Draco's Predicament ✔️

Chapter 1 - New Day

I woke up with a pounding headache again.

It's nothing out of the ordinary, really. I get these headaches at least once a week now.

They've been happening for as long as I can remember. Well, that really doesn't say much since I can't remember anything from before meeting Lady Jane. She said that my siblings had wiped my memories so I can't come back and seek vengeance.

Lady Jane said that the headaches were a side effect of the medicines and I'd have to endure them if I wanted to live.

I'm so used to the pain now that they don't bother me much at all. Sometimes, I even forget about them.

Until bright flashes in my mind brings the pain back.

I'd asked Lady Jane about those flashes, too, but she dismissed them right away, saying they were nothing but a trick of the light. Even though we live in a dark cave. Underground.

Shaking my head to get rid of the train of thoughts- Lady Jane always scolded me for thinking too much, asking too many questions, just being too... talkative- I got dressed and walked to the dining room.

"Ah, Draco, pumpkin, there you are." Lady Jane said, looking up from her glass of champagne. She's always drinking them, no matter the time. They're probably the reason why her teeth are so... stained.

"Good morning, Lady Jane," I said politely, with a little bow.

"I need you to go scout the castle today. I have reason to believe the princesses know where we are, so we need to check. Right away."

I nodded obediently and ate breakfast - the same old clump, hard-to-swallow oatmeal I've been having every day for the past who knows how long. Drinking water makes it go down faster, I've learned.

I quickly returned to my room, and picked up a small and old tattered journal with the word "oreo cake" in it that I hide under my pillow, and my lucky coin. I stroked the sword line art on the journal, frowning. I found this inside my jacket pocket when Lady Jane found me on the ground, and I didn't want to tell her about it for some weird reason.

"Draco! Out! Now!" Lady Jane screamed. I've come to learn that she's not a very patient woman.

I stuffed the journal and the coin in my pocket and ran out. Lady Jane was standing at the entrance of our cave with her vial of blue liquid. I groaned as soon as I caught sight of it. Can't believe she was making me go invisible!

"Hurry along, Draco dear." She said impatiently, tapping her foot on the ground. I gulped and stood in front of her as she poured the vial around me in a circle, then started chanting some weird language.

A weird, gravity-less feeling filled me up and my head felt like it was going to explode from holding too much gas. I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the feeling to disappear.

When I opened my eyes again, I was standing on the peak of a small mountain. Lifting my head, I saw an entrance to a huge cave in front of me.

Sure, it was filled with bodyguards from my sisters' subjects, but it still seemed so empty.

So empty it seemed haunted.

Squeezing my lucky coin, I jumped down and flew towards the cave. Yes, flew. Lady Jane had used some sort of magical enchantment on me that allowed me to conjure up magical puff-balls and gave me the ability to fly.

I landed softly in front of the entrance, which had a huge chunk of rock missing on top of it. I wonder what caused the hole; a canon, perhaps? Or magical puff-balls like mine?

I smiled a little at my creative nickname for my deadly weapons. Puff-balls. The name reminds me of-

My train of thought broke off as a fresh wave of pain tore through my head. I let out a groan and clutched my head tightly, wishing for it to go away. These kinds of headaches were special - they only happened when I try thinking about my past. But I wasn't thinking about my past... I was thinking about Cheetos I used to eat!

Suddenly, things threw me in a whirlwind. Something was pulled from my memory.

I blinked, and suddenly, I wasn't standing at the top of an abandoned staircase, but a ballroom filled with pink balloons everywhere, and a huge banner right in front of me screaming "HAPPY BIRTHDAY BETTY."

Huh, I wonder who Betty is and if her birthday turned out alright?

Then everything faded back into a cold, empty staircase.

I made my way down the winding staircase, my boots echoing loudly in the cave. Torches along the walls of the cave flicked on automatically as I walked in. Reaching the end, a set of staircase ravelled downwards.

At the end of the staircase, there were two separate corridors splitting off to the west and east. I turned left and headed down what would be the west corridor.

Upon entering the first abandoned bedroom, I realized just how... well, abandoned, this place was. Spiderwebs were hanging all around the room, and I swear I saw a spider skitter away from my feet. A huge bed sat in the middle, its bedsheets rumpled.

Something tells me it's Lady Jane's fault.

The rest of the corridor consists of mostly the same, with some occasional rats for company. The east corridor also had pretty much the same thing, but unlike the west, the east had an almost hidden corridor at the end. It took me tripping on an abandoned stick, jamming my elbow on the wall and falling facedown down the set of stairs to find it.

I sat up at the bottom of the stairs, aching everywhere. The hidden corridor had led me even further down from ground level. This is what I would call a true dungeon.

Looking around, I see that I'd landed in a dungeon of some sort. There were empty cages of all kinds around the dungeon; hanging ones, flat ones, even a hexagonal one! I took a closer peek at the hexagonal cage, then immediately leaped back at the sight of dull black bones.

After a few more hours of searching, I'd found nothing interesting in the cave other than that peculiar dungeon. Flying back up the hill, I landed at exactly where I'd arrived and tapped my foot three times. A blue swirl appeared around me and I felt the disgusting sensation of falling upside down again, before landing back on my feet at the entrance of the castle.

"Draco! Finally, what took you so long!" Lady Jane's shrill voice asked, and I heard her heels echoing on the drawbridge, coming towards me.

"Hi, Lady Jane. The cave looks fine."

"Good. We travel back to the castle, under the cover of darkness tonight."

I wanted to laugh at how villainy she sounded.

"By the way, good job. I don't know what you did, but that pesky witch girl of Krewdom has been gone for a few days now, and all her siblings are slowly disappearing as well, one by one. Then, they appear again. Like, on Monday, blondie was gone, and then Wednesday she was back, but pink-haired was gone, and so on."

She looks at me.

"What is going on?"