The Nether Prince

Promise

There are all kinds of monsters in the world. Some you can hear, some you can see, some that make you afraid, and some you befriend.

My brother once told me the worst kind of monster was the ones raised to kill, to shut off all emotions, to ignore the pleas of a crying child as it ripped a heart out of a chest.

I don't agree. The worst kind of monster was made. The kind left alone when it is still human, when its pleas went unanswered. When it has been left alone, forever more onwards. When its belief and hope are all crushed into dust.

I am that kind of monster.

"What's the cost?" the boy had asked. No matter, his mother answered. The boy believed her against his better judgements. She was the only one he had left, his father and brothers all went to take part in the campaign and now his mother was going too.

He didn't cry. His mother was a strong warrior, and he believed, she would come home, she'd have to. In his clammy hand he clutched four small black beads on a thin red chain. The things each of his brothers and father tossed him before riding off, and never coming back.

"Keep it safe Silas!" They all had said.

Now his mother was leaving too. She clambered onto the horse, back straight, long auburn hair flowing in the late autumn breeze. She tossed him a yellow stone as she rode away, spear glinting, armor shining in the cold twilight.

"I promise Silas! Keep it safe!" she yelled over the wind.

In that moment he knew. He put the small stone in between two beads and clasped the whole thing around his neck. It symbolized a promise, a promise he knew his mother would never be able to fulfill. He trudged back to his castle, tucking the necklace into his tunic.

When he eventually gave it to another, like his mother and her mother before, he vowed that he would always keep whatever promise he pledged.

Silas was young. Forever drowning in a fantasy world of gods and monsters his mother loved him to have and his brothers urged him to hide. He loved to read. To read about things that is farther than this little kingdom. What he liked most, were death and promises.

He loved to read about death, about how a person's life can be so easily snuffed out, like a candle light left outside on a stormy night; about what happens after when a man went to sleep, and never wakes from his dreams.

He loved death, so he admired the Black Prince, so he wanted to see war. But now, he hates it. The war, the cries of a man being left to die on a dirty battle field, a spear in his stomach, bleeding crimson onto a field already laden with death, begging for the help they knew would never save them.

He was too easy to believe.

He believed in his father, he believed in his brothers, he believed in his mother, and most of all, he believed in the Black Prince.

The majestic Black Prince.

Silas didn't know his name. Just a title. A title that had made the most seasoned veterans screaming for cover, because they knew, if the Black Prince was here, there was nothing more any of them could do.

The name means death, the emptiness as black as night. And death the Black Prince brought to his enemies. He was an exceptional military leader, and his victories over the French was legendary.

Silas believed in him most of all, not because of the glorious successes, but the deaths and victories, and the black dark monsters that roam the battle field when all troops have retreated, sucking on quickly drying blood and silencing the men still alive for all eternity. The Black Prince commands them all.

He loved and loathed the monsters too.

They are war phantoms. They live for war, they feast on war, and they cause war.

They would whisper in monarchs' ears, spinning beautiful lies and sublime plots. Wishing the troops good luck and death, a voice in their heads, when the warriors were about to march.

Lies and deceit, celebrating the aftermath of blood and gore with goblets of red and plates of salty meat, wearing dead men's chain mails and dancing with spears and swords around and around their underground halls.

Only Silas could see them, because they only answered to one they chose themselves. They chose a child. They chose him, because they could see the darkness Silas was told to squash.

The darkness he could so easily embrace, but was leashed by his family, and his undying belief. He believed the darkness did not exist inside him, so it laid dormant, waiting for a little trigger.

When Silas stopped believing, when he stopped loving, they would come, and with him, they would silence everything.

They wanted war.

The war called, and nearly every family had answered. His father, strong arms often cradling him when he cried out at night, scared of those monsters that often took refuge under his bed, the same monsters inside him, the same monsters he would eventually become a monarch and lead to war.

His brothers, silver tongues at their disposal, loving, but quick to abandon to serve their own desires. His mother, a warrior Lady, who did not waive her own paladin side when entrusted to care.

The war called for a second time, it scratched at the bubbles around their lives, trying vehemently to gain entrance. The family ignored the first call when it sounded, fearing, but no matter how much they covered their ears and shouted to the messengers that came from the king, they could never block out the second.

"No matter the cost" his mother had told him. "No matter the cost" he repeated as he rubbed the leaves etched on the yellow stone, hidden when it flew from his beloved mother's hands. Tri-leaves, like his name.

He was seven, and his belief waned.

He believed that they will come back; foolishly believing that his brothers and father would come home after making the journey to the land of the undead, where those dark monsters roam free.

"They will all come back; they are just delayed that's all." That's what he said, day in day out; sometimes crying; sometimes rocking himself in a dark corner, and sometimes yelling at himself when his limbs stiffed shut, when terrible crystal drops found their ways out of his eyes, when he lost hope, even for a second.

Hope. What a delicate thing. Like words, so easily broken. Shattered. Shaking the tumbling, broken pieces in the wind until all has entered oblivion.

He was beginning to forget. But he did not forget everything. He still remembered a promise.

He would fulfill every promise he made, because he knows the promises his own family all had sworn him would never be honoured. They all went into the forest; they all had left him back here, in this vast land, with only dirty peasants and nosy servants for company.

Alone. His father had failed him, his brothers had failed him, his beloved mother had failed him, and the Black Prince had failed him. All of them are gone.

He was fourteen, and he unsheathed his sword.

None of them were ever coming back. Every one of them had broken their promise.

He would never so easily believe. Not again. Not anymore. Not ever.

He became a monster.

I became a monster.

And I'm going to stain this kingdom red.

Join me, if you too, had stopped believing.