Back with a new chapter!
Thank you all so much for all the support, this makes me really happy :D
As always, votes and feedback of any kind are appreciated. :)
For clarification: the characters Ben and Loris who appear in this chapter are not related to any content creator.
Enjoy!
It's been three days since Clay had arrived at the royal castle.
In this time his daily routine has changed completely- it was nothing similar to his life before.
Every day he would wake up with the other servants from section G at 5 am, according to his new watch, eat breakfast with them and then follow Darryl, who was the so called Representative Of Servants for section G, to work before they would return for a short lunch. After that the work continued until late at night and they could only go to bed when all the scheduled work for the day was done.
Darryl did his best to integrate Clay in every task and make sure he understood everything.
He noticed quite early that not every one of the servants was as nice as his ROS- some of them never even talked to him and if they did, it was something related to their work.
Two of the men he often worked with were Ben and Loris, they were both new aswell and he became friends with them really quickly.
Ben was a bit younger than him and had lived in a different Vilis village further from the castle. He also had a younger sister and had applied for the job as a servant as soon as he heard about it.
Loris has also applied to this job a few days before his 17th birthday- he told them about how he was on his way to the military when he finally got taken.
The boys who both had common blue eyes were fun to be around and made Clay's job way easier.
Darryl had told him that usually their work would consist of serving food and cleaning.
But now that the Queen's Competition was getting closer, their main task was to prepare all of the guest rooms perfectly for the noble Pretiosi family that would move in soon.
Section G was entirely responsible for the Pretiosi family with dark blue eyes and the ability to control water with their mind: Aquantura.
Clay winced slightly every time he thought about the Aquantura family member he had met in St. George's and how he nearly got drowned- nearly, if it hadn't been for Henry.
Henry, his myterious saviour with the red eyes he used to hide behind white goggles. After Darryl had told him that there was no Henry in the red-eyed Ignis family, Clay had gotten curious and tried to find out more about him.
He was entirely sure that Henry was a Pretiosi- his clothes aswell as his way of speaking had been too noble for a Vilis.
Also he had saved Clay from the man in St. George's who tried to drown him because he was a Vilis…- he would not have stopped just because another Vilis would have told him.
During a lot of thinking he came to the conclusion that there were only two options:
Either he was wrong about Henry's eye color- maybe the red flashing he had seen in Nick's hut had only been a sun reflection from his goggles and in reality Henry had a completely different eye color.
If this was the case, then it was helpless- the Pretiosi Empire was huge and Henry could be everywhere- Clay would never find him in this nation of color.
Or, the second and more exciting option, Henry really was a member of the Ignis family and had simply lied about his name.
This would go with the authority Clay had felt from the first second that he met Henry and also with the short wave of heat he felt when Henry had been angry at him in Nick's hut.
Clay clinged to this option and asked Darryl about every royal family member with their red eyes and how they looked like.
He was looking for a rather thin and short yet intimidating man with short, dark hair and white goggles aswell as dark, noble looking clothes.
The goggles, just like the clothes, did not get them any further as a lot of Pretiosi seemed to wear sunglasses to not make their eye color obvious.
The only Ignis that roughly fit the description was Prince George- but the assumption that the Prince would walk through the royal city all by himself, saving random Vilis boys, was ridiculous.
So Clay slowly came back to option one- that Henry was not an Ignis and lived somewhere he could not be found.
He tried to deny it to himself, but he was a little bit disappointed. Even though Henry was a Pretiosi and pretty intimidating, he somehow was curious to meet him again.
But this seemed impossible so Clay tried to get the mysterious Pretiosi out of his head and concentrate on his work.
Darryl gave him, Ben and Loris the easiest work: carrying things to where they were needed.
While the other, more experienced servants were artistically painting the walls in at least 10 different shades of blue, assembling furniture or sewing blue bedsheets, he and his new friends brought them whatever they were told- pots with blue and white paint, screws or needles.
They tried to be as fast as possible because the other servants tended to get impatient quickly, which was tricky as they still struggled with not losing orientation in the maze of passageways.
But even the huge exhaustion from running aroung was worth Clay's new life.
He was extremely thankful for the opportunity he was given- working as a servant in the big castle instead of going to the military was a dream he never dared dreaming.
He still had to get used to all the pressure and stress the servants had to deal with- these days the atmosphere in the castle grew even more tense.
Most of the servants in his section seemed to be excited to welcome the Aquantura family for the big event happening in a few days.
All his life Clay thought the Pretiosi families were actually like every Vilis family but in powerful- between 4 and 10 members, all directly related and always living together.
But from Darryl he learned that this concept of family was entirely different from what Clay was used to.
The only thing the members of a family had in common were their eye color and their ability. Every Pretiosi family had hundreds of members, spread over the whole Empire. They were all distantly related to each other and lived together in small groups.
A lot of these small groups now came together to support their daugther, sister or niece in the Queen's Competition.
At first every family had to choose one candidate to compete for them- and represent the power of this family.
Then the real competition would start.
Clay did not know what this would look like, but he knew it would go on until one young lady won and got the honor to marry Prince George and become the next Pretiosi queen.
Even though Clay still was a bit overwhelmed by this huge event he happened to be a tiny part of, he was excited for seeing the Pretiosi girls compete for the Prince.
The day before the Aquantura family would arrive, Clay woke up to a deep blue sky without any clouds.
He was cuddled up in his wonderfully soft bedsheets, the panda plushie which used to be Nick's right next to him.
His eyes were still closed as he listened to the other servants around him getting up and leaving the dormitory one after the other for breakfast.
Clay always waited until the dormitory was nearly empty before carefully looking around- highly aware of his purple eyes beaming around the room. His green contact lenses were not made for wearing them at night.
In the evenings it was not a big problem as it was dark usually and nobody was paying attention to him as he was coming out of the bathroom, head hanging low, blonde strands of hair hanging over his eyes.
In the mornings though he had to be much more careful- the other guys were not tired anymore and could easily see the bright purple beaming from his eyes as they hurried around between all of the beds.
So he waited until most of the people were outside and unobtrusively took two contact lenses from the box under his pillow before he went to the bathroom, pretending to rub his eyes.
He quickly locked the door once he was inside one of the bathrooms and turned around to see his mirror self looking at him with bright purple eyes.
He washed his face and put in his contact lenses- replacing the eye-catching purple with the more familiar green.
In the crowded cantine for sections G, H and I he quickly made his way to the table where he could see Darryl, Ben and Loris sitting along with some other servants.
As he joined them, Darryl smiled and began to talk to Ben, Loris and him.
"Now that all of you guys are here I will tell you your schedule for today.
All the rooms look amazing and we are nearly done with having everything prepared. As you hopefully know, our guests will arrive tomorrow morning, so today I have a last meeting with all the ROS of the other sections. You will come with me and help me carry the documents I need and I can show you some of the other parts of the castle you rarely get to see. Sounds good?"
The three trainees nodded eagerly, excited to finally see a different part of the castle than section G where they had spent most of their time since they had arrived.
After they all finished their breakfast, Ben, Clay and Loris followed Darryl to his office where they had only been once before.
As the ROS of their section, Darryl had his own office for organizing the whole section G. It was a relatively big room with shelves all around the walls, folders over folders slightly bending the wood underneath them.
On the large desk in the middle of the room, there were four stacks of folders, probably prepared by Darryl last night.
"Don't forget to put your badge with your identification number on your shirt. You will need it once we are out of section G."
Darryl instructed them and Clay put his badge which said GCY3 on his shirt. Ben and Loris did the same with their badge.
Each of them took a stack of folders and the three younger boys followed their ROS out of the office, through the passageways they were slowly getting familiar with.
But the further they got the less Clay remembered their surroundings.
Darryl turned slightly to face the three boys.
"Okay, guys, we are nearly out of section G. When we go through this door try not to keep your mouths open for too long."
Darryl chuckled slightly and knocked on a large door which immediately opened, two Pretiosi soldiers with orange eyes waiting behind.
They quickly checked their identification number and wrote something down in a notebook before the Vilis could pass.
When the soldiers stepped aside, all three trainees were hit with a breathtaking view.
They were on a balcony which was going around in a giant circle, leaving air in the middle.
As they slowly walked towards the railing, the view of a balcony below them became clear- it was also circling around the empty middle, just as another balcony below the first one and another one above the one they were standing on.
As they looked up, a giant dome spanned the empty center.
This whole place looks so majestic…-
Clay thought, not able to close his mouth, just as Darryl predicted.
The latter chuckled again, stepping besides them, looking over the railing at the breathtaking construction.
"Welcome to the heart of the castle. I think we are stopping for a view minutes for you to admire the view."
Clay had never seen anything like this.
There were at least four levels of balconies, all circling around the empty center, leaving a broad column of air up towards the dome.
Far down, in the middle of the construction, clearly visible from every level, there was a huge empty area except for a few people walking over it.
Darryl's voice got excited as he said,
"Wow, we are lucky, they are starting to train just now!"
"Darryl, who are these people?" Ben asked.
"Those are the young Pretiosi nobles who live in or around the castle. They are still practicing to control their ability to 100 percent. Today they seem to be duelling for fun which is always great to watch!"
Clay watched the people making room in the middle and stand in a circle around the two guys that did not move.
He could not see their faces, certainly not their eyes, but he quickly figured out he would not need to as a whistle could be heard and suddenly huge roots grew out of the ground on the left side, reaching out for the guy on the other side.
"Floris!" Darryl shouted over the cheers that had erupted from the spectators.
"The Floris family's members have green eyes and can control all kind of plants!"
Only now Clay noticed the lime green clothes the smaller boy was wearing- the other one was dressed in orange.
Clay expected the roots to tangle around the orange guy, but this person just grabbed a very strong looking root and teared it apart as if it was a blade of grass.
The lime green person started to pull more and more roots out of the stony floor without even touching them.
They tangled around like tantacles, trying to gain control over the strong guy.
"The other one is a Crassitus- remember, orange eyes, incredible strength."
Clay was fascinated by the two Pretiosi fighting against each other- the Floris controlling strong and prickly roots while the Crassitus tried to tear them apart with his strength.
Every Vilis would have been dead within seconds... they would just rip us in half.
Clay thought.
Slowly but surely the Floris seemed to gain control over the situation- the Crassitus could not keep up with the high amount of roots shooting out of the ground and enclosing him from all sides.
Finally there was a whistle and the roots diappeared- the Crassitus was laying on the floor, breathing heavily, the Floris threw his fist in the air and the crowd around them cheered slightly.
Both of them were leaving the fighting area and two other people came instead.
One of them was wearing a wavy blue coat, the other one was dressed in a red tracksuit.
They were standing face to face as Clay noticed something.
The red dressed boy was relatively short and his dark hair was laying neatly on his head. He did not wear white goggles but in Clay's imagination he did-
Henry?
His heart started to beat faster.
This looks exactly like Henry...
A whistle sounded and immediately a huge wave of water from one side hit a giant wave of flames from the other side.
The dark blue dressed girl made the masses of water fall onto the red dressed boy- he tried to block them with a wall of flames but the fire only heated the water instantly and boiling water rushed down on him.
A long, high scream echoed from the walls.
"Wow!" Loris on his left cheered.
Clay could see Henry fall, enclosed by hot water burning his skin.
Is this even Henry? It looks like him but at the same time it doesn't...
The dark blue girl pulled all of her water back, letting the red boy relax for a moment. He got to his feet again, a dark green dressed woman rushing towards him, apparently taking care of his burns.
A moment later the boy stood upright again, little flames already dancing from his wrists.
The girl started to attack once more, but this time the boy's fire seemed to be stronger as the whole water evaporated before it could reach him.
He tried to close the water girl in but she fought back with an even stronger mass of water.
It was an epic battle to watch.
Once again Darryl was shouting over the noise coming from below.
"Aquanturas and Ignis! Dark blue and red! Water and fire! Prince George is doing really good!"