Gives You Hell

        Little can be seen in the dark throne room. Shades of black and deep red coat the walls and floors. The curtains are closed, although it seems pointless as the outside sky is protected by black clouds. Candles are lit along the entire length of the castle. They are not the most powerful form of light, yet they do enough. The most luminescent area of the fortress is up a long staircase. There's a large and soft throne chair that sits on the top and overlooks the rest of the room. Next to it is a small, yet tall table. It's the perfect size to be comfortably by the chair without taking up a lot of space.

        On the throne chair sits the princess Ruby. She's resting on it like one would rest on a bed, with her back against one of the arms and her legs over the other. In her hand is a glass of what can be presumed to be red wine. She's very clearly bored, swishing the liquid around and staring at it dully. Her dress cascades down to the floor, flaunting her mid-thigh as she half sits, half lies there. It's a very elegant, yet risque look all at the same time. Her subordinates pay no attention to it, however. They continue with their work with no mind or care about the princess's appearance.

        Behind the ruler is her advisor and personal servant, Thornton. He stands at attention next to her on the opposite side of her table. He stands close enough to hear every word that comes from her mouth, but far back enough that people know he isn't on the same level as her. It's uncertain of how he feels as he stands perfectly still with no emotion on his face.

        No one in the throne room makes any noise. Everyone stays completely silent as they work or stand. All that can be heard is the faint pitter-patter of rain against the windows and feet moving against the floor. Even though everyone is seemingly relaxed, there's no conversation. It's as quiet as a graveyard.

        Finally, princess Ruby sighs. "Thornton," She begins.

        "Yes, your majesty?" He responds quickly while taking a step forward.

        "Why is it so boring today?" She asks with a soft whine.

        "I'm afraid I do not know," He answers.

        "Do you think it's because of the weather?"

        "Perhaps."

        She sighs again. "How unfortunate."

        Thornton agrees with her, then goes back to his previous stance and location. Everything goes back to how it was before, except now the princess is clicking her tongue. The servants of the castle become tense at the sound. As though danger is on the way, they are careful to make sure that not even their feet make any noise. It slows down their work, but they don't mind. The way they see, they can make up the missing work later. They can't take back any disturbance.

        The princess groans in a way that is similar to a scream. "I need noise!" She shouts, with enough anguish to shake the Earth.

        Thornton steps forward once again. He turns to face her and asks, "What would you like for me to do, your majesty?"

        "I don't care. Just, please end this torture at once." She responds with another groan.

        "Yes, your majesty." He bows to her before turning to the room. "Everyone, get out please. You may continue your chores at a later hour."

        The servants respond with haste. They grab all their supplies and rush out of the room as fast as they can in orderly fashion. The last one is careful to close the doors behind her. Once the room is cleared out, Thornton walks carefully down the steps. Ruby watches his glide with great interest and excitement. His steps echo off the walls as he approaches the door. He locks it, then checks that all the windows are closed. Once he's satisfied that they are, he then moves over to behind the staircase. There's a thinner door hidden there beneath the shadows. Thornton pulls a key out from his jacket pocket. He slips it into the keyhole and opens the door slowly. A second flight of stairs is there, this one older and not decorated. He walks down them, guided by the candles positioned on the walls.

        As Thornton travels down, the sound of screaming and moaning travels up. A crooked smile starts to find itself on his face as he approaches the final steps. There's an archway at the bottom that leads into a hallway. He struts through it, unfazed by the sound of the screams getting louder. Hands reach out, trying to grab him, and their owners beg for freedom. Thornton ignores it all until he finally comes to a stop in front of one of the cages.

        The man inside of it is clearly weak. His eyes are sunken in from a mixture of tiredness and starvation. He seems as though he can hardly stand. He stares at Thornton in clear fear, not moving. His tired, dark eyes seem to go through the servant's body. He is afraid, yet Thornton notices that the man somehow seems content as the same time. It appears that he has accepted whatever fate he's determined he will face. Normally Thornton would choose somebody who is ready for a fight, but something inside him twinges with pain. He looks at the frail body before him and asks him if he wants out.

        "Out?" The man asks confused, yet hopeful. Panic strikes his face when he's met with silence. "What do you mean 'out'?"

        "I mean out of the cage," Thornton responds. "Up the steps. Out of the dungeon."

        "And then what?"

        "And then you will be in the throne room."

        The acceptance seems to have passed through the man as he hears this. He becomes nervous and his eyes widen in response. He keeps his eyes on Thornton while he attempts to come up with something to say. One of his fingers start to twitch uncontrollably. He has to tighten his hand into a fist to get it to stop, to keep himself from giving away just how frightened he is by this offer.

        "With the princess?" He asks quietly. Thornton nods. "Is this really a question, or does it not matter what I say?"

        Thornton's lips curl into a smile. "If you would like to go, that means I don't have to call some guards to force you."

        A deep sigh rolls out of the man. "I want to go," He says. Just like that, he stops being afraid again. He knows what's coming next and the knowledge sends the fear out. He recognises the irony in being less afraid when he should be the most afraid, but he decides not to focus on it. It's not worth being afraid when you know it's all about to end. Freedom is coming. All he can do is hope it's painless.

        Thornton leads the man through the underground prison and up the steps. With every step closer they get, the more reality starts to set in. The man becomes both hopeful and petrified. With luck, he will be let go and allowed to return to his actual home. He plays with the idea, but deep down he knows he's probably about to die. The idea of death is no longer comforting to him. He wonders how it will happen - if he'll be ripped apart, tore to shreds, eaten alive by mice, burned at a stake. There's no telling what horror he'll face once the princess catches sight of him. There have always existed rumours of her evil, but never any proof. This can't be the way he finds out the truth - if she's really a demon born from the devil's seed.

        In the throne room, the man sees a sight he wasn't quite expecting. Last time he was in here, there was blood covering everything. The floor was a sea, the walls coated over, the ceiling dripping, all with the blood of those who made the princess mad that day. He didn't get to see who did the killing, although the look of her face told him the answer of all his questions. For weeks, that look has haunted him. The way her lips were curled up in a sickly grin as hysterical laughter rang out of them. The way her eyes were wide and shining with the look of deranged madness. Her body twisted and curved with this uncontainable urge bursting out of it. And the way she turned and looked at him like he had just slaughtered her entire family. Ever since that day, he hasn't been able to get the image and that fear out of his mind.

        But now the room is spotless. There aren't any signs of impurities or imperfections anywhere, no amount of evidence hinting at a horrid crime having been committed here. The princess herself doesn't even look impure. She's smiling, just as she was last time, but this time it's a soft, lightly curved smile. She isn't hysterical, her eyes aren't wild, her body doesn't appear deformed. Besides the coldness in her glaring eyes, she looks normal. Not fairytale picture-book normal, but human.

        Thornton walks over to the princess, who is now three quarters down the staircase. She stares at the man; not moving, not even blinking. Thornton stops at her side. "Sir Renegade, your majesty. Birth name, not a title."

        Princess Ruby hums to herself and travels further down the stairs. She circles Renegade slowly, her smile growing with every step. "Sir Renegade, you say? Of what kingdom?"

        Thornton nods at their prisoner, giving him permission to answer. He clears his throat. "From the kingdom Vetardan, your majesty." He stands with his back straight and his eyes forward as he speaks, trying to mask his fear despite the shakiness in his voice.

        "Ah, Vetardan!" Ruby exclaims, her serious appearance fading. "I've been there once before. It's a beautiful land, I must say." She stops her trail of circles in order to look Renegade face-to-face. "How come you left it?"

        "I was sent in search of our army's leader, Wytchen. He disappeared, last seen riding this way. I came in hopes that you or your party have caught wind of his presence, your majesty."

        "Wytchen, you say?" Renegade nods in confirmation. Ruby's eyes harden once more, though this time not in a way that suggests intimidation. "No, I'm afraid I haven't seen or even heard of him."

        "With all due respect, you must have," Renegade insists. "He was supposed to be coming here with a peace treaty for you to sign. He wouldn't have left a mission uncompleted."

        Thornton closes his eyes and shakes his head briefly. The princess's demeanor shifts to a tense playfulness. She spins on her heels to face her servant. "Thornton," She begins. "Who was or is Wytchen from the kingdom Vetardan?"

        "He's the one who is currently being saved in the freezer room, your majesty. He was the man you said had the best kind of blood in all categories - appearance, taste, scent, texture, and 'drainability'."

        "Ah, yes!" The princess twists back around. "That's correct. I must have forgotten to ask him of his name, my apologies. Yes, he did come around. And yes, I had seen him. However, you can't have him back. He belongs to me now."

        Renegade feels the fear take over his body. His first instinct is to run, but the way their eyes are on him tells him that he won't be able to make it far, if anywhere at all. He gulps in a pathetic attempt to calm himself, or at the very least appear calm. He can tell this doesn't work though by the way the princess's eyes spark with excitement when she notices it. Her smile starts to curve upward in that way that has haunted his mind. It's now that he knows his search, his mission, his very life, is all over.

        "What are you going to do to me?" Renegade stutters through the question with great difficulty. He's finding it hard to stand or breathe, let alone speak.

        "The same as I do to all my visitors," Ruby says as though he should already know. "I'm going to eat you."

        His eyes go wide. "Eat me?"

        "Yes, eat you." Her tone switches from professional to one of wild excitement as she starts to speak again, "You know, bite into that soft flesh of yours as hard as I can until I can taste your blood and feel running down and coating me. Then pulling back, ripping the skin off your body. I won't eat that, of course. I won't eat my meat raw, so that will be spit out. Then I'll have you dragged off to the freezer room where your beloved army leader Wytchen rests. Then your body will be drained, you will die, and I will spend hopefully many nights after feasting and drinking your remains." Her eyes take on a lust-filled look and her smile grows wider. Her demeanor becomes wild, uncontrollable like the last time he saw her.

        "Please, you can't do this," He begs. "You can't do this to me. You don't even have to. You can let me go and just let me walk away. I won't say a thing to anyone. I won't even return to Vetardan. I can travel East instead to the Isle of Bana Latu. I'll change my name to Hastridge, I'll work on a wheat field, I'll pretend I am deaf or mute, or both! I will never travel this way again. I shall forever avoid Vetardan or Lefdania for as long as I live. I promise you! Please just let me go, I beg of you!"

        Ruby's eyes roll back into her head as she lets out a hungry moan. "God, I do love it when they beg. Don't you, Thornton? It just sounds so desperate, so hopeless, so undeniably pathetic. Oh, I love it so! It gives me life! Please, do it more," She requests, directing her attention back to Renegade. He stares back her with a mixture of confusion and disgust. Perhaps, if he goes along with it, she'll be pleased enough to let him leave. Or at the very least, enough to keep him as a pet.

        He lets out a silent sigh. "I don't know what's happening here. I don't know what you are, how you gained control, why your workers put up with you or continue to let you run this country, but I do know one thing. I know that it's sick. This is the sickness thing I have ever heard in my life! You and anyone in this kingdom who puts up with you are all demons! You're a disturbed, twisted individual and I hope you know that you are going to Hell for it! You will forever burn in a bright, painful blaze. And I hope that your death is a bloody, painful one!"

        The princess starts to laugh. "Oh, yes! Oh, yes! I hope it is too!" She rushes up to him in an instant, cupping his face with her hands. "I hope my death is an agonising one. I hope I feel doses of pain in every part of my body and that the torture never ends. I even hope the Devil makes me his personal sex slave. Oh, I hope so much!"

        The confusion leaves the man's face as he becomes purely disgusted. "What are you?"

        She smiles and leans toward him, resting her nose against his own. "I, my dear, am Hell itself."

        He goes to push her away, making a conscience decision to hit a lady for the first time in his life. But before his hands can make contact with her body, his head is pushed up. He screams as her teeth pierce right through his body. He feels her teeth sinking past the skin and muscles, even bending around his bone. Within the following second, she snaps her head back. His ears ring as he hears the skin ripping, the bone she latched onto breaking. He reaches up to his neck in an attempt to stop the rapid bleeding, but he already knows it's over. The blood is rushing out of him so fast that he starts to feel dizzy. There's a pool forming around his feet. He looks up, back to the princess now a couple feet away from him. Her face is still twisted up with chaotic lust as his blood escapes from her mouth and drips down her chin. Her cursed laughter is the last thing he hears before the world disappears. His body falls back with a hard 'thud'.

        As soon as his body hits the ground and goes limp, the princess's laughter quiets down. She's hysterical still, though not as loud. She starts to make her way back up the stairs, stopping briefly to order Thornton to remove the body. As directed, he drags it off to the freezer room as the maids run in to clean up the blood. The princess settles back into her chair slowly, her laughter now over with. She leans into it, crosses one of her legs over the other, and picks up her glass from her table. She watches as the maids clean and as Thornton makes his way back up the stairs to his rightful place beside her.

        "Care for a drink, Thornton?" She offers him with an honest look.

        "No, thank you, your majesty. You know how blood upsets my system."

        She hums. "That I do, Thornton." She takes a sip of her deep-coloured potion. "That I do."