[Black Butler] (PG-13)
Oct. 12th, 2012 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtxref_ficAuthor's Note: Written for any,any, selling one's soul to the devil. Set pre-canon. Warning for mild violence and occult torture of a minor
Ciel had been forbidden to go into his father's study if his father was not there. If the door was locked, he was not to tamper with the latch. Of course, a rule like that was catnip to a ten year old boy's curiosity, and one day, while his father was out for the day and his mother was resting, Ciel picked the lock on the door.
The room seemed little different than usual, but he noticed that a curtain had been drawn back, revealing a bookcase that he had not seen before. And being the sort of boy who liked books for the stories that they contained, he clambered onto a chair to read the titles.
He did not recognize the titles, much less the books themselves: The Key of Solomon; did that have to do with King Solomon in the Bible stories that Mother read to him on Sundays? Le Petit Albert: who was Little Albert, and why did he have such a large book? Histoire admirable de la possession d'une penitente: who was the possessed penitent, and why was their history admirable.
He heard a footstep behind him and a shadow fell over him. Mister Tanaka, the old servant who had come with his father when he had returned from a long trip to Japan, stood behind him, gently helping him off the chair. "Your father would rather you had found those at another time," he said, gently, but firmly.
"But I want to see what's in those books now," Ciel replied.
Tanaka guided him to the door. "You will someday, Master Ciel: it is a part of your family's heritage, but one you shall inherit only when you are wise enough to handle it."
Even still, Ciel took to slipping out of his room at night, to pore over the books by the light of a dark lantern he'd found in an attic, careful to close its shutter if he heard someone moving about. Half of what the books contained went far beyond what Ciel knew about demons and monsters and magic, and his smattering of Latin taught him by his tutor did not always help him to understand the words in the ones written in Latin, but some of the tales enthralled him as only a boy can be enthralled over the peculiar.
But the day came when a fire consumed the house, taking the library with it, perhaps the same folk who had captured Ciel, locking him a cage, subjecting him to cold, to hunger, to vile treatment, all calculated to drive him to madness, it would seem. Every few nights, from a distant chamber he would hear voices chanting in Latin or strange tongues.
Then came the day when they carried him into their ceremonial chamber, a large, high-ceiling room, the roof supported by carven columns. They laid him bound hand and foot upon a marble altar in the midst of an inverse star painted on the floor. Voices echoing off the walls called upon a name which he dimly remembered from the books he'd read in his father's study.
The air grew hot and heavy. A hooded priest stood over him, a knife raised, poised to plunge into his chest.
And then he saw it, the strange form of a winged being, hovering behind the priest's shoulder, gazing at him in fascination and hunger, with a face that reminded him of his father's. That at least made it easier to accept what the demon offered: the chance to escape and avenge his capture, at the price of his soul. Ciel accepted that fate: better to bind a demon and be destroyed at a later time, than to be bound by humans and destroyed now.
"Where shall I place the seal that shall bind us?" the demon asked.
"Anywhere, so long as it grants me a power greater than anyone else," he said. Then thinking of a name he recalled from his father's books, he added, "Sebastian Michaelis."
The demon narrowed its red eyes. "You're a greedy young man: for that, I shall place it in your right eye," he said, and reached down, sending a searing pain burning through Ciel's being....
Ciel had been forbidden to go into his father's study if his father was not there. If the door was locked, he was not to tamper with the latch. Of course, a rule like that was catnip to a ten year old boy's curiosity, and one day, while his father was out for the day and his mother was resting, Ciel picked the lock on the door.
The room seemed little different than usual, but he noticed that a curtain had been drawn back, revealing a bookcase that he had not seen before. And being the sort of boy who liked books for the stories that they contained, he clambered onto a chair to read the titles.
He did not recognize the titles, much less the books themselves: The Key of Solomon; did that have to do with King Solomon in the Bible stories that Mother read to him on Sundays? Le Petit Albert: who was Little Albert, and why did he have such a large book? Histoire admirable de la possession d'une penitente: who was the possessed penitent, and why was their history admirable.
He heard a footstep behind him and a shadow fell over him. Mister Tanaka, the old servant who had come with his father when he had returned from a long trip to Japan, stood behind him, gently helping him off the chair. "Your father would rather you had found those at another time," he said, gently, but firmly.
"But I want to see what's in those books now," Ciel replied.
Tanaka guided him to the door. "You will someday, Master Ciel: it is a part of your family's heritage, but one you shall inherit only when you are wise enough to handle it."
Even still, Ciel took to slipping out of his room at night, to pore over the books by the light of a dark lantern he'd found in an attic, careful to close its shutter if he heard someone moving about. Half of what the books contained went far beyond what Ciel knew about demons and monsters and magic, and his smattering of Latin taught him by his tutor did not always help him to understand the words in the ones written in Latin, but some of the tales enthralled him as only a boy can be enthralled over the peculiar.
But the day came when a fire consumed the house, taking the library with it, perhaps the same folk who had captured Ciel, locking him a cage, subjecting him to cold, to hunger, to vile treatment, all calculated to drive him to madness, it would seem. Every few nights, from a distant chamber he would hear voices chanting in Latin or strange tongues.
Then came the day when they carried him into their ceremonial chamber, a large, high-ceiling room, the roof supported by carven columns. They laid him bound hand and foot upon a marble altar in the midst of an inverse star painted on the floor. Voices echoing off the walls called upon a name which he dimly remembered from the books he'd read in his father's study.
The air grew hot and heavy. A hooded priest stood over him, a knife raised, poised to plunge into his chest.
And then he saw it, the strange form of a winged being, hovering behind the priest's shoulder, gazing at him in fascination and hunger, with a face that reminded him of his father's. That at least made it easier to accept what the demon offered: the chance to escape and avenge his capture, at the price of his soul. Ciel accepted that fate: better to bind a demon and be destroyed at a later time, than to be bound by humans and destroyed now.
"Where shall I place the seal that shall bind us?" the demon asked.
"Anywhere, so long as it grants me a power greater than anyone else," he said. Then thinking of a name he recalled from his father's books, he added, "Sebastian Michaelis."
The demon narrowed its red eyes. "You're a greedy young man: for that, I shall place it in your right eye," he said, and reached down, sending a searing pain burning through Ciel's being....
