101 Writing Prompts

#44. Frostbite Realm

Prompt: Photo prompt, a blinded king in the water.

The dead king had risen again.

From ancient mire to new murk his body floated to the surface of the water, limbs stitching together, bones joining at joints. Every scrap of tissue melded together, despoiled from the ages. The only parts of him that weren't slapped together again were his eyes, glassy orbs that would never see again.

But the king could see in other ways.

His crown weighed heavy on his head, the cool metal biting into his forehead. Verdigris rust bloomed across the surface, corroded and pitted with holes. Once-shining jewels sat dull in their hollows. His clothing was foul from the water, sodden and swollen. Tatters of his cape slithered down his back, fraying fabric dripping and soaked.

The king rose from the water, hovering over the surface of the lake. The tips of his boots graced the foam, and everywhere they touched blooms of ice grew and spread. He was used to the low crackling, the spread of the ever-present chill that penetrated his very bones. 

The selfsame chill had saved him and pulled him from the dusk.

He only lacked one tool: his staff. Clenching his hand, the king felt the absence of the weapon like a physical wound. His magic was weak without it, barely able to freeze the surface of the lake. He lowered himself down to the ice, boots firm against the slick surface. He would find the weapon before he ventured onward.

The pull of the chill led him to a part of the lake that reeked of a snowstorm, that throbbed with power. The king's marred lips twisted into a grin and he extended a hand over the spot, feeling the ice in his heart harden and crystallize. With a deafening shatter the ice beneath the king fragmented and formed a whirlpool of fractals, tugging at his sodden clothing, slashing across his ruined flesh. 

He could no longer see the greatness of the staff, its carved wooden shape molded to his fingers with bitter frost blistering across its surface. A simple gem was inlaid in the surface, the color of frostbite. The sheer cold radiating from the weapon warmed the king's heart. He turned and cried out with triumph, thick flakes of a snowstorm lacing through his  veins as he thrust the staff to the sky. 

Thunderheads stacked and bloomed like bruises over his head, swollen with water and summoned from the very essence of snow. The king could sense the frigid air bend and warp with tension, the silence before the storm.

That beautiful tension, that perfect silence. The king bared his teeth in a grimace-like smirk, then brought his staff down on the icy surface of the lake, its pointed tip serrating the dusting of snow and shattering. The lake exploded in a cacophony of pure cold and beauty, the clouds unfolding to release their contents on the world. The wind carried the scent of anticipation, a scent for the king of longing.

And as the snow fell and the ice splintered the king rose, ready to claim the world for his own.

A/N: Hey, lovely reader! I'm changing things up and I'm going to make these stories shorter. 2000 words for each chapter is a lot to ask for, right? The rest will be around this length, or however much I think tells the story the best. :)