Author: Artemis ()
Disclaimer: Avalon Palace is my own story.
Rating: This chapter G, all over it’ll probably turn out an R
Chapter: Prologue
Summary: When tourist Ral is given the ownership of a mysterious building for saving an old lady’s life and decides to go there since he anyway needs a hotel, he’s no idea what he’s getting himself into… Avalon Palace is the home of the powerful wizard Samaih, who’s soul was interweaved 1500 years ago with the castle, unable to die and unable to leave his prison…
Warnings: Well, if you know any of my other stories you’ll probably already guess that it’s slash. There’re magic and angst in it, if you dislike these you shouldn’t read. But that’s at the moment about all the warnings I can think of.
A/N: Since I’m writing this story in German first, I’ll most likely get started on the English translation only when the German version is finished (I wanted to write this in English, so when I started it’s in English, but I quickly changed my mind so it isn’t much). But if I get nice feedback I’ll hurry up and translate quicker.

Avalon Palace
Artemis

Prologue

He had always been alone.

Many, many centuries, maybe a millennium, maybe two, he didn’t knew how long since he’d been outside in the real world for the last time.

Avalon Palace.

He had built it himself to be his palace, his fortress and a sanctuary.

Now it was his prison for as long as he could remember.

The curse could not be broken. If he, the strongest wizard of his time, couldn’t break it, then no one else could either. He had tried, had tried every single counter-spell that he knew, but none had any effect on the curse that ruined his life and damned him to an eternal existence of suffering.

So he spent every day, every week, every year waiting for someone to enter his palace and give him the contact to other people that he missed so painfully.

Sometimes curious children would come close to the palace and he would feel them, hoping that they would come in. He loved the company of children, they never judged him and they even listened when he told them about his mortal life, they understood more than the adults. The adults were always wrapped up in their own lives, their own time.

The adults always wanted something from him. Sometimes they wanted him to cast spells for them, sometimes they wanted to live in his palace, but without him, sometimes they wanted the riches of the palace, sometimes they just wanted to kill him because they thought him a creature of Satan.

Children rarely came inside.

They were warned from earliest childhood by their parents not to get anywhere near the palace since it was cursed by the devil, because no one came back or because a coven of wizards and witches had made it their home. Those more sensible, who didn’t believed in the old legends around the Avalon Palace warned their children because it’s dangerous, because the palace could collapse at any time.

And when children came, then they wouldn’t stay for long.

They always had to go home again and he couldn’t make himself talk them into staying, no matter how much he wanted. He had become heartless over the course of the centuries he spent alone, even more heartless than he’d been as a mortal, but he wasn’t heartless enough to take children away from their families.

The adults never cared much about him, few of them stayed.

And when they stayed, then they never stayed for long.

Some stayed only a couple of hours, others spent a vacation at the palace, seeing in it nothing more than a holiday resort, others moved in and stayed several years with him.

These years were the happiest for him.

But they always ended with tears and hurt feelings for him. Because no one would stay forever with him, the mortal people always wanted to return to the mortal world at the end of the day.

None of them were willing to share his fate with him and have after their mortal death their souls being caught in the Avalon Palace, so they’re always afraid that they would die here or that he would even kill them. It didn’t mattered how often they said they loved him, they always went away.

And every time the loneliness was worse.

Every time his heart broke a bit more and he was afraid that soon nothing would be left of it.

So he had chosen to take drastic measures.

When his last mortal lover had left to return to the real world he had vowed that he’d never again let himself be hurt like this. The next human who came to him he would keep with him, even if he had to use force.

Even if he had to kill them himself…

Tbc…