The Wizard and the Beast {Solo}

Althea walked through the dark, rather dreary forest, on the lookout for a castle in the distance.  She climbed over large, knobby roots of trees that appeared to be both dead and alive at the same time.  The night sky only harbored a full moon, appearing to be cold and still along with Althea’s surroundings.  The entire forest was deathly quiet, nothing but the light of the moon providing light.  The wizard found their surroundings to be rather dingy and maybe even spooky, but she wasn’t really bothered by it.  Not too many things were all to scary to her, and she was there for adventure anyways - the atmosphere was just a part of the journey.  Grinning to herself, she recounted how she came about the call for adventure simply by taking a stop at a town.  She had overheard a conversation about a ‘beast in the castle’ and than declared she would go investigate.

Soon, a dark outline suddenly appeared on the horizon, causing Althea to run towards it, excited to investigate the mystery.  Knocking on its grand pine doors eagerly, apparently having either knocked too hard or the doors were just in a bad condition, because they fell inwards into the dimly lit castle.  Slightly scrambled for a second, Althea decided that she would just head in.  “Excuse me for the intrusion~”  She said walking across the thick doors to the carpeted floor of the castle.

Before she even had a chance to take a proper look around the dark castle, all the lights suddenly came on, a booming voice seemingly coming from everywhere.  “Turn back and leave, or face the consequences.”  It said plainly.  But Althea didn’t really pay attention to it, not really caring for people who didn’t have the grit to just straight up show her their face.  Instead, she began opening a desk of drawers located right next to the castle entrance, to her surprise finding something that appeared to be a dusty disk the size of the young girl’s fingerprint.  Picking it up out of curiosity, Althea wasted no time to blow off the dust clinging to the object.  It ended up being a golden coin, soft, intricate patterns decorating its surface.  “Put the coin down!” The voice yelled, anger present in their voice.  “Thief!  That’s what I reckon you are!  I’ll have to deal with you quickly then…”

But at this point, Althea had already returned the coin to its original location, moving onto the next point.  Suddenly, the floor underneath her opened up, the wizard remaining in the air for a moment before dropping down into the dark hole with no obvious bottom.  Thinking quickly, Althea took a deep breath, facing the bottom of the hole.  Exhaling, a stream of water exploded from her mouth, slowing her decent.  But, it wasn’t enough to drop to the ground in complete peace, because Althea’s face still met with the rock hard ground of what seemed like a basement floor.  Shakily getting to her feet, her face was reddened from the impact, not that she could know that.  Looking around her new surroundings, Althea quickly caught sight of a furry creature with large blue eyes, fangs, and luscious garments.  It reached up to Althea’s shoulders, but the wizard was pretty short in the first place anyways.  “Hey, who are you?”  She asked, rather intrigued by it.

Looking slightly taken aback, the creature wiped the tears from their eyes.  “I-I’m the prince of this land and castle, Lohol!  W-Who are you and how did you do that thing with the water?  That trap was meant to…”  Looking quite disheartened, Althea approached him in order to comfort the creature, and then it clicked.  Didn’t those townspeople say that the royal family was missing?  Standing closeby to the ‘prince’ Althea briefly inspected him before deciding she would trust him anyways.

“Oh, sorry for just barging in here, prince.  I’m a wizard and thought no one was living here, so came over to investigate.”  Looking around what seemed to be Lohol Castle’s basement, Althea noted that it looked a lot more like a surveillance room than anything else, monitors and televisions covering almost every wall.  “Hey, were you always so furry?”

The prince shook his head, taking out a vial from a pocket of their regal purple robe.  “I-I just wanted to be scary so I could chase away thieves, sorry for mistaking you for one, Ms. Wizard.”  But Althea couldn't help thinking that all it really did was make the prince look incredibly cuddleable.  Maybe the villagers who reported seeing a beast were only looking at his shadow or something.

She shook her head, “Nah, it’s all good.  Oh, and my name’s Althea, is anyone else here in the castle with you?”

At her last comment, the small prince began to tear up again.  “M-Mommy got sick all of a sudden...Daddy wanted it to stay private so that no one panicked, and then he caught it too!  All the servants were released when that happened so they wouldn’t catch anything either - the doctors too!  A-And now they’re gone, I’m alone!  Oh, I wish…”  But then Althea simply placed her hand squarely on his shoulder.

“Hey, you said your parents didn’t tell anyone to keep them from freaking out, right?”  Her grip tightened as she went on, eyes never once leaving the prince.  “Well all the villagers think the royal family is gone.  Is that what they wanted?”  The prince shook his head, tears streaming down his face.  Moving her hand from the furry boy’s shoulder to his head, Althea gave him a little pat.  “Then stop sulking around in this castle.”  With a grin, she turned away from him.  “Your scaring everyone.”

The prince simply looked on for a moment before pointing to a stairwell to his right, a smile slowly etching across his face.  "The stairs are over there, Ms. Althea."  How could someone flip flop from ditzy to courageous in less than a minute?