"Kay! Kay!"
"H-huh?"
"c'mon! Get up!"
"Haaahh, What do you want?"
"I'm bored! Play with me!" Insisted Kayla before Jumping on top of hid him. The old sofa creaked violently and a large cloud of dust erupted from the old covers.
"Owww! Get off me you barbarian! Why are you here this early anyway?"
"What're you on about? It's lunch time already! Why do you think I'm here? After lunch Victor and Ruben go off to practice their martial arts and I get left on my own. Its a Thursday! You should know this by now!" Complained Kayla as she rolled reluctantly off of him.
"Huh?" Kurtis kissed his teeth "Nice try but I'm not in the mood for your nonsense lies"
"Nonsense? I'm not lying! And why do you say that like I do on a regular?" Kayla argued with a cute frustrated expression.
'What?' Kurtis thought to himself 'That can't be true, if it was then Viera would've already come by now, woken me up and given me my breakfast'
As if on cue, his belly let out a loud grumble of hunger.
"..."
"Are you hungry?" Asked Kayla
"Yes, I'm hungry" responded King in a tone as if to imply that this was common knowledge and should be obvious.
Kayla's eyes glittered mischievously as if she was thinking something up.
"Where's Viera? King asked.
"Who?"
"Viera. You know, the Young maid that looks after me?"
"Oooohh, Vieeeraaa! Y- yeah I dunno "
Contrary to what she said, King had been around her for long enough to know that whenever she stuttered it was because she was either nervous, lying, avoiding something or hiding something and was about to push on before-
"BUT! How about we go get some food!"
"What do you mean? How?"
"isn't it obvious? We run down to the kitchens or the pantry and nick some"
King kissed his teeth again "should've known you'd suggest something like that" he said while sitting up on the sofa.
"C'mooon don't be a pus- a scaredy cat, we won't be gone for long its not that far, are you really going to just sit here hungry?"
"I'm good thankyou, its too risky, I think I'll just wait here for Viera"
"B-but think about it, I know a shortcut that we can take where nobody will see us. We'll be in then out in a second and guess what?"
"What?"
"If we succeed, it won't be just soup you'll be eating. Chicken, pork, vegetables, bread, fish, chocolate, rice, different juices, even wine if you wanted. Anything food you can think of is in the pantry"
King remained quiet while in thought. Truth be told, he was very tempted. He'd been eating bland soup, stale bread and a single glass of water for almost six years now. It got to the point where he dreamed of eating different kind of foods. He couldn't even remember what meat an apple tasted like.
But he just couldn't help thinking that this just wouldn't end well.
"Even if we succeed, won't they notice that some of the food is missing?"
"Do you know how big the pantry is? Even if they do notice it wont matter, Ruben and Victor steal from there all the time, they'll just assume it was them and move on" Kayla could see that he was on the fence and just needed a little push. "Please, it'll be fun and if you do it I'll show you some of my elemental magic"
King's ears immediately perked up. This was something that he'd been asking her to show him for the longest time but she always made the excuse that she was too Young to use her magic even a little bit.
"Fine! But you'd better not get me caught! You would be fine but who knows what they'd do to me, and you better show me something cool with your magic"
"Yh yh, I know what I'm doing okay! I promise, I won't get you caught. Before we go though, we're gonna need to do something about your stink and cover your face, not like anyone would recognise you but you never know, we might run into Victor and Ruben on accident. I'll be right back!"
"I guess you can never be too careful, Okay" but before he could even finish his sentence she had already disappeared down the latch.
A couple minutes later she returned with an exited expression while holding a plain black hoodie and a spray bottle containing what he assumed was some sort of perfume or after shave.
"here wear this and put the hood over your head then I'll spray you with this perfume, Trust me no one will be able to see or smell you" she whispered excitedly.
King did as she said and she proceeded to spray him with the perfume. Turns out it wasn't perfume but after shave, it smelled strong and very manly, not unlike any after shave you could pick up at like Tesco's back on earth.
Once they were prepared they slowly approached the attic trap door. King was growing more and more anxious as his heart beat increased. He hadn't been outside of this attic since he was born and he couldn't even remember anything but the bright lights and moving paintings.
Kayla opened the door and King felt a blast of fresh air, he took a deep breath of fresh air and followed Kayla down the ladder with his eyes closed tightly in nervous anticipation until he felt his feet touch the smooth carpeted floor.
After a brief pause, he slowly opened his eyes only for them to be brutally abused by the bright lighting.
He let out a Small howl of pain before a small and chubby hand was quickly wrapped around his mouth.
"Shhhhhhhh!" Hissed Kayla "almost no one ever comes up here so I doubt we'll be heard but still, you never know. Be quiet!"
King nodded his head desperately and she let go. With his eyes squinted he looked around cautiously. They were in a large and spacious corridor with a red silk carpet, there weren't many decorations on the walls except for a few moving paintings here and there.
From the ceiling hung large crystal chandeliers with small gems emitting light and just as he had thought, along the opposite wall of the corridor were large human-sized windows. Past the windows the clear blue sky could be seen with the sun shining brightly in the middle and down below, was a large terrain reaching out as far as the eye could see. On the terrain were multiple large buildings widely spread out with paths winding in between each of them, large enough no ride a car through.
They were quite High up, so far up in fact that King could only see small dots of what he assumed were people going in and out of buildings from his position with his face pressed up against the glass.
"....Kay....Kay! Kay?.....KAY!?" Shouted Kayla
King, who had been transfixed by the view quickly snapped out of it and retreated from the window when remembering the position he was in and turned to face Kayla who was looking at him knowingly.
"I keep forgetting you've never been outside of the attic before" she turned towards the window and pointed towards a really large building off in the distance to their right. "see that really large building over there? That's where Victor and Ruben probably are right now, that's were they do all their training. And that even larger building in the centre?" Now pointing to the largest building in the area " that's the fighting arena"
The building was massive, at least three time the size of the First one and had a structure akin to a football stadium and a almost as big.
"Fighting?"
Kayla rolled her eyes "yeeess, remember? I've told you about all of this. Anyway, we should get going, the quicker we are the better" she swiftly turned around, walked down the left and turned into another corridor, leaving Kurtis to scurry after her.
This new corridor was near identical to the previous one minus the large windows on the right wall and had a single large mahogany door right in the middle which the hurried right past. They went in and out of multiple identical corridors, coming across a few doors here and there until they had arrived at two sets of metal sliding doors with small panels besides each of them. King recognised them immediately.
"are those?... They can't be, are those elevators?"
"Yeah they are but we can't take them, the servants are always using them, we can't risk them walking in while we're inside so... Although its gonna be a pain, we're going to have to take the stairs." saying this she nodded her head off to the end of the corridor where a set of stairs were gloomily awaiting there attention.
"how many floors are there in this building?" asked King.
"23?24 i think?" replied Kayla
"And which floor is the pantry on?"
"The 4th floor..."
King let out an exasperated sigh as he thought of all the stairs they would have to go through and briefly considered returning to the attic before pushing it to the back of his mind, he had come this far, he might as well see it through.
Kayla didn't wait for him and begun moving towards the stairs and he quickly followed suit, they began descending the stairs as fast as they could while trying to make as little noise as possible.