It's part of a novel - at least I'm hoping I'll be able to make it as such. R&R
Prologue
Too late. It was almost too late. Her Higness would not last. The Angels were defeating her, finally. Through the bond of the Royal Family, he felt her weakening - weakening by the hour, by the minute, by the second. Soon, it would be too late to act. There was no choice. He had tried to formulate plans for years, tried to avoid that one course of action. Countless times, he had tried different ideas.
And countless times, they had failed.
It was almost worth just admitting defeat, if it meant he did not have to release them. His predecessors had done it, had released them, in hopes of recovering her, in hopes of using them as a final battle plan, to win. But each time, they had failed.
Each and every time.
He had no choice, though, did he? No other option, no other idea. They had all been tested and discarded.
She was so weak now. She could not last another thousand years like she had before. She would soon disappear, and his entire kingdom with her.
It had to work this time.
Shaking slightly, he stood up from the chair, and strode out of the room, towards the dungeons.
**********
“Sire, this is insane. You can’t seriously be considering this. Sire – wait!”
“Shut up.”
“But it’s failed every other time – “
“Don’t you think I know that?” he snapped at his servant, aggravated and stressed. The constant protests racking both in his brain and from his servant were driving him insane. The last thing he needed was to be overshadowed by doubts, to be bullied into changing his mind. “Don’t you think,” he continued, in a softer voice, “don’t you think I have considered every possibility? Don’t you think I’ve spent years trying to think of other solutions? There is no other way.” No other choice, no other course of action.
And probably, no other outcome. “Please, surely there’s something - no, wait!” the servant squeaked, seeing the set of old, brass keys in his master’s hand. “There’s a reason they keep getting locked up! They’ll kill us all! Please, wait!”
He scurried away as his master continued on, climbing down the damp stairs, crumbling in places, spiraling lower and lower. At the end of the tunnel-like staircase was a heavy, stone door that looked as though it hadn’t been opened in several centuries. In fact, it hadn’t – it lead to the ninth level of the dungeons, where the worst of the demonic monsters were kept - the monsters that would overthrow him as his entire Kingdom, kill everyone on sight, and ruin all the security they had built, simply for pleasure.
And it would have to be that precisely, that sheer desire to kill and to hurt, that he would have to rely on. The Angels could not be defeated save for the desire that so contradicts their own. The desire to save against the desire to kill.
He fumbled with the keys for a minute, finally choosing one long, thin, and particularly old one, inserting it in the keyhole and twisting it with what appeared to be great effort. The door groaned, determined to stay in the same state that it had remained in for hundreds of years – unopened. He pressed his bony shoulder against it and shoved until slowly, the door gave way, and he almost fell into the dark room beyond, gasping for breath.
He stood up, and smoothed his ruffled clothing. Squinting his eyes for a moment, he sighed, and flicked his hand a little. A bright flame all but consumed it, although it appeared to have no affect on the man, who only brought the flame closer to his face, and made his way down a now semi-illuminated hall. Jeers and howls of pain followed him from locked up monsters, horrendous and scarred, and whether they were screaming at the sight of him or his flame was unclear. Either way, he knew he was unwelcome. Several hissed at him, but he ignored them, striding on to the circular room ahead. Another key, another stone, solid door that almost refused to budge. He clambered into a new room – this time, there were five chambers, all inhabited.
Someone on one of the chambers was screaming bloody murder, piercing his ears and almost convincing him to turn around and leave. But he had business to attend to.
He turned to the chamber nearest him, and peered between the bars – and yelped, stepping back quickly.
A face peered back at him. A horrid, marred face with ugly, large, bulbous, eyes with no whites, a horrible creature scarred and bloodied and dressed in rags. On one of the legs, the bone was protruding from the thigh where disease had eaten away at the flesh, and the long, horizontal, pointed ears that were the mark of a demon were tattered. Scars covered its filthy body – her filthy body, for he knew she was a female – and several digits were missing from her hands and feet. She was chained to the wall from her neck. He would have given anything to step back from her, to avoid looking at her. But she, along with the other four in the horrid room, would be his last hope. He had to appeal to them.
He strode past her and headed towards the chamber in the middle – the chamber that held the leader of the monsters.
He looked at her through the bars, trying not the cringe at the first part of her that he noticed – the marred, scarred, infected, disfigured right side of her face. She was chained from the neck as well, this time to the ceiling.
Appeal to her, he had to appeal to her. What was her name again...? He could hardly remember it, though it floated somewhere between his mind and his mouth… ah, yes! “DeJa…?” he said, timidly.
“What do you want?” she replied, instantly.
Ah, yes. He licked his lips nervously, and continued on. “I need you.”
“For what?”
“…an army.” Suddenly, she looked at him fully, and her eyes seemed to take on a new life.
“An army, you say?” She licked her lips as well. “And why would I want to help you with your army?”
“Freedom,” he offered quickly, knowing full well he’d never give her that. “Absolute freedom, no dungeons, nothing – if you succeed.”
She seemed to ponder his answer, though her bloody, horrid, thin body was quivering with excitement. “…yes, that is a tempting offer….” Suddenly, she looked up. “Deal.”
And that was it. He pulled out another key and inserted it into the chamber keyhole, unlocked it, and yanked at the door to swing it open. She groaned with frustration at his apparent incompetence. “Hurry up and unlock this damned chain!” He finally swung the door open and approached her, breaking them with his touch. He wondered briefly why she had never broken the chains herself – but then realized that there was probably some sort of curse on it that prevented her from doing just that. She clambered out of the cage quickly, tripping and stumbling – and it was just then that he realized her right hand and foot had rotted away to stubs. “And by the way, she called to him, “it’s DeJaVu. Get it right.”
**********
Five girls stood in front of him. Five girls who had never seen the light of day for a thousand years, five girls whose bodies had been ravaged by the hands of time and Hell.
This would be his army.
This would be his salvation.
How ironic, he mused, as that final part ran through his mind. How ironic that I need salvation. I, King of Hell. To them, he said, “You all know why you’re here.”
“Go ahead and say it again,” DeJa said, a smirk playing on her lips. “I think I might have forgotten the details.”
“…” He glared at her. Fooling around, in a situation as die as this one… “You’re going to be my army. Her Highness is weakening in their grasp. Free her, and kill them. Kill the Angels that are protecting her.”
“Wait,” one of them – WaterFall, she had been called before, though her and, for that matter, all their true, Demon names has been lost – said. “I think I’ve heard this before.”
“You have. We all have,” another one said, in a bitter, obnoxious voice. “And we’ve never won. Why are you doing this again? Taunting us with the idea that we’ll have freedom – you’ll never give us that.”
She was obnoxious. He knew it when he first unlocked her – she’d been sitting there, eyes close, with a face of contempt and looked as though she was annoyed that he had taken so long. Thankfully, she wasn’t the leader.
There were two others – AmorTal, who had been very specific on the capitalization of certain letters, was the one he had first seen. And DangerJungle seemed to be the second-in-command. He’d sniggered when he heard the name she had dubbed herself, but the look of contempt she’d shot him was enough to quell that. He had gotten the feeling that if she attacked him, all the others would, as well. Especially that WaterFall – she seemed twitchy, eager to re-enter the battlefield.
“Ahem.” He motioned for them to follow him. “You’re all near useless without your powers.” All of them seemed to shake at the mention of them. “Come.” He led them to a chamber – this one not so much a dungeon as a throne room, minus the throne. In the center stood five glowing objects, in a circle. Each of them glowed a different color – red, yellow, green, pink, blue. Each of them held an object within – respectively, a flame, a lightning bolt, a leaf, something that appeared to be a cracked heart, and a droplet of water.
Before he could motion for them to move, WaterFall shot up, looking awed, towards the blue orb. Predictable. Really, all their self-chosen names led him to know which power they’d pick. Chances are they’d been using the same powers every time. DeJaVu stepped in front of the red orb and snatched it from the air, a look of hunger on her face. DangerJungle reached for the green one, while SkyBomb and AmorTal chose the yellow and the pink orbs. He grimaced as they all swallowed the orbs, stretching their mouths horrendously to accommodate them. Gluttony, he thought to himself. It’s gluttony.
He licked his lips nervously. "Come," he called, "Too much time has passed. You need to begin training."
