Lord Blade

by Jex

Chapter the Prologue

Note from the author:
When Princess Celestia came to me and asked me to assist in the writing of a biography about the life of the Lord Blade Lacuna, I suggested, in my mind of course, that she see the royal physician. I had absolutely no wish to interact with, be in the same room with, or even be within the same wing of the palace with that thing. Many, including the doctors and nurses busy keeping him in a stable condition at the time, would have shared my sentiment had they overheard. However, the Princess has the ability to be very persuasive sometimes, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting beside a hospital bed next to arguably the most dangerous being alive.

It was over an hour before he deemed to notice my existence, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. Even then, he responded to none of my questions. I asked him about his past, his skills, his interests, even his plans for the future. Nothing. Frustrated by the lack of answers, I turned to leave, already coming up with excuses for the princess in my head. As I stood in the doorway, he called me back. I’ll never know why. Maybe he just wanted someone to vent at and I happened to be there. What followed next was one of the strangest experiences of my life. Simply put, he told me everything, and the story that unfolded before me from his oddly quiet voice was one of the most fantastic and incredible tales I frankly believe has ever been told. All the while, he kept a small, sad smile on his face.

I would like to thank the readers and purchasers of this novel, as well as my friends and family for helping me get through writing this book. The story in these pages has changed my outlook on many things and I hope it will do the same for at least some of the people who read it. From now on, the story will be told in his words.

Describe my first few minutes in the living world? Bright, definitely bright. Someone more poetic than myself might call it dazzling or even resplendent, but you know what? It was bright, so that’s what I’m going to say! And the colors! So many of them! As someone, or somepony now I guess, who was used to grey, grey, grey, black, red, more damn grey, this caught me off guard. I’m sure I must have looked like an idiot, standing there for, like, ten whole minutes just looking at all the greens and yellows and... freaking colors! But of course, I’m sure you’re thoroughly confused by now. Good. Eh, just kidding ya. Alright, I’ll start from the very, very beginning...

The first thing you need to understand is that I’m not a pony. I know, shocking right? Was it the horns or the four wings? To put it simply, I’m a demon. Or at least, that’s the name we’ve been given by most intelligent species for whatever reason. What does that mean? I’ll get to that later, okay? Right now I have to go through the annoying process of trying to explain Hell, or Tartarus as ponies call it.

Basically, Hell is divided into seven levels. Again, big shocker. And, just like the myths say, each level gets progressively worse as you go down. Dante Alighieri got some things right at least. What most of those stories fail to mention are the Archdemons, the rulers of the levels. They’re nasty characters, going from bad to worse and each one representing one of the sins. This is where my father comes in. His name is Ira, or Wrath, as it were. You know, the ‘hands that shed innocent blood’ guy. Yeah, not a pleasant hellspawn to be around. He’s the ruler of the sixth level. You can’t go much further down than that and trust me, I don’t know what you would have had to do in your life to end up in a place like the Sixth. Go much further and you’re in the territory of the big fiery guy we don’t talk about.

My father’s mansion (I guess you could call it that), called Vexertane, was perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking what was aptly named The Ash Lake. You know why? Because the shores are made up of the ashes of the burning damned souls... yeah, not even kidding on that one. Great place to grow up, don’t you think?

The palace was a gigantic black structure, hundreds of feet high and set back into the jagged rock. I could never quite determine what it was made of, but I had a hunch that it was actually hard-packed ashes from the shores of the lake, hauled up the cliff by souls shedding their own ashes on the beaches as they burned. Sadly, I was the only one who found that whole idea completely disgusting. Welcome to my family, folks. From a distance, its turrets looked like the spines of a dragon with its head underneath the steaming lake.

It consisted of dark, winding hallways and cavernous dungeons with seldom a torch to light anyone’s way. I guess it’s paradoxical to say something is creepy as hell when it’s in Hell itself, but there’s really no other way to describe my father’s castle. I swear, that place was almost alive. The walls oozed with the condensing steam from the lake and it seemed like you had been unknowingly ingested by some foul creature of the Seventh.

I seldom spent my time there, preferring to walk along the not-quite-so-dismal-but-still-pretty-awful shores of the Ash Lake. As disconcerting as it was to step on the ashes of burned souls, it was far better than constantly being under the conflicted and watchful eyes of my father and his cronies. They always seemed to keep a much closer eye on me than any of my siblings, which I found... really, really annoying to say the least.

Anyway, my mother was another powerful demon from the Fifth. One of the daughters of Greed, I believe. Ironic, seeing as how she joined with my father to gain power and wealth, if there is such a thing as wealth in Hell. Mostly power then I guess. And so, it is here that I come into the picture.

From the moment I was born, it was obvious that I was a little off for a demon. I was smaller than your average baby/monster thing. My claws weren’t as long and my horns and spines not as large. My hair was white, unlike the blacks, greys and reds on the heads of most demons, something any self-respecting demon should be ashamed of. Ironic, I know. I grew up to be only eight feet tall, as opposed to the average eleven feet in the demon realm. Tiny and gentle, I really wasn't much of a demon as a kid. A small consolation for my family, however, is my wings. Now, most demons don’t have wings, contrary to popular belief. My father did, and they were a great source of pride for him. My mother didn’t have any at all. Me, on the other hand, I had four. Two sets of large black bat wings, one pair slightly smaller and situated just under the larger pair, so that they were covered completely when I folded them. How excited my parents were, for a while anyway.

When I was about ten I was wandering around the twisting halls of the palace in what I suppose would be Hell’s equivalent of late afternoon. I used to love exploring the place, no matter how scary it was. I came across a large door with an ornate design made of a material I had never seen before. It looked like your average grey rock, but it wasn’t. It was... shiny. Baffled, I examined the material and noted its smooth surface and glint in the distant torchlight. It had a large door handle made of the same stuff, which just happened to be unlocked.

Glancing around the hall for unexpected watchers, and seeing none, I turned the handle and opened the door. Much to my surprise, it swung open without a sound. Seeing that it was pitch black inside, I peered back outside the door and ran for the torch halfway down the hall. The door crashed behind me, echoing through the chamber. This room was much larger than I thought it would be.

Holding the torch up, I saw books. Tens, hundreds, thousands of books stretching away from the sputtering light I held. We, the Archdemon family of the Sixth, had a library. Looking at the floor, it seemed to be the only place in the whole Sixth level made of something other than ash or lava. My footsteps echoed regardless of how lightly I paced, my clawed feet tapping the floor. Shelves fifty feet high extended endlessly into the dark on either side of me, crammed with books of all colors and sizes.

What really struck me was how clean the place was. There was no ash on the floor or shelves, and many of the books looked like they had recently been handled. This actually managed to completely floor me. I had never before thought of anyone in my family as a reader, and I had certainly never thought any of them would have the time to maintain such a wonderful collection.

Having only ever seen about three books in my entire life, and each one of them a step by step guide to various demonic sacrifices, I was pleasantly surprised as an understatement. Seeing at least a hundred thousand of them all at once, I found myself unable to really think as I crossed the room.

I don’t know how long I continued to walk, so overwhelming was my wonder at the rows towering over me. Eventually, I reached the opposite wall and glanced back into the darkness behind me. I figured I must be deep into the cliffs by now, even though the walls were clean, unlike the rest of the castle. The room stretched out before me like the Seventh, consuming all light from my torch. I walked over to the nearest bookshelf and ran my fingers over the varied spines of volumes old and new.

My fingers tingled as I touched them. They were almost whispering to me. After pausing to listen for intruders, I carefully took a publication entitled 'Daring Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Stone' off the shelf nearest me and opened the cover.

I read out loud. “As Daring Do tread through the tropical jungle, the wet heat sapped her energy and slowed her every step. If only she could escape this oppressive atmosphere and fly up into the cool blue sky, but her crash landing in the jungle had injured her wing and she was grounded for a few days.” Even these first few lines raised an insane amount of questions in my head. What’s a jungle? What does “wet” mean? What’s a sky? What’s an atmosphere? What is blue? Where is this place? Does it even exist? I was so overwhelmed by questions that I had to sit and breathe for a few minutes before I could continue reading.

“‘A few days. It might as well be a few months, or a few years!' she cried. The mosquitos buzzed loudly, the macaws cried from the high trees, yet all of these distracting noises were not enough to cover the sound of the predators that were following her every step.”

I think it was at this point that I started hyperventilating, but I really can't be sure. I knew at that point I would remember those lines for the rest of my life. The story itself seemed a little bland to me, like your standard adventure story I’d heard about, but the setting was so captivating I couldn’t think. I couldn’t possibly imagine what mosquitoes or macaws or predators or trees were, but from what I could tell they were other sorts of things, possibly dangerous creatures, that lived in whatever this place was.

I don’t know how long I read for, I was so enthralled by the world in which the story was set. I couldn't think what anything in this world looked or sounded like, and I was desperate to find more. However, fearing it must be getting late and my father expected me as usual, I stowed the book back on its shelf, picked up the torch, and left the library, the ornate door clicking behind me.

It turns out that I had another card to play as I grew up. At the age of ten I learned how to walk, and it wasn’t until later that I discovered the huge aging gap between myself and most mortals. Anyway, around the time I learned to walk, I developed a new ability, one that has never been fully explained away, even by myself. I could blink. No, not with my eyes, that would just be dumb. I could, and still can, go from point A to point C with no point B in between instantaneously, hence “blinking.” I was here and then I was there, and it is this that has shaped who I have become.

The first time I blinked, I had snuck down to the library to read more of the Daring Do series. I had finished the first one and had discovered that were were approximately twenty books taking Daring Do on all kinds of adventures in all kinds of places, from jungles to deserts to mountains to forests to glaciers and everything in between. It didn't matter what any of these were. It seemed to me that this world was real. It was so intricately woven, and all of the creatures (at least, that was what I assumed they were) seemed to fit right into their environments.

It also appeared that Daring Do was… a pony, a bizarre creature that seemed to be like a smaller and significantly nicer version of the giant skeletal demon mounts my father used to pull his black spiny chariot of doom (yep, that's its name and I'm sticking to it). It seemed as though this world was mostly populated by small talking horses, some of which were able to fly, or do magic, or, very rarely, both. I sat in my favorite spot, right where I had deemed the center of the library, contemplating all this when I heard the door open and my father's deep booming voice echo through the room.

"I know there's a way to do it. I've spent all my time in here trying to figure out how to find it and destroy it, so that little welp of yours doesn't fly right up into the world when we're not looking!"

"How could you think Lacuna could ever accomplish such a thing? He has no idea the living world exists! And if he did, he would never be able to imagine it," replied the harsh, rasping whisper of my mother.

"I don't care. It's still best to get rid of it. No one down here will complain, certainly. And besides, I've been a little suspicious of him lately." Their voices were getting closer to me. I wished desperately to be elsewhere, in my chamber, on the shores of the lake, anywhere but here, where I knew I wasn't supposed to be.

I found it odd that my parents were actually talking about me, though, as well as this "living world." Apparently their four-winged, white-haired son actually was worth discussing, but if they had found out I was listening in, I would probably have been cast into the lake. If only I could be there, right now, jogging along its shores, alone with my thoughts. I closed my eyes and hoped they didn't see me.

And then, their voices were gone. I opened my eyes. There I was, standing on the shore of the lake at least a mile from the castle. I closed my eyes again. I had to be imagining it. But no, there was the ash between my toes, the bubbling of the lava churning in the lake to my right, the wails of tiny souls as they drifted along, crumbling into ash, the bloodcurdling cry of a skullpion. When opening my eyes again, I saw the castle in the distance, the ashes swirling around it in the spurts of steam from the lake.

I couldn't believe it. I had blinked. I'd only heard of it once, maybe twice, before, in stories of old that had been passed down through my family for generations. Apparently only one demon every thousand years or so possessed this ability. And I had it. I had to test it, this was too good to be true! I drew an X in the ash with my toe and walked about ten feet away, closing my eyes and wanting to be back on that X. I felt my ears pop and heard a small fizzle. I felt the indents in the ash and opened my eyes. There was the X, right beneath my feet.

Reflecting back on how I managed to do it the first time, something occurred to me. My parents were talking about me, but they were also talking about the living world. They knew it existed, and now I did too. It was real, it had to be or my father wouldn't bother bringing it up.

My father had also said something about there being an entrance to the living world. How incredible it would be to see it for myself! I spent the next eight hours walking along the lake, my mind racing. There was a way out of Hell itself. I could go to the living world and find out what trees and creatures and blue and red and yellow and green were. I could see what ponies looked like and what they did and how they lived. I could leave this place forever. And it was at that point that I decided I was going to.