The Curse of the Citadel: Part One by jinjolover |  |
He looked from one side, at the tall, ascending, buildings.
Everything was darkening. He could feel the ground rumbling, and the atmosphere
changing. The air chilled, and all was covered in layer of mist. The land was
now in the air; taken from the ground by a powerful force, or let go by another.
The sky was red, and he could hear the panic, the screams, and the endless chaos.
"Mommy!" the young Draik cried, but heard no
reply.
Everything was changing. Even HE was changing. He watched his hands fade from
blue to purple, and he could feel his muscles and insides growing in a strange,
deformed way. He grew horns of a demon, and his skin thickened and became as
hard as metal. He ran to a figure he saw threw the fog in the distance, hoping
to find one of his parents. He panicked, clinched on to the shadow, and started
weeping horribly. He stared up at the figure, not to find his mother, but a
kind-looking Korbat, somewhat familiar, in a long, white, robe.
"It will all be fine," he said, picking
him up, "My young friend. It will all be fine." Suddenly, something caught the
Korbat's attention. A bright, golden light, jumped into the sky, and disappeared
into the distance.
"The Curse."
~
"Sir Bel!"
"Huh? What?" mumbled the Draconian Draik, rising
from his bed. "What's wrong?"
"Well, sir," started off the Draconian Skeith
in mostly black and golden armor, holding a spear in his left hand and a torch
in his right, "you were mumbling high pitched scream in your sleep, and practically
tossed yourself off your bed. Are you alright?"
"Well, guard," replied Bel, squinting at the
light of the torch, "as, um, interesting as I find it that you were,
well, watching me in my sleep, I don't believe it's your duty to wake me up
in the middle of the night?"
"But sir, it's morning time," said the Skeith.
"Roll call has started, the Drack-"
"What? Roll call?" moaned Bel, "Why didn't you
wake me?"
"But, sir," replied the somewhat timid Skeith,
"you told me not to wake you-"
"Nevermind that!" he shouted, jumping to the
closet. "Out of my room! Now!"
Bel soon left his room, dressed and rushing
to the main hall. He wore royal Draconian armour, purple plated, with golden
rims. A picture of a flying Eyrie was detailed into the chest plate. Bel wore
a long cape, which flew behind him as he ran, covering his clipped dragon wings.
Under he also hid his sword, which was incredibly long and sometimes dragged
in its case on the ground as he ran or was in battle. He also had two old strange
pieces of black tape under his pure red eyes, the tape which was starting to
peel.
"Reporting for duty," Bel said, as he bowed on
his arrival, "Cap'n."
"You are yet to impress me, Bel," replied the
gigantic, brute Darigan Krawk. "Hardly ever are you on time. Yet Lord Kass humbly
gives you a position of a Draconian Knight." Captain Kalam wore pure black armour,
and had two daggers, tied to the sides of his waste. His wings spread as wide
as Lord Kass's.
"Sorry, sir," replied Bel. "I had a problem with
one of the guards."
"There isn't any problem with my guards," he
said, fast-paced, "Fool. It's you. Now all of the other knights have gone out
with their duties already. So I'm assigning you to… Guard duty."
"At the dungeon?" Bel questioned. "That's new.
Whatever happened to Vex?"
"See for yourself," said Kalam, throwing Bel
the keys, then walking away.
Bel slowly walked down the hallway, in no hurry
to get to the dungeon. He walked to a wooden door, at the end of the hallway.
As it creaked open, he saw long, spiraling stairs.
Classic dungeon, he thought, creeping
down. But as he got further and further down, he started hearing thumping noises.
He then realized that it wasn't his heart, beating faster and faster, it was
footsteps, footsteps of a large creature, or beast.
"One of the prisoners must have escaped!" he
shouted outloud, to himself. He then swiftly drew his sword, jumped down the
stairs, and once he reached the bottom, he pointed the sword out and flinched.
"Stop where you are!" He waited a few moments,
and heard a few grunts. After he had gone some time without any pain, he opened
his eyes to find yet another Skeith. He was dressed in mostly rag, and looked
pretty brutal. Slobber dropped from his mouth, as he stood, and looked at Bel
in some confusion, some anger.
"Oh," said Bel, looking up at what he had mistaken
for a monster, "it's just you, Haskol. Well, I guess that explains the smell.
Hey, I've got it from here. You can end your, er, night."
"Ugggggh," grunted the guard, as he turned away
and slowly walked up the stairway.
Bel walked down the hallway, staring into all
the prison cells. It had been ages since he had been in the dungeon, and he
found it interesting to look at all the strange, unique, monsters. It was as
if he was at a zoo of some sort.
But as Bel came to the end, he found something
the most interesting of all. Master Vex, in the end cell, asleep, on the old,
rotting, bench.
"Vex!" shouted Bel. "VEX! Wake up! What are you
doing in there? You look like you've been stuck in there for a while…"
"Huh?" moaned Vex, as he rose to his side. "Oh,
Bel! Perfect, now I can out of this crummy little cell."
"Sorry, I can't do that," said Bel. "But why
are you in?"
"Oh, ha, you think I was sentenced here?" Vex
laughed. "No, no, no. That's not how it goes at all. You see, I was playing
a simple game of Cellblock with Haskol." Vex rose to a sitting position. "I
was dumb enough to beat that brute at the game. Went on a straight-out temper-tantrum
and threw me in here. The big loaf. Anyway, I've been stuck in here all night,
so it would be nice if you could let me out, buddy."
Bel stared from to side to side, in thought.
Vex was very high on the list of Draconian administrators, so he couldn't possibly
be in there for a crime.
"Eh, sure, why not," said Bel, not giving much
second thought. "Come on out." Bel put the key in the slot, and turned it open.
But before Bel had a chance to look up, Vex
tackled him to the ground, and took a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and
snapped them onto Bel behind his back. Vex then threw Bel into the very same
cell, and locked it.
"VEX!" shouted Bel, "YOU SON OF A SKARL! What
do you think you're doing?"
"Well," said Vex, with a stare of triumph as
he snatched the extra set of keys, "you see, I really WAS thrown in my own cell…
too many 'games,' they said. Plus, they said I knew too much, and was to attached
to the prisoners."
"Well, are you?" questioned Bel.
"Well, let's just say I've made some friends,"
replied Vex, "That's why I'll be releasing all the prisoners… except you."
"No!" shouted Bel. He went into instant despair.
Captain Kalam would have his head the instant he hound out he let Vex escape.
But since he didn't want Vex to know he was capable of escaping, he decided
to keep his mouth shut after that.
The prisoners all cheered in there low, low,
voices. Some of them were from Meridell, and some of them were betrayers on
Darigan. And some of them, you just couldn't tell. But they all laughed, and
followed Vex out of an extra escape door he had built in the earlier days of
his dungeon-keeping.
"Later, traitor."
As soon as Vex and all of his so-called new
"friends" voices were no longer echoing from the escape route, Bel went into
action.
"Hah," he said, "he thinks he can hold a Draconian
Knight in one of his old, rusty cells." Bel took a Dark Nova from his pocket,
through it towards the rusting bars, and it exploded with purple smoke. As the
smoke cleared, there was a gaping whole in the cell, and Bel was on the other
side of it.
Meanwhile, in the skinny streets of the Darigan
Citadel, the prisoners were no longer imprisoned, and were causing nothing but
panic and fear. They rang a large bell from the top tower of the citadel, which
hadn't been used since the war with Meridell.
And as the rest of the Citadel was distracted,
Vex was in the main castle, finding a way to escape.
"There's got to be a way out of this dirty place,"
he told himself. He looked in every door, until he came across a tight, metal
door, with the words "ESCAPE CHARIOT" beaten into the wall beside it.
He tried twisting the knob, but it wouldn't
budge.
"It needs a key… And I know JUST where to find
it."
~
Bel ran up the stairs, his sword in his hand.
"STOP!" he heard, just as he reached the top. "STOP THIS INSTANT!" Bel turned,
and gasped as he saw Captain Kalam. He had a fiery look of rage in his eyes.
"WHAT THE MERIDELL IS GOING ON HERE?"
"None of this would've happened if you had just
told me why Vex was locked up," said Bel.
"DON'T try to blame this on me," said Kalam.
"Now will you tell me WHAT on NEOPIA is going on here?!?"
"Vex," answered Bel. "Vex released all of the
prisoners… after I released him."
"WHAT?" screeched Kalam. "If you want a possible
chance that I DON'T chop your head off, I suggest you capture Vex with no harm
done to the Citadel!" Captain Kalam ran to a capsule, flipped it open. There
was a red handle, and an intercom. He pulled the red handle, causing a siren
so loud that it was impossible to even think to go off. He pressed a small button
by the speaker.
"ALL TROOPS
AFTER PRISONERS
01,
02,
03,
04,
05,
AND DUNGEON WARDEN, MASTER VEX."
Kalam turned his head.
"You, YOU… You can only hope you can see tomorrow."
Kalam pulled his daggers, and ran after an insane-looking, giggling Korbat at
the end of the hallway.
If Vex was to go anywhere, thought Bel,
it would be out of Darigan…
~
"Where's the key?" Vex asked himself, while digging through Lord Kass's room.
"Where's the stupid key? I've been through his room twice and not a trace!"
"Looking for this?" Bel was at the door of the
room, dangling the keys at his finger. "Vex, you're hopeless. You wish you could
escape Darigan. In fact, we all do. But really. It's all hopeless."
"Please, Bel," whined Vex, pathetically, "of
all people, you'd understand me wanting to escape. In fact, you could come with
me. We'll both be completely free from this curse, and we could live our lives
in peace. We can be free, all you have to do is give me the keys." Bel stopped
for a moment to think about it. As he was frozen in thought, Vex ran, jumped,
and snatched the keys off his finger tips. He ran, laughing, for about two seconds,
and then let out the shrillest scream ever to be heard on the Citadel.
Vexes tail, was stretched out, to it's longest,
and at the end, clinching so-unbearably-tight, was Bel.
"Always catch a Mynci by the tail," said Bel,
as Vexes face turned pale. "Come on, you have an appointment with Kalam."
~
"Sir, prisoners 01, 02, 03, and 05 have been recaptured," said one of the guards,
bowing to the raging Krawk.
"Good," he said, trying to calm himself down
by taking deep gasps for breath, "continue the hunt."
The door slammed open, and there was Bel, indeed,
proud of himself, and in his hand, Vex, hanging upside down, handcuffed.
"Do you MIND," said Kalam, who had not yet bothered
to turn around.
"Shall I leave Vex in your hands," said Bel,
"or can I have the fun of disposing of him?"
"Guards, take Vex away," grumbled Kalam, "I'll
deal with him later." The guards took him away, as he mumbled something about
escaping.
"Now, for you. Oh, now for you."
"I am ready to be demoted to a squire."
"Oh, after all this," said Kalam, with a fiery
glare, "What makes you think I'll give you SLACK? Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no." Kalam
pulls out his left dagger, and points it at Bel as he approaches.
"SIR, I DID recapture Vex," he said, starting
to tremble with fear, "What more do you want?"
"Oh, I've wanted this for a LONG, long time,"
he replied, jumped at Bel an them put that dagger to his neck, and drew the
other to his stomach. "A long, LONG time." The more Kalam advanced, the more
Bel crawled back. Soon, they went to the edge of the doors, and went off to
the castle porch.
"Sir," he said, almost ready to fight back,
but wasn't willing to take the risk, "No, what on earth make you want to end
my life?" Kalam jumped closer, and soon, they were at the tip of the porch.
"It's just a thing of mine to hate people," he
said, with an evil smile, "I guess." Bel was now at the tip of the porch, his
back facing what seemed like oblivion.
But then, the porch door was opened unexpectedly.
There was Lord Kass.
"Captain Kalam," he said, "what is going on
here?" As Kalam turned in shock, Bel lost all balance. He flipped over on his
back, and fell over the edge.
~
He could here the screams again. Everything was changing, everything was
falling. The atmosphere changed, and he pierced through the clouds and mist
once again. And then, he saw a golden light, except this time, it was closer…
"The Curse."
~
"Um, sir?"
What? What's that light voice? I'm-I'm alive?
"SIR?"
I'm alive! And… Bel looks around. He
was in a pile of itchy hay. There is a little yellow Cybunny in a blue robe,
and around him, were the most and brightest colours he had seen in years.
"SIR!!!"
"I'm FREE!" He stares at the young Cybunny,
who was now staring back at him with an awkward look, as if he was insane.
"Are you alright, sir?"
To be continued…
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