Chapter Two: Introductions

Alex whistled as she whittled away at a piece of wood.

Which was a perfectly normal, common-sense and non-dangerous thing to do.

Unless you were, of course, doing it outdoors, in the middle of the night, in a particularly thick patch of forest that was near a cave system.

Alex, being Alex, was doing exactly that.

Alex wasn't worried. And she definitely wasn't stupid. She could handle monsters just fine. Plus she had a little bit of fire magic and anyone worth their blocks know that fire and mobs did't mix well, at least in the mob's case.

She stopped whistling for a moment to examine her work in the light of her campfire. It was an intricately carved staff, made with obvious skill.

Apparently she found it unsatisfactory, as she went back to her carving and whistling moments later.

A zombie crept up behind her, hoping to take Alex by surprise.

One step. Two steps. Three steps—

Just as the zombie was about to reach her, the back end of Alex's staff swung around and hit the zombie with enough force to knock its head clean off its shoulders.

Alex sighed in annoyance. The prospect of having to clean zombie muck off her staff did not appeal to her in the slightest.

She resumed her whistling as she scrubbed zombie blood off the stick with a rag.

The mobs gave her a wide berth that night.

I had a terrible sinking feeling about this place. Why? Well, to start with, everyone in sight was smiling. In my experience, nobody out in the streets after 3am in the morning had much of a reason to look happy unless alcohol had been involved.

Suspicious.

I drifted closer to the guard who was escorting me, eliciting a flinch.

"Something happen today?"

"What, sir?"

"A lot of people look very happy, you see."

"Yessir."

""A suspicious amount of people, in fact, because the current time is-" I pulled a clock out of my Inventory. "-seven past three in the morning. The thing is, my friend, I have heard of crowded streets at seven past three in the morning, and I have seen crowded streets at seven past three in the morning, but on the first instance it was a lynch mob and on the second it was because there was a civil war happening, and on both occasions a lot of people got very unhappy, very fast. Until this day I had never seen a crowded street on seven past three in the morning so full of smiling people. Care to explain?"

"It's a very happy city, sir. Full of happy people, sir." The man stared straight on ahead like his life depended on it.

"Hmm."

A grinning butcher scurried by with a large joint of mystery meat. The grin looked like it was the first one that had happened to his face since he was born, and it was making him very uncomfortable indeed. It was like seeing a horse try to do taxes.

Deeply suspicious.

It wasn't long before we reached the palace. For a small city like Sylder, it was hopelessly extravagant. The whole thing was made out of quartz. Here and there were blocks of glowstone, exquisitely carved with fantastical pictures of dragons and princes with glowing crowns slaying monsters left and right. I looked away. It was grand by palace standards, I supposed, but after I'd seen the Aether everything else seemed to pale by comparison.

Upon entrance to the throne room, I knew with a terrible certainty that during my entire stay here, I was going to wish I was somewhere else.

The king sat royally upon his royal golden throne, garbed with royal finery. There was nothing to give away the fact that he had been gotten out of bed in a hurry and deposited - possibly quite against his will- in the throne room except for the fluffy white bedroom slippers protruding guiltily from the bottom of his long robe, which - yup, guessed it - was patterned with gold. His smile looked like somebody had stuck it on with discount glue and was oozing a little at the edges.

"His-Majesty-King-Arndel-The-Second-And-His-Esteemed-Son-Prince-Tevon-Sir," the guard intoned, and promptly disappeared without a trace.

The less said about the prince, the better. He was currently doing a spot of lurking some ways behind throne, exuding an aura of mild ill-will that wasn't really directed at anyone in particular. His face bore the suggestion that it knew many bright and happy things, and hated those things with a vengeance. He looked like somebody had forcibly rolled him off the wrong side of the bed and then slapped him in the face with a fish.

"Ah... Forgive the hasty welcome, but we were not informed of the visit until the last minute, sir...?" The king trailed off, looking at me.

"Steve," I said, trying to mirror his smile for the sake of formalities and feeling like somebody was trying to forcibly feed me a sock.

"Steve? Steve who? From what family?"

It was the prince. I met his eyes, and felt hundreds of years of good breeding and etiquette leering down on me in disdain.

All of a sudden, I wanted to make him really, really angry. I realised that the polite facade everyone was keeping up was fragile and required cooperation, and I also realised that I was not feeling particularly cooperative.

On hindsight, it was an unbelievably stupid thing to do. On hindsight, I was an unbelievably stupid person, which was what, uh, the whole civil war thing was all about. On hindsight, everything else that followed after could have been avoided if I was not an unbelievably stupid person, or had more sleep instead of hurtling through monster congregations in the middle of the night.

"No last name, Your Highness," I said cheerfully. "I'm a bastard, me."

I could feel the air crystallizing around his stare.

"Just a lowly human being, I'm afraid," I said, thoroughly enjoying myself. "Dirt down to the bones. Bit different from your usual social circle, eh?"

The king coughed. Loudly.

"This is not the best time for discussions of any sort, I agree." His smile was so strained you could see the light through it. "It would be best for all of us to have a little rest, I think. We can continue in the morning, when our minds are clearer and less prone to, ah, inconsistencies."

He rose. The prince followed after him silently. I didn't see his face, but then again, I didn't think I needed to.

A servant appeared by my side and beckoned for me to follow him to what I assumed would be the bedroom.

Warning: This chapter has been rewritten. The next chapter hasn't. For those who found this one bad, I assure you the next will be truly unbearable.

-Nano