His heart pounding against his ribs, Brendon stepped inside the strange building, shielding his eyes from the blinding light that seemed to shine from nowhere.
He was greeted with twisted silver silhouettes in an instant, all beings fabricated by the opaque fog outside. They looked like normal humans, but their movements were completely aqueous, and the mere sight of their willowy, misty forms was enough to make shivers ripple down the prince's spine.
Boisterous chuckles echoed in his aching skull, mingling with the buzz of conversations and the distant sound of a rhythmic drum. He couldn't see much further than a few feet in front of him, for everything was still shrouded in a thin layer of the frigid mist, but he wasn't quite sure he wanted to find out what was hidden in the depths of this mysterious place.
The acrid scent of alcohol stung his nostrils, made his eyes water. Tankards clinked, a shrill sound in his ringing ears. More and more exuberant guffaws boomed through the air, and they seemed to be getting louder. Everywhere the prince looked, he only saw endless entities of silver mist, laughing and cheering and toasting with invisible tankards full of nonexistent mead, and it never ended.
Was he going mad?
The indecipherable whispers returned, pulsating in his skull as they circled all around him, growing louder and louder with every single hiss. No matter what he did, how desperately he tried, he couldn't ignore the harsh murmurs, and as they continued to ring in his aching ears, it was impossible for him to blink back the tears welling up in his horrified eyes.
"Your Highness," a disembodied voice whispered, slicing through the amalgamation of indiscernible hisses.
Brendon snapped to attention, frantically scanning the room for the source of the familiar noise. He searched among the disturbing misty forms as they chatted and drank, wildly scoured the building from the ceiling to the floor, but he couldn't find anything that led him in the direction of the recognizable voice. It seemed to be in his head, just like everything else in this eerie oblivion.
He feared his skull was going to explode. The unrelenting whispers drummed inside his brain, drilled into his bones. They were deafening, jarring his petrified body to its very core, and all he wanted to do was curl up into a ball and scream at the voices until they left him alone.
The pain was searing. His insides burned, like molten lava was eating away at his guts. His heart hammered. His muscles ached, throbbed, spasmed with every growing whisper, and they stabbed at his brain like dull blades.
And again, that familiar voice whispered, "Your Highness."
He collapsed to his knees, holding his throbbing stomach, grimacing as a cold sweat broke out on his skin. He couldn't breathe. The pain was unbearable. Black spots swarmed his tunnel vision, dancing before his eyes like fiendish snowflakes as the misty silhouettes laughed on without a care in the world. They ignored him as he cried out in torment, didn't bat an eye as he faded from consciousness.
A shape began to materialize in the fog, the only thing keeping the prince from closing his tear-filled eyes. It was just out of his reach, swirling up from the frigid ground and twisting into a malformed figure. Two malformed figures, to be exact, and they appeared before the prince's agonized body like mystical beings, much different than the other silhouettes in the room.
"Your Highness," the voice murmured in his shrieking ears.
His vision was darkening. The serenity of unconsciousness tugged at his stomach, begging him to let go, but he held on. He forced his heavy eyelids to open, to look at the two misty beings before him, to get a fleeting glimpse at what they were trying to show him. He held on.
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Regal |Fantasy Ryden AU| DISCONTINUED
Fanfiction"Some princes don't become kings." * * * The province of Asturias is in need of a new king. With villagers to care for, mages to train, and a kingdom to protect from the dangers of the Valmead Empire, only a worthy king can safely rule over the m...
