Chapter 1 – The Highest Room of the Tallest Tower
“Once upon a time, there was a lovely princess. But she had an enchantment upon her of a fearful sort, which could only be broken by love's first kiss. She was locked away in a castle guarded by a terrible fire-breathing dragon. Many brave knights had attempted to free her from this dreadful prison, but none prevailed. She waited in the dragon's keep, in the highest room of the tallest tower, for her true love, and true love's first kiss.”
– Shrek
– ***** –
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaah……!!!!”
An angry screech echoed loudly through the dusty corridors and rooms of the abandoned fortress. Startled crows and bats emerged from the dark woods surrounding the crumbling castle walls, rapidly crowding the sky already filled with ominous thunderclouds, while packs of phantom wolves howled in response to the inhuman shriek.
On said walls, patrolling green goblins flinched at the sound and a couple of half-asleep two-storey high chained mountain trolls looked around in confusion. In the courtyard past the main gate, lying skeletons slightly tilted their ever-smiling heads towards the top of the obsidian tower, standing in the middle of the inner fort.
Inside the main hall, decaying undead guards growled menacingly without targets. Some agitated nervously their crude rusted weapons, ultimately resulting in a slow-paced but gruesome brawl. Further in, two massive armoured dullahans lifted their severed head to glance at each other before warily turning towards the thick black metal door behind them, but didn’t dare opening it.
Had they done so, one could have looked upon the old throne room. Damaged colonnades filled the place, some already fallen, some soon to follow. Tattered pieces of cloth hang here and there, vestiges of the banners of long forgotten powerhouses.
In front of the broken royal chair, a giant abstruse magical circle pulsated with a nauseous purple glow, and behind it, once hidden by the marble throne, opened an obscure and narrow hallway that led to a spiral staircase. Several landings and locked doors upstairs, one would reach an archway obstructed by surprisingly well-conserved blood red veil embroidered with a dark blue rose.
Past the archway was a round, well-furnished, well-kept bedroom, one suited for a young lady of noble birth, strikingly out of place in this cursed, ruined and monster-filled keep. All was in tones of red and blue. Wine coloured carpet and eerie tapestries with intricate patterns covered the black stone floor and walls. Carmine curtains with duke blue lace hang on each side of the shutter-less window.
The furniture were of rosewood with cobalt ornaments. A worktable occupied the space near the window, opposite of bookshelves filled with sets of identical thick blood red tomes, which spines were decorated with the same gracious-looking dark blue rose. A large wardrobe stood next to an elegant, currently undone, four poster bed. A cheval glass <1> with a subtly engraved frame, a beautiful cushioned chair and a small round table, with a single simple crystal cup on top of it, completed the scene. A lustre of rubies and sapphires hang from the ceiling. The rubies were faintly glowing, lighting up the chamber and diffusing a soothing warmth.
In this seemingly peaceful abode, a silhouette was ragingly pacing back and forth, mumbling unintelligible gibberish, sometimes randomly shouting and screeching inarticulate curses, when bothering to try to form words at all.
Suddenly stopping by the worktable, like struck by some foreboding revelation, the figure glared hatefully at the quiet piece of furniture. The kind of look one would give to the murderer of their child, or the rapist of their sister, both of which the desk was probably innocent of.
A hand was slowly lifted into the air, forming a fist, before violently slamming down, akin to an angry god’s hammer of judgement brought down upon the damned of this world. The fist connected loudly with the wood, and, for a couple seconds, nothing happened. Then a small cracking sound rang in the now silent room, immediately followed by a loud:
“AAAAAAAAAAAAOouch!!! Are you fucking kidding me?! You bloody piece of wood! You’re nothing but a dead plant and you dare…aie…ha..ha…you DARE break my mighty fist ! Just you wait, I will teach you…”
After shamelessly insulting the abused secretary for several minutes, rolling on the floor holding the injured member, crying, and disgracefully snorting, the visibly mentally unstable desk-puncher stood up carefully, his breath short.
“Ah..ah..ah… What’s with this ridiculously low stamina? Seriously…”
Finally up, he let out a sigh.
“Fuuuh…Holy sh-”
Abruptly, a head-splitting pain erupted between his temples, and the ground disappeared, only to unexpectedly and brutally become acquainted with his left cheek.
“What the hell?! Ah..ah..ah..ah…” he exclaimed, quite stunned. “Anyway, thank god for the carp-”
Just as the pain was receding, a new wave of hurt submerged him, knocking him out.
– *** –
As he emerged from a dreamless black void, he calmly opened his eyes and, unmoving, fixed the glowing gemstone lustre while pondering on what just happened. Recollecting what he knew of his current predicament, as well as his latest actions, he racked his mistreated brain to make sense of the situation.
Despite the craziness of his earlier behaviour, not without reason by the way, this failure of a desk-slayer wasn’t stupide, quite the opposite. He just had a tendency to consciously cloud his own judgement when unwilling to face reality, which would lead other to misunderstand him. One could call him irresponsible. He himself preferred to consider himself “to lazy to care about the consequences”. Instead of constantly worrying over small things, he liked to follow his own pace, then deal with the resulting problems in place and time when they arouse.
For example, he would gladly exchange a week of light everyday anxiety for six days of peaceful bliss and a day of nerve-racking panic. Not to say he wasn’t hardworking or caring. No. He could be so, but only for things he took personal interest in. In such cases, he would abandon himself to the object of his attention, deliberately occulting everything else, burying himself single-mindedly into his own joyful heaven, until he lost interest, run out of source material, or was forcefully brought back to the mortal realm to face the unavoidable aftermath of his carelessness.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Up to now, he had always managed to survive relatively unscathed thanks to his wits, and an odd sense of values. He subconsciously knew, however, that his way of life would cost him one day. Not that he’d worry too much over it though.
“Now then. I think I’ve got this figured out.”
Still on the floor, he braced himself for what was about to come and uttered a single word: “Heave-”
Without even letting him finish, the ungodly agony took over. Starting from the top of his nose, the pain spread to the rest of his head, invading his skull and making his teeth clatter, before going down his throat to grasp his lungs and heart, pushing the air out of his body and disrupting his pulse, stabbing his guts, frying his leg muscles and finally exiting through his feet. The whole process didn’t took more than a split second, but he felt every excruciating step of it, as if time itself slowed down to torment him further.
That’s it! he thought victoriously… and passed out.
– *** –
Light came back in the world.
Religious word, uh? Go figure… ‘Guess it’s logic… from a certain point of view at least, especially in my condition.
“Better watch my mouth. Good thing there’s a time limit to unconsciousness. Nnng ! Fuuuuh…”
He tried to get up with effort, sighting. Holding onto the worktable, to which he addressed a quick apology, he managed to attain a swaying upright posture.
“Fucking weakling” he mumbled. “Although I can see it becoming useful from a training standpoint, it’ll have to wait until I get a better understanding of this whole mess. You screwed big time on this one, Elric. It was suspicious and too good to be true? OF COURSE IT WAS! But did that stop you?? OF COURSE NOT!!! COUGH cough...ah…ah…can’t even..ah..scream in peace..ah… Damn curse…AH!”
Mmmh? Oh. So only “good guys” words are forbidden, is it? Well… Better keep my cursing to “hell”, “damn”, and good old earthly “fuck” and “shit”. Careful with “holy shit”, though.
Elric slowly made his way to the bed, feebly moving one feet after another, nearly tripping himself half a dozen times, and collapsed onto the salutary softness, disturbing the bedding even further but not caring in the slightest. He was exhausted after almost two hours of solitary ranting and heated augment with himself, to which he could also gloriously add his cracked right hand, as well as three heavenly Tasers, one taken willingly.
F’cking genius…
Grumbling and mumbling, the “F’cking genius” eventually got his mighty self together. Still in a very inglorious position, laying on the bed front first, his arms limb along his body and his butt stuck up in the air, he raised his head and rested his chin on the bed sheet.
His eyes met another pair, bewitching, slightly slanting, with blood red iris surrounded by deep dark blue crowns, sending their sinking cobalt thorns across the sea of sanguine fluid, towards the bottomless black pupils that were twitching with each lash movement, alternating between a human roundness and the vertical oval-shaped slit suited for cats and demons.
After losing himself for a few seconds in those living gemstones, he shook his head, clearing his thoughts, and asked, with a voice covered in a stodgy layer of irony: “You know… It’s also partially your fault. Anything to say in your defence? Or some hint to get me rid of the bloody curse? It’s yours, no? So…mmmh…how do we deal with this, hey? Lady Victoria?”
Without responding, the silent young beauty facing him continued to glare strait into his eyes, a scornful look on her doll-like face and a hint of pity in her enchanting eyes.
“Tsk.”
Well, it’s not like “she” would know anything anyway…
– ***** –
<1> Cheval glass:
Spoiler :
http%3a%2f%2fi.imgur.com%2f30OpZp0.jpg%3f1 [http://i.imgur.com/30OpZp0.jpg?1]
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Sooooo…. This is the first chapter/prologue-thingy. I originally intended it to be longer, but it got too long and that was the best place I thought of to cut it, since the next chapter(s) is (/are) going to be a flash-back leading to his earlier nervous breakdown.
I intended it to be a short introduction, but I get side-tracked easily and continuously add text. The following chapters will most certainly be longer. As far as I can judge myself, I think my story telling is slow paced, with a lot of thought process from my characters or about them, pertinent or not. I’ll try to keep it pertinent though.
Any suggestion or criticism is welcome. I have the plot outlined for the foreseeable future, but it’s more of a frame and the content will vary following my mood, inspirations and notes taken from ephemeral ideas crossing my dusty brain at random, so if you ― Yes, YOU, public ― want something, do ask, by all means.
I probably won’t comply with your request in any visible way, but your gentle comments and hate declarations are sure to influence my reflection at a subliminal level. Aren’t you happy to engage in low level mind control, you little FF-fed psychopaths?!
Eeeeh…Where was… Ah, yes, criticism. I know I’m by no way perfect, so do send, I’ll do my best to better my mighhumble self. The slow-paceness and side-trackingism probably won’t change though, so if it doesn’t put you off, please stick with me, if it does don’t. Concerning the form, I’m fairly confident in my orthography, but I always stumble on the conjugation (NB: If I don’t, just don’t say anything, don’t try to reassure me, please). Idem with the font, etc. Don’t hesitate to nit-pick.
Without further ado, let me offer you my utmost gratitude for your reading, and I shall proceed swiftly with the writing of the following chapter.
(GOD...that was pompous...)