Untitled Story - Prologue (Patreon)

Author's Notes: This is a bit of an experiment for me. I was having the thought about how much I missed Devilla, and how I kinda wanted to write another villainess otome, and... Well, somehow this came out of it?

I dunno. I'm not sure if I'll be making it into a full series, or if it'll kinda die at initiation. It's not quite what I set out to write initially, but it is interesting, so... Let me know what you think, I guess?

My fingers drummed against my thigh as I stared at the blank word processor before me, hoping that somehow text would miraculously appear upon the screen without me actually having to do anything. Not that I didn’t want to do anything - I loved writing, with all my heart - but right at that moment I was suffering from some serious writer’s block. If I could just figure out the start of the story I was sure the rest of the words would flow freely across the page, but no matter how much I beat my fists against that wall I just couldn’t seem to make any progress.

The truth was, I was… sort of bored with what I’d been writing. It wasn’t bad, by any means, and it was rather popular, but at the same time it was just so… boring. At least to me. I mean, it was just a basic love story, starring a heroic prince and a kindly commoner girl who’d managed to capture his attention and win his heart at the royal academy. Which she was only intending due to her prodigious talent with healing magic, of course, because why wouldn’t I throw every cliche in the book at this ridiculous attempt at a story?

Of course, one of those tropes included having a villainess fiancee for the prince - a duke’s daughter, and the most interesting character by far… at least so far as I was concerned. I had no idea if my readers agreed - they were usually too busy hating on her to actually do a deep dive into her personality - but she had a depth to her that the others seriously lacked. She was the daughter of a duke, who had the ability to tell truths from lies, as well as some small ability to peer into the future. Nothing much - glimpses, usually lacking in details. She might look at a boy and suddenly know he was going to grow up to be a knight, but that didn’t mean she’d have any idea what path he’d take to get there. It wasn’t incredibly useful, but she did put it to use - if only to torture others. You know, by lying about their futures, or purposefully sending them down paths she knew would lead to bad outcomes, even if she didn’t know what or why.

She… wasn’t exactly nice. In fact, she was pretty close to downright evil. She’d hardened her heart against the liars of the world at a young age, and saw everyone around her as being liars and sinners at least as bad as her. She was petty and cruel, but also lonely, desperate for companionship and yet convinced that anyone who grew close to her would eventually betray her.

Which they generally would for the record. Even if she couldn’t figure out how, or to what severity. In fact, a lot of the ‘betrayals’ she saw were actually the result of people turning against her for her own bad attitude. She was sort of the master of self-fulfilled prophecies like that, seeing someone would betray her, treating them like shit, and then acting like she knew they were terrible all along when they finally turned on her.

So yeah. She was terrible, and mean, but also sort of tragic? Complex, in other words. The sort of character I liked most.

She was also about to die. Not in the very chapter I was writing - not necessarily at least - but soon. She’d pushed too far against the heroine of the story, after all. What started as simple bullying at the academy had eventually turned into physical action, and even attempted assassination. Poison in her tea, dark-robed figures with knives in the night, the whole nine yards. If not for the protagonist’s ability to heal herself, she’d be full on dead!

What’s more, the Prince had recently - finally - gathered enough evidence to convince his father to act against her, despite her station. Even her father had been brought on board, reluctantly agreeing that for the safety of his house and the nation as a whole his daughter needed to go.

…Well, somewhat reluctantly, at least. He’d never been a great father. Or maybe it was just that he’d never been able to get close to Bridgette - the villainess. She saw through his every lie, after all. Even saw that he would turn against her, one day. Kinda hard to get close with that sorta thing hanging over your head…

That wasn’t the point, though. The point was that everything was in order for the villainess to die. The problem with that being… I didn’t want to kill her. She was too interesting. Too useful to the story. Yet the story was wrapping up, and she didn’t have a place in its happy ending, so… I had to kill her. 

Hence the writer’s block.

“Maybe I just shove it off for later?” I muttered to myself. “Like… do an interim chapter. Capture what’s on her mind, the night before her arrest. The guards are coming in the morning, but what is she doing the night of…?”

She probably knew she was going to be captured, right? Her future sight would give her a glimpse of that, and maybe even the execution that would follow. Even if her future sight was a bit fuzzy on the details, she was smart enough to put two and two together herself. She knew she wouldn’t survive.

So she’d probably do something about it, right? Yeah. I could just imagine her, desperately trying to come up with some sort of scheme to avoid capture. She might even turn to dark magic - that forbidden craft, which even she had been scared to touch. The summoning of demons, for deals…

I could see it, now, in my mind’s eye. The candles, lit and carefully placed upon a chalk pentagram. A circle drawn with ancient runes, meant to keep the fiend captured until the deal could be properly struck. The chanting - I could almost hear the chanting, a slow melodious string of nonsense words that probably meant something in some infernal tongue or another. 

Her magic would fill the room, the mana in the air growing denser and denser until she could hardly see, hardly breathe, and yet still the words would come from her mouth. The plea, to be saved from her fate. To be rescued, no matter the cost. She’d promise her soul, her life, if it meant living long enough to take revenge.

The air would ripple, the mana actually becoming briefly visible from its density, and a split would appear in the air, a crack in reality through which all that mana would pour until it was all gone, until Bridgette felt like she little more than an empty husk… and then they would step out.

Tall, dark, with a face impossible to describe, and features that slipped from your mind just as soon as you registered them. They would stand there, and they would ask her for her will, and she would tell them her wants - survival. To survive, and be free from her wretched kingdom. To live on, away from everyone who had wronged her.

Then the demon would smile, and say - 

“Deal.”