The Crimson Prince： Awakening 49 Chapter 20: Kingdom

"Maya are you alright?" she felt rough hands on her shoulders as she heard Will's voice. Maya opened her eyes to see a tangle of brown hair hovering over her.

Will was crouched over Maya as she lay on the blanket of gra.s.s. The sun had already started to rise for yet another day. "How long was I out?" Maya mumbled as she rose to a seated position. She looked around to the battlefield and noticed black scorch marks on the ground with the absence of bodies.

"Just a few hours." Will said as he got to his feet and stretched. "The awakening must have taken a toll on you." he said as he brushed himself off. "Cainus said you were one of a kind."

Maya looked down at her left hand. A gold ring rested on her finger with a gem she hadn't seen before. It was an onyx gemstone with a golden outer edge. The gold seemed to glow in the rising sun. All of that was real? She thought as her eyes went from the ring to Will's eyes. "Was Jake really there? Where was that throne room and how did we get back here?" she had so many questions forming in her head, she barely had time to process them before they came out.

Will raised a hand to slow her down a little. "Cainus must have transferred your consciousness to the throne room, it's not that bad there. You might be able to go there yourself now. Yes Jake is there, just not the Jake that tortured you." Will scratched his head innocently as Maya rose to her feet slowly.

Maya stared at him with her mouth ajar. "What do you mean not the same Jake? There's only one and yes he did torture me." she couldn't wrap her head around why Will would keep something so important from her.

"Jake is being controlled by the corrupt flame, much like you were not even a few days ago." Will gave her a look that told her not to interrupt him. "He is my biological brother, and Cainus is the first king of Ebonhart."

"The throne room," Will continued before she could respond. "Is in my head." he pointed to his temple. "It's where I've been training on my off time. It's how I learned to fly, as well as how I was able to teach you." he said as if it were a normal every day conversation.

"So you've got a dead king and your brother living in your head?" Maya looked at Will with an eyebrow raised. "I thought I had problems."

Will sighed inwardly. "You know the times I was just sitting in the dungeon meditating?" he asked as he looked through his bag for some food. He silently thanked Leo for leaving it before he left. "I was in the throne room. Cainus taught me a decent amount of things besides flying." he brought out a pack of jerky and a few canteens of water.

Maya wrinkled her nose as Will gave her a strip of dried meat. "Don't you ever get tired of eating that?" she looked at the jerky in her hand. "Also, we only had a few hours of rest time, I can't imagine you being able to do much within that short amount of time."

Will tore off a chunk of his beef jerky and thought of how to reply. After moments of chewing, he swallowed and took a swig of water. "Time works differently within the throne room." he said as he looked down at his food, thinking how best to describe the difference without sounding insane to Maya. "How fast do you believe thought travels?"

Maya thought for a moment before responding. "Are you talking about forming a thought, or finis.h.i.+ng the thought?" it seemed she wasn't grasping the concept all too well.

"If I were to describe it, I would say the time in between." Will said as Maya remained confused. "A few minutes within your mind is almost a few hours." Will played with the idea of telling her about dragon ball z but stopped. I've already confused her enough. He thought as he couldn't suppress a half smile. "In the few hours a night I spent in the dungeon with you, I spent weeks within my own mind."

Will thought of the weeks he spent with Cainus. His mentor ensured he had the right amount of power within his aura to lift himself off the ground. That had been at least the first week.

The second week was learning how to glide through the air. He had to learn how to move forward before he could learn left and right. At that point, he was already wis.h.i.+ng for an owner's manual for his own body.

When he grasped the concept within his mind, he still had to adapt his body to the changes he learned. He could still hear Maya laughing at him while he ran into trees, or flew too high and fell on his rear.

It took even longer to teach Maya the concept of flight. He had his fair share of laughs as she learned the concept through trial and error.

Will was snapped out of his thoughts as Maya held up her empty pack of beef jerky. "Earth to Will," she said with a hint of playfulness. "Do you want to get something actually substantial to eat?"

"Where would you like to go?" Will had been in Crystallia for almost a year, yet he hadn't seen any dining areas around. "Is there a McDonald's around here or something? I haven't seen any locations we could actually sit and eat at before."

"That's because every second you've been here has been a second of training. Do you even know what the wildlife is like here?" Maya rolled her eyes at Will. "What's a McDonald's?"

Will shrugged. "There hasn't been enough time to do much else." he said as he put the food away. He purposefully avoided the last question. He would avoid fast food the rest of his life if he had anything to say about it.

"Do you even know what towns are in Ebonhart?" Maya asked skeptically.

"I know of Ember and Crystal Cove," Will put the bag on his back. "What else is there?"

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Prince of Ebonhart." she said with a mock bow and a sigh. "We are going to Holtz, it's the hunting town that's in charge of gathering game for the kingdom." Maya said as she grabbed his hand. "Maybe you can introduce yourself while we grab some actual food from the market."

They both leapt into the air and flew off from Ember. "You need to get better acquainted with the population of Ebonhart if you ever want to gain the trust of your people." she practically dragged Will behind her.

"Fine." Will started as he flew next to her. "I'll step into the spotlight if you come with me to my world after." he looked at her tattered black dress. "I really wouldn't mind seeing you in some of our clothes."

"Just don't dress me up like Bianca and we'll have a deal." She said with a smile.

The two laughed and talked as they flew over the woods heading northeast of Ebonhart. Will had no idea how big the kingdom actually was. They flew through ten minutes worth of forest before he saw a small clearing in the distance.

"There's a lot of unused area around here, why hasn't there been any expansion?" he looked down at the densely wooded area and could practically see the potential.

"The kingdom destroyed a lot of the cities as soon as your father went into seclusion. They left me alone because of the herbs I was able to grow, but my taxes were significantly higher."

Will remembered when he had met her. She has to break her back every day just to meet the levy the kingdom had demanded.

"Is it the same everywhere?" he asked as he continued to scan the woods underneath.

"If you mean the taxes, yes." she looked at Will with a hint of sadness in her eyes. "Even the town we are going to is highly taxed, almost so much that they cannot afford to live."

Will thought about how these people were living. Every second they flew, he felt better about staying with Maya instead of leaving with Bianca. How could he leave an entire civilization under the authority of a dictator who didn't hear his people's cry?

Will looked in the distance to where he saw the break in the forest. It was more like a hole in the woods, barely even noticeable from above, he could only imagine how hard it would be to find it on the ground.

"If these people are so far out from Ebonhart, how would the kingdom know exactly where to locate them?" he couldn't see through the trees so he had no idea what kind of path may be laid out for the knights to travel.

"Every village and town is along King's Road. Every village outside the path was destroyed. We must have lost a third of the kingdom in the span of a week."

"The road is that important to the trading route?" Maya nodded at Will.

"The knights can follow the road to any of the villages and collect the levy every fall. Without all of the villages within the path, anyone can ignore the tax and live free in Ebonhart."

"The villagers don't travel to the capital themselves?" Will thought about what it could mean for the people to travel themselves. They could potentially leave at the beginning of Autumn and make it to Ebonhart within a week at the slowest.

Maya shook her head. "If they brought their own crops and cattle, they could leave a portion and blame it on the harvest. The knights go to each village every year and search every home for anything they can take. If anything is hidden, the head of the household is punished."

Will remembered some of the conversation he had with Maya when he had first arrived in Crystallia. He also remembered her begging the knights to take everything she had instead of taking her.

"What about transportation here?" Will asked, trying to change the subject. "Do they only have horses?"

"Compared to your civilization it must be odd." Maya replied. "You have cars, boats and trains. We haven't had time or need to invent anything for help."

"You don't have oil or gas?" Will couldn't think of how they wouldn't know about the natural fuel from his world.

"No one is about to dig up the earth for something so meaningless." Maya said as she rolled her eyes.

"What about the aura then?" Will countered. "I'm sure someone with the wind aura could transport other people. Fire could help in construction and possibly make a subst.i.tute for gas." Will couldn't help but nerd out at the possibilities.

Maya chuckled as she looked at Will. "You are the first wind aura user in Crystallia Will. As for fire, remember your father secluded himself."

"None of the aura users remained after he left?" Will asked.

"What happened to Bianca before she left?" Maya replied to a thoughtful Will.

"Her aura faded because she no longer supported me." He said flatly.

"The king turned his back on the entire kingdom. Anyone within this realm lost their affinity as soon as he shut the door." Maya said

"Then Michael kept his affinity because he was on earth instead of Euph.e.l.lia." he said rather than asked.

"The village is just up ahead, are you ready?" Maya cut off the conversation abruptly as the clearing grew closer.

Will nodded, whether he was ready or not didn't matter, he should have been there a long time before.

"Here goes nothing." Will took in a deep breath as they fell from the sky into the dense wood line.