Chapter 1

Melbourne Central Business District, Victoria, Australia

Tobias’ Apartment

Saturday, 12:34 pm

Proofreading was never his strong suit, and it never will be. Matisse was a mediocre writer at best, and the worst person to ever ask an opinion from on anything. His mantra was as long he enjoyed it, then it’s good. This time however, he wasn’t too sure if ‘enjoyed’ would be accurate. He squinted at the text on the screen, blinking three times in an attempt to ignore the spelling mistakes.

‘The booms of cannons roared through the sky, the thunder of drums bouncing through the castle’s brick walls and reverberating into his eardrums.’

‘The war was coming.’

Huh. That was all Matisse could muster.

He scratched the back of his head, deviating from the souce material and staring at the blinking advertisement at the bottom left corner of the laptop screen. There was a small figure of a soldier bobbing up and down on a strange hot air balloon, something that he found strangely amusing. A weirdly specific ad for a video game. He thought. Pulling himself out of the trance, he looked back at the web novel, and from just behind the laptop’s monitor, he could see Tobias sporting a nervous grin.

“So? What do you think?” He said, sheepishly, which Matisse thought was almost endearing. If it didn’t come from Tobias, that is.

“You have an interesting - ” he began, looking back at the novel and then back to Tobias, who was now pacing the carpeted living room floor. “premise. It’s an interesting premise.”

“Yeah! So the princess wasn’t actually kidnapped, and she sided with the other prince’s brother to kill her own - “

“Right, right,” Matisse waved his hand over the laptop screen, gesturing towards Tobias to ‘simmer down’. Despite that, the grin on his face remained, eager to hear some form of feedback. “Where does the other love interest come from again?”

“Huh?” Tobias replied, this time, stopping his pacing and looking at Matisse, who had now closed the laptop and placed it on the ottoman between them. “What do you mean?”

“So, a couple of paragraphs back, you mentioned the brother, but quite literally only in passing as ‘that man over there’, what else do we know about him?”

“Huh,”

“Yeah,”

“Okay, so imagine a mountainous region, some uh, people that look like Vikings but not really, mountains are a little warm, so no fur, and uhh, loincloths - “

“What?”

“I want you to imagine that, that’s where the brother comes from,”

“Right, anything for the physical description or?”

“Blonde hair, long, blue eyes, and tall, like really tall,” Tobias stopped, somehow gasping for breath. It was a spectacle for Matisse, who was trying to stifle a laugh. He didn’t say anything else after Tobias’ little speech. Instead, he closed his eyes, put a quick hand up again and gestured for his friend to stay quiet while he imagined the fantasy world that would dictate a rather crucial part of the budding story that ticked just over 600 words on the document.

Matisse put on a slightly overdramatic display of cozying into the couch, before setting his hand down and resting both his palms flat on his lap. We can add some flair to his little scenery, I’m sure he won’t mind a couple of edits, right? He thought.

For once, he did Tobias a favour and began to visualise. Matisse thought of the mountains, snow-capped but dense with lush forests at their base. He thought of a castle, nestled in one of the range’s many crevices, teeming with life despite its barren and destitute environment. He imagined a prince, beautiful, as were his sisters, brothers and the others in the family. Beautiful but cruel, scheming, hissing in the shadows like snakes.

For a few seconds, he was content with the ‘added features’, hoping that Tobias would, for once, take the advice to add some level of depth to his narrative.

He began to conjure another image, but was stopped when a sharp pain in the back of his head jolted him. Before he could react, the pain spread to his temples. It seared through his skin, and he tried to yell in pain, but he couldn’t. He tried to scream, but he had no mouth. He tried to open his eyes, but he could not see anything but the white of the mountains, the grey of the bricks, and the shimmering light of the blonde hair. They were open, but he saw only what he thought. Something wasn’t right, and he knew.

Then, he could feel the snow. He could feel the cold air biting into his skin, the frost building on the hairs of his arm. He could feel the cold, and he started to panic. How could he feel that? He could feel the dew of the snowflakes drip onto his cheek, and all he could think was, how? He stopped visualising, he stopped thinking of the mountains and the castle and the blonde man. But they did not disappear.

Matisse was suspended in the air, forced to watch the scene he had built in his head come to life. He looked down, watching his bare feet and toes dangling, his arms stuck to his sides. Floating? Why - where am I? Then, he looked up, and his eyes met the blonde man’s. It struck him like a volley of arrows, poisoned at the tip, their fluids seeping into his bloodstream. The man opened his mouth, and while he could not hear the words from a distance, he knew what he was saying. He felt it, inside his head, his body, inside his ears.

“There is evil coming.”

Suddenly, he was back. Sitting on the couch, his back damp with sweat, the familiar feeling of cushions on his backside. He opened his eyes first, then his mouth. Matisse managed a croak, and when he looked up, he saw Tobias, a smile still plastered on his face.

He wanted to ask what happened, he wanted to scream, but he couldn’t.

“So? Kind of cool, right? Almost like Game of - “ Tobias began, but before he could get more words out of his mouth, Matisse bolted from the seat and ran towards the bathroom.

He almost slid on the tiled floor before mounting both arms on the toilet seat and spewing his lunch out.

Tobias sighed and scratched his chin, bewildered more than concerned, before he thought that he should be more of the latter.

Matisse could hear his friend’s footsteps nearing him, and while he could feel that he was saying something, none of it registered. He felt Tobias’ hand on his back, patting him as if to ask if he was okay. His vision became blurry, and before he knew it, it all went black.