Shadow Worlds and Chaos Lights

THE UNDERWORLD was dark. Five people sat silently around a campfire; the light from the flickering flames made grotesque, disfigured shadow images on the walls of the cave and danced over their faces as each of them were deep in their own thoughts.

Agwe was the leader of the group and his whole appearance radiated a collected calm and such an authority that it was impossible to see him as anything else but a leader. He was a demonkin: half demon, half human. His skin was silver-pale like the moon, his white-less eyes sparkled like stars and his long hair was black as the midnight sky. From his shoulder blades grew two tiny, black wings, but they didn't seem strong enough to bear him if he actually tried to fly.

Tana was sitting next to him. He could be described as nothing less than an angel with sparkling snow-white wings and long golden hair that fell down his back in perfectly shaped curls. Only his eyes betrayed that he had human blood in his veins, but those eyes did nothing to spoil his beauty. In fact, it was the eyes that were the most remarkable thing about him; they were all the colours of the rainbow, starting with cold violet around the pupils, going through the whole spectrum of colours and ending with flaming fiery red against the whites of his eyes.

Next to him, leaning slightly against the angelspawn's shoulder, was Idin. Her ash-blond hair and the sickly paleness of her skin seemed to generate an eerie glow and her yellow, predatory eyes reflected the flames. The look in her eyes, however, was not the wild restlessness or the bloodthirsty madness that one could expect from a child of darkness; instead it was filled with an inner calm and a sort of warm satisfaction that one could only find within those who have accepted their destiny, no matter how hard it was.

Ricven was sat next to Idin; he was a fairy with the mischievous features of a teenager and a wild, untamed mane of purple-coloured hair that fell down over his shoulders all the way to the floor. The look in his bright blue eyes, however, was not mischievous at all, but melancholy and kind of empty. His skin was pale with shades of violet around his eyes; on his cheekbones were two triangular markings from his pointed ears towards his nose and a pair of shimmering wings grew from his back.

The fifth and the last of the creatures around the campfire was Mu'atsu, an androgynous male with blood red wings and hair and a pair of nightmarish eyes that were nothing more than dark pupils in pools of blood with no white visible at all. His skin was as pale as Idin's except for on his cheeks and the bridge of his nose where there was a faint blush that made him look innocent in spite of his blood-coloured eyes.

They were an odd mix of creatures, but even though they were different, they had something in common; they all had been either cursed by the creator or cast out by their own.

It was Agwe that had found the others. His father had been an angel, one of the followers of Lucifer, who was banished from heaven at the beginning of time, and his mother had been a human girl who had fallen for his father's mystic charm and good looks. Through his father's treachery, Agwe had been cursed even before he was born, not welcome in either heaven or hell because of his human heritage and considered a pariah among the humans because he wasn't fully one of them. Agwe had already at a very young age understood the whole meaning of being alone and an outsider so, as soon as he had been old enough to take care of himself, he had left his mother and father, making it his mission to travel the world looking for people that had been cursed and cast out, not wanting others to suffer the same fate as he had and to give them a home when everything else in the creation had turned against them.

The first one had been Idin, the very first of the Black Lilies that Cain and his offspring had sewn amongst the humans. Once she had been a human girl, living a common life with a human's joys and sorrows but that had changed the night she had met Cain. He had ripped her throat open with his teeth, had drunk her life and her blood to still his own hunger. She had fought back for her life, kicking him, hitting him and a single drop of blood had fallen from the vampire's nose down onto his victim blending with hers. When the fighting stopped, Cain had left her drained body to die, not for a second considering the possibility that she would inherit the same curse as he.

When Agwe had found her, she had been more of a wild beast than a human girl. Overwhelmed with her thirst for blood and driven to the verge of madness by powers she couldn't control, she had been roaming around the outskirts of her old home, mindlessly attacking people that got too close. Agwe had taken her to his home in the underworld and slowly but surely brought her back to sanity. He had told her about himself and his mission and asked her if she wanted to stay and join him in his search for others, and she had stayed with him.

Ricven of the Fae had been rejected by his own kind because of his melancholy spirit and serious nature that had shone through everything he did even though he had tried to hide it behind an infectious laughter and promiscuous living. He had tried to blend in among the other fairies, tried to be carefree and joyful, laughed and danced and shared his body with everyone who wanted it. But he'd never felt content with his life; he'd never felt complete; something had been missing and it had filled him with an emptiness, a sadness and a desperation that'd ached inside of him, day and night. Soon, others had noticed it too, and then things had taken a real turn for the worst.

Fairies were beings of love, joy and eroticism; there shouldn't be such a thing as a heartbroken fairy; it went against their nature and if one ever appeared, he or she would be considered an abnormality that had to be removed from the society. So the Fae's high council had simply told Ricven that he was no longer welcome among them before banishing him from the fairy realm.

Ricven had wandered through the worlds alone and miserable, sinking deeper and deeper into depression and his longing for death, not caring about anything besides finding a way to end his suffering. It was in that state that the demonkin and his vampire companion had found him. Ricven had, for the first time in his life, found understanding for the feelings he had inside of him, and even though his new friends couldn't take away the feeling of emptiness, they had given him a sense of belonging and a purpose in life.

The three of them had later found a winged, rainbow-eyed child alone and abandoned at the water's edge and understood that he must be an angelspawn, the result of one of the many relationships between the sons of heaven and the humans and that the child must have been the sole survivor of the great flood that probably killed his mortal mother and sent his father to the realm of the fallen. They had named the boy Tana and he had come to live with them accepting them as his new family.

Shortly after that, they found a creature from before the beginning of time, Mu'atsu. The creature had been drowning in the darkness of his own soul and the pain from his broken heart, but Agwe had saved him from the brink of death and invited him into their little group.

Eons had passed since then and time had welded the five beings together with bonds stronger than friendship or family ties, stronger than erotic attraction or the bond between spouses. They had been with each other for better and worse and still they all could agree that there were no other people they would like to spend eternity with. Whatever happened, they would always have each other.