🆁🅴🅳🅰🅲🆃🅴🅳 ᴄʟᴀᴜᴅᴇ

[supremity]

or: vague and all-knowing chessmaster club

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[riegan]

(A boy in golden robes pushes aside his door, carrying a book in one hand a lantern in another. The room is large, extravagant, covered with ornamental rugs, beautiful silks, and colorful, moonlit glass.

He sets the candle down next to his bed and begins to pull back the sheets when he hears a voice drift in from the window, carried on a cool breeze. He sets down his book and goes over to the window's ledge, holding onto the curtain with one hand as he listens to a pair of guards on patrol down below, "I heard someone drugged his horse. Made it go mad while he was on it."

"Is that why the general has us on extra duties this month?"

"Someone might try to kill the prince again."

"Someone is always trying to kill the prince." He complains.

From his perch, the boy rolls his eyes. If the general or his parents really wanted to protect him, they'd give him guards that acted like guards instead of gossipy laundry maids. If they really wanted to protect him, they'd do something about that good for nothing vizier that kept trying to get him sent away for his "own good."

As he listens, he seems oblivious to the shadow moving behind him, slithering from under his bed towards the moonlight.

"Huh?" One of the guards hums, suddenly alert, and the boy leans further to see what he's looking at in the dark ahead. There's someone out there, he notices, and it's then that he tenses, realizing that the cloaked figure in the night is running away. They wouldn't escape if they thought there was work to be done. Something's already been done and it's then that the boy seems to realize there is something behind him.

He turns around and notices the black shadow rise from the ground. He recognizes the pattern on its diamond shaped head and he finds himself staring at its eyes— a vivid forest green meeting a burning red. His hand grips the curtain still and he freezes, careful not to make any sudden moves.

In the background, he hears the guards sounding an alarm, a fight breaking out, and down the hallways, he can hear heavy footsteps running towards his room. As soon as that door opens, he knows what will happen. The viper will strike. He'll fight while his blood burns and his heart races until it bursts and he dies in some stranger's arms. Dead only mere weeks after his twelfth birthday.

He refuses. He refuses. He refuses.

The door swings open, guards rush in, and as the viper strikes, the boy pulls at the curtain bringing everything down around him.

One guard swoops in, lifting the prince into his arms and pulling him away from the window. The others begin to search the room and the one closest to the window lets out a yelp when he sees the curtain writhing and hissing in the moonlight. He takes his saber and hacks at it. Pulling away the curtain, what's left is a writhing, dying creature.

And the boy only watches sadly.)