Tarren’s never been good at being told what to do. A rebel at heart, he’s evolved into a boy who resents authority, despises orders and craves a life that’s more than what his calling as a knight of saturn has turned him into. He’s never wanted anything that his life has given him, forced upon him; his family is splintered, broken, and his father cruel. His bloodline is tainted by the calling of the wonder Crims and his choices have been stripped from him since he was only three.

Tarren is a born rebel, hard-wired to question authority and demand answers. To live life as he sees it, not how others demand.

He has a tendency to run off from his comrades when the fancy strikes him, never in dire times, but on the rare occasions he could. When the princess they served travels and he takes advantage of the confusion, the planning, that comes with the journey.

Tarren, the boy behind Crims, craves adventure like human lungs crave oxygen. He craves possibility like a dying man craves one more day and he craves freedom above everything else.

Tarren is a boy who resents the hand dealt to him at birth, a boy who desperately wants to make his own choices, and discover who he is and what he wants on himself. He wants to have a say in what destiny has in store with him. He wants a voice and he’ll be damned if the nature of his unwanted knighthood prevents him from getting that.

At three, he’s told that the mantle of Crims would be passed to him because he’s the only male heir in two generations. Because he’s young, he doesn’t understand what it means or what kind of responsibility would rest on his shoulders in the aftermath. He tries to ask, tongue stumbling with the complex words, but his father tells him that he didn’t need to understand because understanding was a matter for adults. Tarren gets told that children are not to ask questions but do as they’re told, so he does, until his unanswered questions become too many and he’s brimming with them and ready to burst.

At four, he meets a girl with the bluest eyes he’s ever seen. He’s fascinated with her too red hair and her hardened gaze. He thinks she is too young to look so serious but he see’s the way the adults treat her and the way other children avoid her and he decides, that’s not okay, and climbs into a tree and throws twigs at her until she notices him. She smiles so brightly at him that he loses his balance when his cheeks flare red and he tumbles out of the tree.

At six, he’s isolated from his sisters, taken away from his mother and his heart aches out of want, need for women he can no longer hold on to. He is left in the cold hands of his father, who drills lesson after lesson into him. His father teaches him as many of the tongues as they can find tutors for and he finds himself multilingual by the age of 8. Still, his father is cruel and beats him any time he refuses to study, any time he doesn’t do as he’s told.

By seven, Tarren resents the man who claims he has his son’s best interest at heart. He’s been beaten one too many times, felt the sting of his cheek and the ache of his jaw after a particularly bad backhand more times than he can count. He can speak in many tongues but feigns ignorance when asked to say specific phrases. It’s a small victory, watching his father get red and huffy and to see him scream at the tutors instead, but Tarren will take it. It’s the little rebellions that start to affect the tide.

By eight, he’s learned where his sisters and mother have been hidden away and once a week he sneaks out to see them. He manages to go six months without being caught, until his father discovers the handspun blanket his eldest sister gave him, shoved beneath the floorboards.

It takes him three weeks to properly recover from the beating.

When he is nine, he is taken to see his wonder for the first time. It’s a ornately designed castle that looks as though it erupts from the ground with the way the walls and towers are built. As much as he hates the expectations that come with being associated to Crims the little boy that he is cannot help but stare, open mouthed, at the castle that is to be his.

When he is ten, he gets shipped off to Saturn permanently so he can join the rest of the recently discovered pages in the first stages of training. At first, he thinks that he’ll be going to Castle Crims, to stay at his wonder but, to his disappointment, he finds that he is sequestered away in Princess Saturn’s castle with the rest of them. He never thinks he’d experience homesickness but in the first month away from Earth, he’s retching from it.

When he is twelve he moves up from what he considers the knight version of servant boy to an actual page. He is presented with his signet ring, which fits too snugly and he finds himself wondering how it will fit as he grows. Reactively, his mouth opens to ask, then quickly shuts because his father’s words are ringing in his ears. Children are not to ask questions but to do as their told. So he swallows his question and ignores how bitter it tastes on the way down.

When he reaches fourteen, he’s all limbs and no grace. He’s too tall, too thin and no amount of extra exertion, extra training can seem to give him definition or muscle. He’s stronger than he looks but most sneer down at him like he’ll break if they asked him to do any sort of manual labor. It lights a fire inside of him, fuels the harbored rage he has against his father, his trainers, his title, and his wonder, and he rebels in the only way he knows how.

He proves that they are wrong.

By the time he reaches fifteen he is tall and lanky. He looks as though he’s got no muscle to him but beneath the too-big page clothing he is lean, defined however subtle it may be. He sneaks out of his quarters at every chance he gets, determined to explore the planet he’s been forcibly relocated to.

When he is sixteen, he slips out to see the traveling circus that’s set up and meets Iris when he sneaks backstage. He sees her four more times on Saturn, once on her homeworld and then on another’s. Something about her fascinates him and he finds himself looking for her familiar tent at each place they go.

When he is sixteen the Knights of Saturn travel to the planet that orbits the star Denebola and he meets that girl with the bluest of blue eyes and enamoured with her all over again. He hopes he’ll get a chance to express as much, but the planet is raided, she is kidnapped and he spends the next two years searching the galaxy for her.

When he is seventeen, he acquires the mantel of Knight, despite his young age and his tendency to disappear. He is silver tongued and clever minded, able to manipulate situations in his favor. He knows that he needs the power that comes with progression, because his vendetta is strong and his ambition stronger. He wants to tear his redhead’s captors limb from limb.

He knows that such behavior goes against the nature of the Knights, but he does not care because he is young and foolish and wants to do as he wants for once in his life.

When he turns eighteen, Tarren abandons his post and turns his back on his brethren. He slips away in the middle of the night, cloak fastened across his neck, and hood pulled tight over his head. He leaves nothing behind, tucks a knife into his boot, and steals passage on a ship. He’s a stowaway for days, slips in and out of docks, on and off of ships until he finds a port who trades secrets like currency.

He fabricates stories of others, so convincing that he nearly fools himself from time to time, in exchange for information on slave ships and their cargo. Asks about a red haired girl with blue eyes and a dragonfly tattoo over and over again until he learns something new. He finds her once, but is too late to save and he curses himself for his poor timing.

By the time he is nineteen, he has boarded four slave ships, freed three and commanded two but has come no closer to finding his blue-eyed girl than he was when he began. All leads are loose ends and each fight leaves scars, but he’s determined and angry and doesn’t care who he takes it out on.

He wears the symbol of Saturn like a battle scar, powering up and using his privilege as an advantage in fights. He leaves wreckage in his ruins, terrorizes anyone and anything that stands in his way. A man on a warpath, Crims takes the space seas by force.

By the time he is twenty, he’s still searching for his fire haired girl, but he’s got a star fleet of twenty and he spends his timing running. He’s got a crew around 80 of all different origins, who come to his side because he promises freedom, liberation, protection. Most have someone they’re searching for like him, a loved one, a friend, who’s been taken away that he promises they’ll find (and he almost always does) but there are those who think he’s crazy, yet follow him anyway.

There’s something about the runaway knight that demands authority, that demands people listen and follow his commands. Someone once makes the mistake of telling him his quest is pointless and the whole crew learns to never question him again.

“This girl you’re looking for, you’ll probably never find her,” one of them tells him, a mistake they’ll never make again.

And he’s got this cold, hard look in his eye when he advances on them. “Does that bother you?” He hisses between bared teeth and narrowed eyes. “Are you questioning my leadership, my choices?”

“N-no,” they stammer with their back pressed against the railing on the ship.

“Good,” he snarls, tip of a blade pressed against their jugular. “Because I’m happy to escort you off this ship, let the sharks have at you again.”

“N-no sir, I’m sorry sir,” they mutter, struggling not to swallow and draw blood.

“Good,” he growls gruffly, spinning on his heel and marching off, barking orders at the others who scramble to fall in line.

His crew learns to never mention his fire haired girl, unless they’ve got a new lead, again.

He is twenty-one with wings made of sails and a reputation that has most slave dealers avoiding his ships. He is no closer to finding his blue-eyed girl than he was two years prior but instead finds his blonde haired princess and her travelling circus when he’s sailing through the Hydra constellation. He seeks her attention immediately upon docking his ship, finds her in her circus and begs her company for a night.

When he leaves, he presses kisses to her mouth and whispers a promise in her ear, until next time princess.

He is twenty-two when he finally finds blue-eyed girl, in the company of another world’s knight, looking worse for the wear. She clings to the woman like a lifeline, even as she looks at him with relief, desperation.

“Tarren,” she breathes his name like a prayer, untangling herself from her companion and reaching for him like a thirsty man reaches for water. He grabs a hold of her, sadness seeping through his frame, clings to her like he may never see her again and presses his lips against her forehead. “Crims,” he whispers breathily in her ear. “Call me Crims,” he tells her because he abandoned that name when he abandoned his post.

“Crims,” she murmurs when she presses her lips against his, her kisses hungry and feverish because she’s spent four years in captivity with an ache in her chest, one that’s only dissipated with his appearance.

He is twenty-three when he leaves her in the hands of her she-knight after she pressed kisses into his skin. After he’s whispered promises into her ear. Until next time, huntress, he says when he returns her to her world. He does not stay long enough to see her people welcome her home, instead leaves as quickly as he’s come hellbent on continuing his journey of liberation.

He is twenty-four when he returns to Saturn and reclaims his wonder. It is at Castle Crims when he discovers his summon, a raven-like bird creature who regards him curiously while it picks at it’s feathers. It is about time that you returned home knight, it scolds, cocking it’s head at him.

“I have no home,” he defiantly declares.

Do not be foolish, his summon chastises bristling it’s feathers at him. You are your wonder and your wonder is you. And as much as he argues, Crims knows what the bird says is true.

At twenty-five, he makes the castle his permanent base and he’s tried for his treasons. He comes out relatively unscathed, but knows that some of his fellow knights harbor deep routed grudges against him. He is confined to his wonder and relinquishes his ships to his second-in-command, who still reports to him weekly. Who continues his legacy even when he cannot.

At twenty-six, he fights for his life against another knight and barely survives. If it were not for Iris’s intervention, he might not have survived. His opponent is jaded about the outcome of his trial, resents the freedom Crims once had and how he’d managed to go unpunished.

“Liberation of a few meaningless slaves is nothing compared to endangering the lives of everyone in the galaxy,” he hisses as their weapons collide.

“I am more than my wonder,” he growls in return, even as he sinks to his knees from exhaustion. “I am more than my knighthood,” he says when his weapon breaks in his hands.

Iris saves him from what would be a fatal blow and he presses kisses to her lips as thanks.

He is twenty-seven when his girl with fire for hair comes to his castle and presses kisses to his jaw line. When she thanks him for his tireless efforts to rescue her from her fate, even though her she-knight saved her first. He thinks of confessing his love to his huntress, but opts otherwise because she is bound her star as he is bound to wonder.

He is twenty-seven when he sees Iris for the last time, when he kisses her one last time and whispers, until next time princess, against her skin. He thinks of telling her that he loves her, but decides against it because what good is a confession such as that when neither can stay together for long? What good is an admission of love, when either party will leave anyway?

Labyrinthite -