A/N: Chapter two

A/N: Beware….be very very bewarey of evil things in art museums…-shifty eyes-

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"Come on Virginia!" Henry called down the gallery.

"Coming!" She giggled and jogged down, quietly, in the art gallery. She was just looking at a painting of flowers and fruit in the room of Still Life; she arrived to where her brother was.

She let out an excited gasp, seeing the sculpture room at its best. Statues and busts of ladies and lords, gods and goddess, animals and castles, this room was the largest. Henry was looking at a statue of a proud bear while she stood looking around.

She loved art. Painting, sculpting, playing music…whichever, art was her joy in life. Now she was surrounded by it, looking around and enjoying herself. There were sculptures from hundreds of years ago. There were some modern ones, old, new, decades ago…all beautiful and noble.

She was glad he was her brother. He was her biological brother, along with her biological parents. Yes, of course they were her parents, of course they were. Were they?

She didn't know. She had forgotten form the spells and incense she was under when she was seven. She only knew that yes, she was the real daughter of General Friedrich and Lady Dulcinia. Henry was born two years before her. He was her older brother, her great brothers she played sailboats with on the pond and hung around at the balls and dinners at guest's homes.

Now she was exploring on her own the museum.

She only knew happiness. Flowers and money, good food and education…that was her life.

She didn't know that it was all going to be shattered today.

She was famed, yes, for being betrothed to the prince, but yet she seemed pretty average, normal if but being the sweetest girl in all the land. She lived a normal life, and thought things a normal girl should always think in the society. She was learning skills and ideals on how to become a princess. She was groomed on only thinking on happiness and the life of the people. She already learned a few languages and excelled on leadership and strategy roles and classes. She was getting ready to rule the land, not knowing she would become the prophesied queen!

As the innocent turned the corner, through a darker, dustier hall she went into another gallery.

She glanced at the title, written in marble above the archway.

The Hall of the Macabre.

This did not hinder her. She was curious and constantly trying to learn something, specifically if it dealt with knowing the ways and wonders of the world whether good or bad. Though until that point she preferred the goodness of man.

Not the horrors, the evil thoughts that were brewed here from the minds of the smart and insane. This place was filled with the other side of thinking, the dark of art…all of forbidden desire, terror, fear, lust and the demons of the Death Gods was painted and sculpted in this very room. This gallery was so deep and kept unnoticed in this building that there was no windows to the outside world, so the light was by the dark yellow light of candles and gas lights.

She entered, standing very still, slowly scanning the room. She had never seen such grotesque sculptures of ebony, such thick paintings of lurid scenes, of old artifacts of the Death Gods from eons ago. Demons, sins, blood and gore, a depressed man gouging his throat out…

She had never seen such things before. She had never known the realities of darkness, evil, barbaric and deathly sadness. Nothing, nothing at all, it was hidden from her. Her family feared that she would fear the Red Death. There was always hope that it will be destroyed…that he shall be dead, that he isn't a true God.

There on a pedestal was her worst nightmare.

A tall, dark foreboding statue stood. It was of a figure, a dark shining metal, or was it bright glossy stone, of a man with a cape. He stood with it over his face with only dark, glittering eyes from sunken eye sockets. It was of a skull, of the same stone or metal of the statue. It had a hat with an ebony feather, a clawed hand with long, long fingernails…talons more like it, and talons of a articulated and boney hands, outstretched from the confines of a artful sleeve and lace, all sculpted and black.

She stared and couldn't breathe for a few seconds. When she was, she was gasping and going into shock, staring at the statue. Who could dare make such a thing? It was an unheard of thing to sculpt…

Was it an altered macabre version of a Death God?

Or was it in fact…not even a statue?

Now she knew. Now she remembered the ominous figure that sometime showed up in her dreams. Now she saw her memory, he hidden fear appear before her and shift and move.

For the black figure's stretched hand moved and shifted, it's stringy boney hand curling and wiggling it's fingers. The eyes of black glowed red as the skull-faced entity moved, tilting his hatted head. And smoke, black smoke was rolling off him.

The black smoke was the dark covering, the ebony that masked his red clothes, cape and hat. His ponytail of beautiful silky red hair moved and his face…white, a pale skull covering his even paler white skin. His lips were black and white, like a skull's teeth. Menace and evil stirred the air as the smoke dissipated into dust at his red pointed boots.

Now he stood. Now he once again offered his almost skeletal hand to the frightened girl.

"Come to me. Come to The Red Death"

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A/N: Prepare for screaming next chapter! However if you DON'T review it might not come! GRR.

Shoys.