The Prince of Blood (boyxboy)

10.Start and End

Claude's thick soled combat boots crushed the gravel beneath his feet as he made his way through the dark damp winding tunnels of the catacombs. He was below Sparklieyr. The catacombs of Sparklieyr was strange and different, he could feel the bottled up magic swirling around him. It was all being directed to one place. Claude followed the magic stream, Shadows could see and feel stuff like that, magic streams, sound waves, light waves, energy levels. It was strange, but a handy skill to have, especially when their five senses fail.

Eventually, the tunnel that Claude followed ended with a massive wooden gate. With uncertainty, he reached for the handle. Magic charged into his hand as he grabbed the metal bar, it charged throughout his body and then left without disturbing any of his internal mechanism. He assumed he had passed the test. Some places were like that, a magic flow-through to test for certain things. Sometimes it would be for personality traits, loyalty was a common one, followed by honesty and so forth. Other times, the magic may be tuned to find physical traits or objects on the person. It was the magical way of using locks and keys or fingerprinting and retina scans.

Claude pushed opened the heavy wooden gates with ease. Beyond them were gloomy skies and an ancient looking forest with an eerie, ghastly atmosphere. Most noticeably, the ground had bones and skulls mixed and crushed into the dirt forest floor. The trees were bare and looked to have been dead for centuries, yet they still stood there, strong and unwavering in the harsh wind. As for the flora and fauna, well it didn't exist.

Ahead, there were five massive trees with a complex treehouse system built in, each tree house looked to be ten or twenty stories tall, with stained glass windows that depicted a story that Claude was very familiar with. The Legend of the Two Qin Masters.

Qin was an ancient multi-stringed instrument favoured by immortals of the eastern tribes of the Nine Rings. Once upon a time, two immortals from different tribes and considerably different upbringings walked through the realms playing their Qin, using it to banish demons that had predictably escaped from hell, as they tend to do on a regular basis, as well as punishing any wrong doers. For a time, they were looked up to by all immortals and held in the highest esteem.

"Wu Hui Jin," a low raspy sounded from behind Claude. He swung around to see a silver haired young man, with a Qin strapped to his back. He wore the traditional white robes of a Qin musician. "Welcome to realm of no regrets, Prince of Blood, undead son of Queen Mary Tudor the First of England," said the young man. He had white hollow eyes and appeared to be blind as his steps crunched over the bones of the forest floor.

"Mr Rain," Claude gasped recognising the man immediately. He looked the same as the statue that Claude had prayed to so frequently back when he was still in the Shadow Paladins.

Mr Rain smiled blankly. "I come here every day to tell myself that I should have no regrets. Tell me, what brings a son of one of the Five Heavenly Queens of Hell to my humble abode?"

Claude gulped, he hated his mother's title. It often gets shortened to just The Five Queens. The real meaning of it is that the harmony of five of them combined had the power to destroy the Nine Rings, it came originally out of a prophecy. That was a given, something that was foreseen by many prophets. Claude liked to think that he was very distant from that, but it would be a lie that even he could not believe in. Bloody Mary was chosen as one of the Five Queens after her mortal death. It was many years after that when she suddenly decided she wanted children. lots of children, despite not having any during her life. In fact she became hellbent on having "too many" children. Whilst many had guessed why that was the case, no one really knew what she was thinking, not even Claude who had vowed to go against everything his mother wanted from him understood why she did the things she did.