Chapter Text
They call him Prince. He comes in the night, swift and sure, stopping the most heinous of criminals in their deeds. No one knows where he came from or when he started appearing. He simply comes, does his duty, and leaves. He’s an actual superhero, the likes of which had only been fantasized about in comic books and fictional novels.
Everyone he has saved has a different story, a different view about what he could do. There’s talk of the ability to fly, of strength behind comprehension, and even of psychic powers. But when you get to the truth of the matter, he’s fast and strong, but not unrealistically. He is a master of hand-to-hand combat, disabling people with only a few blows. He’s a very skilled swordsman, though the blade itself is a last resort and rarely used. Prince is no murderer. Not if he can help it.
--
“Oh God, please, don’t-“ The woman’s cries where cut off as the thug shoved a hand forward into her throat. She made a small choking noise and struggled to breathe as he took his hand away and kept her shoved against the wall of the alley.
“I just want your purse, baby,” he said, his voice deep and menacing. He pulled a pocket knife from his pocket and held it against the dark skin of her neck, pressing the cold metal right over her jugular. “Don’t make me use this, sweetie. Just don’t struggle.” Fear flashed in the woman’s eyes. Was he going to stop at just her purse, or was he going to go further? She struggled a bit, kicking at him, but he pressed the blade closer and opened a small scratch in her neck. She froze once more.
“I’d put that knife away and step away from the woman.”
The thug turned towards the noise abruptly, keeping the woman shoved up against the brick wall. A dark figure stepped from the shadows. The thug laughed.
“Oh, so the caped crusader is going to stop me?” he said with mocking fear. The woman stared at the figure, eyes wide. The man did his best to give her a comforting look from behind the dark mask on his upper face, his blue eyes conveying reassurance. He looked back towards the thug and took another step forward, the moonlight hitting him more directly, revealing the silver color of his outfit. It seemed to reflect the light.
The man was lean but muscled. The fabric of his costume was thick and looked as though it were made of Kevlar. It covered his entire body, wrapping him in darker silver. A red cloak was fastened around his shoulders, and the hood was up, casting a shadow over his face. A sword sat in a sheath around his waist, along with several small daggers and a small pack of what appeared to be smoke pellets. A plain black mask was wrapped around his face.
“Preferably, you would stop yourself, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. So yes, I’m going to stop you,” he said in a low voice. The thug pushed the woman onto the dirty alley floor and pointed his knife at the masked stranger. This time it was the stranger who laughed. His hand flashed out and knocked the knife out of the man’s hand before he could blink. The thug looked at his empty hand and back up at the mysterious man, rage contorting his features.
“I’m going to get you for that!” he said. He charged with wild abandon at his opponent- and straight into the other wall of the alley as the man sidestepped at the last second. The thug turned around and launched himself at the other once more, only to receive a sound kick in the stomach and a fist across his jaw. He fell onto the ground, tears pooling in his eyes before he lost consciousness.
The silver-clad man turned towards the woman on the alley floor. He held his hand out, and she took it tentatively. He pulled her up and she stumbled a little bit, straight into his shoulder. He righted her and brushed a bit of dirt off of the back of her dress.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Who know what he would have done to me.” The woman shivered.
“You’re welcome. You need to be more careful. He’s certainly not the first person to try to pull that stunt, and he certainly won’t be the last.” The man had deep warmth in his voice now. It was no longer the colder, more vicious tone he had used when speaking to the thug. “You should call the police now. You’ll need to be here to give your statement when they arrive.” The woman glanced fearfully at the unconscious man on the ground as he let out a low moan.
“You’re not going to leave me alone here with him, are you?” she asked, frightened. The man shifted again; she flinched.
“I’ll stay with you until the police are near, but I can’t be here when they arrive,” he explained. She nodded a small agreement and pulled out her phone to dial 911. Soon a cop car was headed their way. The man shared his cloak; the woman huddled under it and pressed against his side to stave off the cold. The dress she was wearing wasn’t a very good one for walking at night in the fall. It was short, black, and strapless; perfect for a night out on town. Her matching black handbag had been the start of the problem. She had been at a club with her friends when she had decided to go home a bit early on account of a slight headache. On the way down the street, this man had grabbed her arm and pulled her into a nearby alley.
“I really can’t thank you enough,” she said. “You’re very brave, you do know that? I’m Guinevere, by the way. Who are you?” The headlights from the police car brightened the street and blinded Guinevere. The cloak disappeared from around her shoulders and the warm presence by her side moved away.
“They call me Prince.” The cloaked man fled down the alley, leaving Guinevere standing alone as the policeman walked up to her. He looked at her and down at the man lying on the ground. Guinevere rubbed her shoulders and looked up.
She thought she saw a shadow up on the roof staring down at her, but when she blinked and looked again, it was gone.
--
Prince watched from the roof as the policeman started questioning the woman. Guinevere, she had said her name was. He reached up and lifted the mask away from his skin for a second to wipe the sweat from his brow. The fight itself had been relatively easy, but even the slight exertion of it made him sweat due to the heavy fabric of his suit.
“Damn anonymity!” he cursed quietly. “Damn Kevlar.” Still, it was a necessary evil for his safety. He wasn’t bulletproof, after all.
The masked man pulled his hood down, revealing short, golden hair. He wiped his bangs away from his eyes and settled into a crouching position, the tip of his sword tapping the ground. He almost wanted to slide the mask away from his eyes and onto his neck just for a moment, but he knew better. Someone could come up on the roof at any time, and that would be the end of Prince.
Abruptly he stood up and turned away from the alley. He was on the lower of two adjacent buildings; he quickly scaled the wall to the top of the higher one and stood there, surveying the ground below. There was no activity in the immediate area. Sirens sounded in the distance, but he ignored them. If the police were on their way, he would stay out of the way. They didn’t really appreciate vigilantes, especially one of his caliber. He did make them seem incompetent at times.
He scanned the rooftops now, looking for some sort of movement or flicker in a shadow to betray its owner. A small rustle of fabric behind him caused him to whirl around, pulling a dagger from his belt and pointing it in front of him, the edge glinting sharp and deadly in the moonlight. A figure in a cloak similar to his flitted away from him across the rooftop and jumped to the next building. They must have been standing behind him, watching him. He cursed angrily at himself; he was usually much more attentive than that and his lapse in attention might have cost him his life.
He gave chase, keeping the fleeing figure in his view as he ran across the span of the roof and leapt to the next building. He rolled his foot forward as he landed, heel to toe, absorbing the shock of the impact in the soles of his feet. His cloak billowed out behind him, making a loud snapping noise. Prince grimaced at the sound, but it couldn’t be helped. It was one of the only disadvantages of cloaks. He noted that the stranger's cloak didn't make the noise, but was to preoccupied to speculate why.
He ran in the darkness, the lights from the city the only thing keeping him from tripping over a vent on a roof and falling flat on his face. The stranger that had been watching him seemed to have even better vision in the dark than he did. They never faltered and brushed past protruding objects in the blink of an eye. Prince had to admit, he was impressed. That wasn’t going to stop him from catching this guy, though. The other man jumped across to another roof at the same moment Prince blinked. By the time his eyes opened, the man had seemed to disappear.
Prince made the leap as well, looking below him mid-jump to see if the man had let himself fall to the alley below. It was empty. He landed and slowed himself to a stop on the roof. His dagger was still clutched tightly in his hand; he turned his head side to side, listening closely. He couldn’t have gotten that far.
He took a tentative step forward and tensed when he heard a rustle of fabric to his left. His head whipped towards it, and he saw the man standing there. His cloak was dark blue and the hood kept his face from view. A small flash of gold came from under the hood. The handle of the dagger began burning in Prince’s hand and he dropped it with a small cry.
“I don’t like having weapons pointed at me,” the hooded figure said. “I don’t think anyone does, but I’m really not a big fan.” His voice was smooth and charming, quite unexpected considering the circumstances.
“I don’t really enjoy people trying to sneak up on me, so I think we’re even,” Prince said, glaring at the other man. “Who are you, and why were you watching me? And how did you do that thing with my dagger?” He rubbed his injured hand.
“I’m Warlock. You might have heard of me, Prince. Stories about me have been on the rise lately,” the man said. “You’re interesting, Prince. You don’t seem to have any sort of power. Just a regular guy, am I right?”
“If you call someone who spends their nights fighting crime a regular guy,” Prince replied. The name Warlock was familiar. He remembered seeing it in the paper a few times. He was another superhero. This city was just a breeding place for unusual phenomena, wasn’t it? Most cities don’t have one crime-fighting vigilante, let alone two. “You didn’t answer my last question. How did you make my dagger burn my hand? I saw the light from under your hood, whatever that was.”
“Oh, simple, really. I have magic,” Warlock said, shrugging. Prince’s eyebrows rose in disbelief.
“You have magic, and, uh, let me guess, chipmunks are going to overpower the human race and become the dominant species?” he snorted. Magic was fairy tales and bedtime stories. Magic was fake. Everyone knew that.
“I wouldn’t doubt chipmunks so much, Prince. When they become the overlords they’ll remember what you said about them,” Warlock said, chuckling. “But yes, I do have magic. Magic is real. Is that too hard for your meager mind to comprehend, Prince?” Warlock’s mocking tone infuriated Prince.
“Prove it, then, magic man. Do something flashy,” he challenged. “Something that I can’t refute.”
“Ok, I will. You’re very stubborn, did you know that? Not what I expected from someone who’s supposed to be a role model to girls and boys everywhere,” Warlock replied. He thought for a moment, supposedly deciding what he should do. A smirk crossed his face. There was another small flash of gold, and Prince’s hood unclasped itself and began to float above his head and out of his reach.
Prince looked up at it with wide eyes for a moment before staring at Warlock again. For a split second he was worried about Warlock being able to tell who he was without his hood, but the feeling passed as he remembered how covering the mask was, how big the city was, and how there were the extra shadows from the cloak floating overhead. Prince started. There was a cloak floating over his head.
The gold flashed again and the cloak dropped on his head. He sputtered indignantly as he pulled it off and threw it over his shoulders again. Warlock laughed as he smoothed his hair down and pulled his hood back up.
“Oh, thank you,” Prince said huffily, fastening the clasp again. “It’s great that people like you have magic instead of mature, responsible adults.”
“You think I’m immature?” Warlock said with a fake gasp. “I am mortified, sir. I will go learn the error of my ways, for I have done wrong.” They both stared at each other silently for a moment before doubling over laughing.
“You’re an idiot, that’s what you are,” Prince said, taking a deep breath before another guffaw passed his lips. “A big idiot with magical powers and a funny cloak.”
“My cloak looks just like yours, so you’re insulting yourself as well,” Warlock said, wiping away a tear. “Of course, we’re two grown men running around in cloaks in the middle of the night stopping petty theft. Neither of us have a right to laugh at each other.” He had visibly shifted into a more comfortable stance, unlike the tense one he had when he first stepped out of the shadows and made Prince drop his weapon.
“Well, maybe you stop petty theft, but I’ve actually saved lives. You remember that bank robbery? And the help received from yours truly? Those hostages might have been killed if it weren’t for my actions,” Prince boasted. He bent over to pick up his dagger, which was still lying on the ground. Warlock tensed a little bit as he stood back up but relaxed when he slid it into his belt. “Oh, still nervous, Warlock?”
“No.” He answered the question with eyes averted, however. He still was genuinely nervous. Prince felt a bit bad. This guy was new. He didn’t know about the job or how to handle it as well as Prince did. Prince considered himself a pseudo-expert on being a superhero.
“So how long have you been patrolling? I’ve seen some of your work mentioned in the paper, but I have no idea when you started doing the circuits,” he asked, changing the subject.
“I started just last month, but I’ve been training for several months. I’m going to be honest; you did inspire me to try it out. I had the power but no idea what to do with it. When I read about the cool stuff you did, I thought I could too,” Warlock admitted. “I practiced my magic in my spare time, learning spells from a dusty book I found in my attic. A lot of what I had was instinct, but I’ve fine-tuned it.”
“I haven’t heard you say any magic words, even when you knocked my dagger from my hand- which still hurts, by the way,” Prince added, rubbing it.
“Like I said, I do a lot of instinctual magic. I am really sorry for that,” Warlock apologized, rubbing the back of his head with one hand, gesturing to Prince's hand with the other, and shrugging. “I didn’t know what you wanted, and weapons don’t usually mean friendly.”
“To be fair, you were standing behind me staring at me,” Prince said. “Some might have said you were up to no good.”
“I just wanted to meet you. I will be honest about that. I saw you in the area and was about to talk to you when you spotted that thug. Then I got nervous and nearly chickened out when you heard me,” a smile broke across his face again, “and chased me around the roofs. Good workout, by the way.”
“You bet it was a good workout,” Prince said. He looked at the sky and saw a slight lightening. “I better get back to patrolling. We have an hour or so before first light and that’s about the time I go to hang my sword up for the night.” He smiled at Warlock. “I wouldn’t be opposed to talking to you again. We might be able to work together on something. I don’t know. We’ll see.” He did a two finger salute before turning and jumping to a lower roof, landing in a crouch.
That Warlock guy seemed interesting, to say the least. And apparently magic is real. You learn something new every day. Prince cast one last glance over his shoulder before racing off into the night.
--
Warlock watched Prince go. Prince was kind of how he had imagined him, but very different at the same time. He had expected a gruff, serious man, strong and brave. Prince definitely had the ‘strong and brave’ part down. He didn’t have any powers at all, but he still went out those nights and helped all those people. Guinevere was just another in a very long line.
She was also kind of familiar.
Warlock was sure he’d met her somewhere. Not as a hero, of course, but as a person. A person who hid what he could do and who he was and never spoke of how much he did for the people. Being a hero was harder than it looked. But it didn’t stop Prince, and if Prince could handle it, so could he.
He waved away thoughts of Guinevere and Prince. He wanted to patrol a bit before the sun came up. Warlock pulled his cloak more tightly around him and jumped to the next roof, landing lightly, his feet making the smallest of noises as he walked across it.
He had been completely honest with Prince. His magic was as natural to him as breathing was. He had been moving objects since before he could walk. That had been hard to write off with the neighbors, but his mother had managed to every time.
Warlock jumped to another rooftop, lower than the one he was on. It was too low for him to land safely, so he used a little spurt of magic to convince the wind to buffer his fall; he landed in a crouch, one hand on the ground, stabilizing him. The crash of glass to his right made him stand up and look into the street below.
A man had just smashed a glass window to a small antiques store and was currently climbing through the window, being careful to avoid the shards of glass. He appeared to be wearing some sort of costume, not unlike Warlock’s own, but different. It seemed to Warlock that it was like a window into space, but not just a void with pinprick stars. There was a cloud, bright and purple. It was more than a cloud, though; it was a nebula, a mass of space dust that was streaked through with shades of purple and crimson that seemed to be flecked with bright stars. Even his dark hair seemed to have a purple film over it, with tiny blotches of light reflecting out. He wore no mask and had a rounded face and somewhat distinctive nose. He seemed very young. The stranger had black boots and gloves with a continuation of the pattern trimming them, a dark collar around his neck, and a black sash around his waist. As he moved, the starry image seemed to shift and move with him. Warlock took a second to appreciate the ensemble before remembering that the man was, in fact, robbing a store.
He jumped down onto the street and reached forward, using his magic to grasp the back of the man’s outfit and pull him out of the window and into the street. The man was pulled a bit harder than Warlock meant to and smashed against the brick wall on the other side of the street. He fell to his knees, disorientated. Warlock strode up to him just as he raised his head. He reached back and touched the skin under his dark curls, and Warlock winced when he noticed they came away red with blood. He hadn’t meant to hurt him that much.
“You’ve made a mistake,” the man growled as he stood up, wiping his fingers on one starry leg. “It was a bad idea to mess with me.” There was a small flash in his eyes and Warlock was pushed back a few feet. He looked up, eyes wide.
“You’re magic too?” he breathed.
“What, you think this costume is all-natural?” he snorted. “Yes, I have magic. From what I can tell, though, it’s not nearly as good as yours. It’ll have to do, though.” There was another flash and Warlock found himself splayed out on the ground with invisible ropes holding him down. He struggled against them and found them very weak, lacking the level of skill that comes through experience and training. He remembered his first attempts at really using his magic and could tell that this man was a beginner. He concentrated slightly and the invisible ropes snapped. Standing up, he saw the man once again climbing through the window.
“Really? You tie me down- horribly, I might add- and try to break in? Even though I obviously have more skill, I might add. You could’ve delayed me enough for you to escape. Who are you, anyways?” Warlock said, rubbing his wrists. The man turned around, his eyes widening when he saw Warlock there.
“Who I am doesn’t matter, just leave me alone!” he spat. Warlock rubbed his forehead in exasperation.
“Ok, guess what? I’m a hero. At least, I’m supposed to be. And you’re robbing this store and wearing a ridiculous getup,” he explained. “As a hero, I’m supposed to stop you. I can’t just leave me alone. How old are you, anyways? You look like you’re 16.” The man rolled his eyes.
“I’m not 16. And fine, my name is Mordred,” he said, “and you’re not going to do anything to me.” Warlock heard a filter begin to spill into the young man’s voice, a drop of persuasion heightened by magic. “You’re going to climb up onto that roof and run away and maybe find a mugger or two to yell at.”
Even with his own magical capabilities, the magic in the persuasion was strong, and Warlock barely stopped himself from doing as Mordred said. He paused and cleared his head, a thrum of magic going through to wash out Mordred’s magic.
“Nice try,” Warlock growled. He lifted Mordred and pushed him over to a wall, using much more secure ropes to bind him. He also attempted to craft a spell that suppressed Mordred’s abilities so he couldn’t break free or use any more magic. He wasn’t sure how well it would work as he’d never had to do one before, so he just grimaced and hoped for the best. “The ropes will wear off once the police arrive. I’ve also suppressed your powers, so you can’t escape. You just sit tight, my friend.” A grin slipped onto his face as he finished talking. Mordred glared at him and spat at his feet.
“I won’t forget this,” he said.
“Have fun in juvie,” Warlock said. He floated himself up to the rooftop and ran off.
--
As the sun came up and spilled its red light onto the city, two men climbed through windows into their homes. They stripped off uniforms as soon as they had closed the window. The dark-haired one took a shower, got dressed, and headed off for his first day of work at his new job. The blonde collapsed into his bed to sleep for a little longer before he headed to his own workplace.
It was the start of a new day.