Exquisite Poison (Original Draft)

Chapter 19 - King of all Nightmares

Before Him, Monsters were wraith-like, sometimes thought to be caused by the imaginations of Humans.

And then his horns became a twisted and heavy crown. It was with this change that there became no longer any questions of Monsters' existence. Together, they threw the Earth that the Humans once claimed dominance into a dark, new era.

The Deep King, aided as always by his loyal companion, the trickster Thornleaf, sought first to kill every Human.

He came very near to succeeding, at the end of a decade's long war that left the human race limping.

He was stopped only when his blood lust was superseded by another urge. It was one that would come to control his splintering consciousness.

Sex became his primary drive, taking first women that he came across in his marches. With time, it grew into an overriding obsession.

He required carnal pleasure to the point where it became his Master - the first Master for a Monster.

He was driven over the brink of madness by this unshakeable desire. More than that, however, was how enraged by the lack of mutual desire that he inspired in those he consummated with.

Most human women held no softness for a hideous, contorted creature such as him. He was known for his cruelty. He was disfigured, his nature as well as his body corrupted from the numerous battles he had fought.

In addition to how rarely a woman would want to lay with him of their own volition, no human woman could survive a second night in the King's bed chamber. They expired within days of returning, somehow hollow, to the surface world.

No woman would ever tell of what they must have endured in his bed, and would flee to the upper world at the first light of day.

In light of this, he offered an exchange to the surviving humans. For he required the companionship of a woman every night, or else his bloodlust would overpower him.

The Humans tested his resolve once, and quickly found themselves facing their own extinction.

The prerequisite for his companion - his offering - was only that she not be a virgin and that she was no youth. He held an intense loathing for innocence and held no desire for spending a night with a weeping young woman. Oftentimes, a newlywed woman would be brought to him on the night following her losing her virginity. Come first light, she would be returned to the upper world, changed.

In some communities, having the wives be "second wives" to the Deep King was a rite of passage. It was a reason why marriage had to wait for women until they were well old enough to leave their family's home.

It was necessary to lay first with a human man, as all women would be rendered sterile following the ceremony with the Deep King. It was as though his hatred tainted their wombs.

This agreement lasted for a good, long while, until his desire grew past every imaginable limit. Soon, he required three women to join him every night.

The women who returned to their communities brought from the experience an odd side effect. The girl children that they interacted with, perhaps infecting in the day following the ceremony, would express odd powers. It was said that were like weak versions of what Monsters were capable of.

This continued for nearly ninety years.  Then came the day that a woman expressed no desire to return to the Upper World, following a night in the King's bed.

Indeed, she seemed to wish to remain by the Deep King's side.

--- Namioah Cloister, "The Legend of the Traitor King".