Work Text:
The kitchen maids weren't exactly concerned when their king entered the lower kitchens one day.
It was far more accurate to say that they were frightened to death.
Alas, Galbatorix passed them by like a shadow, dressed in all black as always and not sparing them a single glance. One might have truly thought him a ghost with how he headed straight for a wall. Only that with a gesture of his hand and a sharp word in a strange language, said wall rather noisily crumbled to dust. Behind it, a staircase was revealed. One that wasn't on any plans of the citadel, nor had any of the kitchen staff ever noticed something off about the stone hiding it.
The king descended into the dark without another word or a glance back.
With excitement about perhaps spreading some juicy new rumors, some of the maids moved towards the door. Or tried to. They found that they could neither move, nor speak. Like this, they stood for days.
Until one morning they blinked, shook their heads and stiff limbs and carried on as if nothing happened. Because to them, that was true. Nothing had happened.
Only the youngest of them claimed that she had seen the king step from a hole in the wall; cheerfully humming to himself, his copper skin and dark hair and clothes covered in stone dust, making him look like a strange grey ghost. He also carried an odd stone tablet.
But that had surely just been an imagination. There was no hole anywhere and 'cheerful' was the last word someone would use to describe the king.