The skyline was built upon the points of quivered arrows in the lands of princes and kings. Wars that were fought hard and long, but never fair, set the map like a splattered canvas. Never to dry. Ink and fine paint spilling over the edges at every corner. Lines that move fluidly. Places that aren't places.

 

Whole villages wander the countryside.

  

Castle and kingdom move like clouds and clouds move like kingdoms on the whim of their king in a world full of magic. Leaking from old bones in the rich earth, and trailing broken bird songs high into the mountains. The air is thin with it but the oceans flow with it and it ripples in waves across the ground.

   

Nothing stays.

 

Not in the dust of nameless deserts or the deepness of the nameless jungles. Every place is no place and nothing remains. Nothing but change.

   

The seventh kingdom, built upon lion warriors’ backs, had settled neatly beneath a high canopy in the darkest part of the rain forest that day. Not even the sun shone through the thickness of the high trees. The journey there had be arduous. Magic had been sparse and exhausted for days with the travel. That made the going slow. But the path was marked.

   

Taekwoon, second prince of the seventh kingdom, black haired and angular. Full of sharp edges and lion’s rage was wandering outside the lines that day. He picked his way through the forest neatly. Carefully. Walking outside the lines of safety his home provided was always dangerous, but especially in the deepness of the forest and high canopy. At least in the vast open deserts most danger is visible. But in that darkness anything could be lurking.

   

It was not the shoeless prince's first time down this way, but it was his first time in a very long time. The kingdom had not even been on this side of the continent in nearly three years.

   

The air was so thick with sweltering jungle heat that the trees and the ground were sweating right along with the lion prince as he slinked through the dense underbrush with relative ease. His every breath filled with the inescapable scent of raw, humid green and exceptionally rare flowers that he had been able to identify once upon a time.

   

Life burned through the mist, bubbled out from every corner like magic bubbled up from the ground. Everything shifted and made noise. Birds sang, branches moved, twigs snapped. Not a single moment was quiet and Leo, for his part, preferred that to the silence and the frozen cold of the north. He had no great love for high mountains and the need to wear shoes. He did; however, have a deep affection for smell and feel of thick mud. Earthy and writhing with little insects that popped and squelched beneath this bare feet.

   

His fingers found grooves in the trees, traced the the dips and curls of bark and vine with a fondness brought on by old memories. A large portion of his childhood had been spent in this place before the lion people had been forced out by a nation much stronger that had since apparently been overthrown as it was nowhere to be seen. But that, old history, wasn't particularly important to his kind. History was for dirty old men and dragons, neither of which he was.

   

The thought cracked a rare smile across his slender features, turning up the edges of his mouth and the corners of his narrow eyes in the leaking green haze of daylight slipping through the trees.

   

By the time he reached the familiar pool he'd set out for it was late afternoon; or at least he estimated it was by the angle at which dusty rays penetrated the canopy around the old grotto. The entrance to the cave itself had long since grown over with plants but the water stood strong and steady like always catching sunlight as a mirror on the ground. He'd been told many years ago that it was connected to the distant river by a tunnel deep below but who knew how the landscape had changed since then? Nothing stayed the same for long in a world built to move.

   

Slick rocks were a welcome change of texture. Mud slid off the thick pads of his feet as he stepped up over the ledge and stuck to the dips and valleys of old flat stone . With grace that took no effort at all the young prince laid down on his belly over the ledge to peer into the darkness. His crystal King's Stone on its chain slipped from the loose neckline of his shirt and hung down with his gaze pointing at the smooth surface. The rough cut stone glittered orange with the frustration and the exhaustion of the kingdom that couldn’t move for at least a few days. Maybe a few weeks. It was his lifeline. The thing that linked him to his kingdom.

   

Magic sparked on the tips of Leo's long fingers as he dipped them in the water. Pushing out fizzing green and gold dots took more effort than he cared to admit, but moving the cities had taken everything from him in the past five days. The mixture of sweet magic and water flowed like cold silk over his hand as he swirled the incandescent bubbles into that endless calm below. His distant longing turned to anticipation as he poured old desires through his magic and into the quiet water.

   

It was a siren's call.

   

One he hoped he had remembered right. It had been a long time since he had called for the companionship of this friend; just like it had been a long time since he had visited this part of the world. The two were equivalent actually.

   

He remembered vividly the day he had been ripped from his best friend's arms, necklace humming red with something he'd never felt before. He remembered screaming himself raw and how the stones felt like icicles and a knife in his back as he laid on the throne room floor. All of his magic had been drained, his father had left him empty and paralyzed. Nearly the life out of him too just moving the kingdom out of spite.

   

All because of a kiss between two children.

   

Leo was not like his brother Himchan; crown prince with royalty from another land promised to him. Taekwoon was just himself. Just a prince, as odd as that seemed. He'd disobeyed his father on many occasions but none more pointedly than when pledged himself to his home at a very young age to keep from getting promised to some far off place that never shared borders with the his beloved home.

   

When he'd taken his oath, and confined himself to the lines, he'd left Ravi...Wonshik...his best friend far in the distance.

 

Minutes passed in agony, waiting with nothing but the bitter taste of his regrets to easy his nervous jitters.Taekwoon was just beginning to lose hope when a silver flash caught his eye. His anxious heart told him that it must just be a fish. Sometimes they made homes in places like this away from the tides and currents of the wider world.

   

It wasn't.

   

It was exactly the person he had called for. Flashes of silver and bright blue and deep purple grew more visible by the second until a warped shape began to form and then finally Wonsik emerged.

   

It had been years since they had seen each other. The siren's hair had gone from cold white to a chilling ice blue. He looked like a glacier even with his tanned river skin. Iridescent scales danced along the ridges of slick muscles. The younger man glittered with a sheen of green that made him look starved for oxygen by the standards of land walkers.

   

“Lion boy?” the younger man's pleasantly deep voice echoed across the pool. The slant of his dark purple eyes widened in apparent shock, “It is you! You came back!”

   

Taekwoon had never been much for talking so he just peered out over the water with his mouth a little more open than he intended it to be and his hand still spewing what was left of his magic into the water. They'd both grown, but Ravi, Ravi had grown considerably not just in size but in beauty. Maybe it was the siren spell or the way the sun caught the water around his shoulders.    

   

“Lost for words?” the siren asked, narrowing his perfect eyes. He was treading water so effortlessly it scarcely rippled

   

“Always,” The lion boy replied, letting the infuriating softness of his own voice tickle the air for the first time that day.

   

“Do you still swim like a house cat?” the siren asked.

   

At this the prince cracked a lopsided smirk edging with all kinds of danger, “Hardly.” He folded his arms under his chin and blinked at the short distance between them.

   

Ravi was made of slick power, gliding in the water. He dipped below the surface and rippled along the underside of Leo's rock overhang with his flat, well muscled stomach facing up. Teasing was a favorite pastime of sirens...and mer-people as a whole. Siren is a kind of magic not a kind of person.

   

“Good, because you don't look like one anymore,” the younger man joked as he came back up. Beaded droplets of water rolled off tan skin like glass.

   

“What do I look like now Wonshik?”

   

The air rippled with tension the same way the water rippled with movement. Something powerful caught in the lion prince's lungs as the siren approached him. For the first time in a very long time he found himself breathless and nose to nose with that which he had desired since childhood.

   

After so many long years without this precious person, the lion prince found himself staring into soft, dark eyes. They were close enough then as the blue haired siren pulled himself up to hang from the ledge and hot breath pooled between their faces.

   

“I think I see a little lion in you now,” the siren rasped out, “And maybe a little dryad,” His voice went husky when he tried to whisper and it sent chills down Leo's spine as he reached up and plucked a leaf from the prince's black mane.

   

“Are you trying to seduce me?” Taekwoon scoffed.

   

“Magic only works when you want it to,” Wonshik countered.

   

Another chill. The lion prince may have in fact felt his blood run cold in his veins if he hadn't lunged. The crush of water against his chest was completely underwhelming compared to the strong arms that caught him. Lips crashed together, water filled his nose and the Leo forgot how to breath. Water filled his heart and his hands and his head with wild new inhibitions. Every sacred lesson he had ever been taught about the sanctity of lion-kind and the purity of bloodlines shattered out his mouth as sharp teeth tugged on his lower lip.

   

Starvation had overwhelmed his senses. That kiss burned with three years of loss. It was like breathing sharp mountain air again. No matter how close they were it wasn't close enough. No matter how all consuming the feel of Wonshik's embrace was it couldn't swallow him whole the way he wanted it to.

   

When his head finally broke the surface again he was gasping for breath with his waist still held loosely in the circle of strong arms.

   

“Well,” Ravi chuckled pushing at the black hair plastered to the lion's forehead, “you can hold your breath a lot better that’s for sure.”

   

The younger man made sure to wink as he pushed waterlogged strands of hair behind Leo's ears.

   

The lion prince coughed, scooped some of that fresh spring water into his mouth and spat it at his companion. “Don't act like you weren't helping,”

   

“Fine,” the river siren scoffed. “Show me what you can do without my help then.”

   

With those words Taekwoon was released. The cold gathered around him finally and he was forced to rely upon his own strength for treading. His arms made considerably larger waves than the blue scaled siren's did. It was a bone density thing; he'd read a book about it. He’d read a lot of books about magic and merpeople.

   

What his blue haired friend didn't know, or seemed not to know was that the seventh kingdom had been in the frozen north. High in the mountains where the air was thin, the magic was unbearably weak and the food was sparse. For three long years he had been breathing air with no substance to it and diving through frozen lakes for fish like a freaking penguin. He was literally one of like six people willing to dive for food. The only one that was lion born. So when deer season was up, guess who got to freeze trying to feed a whole kingdom?

   

The prince was only moderately bitter. On the one hand he was a much stronger swimmer than most of his people and no longer despised water. He actually kind of liked it. On the other hand...no one really wanted to feel like a penguin unless they were one.

   

Despite the fact that he felt heavier without Ravi's magic he let a smug smile glide across his lips; in a breath of hot thick air so deep that his lungs felt like they were touching his ribcage and dove. Sharp brown eyes open he watched the rock walls. Traced the outlines of scarce fish that made shadows in the seemingly endless dark and ran his fingers through the seaweeds that grew up like vines. They were slimy and kind of unpleasant but the pressure that poked at his skin as he pushed deeper was welcome and wonderful.

   

By the time he hit the bottom, dipping his feet in fine sand, he estimated that it had to be nearly forty feet deep. The tingle that rushed through his feet and up into his body reminded  the lion boy how precious life was as magic pulsed back into his empty soul. Like a sky filling with stars, each little pop or fizzle that rushed into his blood became a pinprick of light under his skin.

Feeling the power in his own body again was delightful. His muscles stung and his lungs burned against the oxygen deprivation. When the black haired prince finally turned to face up he couldn't see anything in the darkness except flashes of silver magic rippling through the soft currents and the hazy distant promise of sun rays still dancing through the leaves high above.

 

Taekwoon was so caught up that he didn’t even see Wonshik coming towards him until the flairs of the siren’s elegant tail were all individually visible as they swished in and out. When they were children he’d compared it to an opulent silk dress but that did very little justice to the rolling curls and delicate folds of blue and purple that draped around the younger man. Air came back to Prince Leo’s lungs as soft lips pressed against his neck and sharp teeth pinched tender flesh.

 

Dizzying siren magic swirled like a fog, trying to envelop him whole.

 

They thrashed around in a flurry writhing limbs and wandering magic going up and down and all over. Wonshik moved like air, with all of the grace and fury of an ocean wave and that’s how exactly Taekwoon found himself pinned under a rock ledge with with the bright blue scales of Wonshik’s fingers teasing at the skin under his shirt. He was well and fully soaked. A waterlogged little lion prince aching for more than the tease of a siren’s magic when his partner pulled away.

 

“I missed you Taekwoonie,” the river dweller offered between sharp breaths. Sincerity managed to leak through his magic facade. “I missed you more than I miss the ocean.”

 

“I missed you too,” the Lion Prince croaked out. He thought maybe they were about to exchange ‘I love you’s’ but then the trees shook.

 

“Dragons,” Wonshik hissed, putting a hand over Leo’s mouth. “Stay put lion boy, and stay quiet.”

 

Of course it was dragons. He wouldn’t be Leo if it wasn’t. His luck was the stuff of legends.

 

“Taking a bath outside your lines princess?” the rough growl of a dragon’s voice spewed out. With his words came cinders and smoke so strong that the Lion Prince ducked his head under water to keep from choking.

 

In response Wonshik swished his tail up over the edge of the pool and said, “I’m not outside my lines, you are.” Merpeople have different rules, Ravi was unpledged but he was safe as long as he was in the water.

 

“What,” the growly voiced guard snarled out, “You’re going to take on all six of us? We’re on magic leave. We have papers.”

 

“Why didn’t you just start with that then?” The siren teased.

There was a sudden searing pain in Taekwoon’s left ear, he had to gasp to keep from screaming. The softest hiss of a voice cried “help me” in his head. Which was alarming for many reasons, the first of which was that he didn’t know who or what or how many things were poking around in his head.

 

~~~~~

I am back with a high fantasy OT3! I hope you enjoy chapter one and are ready for a wild ride. I know I am. VIXX is probably my favorite group to write fantasy with and I've had this idea sitting around for awhile. If you have anything you'd like to say dont hesitate to start a conversation! Comments make me a better writer.

Much love

~RFL