FIDGET, BATRISHAN PRINCE OF DARKNESS
Prologue: A story told to a descendant
About 300 years after the events in Storybrooke
The worlds were shattering. It was occurring everywhere, in every world, and in every realm that were known to all kinds. The feuds within individuals or nature had finally led to this. Now, the Nine Norse Worlds were falling apart. Neverland was getting its magic drained. The yellow brick road of Oz was losing its bricks as they detached themselves from the ground and went to join the atmosphere. Everywhere was a sign of apocalypse: destroyed buildings, animal corpses, plants slowly withering one by one, and realms losing their magic, their life force. And all this time, people were either scavenging for survival or fighting against each other for territory, conquest of resources, etc. In other words, they kept doing the same things that led them to this universal apocalyptic inferno.
The Enchanted Forest was barely spared: patches of land were stripped away from gravity and were floating in midair. Many crop fields were burned and so were towns and villages thanks to their warring habitants. Aside from the royal castles and nobility domains, the only accesses for refugees, and the temples or shrines dedicated to saints or gods, nothing was intact from destruction. The more things were destroyed, the more you could see outer space.
On the winter solstice of this cursed future, two figures where flying through the fields of floating mountains and remains of civilization. They appeared to be Batrishans, a species of humanoid bats that miraculously survived their rumored extinction, due to their bat ears, wings, and claws, but they weren't quite that. They had mixed bloods in their veins, causing their Batrishan blood heredity to slowly disappear by each generation.
"It's horrible out here, Papa," the smallest of them said. His skin was a somewhat like gray like his father's and their ancestor's golden eyes with red irises were a characteristic that they both shared with their paternal predecessors. However, their facial features and light hair mostly came from any human predecessor they had.
"I know, Zadnji," his Papa said, calling his son by the native Batrishan name that was given to him at his birth besides the Christian name that his human mother gave him: Zachary. They flew close to one another, holding hands, as they flew towards a remaining patch of land on the non-floating grounds of the Enchanted Forest. The section was a large range of dark mountains with endless ravines, death gray clouds, and thorned trees. A person who didn't know Zadnji and his father, Vjero, would have laughed at them for going at a hellish place that the Batrishans, peace-loving and altruistic as they once were, had called sanctuary for more than 3 centuries now.
Vjero and Zadnji flew to the highest and darkest mountain of them all, where it seemed like no light ever came to drop even the weakest ray of sunshine. They finally saw a rocky platform with a carved staircase that led to what appeared to be a shrine. The Batrishans landed and began climbing all the way up without even resting.
"Papa, why do our people call this a sanctuary?" Zadnji asked, clinging on to Vjero's arm, worried about the possible dangers that this hostile place represented.
"Because…this is were our ancestor's shrine is. This is where he was finally buried after living more than 3 centuries." He motioned his hand to the shrine that finally appeared before them. It was the most gothic looking shrine that Zadnji had ever seen. The marble stones were as dark as hell; the columns were twisted and ebony-colored like wild black mambas; the glass windows were shaped and designed like bat wings. The mammoth-sized door, dark as the plague itself, greeted them. Zadnji noticed that a dome made of silver crowned the shrine.
"Papa, since when do shrines have such shiny, silver domes like this?" The young Batrishan pointed at the dome.
Vjero shook his head. "They never did. Humans feared that our ancestor's ghost would haunt them as much as he terrorized them when he was still alive. They thought that, due to his…conditions, silver would keep him locked in the shrine…forever."
The door automatically opened when Vjero and his son headed towards it. The inside was no different than the outside, except that rows of Batrishan statues holding torches formed a pathway in front of them. The torches lit up one by one, illuminating a passage for them. The visitors walked through the trail of fire like ghosts going to the afterlife.
"Was our ancestor as bad as the stories claimed him to be?" Zadnji asked, seeing his father sigh in disappointment.
"I wish I could wait until you were older to tell you this, Zadnji," Vjero said as they approached what appeared to be a platform. "But with everything that is occurring around us, it is best if I tell you our ancestor's story."
They approached the altar. A large, magnificent mural painting of Ashiva, the Batrishans' eternal god of balance, welcomed them with its artistic glory. But Vjero wasn't looking at the mural painting of the father of all Batrishans. Instead, he was looking at a statue that was separating the mural painting from him and his son.
"Our ancestor had his times when he was a good and great man. But throughout most of his life, he had followed darkness…darkness that consumed him. Centuries of making pacts with immortals, serving notorious villains…all for the sake of getting the revenge that he never ended up getting…made him the monster most people knew him as. Zadnji, listen carefully to the tale I'm going to tell you…of the Batrishan Prince of Darkness."
Zadnji looked one last time at the statue before listening to his father's tale. The statued Batrishan was in a both predatory and warrior position. His wings almost appeared as if it were turning into a swarm of vampire bats. Zadnji was in a state of disbelief when he saw how the statue looked exactly like him and his father…
Except for his right, notched ear, his angry eyes, and his right leg replaced with a peg leg.
The bottom foundation of the statue said the following words:
THE BATRISHAN PRINCE OF DARKNESS HE WAS
FOR MORE THAN CENTURIES HE LIVED AT,
HERE LIES THE MONSTER HE ONCE WAS,
KING FIZTGERALD DENADA CORTÉS, A.K.A FIDGET THE BAT.