That Butler, New Face

It was strange... Instead of feeling as though she were plunging toward her doom, Chêne felt as if she were floating. She slowly opened her eyes and saw that instead of falling down a hole, she was surrounded by strange lights that swirled into a vortex. It reminded Chêne of those screen savers that tried to imitate the effect of flying through space at warp speed. It was a cool effect, definitely not something you would find in your average hole in the ground.

'That's the British for you, I guess,' Chêne thought to herself. 'Even their bottomless pits are fancy.'

Suddenly, Chêne felt another force pulling on her, and a light blinded her. She shut her eyes and winced in pain as she slammed in to something really hard. Not cool. Chêne groaned and tried to sit up, not quite managing it. She hoped she didn't have a concussion...

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{1886—The headquarters of a certain cult—England, just outside of London}

Ciel's POV

How long had he been here? Being tortured, beaten, reduced to nothing more than a filthy, debased animal. Ciel couldn't be sure. It happened again today. He was forced into the cage with the other children. There were fewer of them now, and they were forced to watch as even more of them were murdered for one of the cult's sick rituals. They claimed they could summon the devil to do their bidding by doing so. As far as Ciel was concerned, they were the devil himself, evil. Ciel watched with dull, hopeless eyes as the little girl on the pentagram breathed her last. As always, nothing happened. The cult members were clearly not pleased, and they bickered amongst themselves.

"I do not understand. The conditions for summoning a demon are perfect tonight!" a large man with a gray mustache said.

Though Ciel knew none of the members' names, and they always wore masks and cloaks to disguise themselves, he knew from watching them that this man was the leader.

"In fact," the leader continued, "the conditions for summoning a high-level demon will not be this good for another ten years once tonight ends."

The cult members began to whisper amongst themselves. These people—if you could call them that—were greedy and selfish. There was no way they were willing to wait that long.

"There is no other alternative then," the leader said; "we will just have to keep performing the ceremony until either a demon answers, or we run out of sacrificial lambs—Whichever comes first."

The leader stalked over to the cage Ciel was in while the others removed the little girl's corpse from the altar. Ciel shuffled as far back into the cage as he could. He was the only one left now, and as wretched as his current situation was, Ciel did not want to die, not like this. As the man reached for the cage door, something unbelievable happened. The pentagram was glowing. Everyone in the room froze as they watched a girl materialize from thin air, right in front of their eyes. Ciel was truly shocked.

'They couldn't have succeed could they?' Ciel wondered.

The girl looked human enough. Ciel couldn't see her eyes because they were closed, but her hair reminded him of chocolate. Her skin was very pale, but it had a golden tone to it despite the fact that it was as white as porcelain. She also had a few freckles across the bridge of her nose. They only really strange thing about her—other than how she  came through a pentagram—was her clothing. For one, the girl was wearing pants, unheard of for a lady at the time. They were made out of some rough, blue material. They hugged her curves tightly, like riding pants, but instead of tucking them into boots, the girl was wearing laced-up shoes that were made with a design that was completely foreign to Ciel. Her blouse was made out of very fine-knit material that was also very form fitting, and it was grey with extremely bright colored designs on it. She also sported a hooded jacket of the same material, only it was black, and she had a rather large bag slung across her shoulder. The girl's body hovered above the sacrificial altar for a moment before falling, and a sick cracking sound was heard as she slammed down onto the altar. The girl groaned and opened her eyes. They were a soft, pale green. She tried to get up, but uselessly fell back on the altar. She must have hit her head too hard, because she was now unconscious. The whole room was silent, the cult members too shocked at their success to speak. The silence was broken by someone's low, half-crazed laughter. It was the leader.