He awoke in his subliminal world, but this time, things felt different. It was cold, wet, fluidic, serous and dark. He literally couldn't see anything, no light, no air, just an enclosed watery space. But he wasn't sinking, he could definitely feel himself in the midst of something watery and fluidic, but he was neither drowning in it nor was he feeling suffocated from the small dark enclosed space he's suddenly found himself in.
Things were different this time around, he knew he was no longer in his conscious world and that after encountering that prince again. He had been caught the second time wandering in the Palace by the same prince and he knew he would surely be in a lot of trouble once he wakes up from this trance. But that could bother him later, because right now, how things had unfolded this time around was rather different, even too different that he himself was taken with surprise by it.
He always knew his subconscious self to be like an invisible third person whenever he travelled back or forward in time. He saw and heard everything from a third person's point of view. But what was wrong this time around? He could feel himself being in the physical world of his sub-consciousness, like he was physically existing in his subconscious world, or like he was in the body of someone that was already existing in this world. He felt the watery fluid around him, the dark enclosure of something he couldn't explain that he was somewhat trapped in.
What had gone wrong this time? Why was he physically and actively in his subliminal world? And if so, where exactly was he? Whose body was he in? Why was it that he suddenly fell into a trance as soon as he touched an Imperial for the first time and not only that, why was it that things were suddenly different in his subconscious world after feeling an Imperial's touch?
Then his eyes came open, or rather, he forced his eyes opened. He could feel the watery fluid surrounding him both on his face and in his mouth. Only the heavens knew where he was and what all these fluid meant, but as soon as he opened his eyes, he saw something else apart from the wet enclosure. There a little boy sat, with very many colors and paints all over him and even on his body. The little child was clad in a princely attire and even though he had the wet colors and paints covering him from his head to toe, it couldn't hide the fact that the little boy was an Imperial.
Cael couldn't tell if it was because of his abilities or whatever, but the things he was seeing was what he would originally not see, especially given that he was being encircled by something, but he could see everything without the enclosure. The child, the little child he saw outside of the enclosure, toiling with many paints and colors, then turned his head around to where Cael was watching him. He looked up towards something else that seemed to be above Cael's direction, but which Cael could not see for himself-what the child was really looking at.
But something was really familiar about the smeared little child. His dark green eyes, his cute vivid dimples that appeared when he smiled, and the entire ambience the child carried felt really familiar to Cael.
The prince. Yes! The prince Cael had encountered on two occasions and in two different awkward times. The little child was the prince, probably as a little boy. Cael was now beginning to have little understanding of everything that was happening. To start with, it was the prince's touch that had initially triggered his abilities in the first place; he suddenly fell into a trance when the prince touched him, so it wasn't strange to know that he had actually travelled back in time to when the prince was just a little boy.
But the question now was the unusual way he had come to find himself in his subconscious world this time around. The enclosure, the watery fluid, the thick walls that surrounded him, and every other thing.
'Sylven!'
A tender unfamiliar voice immediately came from above Cael and he tried again to look overhead to see whose it was, but he couldn't. He struggled and struggled to do so but couldn't, the fluid and the situation he's found himself in seemed to constrain him from doing so.
'Sylven!' the voice came the second time and Cael saw as how the little prince turned to face his direction and smiled again, revealing his little set of deciduous tooth.
'Oh, look at you, you are making zero progress in your painting exercise' the voice above Cael continued, and it somehow seemed to make Cael's heart flutter, like when his mother would always coo him to sleep as a baby.
'I guess painting's really not his thing'
Another voice came again to Cael and this time he turned and was able to see who it belonged to. There stood a queenly figure, tall, majestic, beautiful and royally adorned. The woman in her dignified robes of heavy silk dyed in deep hues and that had intricate embroidery-threads of silver and gold and a mantle of velvet falling down from her shoulders, stood on her position and smiling down to the little prince covered in paint.
'Well, we do not expect him to be just like his brother, maybe we should let him try something else. What do you think?' the queenly figure continued and the voice above Cael gave a firm positive reply.
But just then, before Cael could see or hear anything else from the subconscious world he was in, he slowly started to feel dizzy. The voices were now coming inaudibly to him and the sight before him, outside of the thick-walled enclosure, was also becoming blurry. His sudden dizziness persisted for a while before Cael could completely fall into a deep sleep and from his subconscious world, he was returned back to reality.
Cael's eyes gradually came open and they met with the finely patterned and colored ceiling above him. As he ran he gaze through the whole room and discovered, with the embellished décor around the chamber and the regal setting of furniture and fittings in the room, that he was definitely in a place he shouldn't be. The bedchamber was warmly illuminated with decorated lamps and scented wax lights, whose sweet fragrance gave the entire room a welcoming and intimate ambience. He swiftly raised himself from the bed and sat up to his hind end and he began to look about him tensely.
No one was in the bedchamber and out of the window, Cael could see the light from the moon that had already prevailed the day sun. It was already dark. He had been unconscious from the real world throughout the daytime and now that he's regained himself, he was in a place that he was clearly forbidden to be.
He quickly brought himself down from the bed and unto his feet, and as he moved towards the door of the bedchamber, he could feel his legs trembling for what he might encounter outside of this chamber. But again, along the thriftily irradiated long terrace that could lead out of the chamber, he witnessed nothing. Maybe the heavens were being merciful to him again or maybe his luck was still following after him, but he kept moving without seeing anyone.
Now out of the chambers and into the open space of the quarters, he began to scurry towards the gates without even looking behind him. Once he was out of these gates, he was free.
'I don't think so' the prince's voice came from among the shadows under the willow tree that stood at the corner of the quarter and Cael immediately stopped walking.
'…I mean, you are in the Main Palace right now and not the lodge-house that you were previously in, and the Main Palace is mostly fortified and guarded by the Palace guards during nighttime; a strange fellow walking in the Main Palace by this time of the day would definitely cause an alarm'
The prince carried on and moved away from the shadows and into Cael's sight, his dark green eyes glimmering with the light from the standing well-lit lamps.
'So, I don't think you should walk out that gate just like that' the prince put on and continued looking into Cael's eyes as they both stood staring at themselves. And just then, a nobly dressed guard suddenly appeared from behind the quarter and bowed in revere to the prince.
'I sent away my guards and servants so that your presence here wouldn't be known to any other person except myself. This is Zophai, my personal sentinel, he would take you back to the lodge-house discreetly, so that no one gets aware of your existence in the Main Palace' the prince said and swiftly turned his back on Cael as he began to watch the walls surrounding the quarters.
The guard bade Cael to straightly follow him and as Cael took few steps towards the guard, he abruptly paused again. He then turned slowly to look at the prince who still had his back facing them.
'Err…I…just want to say thank you…for everything…then and for today also…thank…thank you' Cael stammered in timidity to the prince as he clasped his hands together and twiddled with his thumbs. He then swerved himself about and trailed closely behind the guard.
The prince remained standing before the willow tree and as soon as Cael and the guard left the quarter through the back, he chuckled and smiled to himself.
'What an appealing gentleman'
Cael sidestepped into the grounds of the lodge-house, luckily for him, the guards positioned at the lodge-house were rather few and somewhat slapdash with their assignment. They hovered here and there in insignificant places in the ground that made it easy for Cael to walk into the lodge-house without being spotted, talk more of being questioned, by any of them.
As Cael scampered through the hallways and towards his room, many thoughts ran through his mind and most of his thoughts was that of the trance he had fallen into earlier in the day, when he stumbled upon that prince the second time. How strange things had turned up this time around, because back in the Mountain Tribe, and since he suddenly began to fall into the subconscious world where he was either taken back in time, to events that had happened in the past, and which only occurred whenever he came into physical touch with anything, he was subconsciously given the ability to read the past of that particular thing.
When it came to seeing visions of things already past, he fell into a trance but for a short while, it came for just a short moment that could hardly be discovered by anyone, and even if he were to be removed completely from reality, he would lose his consciousness but again, regain it in no less than an hour. It had always been this way when he was in the tribe, that even the people of the tribe didn't take too much out of his sudden and random black-outs, they just termed it as a natural illness that could happen to anyone, and this made for why Cael's abilities was never detected by the people of the tribe, well except for the old man and the boys.
But now he was here in the Palace and his powers manifesting for the first time because of an Imperial's touch, things seemed to have changed. He was now caught up in a trance for a longer period and there in his subconscious world, he could also feel himself physically existing in the past and limited by some watery fluid in some dark enclosure. In short, the unexpected change in his abilities was not something he could call better or advantageous to himself. If he was to fall into trances for longer periods, both for the past and the future, when it comes to an event where the flashes of the tragedy that was to happen, came bursting in his sight as usual, how was he going to be able to stop it before it happened if the flashes were to delay? Concisely, how was this change going to be beneficial to him and the goal he was to achieve here?
And atlas, Cael knew that this was truly the end of the road for him, he had botched up the only chance he had, and now, he had no other options than to take the test, as it was expedient for all the selected ones to do so, and before he could witness his woeful failure, he would secretly meet with the royal examiners for the test and politely ask to be transported back to the Mountain Tribe from whence he came. Cael nodded firmly to himself as he strolled towards the room where he was lodged with the Southerner. But as he raised his head to look over to where his room was, he saw at the door, a handful of familiar people who were peeking their heads out of the door to watch the hallways of the lodge-house. Cael eyes met with those of the northern guy's figure and immediately, the anxiety that was clearly written on Haniel's face faded and changed to a vivid expression of relief.
'Dear heavens, where did you wander off to again you Mountainer? Is getting lost like one of the hidden talents of everyone from the mountains?' he said as he quickly moved to grasp Cael by his shoulders. Cael gave him a short distressed sigh and then shifted his gaze to the rest of the young men that were standing behind Haniel. There was Jorai, the eastern guy, with his usual hand-fan with which he blew himself nonchalantly, and then Mikneiah, the guy with whom Cael shared the room, and even to Cael's utmost surprise, the younger fellow who appeared so much like the older version of Zaza was also standing with them; Unni. Cael looked at each one of them and wondered as to why they were all peeking out of the door of Cael's room.
'You guys…what are you all…?'
'We wanted to go look for you, you dull-head. No one had seen you since the assembly and we knew you must have been roaming somewhere in the Palace and we got worried. We got worried that you might have gone someplace you shouldn't be and might get arrested for that, we also didn't want to tell the guards about it or that would have made things worse for you. So we decided amongst ourselves to sneak out at the right time and go search for you' Haniel explained to him swiftly as he continued squeezing his grip on his shoulders.
'All…all of you?' Cael inquired again as his eyes fell unto the guy that looked so much like the older version of Zaza.
'What do you mean all of you? We were all dead worried!' Haniel carried on.
'No, you were dead worried Haniel, not we. I mean since you came to realize that the Mountainer was no longer in the grounds, you couldn't stop blaming yourself for having left him all on his own during brunch earlier today. You got green-eyed that he was sitting at meat with these two other fellows and not us, and you made the both of us not to eat brunch because of that' Jorai tossed in tetchily as he forcefully closed the fan and crossed his hands, furrowing his brows at Cael.
'Ohh…I…' Cael tried to explain.
'No one wants your excuse Mountainer, all we want to hear is why and how you came to leave the grounds without being spotted and where on this earth did you mosey to?' Jorai cut in crossly and Cael licked his lips in guilt.
'I'm sorry. For whatsoever this might have caused all of you, I am really sorry. I was foolish to not have taken into consideration how you guys would feel about me wandering off again without your knowledge, I took your concerns towards me for granted, and I am truly sorry' Cael said apologetically looking from Haniel to Jorai and then to the other two young men behind them.
'And about earlier today, I was the one who asked to sit with him at brunch, because I couldn't find a suitable and peaceful place that I could sit without…you know…people whispering and murmuring about…' Unni, the younger fellow put forth as he hung his head remorsefully to the ground.
'Ohh, the Lord's son. It must be very hard on you to constantly hear those rumors' the eastern guy replied him and Cael at this point, really wanted to know about this rumor, he could remember Mikneiah, the southern guy, also talking about it back then at brunch.
After washing up and readying himself to hit the hay for the day, Cael laid upon the bed and reminisced on everything that had happened on his second day in the Palace. From his sneaking away from the grounds, to roaming through the premises of the Main Palace, to his second encounter with the beautiful prince, the trance and how differently things had turned up, and now to the northern, eastern and southern guys who were worried about him and even devising a way to sneak out from the grounds in search for the supposedly lost Mountainer. When he ruminated on all of these things, he then came to realize what a long stressing day it had been and maybe, just maybe, he had made some new set of companions today.
**************
The thirty selected young men for the Bid all sat for the cognitive test the next morning and the following day that came after the day of the test, Cael was occupied with how to execute his plan of secretly meeting with the royal examiners and ask to be taken back home before anything could follow. But everything seemed not to go his way anymore, his luck was appearing to have already gone out from him and things came crumbling down. He was now standing again, in the midst of the other thirty young men who were all now on the edge, waiting for the chosen twelve to be announced to them. Haniel was also standing close beside him, having Cael's hands tightly locked into his, in order to prevent him from vanishing out of his sight.
'I don't know why you bother holding the Mountainer, it's evident that this would be his last time together with us and also being in the Palace' Jorai's dismissive tone came from Haniel's left-hand side and Haniel scoffed at him as he turned to him.
'What about you? You look rather certain that you would be among the chosen twelve' Haniel replied sarcastically.
'Of course, there is no doubt about that, I know I might not be like some other people whose relations would definitely get them to be among the Princes' Escorts, but I am very confident of what my unequaled intellect can do' Jorai continued and then slightly glanced over to where Unni was standing with Mikneiah, the southern guy.
'What do you mean…?' Haniel tried to question.
'You know Unni? The youngest son of Lord Zur, head of The High Council? They say this test will be unbiased and everything, but I doubt if that would be the case. I mean, the rumor about him being selected to be among the thirty while someone else wasn't selected at the expense, was already going about immediately we came here' one of the young men in the grounds whispered to his friend as they took furtive and distasteful glances towards Unni.
'Exactly my point, if they knew that they would at the end of everything, chose people based on their reputation and influence, then why was the test initiated in the first place?' his friend whispered back bitterly and rustled with his lips.
'Beats me too. But who I pity the most in all of this is that poor Mountainer who was luckily selected to be among us, seeing how things are at this point, there's definitely no other option for him but to go back to his mountains' the fellow carried on and he and his friends giggled silently to themselves.
'He making it this far is already a miracle itself, it is better if he just appreciate how far he's come and with a heart full of gratitude return back to his mountain climbing'
'True, because how does he expects to stand a chance against the sons of the Lords and Nobles that are here because of their father influences, I also heard that Jezer, the grandson of the Overlord Enoch is even among us' his colleague put in and they stared at each other for a moment before bursting into another round of mumbling laughter.
'It is home sweet home for the poor Mountainer'
'No, no, mountains sweet mountains you mean'
'AND NOW, I SHALL ANNOUNCE THE TWELVE, WHO HAVE SUCCESSFULLY PROVED THEMSELVES WORTHY THROUGH THE TEST, TO BECOME ESCORTS TO THE TWELVE PRINCES OF THE LAND!' the master examiner who had a scroll in his hands and standing on a level rocky podium, shouted out to the young men before him, clearly making everyone's hearts to skip into their stomachs.
'Jezer; son of Maaseiah. Cael; son of Jephthah, Eshek; son of Zur, Mikneiah; son of Jasaiah, Jorai; son of Terah, Unni; son of Zur, Jehiel; son of Magdiel, Haniel; son of Abdiel, Raphael; son of Rephaiah, Lael; son of Igeal, Neariah; son of Jeconiah, and finally, Jaanai; son of Jerahmeel.'