Of Kings & Queens

The Tale of Madness Begins

"You all must be the Way party, correct?" They were torn out of their observations by another voice with a slight accent, possibly Russian. It had come from a man in his 40's, around Gerard's and Ray's age, who was as bundled for the cold weather as they were. To lessen the chance of encountering fans during this vacation, they had registered themselves as a group and not a band, but they were pretty sure anybody could see past that. Not like they minded, but they preferred to keep a low profile now if they could.

"Yeah, that's us." Gerard shook his hand, "I'm Gerard, this is Mikey, and these are our friends, Ray, Frank, and Bob."

"Nice to meet you. My name is Leonidas, but you can call me Leo. Yet you look familiar..."

"Probably just a coincidence." Frank shrugged, though they all knew why they looked familiar.

"Right. Well, come in and we'll get you settled." He led the way inside and they found themselves in the foyer of the castle, which was considerably warmer than outside. It was actually a bit small, to their surprise, and unlike most movies where the stairs are huge and in the middle, there were two staircases that curled off to the sides, allowing the front desk of the hotel to be set up like it would be in a normal building.

"While saying here, you all have complete access to the museum, like our other guests." Leo explained, "In fact, while I lead you to your rooms, I can give you a small tour of the place. Would you like that?"

"Sure." Ray nodded and the other bandmembers didn't mind.

"The brochure I got, it mentioned this place had some bad history." Gerard spoke as they went up the stairs on the left side of the lobby, "Just what is so bad about this place?"

"It's haunted, supposedly." Shivers shot down all their spines.

"Out of one fire and into another..." Bob muttered.

"I said supposedly. I haven't encountered anything haunting myself, but some of the guests have said they did."

"Is your short tour going to go over why this place is haunted?" Frank asked.

"Of course." Leo nodded, "We're heading up to the Hall of History right now. There are 4 wings, one for each of the intermediate directions of the compass, which is strange compared to most castles. Though, going with the history of this place, it makes complete sense."

"Because this castle was at the corners of four kingdoms, right? That's why this place is called Four Corners. The wings are pointing towards the kingdoms, or where they used to be." Gerard said. The brochure was in his coat pocket, where Mikey took it out to look at it.

"That's right. You'll all be staying in the Scorxus wing, which is to the northwest."

"Scorxus? What a creative name..." Frank mused.

"Oh, I didn't come up with it." Leo shook his head, "No one did. It's a part of the castle's history. The northwest part of the castle was in Scorxus, the kingdom of Scorpions." They finally left the stairs and were now walking down a hall, but it wasn't anything fancy, so they knew they weren't in the Hall of History yet.

"But the southwest wing, it's unnamed." Mikey was looking at the map in the brochure and gave their guide a confused look.

"Yes, that's because the kingdom to the southwest, we don't know anything about it. We barely know anything about its king, too, so we just call it the Unknown Kingdom and that's just the southwest wing." Leo turned to the right and opened some large doors, "We're here." When the guys went inside, they almost gasped in amazement. There was a long, single yellow carpet down the middle of a huge hall with a high ceiling and along the walls were tapestries. To the sides of the carpet were pedestals, new ones, that held glass cases containing items pertaining to the history of the kingdom. No wonder it was called the Hall of History.