Book 2 of the Eternal series

Chapter 23

“Welcome home, Mertheis,” said Bestol, and Mertheis made a disgusted face at his brother.

“I know we have lived here for all of our lives, but this place really is disgusting. Especially since we have breathed the sweet air of the other realms,” he said, and Bestol snickered.

“Oh, come on, Merth. It isn’t that bad,” laughed Bestol, and Mertheis sneered at him.

Mertheis hated the Underworld Realm. It was a hot and sticky place which made for very uncomfortable living conditions. The skies were orange and red with a hot gray haze, and the sun never set at all. The temperature stayed the same no matter what. There was nothing to distinguish from day or night or season to season. The realm was nothing but a desert wasteland with scattered dead trees and a few broken-down mansions looming in the distance.

“If you say so,” said Mertheis, looking at his brother with a raised eyebrow.

Bestol laughed, and then they made their way to a castle-sized mansion in the distance that they had both grown up in.

“Mom, we’re home,” called Bestol as he and Mertheis walked into the broken and rundown place.

The ceiling was gone, and part of the walls was missing, but this was home.

“Bestol, Mertheis. Welcome home. How did everything go with the Goddess of Fire?” asked a tall, slender woman with long, dark hair and brown eyes shaped like almonds.

Heavily, Mertheis sighed as he looked at her, and she looked at him with care.

“Not so well, aunt K,” he said sadly, and the woman scoffed.

Bestol’s mother’s name was Katalina, and she was the fire demon that had fallen in love with Ashta’s father. She was not a very kind creature, especially to her son. She would torture him, and make him see the errors of his ways, no matter if they were big or small. She had once locked him in the cellar with a Shax-demon and left him down there for what seemed like an eternity.

Shax-demons were nasty creatures that lived on the outskirts of the Underworld Realm, and they fed off the poor helpless demons that were dying or had gotten trapped out there. Bestol had nightmares for weeks after she had finally let him out, and he hated her for it, but she told him the things she did were only out of love.

Katalina looked at Mertheis with pity, and then she turned to her son.

“How was the meeting with your sister?” she asked, intrigued, and Bestol snickered at her.

“I never got the chance to meet her, and I will probably never will,” he said cleverly, and she looked at him with a strange look on her face.

“Why do you say that?” she asked, and Bestol and Mertheis looked at each other as they chuckled.

“Because we sent the guardians to the Simulation Realm,” chuckled Mertheis, and Katalina looked at them with wide eyes.

“You what?”

“Mother, it is no big deal. Two of them might have found their way out, but the other two are stuck in there for eternity, and one of them happens to be my sister. We destroyed their only way out, and it is not my fault that my stupid sister wasn’t one of the ones that got out,” explained Bestol, and Mertheis nodded.

Unnerving, Katalina looked at the two guys, and she scoffed. Confused, Bestol looked at his mother, and she walked over to him.

“You poor thing, haven’t you learned anything that I have worked so hard to teach you?” she asked as she put her palm to her son’s face, and Mertheis winced as he looked away.

Suddenly, Bestol began to scream in pain as his mother burned his face with her power and looked him over.

“You might have bought some time for yourselves, but your sister is one of the four Elemental Guardians. You might have separated them for now, but as in the past, the guardians always find their way back to each other,” she sneered, and then she took her hand away from his face.

Relieved, Bestol sighed as the pain stopped, and he rubbed his face and looked at his mother angrily.

“If my sister and the other guardians reunite, how do we stop them?” he sneered, and his mother looked at him cleverly.

“Well, right now, your sister is against us. I am going to whip up something special that will make your sister come to our side and join us,” she said, and then she walked over to her table that was on the other side of the room.

“Like what?” asked Mertheis.

She looked at him as she smiled.

“Oh, it’s a special potion to make a dear sister love her brother unconditionally. After you drink this, the first time she sees you, she will love you so much that she will do anything to be with her brother,” explained Catalina, and Bestol and Mertheis chuckled.

“Just remember, son, she might be a centennial being, but you are not. I would simply die if anything were to happen to you,” she said, seriously, as she looked at her son, and he snickered.

“If your little potion works as it should, then we should have no problem and nothing to worry about.”

His mother only nodded as she continued to work on her potion.

“So, how do you suppose we get down there?” asked Riah, and Ray looked at her thoughtfully.

Suddenly, he remembered his spirit guardian giving him the ability to move through the earth, and he grinned at her.

“What?” she asked.

“Be right back,” he said, and then he disappeared into the ground.

Shocked, Ashta, Roman, and Ray looked at the spot where Ray had disappeared, and Riah looked up at Ashta and Roman as she swallowed hard.

“Where did he go?” she asked with worry in her eyes, and they shrugged their shoulders.

Quickly, Ray moved through the rock and dirt of the earth as he burrowed deeper and deeper. The different-sized rocks seemed smooth against his skin as he burrowed through the earthy substance.

Suddenly, the earth had disappeared from around him, and weightlessly, he fell weightlessly onto the hard, rock-solid ground. Ray grunted loudly as he fell on his stomach, and then he pushed himself to his feet as he shook his head.

“That hurt,” he said aloud as he brushed himself off and looked around.

Surprisingly, Ray found himself in a stone tunnel, which was very dark. A few moments later, his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and then they started to glow with a faint bright green color. Sharply, he inhaled a breath as he realized that he had night-vision, and he chuckled to himself.

“This is pretty cool,” he said softly, and then he looked around the tunnel.

There was only one way to pass through the mysterious tunnel, and cautiously, he walked through the tunnel with his guard up. He wasn’t sure what kind of creatures could have been living down there, and he wasn’t going to take any chances of being caught off guard. After a few moments, Ray walked out into an enormous room with an enormous door on the other side.

Carefully, he walked through the room and over to the strange-looking door. The door looked like it was made out of solid metal, and there were strange symbols engraved on it. For a moment, he studied the door and the strange symbols. They were something that he had never seen before, and he couldn’t begin even to describe them if anyone were to ask about them.

He tried to push on the door with all of his strength, but the door didn’t budge. After trying a few times, he sighed heavily, and then he turned away from the large door as he thought for a moment. Curiously, he looked around the room, and he saw two mechanisms at the top of the door.

The mechanisms were enormous-sized, rectangular platforms made out of rock, and large, round cylinders came down from the platform to the top of the door. Then Ray looked around the room, and he noticed two levers above the tunnel entrance where he had just come. Cautiously, he took a step backward, and he didn’t realize that he had stepped on a switch connected to a trap to stop intruders from getting into the archive room.

Nervously, Ray looked down and picked his foot up. At that moment, he heard growling and snarling, and he frantically looked around. He noticed two sets of glowing golden eyes staring at him as the creatures connected to the eyes stepped out of the darkness. These creatures looked like they were once part of the feline species. They looked like burnt tigers.

They were solid black with golden vein-like streaks down their bodies, legs, and tail. The feline-like creatures bared their teeth at Ray as his eyebrows shot down in determination, and he took a fighting stance. One of the creatures snarled at him and lunged itself at Ray with its sharp-clawed paws spread. Quickly, Ray grabbed the first creature by the mid-section as it reached him, and he picked up the monster above his head.

Aggressively, he slammed its body on the ground behind him, and he faced the creature. The cat-like beast shook its head as it raised on all four paws, and it snarled at Ray angrily. Suddenly, the other creature jumped onto Ray’s back and tried to sink its claws into his flesh, but the armored skin repelled the sharp nails. Ray growled as he reached up and grabbed the creature by its skin, and he threw the beast at the other one.

The beast crashed into its partner, and they both snared and whimpered. Ray’s hammer appeared at that moment, and the beasts snarled at him as they faced him. Amused, Ray smirked at them as he raised the hammer above his head just as the two beasts started bolting toward him. Angrily, Ray yelled as he brought the hammer down and slammed it on the ground.

Amazingly, a bright green flash exploded from the impact, and the two creatures whimpered as they shrunk down to kittens. The hammer disappeared, and Ray studied the little cute things. Surprised, Ray stared down at the two black kittens, and they blinked their golden eyes at him. They meowed a soft meow at him, then rubbed their bodies against his legs.

“You’re welcome, I guess,” he said, and one of the kittens looked up at him and bowed its head.

After that, the kittens ran off, and then the room began shaking violently. Ray fell to his knees, holding onto a nearby boulder as he frantically thought that this was it. He was going to die. Shockingly, he watched as the entrance to the tunnel collapsed, and then the room fell silent and still.

Nervously, Ray looked around as he swallowed hard and looked around. Heavily, he sighed as he thought that the way in or out had been sealed off.