#king ghost

It’s been a long time since you’ve felt anxiety this way. It’s the kind of gnawing, unsettling feeling at the pit of your stomach that comes only from venturing away from the safety of the trees and caves, brooks and hollow roots you call home. Your people call home. You force yourself to swallow down the fear - remind yourself that you’re doing this for them. Without this sacrifice, your sacrifice, the woods and forests which serve as sanctuary for your entire species, would be gone. The sick feeling in your stomach refuses to be soothed. 

In an attempt to calm yourself, to tear your mind away from the images you’ve conjured of what may await you on the forest edge, you focus intently on every slow stride of your companion. You draw your thoughts to counting every rhythmic movement of her shoulders, the way they gently jostle your hips as you follow each motion of hers with one of your own. A push and pull of a gentle tide. She and you melt into one being, acting and reacting in such effortless synchrony, such enviable elegance. An innate ability for which your kind are revered. 

Humans long lost touch with nature - shunned it in favor of such rapid growth, such vast power. They burned the trees to make room for their sprawling palaces, dug up the earth and all of her riches to build their roads, to grow their crops, never once wondering what she could provide had they simply respected her instead. Your people had never done such a thing, and for that, you’d been blessed. She’d provided you with everything you could ever have needed, and all you’d ever had to do was provide for her in turn. That balance, that equilibrium, is what humans have long since forgotten. Compromise, to them, is an impossible thing. To you and your kind, it’s an intrinsic part of life. 

At this moment, you feel that perhaps you know compromise better than any. 

The journey so far has been painstakingly long. On the one hand, it’s something you feel grateful for, that you’ve time to prepare yourself for the life that lies beyond the treeline. On the other, however, it’s excruciating. To ride through the forest, down the path away from the only life you’ve ever known, to mourn something you’ve not yet even lost. Every blazing orange dusk is another grain of sand dripping through the fingers of time, and every golden lighted dawn a death knell. You wonder if your sisters miss you the way you miss them. Your mother, too. Maybe they sit in quiet solitude, wondering what you’re doing at any given moment, or maybe they cry tears of frustration and anger at the fact that it could’ve been anyone else. Anyone but you. 

The days before had been spent in a resigned sort of mourning. You’d saved your tears for the first days of your voyage. 

You still so vividly remember sitting with your mother as she twisted up your hair, pinning it with flowers as she reminisced upon the girl taken by the last king. She’d been only as old as your youngest sister, Ophelia, when it had happened. Once every generation, every two, if you were at all lucky. You, unfortunately, were not. She’d spoken of how silent everything fell when the girl had been sent away - the strange, pained feeling that had settled over your people as they’d watched her go resigned into the trees. She’d never come back, of course, a fate that you too share. The small hope flickering like a fading ember at the bottom of your heart sings songs of longing. Such a foolish thing it is, holding out that perhaps the man who waits beyond the woods will love you, guide you to him with coaxing words and the gentlest of touches. You feel pathetic even thinking of it. 

You never had quite outgrown your childish fantasies of love, and in turn, had given the humans holed up behind their cold stone walls another innocent heart to break. 

When the sun shrinks back to nothing but a hazy golden glow, like that of a dying fire or burning star, you realize that more for your horse’s sake than your own, that it’s time to stop, to rest before you carry on with your journey. A day or two more and you’ll have reached the place where the canopy dwindles and the roots which cover the forest floor grow sparse, travel under the earth as though to hide from the human feet which march upon them. You hope for at least one more blissful sleep under the stars, moss under your head and night creatures watching your rest with vigilant, unseeing eyes. 

Settling aside the small pond where your horse bends at her withers to drink, you lay up against the gnarled stump of a fallen tree, which yields to accommodate your body, just one of the many perks of being so connected with nature. You’ve no need to set up a campsite when the forest welcomes and provides for you with such ease. It’s not easy to forget the fact that the forest probably recognises the way you’re feeling - sympathizes with your predicament.

As you drift off into a fitful sleep, under the comforting twinkle of the stars, A king is waking.  Behind the fortified stone walls of the palace, the revelry celebrating the lead up to King Simon’s wedding has lasted for days. To most, it’s an opportunity to celebrate. Their cold, reclusive king finally taking a wife. When the betrothal had been announced, the sigh of relief collectively exhaled by the nation had been palpable. He hadn’t wanted to do it - marry some wild forest thing and rut her full of little fat wailing babies. Johnny had been the unfortunate soul tasked with convincing him - reminding him that since Tommy passed, so did the soul heir to the Riley line. With enemies poised in the south, ready to exploit any weakness they could find, Simon hadn’t exactly had much choice. His being backed into a corner, however, hasn’t made him the most pleasant to deal with during the preamble to his rapidly inbound nuptials. For not only his sake, but also everyone else’s, he hopes that his bride-to-be is at least reasonably tame. With his luck? Highly doubtful.

His closest men had shared their theories and fantasies of some nymph-like creature, lovely and demure, happy to bend to Simon’s every whim, less wife, more well trained pet. Whilst he can appreciate a beautiful woman just as much as any man can, he keeps his expectations low - pleasant to be around and a decent conversationalist is enough for him. 

He’s tried to expel the thoughts of marriage from his mind for as long as possible. He’s far too busy to be distracted with silly fantasies of rose petal decorated aisles and which rings he’ll select for his betrothed. Keeping a kingdom running and the vulture-like men that are his enemies at bay is no mindless thing. Simon barely has time enough to sleep, let alone celebrate a wedding he doesn’t want, nor to take the day-long trek to the agreed meeting place to collect his new wife. To collect his new wife. Parade her on horseback like some exotic acquisition to be flaunted, to grow bored with when the novelty inevitably wears off. 

It’s impossible to ignore the way his knees creak as he rolls tiredly from his bed, the fathomless cold embedded in the very core of the flagstone floors seeping into his bare feet as he dresses himself. In spite of his status as King, Simon keeps his appearance reasonably simple, his tunics plain and armor scarcely decorated. Easier to dress. Simon Riley is a man of convenience, the bells and whistles of being monarch are nothing but a hindrance. 

The celebrations have thankfully quieted, all of his courtiers and castle residents undoubtedly tired, hungover and sore from the days of singing, dancing and drinking - days which he’s mostly spent holed away in his study, playing chess with wooden carved soldiers on battle maps, giving the occasional go-ahead to wedding planners and burying his nose in any literature on strategy he can find.  Today, unfortunately, his kingly duties outweigh his reclusiveness. He’ll only travel with Price to the meeting point - having originally wanted to go alone so as to make your initial meeting less intimidating, a point to which the head of his Kingsguard had made his disagreement abundantly clear. Yes, Price knows that Simon is fully capable of looking out for himself, but he sure as hell isn’t giving him any chance of proving that. He’s also desperate to get out of the castle and away from the mothers attempting to shove their daughters at his feet. So, with huffed complaints about the weather, and the threat of oncoming rain, signaled by the gritty gray clouds blotting out the starlight, the two men set off. Hooves beat thunderously across stone, dirt and grass as they make their way past the walls of the city, through the dwindling suburbs of thatched roofs and smoking chimneys and out into the vast plains of the countryside. The fresh air is a welcome reprieve from the smoke and burning metal of forges, the grassy hills and fields stretching for miles a refreshing break from the towering monoliths of stone that make up the palace. He can see why people would like it out here, away from the banal chatter of gossip and the unrelenting noise, left to grow stagnant within the confines of winding alleys or houses packed so closely together. Simon hasn’t even met you, and yet he already finds himself sympathizing for the adjustment you’ll have to make. 

You, meanwhile, feel surprisingly more grounded following your nap, having allowed both yourself and your horse to rest for a while before continuing your journey. The gnawing anxiety in your stomach is soothed by the handful of blackberries you’d found and snacked on as you continued through the slowly more sparse woodland, and although you’re still wallowing, at least you’re not wallowing on an empty stomach and no sleep. 

The sun slowly inches west behind the cloud cover, which quickly replaces the forest canopy you’ve always known, and tells you that in your mental absence, another day has nearly come and gone, and with that, the mileage covered which draws you closer to your inevitable fate. The birdsong has long since gone quiet, and there’s no longer movement indicative of life in the shrubbery. Just you, and the parapet on which you seem to endlessly walk. 

Until the forest seems to stop entirely. The trees halt their growth at some invisible boundary, wildflowers cease their spread with an unnatural abruptness and your stomach goes lurching. Like you’ve jumped from a cliff. You’ve jumped from a cliff, you’re about to hit the ground, and everything in you is screaming for time to stop, for fate to twist, for the inevitable to be somehow avoided. 

You could turn back. You could still turn back, and the forest would welcome you home with open arms. You could go home to your sisters, to your mother and the magic woven into everything you’ve ever known.

You could turn back - but in turning back, you’d only shatter the fragile peace forged so weakly between your own people, and those who’ve come to take you away. 

“Looks petrified.” Price observes from where he and Simon stand proud upon the hill, watching as a faerie on a white horse comes emerging tentatively from the treeline. You do, you poor, delicate thing, Simon thinks to himself as he, Price, and their imposing black friesians make their way to greet you. 

Snotty in the role of Pizza Granny: Vigert’s adventurous but accident prone cousin. Found and explored the tower before Vigert arrived, and is trying to help by giving hints + tips. Knee brace from past injury that never healed properly.

Pizza Granny in the role of Secret King: Secret eyes are replaced by Pizza Portals (Bonus note: she doesn’t play a very large role in the AU, same as the Secret King doesn’t play a large role in Pizza Tower)

Secret King in the role of King Ghost: Pizzascape and Pizzascare have eye motifs, and anything he possesses gains more eyes (Bonus note: Pizzascape and Pizzascare are renamed to Paintscape and Paintscare respectively)