Just a Small-Town Boy, Looking to Destroy
Part One: Winning By Default
To live is to win. Or, at least, that mantra pulsed through my noggin for the first five hundred years of my luxurious existence. It is true that underworld rulers are never born in the underworld realm.
They are forcibly removed from other realms and wiped clean of past memories and emotions. The lower our capacity for emotional understanding, the greater we were favored by the higher-ups.
Occasionally, due to my status, I can recall those times...
-Death's
Archival Note #1
500 Years Prior
The Ethereal Geyser
North District of the Old-World Underworld
"Mama, papa, look what I found!" I shout into the void as sea foam shoots out from the Ethereal Geyser. It glitters with its emerald sheen and curls my locks. I dance and dive across the jagged shards just beneath the shallow pool.
I clutch a ginormous feather to my chest and admire its spidery veins and fluffy ends. Fiery blood soaks my toes and tickles them.
"Jasper, your toes! Your precious toes!" cries my mother as she races over to scoop me up in her arms. Her wild, ruby eyes pierce me as she flicks beads of blood off of my ankles.
She truly takes on the role of goddess with her golden silks and flowing dark locks that attempt to escape from their plaits. Her features are sharp and angular, though petite.
"Lena, what in Hades name are you doing?" curses my father. He shakes the frazzled woman off and grabs my feet. His touch energizes me and removes the Trace of Pain.
For pain is a luxury not awarded to the higher-ups, especially those in charge of underworld districts and countries. My father, Daniel, rules an tiny underworld district in the Northern Region known merely as Thoth. Yet, his authority lacks much pizazz and he often has to leave late in the evenings to break up squabbles.
"A feather, you say? What a find, my son. From where had you sewn it?" My father constructed the only logical explanation: underworld beings are allowed only to create, or sew, not to plunder or pillage.
Yet, I had committed a taboo, however unknowingly, by plucking the feather from its wild dwelling place. I glance down at him mutely, despite my normal extroverted nature. I typically babble on incessantly, loving the booming authority of my un-childlike tone.
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