Chapter I

INFERNUS

"Only I know your pain…"

When the mother's screams died away, and the newborns', weaker and babyish ones, arose in the air, nobody rejoiced.

That night, there were two motives, which make those present, including the new mom, keep silent, and both were reflected in the two crosses, carved on the woman's arm, that stood out in the Infernus red moon light. Those, who, for one reason or another, had kept a bit of compassion in the bottom of the heart, knew perfectly well that for the trio in the narrow bed it would have been better to die than to survive the labour and birth. The other ones, who, being good and proper demons, didn't feel anything but a cruel satisfaction at the idea of two new members of the cursed clan and had hoped to get one such spawn for themselves, were now intimidated and froze in awe of a figure, who had appeared in the middle of the room.

Black mid-back-length hair and a finely chiseled face, so beautiful it tore at the soul of anybody, who happened to look at it... The man got a couple of steps closer, arriving at the foot of the bed, which had hosted the labour.

The woman trebmled and, instinctively, tightened her grip around the twins, two little plump and rosy baby boys, who had fallen asleep in her arms, unawares; but she couldn't turn her eyes away from the ruby ones of her king.

"I beg you…", she found herself whispering, without knowing, where she had found the courage to plead with the hell king, "I beg you, they have just been born…"

"Oh, Lilith," Lucifer shook his head with a cruel smile on his lips, "they'll grow up, you know?"

Lilith knew she would get such an answer. You couldn't expect mercy from that being; even less hope there were for a woman like her, so beautiful with her incredibly long black hair and wonderful eyes, one grey and one amethyst, - so beautiful, but a slave, coming from the cursed family. And even so, for a moment she had tried to hope. Not for herself; Lilith knew she had condemned her own life as soon as she discovered she had conceived children of the man, who wasn't her master; but for her babies she had dared to beg, and she would dare to do it again.

"Please," she murmured, her voice a bit louder than before, "don't do this to them…"

She couldn't finish. Lucifer made a quick movement with his right hand, brought vertically near his face, and Lilith felt her throat tighten in an invisible iron grip, which choked her voice out and took away her air. With a spasm, she held the twins even closer.

The one leaning against her left shoulder started crying with the strong pressure, the other one became red with fear or pain, but didn't shed a tear nor uttered a sound.

Lucifer smiled even more. He moved to the side of the bed and reached out to the woman, who was growing paler by the moment, struggling for breath.

The left baby cried even louder, when he felt that, apart from his mother going cold, his brother, his last source of heat, had been taken from him, too.

Ignoring the weaker one's crying, Lucifer straightened with the right twin in his hands, who still stubbornly refused to cry. The hell king smiled, then he turned his back to the pleading eyes of exhausted Lilith and took a step to the exit.

"That one", he only said at the door, pointing with a nod at the remaining twin, "you can keep."

And then Lucifer went outside. He had taken a couple of srides before he felt his spell melting, useless, and Lilith's life dissipating as dust in the wind.

In that moment, Luze's bawls that had been getting more and more desperate, were echoed with Luka's first cry.

[Sound the bugle now. Play it just for me.

As the seasons change, remember how I used to be.]

Luka was eight and really hungry, when he met Lucifer for what he thought was the first time.

Since the demon king killed his parents and took him away, Lucifer had never showed up at the young Crosszeria's for years. The one reason was that Luka had been too young to be useful. What did he have to do with a two, three, four-year-old child, who cried all the time and couldn't do anything worthy? In fact, waiting for the slaves to grow up was the most hated part. But as for Luka…

Lucifer savoured every moment - from the instant, when the doors of his room were opened and the young Cadenza, a middle-level Opast, destined for fame, dragged the child inside, and till the moment, when the young demon slipped out, leaving the Crosszeria boy on his knees, too weak to resist any attack.

In his childish way, Luka was gorgeous. Hip-length soft pitch black hair and eyes of frosty silver, like mercury frozen into ice. His translucent skin was stretched tightly over his skinny body, leaving all his bones in plain sight, and his light complexion made the bruises stood out like stars in a negative form of the sky.

Despite his condition, Luka braced up to straighten his arms enough to raise his head and to look at his master, who called to him, but the child didn't shiver as his mom did, when his eyes met the red ones of the lord of the demons. Luka had already killed two A-level demons to earn that little amount of food, which was granted him to ensure the boy's survival, and that achievement had intrigued the demon king very much. The little one gritted his teeth, and steel flashed in his eye, making his glare too hostile and angry for a child.

No, Luka never seemed a child; maybe because he had never been one. He was a miniature adult, and he was too gorgeous for Lucifer to wait even one more day.

Without a word, the hell king stretched out his hand and grabbed Luka by his hair, than he pulled the boy to him.

[Now I can't go on, I can't even start.
I've got nothing left, just an empty heart.]

That night, for the second time in his life, Luka cried out.

[I'm a soldier, wounded so I must give up the fight.
There's nothing more to me: lead me away...
or leave me lying here.]

"Hurry!"

Luka practically didn't mind the kick that caught him in the ribs, while he was trying to get up. Kneeling on the floor, he had just cleaned all his master's lodgings, and now his body ached with the effort and the bruises Cadenza, as if playing, gave him from time to time, like right at that moment, while he supervised the young slave. Silently, Luka got up and rapidly gathered up everything he had used for cleaning, so as to not make his master angry, and headed for the door.

He endured, without a word, all the violent pushes, the demon landed on his back on the way to his tiny cell, which, for Luka, was the best thing in his miserable life because being there meant he wasn't forced to spend another night in his lustful master's wonderful chamber. The chamber, which, for Luka, was the worst of the cages.

The boy almost stumbled, when Cadenza shoved him over the doorstep, but he managed to keep his balance and just stood there, motionless, not daring to move an inch until the echo of the closed padlocks on the wooden door vanished in the air and the low sound of his tormentor's steps became inaudible. Than he risked taking a deeper breath and went up to a thin litter, made of dry straw, but cold with dampness, which was his bed. He just wanted to lie down for a moment and recover his strength – just so that he could last through the hours till the dawn and then bear the rest of the day, which, with the sleep it would bring, would provide him with a bit of courage to get up at the next sunset.

Luka lowered his eyelids and in the black that surrounded him he curled up on himself, wrapping his arms around his skinny body to warm it a little.

He had accepted his destiny. He understood it, and he agreed with it, in part. He knew his clan deserved what he was now suffering. But sometimes it was so hard...

In his dark corner, ignoring bites some mice gave to his bare feet, testing, if he was still alive and if they could eat him, Luka felt again the harsh words of demons torture him.

"You Crosszeria, tsk! You're lousy traitors, you make one sick, just looking at your faces!" "It's your fault, only yours! If your damn ancestor hadn't sold us, now we wouldn't be pets for humans!" "Our names! Our TRUE names! Anyone, who knows them, can force us to obey their orders! The bastard sold us!" "Kill all of you? And what for? To save you from the destiny you've condemned us to?" "No, it would have been too easy. You doomed our ancestors to slavery, and this will be your punishment: you'll have no peace even in your own home, marked by two 'X' carved into your left arm, you'll be cursed forever. Culprits, you'll be slaves for the brothers you have betrayed!"

Luka drifted between sleep and consciousness, while Lucifer's silken and cruel voice, announcing his sentence, rumbled in his brain.

For a Duras, a hell demon, their true name was sacred, not even their relatives could know it because, when pronounced, it forced the owner to obey. Luka knew why all the underworld beings, from the weaker A-level demons to the stronger Opast Generals, gang up on his clan, and a part of him shared their anger against that forbear, whose name he didn't even know. But at the age of eleven he still believed that some justice could exist even in Infernus and that someone, sooner or later, would understand that he, Luka, after all that millennia, certainly couldn't be blamed for what his ancestor had once done.

He opened the shutter, when he felt Cadenza approaching, and jumped to his feet instinctively just before the Opast opened the wooden door.

Cadenza was tall, an adult for a couple of centuries already; he had long red hair and narrow eyes, full of cruelty; his strongly muscled body and a sharp, stout face were a perfect match. His looks couldn't be compared with Luka's elegant and delicate handsomeness, but still Cadenza was quite attractive, just like all the higher demons were, a trap for humans.

Luka realized he had grown in height to reach Cadenza's chest, although his body was much leaner and malnourished. He looked into Cadenza's eyes and knew, why the man had come.

A well-hidden part of him trembled, but Luka didn't let the world in on this; he stood, strong and quiet, waiting for the Duras to confirm his suspicions.

"Follow me," the redhead ordered derisively, eyeing the boy from head to toe, as if he also was incredulous about the words he was going to say, "you start training."

[Sound the bugle now. Tell them I don't care.
There's not a road I know that leads to anywhere.
Without a light I fear that I will stumbled in the dark,
lay right down, decide not to go on.]

Luka slowly traced the silver claw on his right ear with his thumb and index finger. It would be enough for him to appeal to just a tiny bit of his powers to make it change into his black sword, long and sharp, with a hilt, carved in a toothed way, as if to make it cutting, too, and a big bloody-red gem in the intersection between the hilt and the blade.

And...

And Lucifer would need even a smaller droplet of his powers to break Luka's sword into pieces and compel his obedience by force. Luka knew it, but he couldn't help imagining grasping his sword to try to defend himself from his master, not just to defend the worm from others.

Suppressing a sigh, he slowly opened the door, which lead to Lucifer's rooms, and silently came in and then closed it. He passed the little anteroom and entered the bedroom wordlessly.

An invisible band around his chest tightened brutally, cutting off his breath and squeezing the air out of his lungs, when he saw Lucifer, his back to Luka, staring at the red Infernus moon behind the polished glass of the window. If the demon lord was waiting for him, with nothing to distract his attention, then for Luka that would be not a painless night.

"Master?" he asked, slowly kneeling to the ground.

Lucifer turned without a word and just stood there, admiring his darling's submission for a moment.

There was his beloved servant, with magical powers, superior to the ones of everybody else, maybe even his own. Cold-hearted and ruthless; his eyes were like steel blades, and his hair was the night itself. His body was still thin, for he was forced to go hungry, but, although slim and slender, he had grown up and matured a bit, thanks to the trainings, duels and battles. His rice-paper skin showed not only bones, but also veins and tendons, stretched over lean yet powerful muscles. It was obvious he was a warrior, scary and handsome. And he was his.

Lucifer approached his Zess and put his hand into his hair. For a few moments he enjoyed the sensation of its silky softness, before he tightened his grip and forced the youth on his feet. Luka let out no moan, not a sound at all, but, when standing up, he complied with his master's hand movement and looked up at his face.

He was sixteen, and his body was still a bit childish, but it seemed to manifest to the world how handsome and masculine this adolescent was going to be in a couple of years. It had to be said that to Lucifer, who appreciated boyish beauty and charm, at that moment Luka appeared to be the most gorgeous being ever created. Unable to restrain himself, the demon king, not loosening his grip on his Zess' hair, imposed a violent and possessive kiss to the young Duras' lips, which pushed his mouth open and polluted it with wickedness.

Luka's stomach revolted, pleading with him to run away from that agony, which made him feel defiled in an irreparable way, but his head reminded him that, by now, nothing could make him whole again and that flinching was forbidden and horribly punished. So he stood still, striving for keeping calm and silent, and let his master took pleasure in his mouth and his suffering.

When Lucifer broke the kiss, he was even more sure about his decision.

"I want to make you a present, Luka… Are you happy?" he whispered into his ear, so that his lips just touched the youth's earlobe at each word.

Luka had to engage all his restraint not to shudder. He continued staring off into space in front of him, wordlessly, waiting to discover what was going to happen to him.

Lucifer snapped his free hand fingers, and Luka's clothes disappeared. The frosty air started to bite at his skin, but he didn't really notice it, worried at this turn of events. He had almost hoped to avoid it, for that night, but, indeed, he would have had to know better than this here, in Infernus.

Lucifer pulled young Zess closer by his hair and pushed him to the bed, causing the youth to fall prone on the enormous mattress; then the demon king let the tester ropes come to life and wrap around Luka's finely muscled arms to tie them together behind his back.

Luka didn't even try to move, he lay still and waited for the inevitable, but the minutes passed, and no hot and violent body, so heavy because it was too much bigger than his, came to crush him.

"Luka…" Lucifer whispered, but the tone he used made the youth's skin creep.

He didn't dare to move his whole body, but he turned his head to look at his master over his shoulder.

Lucifer had taken off his gloves and had brought his index finger to his mouth. After a second, he removed it, and Luka could see a small cut on the hell king's fingertip, from which a drop of dense and dark red blood oozed out.

His stomach rebelled even more.

"My cute Luka…", Lucifer soughed, his voice reduced to a scary gasp his slave knew all too well.

Luka gritted his teeth, stiffened his jaw and maintained his stoic expression, but he didn't averted his eyes from Lucifer, who got near with his bloody finger stretched out toward the youth. A part of Luka wanted to scream with fear, but his other, stronger part wanted just to let Lucifer do whatever he was going to do – so that everything could be finished as soon as possible. And that was the very part, which had allowed him to survive till that day, the one, which knew, when it was time to fight and when to bow his head.

Lucifer saw Luka's dull expression and smiled.

"We'll seal this special contract", he revealed, kneeling on the mattress to have Duras' legs locked under his, "with my blood."

Luka felt his heart slowing down a little, while he used all the strength he had learned to master not to really think about what that phrase meant. Silent, he observed his lord's satisfied expression, while Lucifer sneered, seeing him so weak at his disposal.

"How about I dye your Brand Zess?" the king went on, and at same time he tightened his healthy hand's grip on the boy's left arm, at the elbow, and clamped it, while bringing his bloody finger closer to the two 'X', carved into his flesh. Luka continued staring at his face with a sad expression, as if he didn't mind, and that made the king's cruel smile even bigger. He adored the cold defiance that slave offered and the quiet way, in which he tried to resist the wounds that were impressed into his body and into his mind; he adored it to the point of foolishness. "Don't worry", he whispered again, with fake kindness, leaning forward to get closer and better see his intended work, "you should be able to withstand the pain."

For a moment Luka felt the finger touch the top of one of the marks on his arm, but then some fire blazed up and began to consume his flesh, where the Lucifer's blood came in contact with the scar and started to reopen it by force, thrusting into the new cuts and infecting them.

"Always remember…"

Luka hardly heard Lucifer's voice through the curtain of excruciating pain, so strong and intense that it was burning away the rest of the world and made him believe his whole body was aflame. The youth set his jaw, trying hard to hold back the scream that was tearing at his throat, but he felt his face contracting into a grimace of pure suffering against his will. All his muscles stretched and stiffened, distraught by a wound his body didn't see coming and couldn't prevent or heal in any way. Instinctively, he tried to wriggle his arms free, but they were tied securely, and the demon lord was now pressing on them with his whole weight in order to block him under his body. With Lucifer's frame upon him, Luka felt a hardness against his hip, which warned him that breach wouldn't be the only one of that night.

"You're mine", Lucifer murmured in his ear, his voice silken and smooth, which was enough to make Luka grit his teeth. Luka, who, staring off into empty space, was doing his damndest to maintain control over his body, which was trying to writhe. "Every strand of hair, every drop of blood."

The fire, devouring his flesh, doubled its heat, when Lucifer finished, with his last word, to trace the second 'X' with his finger, and at that point it was too much for Luka.

He closed his eyes and screamed in pain.

[Then from some high, somewhere in the distance,
there's a voice that calls: "Remember who you are.
If you loose yourself, your courage soon will follow,
so be strong tonight. Remember who you are."]

He slightly tightened the grip of his hands on his forearms. Knees to chest, crossed arms supported by them, he sat there, with his gaze lost in the space – in the sky that was too high to be reached.

There was a storm, a big one, not so far from the dead tree, on which branch the young Duras had spent hours and hours before, taking advantage from the freedom from his master's orders. That night, the expanse over his head was covered with thick and dense clouds, grey and narrow like some big mice, intending to fight between themselves; the rain washed out the horizon line, but the lightnings illuminated the gloomy and apathetic face of the youth, all curled up into his Opast uniform that was too big for him.

Luka lowered his gaze a bit, moving his eyes only, and looked at himself. The white skin of his wrists, visible at the border of the sleeve, showed, without any chance of misunderstanding, the big bruises, which seemed to wrap as snakes around his joints and went on, upwards, to hide from view, in a perfect mould of the strings, which had crushed his arms in the bedroom. He didn't dare to think, what the rest of his body should look like: his back, against which Lucifer had pressed his knees to keep him still; his chest the king had kicked; his legs the demon lord had sprawled to put them into the position he preferred. Luka knew quite well that the one reason, why his face didn't show any trace of violence, was that the king loved his graceful beauty. For the umpteenth time, Luka wished he had the courage to turn his blade against his own face, to disfigure himself so irreparably and to look so revolting as to make even his master run away from him; but his most apathetic part always stopped him with the same objections: firstly, his face was the one thing, which gave him some advantage on the other Duras, and the only reason Lucifer had to keep him close, despite the rebellion risk, and not to eliminate the problem at its root, taking into account the enormous and ever increasing magical power he was showing more and more; secondly, his master's rage would be beyond imagination, if his favourite toy got broken, and his wrath was something nobody with a brain would ever like to face. And Luka had been beaten enough to not want to endure another bashing and other tortures.

Not allowing himself to sigh, he curled up a little more tightly and returned his eyes to the lightnings, which shattered the earth far away from him.

But he had already seen.

He was weak . There was no way to deny it, now. His body was too frail; the muscles were worthless, if there was no strength to use them, and his powers were out of control. Everything in him said 'victim' to any demon he came across with.

A faster series of thunderbolt hit the ground. At first, they left just a little spurt of fire, like a candle, but soon the flames engulfed the whole zone and expanded to the nearer fields. And the lightnings continued to fall.

Why woildn't they strike nearer? Why wouldn't they hit that tree and burn it, letting him die with it?

"War, Zess. It's the only thing, which exists in Infernus. The natural law of 'kill or be killed' has reached its heyday here. It isn't a non-written rule, it's our simple doctrine, the only creed we rely on. So you'd better learn quickly to kill bigger and worse beings than you or, I assure you, you won't live long."

Luka shivered, hearing again the words of the General he was entrusted to so that he could learn how to fight. That lesson came in the middle of a beating, when he didn't yet have the strength to break free from a much stronger adversary. He was twelve, then, but he remembered these words as if it had happened the day before. Just like he remembered the day he decided to put them to practice and his blade – to his beloved teacher's forehead. But hey, that one really happened the day before.

What would happen now – he couldn't say. He had reached the high-class Opast status long before, and the killing of a General, added to the Lucifer's mark, screamed in his ears that from now on he would be someone legendary in the others' eyes, a less-than-a-century old Opast killer, the king's favourite. He didn't know, whether Lucifer gave him his mark in that moment just by chance, or if the demon lord made it expressly to tie him to killing and to make him new and special, in everyone's perception. But from now on, to kill him would be the wish of anyone, who saw him, for fear or for envy. He didn't believe his master wanted to get rid of him, or he would have already done so; but he leaned toward the idea that, as sadistic as the king was, he just had decided to see how long he would survive and how tough he would be in a fight. It was what Lucifer always wanted: to watch him flounder and writhe and then find some strength somewhere to perk up.

But Luka was tired of perking up, healing and starting again. He was tired of looking at himself and feeling the impulse to destroy what he saw – to save the others the trouble.

He raised his eyes to the thunderbolts, still falling on the hill, which was almost all afire.

There would never be an end to his suffering, if he didn't become the one to put it. The demons wouldn't have mercy on him, and he would have none on them.

With an effort, but without betraying any emotion with his face, he rose and stood up on the branch. His left arm still throbbed because of his master's rite, and he knew his 'X', hidden to the world thanks to the cloth, glowed on his skin in dark and rich scarlet, which made them unique. A possessive mark and a sign of independence, a target and a scarecrow at the same time, he couldn't break free, and so he would get free of anyone, who would try to make him pay for it.

He had already given away too much, and he had no intention to spend another drop of blood at anyone's hand. Anyone's, who wasn't the one, from whom, he knew, he would never be able to run away and against whom he would never be able to prevail – his master, sadly, the only one he really wished to get rid of.

[You're a soldier now, fighting in a battle
to be free once more.
That's worth fighting for.]

I do not own the song. It is the Lyrics of Bryan Adam's "Sound the bugle", from "Spirit" soundtrack.

Hi!

Ehm, I'm Agap... *embarrassed* Ok, this is my first story on this site and in a foreign (for me) language, so... be mercifull, please! XD

If you find out any mistake (and you'll probably do), please let me know :)

Speaking of the story, I don't know when I'll publish the next chapter. It's quite ready in Italian, but I have to translate it yet...

Let me know if the story enjoys!

Read you soon!,

Agap