TRYST // Philza X Reader

3

By the time you left the palace, the sun was high in the sky and the smell of the street vendors preparing for the lunch rush filled the route back home. You clutched the royal summons in your hand - you would need it to get back into the palace tomorrow morning. The king had informed you that you would be heading out then, and that you had the rest of the day to pack what you would need for the journey.

In one morning, your whole foreseeable future had been turned upside down.

The rest of the conversation had been logistical - what the palace would be providing for the journey, and what the king was hoping to get out of it. It was never explicitly said that if you failed your life would be over, but you got that feeling from the way the king had looked down the end of his nose at you.

Needless to say, you were scared out of your mind. The nerves that the royal summons had stirred in you had grown into a full fledged panic now. Part of you was hoping that today was all a dream, and that you would wake back up in your bed.

But the scroll in your hand was painfully real.

You hurried back to your house as quick as you could, not wanting to waste any of the precious time the king had given you before you were whisked away to the woods in search of a fairytale you hadn't known was real until today. If it had been a normal day, you would have been taking a break around now, getting lunch from one of the many street vendors and people watching while you ate.

But no, you were jogging through the throng of people in the streets now making a beeline for your home.

When you arrived, the house was exactly as you left it - bedsheets still rumpled from where you had been tossing and turning all night. Just standing in doorway, looking at all your belongings you could already tell the rest of the day wasn't going to be enough time to get your belongings together and the house settled in for your absence.

Still, it was better than nothing.

You headed over to the large closet where you kept most of your things, sorting through what was stored in there. You wouldn't be able to take that much with you - your most durable bag was the messenger bag you used everyday, and there wasn't that much room inside. Still, with some clever packing, you could hopefully fit the essentials.

You tossed your bag onto the bed nearby, setting the scroll down as well. That was the most important thing you had to pack - without the scroll from the king, it would all be for naught.

You went about the room, gathering everything that seemed important onto a pile on your bed - you would go through it and try to fit everything in your bag later. As you sorted through your house, your mind buzzed, going over every piece of information about the Angel of Death that you knew.

As the story went, he was one of the oldest beings in the entire world. No one quite knew where he had come from, and he hadn't been seen for at least 112 years - since King Etienne had just founded the kingdom and was still a strapping young man. There were various stories about him from that time, but your favorite was just how the Angel of Death had got his name.

Before the kingdom had been formed the world had been a lawless place - and with that lawlessness came a high death toll. Pillagers ransacked and burned mercilessly and organized villages were few and far between. While Etienne had taken to creating a safe place for humans out of the chaos as a solution to the killing, the Angel had taken the opposite approach - vigilante justice.

The most powerful pillaging bands of the day, slaughtered in their own hideouts without a trace. The only way people even knew the Angel existed was from sparse sightings of a winged figure flying away from burning pillager towers. Of course, as one of the powerhouses of the day, the Angel had eventually sat down with Etienne and Herobrine to decide the laws of the land, but after that, he had disappeared.

In the legends of the great kings, he was only ever mentioned in passing, and most people didn't even think he was real. You had been one of them, until that scroll had been pressed into your hand and the king had uttered his name - his true name.

Philza.

You dropped the last of the essential items you had collected on the bed. There was no way that you would be able to fit this all in the bag, but at least you had an idea of what you wanted to pack now. You'd got out your most durable and travel-ready clothes, practical supplies like knives and repair tools, blankets for a makeshift bedroll. The only thing missing was smoe kind of weapon - not that you would be able to use one even if you'd had it.

You were really regretting not picking up swordplay. Of course, you couldn't have known that you would be facing a perilous journey after a man of legend in the years to come, but still.

You started to compact what supplies you deemed the most important out of what you had gathered, fitting them into the bag as best you could. The scroll sat in the outside pocket on it's own - right where you would be able to reach it. It was easily the most valuable thing you would carry on this trip - both because of the royal seal and the letters content.

Just looking at the gilded wax made you nervous. If you failed, there was no telling what the king would do. You were just a citizen after all, and the kingdom was in the middle of a war.