Book 2 of the Eternal series

Chapter 12

“Well, uncle Gale, you have certainly made a name for yourself now, haven’t you?” asked Bestol.

Gale, Liam, and Chantelle were in the throne room, and Bestol and Mertheis appeared before them. Gale looked at Bestol, and he swallowed nervously.

“When your father died, I became the next in line for the throne,” explained Gale, and Bestol looked at him.

“My father sent me away to live with that homicidal creature that you call my mother, but my father was royalty, and so am I,” sneered Bestol, and Liam nodded to his nephew.

“Of course, you are. No one has the right to deny you your birthright. Honestly, son, we thought you were dead,” Liam said.

Bestol looked at him as he curled his lip in disgust.

“You never once tried to come to find me. Not even my own father,” snarled the blue-haired demon, and Gale and Liam hung their heads sorrowfully.

“Well, that is all in the past. Besides, what matters is that I am here now,” he said with a smirk, and Gale and Liam looked at their long-lost nephew.

“What is it that you want?” Chantelle asked as she looked out of the window.

Sadly, she looked at her son’s statue out in the middle of the courtyard, and she contained a threatening sob. Cleverly, Bestol looked at Mertheis, and Merthies’s smiled at him as he nodded.

Bestol walked over to his uncle Gale, and he held his gaze.

“What I want is a way to the Spirit Realm, preferable where Merthies’s mother is,” he said, and Gale nervously swallowed as he began to sweat.

“Why go to the Spirit Realm when we can summon your mother here?” asked Merthies’s, and Mertheis looked at him.

“You can do that?” he asked in surprise, and Liam nodded.

Bestol gave Gale one last look before he took a step back. Intrigued, he looked at Mertheis, and then he laughed.

“That’s even a better idea,” he said, and Bestol nodded.

“Okay, then we will summon her. Let’s get to it, shall we?” he asked as he clapped his hands together and rubbed them.

At that moment, Chantelle looked at the two strange-looking men, and she scoffed. Bestol and Mertheis looked at her as she walked over to them, and she eyed them suspiciously.

“You must have failed history class, son because everyone knows that the gods can only be summoned at dawn,” she snapped and left the room.

Bestol and Mertheis exchanged looks, and then Mertheis shrugged his shoulders.

“I’m afraid that she is right. We cannot do anything until dawn,” said Gale, and Bestol looked at him.

“Then your kingdom shall sleep until dawn,” said Mertheis and snapped his fingers.

The villages began to yawn deeply in their homes, and they started falling asleep in the very spot they were standing or sitting in. If they were standing, they fell on the floor. The villagers fell asleep on their couches, chairs, and beds, and even Chelsea and the boys fell under the sleeping spell.

Soon, every Slayer and Selvempt in the kingdom had fallen asleep except Gale, Liam, and Chantelle. Oddly, Gale and Liam looked at Bestol, but he stared at his brother.

“What did you do?” Bestol asked, and Mertheis laughed.

“It’s just a sleeping spell. Relax, they will all wake up in the morning,” he said, frankly, and Bestol sighed.

He hated it when Mertheis involved himself in his plans. He would always add one of his tricks into Bestol’s plans, which was starting to annoy him.

“Well, there you go. That is what he did,” said Bestol uneasily, and Gale gave them both a disapproving look.

“You have already captured the four guardians. You didn’t have to do that,” lectured Gale, and Mertheis laughed at him.

“Are you really lecturing me, old man?”

Gale and Liam looked at him, and Mertheis sneered at them.

“Did you forget who my father is?” he asked, and Gale and Liam looked him over.

Suddenly, Gale realized that Mertheis was the prince of the Underworld, and he swallowed nervously.

“Yeah, now you remember,” sneered Mertheis as he appeared right in front of Gale’s face.

“You will never see your precious guardians again. They are all about to die,” he sneered as he held Gale’s gaze, and Liam inhaled sharply.

At that moment, Bestol snarled at Mertheis, and Mertheis, Gale, and Liam looked at Bestol in question.

“What did you do?” he snarled at Mertheis.

“What? You weren’t going to dispose of them properly, so I helped push things along,” he said, and Bestol growled.

“If they die, then they can come back! That was the only way they can come back, you i***t. I told you to leave those statues alone.”

“Well, that might be a problem. I will be right back,” said Mertheis, and he disappeared with a wave of his arm.

Mertheis appeared before the statues, and he quickly waved his arms. Unfortunately, his counterspell had failed, and he looked at the statues oddly. He tried his counterspell again, and it still didn’t work. The only thing that could repel his spells was the elemental powers, which could only mean one thing. That one of them had connected with the four elements. Angrily, he scowled as he looked at the four statues.

For now, he had decided to keep this information to himself. If the guardians came back, he would dispose of them as soon as they appeared. He disappeared with a wave of his hand, and then he reappeared in the throne room.

“There, all fixed,” he said as he brushed his hands off, and Bestol sneered at him.

“You had better hope so,” he snarled, and Mertheis put his hands up defensively.

“Not to worry, my dear, brother.”

Gale and Liam looked at each other, and then they looked at Bestol and Mertheis.

“Well, since you have all day and night long to wait. Maybe you will feel more comfortable in the sitting room,” suggested Liam, and Bestol looked at him.

“Why?” he asked.

“Unless you prefer to stand all day and all night long,” said Gale, and Mertheis snickered.

“Relax, bro, we have got a lot more time to kill than expected,” he said as he clapped Bestol on the back, and Bestol looked at Liam.

“You had better not be up to any tricks. I will end you where you stand, old man,” he said, and Liam put his hands up defensively.

“No tricks. Besides, you put everyone to sleep, so we have no back-up at the moment,” said Gale, and Bestol nodded.

Eventually, Bestol and Mertheis were led to the sitting room, and Gale and Liam headed back to the throne room. They were both losing help that the guardians would ever return home.

Chantelle went into her bedroom and closed the door behind her. She cried as she held onto one of Roman’s t-shirts. After crying, Roman’s mother went to her cabinet and pulled out her prayer bundle. She laid the tapestry on the floor, and she put the four elemental crystals on each corner of the fabric. The tapestry had been in her family for years, and once Maya was destroyed, she had retrieved the prayer bundle from her old home.

Her great-great-grandmother had sewn the symbols for the four elements and the gods onto the thick fabric. Carefully, she knelt onto the tapestry and put Roman’s shirt on the top. Slowly, she bowed her head, and she began to pray to the gods. Chantelle whispered everything that was going on, and she prayed that they would see to it that Roman would make it back home safely.

The moon god heard Chantelle’s prayers, and he swiftly passed into the sun goddess’s realm. Unknowingly, Merthies’s mother had been promoted as the Goddess of the Sun. Mertheis always thought his mother was the Goddess of Fire.

“Sebastian, what do I owe this honor?” asked the sun goddess, as she smiled shyly.

The moon god phased into his human form, and he ran to her.

“Hellena, I wish for this to be a social call, but I am afraid it isn’t,” he said as he searched her eyes, and she looked at him with concern.

“What’s wrong?” she asked seriously, and he sighed.

“I am afraid that our worst fears have come to life,” he said, and she searched his eyes.

“What fears?” she asked.

“I have received word that your son is alive, and he has taken over Halondelle,” said Sebastian, and Hellena looked at him in disbelief.

“No, that can’t be right. He died with his father,” she said, and Sebastian shook his head.

“I am sorry, Hellena. There will be a summons for you at dawn.”

“Why haven’t the Elemental Guardians stepped in and taken care of him? They have the power to stop him,” she said, and he grabbed her shoulders.

“He has trapped them. They are statues in the middle of the kingdom,” he said

Hellena’s hand flew to her mouth.

“Oh, no. That’s horrible. What are we going to do?” she asked, and Sebastian held her gaze.

“Maybe you can talk to him, make him let them go. He just wants his mother. That’s all,” he said, and she only nodded.

Hellena feared that it wasn’t just his mother that he was after. Just to be on the safe side, she and Sebastian ground herbs and spent the day doing protection spells.