The Dragon & The Prince - A Moceit Story

"Taking Flight"

 The news of the crown prince's death spread like wildfire. While Apollonia grieved their fallen ruler, Dulcinea made a full retreat. No one was quite sure why, but it could be assumed it was out of respect for the dead.

Back in Parthenia, Patton was horribly grief stricken. For days he couldn't bring himself to eat nor sleep. All he could do was think. About his lost love. About the life he almost had. About how grey everything had become. It seemed as if all the light from his world was gone.

But it wasn't.

✧༺♥༻✧

"This is it." Janus thought as he felt the air thinning out. "This is as far as I can make it."

He stopped at the ledge of the mountain he had been scaling. Hours of running and climbing miles away from any signs on civilization had finally allowed him to escape. Janus's legs ached, both from running and from the splinters in them. Although they'd been stuck in his legs for hours he couldn't get them out.

It was difficult to grab anything with claws.

Janus had no idea how it had happened, but something had changed him in that forest. His entire body had become scaled and much larger. The sudden bulk complicated the simplest of things. It took him quite a while just to regain his balance, especially after discovering his wings. The mountain wind hit him, making him both tired and freezing cold. He normally wouldn't be this cold, but it seemed that even his blood had changed.

And it had.

He was a dragon.

Janus put aside his mountain of questions and instead focused on finding shelter for nightfall. He found a cave on the mountainside that would be big enough for him to sleep in. Janus managed to squeeze into it, struggling to get comfortable. He watched as the sun sank down to the horizon and the moon took its place. Once the sun had fully set, he felt a surge of warmth flood through his veins.

As suddenly as he had become a beast he returned to his true form. The prince found himself small again, alone on the mountaintop.

"How did this happen? How could this happen?!" Janus asked the almost empty cave. Now that he had shelter he was addressing the thousands of questions he had. "It's not possible... is it? Dragons haven't roamed the Earth in centuries! And besides that, I'm human. Or at least I thought I was..."

Janus rambled aloud pacing the floor of the cave, pulling his cape tightly around his shoulders to stay warm. He sorted through dozens of possible explanations for what had happened in the forest, he came to a conclusion. Only one thing could have done this to him: a curse.

Magic existed in the world, but it wasn't very widely used anymore. Only certain people were born with the ability to control magic and they had been dying off for generations. Very few were still around.

Still, perhaps it hadn't been a person who cursed him. Perhaps it was the forest itself. There had been a few instances of lands being magical although it was a possibility. Either way, Janus knew that he needed to figure out how exactly this curse worked if he wanted to break it and get back to-

"Patton..." Janus said, staring out over the dark mountain range. Somewhere out there Patton was waiting for him. He was supposed to be on his way to their wedding! He needed to get back to him as soon as possible.

He had to figure out when exactly the curse changed him into which body. After a few days staying in the cave on the mountaintop, Janus figured out that he remained in his human form all night and the dragon form all day.

Janus thought through what he needed to do. He thought that it would be best to return to Apollonia first, but to do that he would need to avoid acres upon acres of villages and settlements. It would simply be too difficult to hide himself for long enough to return home without being hunted.