AN: First a prologue to the story. A song that was taught to young witches for generations and the legend that spawned it.
Revised AN: I've gone through and tried to fix as many typos and continuity errors that I could catch. Some character dialogue has been tweaked for better verbiage, but the overall content has stayed the same. The biggest changes I made were in Justin's characterization during his interactions with Giriko and Gopher, I felt in some places he was acting a little too young and naive and have since tried to fix that without changing the overall structure of his scenes.
In honor of the story's two year anniversary, I've added 3 new scenes to the last chapter. Hopefully, they will tie up some of the unaddressed issues I left hanging that had people craving a sequel. And as always, thank you so much for reading and supporting this story. I can't tell you how much it means to me.
Guess who's back,
Dressed in black,
Come to take her soul back.
In ancient Greece there was a time when witches and humans lived in peace. Granted there was always a boundary of uncertainty that separated the enchantresses from common folk, but in most of Athens and the other large city-states, they were respected. It was in the smaller villages that ignorance lead to fear and hate. Pandora was one of their victims. She had been born with unnatural pink hair to an unwed mother; this did not sit well with the village of Mavro. They did their best to ignore her whenever possible, not wanting to deal with any bad luck that might befall them should they speak with her. Only one person in the whole village paid her any mind, Persephone.
Persephone was unlike Pandora in many ways. She preferred bright sunny days as opposed to dark winter nights, she had many friends as opposed to one, but above all everyone loved her. Still, to the bewilderment to the village, she reached out to Pandora and tried to teach how to deal with the many beautiful things of the world. Such a positive outlook was rare, for the throne of the Underworld was to change hands at any moment. The west launched on the chance to take hold of as many villages as possible. The villagers feared that Mavro would become one of their targets, in an effort to calm their fears Persephone volunteered to talk with Odin and prove that the village would be safe. None begged her to stay more than Pandora, whose reputation hung on the fate of the village. Still Persephone set forth. Her friend was left defenseless among the narrow-minded villagers. That afternoon Pandora wept under the branches on an old oak tree as she was now alone in the world. As she sobbed, she heard a voice from behind her.
"Such a pretty girl should not be crying in the woods alone." She turned and saw a cloaked boy holding a strange box. She shook her head. Her beautiful? She was a disgrace; dark circles were permanently a part of her features. She was far too skinny and frail to do any work, her eyes an eerie shade of purple, even her face was covered in unsightly blemishes.
"W-who are you?" She sniffed, "I've never seen you around here before."
"My name is Haden." He said with a slight smirk.
"Th-that's a s-strange name." She said as she leaned further into the roots.
"I'm a traveling Lord," He explained, "and couldn't help but see you were crying." He crouched down to her level, his black irises danced with an inhuman mirth. "What could have made you so unhappy?"
"My friend went to talk with Lord Odin about the safety of our village and I have a sinking feeling that she won't return. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn't listen to me." Tears began to flow down her face again. "I don't have anyone else here." The lord frowned and glanced down at the box he held in his hand, then held it out to her.
"Do you know what this is?" She looked to the box and frowned. There was no wood, but in its stead polished sulfur. Twisted bone lined the edges of the box, she recoiled from the sight.
"A box."
"Not just any box." He said placing it in her hands, "This box will grant your deepest desire."
"But I don't have any-"
"It's not really mine to begin with, but you seem to need it more than I. A word of caution, in order to grant your wish, the box must take something equal in value. It will hold your soul in exchange for granting your wish; so don't lose it." Pandora glanced up to protest once more, but Haden was gone. All that remained was the bone and sulfur box that lay in her hands.
He says come,
Let's have some fun,
Open the box, the game's begun.
Pandora couldn't bear to leave the box behind. Something that could steal the soul of a person was too dangerous to leave where someone might open it by accident. As the days turned to months, Persephone didn't return. The villagers blamed Pandora, claiming that she bewitched the girl into running off. Despite Pandora's pleas, she stayed the enemy in their eyes. After all, no one was left to side with her. Her treatment eventually became unbearable. When she walked down the street she was spat upon, the grocer would only sell her rotten food, and even her mother grew distant from her. When news of an invasion from the west came, she finally was at her wits end. She no longer knew how to deal with the angry people that surrounded her life. After a particularly cruel day she trudged to her room and looked down at the box. Mud dripped from her clothes as she reached for the lid. Anything had to be better than the treatment she faced day to day. Carefully she threw open the lid.
All at once a black monster burst out of the box, its form dripped as if made of pure liquid. She felt a sickening wave length come from the creature.
"You've have set me free from my prison fragment." Its soul voice curlded, pieces of its body dripped to the floor and took shape; running off in different directions. "In exchange I shall grant your wish, and destroy those that you don't know how to deal with." Her soul ripped itself from her body and was sucked into the box. As the lid snapped tightly closed, the black creature took off, breaking through the roof of her room. She watched as the massive demon disappeared over the horizon.
Slowly she turned to the floor at a puddle the black creature left behind. It quivered and stretched, reaching for the ceiling and twisting into a spire. Limbs jutted out of the sides and the base split. Slowly it grew skin and the black liquid dropped into iron armor. In the stead of the demon stood a man with raven hair, a demon knight with pitch black eyes. A sadistic smile glided across its newly formed features.
"Your wish is my command." He said. Still in shock Pandora watched as the knight walked into Mavro and drew a jet black sword. He sliced the villagers in half like butter, laughing at how their blood painted the dirt. The whole village was becoming a war zone before its prime.
"S-stop." She whispered, "Please, this isn't what I wanted." Still the swords man hacked and hued the dwindling villagers "STOP!" But it was too late; the entire village had been slaughtered. She ran out of the house and grasped the arm of her knight. But no words would come out, only tears.
"I understand miss, but be patient. Your wish is almost granted." She shook her head not understanding. Then the sound of horses drew her attention. A nobleman from the west hopped off of his stead, looking around the village in disbelief. Thunder shook the sky and cold rain poured down on the caravan.
"What happened here?" He demanded.
"It was terrible," The knight said, "our own country thought the town was producing weapons for the east. They slaughtered the whole village before I got here. I did my best to fight them off and look for survivors, but all I found was her." He gestured to Pandora. "She was hiding in a corner behind the doors of her home." The noblemen took her hand.
"I'm so sorry this happened to you. Surely they must have been mistaken." He looked to his men. "We are taking her back with us; I can't leave such a beautiful lady behind in such conditions."
"If I may," The knight stated, "I hardly know you, I don't think my conscious could rest if I let her walk off with a strange man." The nobleman was taken aback.
"Are you her caretaker?" The knight nodded, "I suppose you do have the right to follow, very well. We head back to Italy." The man shouted to his companions.
"Beautiful? Me?" She looked to her knight, "He couldn't be serious!" The knight chuckled darkly.
"Have you seen yourself lately?" She looked at her reflection in the ground water and gasped. Her face was clear of all blemishes, she looked less frail, her hair flowed healthy rather than falling limp in the rain.
"I don't understand-"
"Even with a soul as pure as yours was it was still held down with all of the negativity you held. Our body is, after all, a reflection of the soul; without one it will flourish on the madness of the world instead."
"What's madness?" She asked The knight cackled at her naivety.
"You'll see." The knight chuckled.
The nobleman she met turned out to be the son of a wealth Italian merchant. She stayed in Florence and soon married the man that took her away from her Greek village. Still, she could not run from the terror she unleashed onto the world. Dieses began to spread through the countries, poverty enwrapped the smaller towns, and no one could take a step in the world without fear flooding into their soul. As people grew more and more distressed Pandora grew more beautiful. She couldn't stand it! The people of Florence loved her, she had a husband and daughter, all the riches of the world was at her finger tips. But the guilt of unleashing madness onto the world gnawed at her conscious. She dismissed her knight, stopped talking to people, and grew distant from her family. She didn't want to be reminded of the pain she had brought the world with her selfishness.
Eventually the only solace she found was in her rose garden. The white flowers reminded her of how she used to be. Surrounded by the pure flowers, she could pretend to be like them. Until one day when she went to pick a rose and instead pricked her finger on the thorns. She recoiled and went to bring the wound to her lips to alleviate the pain. She stopped, eyes widening at the sight of her hand. Her blood ran black with sin.
What an act,
Her blood is black,
She'll never get her soul back.
She tore through the mansion to the embellished room she had lived in for the past thirty years. There, on its own table, sat the sulfur box she had traded her soul for so many years ago. Desperate to undo what she had done, she grabbed to box from its perch and hurtled it to the marble floor; praying that death would be merciful and allow her out of the deal she had made. The box shattered into many pieces and her soul floated free of its prison, yet did not make a move to go back into her body. A long shadow stretched along the floor and a gloved hand grasped the fragile soul.
"Lord Death, thank goodness you've-" She looked up with tear in her eyes. "HADEN!"
"Hmm?" The male Shinigami furrowed his brow, "I'm not-" He stopped midsentence as a memory bursted into his conscience. "Allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is Hades, now lord of the underworld." Pandora backed away on the floor in tears.
"B-but when I met you, you said-"
"That I was a traveling lord, which was true. As you can guess my presences wasn't exactly welcomed in the towns that I passed through, so I simply changed one letter of my name while I migrated."
"Then you-"
"Were the one that gave you the box, yes."
"No. Nononononono!" She cried, "This can't be, I thought that if I- and then you-" Pandora curled into a fetal position and bawled. The Shingami frowned at the sight. "I thought that if I broke the box I could take back the wish I made and now~ Oh if only I didn't open that stupid box everything would have been fine."
"…you didn't like the gift." He stated his emotions hard to read.
"How could I, because of it-"
"Then let's make a deal." Hades said, Pandora looked up from her knees. He held the same mischievous smile she saw when she first met him. "Since you don't like the way your wish turned out I'll give your soul a second chance. If one of your decedents can stand in the face in madness I will give you your soul back in exchange for the soul of a Kishen. But if your family can not break free by the 1,000th year your linage will die and your soul will be mine forever." Pandora thought.
"H-how do I know you won't cheat?" The Shinigami chuckled.
"I'll give you a fair chance. Your wavelength can guide your decedents and I will do the same for mine." He pulled on his own soul and held it in his other hand. "Do we have a deal?" Pandora hesitated then nodded placing a hand on his soul.
"Deal."
If she's won,
When she's done,
She'll be back on square one.
AN: What do you think? I might continue, but if I don't get enough response I'll leave it as a one-shot. If continued the next chapter will start 914 years in the future to Death City before Arachnophobia.