The Budder King, the Snow Princess, & an Outcast

Sky the Kid

Chapter 31

Third Person

A guard carried a crying young prince through the halls of a large castle. She rushed into the throne room where the king and queen had just finished having audience with some of their subjects. Her partner was right on her heels and he called for the royal couple's attention. They both turned to look at the two guards and their crying son. Worry emanated from both of them as they rushed over. The queen took her son from the arms of the female guard.

"What happened?" The king looked towards the guards as the queen tried to comfort her son.

The two guards looked at each other before the man nodded to his partner. "We aren't quite sure sire. We were walking by the slow moving river that is in between the capital and the castle. There were a few squids lazily swimming in it and the prince ran ahead to look at them."

"Did bandits attack?!" The queen was frightened and angry at the idea of bandits who would dare attack their son. The king however stayed silent as he waited for the guards to continue.

The armoured woman shook her head as her partner took up the report. "The squids swam to where he was which was interesting in itself, but then one lashed out and narrowly missed his eye. We rushed him back here immediately." The king shook his head in disbelief. Squids were passive mobs and had never been a problem to anyone. Except for his own grandfather who had been delusional and only thought the creatures were out to get him. Some say that was part of the reason he founded this kingdom. His delusions also led to the name of the kingdom being what he had called gold, as the land of this kingdom was rich with it, and had many mines for the ore. The prince had picked up this habit despite never meeting the man, but it was one the king was trying to stop.

"Squids are scary and big meanies!" The young boy sobbed. He looked up at his mother with the one eye that was not already covered by an eye patch, the one the squids had nearly missed. There wasn't much blood coming from the wound, something the guards must have tended to on their way back. The major difference though was that the eye had become very misty. The iris and pupil were barley visible behind a thick white mist. He narrowed his eye as he looked at his mother before pulling off the eye patch so he could see her better. The newly revealed eye had no pupil or iris visible at all. It had a slight yellow tinge to it, but otherwise was identical to the eyes of a great evil that had once terrorized the world and had now faded into a legend. The prince was always forced to wear an eye patch over that eye even though it was the better of the two, even before the attack, because his parents were worried that the eye would make people believe that the prince held this old evil within himself and that they would attack to try and take him out. The thing was that the boy was practically the opposite of the evil, with his huge heart and the fact that he seemed to hold no hate within his heart. They had told the populace of the kingdom that the prince was born blind in the one eye and wore the eye patch to protect the eye.

The king turned to look at the two guards. "Go and have a pair of sunglasses made for the prince. Have the lenses so dark that you can only see through them if you are the one wearing them, and have straps as a part of the glasses to make it look like he is wearing two eye patches underneath. I Do not want word of this to go out to the people. Tell them the prince injured himself and harmed his good eye. I do not need the people to worry about squids when this could be nothing but our son getting too close as one of the tentacles flicked out of the water as the squid was swimming." Both guards nodded and headed off to complete their orders, despite the fact that they both knew that there was no way it was the fault of the prince. He was standing far enough away from the river bank. The way it happened seem purposeful and there seemed to be some malice in the strike.

  ~-~-~-~- 

"Hey Adam!"

"Sky!"

The now teenage prince of the Budder Kingdom turned to look down the hallway he was in to see two of his friends running towards him. "Ty! Jason!" He grinned as he stopped to let them catch up to him. "You know you shouldn't call me Sky. I'm not the king yet and that is basically wishing ill of my father and I don't like the idea of him dying."