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part two hundred and thirteen
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wc!au: team dage [c] - fantasy au fic part 1
(Anonymous) 2014-07-10 07:58 am (UTC)(link)theme: fantasy
cw: implied cannibalism
ft: dage, kai, chen, suho, kyungsoo
summary: minseok receives a summons from the capital to translate ancient texts and build them an ice fortress
2565w for this part
Re: wc!au: team dage [c] - fantasy au fic part 1
(Anonymous) 2014-07-10 07:59 am (UTC)(link)like a snowstorm, the worst of hails
(Anonymous) 2014-07-10 08:05 am (UTC)(link)“-with fortresses made of ice!” his sister, a younger, less shrewd version of herself would then interject in between retellings and made distracting whooshing noises while Xiumin tried to read scraps of fading script by gaslight. He allowed his mother’s little indulgences because believing they were royalty was easier to swallow than the other half of the truth – that they were nothing but prisoners of war, dirty little bastard maggots of a man who escaped the slave camps a couple of decades ago. And if the empire was a bit more diligent they could still track down what remains of his grandfather’s bones and drag their whole kin to the slaughterhouse or the markets to sell.
Royalty or not, all that was left of their ancestors’ legacy was the tattered robe that survived his grandfather, their ritual dances, Minseok’s name and his knowledge of their dead language.
In the end it was the ice fortresses’ fault. At least the myth of it.
“Hyung, have you gone crazy? You can’t outright refuse a summons from the Kai!” Jongdae said, shaking the letter in Minseok’s face like the sight of the empire’s seal would make him consider otherwise. The letter was from the dried skin of some four legged bovine, thicker and stiffer than cloth, and Minseok wanted to bleach the hell out of it. His sister was always complaining about the lack of writing material to keep their accounts in order.
“I’m not refusing anything. They need scholars, Jongdae. Proper ones. You and Joonmyun should be enough.” Minseok made to shut the door but Jongdae’s hands were faster.
“They’ll want someone to decipher ancient floor plans and defense walls. Joonmyun hyung and I know cat’s piss about interpreting dimensions. Your reputation precedes you, hyung, this summons practically has your name on it.”
Reconstructing some old building to vaguely resemble a town hall from a century ago before the invasion wasn’t enough for a reputation to be formed on, was what Minseok thought. But mostly he was concerned about attracting the wrong kind of attention.
“You know what happens if we fail translating those old texts right? If we fail to turn up at all?”
“Why do you make it sound like I’m selling the two of you to slavery?” Minseok could come up with worse things.
Jongdae nodded. “Slave camps. The Kai hunting us down himself, cutting us all up to grill our innards for his enjoyment. Take your pick.”
His sister seemed uncharacteristically supportive.
“Go help them.” She said when she heard the news, sparing a moment to glance up from her bookkeeping. She’d married a merchant, had taken over the cloth trading business when the man left her with no child and no more than his broken bones picked clean by bandits and vultures alike.
“Build Kai his fortress and then come back home quickly. Avoid getting eaten by the Kai.” She smiled, a little too sharp. “Maybe bring a wife or a husband back?”
Oh.
“This is more important than endangering our cousins, I suppose.”
His sister laughed. “You are too discreet to be discovered. Unless you bring down a snowstorm on the Kai’s head. Would you be dancing to protect yourself from bandits, I wonder?”
She threw her hands in the air, palms out, one of the warrior’s stances and Minseok hoped his glare was enough to communicate his disapproval. Ice fortresses, warrior’s dances that change the weather, myths upon myths upon myths.
“I’d be gutted before I complete a turn.”
She put down her hands. “Yes. You’d better arm yourself well.”
/
They traveled on horseback and reached the capital in five days with only a few minor setbacks, one in which Jongdae narrowly missed getting eaten alive by a bear. They clearly owe a debt to the contacts of Minseok’s sister – there had been news of a rogue army pillaging the villages near the capital and going through the rugged, bear-infested route turned out to be safer than walking the main roads. It was bad for Joonmyun’s nerves though who lost days of sleep over it.
“This isn’t what I expected.” Joonmyun pulled his scarf up to his nose again, probably in reaction to the overpowering smells of canal water, of something spicy and pungent grilling in the distance. Jongdae stared at a woman with her braid of ink black hair reaching past her knees, peddling her basket of raisin bread. They had just walked through the outskirts of the community surrounding the Kai’s palace. At the sight of the low stone and mud houses, some piled on top of the other, a landslide waiting to happen, Minseok suddenly realized why anyone would think his five-storey town hall of red brick and varnished wood was impressive.
“So this is it then? Is this like this all the way?” Jongdae pulled on his horse. He was doing a bad job of avoiding merchants and peddlers, jostling to clear a path for both Joonmyun and Minseok.
The palace grounds were cleaner, less crowded of course.
“Oh, it’s the same.” Joonmyun said as he overlooked the cluster of low stone buildings arranged in a semblance of organized chaos. Their town was no beauty either, probably on the too bare side, houses made of wood instead of brick because it was easier to build, easier to expand for when families get bigger. But Minseok understood the disappointment in Joonmyun’s voice; they’ve all read it, old accounts of the capital’s palace before they’ve been taken over by the first Kai – impenetrable towers of dark granite, walls of stone so high any slipshod footwork from intruders would result in instantaneous deaths.
The invaders had knocked down the walls and destroyed everything. This was utilitarian at best. Like the Kai’s only squatting on ancient grounds while they plot for the next piece of land to take over. It was obvious that smart architecture alone can only get you so far compared to sheer numbers, to complete bloody-mindedness.
“We’ll be helping them improve it anyway.” Minseok said.
/
For a people known to be bloodthirsty barbarians, the Kai’s chief advisor was as docile as they come. Narrow shoulders, his hair in a bowl-cut, huge eyes. His stare lingered over Minseok’s face (or maybe it was just Minseok’s paranoid imagination), and then he pulled a reassuring smile as Joonmyun finished their introductions.
“Isn’t he a bit young? And he’s small. He’s hyung’s height almost.” Jongdae whispered, following the small shuffling steps of Kyungsoo in the long winding corridors. For a building that looked small from the outside, the Kai’s archives had an increasing number of doors and dark corners to get lost in.
Joonmyun sighed. “At this point I’m rather tired of getting surprised. I’ll hardly have enough energy to blink if he pulls us in a corner and stabs us.”
“That would be pointless, wouldn’t it? Who’ll do the translations for us?” Kyungsoo called back to them, the two tensing up at his words. Kyungsoo caught Minseok’s eye and grinned. “You’ll be all safe here, as long as you don’t outlive your usefulness.”
Minseok has a forgettable face. His sister told him so. Another pale face in the crowd of pale faces. Jongdae’s more distinct with his cheekbones, Joonmyun with his forehead. They all looked alike in town anyway and the best that his features had afforded him was to appear younger than his actual age.
Still Minseok had to steel his voice to reply. “Of course. We’ll work hard.”
/
He’d caught a glimpse at an odd portrait or two of the old Kai hanging in the archives. Wizened and in his fifties, tanned, not someone built on pure muscle but rather small and wiry. Squinted eyes like he had trouble seeing. Yet there was something about the tilt of his smile that could feed Minseok’s nightmare for weeks, some mental image of sharp white teeth munching through the flesh inside his head.
Minseok was glad he’d never have to meet him in real life.
/
The stacks – collection of journals, diaries, old books, bits and pieces of documentation that survived the culling during the last invasion – was started as the previous Kai’s pet project until his nephew killed him and took over. Since then they’ve been mostly gathering dust and mold in the archives.
“The current Kai has an interest in infrastructure.” Kyungsoo informed them, saying the word infrastructure like it’s an inside joke and he largely meant something along the lines of ‘cool towers’ and ‘dark menacing castles’. The Kai’s army has a reputation of ruthlessness and yet his residence hardly fit the image.
“It’s a myth, these ice fortresses that you want us to find.” Minseok said while carefully sorting through his pile of – he didn’t want to know. “It’s impossible to make and maintain in this kind of weather – they’d melt, first thing, and it’s impractical. Better to mine for a good raw material and start building up from there.”
Jongdae raised his hand, looking a little sick. “I have a question and I don’t really want to ask but I know I’ll be poring over all these-“ He gestured at the shelves behind him. “all night and- is this book made out of human skin?”
Kyungsoo laughed.
/
Among the three of them they managed to get through a fair amount of books and journals in a span of two weeks. There was nothing about ice fortresses, anything about the design and build of the granite towers of old. There was however maps of the city’s old waterways, some random bits and pieces about the foundation and materials of their ancestor’s castles, notes carved into wooden chips about building walls for defense. Jongdae and Joonmyun read as fast as they could while Minseok drew and jotted down measurements.
Kyungsoo never checked up on them in the archives. Rather they handed off their sealed reports to one of Kyungsoo’s trusted guards at the end of the day. It was like working in an entirely closed off world, each translated page weighing in whether they’d be able to go back home in one piece, and the nerves would have killed them off if not for the random visits from one of the locals.
“It’s mostly porn, you know.” The local would say, chewing through a piece of jerky. He’s younger than most of the guards, younger even than Minseok’s sister. Bronzed skin and platinum hair. Minseok wondered if the hair color was natural. He’d caught the guy looking over at his face once, speculative, something calculating in his expression. But maybe he hadn’t seen anyone from way up north before.
“I’d rather not think so but yes.” Joonmyun stood up, exchanged his current book for another one.
“Bad porn.” Jongdae said. “How’d you know anyway?”
Guy swallowed down his jerky. “Whenever I’m bored I come down here to look at the pictures.” He smiled and it transformed his face, now all boyish charm instead of blank indifference. Minseok forced himself to concentrate on the manuscript he’s reading. “Want me to point out all the good ones?”
“Ugh, go away, we’re working here.” Jongdae moaned but Minseok knew Jongdae was trying hard not to laugh, and Joonmyun was already cracking up.
He’d be talking to them about inconsequential things. The moldy smell of the stacks, how the three never get tired of curried vegetables (“it’s like the only thing you eat, huh?”), some news of the outside world (“Another village got raided last night” And they’d all commiserate like tired old crones).
When they grew quiet sometimes he asked them how they were getting along in their work. Joonmyun would wax lyrical about the transformation of pre-Kai literature minus all the badly written porn. Jongdae would let slip how much he misses home.
Minseok kept to himself. He was not sure if he should share what he knew about the architecture and the layout of the old cities, and most of the other things he found interesting in the stacks were historical accounts of his own people – the rituals, their life stories, the dances. It reminded him of his childhood when his father was still alive, the way he taught him each step, how they danced together in one of the town’s summer festivals. It had been the hottest summer in years, barely any water, but they danced like they could spare all the precious liquids of their bodies. And like a blessing from the gods it hailed through the night and the whole town woke up to puddles of water on their fields, on their rooftops. All those melted ice.
There was no definite time the local would drop by: he could arrive by lunch, a little after their food was delivered to the archives, and he’d be munching along with them with his jerky or some disgusting unidentifiable meat; in the afternoons when they were feeling tired, he’d bring extra just to taunt them.
“This guy, he doesn’t laugh at Joonmyun’s jokes.” He pointed the strip of jerky at Minseok.
Jongdae scrunched his nose. “You’re the only one who laughs at Joonmyun-hyung’s jokes.”
“Hey.”
“And please, take that stuff away from hyung’s face before he gets mad.”
“Heoong ~” He would try out the syllable, silly smile on his face while he crouched on the space next to Minseok, watching him annotate plans on the floor. “No, you’re wrong. I don’t think he’ll ever get mad at me.”
Minseok thought so too.
/
The weeks wore on. Days grew longer.
“No ice fortresses?” Kyungsoo greeted them first thing in the morning. The shadow of his stiff robes a looming dark mass on the floor.
Joonmyun shook his head. He looked pale. They hadn’t been getting out much these days, rushing through their translations. They were only half-finished with the stacks and it was nearly summer.
“I already told you it was impossible.” Minseok stood up from his place on the floor, picked up the blueprint he was working on. “There are other things you could build.”
Kyungsoo released a long drawn out breath. “The Kai wants his ice fortress. He’s been- very adamant about it.”
“He wants it now? We’re scholars and nothing more. We can’t build this ice fortress out of thin air.” Jongdae said.
“It’s a gift for the Kai. I expect you to continue working.” Kyungsoo said and went back outside, carrying out the latest batch of translations and building plans with him.
“His face is a trap isn’t it? He’s actually a flesh-eating barbarian like the rest of them.” Jongdae collapsed back on his seat.
“I still stand by not being surprised when he gets to stab us.” Joonmyun said.
The local boy made no appearance with his curious-smelling jerky and spine-tingling smiles this time, as if he had heard that any kind of distraction at this point was detrimental to them. Minseok wasn’t sure if this was better or worse, seeing his dongsaengs clam up the moment their usual conversations run dry, like there were questions they avoided asking, thoughts that were too potent to voice out.
Re: like a snowstorm, the worst of hails
(Anonymous) 2014-07-10 09:42 am (UTC)(link)