Yuri woke slowly, aware of an acute pounding in his head. It was as if he had been hit in the back of the neck and his chest with a baseball bat. His first thought was of the thugs that had been harassing a previous classmate of his outside the women's bathroom in the park. He really needed to stop jumping into situations without thinking them through, especially if he didn't have his own baseball bat to hit them back with. Not that Yuri had ever been much of a fighter. He had a hot temper, sure, but he never wanted to actually hurt anyone.
Yuri couldn't remember anything about the fight and wondered vaguely, through the drumbeats in his head, if they had knocked the memories right out of him. The young teen groggily shifted his body, assessing his limbs for any further damage. The only other thing he could feel was a small cut in the corner of his mouth. Yuri shifted around again, noticing for the first time that he was on a very, very, soft mattress. This doesn't feel like a hospital bed, he thought sluggishly. Maybe I was taken home…but my bed isn't this soft.
The first pangs of alarm wormed into his mind as he realized that he wasn't where he was expecting to be. The teen mentally steeled himself and opened his eyes a sliver…and instantly shut them again with a groan as sunlight streamed straight into his face from an open window. The pain spiked sharply in his forehead and Yuri groaned again for good measure before slowly turning his sore body away from the light. He did not dare open his eyes again until the pain had faded.
"Your Majesty?" a soft voice drifted from across the room, a light and pleasant cadence that scraped through Yuri's sore head like nails on a scratchboard. Yuri still had his eyes clenched tight and he tensed further as he suddenly realized he was not alone. At first the words didn't register, then–
"M'jsty," Yuri mumbled incomprehensibly. A few seconds later the memories came back to him in another great spike of pain. Right…he was in an alternate dimension hell-bent on putting him in charge of a race of demons that he knew absolutely nothing about. Great, so that wasn't a dream. Yuri tried to remember the rest of it; getting flushed down a toilet, getting attacked by villagers, getting attacked by a huge foreigner, getting kidnapped by a skeleton…. another spike of pain discouraged Yuri from trying to remember the rest. No wonder he was in so much pain if that was just the beginning of his ordeal.
"Your Majesty, are you awake?" A soft hand rested on Yuri's shoulder. The young king tried to respond, but all that came out was a gurgled groan and a slight nod of his head. His eyes were still clenched tight, and the hand slipped off his shoulder. Yuri heard the faint tapping of shoes on carpet and a hiss, and then it was blissfully dark in the room once more. Yuri's shoulders relaxed as the pain in his head slightly receded and he slowly opened his eyes. Sitting before him next to his bed was his supposed godfather, brown eyes soft with concern. Yuri saw that the bed he was sleeping on was a very large four-poster, but his eyes were too squinted to make out much else in the gloom. "Yuri, are you alright?" Conrad said softly, and this time Yuri could tolerate his voice. Yuri nodded once again and felt with relief that the pain was slowly receding into a tolerable ache. He now felt like he had a slight migraine rather than head trauma and a beating.
"What happened?" Yuri whispered, finally achieving comprehensible words, even if his voice sounded like he had swallowed sand. Conrad stood and brushed his hand across Yuri's forehead, supposedly checking for a temperature before sitting back down, satisfied. "You don't remember?" Conrad whispered back, aware of his charge's headache. Yuri shook his head, not really wanting to try his luck again remembering on his own. "Can I get a short summery, " he joked weakly with a smile that was closer to a grimace.
Conrad smiled fondly before the expression slipped off his face. Yuri felt a little worried as Conrad hesitated. "You may have destroyed the dining hall after challenging Wolfram for permission to pursue our mother."
Yuri stared at his godfather incomprehensively for several long moments, slowly replaying Conrad's words in his head. Like a film reel, the events of the previous day flashed through the young king's mind in fast forward; the arousal, the confusion, the fear, the beautiful woman, the spork, and a very angry blond kid that may or may not have been on fire. And then...nothing. He only had brief visions of rage and flying tables that flitted across his mind like possessed fireflies.
"Okaaaay…" Yuri slowly sat up in the bed, grateful that the pain in his head was clearing away steadily. Whatever he had been hit with was wearing off, which was good, since he needed to be completely lucid for this conversation. Conrad made an aborted motion, as if he was going to insist that Yuri remain horizontal, before evidently deciding that Yuri looked fine enough to sit up. "Can we dissect that sentence for a minute? Start at the beginning." Yuri continued, propping a pillow against the headboard and sitting back as comfortably as he could.
"Alright," Conrad started, "Do you want me to start with dinner?" Yuri nodded, he definitely remembered what happened before dinner, but everything after that is a bit hazy. "When mother appeared –"
"Wait, wait, wait." Yuri interrupted, "can we please start with that interesting nugget of information? Lady Cheri is your mother? She couldn't possibly be any older than you are! And not only that, you guys are brothers? You look nothing alike."
Conrad smiled that sweet smile that Yuri was quickly coming to associate as his default expression. "Demons tend to live much longer than humans. We also age much more slowly and generally are five times older than we look. Gwendle, Wolfram and I all look different because we have different fathers."
"I see…" Yuri said slowly, not seeing at all. He wondered vaguely if he would live that long and decided that that was definitely a conversation for another time. So Cheri might be hundreds of years old. Yuri really didn't know how he felt about that, and didn't want to think about it at the moment. "What happened after that?"
Conrad shifted uncomfortably and continued his narrative. "I introduced you to Mother. Apparently she had thought you were a gift when she encountered you in the bath." Yuri opened his mouth to ask, but Conrad beat him to the punchline, anticipating his next question. "In our culture, once a person reaches their coming of age at 16 they receive full rights as an adult and are eligible for marriage, and at age 60 they reach physical maturity. Sometimes, families in the nobility will offer those who have reached their majority but have not chosen any lover to members of other families to… well…" Conrad blushed and stuttered, and Yuri cringed in disgust. Was he hearing this right? Families were giving away their children to strangers for sex? What kind of messed up world is this place!
Conrad caught the look and raised his hands defensively. "Wait, it's not what you think!" he stuttered quickly, but Yuri's disgusted expression stayed firmly in place. Conrad dropped his face in his hands and groaned. "I am explaining this badly." He lifted his head again and attempted to collect himself before continuing. "The offering of a gift is completely consensual by all parties involved. It is practiced by families who are close or have done another a great service. A 'gift' is a person who is presented to one of the nobility as an expression of immense gratitude or trust."
"So let me get this straight. If one family does a favor for another family, they send someone from their own family who is barely out of puberty to come have sex with some stranger from the family who helped them out?" It sounded convoluted even as Yuri said it.
Conrad smiled again, glad that Yuri had relaxed a bit. "Not necessarily. You see, a gift has to be a virgin, so technically anyone who has never experienced physical pleasure by another could qualify to be a gift. In our culture, surrendering yourself completely to another for the first time is a sacred act, and one that shows absolute trust. A family sending a gift to another is echoing that trust symbolically and literally."
"Alright." Yuri could accept that, as it sort of made a weird kind of sense.
"So as one of the nobility, Lady Cheri thought I was a gift. Does that happen to her often?" he asked, slightly dreading the answer.
Conrad shook his head. "Not too often. Receiving a gift is a very rare thing, even for a Demon Queen."
Yuri nodded dumbly at this newest revelation. Cheri was the previous Demon Queen. Well, that explains what she was doing in the Demon King's Private Bath in the first place. This story just kept getting more convoluted as it went, and Yuri was not positive he could take much more. Well, it's now or never. "And then? You said that I challenged Wolfram for permission to pursue Lady Cheri," and that particular thought sent a thrill through him. At this point he wasn't quite sure whether it was fear or excitement. "How did that even happen anyway? I certainly don't remember shouting any claims to his mother at the guy who clearly wanted to maul me."
"When Wolfram perceived that you may have been interested in our mother, it was within his rights to challenge you to a duel to either chase you off in the event that you lost, or accept that you were worthy of pursuing her. Dropping cutlery to the floor signifies the issuing of a challenge. If you had picked up the knife, it would have meant that you had no intention of pursuing her and would have ended in a duel of honor. Since you picked up the spork, however, you were declaring your intentions to pursue Lady Cheri, and would have dueled her son for permission to do so. And that is exactly what happened, only…"
"Go on," Yuri said, head still spinning from all the strange cultural mumbo jumbo he had just heard, but wanting to hear the end of this story sometime soon so he could pass out and forget any of this crazy shit had ever happened.
"You kind of awakened your Demon powers in fit of rage and destroyed the dining room. Lady Cheri had to subdue you before you ended up killing Wolfram."
Yuri paled. He vaguely remembered Conrad explaining about Demon powers, but didn't really believe it until he had witnessed them for himself. Not only did he have powers of his own, but he had almost killed someone with them? All in all, this was turning out to be a very bad morning.
Conrad, sensing that his charge could take no more talk for now, stood and gently lowered the young king back down to the bed. "I think that's enough for now." Conrad said. "You can hear more after you've rested properly. You drained your magic pretty severely, and you need your rest."
Yuri nodded numbly, mind too overloaded to properly respond. After his king was settled, Conrad stood to leave. "I will come and wake you for lunch in a few hours. Please get some sleep," he said as he padded out of the room and shut the door softly behind him.
The next time Yuri woke, he was alone. He opened his eyes and was relieved to not experience any pain, only a deep fatigue. He sat carefully upright and waited a few seconds, but the pain did not return. Satisfied that he felt much better, the boy slowly got out of the four-poster bed and looked around.
He was in a large room with vaulted ceilings. The walls were made of stone, like the rest of Covenant Castle, the estate of the capital of the Great Demon Kingdom. To his right were four large windows that were currently shuttered from the sun by green drapery. Yuri padded across the soft carpet on the floor past a few pieces of over the top fancy furniture and opened one of the curtains. Light streamed into the room and warmed the bare skin on Yuri's chest as he gazed outside. It looked to be just past midmorning, so he supposed he had only slept a couple more hours. Yuri carefully opened the over sized window he was standing at and leaned against the sill, taking in the fresh air. He looked out over the vast courtyard and stared at a garden that held a variety of yellow, blue and white flowers.
"What a day" Yuri sighed to himself. It had only been a few hours since it started, but already he felt like it had been too eventful. Just the day before he was at home wishing he could go to baseball practice. His normal life was starting to feel like a dream…A swelling of annoyance rose within him. Who did those people think they were, stealing him away like this? He was getting nothing but headaches while they bickered amongst each other, picked fights with him, and explained absurd cultural stuff to him that he couldn't understand. He didn't want to be king, and he certainly didn't want any freaky dangerous powers. He remembered with a shiver what had transpired last night. That power had been terrifying.
Abruptly, Yuri decided that he didn't want to go along with this insanity. Be a king for these crazy, violent people! Please. It looked like half of them didn't want him there anyway. He spun on his heel and stopped by a dresser, quickly rifling through the contents looking for something to wear. He bypassed the ridiculous underwear, deciding that he would just have to go without if that was the only option. He pulled on a white button down shirt and covered it with an emerald green vest. After a bit of rifling, he found some loose fitting pants that wouldn't chafe too badly and a pair of sturdy shoes.
His hands fumbled as he tried to move as swiftly as possible. He didn't know if he had any time to waste. He stalked over to the window and looked down. He was a few stories up with a solid stone wall between him and the ground. Good, at least he wouldn't be in view of any windows. He took in the surrounding courtyard and palace walls and made sure there was no one in the vicinity. Surrounding the palace was a huge wall with guard stations at the top. There were guards, but they only seemed to be paying attention to the other side, towards the town. The yard was empty.
Yuri dragged the back of a chair to the door, securing it in place, and began ripping the sheets off the bed and knotting them together. He planned to tie them to the frame of the big heavy bed and climb out the window. He saw it in a movie once, and this was just a dream, so it should probably work. Right?
Yuri double checked his knots and took a bracing breath. Let's do this!
He began to throw them over the window-sill, but hesitated. Oh my, I've never seen a man with such beautiful colors, Cheri's voice drifted through his head. The double black glanced at himself in the mirror. If he was going to get anywhere, he would need to cover his hair as best he could. Yuri walked back over to the dresser and began furiously rifling through it again. Come on, come on…there! He pulled out a brown travel cloak in triumph and swiftly pulled it on. Without hesitation, Yuri stalked back to the window, pulled himself over and began to scale down.
He should have hesitated.
"Aaaaahhh," Yuri screamed quietly to himself as he lost his grip for a second. He slid down a few feet before regaining his tenuous hold on the slippery silk sheets. He looked down at the ground in terror. What had he been thinking! This looked so much easier in comic books!
He began struggling down slowly, afraid that if he moved too much, his knots would come undone. Inch by inch, the ground came closer and by the time Yuri was ten feet off the ground he began to breathe a little easier. And then the rope snapped.
"Gah," the teen screamed in surprise, falling hard on his back. The sheets tumbled down on top of him as he lay groaning in pain, trying to regain his breath. That…didn't go too well. Fighting past the guards might have been a better choice after all.
A few moments passed and Yuri carefully sat up, the mass of blankets bunching in his lap. He was relieved to find that, aside from a very sore backside, he hadn't taken any real damage. He looked up and noticed that all of the rope had come down, and he suspected that it was where it was secured to the bed that had snapped.
"Boy," a voice startled Yuri, and he jumped badly. Behind him was a middle aged man in a guard uniform and the boy gulped audibly, pulling his hood down lower. "What do you think you are doing?"
Yuri looked around frantically for an excuse. "Um," he stuttered, looking down at his legs. "Taking these sheets to get cleaned," he said with a sudden burst of inspiration. "I tripped over a rock and dropped them."
The guard narrowed his eyes and Yuri looked away, nervously. Finally the older guy grunted and walked away. "Be more careful kid."
"Right," Yuri said, giving a two-finger solute. As soon as the man was out of sight, the double black gave a sigh of relief. Now, how was he going to get past the gates without being noticed? Luckily, they were open at the moment, and he could see the town at the bottom of the hill, but there were a couple of men facing away from him blocking his exit.
Yuri picked up the sheets to obscure his face and casually wandered around along the wall, trying to look like he knew where he was going. He was just rounding the corner when he was pushed back as several men wearing similar cloaks to his passed by, heading to the nearby stable. They walked by him without a glance and young stable hands began passing them horses. They looked like they were leaving!
Yuri swiftly dropped the sheets behind some bushes and fell into step behind the line of men. None of them noticed as another person joined their ranks. A young blond boy handed Yuri a horse, which snorted in his face.
Ok, Yuri, you can do this.
He furtively looked around to see how the others were mounting their steeds and clumsily copied them. His foot missed the stirrup several times, and he wasn't exactly graceful, but he managed to get on without the horse dragging him off, or anyone noticing him. This one seemed a lot easier to handle than the last steed he was forced to ride. The bay stoically stood still while Yuri fumbled. As soon as everyone was seated, an order came to move out, and Yuri flinched as the horse turned about and began following the others.
The gate got closer, and Yuri's anticipation grew. He was really going to pull this off!
Ten feet…three feet…and without receiving a second glance, the monolithic gates passed over the boy's head, and he let out a sigh of relief.
Yuri was free.
Hey guys! Sorry it's been a while, but here you go! Got to love these crazy Demon Kingdom utensil based customs, am I right? And rebellious!Yuri for your reading pleasure. Hope you enjoyed this. Please review! Your words are like spinach to my Popeye!