The Prince On His Bed

As a man stumbled around in the abyss, all he could hear was the lightning crackling.

The man followed along his road made from sound, but as he followed the crackling, he slowly grew shorter in stature while his muscles atrophied along with it, his hair grew shorter, and his clothes changed to golden-brown shorts with a leather buckle, a striped white shirt, followed by a black bowtie.

As he followed the crackling sound, he soon saw a blow glow in the dark abyss. He followed after it, like a moth attracted to a campfire he followed after it.

Soon, by the time he reached the blue scattering glow, he had regressed to when he was a child. He for some reason was hoping to find his mother in this bottomless abyss. Because she was always beside his lightning.

"Lucas, come and find your mother will you~," A static voice said in the boy's mind as he looked through the lightning. He was sifting through it as he touched the lightning and moved it aside with his bare hands, searching for the static voice that he had already begun to forget.

"Lucas-"

"Shut up will you!" Shouted the boy as he smacked a piece of lightning on his side towards an indistinct location in the void.

That static voice... he didn't want to hear it. It was the pain that had left him.

He didn't want it back.

But in a void of nothingness, he could do nothing but continue searching. Even if his lightning soothed his soul, it still harboured the pain from a time long ago. In a time when he still used to have a family.

As he continued to wack the lightning around in the dark abyss, he touched upon a solid figure. Something that was hard and heavy for his boyish arms to move alone.

But when the boy felt what he had stumbled upon, a hand made from pure lightning caught his attacking hand and held it in a vice grip as it slowly burnt into his flesh like a stamp made from heated iron.

"Ahhhh!" The boy screamed and dropped to the floor at the searing pain as he shivered at the flaming touch of lightning holding his hand.

'No, no! Not this soon, I can't be meeting that thing this soon!' He thought in a panic as he tried to pull his hand back from the monster grabbing it, only for it to pull him towards its chest and grab the boy from both sides as it gave him a hug with its burning touch on his body. Giving him pain, unlike anything that he could've imagined as it held him tight.

His back burnt from the grasp of the monster, his chest burned from the pressure of the monster against his own, while his face felt as if it was slowly melting from the monster's chest smothering his cries of rejection.

"Let me go! Let go-!" The boy shouted as he tried to struggle his way out of the monster's grasp, only for it to tighten its grip and make the boy cry out another scream of pain.

But as the boy screamed, the monster brought its face towards the boy's cheek and fused it with his before voicing out a single coherent line from its maddening static screeches.

In a static noise, it made an intelligible sentence as its voice took a demonic tone, "Will you look at that..."

"...you found me, Lucas~"

__________________________________

"Prince, it is time to wake up." A voice called as she constantly shook a young man with blond hair out of his slumber.

As soon as the young man heard the call, his eyes opened wide and he got up from his bed with a groan.

The voice from before was his maid. He didn't really know how she got here. In fact, he wasn't even sure he had a maid. But he still felt glad that she came to wake him up anyway.

The Prince looked at the young woman and nodded at her, "Thank you, Aveline. Did you iron my clothes for me and bring me my breakfast?"

Aveline the maid smiled at him and bowed, "Yes sire. I have washed your clothes and ironed them out for you, you will find them hung outside your cupboard as always."

After saying that, she took a step back and moved aside as a male servant brought a silver trolly with food on the top and drinks at the bottom.

After the trolley came into the Prince's view, Aveline did another bow and introduced the meal for the morning.

"Sire, this is pancakes that a duke has recently invented along with eggs and grilled chicken as the main dish. The chicken is a subspecies of Magical Beasts in the fourth realm of cultivation, so it is very nutritious and filling for a cultivator, while at the same it was made by a chef in the Law Breaking Realm with a very rare Law based on cooking. It is a dish I had specifically picked based on your mood for the past couple of months, so here I present my masterpiece!" Aveline said in a chipper tone as she brought a mini table on the Prince's lap and placed the pancakes as the appetiser on top.

The Prince chuckled when he saw this, he held the plate with the new flat food when he suddenly realised that something was wrong. He looked back at the maid with a smile as he spoke, "Once again Aveline, thank you for the wonderful breakfast you have prepared. Now, tell the butler to leave the food and send him away, I wish to speak with you for a little while."

Aveline looked shocked for a little while before she nodded and told the butler to leave the trolley and close the door as he left the room.

With the butler gone the maid immediately jumped onto a chair near the Prince's bed and hugged his chest tightly, almost making the food fall over only for it to suddenly float in the air as it moved away from the couple.

The Prince looked at the ridiculous actions of the maid, only for him to start laughing his ass off.

"Alright fine, you could trick the butler but you can't trick me with your illusion magic," The Prince said as he pried the woman away from his body and levitated her to a chair further away from him.

But during this entire ordeal, all the maid could do was frown and protest, "What illusion magic?! I'm Aveline your maid! There is no way I could be a cultivator who would do all of this for a prank!" She said as she harrumphed at the behaviour of the Prince in a displeased fashion.

"You know Aveline, it's not really convincing when the amount of force I used to push you away would've pulverised a normal mortal. You know that, right?" He said as he gave a smug grin at the woman floating above him.

The 'maid' Aveline rolled her eyes before giving a smile with a sigh following after.

"You're really not cute when you know me so well, darling," Aveline says as greenlight started emitting from her body and morphed into an hourglass figure with long hair while continuously pulsating during the entire process.

After a while, the bright green silhouette dimmed, transforming the previous plain-looking maid into a beautiful woman with long black hair and forest green eyes staring at the Prince with worried eyes as she saw the distant look in the gaze of her lover.

After the transformation, the Prince still had his eyebrows raised as he commented, "Didn't think you would wear an actual maid dress for me, what changed?" before looking away and taking a bite out of his floating pancake.

Aveline gave another sigh before she slowly floated toward her Prince and gave him a hug while enveloping his head in her chest. Letting the man know her worry through the beating of her disturbed heart.

"You're the one who changed, stupid," She said as she hugged the man tighter.

"What do you mean? I'm the same as always," He said when his lightning suddenly shot in an arc toward his chicken and fried it into a burnt crisp.

Aveline quickly jumped away from him in a hurry and tried to grab the last few pieces of the chicken she had brought for breakfast. But alas, it had now become a well-cooked pile of ash, that was soon to be blown away by the open air outside.

"Nooo, my chicken!" Aveline lamented as she tried to grab the last few handfuls of ashes in a hurry only for them to slip through her hands and be blown outside.

After the chicken went away, Aveline turned toward the Prince with a depressed look, "The chicken... I worked so hard to cook... is gone?" she said as her eyes started to glaze over with moisture while looking at the prince, who now had a guilty expression.

"W-wait, I didn't mean that- my lightning just blasted on its own!" The man said as he quickly floated by Aveline's side before enveloping her in a hug and running his hand through her hair in an attempt to calm her down.

But despite her current crying, Aveline still hugged her Prince as she rested her head on his shoulder and smiled to herself in a content way.

"Don't worry about the chicken, I don't care about that as much as I care about you leaving this room and actually do something else instead of moping around and doing nothing. What happened? Was it that nightmare with the talking lightning again?" She said as she hugged him tightly in a way to comfort him.

The Prince took a deep breath before he sighed.

"Yeh..."

"It was about mother again."