Dark Prince: The Death Realm

Chapter 12

Kalik smiled as he watched the young fae queen through the water like screen which he viewed the happenings of the new inhabitants of the Death Realm. He didn't even have to make trouble for her. Gravity was doing that for him. He gazed at her through the small portal.

He hadn't even given a second thought to the death of the centaur when planning out her specific maze, but he was glad that the half horse had made an appearance. This challenge was going much too easy for her. Three puzzle pieces within two and a half months? She didn't need any more help finding the other 21 pieces, one of which Zekrin had already found and kept in his pocket.

He turned his head and changed the view of his second screen to the 'Dark Prince', as he was called up above. He smirked, letting out a silent laugh at the unconscious figure that was propped up against a wall all the way across Hell from his little wife.

"You won't awake any time soon, youngling." He crooned, making the portal come closer to give him a larger view of Zekrin's young face. Kalik traced a long-nailed finger along the edge of his jaw. "Not until your dear wife comes, but you may have to wait a while... I'm afraid she has...other problems on her hands." His smile grew wider at the portals before him. Kalik made his hand into a fist.

The death realm ruler waved his hand, the view of the dark prince shrinking so Kalik could see him from the viewpoint of a bird sitting upon a rocky perch on the wall of the maze. He turned his gaze to the woman in question and his expression grew quite somber with thought.

He made a third viewing portal appear above the other two so it formed a triangular shape when he looked at the three of them. The third screen remained blank as he considered what to project there without having a million more screens around him as he considered his options for the added trouble that he would inflict upon the little fae queen with her quickly waning self-sufficient magick. He watched, entertained, as she tried once more to push the centaur off of her leg.

He could remember with sick pleasure what had happened to that centaur a few short days ago. The centaur, Memreth, was stuck in the maze for many Living months, not unlike his current most interesting multi species duo which his eye was focused on these past couple of months. The dark king and his fae queen had been quite an interesting pair since they had entered his realm of death.

Finally, something more interesting than the stupid mortals and their dumb little coin fares. They don't know that money means nothing to me. What use is their stupid little circular stamped metals to me?

Memreth had wandered around here aimlessly for a couple months! He had been quite a warrior, weapons or not. He had won quite a few battles and truly fallen like a warrior. Well... flown towards the ceiling like a warrior, that was. Against a creature of the night, he had lost his battle. A blood sucker, in mortal terms, a vampire. A vampire who had later been killed by the poison of the centaur's blood, writhing on the ground and cursing his own stupidity.

Kalik smiled at the terrible memory of the supernatural fight. He had been sick and tired of watching the seemingly endless stream of humans that were flowing into his death realm, so that supernatural battle, however short, had been quite an entertaining change of pace.

He looked again at the third screen and his face lit up at a wonderfully terrible idea.

"Die together once, why not die together twice?" he waved his hand over the third screen, summoning up a live image of another life sucking snake creature which he had sent to plague the dark king.

His somber face was touched by the slightest hints of an evil smile. Kalik flicked his wrist at the top moving image. The snake started moving in the direction of the fae queen.

"I wish you luck, my queen. I wish you a quick second death." He pushed aside the prince's viewing portal and enlarged the queen's, watching intently as she struggled more with the dead centaur.

Moving a dead centaur was a two person job. A two man job. It would probably take three fae at least to move the centaur. If he were nicer, he might appear to her to inform her of how pointless and energy wasting her action were. But he wasn't about to turn nice. He was the ruler of the death realm, for evil's sake! He wouldn't dream of doing such a nicety nice thing as that. What was the fun in that? What was the fun in telling his entertainment to stop at the expense of someone else? It was so fun to watch her struggle! It was so much fun to watch her struggle on one portal and watch him die on the other.

He almost wanted to get a snack and sit here to enjoy the show more. But he didn't. Unfortunately, he had other business to attend to. A lot of people to attend to, but that was what happened when wars started: lots of people died. Lots of people to explain the basics to.

Thinking about it now, he realized that he really should just have someone else do it. Or at least create some sort of... pamphlet or something. Then he stopped.

A pamphlet? Ha! What a stupid trip that would be!

"Guess what, you died! Here's the information packet to read at your leisure. But I would advise that you read it sooner rather than later. Unless, of course, you just want to get it all over with. In which case, just give it back and get in line. I'm rather busy at the moment."

He barked out a rough laugh, deep and throaty. He stood up and brushed aside the viewing portals, moving them with the literal thousands of others which floated above, almost going into the Land of the Living.

He knew that some of these viewing portals were probably useless now, their subjects dead or eaten long ago. However, he never seemed to truly get rid of the portals, as though those subjects might suddenly be a member of the Living Dead, ready to jump from his stomach at any time and reactivate the viewing portal.

Such things were just myths, of course. Never in his thousands of years of being ruler of the death realm had that ever happened. He often wondered if it would happen one day, but he highly doubted it, what with the high acidity of his stomach, enough to disintegrate the bones of any creature in the death realm. Even those fae who prided themselves in facing him and going back to the Land of the Living physically unscathed, he ingested them in the end. He always did. Kalik almost looked forward to eating (and perhaps savoring) the dark prince and his queen. Perhaps they would go together?

Perhaps side by side they will walk in? Or will the snakes kill them first? Will their spirit still be there? Or will it have already departed? That's the main source of flavour. I really will have to get to them quite quickly then. With a quick movement of his hand, he brought back the viewing portal for the dark king and moved it as close as possible to the fae queen without them merging.

It would be quite bad to have the portals merged now. It would be quite catastrophic and ruin all his lovely planning. By combining the portals, they would be in the same room, wasting all of the precious time which he had spent hiding the puzzle pieces and building up all of Genevia's frustration. But then he would only have to send the snake to one room instead of traversing across the maze in search of the fae queen.

Kalik gave a quick glance at Genevia's continuous struggle to escape from under the centaur before leaving the room. He made a mental note to keep track of the fae queen's struggles at a convenient, less busy time. But right now, to his displeasure, watching the lover's struggle would have to wait. Right now, he had a couple hundred dead peoples to greet and eat.