Prologue 2

The people entering the prison room were clearly not guards. They were talking very loudly but inaudibly. It was always one guard who dared to come in, and not some people off the street. Lilynn could hear them approaching her cell from the other end, and it sounded as if they were laughing at something. Two men stopped in front of her cell, staring and pointing at her.

"There she is, our little maiden!" said the taller one with a pointy beard. He held a green bottle in his hand. The other one, wearing a blue cap, laughed even harder after he heard his partner.

Why were these drunk idiots laughing here? Anger filled Lilynn as the men giggled. Her energy and sanity seemed to have returned.

"Shameful drunk animals! You should try laughing while imprisoned, that would make me happy as well" she uttered.

"Look at this hag, Lusius, she doesn't even know the dead do not speak!" the bearded man said.

"Yeah, you are already dead, lady, no point in being so rude!" the blonde one claimed. "Kasius, your plan was perfect. I could not ask for a greater brother"

"The gods have blessed me with a brain smarter than the average. Perhaps even smarter than yours."

Lusius just nodded without processing what he heard. Lilynn was furious.

"We have a lot to thank you, young lady. You did an excellent job, and we are sorry your fate had come to this misery" Kasius said.

"What are you mumbling about?"

"As you might have noticed, the Potion of Truth, well… made you say something you did not commit."

Lilynn felt a heavy weight on her chest. "How do you know?"

Kasius let out an evil laugh.

"Oh, you poor… you don't even know how easy it is to deceive the court. They don't even guard the potions, so filling one of the cups with a different one is as easy as taking candy from a baby."

"So you are saying that the potion I drank was something else?"

"Indeed! You were the perfect bait for the court. Now that you have confessed, nobody will ever question who the real killer of Finn was."

It all came together in Lilynn's head. These men killed the earl and then painted her as the murderer. She felt that her stomach was turning inside out in her body. These men are the reason her life is over. She was just a pawn in the game of these people, someone who could never stand up and defend herself.

She reached out with a sudden move between the bars, reaching Kasius' face just enough to slash it with her nails. The drunk Kasius stepped back too late; Lilynn left three bleeding scars on his face.

"You bitch!" Kasius shouted. "Give me the keys, Lusius!"

Lusius whipped out a bunch of keys and handed them to his brother. Suddenly he stroked fast with his bottle, hitting Lilynn's head through the bars. While she was backing up towards the wall holding her head, the two men got into her cell.

"You are already fucking dead. If we kill you here, we are doing a favor to the kingdom" Kassius said in a deep tone.

Lilynn could only feel the strike of a punch hitting her head. She could barely see anything in the torchlight. Next, a kick hit her in the stomach. Another from behind.

They were hitting and kicking her from every direction. She could also feel the bottle hitting her with greater pain between blows. At this point, she was already on the ground.

Blood started to block her vision from the head blows. The pain was unbearable, but she could not scream.

She murmured a prayer with her remaining power. It was not towards any gods, like the previous one. She prayed for the demons of the world to kill these men. She wanted them to feel the same as she does. She wanted to see them suffer. She wanted to be the one to kill them at the end.

Kill... kill...

Soon the hits all became the same. Punch, kick. Everything was becoming black around her. Until nothing remained.

⠀

***

⠀

She opened her eyes. The pain was gone, and so were the men and the prison. Her eyes adjusted, and she could see that she was standing on water. Except the water was blood red, and she did not sink in it. The skies were white as fresh snow.

Is this heaven? Or hell?

She did not know. There was nothing on the horizon besides the red sea.

"Welcome, child."

A mysterious voice came from nowhere. In front of Lilynn, the silhouette of a woman with the color of the night sky appeared. She was beautiful and frightening at the same time, looking at Lilynn with red eyes.

"You probably know what I am," she declared.

Lilynn nodded. She imagined them as something similar in the fairy tales she heard as a child. It was a demon.

"But you do not know who I am"

No, she did not know.

"Of course. Humans who never pray to us do not know who we are, and the power we possess. You only praise gods, but not us. Yet, you managed to do it."

Lilynn started to remember. Men were beating her, and she was dying. The last thing she wished for was for them to experience the same thing as punishment.

"You see, when you wished upon their pain, you wished for me to appear," the demon said as if she were able to read Lilynn's mind. "As I am the Demoness of Vengeance."

The Demoness walked right in front of Lilynn, touching her blonde, now fully clean hair with admiration.

"As you can imagine, living here for thousands and thousands of years is tiring. We demons love to walk into the human world to cause chaos, as gods would say. In reality, we create order in the world by giving our powers to people. Without darkness, there is no light. Without evil, there is no world. And the evil in this world is justice. Without the intention of revenge, humanity would not exist."

The Demoness snapped with her fingers, and dark flames appeared in the air, forming a circle around them.

"The world needs darkness. The world needs justice. The world needs me, and I need you" she grabbed both of Lilynn's wrists. "You will be the Demoness of Vengeance in the human world, changing it to a better one with my powers. Also… I am somewhat bored. I will observe all of it. Show them no mercy, Lilynn."

She let go of Lilynn's hands, who started to fall into a dark void with no end.