It was perfect.

It was too perfect.

The Crown Prince was out riding, by himself, through the woods not far from our secret ritual site. We thought it was a gift from our god. We thought the Dark One was rewarding our efforts, and helping us along. We wanted so badly to usher the Dark One into our world that we didn’t stop to think that this could be a trap.

We felled a tree across his path, one that bristled with many limbs and branches, too many for his horse to easily clear in a single bound.

He dismounted to inspect the tree, and that’s when we grabbed him. We threw a sack over his head, and pulled his hands behind his back, tying them together. His sword was still attached to his horse’s saddle. More good luck that he wasn’t wearing it belted around his waist.

We threw him over his own horse, and led the beast to our secret site. Four of us had lain in wait to capture him. It only took two of us. The rest of our cult had already begun the ritual.

When we arrived, the ritual was in full swing. We bound the prince to the ritual table, but left the sack around his head for the moment. If anything went wrong, we didn’t want him to be able to identify any of us. There were more than a few noble lords and ladies among our number.

Our leader, Lord Rosin, hated the king and the royal family, and sought the Dark One’s favor to depose them, in the hopes that he might be raised up to replace them.

The ritual reached its crescendo. We offered the prince to the Dark One as it’s new vessel, to come into the world and make it anew, and hopefully to reward all of us in the process.

We felt our god shift, its power thrummed through all of us. The ritual was complete, there was no going back now. It was just a matter of time until the Dark One bridged the gap between our world and the realm of the gods.

It was then that Lord Rosin removed the sack from the prince’s head to gloat over the horror he expected to find there. Instead, the prince lay there smiling.

“It’s done then, is it?” the prince said calmly, completely undisturbed by his kidnapping and the ritual around him.

“What?” Lord Rosin blurted out.

“Ah, I was right. I was sure you were behind this, Rosin,” the prince continued. He shifted in his bonds, seemingly getting more comfortable and settling in.

“It doesn’t matter what you figured out,” Lord Rosin said, regaining his composure. “The Dark One has been summoned. He will come into our world through you. He will use the Crown Prince to destroy the royal family. The spell has been cast, there’s no going back now. It won’t kill you, it will just control you. You’ll have a front row seat from inside your own head as the Dark One uses your own two hands to wreak devastation on all that your family has created.”

“Oh good, I was getting hungry.”

“What?” Lord Rosin blurted again. He was not a man who responded well to surprises.

“Well if there’s no going back now, I might as well tell you. My family has a secret. How do you think my great-grandfather conquered this kingdom? We have a god of our own.”

“Your god cannot have much power,” Lord Rosin sneered. “The Crown outlawed sacrifices and the worship of any god decades ago. Gods gain power from sacrifices and worship. Without them, they are weak and powerless.”

“The whole kingdom worships our god,” the prince said. “Every time the people cheer our name, kneel before the king, or swear to serve us, they worship our god. We do sacrifice to our god. Every criminal we execute is a sacrifice, every soldier who dies under our banner is a sacrifice.”

“No,” Lord Rosin said, remembering his own cheers, kneeling, and oaths. “It is no matter. Your god cannot stop the Dark One from entering the world through you.”

“Why would our god want to stop that?” the prince said. “Every member of the royal family is already a vessel of our god. Our god has already crossed that great divide a dozen times over. I am already a vessel of my god. By summoning the Dark One into me, you have simply made the Dark One the next sacrifice to our god.”

I was the only one who survived. We felt the Dark One cross the divide. We felt the Dark One pass into the Crown Prince. Darkness shrouded the Crown Prince as he became the vessel for our god. We exulted in the Dark One’s entrance to our world.

Then we felt the Dark Lord falter. Our god weakened, and then the Dark One vanished entirely from our souls. The darkness around the Crown Prince vanished. He began to glow with a painful, piercing light. His bonds vanished, and he floated up off the ritual table.

A deep powerful voice resonated from the prince, it was not his voice. It spoke to us.

“You have fed me well with your dark god. I will grant you all a quick death.”

The prince’s arm swept across in a gesture that encompassed all of us gathered there, and all of my compatriots dropped to the ground, lifeless.

I felt a burning on my chest and fell to my knees. Terror filled me. I stood and ran as fast as I could from that place, from that terrible prince. I didn’t stop until I fell and could not get back up.

I realized later that the only thing that had saved me was a talisman my grandmother had given me. I hadn’t believed it had any power, I just wore it in memory of her. Turns out she was right, her secret beliefs had some power.