crimson snow melts slower (red winter)

red winter

The sky dripped with crimson on the day the world ended, ash and snow falling from the sky in the same whirlwinds of frost and blood depicted on the Red King's banner. Within minutes, the snow was already feet deep, and every lake was thickly frozen over with a deep frost.

Grian couldn't believe just how cold the desert could get. He missed the days when it was just him and Scar in their little piece of the desert, the two of them against the world. Now Scar was dead, felled by the cruel axe of the Red King during a brutal battle for their lives, and the desert was cold. It didn't make sense, but there was no time to dwell on that. Grian had been one of the few lucky people who attacked Dogwarts and had made it out alive, and if he knew Red King Ren at all then that wouldn't be the case for long.

Quickly, he scoured the ruins of Monopoly Mountain with trembling fingers, throwing any items that he deemed useful into the bag slung around his shoulders. It was below freezing now and even his bones seemed to be turning to ice, each breath he took hanging just a little bit longer in the icy air. Once he could wait no longer, Grian turned to run—but stopped abruptly in the doorway.

He looked back into what once was their base. The pages of reputation Scar had built up. The heaps of  TNT that they had grinded for hours to get. The laughs and jokes and forgiveness that Grian was sure he didn't deserve, but received regardless. A promise that he'd stay forever, until hell froze over. All this and more, things he would never get to say now.

He blinked cold tears from his eyes and turned.

Maybe they had been the villains of the story.
But he would do it all again.

Goodbye, my dearest friend.

Off in the distance came the howling of wolves.

————————

Scott didn't pay much attention to the world ending.

He hadn't been paying much attention to anything, really, lately.

Jimmy was gone, and the frost had killed off the last of the flowers.

He welcomed death with open arms.

————————

As the world fell apart around him, Martyn didn't know quite how to feel. This was what he wanted, what they all wanted. They had worked for this for months and it was finally here. The day the Red King rose to power. This was good. This was right.

But then why was it all so wrong?

They wanted blood, didn't they? They wanted power? They wanted their enemies' heads on a silver platter, and they wanted to win, to claim this blood-soaked victory as their own? That had always been the goal, the entire time, and he had stood with Ren through it all. Through the death, through the fire, claiming life after life in the name of Dogwarts. The names of all the people he had killed were etched into his brain, always on his tongue, repeated over and over again in his wakefulness and in his sleep, and gods damn him if he ever forgot even one of them.

But it was okay, because it would all be worth it, in the end. Every life lost was one less thing he had to worry about, one less threat to his king and country. Martyn didn't like to kill. But he had always been comforted by the notion of necessity.

Now looking out at the destruction wrought by his own hand, he had to wonder... was it really worth it?

"It won't be like this forever." Ren said beside him, as if he could read Martyn's thoughts. "Just long enough. Just long enough to make sure we're safe. That's always been the goal, laddie. Since the beginning."

Martyn wasn't so sure what to think anymore.
You could kill him, a voice whispered in the back of his head. Quickly, while his back is turned. Do it now, while there's still time. Save the world. Become the king.

Fix everything.

And he knew he could. It was probably even the right thing to do. Ren—no, the Red King— had ultimately caused all of this, after all. All this pain, the death, the godsforsaken cold. The red sky. As temperature continued to plummet, Martyn's hand itched to unsheath his sword more and more and end this accursed winter once and for all.

But he didn't.

Of course he didn't.

The man standing in front of him, his long dark hair tied into a knot beneath a bloodstained crown, seemingly unbothered by the biting cold, was his King. And Martyn was his Hand.

He loved him. Ren had taken him in under his wing when no one else would, had protected him from a world that discarded him as worthless and gave him another chance to become something great. When everything and everyone he knew was falling into pieces around him, Ren had been there. And that was why Martyn knew, no matter how twisted his savior had become, he couldn't do it.

Maybe it would be better to kill him. But deep down inside, it was clear  that in this life and the next and the next that this was always how it was going to end, and Ren knew it too. The two of them, remaining, fighting, together, even when everything else came crashing down around them.

The King and his Hand. Like it was always meant to be.

Until hell froze over.