The Glass Coffin Ch 01

Aurelius Lucem inhaled the dusty, stale air inside the dark chapel. He sensed Deus' fright as he watched him looking at the 10-year-old girl who managed to break in lying on the damp floor under the slowly narrowing beam of light coming from the transom above. Aurelius knew that Deus was powerless in his weak astral form.

"Oona? Can you hear me? Oona... please listen to me." Deus' voice sounded as if it was being carried on a breeze. Oona wondered if she was hearing things. She reluctantly opened her eyes only to squeeze them shut again. The white light shining on her was brighter than the sun. "Oona, please get up."

"Why should I?" She asked petulantly. "I don't want to get up. I don't want to live."

"Your parents wouldn't want that." Deus retorted.

"My parents are dead. They can't want anything anymore." Oona sighed; her breath was getting shallower by the minute. Deus feared that the chapel's cursed darkness was about to whip her little candle's flame out. "Whoever killed them made a mistake."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because they forgot to kill me. Tell me; are we alive just to die?" Oona picked her head of long strawberry blonde hair up and looked into the blackness, her blue eyes scanning for the voice's owner. "I know we've got to die someday. But why do some people die sooner than others?"

"It's fate," Deus explained. "Sometimes an early death is part of the purpose in their lives. Just like there is a purpose for your having survived."

Oona sat up on her skinned knees, her white knee socks stained from the dirty floor. "Who are you?" She asked. A thirteen-year-old boy stepped into the white light. He had short silver hair and was dressed in a white silk uniform with a red mantle.

"I am Deus."

"How did you know my name, Deus?"

"I know a lot about you Oona. And a lot about your kind."

"'My kind?'"

"Humans," he clarified. "You can't change your parents' fate, Oona. You don't have that power. Nor do you have the power to decide that you should die as well. Learn from the mistakes I made." Oona was puzzled by the riddles the boy spouted. "I was a prince with power that could control the stars. But it was not enough to change the fate of human suffering." Deus smiled wistfully.

"What happened when you tried?" Oona asked.

"I became angry, hateful. And I lost the most important person in my life." Deus' voice dropped so low that Oona strained to hear what he said next. "And then I died... But you mustn't be afraid of me," Deus sensed her fear and gallantly dropped to one knee before her. "I won't harm you. Just listen. Everyone must be tested in life and you must not give into hate or fear lest you will be condemned to languish in a glass coffin for all eternity."

A glass coffin? As though he read her mind, Deus pointed into the blackness behind him and another white light shone upon a glass coffin where a little girl looking to be about Oona's age lay in. Her long orchid-colored hair splayed over the white satin pallet, she wore a gold sunray tiara and a silver gown.

"Can you promise me that Oona?" Looking into his cyan eyes and seeing sincerity there she got to her little Mary Jane shod feet and shook his gloved hand.

"I promise." Deus nodded, smiling down at her.

"Then it's time for you to go."

"Deus?"

"Yes?"

Oona tipped her head slightly examining his uniform. "Were you a good prince?"

Deus' grin was lopsided. "No. I failed my duties. Good luck to you... Miss Oona Tudor."

"No one should be in a glass coffin," Oona's child voice echoed once more in the blackness after the light went out. Humans were gullible creatures, Aurelius thought. They were flawed, wanton, and most of all, weak. He could never figure out why he- or rather his former self, Deus- obsessed over them. But to the humans' credit, their sole redeeming quality was their spirit. They imposed such high standards on themselves, but were always defeated by desire. The more radical humans called them The Seven Deadly Sins. Aurelius was able to identify them in the players he recruited for his game.

Intersecting his arms across his broad chest, Aurelius exited that memory and into another where a baby grand piano stood. On the bench lay a brown leather portfolio containing a sheaf of sheet music. Aurelius flipped through the pages.

"We could stay like this forever if we wanted to Koren." A young man's voice echoed from the left side of the bench.

"Why would we want to do that, Mack?" Koren's voice asked with a thick mocking undertone from the right side.

"Because it's the only way for us to be happy."

Mackenzie Danvers, the concert pianist was Gluttony. He seemed happy allowing his beloved partner, Koren Haywood, to stab him in the back at her pleasure.

Aurelius dropped the sheet music and left Mackenzie's memory. In a fencing hall he approached a pair of crossed fencing foils leaning against a metal folding chair.

"It's no good," a woman's voice spoke. "No matter what I do, nothing will please her. I'll never forgive her... or myself." Jeanette Broussard, Lust, was mired in guilt over her unrequited love. Part of Jeanette wanted to destroy the woman who spurned her, while the other half still wanted her.

Aurelius moved on. In a plot of dirt stood an apple tree, the fruit glimmering with a dewy luster. A woman's sudden shouting made him flinch.

"Look at me! Are you deaf or what?! Nothing should be more important to you than me, understand? Nothing!" Natasha Illinova was born to be Wrath. Since childhood, her parents spoiled her and naturally she demanded to be the center of everyone's universe. And if she wasn't, there was hell to pay.

Aurelius found himself standing in a dojo. On the wall hung a framed piece of long parchment and in Japanese kanji it read 'Way of the Warrior.'

"I've always known who you really are and what you're all about." A man said. "And just to let you know, I've considered you my best friend just as much as you have me. So we're even." Envy was Sterling Houseman through and through. He was convinced that his best friend had it all through betraying and using him. He was right.

Checking the time Aurelius knew that the last memory was coming up. He had only a few minutes. It was an empty hotel room, the bed unmade with a glass tumbler on the carpet and a burgundy stain on the sheets.

"In this chaotic world," a man lectured, "we struggle for a common goal: order. In this university I will be the one to bring order. I am the headmaster's successor." The most deadly of the sins was Pride. And Tristan Lockney was a proud man. A master manipulator Tristan became under Aurelius' tutelage, spinning webs attracting the juiciest butterflies who attended St. Eustathius University where Aurelius was the headmaster.

Aurelius put these five challengers together forming the Student Government Organization. But it was Avice Hesper, the game's trophy, and his slave, who undermined the SGO using the skeletons she unearthed to prolong the game for his ends. But Aurelius lost all trust in Avice when Oona transferred.

Oona arrived on the tenth anniversary of her parents' murder. After being orphaned, it was expected by her adoptive aunt that Oona, unable to understand the situation to become withdrawn. Instead the outcome was quite the opposite. She was energized and determined to fulfill the promise she made to Deus. It astonished Aurelius that she actually remembered him.

The pieces fell into place quickly; Avice went through the motions becoming Oona's roommate, befriending her, and allowed Oona to defend her as the other students bullied her. Since no one made a move to stop the harassment, Oona took on the responsibility herself. Oona knew the SGO were the only ones that could end the torment, but instead they shut her down every time she raised hell about Avice's situation.

Avice made a suggestion to Oona that might even the playing field: join the game to free her.

Now as the game's new champion, Oona climbed to the top of the monolith in the woods at the edge of the university's campus where all the challenges were staged battling the butterflies over her final fight. Her blue leather ankle boots clicked on the cracked stones walking through the archway, but she was confused when she didn't find her last challenger or the SGO who were required to witness the fights.

What Oona did see at the center of the platform was a glass coffin. And there was someone in it. Oona knelt beside the casket and admired the woman inside. Slumbering serenely, the sleeping beauty wore a pink gown. Oona envied the woman on the bed of white satin seemingly waiting for the kiss of her prince to break the curse.

"Oona..." A voice from above said.

"Huh?" She stammered. Her eyes widened at the man standing over her. Aurelius bowed to Oona. He was the last challenger? His long silver hair was loose about his shoulders, but there was something familiar about the uniform he was dressed in. White silk with golden frogs, purple braids and a fleur-de-lis medallion around his neck. He carried a lilac satin cushion and on it was a diamond sunray tiara.

"I have something for you." The moonlight made every flawless facet of each diamond strand an iridescent band of stars.

"You are-" Oona was cut off by the squeal of hinges. She turned around and the golden cage Avice occupied during the challenges appeared behind her. The door swung open on its own. Taking little steps toward Oona, Avice's silver chiffon skirt shifted softly. Avice stopped standing above Oona; her arms raised high holding Oona's sword poised to strike.

"Do it." Aurelius ordered. Oona spun back around to face Aurelius, and screamed when the sword came down.

# #

Clutching her chest, Avice crashed to her knees on the grass. She escaped the monolith at the last second. Smoothing her hands down the front of her silver gown, Avice felt a sticky wetness on her palms and flinched thinking it was Oona's blood. She relaxed when she only saw a thick sheen of sweat on them. Her hip-length orchid hair was mussed and the heavy gold sunray tiara she wore was gone. Dusting herself off, she looked back at the tower where the monolith stood atop. None of the players in Aurelius' game knew how they made it up to the monolith or where it was simply because they didn't care, and that may have been the real secret behind the tiny amount of Deus' power Aurelius still possessed. But now Avice's real work was about to begin.

Trudging deep into the bowels of the forest that once belonged to her family, Avice made her way to the cemetery. It was one of the few secrets she was able to keep from Aurelius. Thousands of glass coffins lay in state, Avice stopped before two of them, one was empty and the other held the body of a man with light brown shoulder-length hair. Avice laid her hands atop the lid of the man's casket momentarily before it opened.

Abruptly the mental link Avice shared with Aurelius became active and was inundated with images. She saw Oona dressed in the pink gown being led by Aurelius through a deserted hotel lobby. Avice became distracted from her vision as the man in the open casket began to stir. Struggling to focus she saw Aurelius and Oona board an elevator, and Avice held her breath knowing what awaited Oona when they reached the top floor.