were known somewhat as the problem solvers of the supernatural world. Well, when we were taken seriously enough for those that believed themselves above us to listen. Those pointy eared fopdoodles, the bloody Elves, were just so damn superior to all others in the Elemental Realms, I was surprised they could wipe their own asses without tipping over due to their inflated ego heads!
Needless to say, I didn’t much care for those magical blood sacks.
“Come on then, Percival, time to meet your new daddy,” I said as I picked up my bag, one that contained a single rat that I had quickly declared as my favourite, hence why he travelled by my side. Unlike the others who travelled in my trunk that was filled with cages. I had allowed them to run around the cabin as much as possible, knowing that they would listen to me as my other skills as an Imp were being able to control the nature of some creatures. But as for Percival, well he was sticking with me.
I exited my quarters, lugging the heavy trunk behind me and struggled my way across the starboard side, saying things like,
‘Out of my way, you scurvy dog, and shipper me timbers… which I think was said wrong, but then again, I'd been corrected quite a few times during this journey, so make of that what you will.
I crossed the plank over to the docks in Southampton, knowing I was then to get a carriage to London, despite it hardly being the season for it. Every time I found myself in the city, its population had grown having repopulated itself after the disastrous depletion in numbers, thanks to the horrific Black Death. A disease so deadly that when it hit in the 14th century it wiped out over half of the population, killing millions. Of course, no one knew what started the outbreak, only that it had swept across the world like a demonic force and annihilated human life in its path. To this day, no one really knew the exact numbers, we only remembered the piles of bodies that had to be buried and the smell of death that clung to the air thick enough to turn even a demon’s stomach. Most immortals were quite impervious to those that were mortally inflicted as we didn't tend to mix.
But I had been affected.
Another lesson learned, and one that fractured my heart. Because never would I engage in mortal life that way again. No longer would I pretend to be one of them, even if the friendships I had made I could class as the greatest my life had known so far. But when the disease took them from me, no matter what I tried to do to help, I was helpless to stop it. That was when I learned why immortals didn’t mix too deeply with those fated to die by the Gods.
But alas, that hadn’t been the last time I had cried over the loss of mortal life, for the sights I had witnessed during such a time had made me long for the type of solitude only found in the untouched and unspoiled parts of the world. So, I had escaped it all after the day I was forced to watch my friends burn inside their infected homes, begging for a God I knew wouldn’t save them.
It had made me question my life, and the answer was one only ever found for an Imp like me in nature. So, I had run from it all, escaping the last years of the Black Death until the world had been cleansed once again. That was when Pan had found me, fifty years later, playing his pipe and luring me from my cave, a place I had made my home. He had lured me from my grief and back into the world of mortals once more, with promises that he would protect me.
I had to confess, that for a while it had been good. The first hundred years or so we’d had fun and travelled all over Europe. But then, as each year passed, I felt my own soul darken, and that demonic side of me had awakened to a point of no return. Which meant that what I saw in the mirror these days wasn’t the same Imp that had fled heartbreak that day.
Pan was the darkness that had been slowly blinding me.
I was sure of it.
As for Pan of the now, he had arranged a coach for me