He ran faster than the wind, he ran faster than his shadow. The despicable urge to throw up was repressed once as he kicked the ground.
His toes were numb, he knew his muscles were incapable of sustaining such physical prowess for long, so he gave it his all.
No one dared to stop the white mane from running away from the Last Pillar. Not a mage cast a spell nor someone made a step forward, it was impossible to lay a hand on a royal blood and survive it.
They looked at him vanishing from their sight, they were more mesmerized by the gory scenery he left behind than by his sudden runaway.
After what seemed to last an eternity, he had the steel-like taste of blood in his mouth, the weakest blood vessel in his lungs exploded because of the effort. His torso was clogged in between cramps, the air he was breathing in was hot, and it strangled him from the inside.
'I won't stop! Never!' He thought, staring at the thousands of new faces he came across. People almost looked worried about his frantic comportment, but his ability to decipher emotions was clouded by years of mental manipulation.
He slowed down after a few kilometers, he couldn't see the end of the city or the Titan's claws. Even though he had never been away from the castle, he knew he needed to walk over a hundred kilometers to exit the capital, alas he was already out of stamina.
Wandering into a popular marketplace where storefronts gave life to the area as much as the sellers, his eyes caught many details. People looked at him from windows, others from a lower position, and some held out their hands to ask for a coin.
He felt like a stranger to the people that lived next door. They were pointing at him and whispering to their peers, but for now, he ignored them. Asking them for help or telling them his tale would only lead him to bigger problems, there was nothing he could do against a monster that made him execute Lancelot.
He felt a crushing pressure in his upper torso, more than his grief, his rage corrupted him from the inside. His eyes were frozen, he couldn't blink or talk, a thick foam dripped from his mouth, it was the only source of hydration for his suffering lips.
He was lost. In Tash's streets, he leaned against walls to take back his breath and never stopped moving forward. Each time he tripped, he stood back and dusted off the dirt from his outfit by reflex.
His long white hair had lost its pure whiteness because of the repetitive brutal contact his forehead made with the muddy ground. The streets were wet from the recent downpour as well as the townspeople's normal daily activities. Water from the fish market flowed down the suburbs and the chamber pots were emptied from balconies. Taking a bath and sinking his head underwater was a distant echo in the boy's panicked mind.
The current mood in the capital was disturbed by the blast at the castle. Many feared a revolt and deserted their shop, many left behind their cart, afraid of the worst.
When he entered a narrow street where the sun couldn't reach the stone tiles that decorated the road, he stopped. He brushed his hair backward and unified the terrible color it took, he hid the tip of it in a rough braid under the collar he hurried to untie.
Arthur threw away the delicate tissue that covered his torso and pulled every button off his ceremonial costume, even the ones that kept his sleeves rolled up. After getting rid of his golden laces, he threw away his belt as well. Every shiny bit that caught people's attention was now well hidden under mud and blood.
He still looked like a survivor from an untold tale, but his worry about being identified as royal blood was now gone.
Before continuing the long road, he left behind what remained of his last meal and let a few tears escape his veiled eyes.
After an hour of losing blood from the back of his head, one entire hour with a colorless liquid dripping from his ear, only his mantra allowed him to take a step forward. His eyes wouldn't blink anymore and his heart was failing to keep a steady pace.
The rolling head in front of him, and the ghost images he saw gave him determination, he managed to walk another hundred meters before falling to the ground. His massive headache kept him awake for a few seconds during which he saw people approaching.
The reddening sky and the dark walls made another challenge for his eyes to focus.
One of the silhouettes towered way above the others, Arthur saw a green shade coloring its thick limbs, up to the jawline, the guy was covered in scales.
"The... The..." Arthur tried to mutter something while pointing at the giant. His eyes were rolling back, the heat of the crowd that surrounded him gave him an instant of peace. Only the overall shadows of the buildings and structures could now be distinguished, the sizzling pain spread to the top of his back and wasn't diminished at all by his tensed muscles.
When the group of people crouched next to him to take a closer look, he said with a semblance of a smile.
"The fabled... Dragon..."
Half a dozen of echoing laughs resounded in his mind as he lost consciousness. What followed was a terrible dream in which the distortion of his memory altered the nightmare he was going through.
He woke up in a jolt, half a day later in a room and a bed he wasn't able to identify.
His first scream of pain was interrupted by the latent pain itself, a strong headache.
"Good morning sweet heart. How was your night? Awful, right? Mine was too..."
A feminine voice echoed in the room, it was a hoarse morning tone that sent a shiver down the boy's spine. Though the place was crowded with furniture, the low position from which it came from made it bounce against the wooden floor first.
A hand, as big as Arthur's head pushed the thick mattress down, its pointy, yellowish nails and the reflecting light made the boy react more than he could.
The titan he saw before passing out was standing above his awful bed, one devoid of silk and petals. She had a tight corset that insulted her muscular breasts. Her belly button was uncovered, and the other patch of tissue she wore was coiling around a broad reptilian tail covered in an entangled pattern of scales.
Her build reminded Arthur of the last mages that stepped in his room to assault him a minute later, his subconscious thoughts put the woman in a pre-determined box in a corner of his mind, one that was built for the woman mages willing something specific from him.
Her eyes were decorated with vertical slits and her nose was ridiculously flat, but all of her features harmonized to empathize with her beauty. Arthur became instantly suspicious of her intentions.
"You sure talk a lot in your sleep." She said, crossing her arms.
By bending forward, Arthur managed to look around for an instant, enough to notice the rough place where the titan had slept all night.
The boy's whining was hushed by her hand delicately caressing his cheek. "Don't move. You've got some big head trauma, you need to stay immobile for now. The leech couldn't give you any drugs since your body already tried to recover from the injury. What business were you doing when the castle was blown up, young fella?"
A slight move of his head made the boy realize how heavy it became. The well-wrapped bandage around his head hid every strand of pure whiteness he had over his eyebrows, and his hand crawled to the left side of his upper torso.
He touched his cold skin, his disheveled outfit was gone. He moved his legs to his head and held himself tight in a lone embrace. 'This is everything I have left now.' He thought, letting his tears fall like the rain.
"Hey, it's okay, it's all finished, they have settled the matter already, have you lost someone in the explosion perhaps?"
His head moved up and down, he was still protecting it from the icy touch of the warm folk.
He whispered between hiccups. "I don't remember what happened. Where are you there? At the palace?"
The woman rose his face from its hideout, she looked at his perfect face one last time before shaking her head slowly. "I'm afraid no, I overheard the public announcements only. Here, drink some water, you're in a dire state."
She was looking at the boy like a precious gemstone, and he was replying with the same gaze, he wouldn't talk nor follow her directives until he was sure of his current situation.
Since his head was itchy, mainly because of the few stitches that were scratching his bandage, he slowly removed it from around his head despite the woman's uneasy face. He felt the wind that entered the window pass over his nearly-naked skull. He reached for the strange sensation that disturbed him to no end with wide-opened eyes.
"I cut it off, now you've got the same haircut as me. Trust me, you wear it better." Her touch of humor did not make the boy react at all.
It was a first for Arthur to meet such a strange person, there were dozens of humanoid forms of life on Pazuut, one originating from the dragon species, the wyrmfolks hardly grew hair, and only short hairstyle could suit them.
Yet, from the thousands of shades that made the crowd look like a colorful flower bouquet, one was too bizarre to fit a child's traits.
The white mane Arthur had inherited from his father was what branded him. He knew many witnesses stared at him for this sole reason.
'She knows. She knows about this damned curse!'
Only one option remained for him.
"My mind is blurry and my head hurts like hell just to try to figure things out. I can't recall where I was, however, one thing is certain. I am going to take my revenge on the royals."
The woman slowly clapped her hands and gave Arthur a bone-chilling smile. "That's the spirit, boy."