I woke up to the sound of my alarm, and despite it only being 7 am, I was already feeling fed up. Nevertheless, I managed to pull myself out of bed and prepare myself for another school day.
After I changed my clothes, I walked out of my room and down the hall to the kitchen, where my parents were already awake and had prepared me breakfast as they always do.
I sat down and looked at the breakfast before me; my Mother always made breakfast, and she gave me a small portion since she never liked to give me too much food before I left for school.
After a while, I left the house to head to school. As I walked, I saw some brown-haired guy walking just ahead. It took me a moment to realise it was my friend James. Because I was wearing shoes that made a lot of noise, he heard me walking behind him and turned around. When he saw me, he immediately had a giant smile on his face, "Zander! Why didn't you say you were behind me sooner!"
I smiled, "Sorry, I didn't realise it was you."
"Oh, well, now we can walk together!"
"Sure..."
Even though I found him annoying sometimes, he was my best friend. He helped me forget about my hard time at school with our conversations. While we were walking to school, I could see storm clouds forming in the far distance, ‘I guess it’s probably going to rain later.’ After a while, we arrived at school and headed to our first class.
I never really paid attention during most of my classes. They were all too simple for me; I instantly understood everything the teachers tried to teach me, or I had already learned it in my own time.
Despite my higher-than-average intelligence, they kept me in regular classes, which I found dull and boring with how simple they were. Most of the time, I fell asleep during class, and because I always got perfect scores, my teachers let me get away with it.
Throughout the whole day, I was falling in and out of consciousness from boredom, or I let myself get lost in thought. During the last class of the day, I was completely caught up in my thoughts, so I was startled when I heard the bell ring, signalling the end of the class.
As I went to get up from my desk, James rushed over to me, "Hey, Zander, do you wanna walk back with me?"
I smiled at him as I threw my bag over my shoulder, "Of course. Don't I always walk back with you anyway?"
As we walked out of the school, I looked up and noticed the storm clouds I saw earlier were now over us and looked like they might start to pour down any minute. As we made our way down the street, James was talking to me about a game, but I was zoned out and didn't hear.
I was lost in my own thoughts until he looked at me with a delighted expression on his face, "That's why I think the sequel is going to be WAY better than the first! It's going to be so awesome when it comes out!"
I smiled nervously, "Yeah, it sounds great...! But you do remember that I don't play games, right? I prefer to read a book, honestly."
James looked slightly offended by what I said, "Come on! I try to get you into these things all the time, but you only ever care about books! And I only talk about the best games that are coming out, especially this one! You need to be more excited about this, so I won't stop until you admit you want to play it, too!"
"Alright, you win; I'll visit you at some point when the game's out, and we can play it together, okay? Happy now?"
He gave me a large smile, "Of course I'm happy now!"
As we continued to walk, James walked ahead of me while I was distracted by a message on my phone. I read the message, and it was from my Mother telling me they wouldn’t be home and to let myself in.
While I was distracted reading and replying to the message, I found myself losing my footing. When I looked down, I was falling into an open manhole. As I saw the ground rushing towards me, everything went black in an instant.
After half an hour of walking, I started questioning if Tasha really knew her way to the market square, "Are you sure we're going the right way?""Yep! I'm 90% sure!""What about the last 10%...""I'm 100% sure!""..."We wandered around, aimlessly getting deeper into the city. After a while, I was sure Tasha didn't know where she was going, "You don't know where we are, do you? This looks nothing like the area near the market square.""I'm sure we're close...""Should we ask one of the patrol guards for directions?""They might get suspicious and send us back!""Wouldn't that be better than being lost?""But we'll be punished!""Fine, then ask someone when they walk by.""But what if they also get suspicious and report us to the guards?""Not everyone is suspicious of us!""You don't know that...""Fine, I'll keep following you for now, but if we don't find it soon, I'm gonna ask someone where to go."Tasha looked relieved and happy that I wasn't going to ask for directions yet, "Yay!
After the guard left, the king looked at Terry and me, "You should bring her up here and let her rest on the crown princess's throne." Terry looked at the king, surprised, "Are you sure, your majesty?" "Of course I am. My son has troubled her greatly. It's the least I can do." Terry then made his way up the stairs and placed me down on the throne beside the king. Once I was sat down, I said to the king, "Thank you." After an hour, the guard returned with two other guards dragging Larry by the arms, wearing special shackles that prevented him from using mana, casting spells, or changing forms. The two guards dragged Larry up to the king and dropped him to his knees. Larry looked up at the king and asked, "Father, what's the meaning of this?!" Without realising it, Larry's eyes were still in their pink state for the king to see, "I can see you actually had pink eyes this whole time." Larry then realised his mistake, "That's beside the point! Why have you ordered your guards to put
Over the next month, the guards set up the barrier like Larry told them to, which kept me from collecting the mana in the air. Finally, after that month was over, it came that time when Larry would normally give me some small amount of food. One of the guards in front of my cell received a call from Larry. When he finished talking, he turned to me and said, "His Highness said he won't be able to make it until later today, and because of your previous attempt to escape, he won't be bringing you this month's ration." I let out an amused huff, "He barely feeds me already. So why do I care if he misses one?" The guard didn't respond and turned back around to continue standing guard. Finally, after a few hours, it came time for the guards to change, but no one came in to relieve the current guard. After a few minutes of waiting, the guards in front of my cell became restless, "The next shift should be here by now. Those two in the evening shift are normally more punctual than this." "J
Larry would come back to the cave every week to try and convince me to sign the contract, but I refused every time. Finally, after three weeks, Larry came into the cave carrying a stale piece of bread, "You've been in here a month now. Aren't you hungry?" "I went two months without eating of my own choice. You really think I'll cave after a month?" Larry smiled at me, "I have to admit, I do admire your spirit. I think you've earned this much, at least." he ripped the bread in half and threw one of the halves into my cell at my feet, "I'll give you the other half next month." He then left the cave. I reached over, picked up the piece of bread he gave me, and took a small bite out of it, 'Tastes awful, but it's better than nothing. But I should ration it for the next month.' After taking just one bite, I put the bread down beside me and started practising my mana control, 'He said I can't use my mana, but what about the mana in the air?' Concentrating, I was able to see the faint gl
As I slowly started to come to, I opened my eyes and looked around the room. I noticed I was in what looked like a cave. After completely coming to, I sat up and had a proper look around. I was inside a cell built into the corner of a cave with guards standing just outside the door to the cell. Feeling groggy along with a headache, I took off my wig and mask and threw them on the ground, "What the hell happened? Where am I?" "You always ask a lot of questions, don't you?" I looked over to my left and saw the man in the crow mask standing outside the side of my cell, "Who are you? Are you the bastard that kidnapped my child?!" The man smiled as he took a few steps to the side, allowing me to see the rest of the cave. As I looked behind him, I saw a pedestal in the middle of the room with my egg on it, "My egg! What the hell do you want?!" "You never stop asking questions. That's something I really couldn't stand when we were together." "Just tell me who you are!" The man faced me
Terry and I spent the next month working together, combing through everything we could find on the three noble families we were looking into, but we couldn't find anything out of the ordinary.While Terry and I were looking through documents in his office, I finished reading the one I had and threw it on the desk, "Nothing! I can't find a single thing that can help us!""Sash, please, we'll find something. It'll just take time.""Terry, it's been nearly two months since our egg was taken from us. I want to get it back.""I do too, but we have time. The child won't hatch for nearly five years. So we have all that time to search.""From what I've seen, we're not even close. It's obvious after looking through all this these families didn't do it!""Then we start again and look for something else to help us.""And how long will that take? I don't want to leave our child's life up to some ruthless bastards who stole it!""What do you suggest we do then? We've been doing all we can. It's jus