important was on the cusp of being lost.

With troubled heart, Pride made his way down into the kitchen, and thought heavily as he set about preparing breakfast. What had the servant meant, that Corypheus had to win one of the strangers over? Was that part of breaking the curse? That seemed a puzzle to Pride, for surely Beast had won his friendship, and yet the curse remained unbroken.

He was still turning over the possibilities in his mind when his siblings began trickling down for breakfast. One of his sisters was absent. With an internal sigh of impatience, Pride went to knock upon her door, but discovered that her bedroom was empty. When he asked the others after her, they exchanged looks with one another.

At first, they said nothing.

An ill feeling stole over Pride.

At last, one of his other sisters broke with her silence, peering down at the breakfast table with a disdainful sniff.

“She has gone off to kill that beast, and claim its treasures for herself. She will deceive it with friendliness, and then put a knife to it when its back is turned,” she said. The others gestured at her to be quiet. But their sister was quite convinced that the other meant to keep every scrap of wealth or coin from the cursed castle for herself, and she was so incensed by the notion that she would have rather none of them had any of it.

Pride, of course, was appalled, and he was out of the door before anyone could say another word. Some of the other meant to follow him, but their mother stopped them. Pride took his halla and rode faster and further than he ever had before, his heart pounding in his chest at the thought that his sister might succeed, and kill Beast. That she might fail and be killed by Beast was also a distressing thought, but surprisingly less so.

As he rode, his mind continued to turn over the matter of the curse, even as it was assailed with images of all the most terrible possibilities he could conceive. Indeed, it seemed the closer he came to the forest, and the castle, the more clear such images became. One picture kept coming to him above all others. It was strange, because it did not involve his sister in the least. Instead it was one of Beast, locked in chambers that were clearly of the castle, but not ones he had ever seen before. The rooms reminded him of his visions. They were cold and dark, and stained with blood; piled high with shackles and torture devises and ritual stones, all…

All locked away, out of sight from where they might disturb someone.

Such furnishings were old and broken. But the blood was fresh. Several of the larger objects had been dragged to block off the door. In one corner of the room, Beast lay. Many heavy chains were wrapped around his friend. The blood came from injuries upon it, as it had apparently fought to break itself free. Its eyes were dull, snarling and incoherent, and many of its wounds seemed infected. Some looked to have been self-inflicted as well. One of Beast’s horns had broken off, and there were tears upon its flesh, and deep bite marks around the places where the chains held fast to its limbs.

All in a rush, Pride feared that what he was seeing was not some dark supposition on his part, but another vision, granted to him in his waking hours.

How had Beast stopped itself from pursuing him? Truly?

Oh, he had been a fool.

He urged his halla faster still, and when at last it gave out in exhaustion, he set off through the forest by foot. The paths seemed to clear before him. Yet he still moved with such haste that at one point he tripped over a stone and fell. When at last he managed to pull himself to his feet again, he paused, if only because his eyes caught upon several carvings in the stone he’d struck. It was a scene like the one he had happened upon in the archivist’s book. Elves, wild elves, fighting the monstrous Corypheus.

Except in this scene there was but one elf. One elf left standing, who struck down the monster.

And on the back of the stone, carved clear as day, was Beast.

Pride’s heart hammered in his chest so fiercely that he thought it might burst. He took off running again. When he came to the ruined castle walls, he felt as though he might weep. When he broke through the grounds, the magic in the air swirled fiercely around him. Never before had he felt so desperate; particularly when he caught sight of his sister’s halla in the stables. He tore through the castle towards Beast’s chambers, and his heart sank when he saw, for the first time, that the doors were open.

The scene he came upon was all too close to what he had witnessed in his mind.

The rooms were indeed piled high with the evidence of the castle’s tenure under Corypheus’ rule. The walls were splashed with blood. Beast was chained in the corner, glassy-eyed and snarling. The only break in the pattern was the presence of Pride’s sister, who stood by the side of the door with her bow drawn, and arrow aimed towards the Beast.

Yet she hesitated. For though she was a hard-hearted person in many ways, she, too, realized what Beast must have done to free her brother. And it gave her pause.

“Lower your bow!” Pride demanded.

“It would be a mercy, at this point,” his sister said.

Pride shook his head.

“No, sister,” he said. “If you kill her, you will only take her place in the curse.”

For a moment, it seemed to Pride that he might have gotten through to her. But his sister was more susceptible to his namesake than he had ever been, and the thought of failing when she was so close to victory, to slaying the monster and claiming its riches for herself, won out over her better nature. With an air of defiance, she loosed her arrow.

It struck Beast, and poor Pride’s heart seemed to shatter as it did. It was in that moment, as he realized the fullness of everything that had come to pass, that Pride understood.

He loved Beast.

That was why it was all so important to him. That was why so much had changed in how he saw the world. That was why he could not be happy at home, with his family, while Beast was still in the castle in the woods. That was why he could not stop thinking about breaking the curse, and yet had spared hardly any thought for the wealth or power that might result from it.

“No!” he cried, rushing forward as poor Beast slumped down, the last bit of light draining from its eyes. He threw his arms around Beast, burying his fingers into bloodied fur, as tears streamed down his eyes. “No, do not die, do not die, my heart. I love you.”

Magic poured from him in waves, desperate to heal.

Yet in that moment, as his heart burned, as Beast lay dying, another kind of magic overwhelmed it entirely.

Beast began to glow with a strange, golden light.

Pride watched, and his first thought was a moment of incoherent fear. For all he knew was that his magic was not working, and his beloved was dying, and the light made it impossible to hold onto the strange, bestial form in his grasp. He was deathly afraid that it would go out, and Beast would be gone forever. It took him a moment to realize that the magic he was feeling was the tide of a breaking curse; that the light in his arms was the light of a form being reshaped. That it was harder to hold onto, only because it was growing smaller in size.

He wept, terribly, until he felt the soft touch of a hand across the backs of his shoulders. Then he looked up in shock.

The sight that greeted him was one of the elves he had seen in his dreams. The wild elf who had looked up towards the sky, who had been among the band which happened upon the cursed castle, while Corypheus ruled there. Up close, she was enthralling to him, as a broad smile stretched across her face, and tears pooled in the corners of her own eyes.

Eyes which were as beautiful as they had been when he first saw them, in the face of a beast.

“You weren’t supposed to come back,” she told him, in a voice that finally suited its kindness.

Poor Pride, who had been overwhelmed by so much in so short of a time, could scarcely think of a response.

“Beast?” he asked.

She laughed, quite overwhelmed herself, and nodded.

“I never thought anyone would come to love me,” she said. The tears in her eyes at last spilled down her cheeks. Pride reached up, and wiped them gently away. “When my clan came to this place, we were captured by the beast living here. He tried to win some of us over, but all of us could tell he was black-hearted and cruel. When his attempts failed, he began to kill us. But we were stronger than the servants he had been abusing for centuries. We fought him. My friends fell. When at last I struck the killing blow, I alone remained out of all of us. I thought that would be the end of it, as horrible as it was. But the curse was not broken. Instead it transferred to me. The monster’s servants told me love might break it. They themselves, at least, were freed by their master’s death. I had thought, perhaps if I died, the bonds upon you would be broken, too. Only, the beast could not be killed most ways. This was the best I could do. I read your note, and I could not regret it at all, because I knew then that if your regard was not enough to break the curse, then nothing ever would be.”

Poor Pride could have screamed. But instead he drew her close, and kissed her lips.

His sister, watching, was simultaneously unnerved by all that she had seen played out before her, and by how close she had come to replacing the Beast herself. She lowered her bow, and left the castle in silence, taking nothing of it with her. When she returned home, her siblings berated her and flung every question they could think of at her, but all she would say was that their brother had broken the curse; and what came of it was his, and his alone.

So it was. When their mother went back to the castle, she found no one there. Some coins had been claimed from the treasury, and some books had been taken from the library, but the rest had been left behind.

On top of the remaining riches, she found a single note. Upon reading it, a smile of satisfaction spread across her face. For whatever her ambitions for Pride had once been, things had, she thought, gone better than they might have had she never chanced upon the castle in the forest. Better even then she had imagined when she first plucked the flower from its grounds.

The note read only this:

And they lived happily ever after.