The Undead Rebellion: Royal Blood

Prologue

I lay there in the mud, blinded by the rain; sight stained red. Memories of when I was still able to play flooded my mind, teasing me at what I could instead be doing. I was no longer a kid, but that had never stopped me from dreaming of when I was. Unlike the reality of my past, I quickly grew exhausted - even in my dreams, I'd fall asleep again only to have nightmares that had eventually became my reality. Come to think of it, I was always fearful of growing older, but like everyone else, I hardly had a choice.

Since I grew up in a heavily sheltered mansion that belonged to my father, the king, I hardly knew of the hardships it took for most people to survive and grow old. For me, survival was as simple as asking for food. Looking back on it, I wonder why my tutors never told me of all the problems beyond the high walls of the place i called home. I suppose that they didn't want me poking my nose into the area separated by a three foot thick wall.

I remember that one day I heard civilians yelling obscenities from the other side, and that my father had arrived not long before. Not really knowing what they meant, I had used one around him; he had me punished severely. When my emotional wounds begun to heal, I asked my language tutor about it. He frowned and gave me a brief explanation. According to him, the words were meant as curses to the king. Even though he was rather cruel to me, I felt horrible. No matter what, I still loved him.

After this incident, he came to visit me less and less. My curiosity shifted to his lack of presence to the point I would ask him about it whenever I had the chance. At one point, I asked him why I wasn't living in the royal palace, but every single time he would say that he would tell em when I was older. It never happened. I must admit that I only recently became eighteen years old, so I'm hardly all that old. Regardless, I still wanted the answer to the increasingly old question.

Outside of my mind, which was quickly flipping the pages of my life, everything continued to fade to black. I felt my pain slowly dissipate. It should have been obvious that I was dying from the large cut across my stomach, but I didn't care. All I felt was a warmth as I lay in the rain, in a pool of blood... in the mud.