A/N: Here's a little teaser of sorts for my upcoming story "HOND: Devil's Masquerade." I'm working hard on it right now, so enjoy the prologue, and keep checking back while I finish the rest!
PROLOGUE OF A GYPSY KING
Ah, you have returned, my friends, at last! Clopin knows. Clopin Trouillefou, Emperor of Truands, King of Gypsies, sees all from his little cart. It has been six long months since last we met, no? And yet – listen, do you hear? – the bells still ring! Faithful they are, faithful is their bellringer, Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame! Now that Judge Claude Frollo is gone (purging the world at last of much great sin!), we see a good deal more of the bellringer. Shy, yes – how can he be otherwise? But so much brighter, as he visits La Esmeralda in the street, and carves his miniature village, and sounds the joyous knells of the bells!
He is happy!
Yes, Clopinet, my puppet, you speak the truth. He is happy. And yet…
What? What else? He IS happy, no?
Well, Clopinet, I am sad to say you are very innocent and know less of the World than I. For I have been lurking some long time, and I have seen that things are not always as they seem. The brightest of lights may yet be the bringer of the most miserable shadows, it is true. The world is, sometimes, a very Masquerade, a devil's Masquerade, and we must learn to tell the light from the dark, the diamonds from the rough, the angels from the demons who hide behind their masks of kindness and friendship.
But – how can you tell?
Ah, that is the difficulty, my puppet. That is what Quasimodo has learned, learned the hard way, save for the help of his trustworthy friends who learned also never to judge by false appearance. Quasimodo is happy, yes, happy now, because he knows how to look beyond the masks.
How did he do it? How, how?
Hush, and I will tell you, puppet. I will tellyou all the tale of the Masks, and it begins with, of course, three new faces to the city of Paris. We cannot have masks without something to hide, you know…