Matthew Olsen winced as his senses slowly came into focus; the thick scent that polluted the air and forcing bile to crawl the height of his throat. "Jesus!"
The boy heaved over the surface beneath him, his throat burning and a slow churn catalysing in his chest, his arm wavering in strength as he used the right to hold himself in a crawl. The stench only worsened, but barely so and Matt stared down at the contents of his own stomach blindly as he tried to strain coherent thought. His gaze swept over the rocky surface, the scraty grey that had an underlying salty scent under the prominent odour.. "Sulphur."
"Hu-" Matt's eyes shot to the heart-shaped face of a young woman in fiery red, the colour suddenly bringing his obscure fog of his mind into focus and allowing him to note the thick red substance in which she seemed to be enthralled into a patronizing gaze on him.. He'd been.. Had he..? Questions that bubbled in his mind alike what appeared to be some boiling magma were pierced and dishevelled by his growing angst. He watched, stunned as the slender woman pushed herself out of the crater; he decidedly hoped himself to still be thoroughly drunk as explanation for the magma forming into lean, shapely legs.
The defined woman stood and stared critically down at him; confidence radiating from her as his pulse and strength weakening. A nimble foot pushing his cheek so that again he faced the slated rock. "Get it up and Nerissa might not realize what a disaster you are..yet."
"Where am I!" Matt pushed himself up, ignoring his screaming mind and body as he wiped his mouth and sat on his knees - not trusting himself to stand as his vision swerved in and out of focus. A heavy feeling ran through him and Matt glowered at what he presumed to be some sort of enemy.. He'd spent most of his time pushing Will to the back of his mind[0].
A gruff laugh alerted to him to a second presence and he watched in awe as the woman walked to the slightly translucent man sitting on a rock; he seethed in annoyance as she dragged a finger over the back of his shoulders and a slightest steam seemed to evaporate from him. Matt Olsen realized that this was certainly not his world.. "Hell."
...
Elyon Brown woke in a bed that was not her own. Her fingers trailed wickedly over the pristine blue velvet beneath her; a mother's sheets radiating the virginal purity that her mind was not.. Not her mother either and she'd initially only done it to somehow spite him: somehow hoping for the Prince to be irked by what he didn't know, despite the fact that she could never dare tell him..
It had become her monastery in her waking hours though.. A wishfulness clouding bottomless grey eyes that somehow this cathederal of rich heavenliness might save her soul. Perhaps a hope that she would find her mother, but only dark lusts and corrupt smites of the past Queen's progenies filled her mind in the night time and there would be no denial.. Elyon did nothing in attempt to stay awake.
So here she lay, where only her high-maid could join her. She'd sent some quote of regality in her staying her, but in truth it was none of these things. This room was no revenge, nor churchly baptism. This room held no mother of hers and held no past to her other than infidelities.
It was a place of hiding.
The fact that Elyon adored the room made it no less an imprisonment; it was her banishment, an exile worthy of royalty. The young Queen lay over a simple furniture, still better than her.. Whispering prayers within her mind. Craving some Angel in her silence.
[0] As in Will's "magical qualities"