Chapter Text
Once upon a time, there was a castle overgrown with thorns and roses. A bitter and ancient faerie wished to prevent anyone from breaching the castle. He whispered his magic into the soil so that the thorns grew higher and ever higher until even the tallest tower was consumed. His creatures prowled the land around the castle. No one in the kingdom dared come near.
And inside, the Briar King slumbered.
Thorns pinned him to the throne his father coveted. His head sat askew on his neck. The weight of the crown brought it down. Blood stained one of the crown’s spokes. The red matched a healing cut on his palm. He breathed evenly and without sound. Only motes of dust stirred in the throne room of Castle Briar
The land of dreams which consumed Will plagued each of his senses. It was as if the world had been turned upside down. Through threads of smoke, he saw himself a hundred times over, a child, an adult, a wizard, a boy wielding strange devices as he fought to stay alive.
And like an echo, Mike, face half-shrouded in shadows just behind him, every time.
Sometimes, Will heard voices in the dreams. They were entirely unfamiliar to him, and yet he knew they were the voices of him and Mike.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” Mike promised.
“You will,” Will’s voice answered. “Just not this time.”
And later: “I’ll love you then, too. I promise.”
Such a strange method of torture Vecna had for the poor prince. If he could not die, he would suffer. He wept until his tears became a river, until that river circled around him and became a lake.
*
The Order traveled for three straight days until they arrived at the windswept tower. Dustin beamed; it was his map that had led them here, somewhere deep in the northern mountains, the product of hours in the library pouring over old tomes for mentions of older magic. The door opened without anyone reaching for it. They huddled closer together and stepped inside. A grand spiral staircase met them, stretching upwards into darkness.
“Onwards and upwards,” Mike said. They began their climb.
It was at the top of the tower, in a room much larger than it ought to be, surrounded by devices sparkling with lightning and grimoires as thick as a person, that they found the wizard.
He looked up from his work—a mess of papers spread out over a desk—to greet them. His eyes sparkled with intrigue. His face looked much younger than it should, a neat mustache adorning his upper lip.
“You are early!” he declared. Mike flinched as the wizard stood and strode across the room to clap him on the shoulder in two quick blinks. “You made quick work of the journey. I should have kept a closer eye on you. I wanted to prepare tea.”
“We need advice,” Lucas said, no nonsense. “What do you know about curse breaking?”
“Curse breaking?” the wizard mused. “I prefer to call it curse unweaving, myself. Curse breaking sounds so violent. I have laid one or two good curses myself. No one likes to think of all that hard work being undone. Now, I have taken out the requisite books, but I am afraid I do not know the nature of this curse. My eyes can only see so far, you see.”
“It is faerie,” Ella said, quite boldly.
The wizard frowned. With one sweep of his arm, half of the books on his desks were cast aside, tumbling back onto shelves stretching to the ceiling.
“What type of faerie?”
“His name is Vecna.”
The wizard’s frown deepened. He swept away more books.
“You can still help us, can’t you?” Dustin asked.
The wizard only hesitated briefly before nodding. He leapt into a ceaseless list of questions, hemming and hawing after each answer, mumbling under his breath and throwing out useless tidbits of information. The Order lost their propriety as their impatience grew and claimed various chairs around the room. Only Dustin remained standing, looming over the grimoires with the wizard and taking frequent notes.
Eventually, the wizard sighed and shook his head somberly.
“I am afraid,” he began, and Mike already felt frustrated tears building in his eyes at being told he had reached another dead end. The wizard continued: “that the only way to unweave this curse is true love’s kiss.”
“That does not make any sense,” Ella said. “His mother has kissed him on the forehead almost every day for his whole life. And she loves him very much.”
“Ah, but faeries respect the rules of romance above all else,” the wizard countered. “You should know that, shouldn’t you?”
Ella shied away from the wizard at his comment, half-tucking her body behind Mike’s.
“How are we supposed to find out who his true love is?” Mike asked. His voice peaked with desperation and something else that he did not recognize.
“That is beyond my purview, I am afraid. But I urge you to work quickly. While the other faerie may have subverted Vecna’s original curse, he will not waste any opportunity to take his revenge against the prince while he has him in his clutches. Dark things can happen in the land of dreams.”
Silence reigned for a few moments until Lucas spoke.
“We should go straight to Bellwood, find Will, and bring him back to Hawkin. We have to keep him safe until we find who can break his curse.”
“Would that keep him safe from Vecna?” Dustin asked the wizard. “He’ll still be dreaming.”
“It would keep him safer than being in the epicenter of the curse, certainly. Ella’s magic will weaken his influence. It will buy you time.”
“Time is all we can ask for,” Mike mumbled. His heart beat frantically against his chest.
They bid farewell to the wizard. Dustin took one last mournful look at the vessel of knowledge in the top of his tower. In somber silence, they began their ride to Bellwood.
*
Will dreamt of a father he never knew. He dreamt of swords separating heads from necks. He dreamt of cold nights. He dreamt of empty hands. He dreamt of flooded valleys. He dreamt of burnt libraries. He dreamt of a creature of endless night stalking him, treading behind him, step after step, dream after dream, breathing its rotten breath just behind his ear.
Will dreamt of a bear in the forest. He dreamt of the teeth in its mouth closing around the head of a prince. He dreamt of the teeth in its mouth closing around the head of his mother. His brother. His friends. Himself.
Vines and thorns and roses crept through the cracks of the land of dreams. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shadow, a face only half familiar to him. Always watching. Waiting for something. Pushing closer. Closer. Closer.
*
Kali, now grown and ageless like all faeries were, waited for the Order on the road to Castle Briar. It loomed above the kingdom, a once noble silhouette swallowed up in thorns and roses.
“I have come to help,” she said. “I know more than I knew back then.”
She cut through the thorns protecting the castle with magical ease. Ella watched her closely as the obstacles melted away. Her magic was inherent, not practiced, and perhaps even clearer than the night of the ball, she saw what she had lost in the changeling trade to her father.
They walked the same steps as Will had done weeks before. They walked through the same open door. They navigated the same empty hallways. Thorns grabbed at their skin at every chance. It did not take long before they found the throne room.
Mike could stop the wounded gasp that escaped him when he saw Will’s face amongst the flora. A beam of light from the rafters made his face glow as if made of gold. He sat awkwardly on the throne, slumped into the stone with his head hanging to the side. The crown drooped a little over one eyebrow.
At first, no one could tell if Will was still breathing. No one dared speak the possibility, not even Kali, until they saw the steady rise and fall of his chest under the thorns.
“There is magic in these plants,” Kali said, perhaps needlessly. “Let me try and free him.”
But the moment she took a closer step to Will, he stood up off the throne, and the thorns melted off him and into the ground.
His eyes remained closed.
He opened his mouth, and Vecna’s voice came out.
“This boy is mine,” he said.
“I am claiming a debt,” he said.
“I am fulfilling the terms of a spell laid long ago,” he said.
“You may go in peace,” he said.
“But you may not take him with you,” he said.
“We are not leaving without him,” Mike replied. The steadiness of his voice startled him.
“Then you shall kill him, or die yourself,” Vecna commanded.
Will’s body drew his sword. Like a puppet, he lumbered to closer to Mike.
“Do not worry,” Ella said in Mike’s ear, “the five of us can overwhelm him without hurting.”
But even as Ella spoke, thorns around the room were coalescing into beastly creatures, one for each member of the Order.
“Demogorgons,” Kali cried.
Mike had to face Will alone.
Will’s body was as good a swordfighter as Will was; though, Mike did not know how much credit should be given to Vecna. His body swung his sword in near-perfect form. The metal of their blades clashed together, and his body staggered.
*
Will swung a blade at Vecna. He did not know where the metal came from. He did not know why Vecna decided to finally reveal himself to Will. But he knew, more than he knew anything, that this was the man responsible for the torture of his dreams.
*
Will’s body matched Mike pace for pace. They circled around the room while trading blows, narrowly avoiding the skirmishes between the Order and the demogorgons. Lucas cried out in pain as one of them closed its mouth around his arm. Dustin managed to wound the beast enough so that it retreated. It was a warning: the longer Mike took to deal with Will, the more his friends would be hurt.
*
Will cut through the thick air of the dream and nearly landed a blow against the dark faerie. Vecna laughed in his face. Shame flooded his body. With shame came anger. Rage. The seed planted by Vecna in that storm many months ago grew into something the faerie could not control anymore. Will grit his teeth and clenched his fists tighter on the hilt of his blade.
*
When the thought came to Mike, he did not hesitate. Will’s body lunged forward with a thrust toward Mike’s chest, but he anticipated the motion, driving the hilt of his blade down on Will’s bad wrist. The sword clattered to the stone.
*
Will lunged forward with a thrust toward Vecna. The faerie blinked, his eyes in some faraway place for a moment, long enough to miss the blade plunging into his chest. He hissed in pain, something deep and guttural, a sound that a human could never make.
*
Will was unarmed, but the demogorgons still fought. Mike did not know how to get his Order out of the castle safely while carrying the possessed body of a well-trained knight. He did not know how to save them all. And he needed to save Will. He needed to save Will more than he needed himself to survive this battle.
Something unspoken swelled up in his chest. He did not have enough time to let it burst. He acted on pure instinct. He swept forward to pull Will’s body against his, hands grabbing at Will’s neck and jaw.
He closed his eyes and pressed his lips against Will’s.
*
The world of dreams shattered.
*
Will took a gasping breath of air, as if surfacing from a great depth, the sensations of his body still unfamiliar to him. He opened his eyes. Mike’s face swarmed in front of him, breath still warm on his lips.
It was nothing to move closer and push their lips together again. Fingers tangled in the back of his hair and held tight. He pressed closer against Mike, hands against his chest, starved for more than just air.
Perhaps, he thought, he was still dreaming.
They had to pull apart when Vecna manifested in the throne room. He called the demogorgons to heel at his feet. Will’s body thrummed with the closeness of Mike. He could not make his mind think of anything else.
“Your curse is broken,” Kali declared. “You are owed nothing else from the Briar family. Leave them be.”
She held her chin high, as if her voice did not waver in challenging the elder faerie.
“What I am owed,” Vecna growled, the temperature in the room dropping several degrees, lips curling in an unnatural smile, “is an invitation.”
He vanished in the space between breaths, taking his demogorgons with him. The vines retreated at a rapid pace, slipping back in between the cracks of Castle Briar. Darkness lifted off the entirety of Bellwood kingdom.
The moment they accepted they were safe, the Order swarmed Will, crushing their bodies against his, cries of joy and celebration filling the air.
In the chaos, Mike found Will’s hand.
They held tight, and did not let go.
THE END