Chapter 1 - The Crystal Palace

The morning was cool and crisp; only a few clouds dotted the beautiful blue sky, and only one structure broke the skyline. It was a beautiful crystal palace that sparkled blue and white. Just outside, a girl stood there. She looked as if she did not belong to the beautiful day. She looked as though she had not slept in days. Her hair and her clothes and hair were sodden and torn. She stared at the palace as if it were something terrible and knew that it was.

She could tell you what the palace looked like on any other day. It was a beautiful translucent crystal, always white. Never the watery blue that you could see in it that day. She could tell you of what had happened in that palace the night before, and of the terrible secret it now guarded behind its beautiful walls.

She looked up and walked slowly to the massive doors and pulled them open. Water trickled out of the building and puddled on the step outside. She ignored it and strided in, sure of her destination. Not many people of her rank knew the palace well, but its layout had been burned into her memory. She walked until she reached a set of intricately paused double doors and stopped staring up at them, seeming almost afraid to open them. She hesitantly slid her trembling hands into the handles on the doors and pulled them slowly open.

Inside was a huge sunken ballroom with an elevated ring all around the edge. Ramps from the edge led down into water; the entire pit was flooded. Something indistinguishable lay on the other side of the room, and the girl headed directly toward it. She walked through the water until it came up to her chest, at which point it no longer rose on her. She continued to plow through the water as if she did not notice it was there.

It took her almost ten minutes to reach the other side, and she immediately kneeled next to the body of the young man that laid there. She shook him softly willing him to wake up, but she knew that he never would again. Tears rolled off her face to join the flood of the room, as a flood of memories from the night before overcame her.

She had been in a hurry, but had stopped to talk with him anyway. Like she always did. But this time, when she had to leave, he pleaded that I didn't. They argued; he left, still angry, and then she left. Only hours later they met in the palace...for the last time.

Some idiotic water mage tried to kill everyone in the palace that night. He flooded it, the entire building. They had been on the bottom floor, the first and quickest flooded, in the ballroom. Everyone panicked and ran toward the doorway, swimming when they had to. They had been on the far end of the room and the room was almost half full when they reached the far end, and the doors were being pulled shut by the constant movement of the water. He managed to hold the door open for the moment it took for her to swim in...and was shut inside his crystal coffin.

He had had no reason to help her. She had treated him so terribly that they were barely on speaking terms. Why had he saved her then?

As she gazed at him sprawled across her lap, she realized that she would never know.

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