The Right Hand of the dead Immortal King walks around the shrine, The Master of Blades and The Blood Red Woman stand at the edge of the shrine, not ready to confront their own sins.
Right Hand walks around the shrine, picking up items before setting them back down. The metal of his prosthetic arm groans with each movement. He’s been trapped for twenty-five years, unable to repair himself.
“Can’t you hear the voices, Right Hand? People are distressed. This isn’t the time for your self reflection.” Red Woman talks plainly. She does not enter the shrine. She knows the Right Hand is bound inside, and would win any confrontation. “You do nothing but mope. It’s all you’ve done since your imprisonment.”
Blades gestures down the mountain, panicking. “Nobody thought this was possible! Our king is gone, dead! He had already ruled for hundreds of thousands of years when any of us came down into this hellhole, and now he’s dead!? How did this happen!?”
Red Woman stands on the boundary of the shrine. The Right Hand cannot touch her until she actually enters the shrine, and they all know it. Blades and the Red Woman wouldn’t even be here if they didn’t know that. “Answer us, Right Hand! We know you know something! You were his favorite! You brought him hundreds of thousands of souls over the many centuries you’ve served him.”
The Right Hand paces in front of the entry way in front of the duo, a predator sizing up his prey. “And yet I’m still here, trapped. While the lot of you stay out there, free. Well, only as free as a lot of demons can be. How long until you all start to fight amongst yourself to become the new king, hmm? It’s already been a month since he was destroyed. How much longer until we stop pretending we’re still humans? How long until they all stop pretending that they’re still in that society modern humans hold so dear?”
Red Woman glares down at the Right Hand. “You act all high and mighty, as if being the oldest of us Deal Makers makes you great, It just means you were the original fool.”
The Right Hand laughs at the Red Woman. “Does that make you the second fool!?” He turns to Blades. “And you the third!? Nothing but a pair of followers, aren’t you two!?” He cackles at the pair. “In life and death you remain nothing but a pair of followers!”
The Red Woman grabs the Right Hand by his throat and yanks him forward, slamming him into the barrier keeping him trapped. “You’re nothing but a traitorous rat! You’ve betrayed everyone who loved you before He made you this monstrous form of perfection. And for what!? Love!?”
Blades reaches forward, attempting to soothe. “He’s just a man! Isn’t it a human desire to love? To feel the warmth of another? We can’t blame him for craving affection after so long-”
Red Woman shouts in outrage. “He abandoned us! Again!”
The Right Hand snorts. “You speak like I chose to become a demon in the first place. It was that or a slow agonizing death. And the two of you are grown now. You can protect the other two. Or am I expected to simply abandon the thought of ever doing something to please myself because it means the two of you must bear a fraction of the responsibility I carried for a decade and a half? I didn’t realize that by saving a bunch of half-dead children from the snow, I was tossing out the possibility of ever living a life of my own.”