Save many things temporary, Pandora’s story is exceptional. On a grand and ornate floor, in a ballroom hall high above the castle entrance, where the light shines in through tall balcony doors, in a city on the highest plateau, the princess dances in the golden sunlight, until she tires.
Having all things her heart desired, she asks the sun “What else is in store?” Loki the trickster waiting in the shadows until this point, enters the scene and offers her the chest of all souls, asking in return “that she sing a song” when she is joyous and nothing more. “Wait,” she shouted, “what is in the box?” “You must never know,” said the trickster in a faint voice as he walks without touching the ground, gliding out of the tall doors on to the balcony, fading in light and spirit as well, a whispering shadow, sliding into the sunset.
In a far away land, in a place where sacrilege, blasphemy and fate doth meet, Loki gave Pandora a box, warning her of the dangers within, when her curiosity overcame her and she opened the box, the souls loosed, attacked her mind and drove her mad. She was lachrymose for much of wanton and wasted hours, not nearly as much as she shouted and lamented at souls that fly about, with traces of shadows, that none, among the strongest of visionaries, could see. Condemned with a curse unanswered, the restless spirits within her, uncontainable the way the charmed case had held tight attacked her soul, and she died as like a phoenix's birth.
Her father, the king of a city that bore her name, ordered the greatest of the kingdom’s sorcerers to seal the box. At every mention of the fair princess’ name, the father hit the floor in anger, eventually deciding to bury the soul chamber far beneath a new city far within the boundaries of the Norse lands.
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They stand in the wood, around Merlin, on the ground with a map, with a diamond necklace on it slowly sliding in a path.
Troy: “It’s stopped?”
Ana: “Either they have stopped, or they’ve made camp.”
Merlin, “It’s not far from us at all.”
Troy: “How far are they from here?”
Merlin: “Your bird can probably see him from the canopy.”
Troy shows a sign of apparent confusion, and Ana points to the top of the trees.
Ana: “You should probably stay back on this one.”
Merlin: “Yes, we don’t know how this battle will vex.”
The sun setting, the crows crowding and circling, more and more as the sun begins to pour out of the horizon, as a gold lake below a red edge of a grey sky, lacking as soon as the sun falls, soon becoming black and full of stars. A sunken castle, struggling to stay atop a grassy knoll, moss covered and nesting feather, the large all-black passerine birds jettison immediately when noticing Troy and his phoenix, watching from the forest line far in the distance.
The sun begins to bleed, turning from a sullen orange to a somber red, as they encroach on murky soil. Ana and Merlin move ahead to a pile of boulders and stone rubble in the clearing. Looking back, Ana and Merlin see the phoenix will not come near, nor will Troy with it. The wizard sneaks up to a window, to see a cult of druids and candles, behind a table of scrolls and parchments. The monster who has taken Nickolas, sits forthwith to muse upon things further, dark circles around his eyes. He clenches his hands to the sides of his head, his fingers bent almost ready to claw at his slightly scaly temples, his black hair turning red and his eyes filling bloodshot, before turning full red, the same as his hair, which had turned the blackest red.
Nickolas kneels in wait on a circle in an occult setting, surrounded by many. Clouds of fire above a floor of stone, stands the evil chimera demon. Merlin sends a tiny mortar to Ana’s whereabouts, signaling her.
Chimera: “Fenris go and see what that was.”
Fenris: “As you wish.”
The chimera pushes many a scroll off his table, many into the candles amongst, to find at the bottom a prophecy written, on a white papyrus sheet, in blood. Nickolas the wounded though undead, waits in the center of the circle drawn onto the floor, much like the rings of the coastal palace, yet filled with dried blood, with four diamonds etched into the floor, equally distanced each to the other. Four positions of ceremony, where creatures now stand, four beasts among the small crowd guard him.
Chimera: “The key is in the stars.”
Nickolas: “What you could become.”
Chimera: “I never knew what it meant, for many years. That was until I realized the stars will always shine.”
Nickolas: “What does that have to do with me?”
Chimera: “You’re a descendant.”
Nickolas: “I’ve always been on this plane.”
Chimera: “You are someone's legacy.”
Nickolas: “I am no more than my own.”
Chimera: “Are you young or old?”
Nickolas: “I cannot say.”
Chimera: “None the less, you will be aid to our legacy.”
The chimera stands before him, seven animals in one. He adorns the seven-chakra symbols of the spirit from his forehead to his waist, his serpentine skin of awe visibly warm and radiant. The four door guardians in the sacrificial chamber, are occult followers and with ritual incense poison, kill the occult worshippers in the room, all but they and Nickolas remain, guarding the seals of the summoned.
Troy carefully and cautiously sneaks forth to watch from an opening of an upper glassless window of the dungeons keep. Four ferocious warrior stand around Nickolas and one druid survivor standing close behind one of the four, hells minion, the master of puppets, his skin the color of blood and ash.
Fenris: “I found nothing sir.”
Chimera: “Great, thanks for your service.”
The shape shifter lupine Fenris is the first sacrifice, his heart stabbed with a silver stake. His death opens a lock, and his blood fills the lines and cracks and grooves in the floor, as the room burns bright, the light of the case active, yet unopened as light begins to glow from the seams.
The chimera is performing a ritual over the pooling of blood. The white rider king with bronze bow takes a pouch from his vestment and throws it to the chimera. He fills it with Fenris’ blood than pours the contents on the box, a deluge of smoke and black ash form from the blood and bones, for only moments in which opens a second lock.
The red swordsman summoned a silent oration. The villain drinks Nickolas’ blood like a leech and offers his own over the box by cutting both of his wrists and bleeding as a third seal breaks.
A black rider enters the chimera’s large keep, covered in black crimson armoring scales on vulnerable places between armor, the neck, the forearms, and gives an hourglass full of wheat and it is set before the box. He takes three pieces of gold, holding his hand out the gold in his hand melts and then sets afire. The black one waits and watches the captive, staring with invested madness. Ordered, the black one disturbs the floor around Nickolas by turning over his hand, the flaming gold pours out like sand, the hourglass melts where it rests and the white powder it has become, is drawn into the box, a fourth seal is broken.
A blond beast with clothes draped as an Olympian, has a large hooded cloak of darkly ash grey and matching eyes, filled with smoke, and the sickle weapon of the death reaper. Followed by Hades, shoeless in a red and black suit of fane, with a red cord made of snakes around the collar, when they move passed Nickolas, he dies as if by both plague and famine, and after they pass, he arises. The reaper steps to the side and halts with a knocking of the sickles cane to the ground, and the master of puppets delivers a chalice of blood, which the demon uses to pour an alchemy circle, while walking and encircling Nickolas, the red ring enchants as a fifth lock opens.
Souls begin attempts to drift out from the walls of the case, still drawn into the box mid tenuous leaps. Disembodied souls begin to whisper in callous hollow voices that sound like echoes in the winds of dark caves, “Free us - how long we wait - judge them - curse their world.” The great Satan then passes the goblet to the orchestral chimera demon who then pours more blood on the box. The savory blood boils, soaking into the box, appeasing the confined spirits temporarily. The reaper cuts his dark lord at Hades' gesture, holding out a bare arm, the reaper slides the sickle across the wrist and the devil lets the blood pool into the palms of his hands and takes a sacrosanct drink, before spitting putrid black blood over Nickolas. The one called Lucifer closes his eyes and slides back, with fists clenched and tucked close to his sides, as if carrying invisible lumber as a sixth lock opens.
A minimal distraction, something brushing in the rotten earth or the dead leaves outside, and without cause or glory, Hell’s emperor vanishes. The box begins to make the sound of marching armies walking on sleeping helpless groundlings. An earthquake minimal, a black whole sun, and blood red moons, meteors into the sea, each red and yellow, falling into a dark ocean as it nears the black dawn, among a missing sky, newly dead leaves fall as the wind blows, the red moonsets, as the skies fill with smoke and swallow entire mountains. Islands flee the dangerous coast, every creature of earth hides where it may. Nickolas pleas, but without success, a somber rumble like royalty and regiments, wealthy warriors, slaves and free animals, returning with stolen gold and sand, running from the gods which they have offended, fills the scene.
They are four colors with auras, beginning to chant the same mantra, praising Nickolas the undead as a creature of sacrifice. Nickolas has much fear, the four make him to sacrifice, as from the windowsill, Troy prays as he watches while everything in sight becomes a world painted blood as a demented and impugned dreams of a mass murderer.
The last lock opens on Pandora’s Box as they, the chimera and the apocalyptic slayers absorb the spirits floating around the room as they condemn their absent gods. An acidulous hot wind spirals upward from the circle, and the light pulls away, from the walls, drawing into the chimera demon. The box as quickly as began, the souls in clouded forms begin escaping, consumed by the evil creatures in the room.
Ana shreds apart the door with her arches of fire, between her hands, palms upward, shedding shrapnel of the old iron entrance, which easily broke from the aging stone and washed mortar.
“Get her!" cried the leader, as Merlin slips in through the open window above the room. He drifts as if carried by the wind, serenity on fire.
The room slightly tilted gives her a disadvantage as they plod to her, they cannot catch her, though they give her a couple of blasts of fiery malice, she uses the Sun-Flare a few times, then as they get close, the Shield of Dawn, than lastly a bolt of lightning that only proves to be useless. Her commotion is the proper distraction, as the chimera notices the absence of the vital sacrifice Nickolas, Merlin lets fly an ampoule that shatters afore the demon, with a blast a smoke of light bursts to the edges of the confinements, taking Nickolas with him, while breaking his bonds.
Nickolas: “There's one missing,”
Merlin: “Run,”
A lifeless, colorless, grey sheen of stone washes over everything, starting at the chimera’s feet, until it becomes an agonized statue. Noticing Merlin having grabbed the scrolls and Nickolas, and out the window as the room turns to stone, stemming from the chimera, even the flame on the candles turn to stone, as two of the villains are caught in the petrify spell, Ana flees out from where she came.
Into outdoors, to avoid the stone wake, she turns to face her pursuant and summons the fire circle whirl, which throws great smooth boulders, half the size of a man in some cases, toward them, as Merlin and Nickolas quite nearly drag Troy and flee off in the distance behind and just beside the castle. The boulders flung move much from directly where she stands and slightly in the distance, the most dangerous, and crashing into the decrepit castle itself, one into the doorway as the second of the surviving henchmen comes running, making course with massive collision.
Merlin’s magic has turned everything to stone, including the chest, with broken seal a stone lid closes and the box itself reseals. The stone is a prison, a reliquary of temporary confines that begins to fracture and break. The evil accompli of wasted haste are petrified and done, but the chimera is resilient to petrifaction, and begins to escape and molt from his dastardly reliquary, crawling out of his captivity, screaming in horrid anguish as scale and flesh tear from the shell.
