Bartholomew Nelson and the World of Zathya: The Prince and The Heir

Chapter 23

Bart awoke to a bright light and a huge room. At first he didn't quite remember what had happened the night before, but he knew something wasn't right. That's when it hit him. Charlotte had been taken. The sadness of losing his best friend hit him like a pound of bricks. Not once had it even crossed his mind that she would be a casualty in this, but he knew that they wouldn't keep her alive for long. They would probably torture her for answers and then kill her when they were done. After all, it was always Bart who they were after. Charlotte was expendable. To make things worse, they hadn't been on the best of terms. They had never fought as much as they did while in the woods. Bart had never before felt so distanced from his best friend. Why did he let them argue? Why did he let it go on for so long?

"So stupid," he said to himself. He didn't even know if he would get the chance to apologize but he couldn't think like that. If anything, he had to save her so he could set the record straight. Bart sat up and immediately felt pain in his left cheek. He thought back to what happened and then remembered that Jonah had punched him in the face.

"I owe you one," he said to himself as he looked around the room. The room was enormous. There were golden curtains hanging by the window and the blankets he was under were also golden. There were wooden cabinets and dressers and a couple mirrors. He got from under the covers and headed over to the window. He looked out and saw a huge courtyard far down, revealing that Bart was high in the castle. There was a giant fountain in the middle with white pearly marble surrounding it. The walls of the castle were made of pearly white bricks. A lot of people down there were walking around and then he realized it was daytime. How long had he been out? As he continued to look around outside he saw just how massive the kingdom really was. There were slightly shorter towers in the distance and the castle itself looked liked it was the size of about one hundred mansions. "This is crazy," he said. He decided he could marvel over the glorious castle later and he rushed to the door but when he stepped out into the hall Jonah was waiting for him.

"I see you're finally awake," he said with a smile. "Good because Demetrius wants to talk to you." Before Bart could say anything, Jonah started walking away. He hurried and followed and decided to pay Jonah back later. The inside of the castle was just as huge as the outside looked. There were tons of different hallways that they passed on their way to Demetrius. There were also tons of pictures on the walls. Either many people worked here or many people lived here because Bart was sure he walked past at least two hundred people just on the floor they were on now. Everyone was rushing around doing different things. One woman had papers floating behind her as she walked and wrote things down. Another woman was in her room with different outfits floating around her clearly unable to decide what to wear. Some guy was running as fast as he could trying to get his shoe on.

"What's going on?" Bart asked, trying not to laugh at the guy as he tripped and face planted inches away from the steps. "Why does everyone seem so busy?"

"It's always busy here," Jonah said. "The woman with the papers is a teacher at the school and the guy tripping over himself is, too." Bart looked back as they passed the woman with the papers. She was a teacher? At what school? Bart never even thought about the possibility of there being a school in Zathya. Why do they even need one?

"What do they teach?" he asked. "Like, history and math and things?" Jonah laughed.

"Well yes and wielding, of course," he said. Bart felt like an idiot. Duh, he said in his head. They finally made it to a huge staircase and started to go down. Bart lost count of how many steps he went down before they turned and headed towards these huge golden doors. On their way, something caught Bart off guard. On the wall to his left was a stream of water flowing out of it. There was no pipe and the water poured out in a straight line towards the ground. If that wasn't crazy enough, the water vanished before it hit the ground. Bart tried to touch it just to see if he could.