The carriage was halted in front of the palace's main gate. Behind us, a group of soldiers stepped forward to control the crowd as my mother stepped out of the carriage, holding me in her arms.
Father also dismounted from his horse and began walking towards us. Soon, the soldiers and officials opened a path towards the palace.
Wait, who are those? As the path to the palace opened up, my gaze fell on a pair of children, a boy, and a little girl, standing at the palace's entrance with eager smiles on their faces. The most striking part about those kids, however, was their long silver hair.
Wait, silver hair? At once my gaze shifted towards my father, proudly walking with his head held high.
We were just steps away from the two kids when the little girl, no more than three years old, rushed towards us.
"Father, mother you are finally back." She spoke, running towards Father. Father too kneeled down smiling and caught her in his embrace.
"There is the most beautiful princess in the world."He spoke, standing up and holding the little girl in her arms.
"Did you miss me? I missed you a lot." The little girl giggled and peered over Mother and, at the same time, me.
"You were supposed to wait at the gate, Myria." Another childish voice caught my attention; looking ahead, I saw the older boy about five years of age slowly walking towards us, shaking his head.
"Now look, you have made the whole crowd rile up." He spoke, looking exasperatedly at the girl, after which he lightly bowed.
"I greet mother and father. Congratulations on your great victory."
Looking at the kneeling boy, both mother and father flashed a somewhat satisfied smile.
"Raise your head, Faelan dear." Mother spoke, and the boy raised his head. Giving a small smile, he curiously looked in my direction.
"Is this him, my new brother?" he spoke, looking at me.
"Ha Ha Ha. Yes, he looks just like your mother, doesn't he?" Father chuckled before lifting the boy up in his other arm and bringing both of my new siblings close to me.
Two children curiously gazed at me, yet both of them showed different reactions. The boy's smile grew a bit wider while the girl furrowed her eyebrows and scrunched up her nose as if she was smelling something rotten.
Why was she making that face… did I? I hurriedly felt the insides of my diaper.
No, everything was fine. Then why was she making a face as if she was smelling something rotten?
To try to please her, I let out a small yawn. Kids love cute stuff, after all, I think.
It seemed like my hypothesis was wrong, as all that yawn did was make her expression worse. Looking away from me, she buried her face in her father's shoulder.
Looking at her behaving like so, mother and father gave out a light chuckle and all of us stepped inside the palace.
Everything was a blur after that. Before I knew it, my mother and father had taken me up on a balcony overlooking a crowd of thousands of people. Seeing the number of people, I couldn't help but feel I had somehow underestimated my parents. This much influence seemed more befitting to a king than anything else.
Yet somehow that wasn't the most shocking site. From this high up, one could see much farther, especially the vast mountain range covering the entirety of that direction. In the centre of the mountain range laid the figure of a giant skeleton atleast half a km tall.
The skeleton was lying sprawled up on the mountain, with a giant sword protruding out of it's back.
What the hell was that? I had thousands of questions in my mind before Mother stepped forward, and this made me much more visible in front of the crowd.
From there, Father gave a passionate speech, probably talking about his victory in the battle.
He talked about our great country, our amazing victory in the war, described how the dogs of sunspire had left us no choice, how vile they were and how he had asked them to surrender several time, my birth. Basically lashing out with all the classic propoganda technique.
Make the enemy seem vile and less than human, so your people can feel morally right while slaughtering them.
The crowd was eating it up as well, getting riled up by each word he spoke. Yet it all came bursting forward in the end when he urged Mother forward and took me from her arms, raising me up to display in front of these people.
ORION!!! He shouted. It felt as if a dam had been broken; all the shouts came bursting out one after another, all of them saying the same thing, or rather screaming the same thing.
"PRINCE ORION."
"PRINCE ORION."
"PRINCE ORION."
Orion. Was that my new name?
"LONG LIVE PRINCE ORION."
"PRINCE ORION THE STAR OF OUR KINGDOM."
"MAY THE OLD GODS BRING YOU PROSPERITY PRINCE ORION."
---
It was already night by the time we were done. Mother took me to a room, which I was assuming was mine. Placed me down in a crib and left after giving some instructions to the maid from before in the carriage.
The maid as well, after making sure I was fed and changed left when she saw that I had fallen asleep.
Of course, I hadn't fallen asleep. For some reason, it took a lot of time for this new body of mine to get tired, and considering I had spent most of my journey here sleeping, I was currently as wide awake as an owl.
Slightly opening my eyes, I saw her walking towards a lamp near my crib, shutting it off with the press of a button.
Darkness descended on the room, and just like that, for the first time in a month, I was truly left alone.
Yes, I couldn't describe my happiness at the moment; making sure I acted like a child and didn't do anything a child wouldn't do was exhausting.
Steadying myself, I began inspecting my surroundings, my gaze falling on the balcony at the edge of my room.
Now, that was something very interesting. Just outside the balcony, one could view the mountain range, which contained the giant figure of the skeleton.
To say I was curious about that thing would be an understatement. Every single fiber of my being wanted to know what was up with that thing.
Well, I'll find out eventually. Thinking so, I calmed myself. A thing this visible shouldn't be a state secret anyway, and even if it was, it would be towards the prince. Besides, there were far more important things for me to deal with now.
Turning my head from the skeleton, I laid down straight and concentrated hard in my mind.
Soon, a transparent screen appeared in front of my eyes.
Integrating With The Will of the World
Progress- 100%
In accordance with "Realm Walker Association."
Nexus Intialised
Proceed
Y/N