Prince Thomas was terrified and confused and felt rather humiliated. A mere week earlier, he’d been living in his father’s castle, practicing to fight with a blade and learning strategy and diplomacy and intrigue, being the oldest son and heir apparent to the King. However, on one seemingly ordinary hunting trip a week ago, all of the people around him, his guards and one of his friends, had all fallen asleep and fallen off their horses almost all at once. Thomas had remained on his horse for a few seconds after they all fell, surprised and confused, when suddenly he felt the urge to rest coming across him. He’d slipped off the horse and reached the deep oblivion of sleep even before he’d hit the ground, and later woke up in the witch’s dungeon.
For the first day, he’d refused any food and water in protest, but he was young—only seventeen—and he required a lot of nutrients for his body, so the next day he eagerly accepted the food and drink that she provided. It wasn’t bad, as such, but it also wasn’t as good as he was used to. Still, he needed to eat, and it seemed to be nourishing. Still, he cowered in the corner when she came, fearing her and her abilities. And on the eighth day that he’d been in the dungeon, the witch brought a monster with two cocks, and Thomas was to be its plaything. He gazed in horror at the beast’s throbbing cocks and its drooling face.
The monster ripped Thomas’s soiled clothes right off him with as much ease as Thomas would have pulled an old leaf off a tree, shredding the clothes as it did so but somehow leaving Thomas himself unscathed. Thomas tried to cower in the corner to make himself a smaller target as the monster stood back and made a horrible sound that might have been a laugh. The monster then leaned in to grab him. Thomas helped and huddled further back, reaching an arm out in a vain attempt to stop the beast...
...and suddenly, from his hand, a blinding flash of golden light. The monster staggered back to the far side of the cell.
Thomas stood up and looked at his hands in shock. “What the hell?” he exclaimed. His whole body seemed to be glowing faintly, but bright enough to see clearly in the dimly-lit dungeon. As he watched, the light grew brighter, and he could see muscles developing on his body that hadn’t been there before, before form-fitting golden armour began slowly appearing on his body.
The witch seemed just as shocked as Thomas was. “I thought it was a legend that your family was descended from the sun god!” She reached through the bars and slapped the monster in the back of the head. “Attack!” she screeched. The beast shook its head out and launched itself at Thomas. Barely thinking, he sent out a pulse of energy focused on the beast, which went flying across the room and hit the wall hard, crumpling to the floor. He held a hand towards the beast and fired a beam of golden energy at it, intending to destroy it, However, the beast instead began to shrink, rapidly transforming into another naked teenage boy who sat there, groaning.
The witch began to back towards the dungeon’s entrance as Thomas exited the cell. She aimed her hands at Thomas. “Stop, you don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know how to control it!”
Thomas stopped and considered that. “No, I don’t,” he commented, also raising his hands. She immediately released a beam of purple magic at Thomas, but instead of affecting him it just seemed to cause his power to erupt from his hands in a blazing wall of golden flames, that swept across the screaming witch and past where she stood, shellshocked but unharmed, and began an inferno in the forest beyond. She turned and ran from the dungeon, disappearing into the burning forest.
Thomas went back into the cell and pulled the other teenager to his feet, guiding him out into the burning forest. He studied him as they stood there in an unburnt clearing, noticing that while they were about the same height, the other boy looked maybe a year or two younger.
“Who are you and why am I naked?” the other teenager asked in a mutter.
“I am Prince Thomas of Afon,” Thomas replied, “and because of the witch of these woods, you were just a beast that seemed a bit too...wild, I’d say, for normal clothes. Also, I don’t have any to give you.”
The other teenager looked at him weirdly. “You need to help me. I’ve got no clue where I am or how to get home.”
Thomas didn’t think he liked the other boy much. He didn’t seem very impressed by Thomas being a prince, or grateful for everything he’d done for the boy so far. Still, it was better to help the boy than leave him here. “I don’t know this place exactly, but I know that mountain peak.” He pointed to an oddly-shaped snow-covered peak that glittered in the sun high above them. “If we travel a few miles north, we should reach a road that should bring us straight back to my father’s castle. I’ll see what I can do to help you from there,” Thomas said. He aimed a hand at the other boy’s naked body and his hand glowed briefly for a second, before golden armour similar to his appeared on the other boy’s body. “Do you want to come with me?”