CYRDEL SONASSON, heir apparent to the Alkaran Throne, is a budding inventor against the wishes of his father, the King. But when a friend from the Inventor's District needs help, he has to drop everything and come to their aid, even going as far as...
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2406 Rab 9, Velpa
The smell of metal burning assaulted his nose, making him hold back an oncoming sneeze. It couldn't come now at this point. This was the part that needed the steadiest hands.
So, Cyrdel sucked in a breath, peering closer than it was deemed safe into a sheet of gears and wires, squinting past the hazy layer of his spectacles. His hands shook but gripped the solder tightly, slowly edging towards a gear tooth in need of refining. Sweat dripped down the side of his face and past his cheek, his breathing labored and thick with the cooped up, humid air inside the shop. Just a little bit more now.
The charged solder's tip hit the gear just as a bell blared throughout the whole manor. Cyrdel jumped, missing the tooth by mere millimeters. "Nira's bottoms," he cursed, throwing the solder into the wooden table and dislodging the sentzite ore powering it. "Would it kill them to delay lunch by a minute?"
With a sigh, he undid the knot tying his apron around his form and chucked it next to the solder. He glanced down at his recent invention still in parts, a mess of out of place gears, wires, and sheets of dented metal he still had to refine in the forge. Apparently, lunch was more important than finishing and Cyrdel didn't have a say in that matter. At all.
It'd be a disaster if he even thought about being late. He'd learned that the hard way just a few years back.
Cyrdel wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve and strutted out of the shop. A cool wind from the palace's ivy-infested backdoor garage hit him, making shivers run up his arms. How long had he been inside for him to be used to the sweltering heat?
His soles clacked against the trail of cobblestones sloping up, taking him to the real ground floor of the Royal estate. All the flowers, despite how colorful and unique they were, breezed by his periphery knowing they'd still be there the following day, even weeks after. The landscape remained the same, too, almost as if mocking Cyrdel for wishing each day wasn't as boring as the last.
He reached the front door of the estate, letting his eyes rove over the glass-paned windows forming the facade. Behind him sat the arched gap in the tall, white walls surrounding the manor, the city of Depandes lying just outside. He pursed his lips, clenching his hands against his sides. It was only a few steps and he'd be out of his family's collective hair.
Still, one glance at the timeteller stuck to his wrist told him it was best to swallow his feelings and just head to lunch. So, on he walked, past the bustle of servants and some of the Masters in the Court of Varis heading towards the open gardens of the manor's backyard and into the adjacent wing where the dining hall was located.
It never did make sense to Cyrdel why the King and Queen decided it was a good idea to have everyone in the Palace eat communal meals but it was what it was. He wasn't consulted with the matter, despite being the Crovalis. Perhaps they knew he would rather eat meager snacks in his shop at all times while inventing. Was this their way of forcing Cyrdel to get out of his rooms?
