So, okay, you wouldn't think that this place would have any history. Culture, ethnicity, that certain spice of life quality, history -- no, well, frankly, you wouldn't think that this place had anything more than a severe problem with paying the electric bills. It's the Dark Kingdom, hence no lighting, hence I can't see my goddamned hand in front of my goddamned face -- what do you mean, that's your leg?

Well, fine. Be that way.

Did you want me to tell you this story? All right, then.

We might as well start with Beryl. Evil-minded bitch, and let me tell you somethin' else about her taste in clothes: purple definitely does not suit her, not the least fuckin' bit. Not that she'd listen to me. She's just jealous cuz I get all the fly guys and she couldn't even manage to make it with those four dudes she had working for her.

Yeah, I know you want to hear this story, so just settle down and listen, baby.

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Beryl was born in the fifteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Endymion VII, to the Grand Duke Ulrich and the Grand Duchess Sofia of Grand Fenwick. They were very proud of her, for a little while.

Let's just tick off all the important things about her, shall we? She had red hair, she had eyes the color of which reminded you of nothing so much as frozen cat piss, and I guess you might've called her pretty, except you would've been lying. She was striking, no doubt about that -- it helps, being seven feet tall when you're still only seventeen -- and she kept herself reasonably well-scrubbed, so pretty soon she had all the young studs of the lesser kingdoms of Earth panting after her.

Her mind was keen and sharp; she knew her geography and her arithmetic and her physics and her magiscience and her history; she knew her etiquette and her fencing and her cooking and her fancy sewing and her ballroom dancing. She was pretty well-educated, even for those times, and she repaid her loving parents by not even becoming a Socialist. You know how these high-bred women are, you get a little bit of eddification into 'em and they turn into pinko Socialists. It's, like, a law of nature. Beryl was, of course, a member of the Divine Right Party of Grand Fenwick; she believed that the gods had ordained a certain person to rule over everyone else, and everyone had jolly well better fall into line if they didn't want to get seriously fucked over by the gods.

This was, by the by, an extremely popular sentiment of the day, held by people from Queen Moment of Pluto to Queen Sagacity of Mercury. More on them in a second, OK?

Beryl was one of the most highly-born, highest-ranking women on Earth; her personal fortune was vast; her parents were doddering old sots due to die any day now and hand the grand ducal coronet over to her; and she was getting marriage proposals by the thousands.

Nice, eh? Don't see anything she has to be bitter about? Oh, just you wait: it's coming and it's a doozy.

She was in love with the by-God Crown Prince of Earth.

Jesus H. Christ on a sidecar, you say, isn't that just the tiniest bit dumb of her? After all, you say, the Crown Prince Mamoru, destined to succeed his father as Emperor Endymion VIII of Earth, was in love with the Princess of the Moon! Yeah, you say, as if he's going to toss away a sweet little package like Serenity for some chick whose only claim to fame is that she's got some rather lovely red hair and a hunk of dirt studded with castles way out in the middle of freakin' Lemuria.

I bet you did say all those things, too. Go on, admit it; I know exactly what the hell you were thinkin', cuz I thought it too the first time I heard this story from some deranged chick in a serafuku with long green hair and a big-ass white key of a staff. She kept giggling at me, too, which freaked the living shit out of me because, well, I kept getting the feeling that she wasn't lying, that this was the straight shit she was telling me and therefore the straight shit I'm feeding to you. Gives me the creeps, dude.

Well, so Beryl might not be one of the all-time heavies in the common sense department. But honest-to-God, kids, have you ever heard of a noblewoman who was? My brother said he'd rather marry a pig than a noblewoman, and a good thing, too.

Beryl asks for Crown Prince Mamoru's hand, but gets no soap; she then begs to be considered as one of his Honored Concubines, and still no concessions; she stands below his balcony one night and asks, yo, Mamo-chan, wherefore art thou and why the hell aren't you here in my arms?

And gets a bucket of cold water dumped on her head for her pains.

Golly, you say, that wasn't too nice of Crown Prince Mamoru Endymion.

I say, no shit, Sherlock; but the thing about Crown Prince Mamoru Endymion is, he's basically a scumbag even if he does have an absolutely spiffy set of ceremonial black armor. I mean, Christ on a sidecar, the dude throws roses, for God's sake. Roses. All right, ten points for romantic, but minus a billion for sheer stupidity -- how the hell, I ask you, are roses going to stop an enemy?

Dude. I'm getting sidetracked. Don't let me do that; we'll never get to Part Two at this rate.

So, OK, Beryl's ticked, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and all that good stuff. Beryl is, as I say, royally ticked off. Yeah. She stomps away, huffing and puffing and blowing the house down and all, and lo and behold she stomped right straight into a pair o' people kissing in the royal gardens, although when I say 'kissing' I mean something that's only a step below ripping each other's clothes off.

Lord General Kunzite and Lord General Zoisite had the presence of mind to stand up and bow civilly to the red-haired, sopping-wet noblewoman, and asked her politely if they might be of service.

'If they might be of service.' And lookit, Kunzite's got a cape on. Moonlight's shining down on his white hair. Tanned skin showing at his collar. 'Can he be of service?' Uh-huh. Ditch the sakura and wander over yonder with me, O Lord of the Silver Eyes.

Noooo, instead Beryl stops, snarls at him, and stomps over into the Palace proper. Ouch. Then she opens a door and stomps inside the Palace.

Kunzite and Zoisite think nothing of it, but return to their previous activity and soon proceed to discover exactly how cute Zoisite looks lying nekkid on a big flowerbed of night-blooming lilies.

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So, Beryl's pissed off. I sure as hell would be, too -- how much effort could it have been for Crown fuckin' Prince Mamoru to lean over the balcony, spout off some stuff about how he is doomed to love another but thanks for your time, Beryl-sama, why dontcha hook up with my Lord General Jadeite?

No, instead the sonuvabitch pours some cold water on her.

This never, ever works. Trust me, dudes. Send the girl a note, she'll react much much better.

All right, so Beryl goes into the Palace and starts running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Jesus, I do come up with some unpalatable animal imagery, don't I. Well, OK, so that's what she was doing, right, and suddenly, can you imagine, she walks smack dab into a dark room lit with black candles.

'Damn,' says Beryl to herself, says she, 'I must have gotten into the Sorceria Obscuria, which is some vault or crypt or somesuch nigromantic shit containing books of demonology.'

Demonology, my friends, is some serious shit. It's the thaumaturgical equivalent of an H-bomb. It's not nice. It's hazardous to your health. It screws over your karma somethin' fierce.

Plus it could kill you and your soul deader'n a Cannibal Joe's Sunday Nite Blue Plate, Blue-Collar Special.

Beryl, you say, don't be setch a damfool eejit as to muck around with demonology. Beryl, you say, don't freakin' go poking around in the Sorceria Obscuria when you know that all the legends say that the only people who ever manage to find their way in here never come out again -- at least, not as the same person as what came in.

Beryl, you says, your eyes all teary and misted over, Beryl, just stop and think 'bout what you're doing for a minute, if you'd be so kind.

And Beryl does the equivalent of turning to you and saying, "Fuck you, conscience or whatever unknown voice you might happen to be. The man I love has just rejected me in the coldest, most bastardly way possible, and I. Want. Him. To. SUFFER."

At which point you leap back in startlement, cuz the frozen-cat-piss saffron eyes aren't entirely sane, and the strikingly-sculpted face is twisted into something that looks like the pale underside of a dead log, all crawling and twitching and rotting away.

Miss Beryl, she of the long lovely red hair and dichotomously voluptuous and slender body, patters around the Sorceria Obscuria in her sopping wet gown, lookin' like the Bride of Death in those old monster movies on KPBS. She looks around the shelves for a while, takes long thoughtful stares at the open tomes chained to their pedestals, gives appraising glances to the glowing crystals on the tables scattered here and there.

This be the scariest damn place she's ever been, and even though she doesn't want to admit it she's terrified. There's a dark miasma, a heavy oppressive blackness, just waiting to pounce on her. She can feel it crawling over her skin, creeping up into her beautiful tendrils of blood-red hair, caressing her high cheekbones and whispering in her ears.

"No," she says, and turns around to find the door. She isn't feeling so damned inclined to say "Fuck you" to anyone right now; she's scareder than a shithouse rat and twice as crazy out of pure fear.

And the blackness stops her, holds her, freezes her in place.

It assumes the likeness of Crown Prince Mamoru Endymion, with the lovely Princess Serenity on his arm. They look calmly at Beryl. Pityingly at Beryl. Just the slightest touch smugly at Beryl.

She opens her mouth and wails, a high pure thin lonely sound that echoes off the vaulted ceilings, a sound that would've melted a heart of stone. All her life she's gotten whatever she wants, whenever she wants it, and now she has been denied the only thing her heart has ever truly desired. She wants to die.

No, fuck that. She wants Crown Prince Mamoru to die, and his damned moon-faced bitch Serenity to die as well.

The darkness smiles, manipulating the shapes of Endymion and Serenity to throw back their lovely heads and laugh until the Sorceria Obscuria trembles in the sound of their malicious glee. "Oh, Beryl," Endymion says, mock-sympathetically, "you could've had me. You could've. But instead you're weak and you're a mouse and I could never love a woman with no power. With no backbone. With no... alluring mystery to her." He shows off the smiling Serenity. "Like her: I could drown in her eyes, I could peer into her soul a hundred times and never even come close to breaking the surface of her thoughts. Beryl, Beryl, and she is so strong! You could never beat her. You could never win over her... You're weak."

Beryl screams again, shrieks, wails, howls to the high heavens.

Damn shame that the heavens can't hear her, not in this place. The Sorceria Obscuria, ladies and gentlemen, does not exist in the primary plane, not the least li'l bit of it: the Sorceria Obscuria, the original depository for the Necronomicon and the Abaddonomicon, the Book of Solomon and the Qabbalah, the Feng Da'Zhu and the Tome of the Shadow -- the Sorceria Obscuria is the library of Hell, and its proprieter's name begins with an "L" and ends with an "ucifer."

The darkness fades away, gradually reappears in her own shape. "Beryl," it says calmly, "Beryl, look at me."

She looks, and oh, how her heart aches at the sight, for this is her as she sometimes wishes she looks: tall, even taller than she is now; with all that beautiful thick silky red hair pouring down to her feet; a body with beautifully waspish waist and curves where they most damn definitely should be; a face of arrestingly triangular proportions and eyes that are no longer frozen-cat-piss, but are now the burning gold of sulfur and brimstone.

"Oh, Beryl," the darkness says, smiling with her own lips, reaching out her own hand. In passing, Beryl notices vaguely that there is a spike on the wrist. There are spikes on the bare shoulders. Beryl doesn't care, doesn't care -- she knows that this image of herself is strong, stronger than Endymion, stronger than his milk-pale whore of the Moon.

"What do you want?" Beryl asks herself.

And she answers as you just know that she will: "I want Endymion. If I can't have Endymion, I want his pain and his suffering and his broken spirit forever. I want pain and desolation for everyone."

Well, now, didn't you just see that one coming from a country mile away? Misery loves company, and in the Sorceria Obscuria everyone's miserable.

"I know," says the dark Beryl sympathetically. On her brow there appears a diadem of dark green and black stones; swinging pendulously from her earlobes are heavy daggers of the same gems. "Here, Beryl. We want to be strong. We want it so badly we can taste it, can't we?"

She can, she can indeed. And you know what frustrated desire tastes like: like ashes and like tears and like the bitterly ferric tang of blood. She can taste it and she can chew it and finally she swallows it, internalizes it, puts it away so deep that it will eat at her forever, like a canker, like a cancer that can't ever be dismissed.

The dark Beryl smiles tenderly, joyfully. In her hands something glimmers and solidifies, the darkness coalescing into a tall staff, curiously carved, adorned at the top with a perfect sphere of polished quartz. She holds it out to the still-frozen, still-sopping-wet Beryl, offers it gravely.

"Take and wield," says the dark Beryl gently. "Take and wield, in My Name. This is My staff, given unto you so that you may serve Me and gain the kingdom for yourself."

Beryl, you say, your eyes widening in terror, don't do this. Beryl, you say, never ever accept gifts from strangers, especially not this strange pulsating darkness -- can't you see the void behind her eyes?

Beryl, you say, this is a damfool thing to do, and you fuckin' well know it, get your ass back out of here immejitly and forget about all of this.

And again Beryl gives you a slow cold hateful stare, tells you exactly where you can shove your goddamned advice about what to do with her life and her love and her soul.

She takes the staff, hefts it thoughtfully. There is a pain in her right wrist, in both her shoulders; she feels an unaccustomed weight on her neck -- so much gloriously red hair popping spontaneously into existence is startingly heavy on the head.

Beryl glances around the dark library, notices that there's a portal beckoning her, opening for her, welcoming for her.

She looks at you, smiles coldly, says lightly, "The price isn't that hard," and only scoffs when you point out that she's only had the damned gift for a few seconds, she can expect the pay the price for the rest of her eternally damned life.

Beryl steps through the portal.

The ArchDemon has her soul in its keeping.

And that was how Beryl made a powerful friend out of a fiend, and influenced a powerful personage.