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Varian had heard enough as looked out of his window. The villagers were angry, the black rocks were destroying his home and no one, absolutely no one was doing anything about it. However, the truth was even he had no idea what to do. His father had banned him from his experiments already and he suspected that he was also hiding something. The princess had said she would help but now that he thought about it, was there really anything she could do?
Varian considered going back down to the basement and secretly continuing his experiments down there while his father was out but something stopped him. Something told him that right now, he was needed outside. His father had made up yet another lie that the king had refused to help despite the fact that the king wasn’t even aware of the severity of the problem and was busy with an angry mob. Varian and him hadn’t spoken a word on the way back home but he wasn’t planning on speaking to him anyways.
All he does is lie. He doesn’t trust me and he won’t listen.
“Come on, Ruddiger.” Varian said as he walked towards the front door. “Something… just doesn’t feel right.” He left the stronghold and could suddenly feel a chill in the air.
“Huh.” He said to Ruddiger, “It’s like the temperature suddenly dropped… The first frost rolled in really quick.”
He went around to the back fence of the stronghold and entered the small courtyard. There he went to an invention of his that he had created to predict the first frost.
A thought came to his mind. See Dad? Not completely useless.
As he went to check its reading. To his dismay, the temperature dial seemed to have gone all the way down.
“That’s odd… I don’t think it’s malfunctioning.” He murmured as he inspected the device. He looked up and could note that the sky was becoming increasingly cloudy.
“Based on that build-up…” He realized out loud, “We might just be about to be hit by a really bad blizzard!”
Suddenly he raced to the front of the stronghold and the square where his father was still surrounded by the angry villagers.
“What do you mean he said he wouldn’t help?!” One man shouted.
“The land is practically uninhabitable! The crops are dying!!”
“More than half the other villages left already!”
“You have to fix this!”
The remarks kept coming as Quirin tried to calm them down and address them all.
“Dad!” Varian shouted as he tried to push his way through the crowd, but it was proving even more difficult then he had thought. He struggled to push his way through but was nearly knocked over.
Ruddiger suddenly pounced at someone’s foot causing them to yelp with surprise and leap out of the way. This gave Varian the perfect opportunity to squeeze through. Unfortunately, he tripped on someone else’s foot and stumbled right into his father in the center. “Dad!” He gasped.
His father looked down at him confused for a moment and then turned his back on him and towards the crowd at hand.
“Dad! We have a problem!” He said as loudly as he could over the arguing.
“What is it? Can’t you see I’m busy?” He scolded.
Varian wasn’t going to back off as easily as he had in the castle earlier.
“A blizzard is coming! We have to prepare!”
“Varian, the first frost hasn’t even arrived yet.”
“But my machine predicted…”
“I don’t care about your machine! Just let me deal with this!” He snapped, causing Varian to tremble for a moment.
No! He suddenly thought to himself. I’ll make him hear me!
“FATHER! JUST LOOK UP AT THE STUPID SKY!” Varian suddenly shouted, his eyes slowly widened as he realized that he had just yelled at his father. In fact, he had somehow yelled so loud that all the villagers became quiet and began to look up at the sky.
The light gray clouds suddenly turned darker and began to swirl at a rather unnatural speed. The winds started to pick up and a blast of cold air caused them all to shiver. Quirin’s eyes widened as he suddenly saw a flash of light blue light streak the sky and he realized that this was no normal storm.
“Start the blizzard preparations!” He shouted, “Immediately! This one is going to be bad!”
He looked back at Varian with a slight look of surprise, but he was a bit too annoyed at his father to care. The disgruntled crowd broke apart as everyone began to hurry towards their own homes and properties.
“Varian…” His father said hesitantly.
“I’m going to help out in the square.” Varian said firmly. He trudged off feeling a little bitter and slightly in shock with himself. He didn’t want to look at his father’s face right now.
He distracted himself by helping board up shops and houses for the next hour with the others. After that had been done, he helped hand out supplies with his father but they had worked together in silence, only exchanging a few words if necessary.
As snowflakes began to fall, Varian had assumed that most preparations had been done when he realized that something odd was happening on the main road. Varian realized there were at least five supply carts heading towards the gates leading out of the Coronan walls. One of them suddenly broke down and he immediately ran over to help and investigate. When he got there, he realized that there were three families that seemed to have completely packed up.
He recognized the farmer with the broken cart as his neighbor.
“Farmer Cole!” He called, the farmer looked in his direction giving him an odd look for a second before returning his attention to the broken cart.
Varian was used to this kind of rudeness but went over anyway.
“I can fix your cart.” Varian said, cutting to the chase to avoid any conversation.
The farmer raised an eyebrow and then shrugged, “Right, I forgot that you were handy with tools, go ahead.”
Varian noticed that the cart seemed full of belongings as well as supplies. “Why are you all headed out of Corona at this time? The blizzard is coming in strong, wouldn’t it be better to head off to trade with the outer border villages afterwards?” He took out the tools from the metal box he had been carrying while boarding up and could immediately tell that it just seemed that the cart’s axle had gotten misplaced. An easy fix he thought.
“Oh, we aren’t going to trade, we’re leaving Old Corona for good.” The farmer said.
Varian looked at him confused and looked at the other carts that had stopped to wait.
“Now? But the storm is coming. What makes you all think it’s a good time?” He asked.
“Because,” The farmer continued, “With this blizzard coming and the black rocks, I doubt there'll be much to salvage afterwards. If you haven’t heard, pretty much everyone in town has plans to leave. We figured that we could get to some of the outer villages and seek shelter there. It’s not like the royals care at this point.”
Varian couldn’t exactly say anything to that, he did know that most people were already planning to leave. “Ah, of course.” He said, but he was suddenly saddened by the fact that they were all being forced to make this decision to leave their homes.
The farmer watched the boy as he worked on the cart.
“It’s done.” Varian said, “And I’ve reinforced it so it shouldn’t bother you again. I’ll go reinforce the other carts too, since you are all going to be trying to race the storm.”
The farmer regarded him for a moment, “You’re a good man, Quirin should be proud to call you his son.” He said.
Varian looked at him speechless for a moment.
“You should go reinforce the other carts.” The farmer nodded towards the other carts, “We would be very grateful for your help.”
“Yes sir.” Was all Varian could say. As he worked, the other families also gave him their gratitude. He wished them all safe travels but knew that this would possibly be a very treacherous journey for them all to make.
He returned home having done a final check on some of the preparation measures. While walking through the street now, he could still hear hushed conversations about the plans to leave and evacuate once the blizzard was over. They were all giving up on their home and Varian couldn’t blame them.
This is all because of the black rocks. All because my father won’t tell the king how bad it’s gotten. He shivered as a gust of wind blew through his cloak. I have to do something about this.
He finally returned home and decided to go down to his lab in the basement. When he got there, he realized that black rocks had sprouted out from the wall by his desk. His father had told him to stay away from them but now they were right here. He carefully approached his desk and observed them. He felt their strange and cold energy as he got closer.
Ruddgier hissed at the sight of them and suddenly began to tug on Varian’s cloak.
“Yeah… I don’t like them either.” Varian finally said. As much as he wanted to continue his experiments and find out whether they could be destroyed, there was something about them that was telling him to stay away. Actually, now that he thought about it… they were suddenly making him feel very weak. It was almost as though they were sapping away his energy. He felt himself begin to shake and began to back up.
Maybe. He thought as he was forced to lean against the wall, feeling out of breath..
Maybe… This is why the crops are dying. But something was off, he’d never felt like this around the rocks before. Ruddiger continued to pull back on his cloak.
“Yeah… don’t worry buddy… I think I got the message… let’s go back up.” He said with his voice shaking. There was this pit of dread that had begun to fill him, but as they moved away from rocks he began to feel better.
He pushed open the basement door just as soon as the front door had opened. His father had returned and looked tired. They met each other's eyes for a moment and could see that they both shared in their exhaustion.
“Varian,” He said with his voice seemingly calmer than before. “I think it’s time we talked”, he touched the scar on the back of his hand.
Varian nodded, “I’ll go make some tea.”