Snowcon Forest

Open Your Eyes

Everything was cold.

"Queen Vanessa," The beautiful, red haired woman began to say as she followed the other woman into her manor. "Thank you for bringing me here! You said you managed to figure out where-"

Static, a name lost to the world, and then the images within her mind continued.

"-is?" She asked, bright eyes shining with joy as she looked at the Queen, desperately trying to ignore the voices in her mind that begged from her to flee, run as far from the freezing building as she could.

There was something... wrong with the woman in front of her.

Her face kept twitching erratically, switching between a smile that seemed to be too big and a dark, murderous expression. There was a hint of sorrow too, but it was mostly hidden by the other emotions she was displaying. It made her more than a little concerned that something had happened to her close friend that he might have been found dead.

Her heart pounded in her chest and she could feel the tears start to form in her eyes. She blinked them away and did her best to focus on the words Vanessa was saying.

"Oh yes, I found him some time ago and since you are so close to him I felt you had the right to know first." The too cold woman replied, ruby eyes staring blankly ahead.

She was so caught up in her excitement that she failed to notice that strange amount of emphasis that the Queen had placed on her words, and the fact that his parents should have been told this information before her.

The duo walked up the stairs of the manor. She had to be careful to not slip on the odd patch of ice that covered the wooden floors...?

Why was there ice on the floor?

"Your Majesty." She began, wincing when the woman looked at her with those empty eyes. "There's ice on the floor, are your servants cleaning up properly?"

Her face twitched once again, ruby eyes almost glowing blood red in the light of the hallway. She cringed and back away, fear rising up in her heart. Surely it was not just the disappearance of the Prince, or King, that had caused this disturbing change, especially since she had found him!

Right?

"This way." The sudden voice startled her out of her thoughts, and she glanced up just in time to see a bit of blonde hair and green dress vanish into a nearby room.

It appeared to be a bedroom of some sort, but once again it felt strange. There was ice covering some of the walls, and the bed was resting in the center of the room near another door. Perhaps the oddest thing of all was that some sort of panel had opened up in the wall, exposing a small room that Vanessa now stood in front of.

She walked over to join the other woman, assuming that this was where her friend was being kept. Once more that feeling of wrongness rushed over her but she ignored it and kept moving forward. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a small pot of flowers sitting on a desk. The flowers themselves were very small and clustered together with rich blue petals.

Hydrangeas...?

Then she felt it, a casual brush against her shoulder as she stared into the empty room.

And then everything went wrong.

Ice immediately started to form where she had been touched, freezing her arm and back in an instant. She tried to turn her head and look at Vanessa, beg for help, but she was, quite literally, frozen in place.