Emma sits on the edge of the office desk only a few feet away from the seated imp, and gives the prisoner a grin. For some reason, it doesn't put him at ease.

"So, in the interests of full disclosure, the reason I introduced myself as Emma and not as Xenia is because I'm not Xenia. She is here, of course, but frankly you're not worth burning precious avatar time on. That's time she could spend getting drunk, or enjoying a lap dance from an incubus in the lounge, after all." She pauses as her head tilts to the side, before snorting. "C'mon, I might not be omniscient Xen, but I ain't gonna miss what's going on in my own damn lounge."

Ruckus eyes the empty side of the office, but finds no trace of the dungeon spirit that he can see. "Sure, sure, I'm not complaining. Not like I'm some high-and-mighty prince or something myself. Just a humble rogue."

"So I see. That being said, while I'm taking Xenia's form I can remember what she remembers, so for the purposes of this story I'll be speaking in first person." She pauses briefly again before slightly changing the topic. "Before we get into it, though - not a prince, sure, but don't suppose you're also claiming to be one of Xen's grandkids?"

Ruckus opens his mouth to speak, but then thinks better of what he was about to say and then changes tack. "Well, yea...well, no, actually. My cousin did, Wander, but he's one of the boys that didn't make it this far. Got in a fight with one of the prince's other recruits, old grudges, y'know, but it didn't exactly go well for either of em. But I was already along the ride so, hey, here I am. Yippee."

"Really such a delightful bunch, you just sound better every time we hear more about you. Anyways! The story. Now, you might not be a descendant of a Champion yourself, but I take it you've heard enough about them? How Prince Xenon turned the Champions against their summoners, conquered and rebuilt the Tower, yadda yadda?"

The imp nods. "Obviously. I mean, even folks literally living under rocks know about Prince Xenon!"

"Figured. But do the stories mention how I did it?"

Ruckus scratches at a long ear. "Bribes, right? Money, power, all that. Some people say Xenon had a hypnotic voice or something, but I never really bought into that sort of shit."

Emma chuckles. "Nah - not surprised people think about bribes, since giving a Champion a castle tends to be pretty obvious even to the footsoldiers, but all of that happened after I turned em. That's the last step in the process. You know what's first?" Her smile widens, and she doesn't wait for the rogue to guess. "Showmanship. As an example...well, take the original owner of those swords there - Jennifer of the Twin Fangs. Or as we called her, Stabby Jen. She was...well, not in the first ten Champions, maybe the first fifteen or so? Enough that I'd been doing it for a few years and had the routine down. It all started on a dark and stormy night..."

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As Xenon hears the crash of thunder and lightning outside the dungeon windows, the prince nods to himself. Getting a weather mage to cast a storm spell this intense was no minor effort, but it wasn't every day a new Champion arrived in his cells, and it was important to make a good first impression. With that in mind he checks his outfit before he proceeds any further - skull pauldrons, black cape, sword at his side with its hilt shaped like tusks and thorns. Everything a good dark lord needs.

Everything proper and fake, just as it ought to be.

Pleased with his appearance the man continues on forward, and the next turn of a corner brings him before the Champion's cell. The brown-haired woman seems young, as most of them do, perhaps college age or slightly older. Her soft features wouldn't look out of place in any suburban coffee shop, but her bare arms do show hints of muscle, the results of a few weeks or months crash-training a combat course. She's dressed in prisoner's rags but her skin is clean enough, her cell having been provided with running water and a small bathtub. That was almost more of a practical concern than a kindness, considering hoofing buckets of water up the massive Tower the manual way would've been more effort than anyone could be assed to do, but either way it seems as if the woman had taken advantage of the chance to wash away the stains of her last battle.

Her armor is long gone, moved to the Tower armory, but her relic-class weapons are here in the dungeon and left in plain sight for her to view. A weapon rack was brought out just for them, the twin swords angled just right to catch the torchlight, taunting the Champion with their presence. A classic dark lord blunder, isn't it? Leaving a hero's magical weapons right next to their prison cell, so that any escape immediately leads into a battle for the Tower itself?

Tropes are tropes for a reason, after all, they often make sense. Too much sense, really. And that's the problem with them.

The woman scowls at Xenon as he walks into view, even as she takes a step back away from the bars. "Darkstar! I don't - I don't know how you caught us so quickly at the border, but you better not have hurt my friends, or you'll regret it!"

Xenon grins as he pulls up a simple wooden chair and takes a seat in front of the cell. "You're lucky, Champion - your team this round was stunningly incompetent. Really, a brownie as your tank? Did you think mischief and illusions would make up for going down to a single solid hit? I don't think even Willow would've tried that shit. Nah, taking them alive was easy. Better than that all-elf assassin team the last one had. Elf assassins really don't like being captured alive."

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The woman's eyes narrow. "Willow? Is that one of...the lieutenants you've recruited?"

"What? No, the lil hobbity dude from the movie, with the magic acorns...fuck, forget it, guess that one didn't stand the test of time. I could go back to making 'dark side' references, everyone seems to love a good Star Wars."

Now more confused than ever, the woman steps closer to the cell bars once more. "You...you know Star Wars?"

Xenon laughs. "They still aren't telling you kids about this, huh? They've got to have heard about it by now...then again, competence doesn't seem to be high on their trait list. Tell me, Champion, what's your name? I'm Prince Xenon Darkstar, as you seem to know."

The woman stands up a little straighter as she introduces herself. "Jennifer! Of the Twin Fangs! I've been chosen and blessed by the - "

Xenon quickly interrupts her with a wave of his hand. "Yeah, yeah, I've heard that part before. So Jen, huh? Can I call you Jen? Or do you prefer Jenny?"

"...Jen's fine."

"Great! So, tell me Jen, how's the Champion life working out for you? Training go well? Got some good adventuring buddies? You did call them your friends, so that's a good sign. I'd assume getting captured wasn't in your plans, but then that's not exactly off-beat for the typical hero story, is it?"

Jen peers at the dark prince, uncertain what his upbeat tone actually means for her. "Why - why are you acting like this is some sort of movie or something? Is that what's going on here?"

The prince grins widely, although the smile lacks much warmth. "Acting like? No, Jen, we are. Well, in a story, anyways, they don't have movies around here. Maybe if they did they wouldn't bother with all of this bullshit. Life is but a stage, and the gods have dressed us up in idiot costumes and shoved you and I up on it."

The Champion seems offended by the man's words. "What? No - those are real people out there! I know them! This isn't like some sort of video game filled with NPCs, you asshole! You're ruining real lives!"

Xenon's smile fades away as he leans forward. "I know they're real people, and that's the problem. The gods don't care about them, Jen, or you, or me. If we weren't here, it'd be another hero and another villain saying the same lines and doing the same things. And I'm not speaking hypothetically. I don't know if you've gotten a history lesson, but this war's been going on for thousands of years! The countries change, the names of the players, but the tide swings back and forth, back and forth, nobody ever wins, and everybody suffers. Forever."

Jen blinks as she processes her captor's words. "So...why are you bothering, then? Why don't you just surrender and break the cycle? Let good triumph?"

Xenon sadly shakes his head. "Wouldn't do any good. For one thing, you might notice that my title is prince, not king. I have no authority to surrender the kingdom. And if I didn't fight - if I just slit my throat and moved on to the next run, say - they'd just put someone less competent in charge and the stalemate would continue for another fifty years. No, if I'm going to break the cycle, it's by winning it for good. Well, not 'for Good', haha, although to be honest I think you'd find most of the folks on this side are every bit as decent as the elves and dwarves and so on on yours."

"But you're not going to win. You're just playing your role after all, aren't you!?"

"Oh, but I am already winning, Jen. And you know how?" Xenon leans forwards a bit more, and there's a strange light in his eyes as he does so. "Because I'm not going to fight you."

Jen seems rather unconvinced. "You're just going to let me go, then?"

"Yup! Not right now, but soon. I can tell you've got at least two brain cells to rub together in there, and so far I've only had one absolute moron who ended up not wanting to come out eventually. On average...three weeks to flip a Champion to my side, though there was one guy who signed up in thirty minutes, bit of an outlier there."

The Champion's voice is defiant as she shouts back. "I'll never join you! I don't know what spells you used on the others, or what tortures, but I won't fall like the others did."

"I'd wager a bet on that, but we did take all of your money already. But if you want to play hero for a little longer, that's alright. See you tomorrow, Jen."

The man gets up and returns his chair to its original spot, ignoring his prisoner as she continues to shout in his direction. "What? You can't leave me in here! Let us...go..." Her voice trails off as the dungeon door slams shut, leaving her in silence, and she returns to her bunk and collapses on top of it.

"...What in the world is wrong with that guy?"

----------------------------------------

"So you're going to torture me after all, huh? Or are you going to...to..." Jen grows quiet before she finishes her sentence, uncertain if she wants to give the prince any ideas. The young woman is currently strapped to an inclined torture rack, her wrists secured above her head, and for a moment she finds herself wishing for the safety of a set of iron bars.

Prince Xenon simply shakes his head, however. "No, no, just setting the stage. I've tried this other ways, you know? For example, inviting a Champion to share a feast with me at my table. Full armor, no chains or anything. Have a pleasant talk over dinner about their future, right? Classic villain move. Sit down, one on one, hash out our issues. Goes over like a lead balloon. Never works."

Jen snorts. "But this does?"

Xenon leans over the woman, his intense eyes staring into hers. "Yup. You see...Champions like being tied up."

The prisoner sputters. "What!? That's - no!"

The prince steps back and begins to pace around the rack. "Not as a sex thing, necessarily - although sometimes. One guy already had a hard-on by this point. But no, being too nice makes you too nervous. You spend too much time looking for the trick, the trap. Poisoned food, a macabre dinner show or something like that. And ignoring me when I'm telling you the trick to your face. No, I've found that Champions need to be...eased out of it. You expect to be a prisoner, you expect to be tortured. So talking to you like this is a more comfortable setting. It puts your mind at ease."

"I'm really not sure I'm comfortable with the idea of being tortured, asshole."

"And you won't be." Xenon gestures at the rack. "You get a good look at what's on that thing before we strapped you into it? The chains. The pulleys. The sweat-stains from previous occupants - we do our best to keep things clean around here, but y'know, it's seen a bit of use by this point." He turns to look at Jen once again. "You know what's not on that rack?"

The woman does her best to eye it with her forehead strapped down, but nothing obvious jumps out at her. "...Spikes?"

"True. But also - no blood. I've never tortured anyone on that rack, and I'm not going to start today. We're just going to have ourselves a nice, comfortable...conversation."

"About what, exactly?"

Xenon finds his old wooden chair, and takes a moment to lean back into it before answering her question. "Today - we're going to talk about you."