And So Shall Darkness Fall
By: Aurorarose13
Prologue—Meet the Enemy
All-consuming darkness throbbed heatedly with the deceptively silent and narrow passageway to the underground dungeon. It pulsed like a living entity, so velvety black as too hide the million evil secrets cluttering the castle walls. The pathway there was strewn with dangers of the supernatural kind, but she braved them anyway. She had a mission to complete.
When she had reached the base of the stairs, the ruinous sorceress, cloaked from head to toe in nothing but seamless jet-black garments adorned with amethysts, narrowed her amazing lilac eyes meditatively, dividing her surrogate daughter—the midnight blackness—in half with incredible ease. In sweeping waves, the onyx curtain was drawn to the sides with fantastic embellishment; however, the revealed space lay intertwined with shimmering shadows, glossy like the wings of a raven. With a graceful flutter of her spidery hands, the slender, serpentine woman remedied this problem by weaving an elaborate-looking spell. Her icy voice—chilling and calculated and needle-sharp—pricked the air and tumbled fluidly over her ebony lips. "Accursed light, come unto me! I command thee, do my bidding! Illuminate my darkness with your wretched brilliance!"
Energy crackled and fizzled in an undulating ball in the sorceress' cupped hands, and she winced at its harsh radiance. Strained streams of unadulterated light pierced the golden sphere and looped wildly about the moldy, decaying prison. Demonic shadows writhed gleefully, as though they enjoyed the intense, twisting pain of light gnashed viciously with darkness. The grinning woman dropped her hands out from under the globe, and the ball remained mysteriously floating in the rancid, unmoving air. She bent her head down behind the ball, pouted her thick lips and blew lightly on it, pushing it further into the room. The shining sphere unfurled like a Persian carpet, spreading throughout the dungeon and lighting the extinct torches that lay dead for over a thousand years.
Slumbering in the center of the room was it. The creature of the night. Metallic blood red with golden tips to each individual scale. Its low, tapered head was marked with the kind of predatory devilishness seen only in fantasy books and legends. Its long, bony wings were ideal for midnight flights over the once great Yusaki Dynasty whilst it searched for innocent prey upon which to feed—usually human.
Suddenly, the crimson lid blinked open, and the creature's bronzed eye flecked with steel gray focused on the proud, terrifying figure of the black sorceress. "Lady Morin," the huge dragon belched, with reverence and fire resounding in its voice's depths, "it has been a long while."
"That it has. A good 5000 years, I should say," she acknowledged, her tone softening only slightly—enough to let the monster know she was glad to see it alive. With great effort, the behemoth lifted its misshapen head, and Lady Morin dared to run her fragile fingers delicately over the gently sloping bridge of the dragon's snout.
"Has it really been so long?" it huffed with amazement.
Morin nodded solemnly, her darkly purple hair cascading over her shoulders. "And it would have been longer, too, had Talpa not been overthrown before he could attain power."
Angry gray smoke abruptly escaped the seal of red lips over the chimney that was the dragon's mouth. A deep grumble trembled within the its great belly. "That armored bastard… Is there any bit left of him that I might shred and ingest with joy?"
"I'm afraid not, my dear Rantach," the sorceress informed, waving a ghostly white hand in front of her. A filmy projection appeared mystically before the two, and five young men in colored armor danced haltingly in frames. "Apparently these five human creatures had the ability to do what we could not; they obliterated Talpa and his Dynasty completely."
"Human creatures did that? Surely you jest, Lady Morin. Had I not despised them so greatly, perhaps I would be impressed, if this is the truth."
"How else would you explain all this?" she implored, motioning around the room. "Besides, Rantach, you know my sense of humor. I would never joke about Talpa's annihilation, not after what he did to us."
Rantach chuffed ferociously in agreement. "So what do you have planned for us, m'lady?"
The horrific gleam within the depths of Lady Morin's swirling eyes resurfaced, as if buried for a millennium. A delicious smile crept steadily up her darkly gorgeous face, settling in for the first time in ages. "First, we shall destroy these pitiful human creatures; they have served their purpose. Then, with those beasts exterminated, you and I shall once again establish the Yusaki Empire and throw Japan, then the world, into my magically beautiful darkness!" Rantach grinned a toothy grin in his dragon-like manner and roared anxiously. His sanguine body flared threateningly as he stood up.
And then the torches blinked out dramatically on a strange wind. Lady Morin's magically beautiful darkness again reigned over all…