Book 2 of the Eternal series

Chapter 10

Halondelle

Suddenly, the sky above the celebration turned dark and blue lightning shot down into the crowd. Selvempts and Slayers ran as they screamed for their lives and Gale and Liam looked up at the sky. Oddly, the clouds opened up right above them, and they watched in terror as four blue lightning bolts hit the four Elemental Guardians and turned them to stone.

Chantelle screamed in horror as Chelsea, and her four boys ran to her. Suddenly, a wide, blue bolt of lightning struck in front of Gale, Liam, Chantelle, Chelsea, and the four boys, and they all stared in terror. A tall, muscular man with flaming blue hair and icy blue eyes looked at them as he smirked.

“Bestol!” exclaimed Liam angrily, and the blue-haired man looked at him amused.

“In the flesh,” snarled the man, and then he looked at Gale.

“It’s been a long time, uncle Gale.”

Nervously, Gale swallowed hard, and Chantelle looked at the king in question as Liam hung his head. Heavily, Gale sighed, and he looked at Chantelle and the others.

“This is Jerico’s firstborn. We thought you were dead,” said Gale, and Chantelle and Chelsea just stared at him.

“Jerico had a son?” Chantelle asked, and Gale and Liam nodded.

Curiously, Liam looked at his long-lost nephew.

“How are you in this form?” he asked, and Bestol smirked at him.

Liam talked about how he looked more like a demon than a Slayer. Of course, his mother was a fire demon. Then it dawned on him. Bestol looked at his hand, and then he looked back up at his uncles.

“Because my mother made me this way,” he said, and Gale and Liam looked at each other in surprise.

Chantelle and Chelsea looked at Gale and Liam in confusion, and then Gale sighed heavily as Liam nodded to him.

“Bestol’s mother is one of the most powerful fire demons. She is the queen of the fire labyrinth. When she came to our realm, she had disguised herself as a Slayer when she met Jerico. He knew what she was, but he couldn’t help falling in love with the girl,” he explained.

“Why didn’t you share this information? I mean, at least with Ashta?” asked Chelsea, and Gale shook his head.

“Oh, come on. It’s not that bad,” laughed Bestol, and Gale and Liam looked at their nephew.

Angrily, Chantelle looked at the blue-haired man, and she growled a low growl.

“Not so bad? Look what you did to your sister and my son,” she snarled as Chelsea held her shoulders and Bestol looked at her.

“Not to worry, my dear. They are perfectly fine. I just sent them to a different dimension. Besides, the Elemental Guardians should be statues and not living souls,” he snapped, and Chantelle sneered at him.

“You bring my son back, right now!” she demanded, and the blue-haired man laughed at her.

“I can’t do that. They have to find their own way out if they can,” he sneered, and then he looked at Gale and Liam.

“Let’s see how well you do with your precious guardians, now,” he sneered at his uncles.

Gale and Liam looked at each other. How did he get out of the Underworld if he was a demon? They thought for a moment, and they couldn’t come up with a reason he might have wanted to come here. Only the gods could grant passage from the Underworld realm, and they both doubted that they would allow this demon to pass through a portal.

“How did you even get out of the Underworld?” Liam asked.

“Well, your precious guardians opened the portal for me when they destroyed Maya. Of course, they didn’t know that they did,” stated Bestol, and Liam looked at him oddly.

“A portal? Just for you?” he asked, and Bestol looked at his uncle cleverly.

“No. I brought some friends with me,” he said, and then he raised his arms into the air.

At that moment, many blue lightning bolts shot from the sky, and demons began to appear around the courtyard. The demons were humanoid-looking creatures that were solid black with no eyes. The sockets in their skulls where their eyes should have been, were gone, and their skin was slick and shiny. Bestol looked around at his demon army, and he gave them a firm look.

“Take these peasants to their homes and make sure that no one leaves once they are inside,” he ordered, and the demons bowed their heads to him.

The shiny humanoid creatures began herding the villagers down the streets and back to their homes. After the courtyard was cleared of all of the villagers, Chantelle looked at the statue of her son sadly. She hoped and prayed that he would soon break free from his stone prison. She hoped they would break free from their sculptures and destroy Bestol like they did Maya.

Seemingly, Bestol looked at the four statues in the middle of the square, and then he looked back at Chantelle as he snickered. The man closed his eyes, and he began speaking in a different language that none of them had ever heard before.

Gale, Liam, Chantelle, Chelsea, and her four boys all stared in horror as the statues started glowing a greenish glow, and then the light faded away. Bestol opened his eyes, and then he grinned evilly at Chantelle.

“Don’t worry, mother of the Guardian of Air. I made it so they could have a way out, but it is the only way they can come back,” he said, and Chantelle looked at the strange man with a seething look on her face.

“And how would that be?” Gale asked as he put his arm around Chantelle’s shoulders.

Bestol looked at them, and then he chuckled to himself.

“First, the four of them have to find each other. I have wiped their memories, so they don’t even know who they are, and I have split them up. They don’t even know they are surrounded by Nox-demons, which were especially designed after all of you and the ones they have lost. Then, the only way to get out is that they have to die,” explained Bestol nonchalantly, and Chelsea and Chantelle gasped.

“Nox-demons!” exclaimed Sam as he looked up at his mother with fear in his eyes.

Chelsea looked down at her son’s face with care and put her hand on his face.

“They are nasty creatures that can look like anyone from a memory. They will drive you insane with their repetitive motions, and once you start believing in their lies they tell you, you will start to become one,” she explained, and tears welled up in the young boy’s eyes.

Chelsea only nodded as she took her hand off his face and put it on his shoulder. Fearfully, Cellic and Bruce looked at each other, and then Cellic snarled as he looked at Bestol.

“Hey, you ugly demon! You bring my girlfriend back, right now!” he demanded, and Bruce nodded as they pulled their knives.

Immediately, Chelsea grabbed the boy’s arms as they tried to head toward the strange-looking man. Both boys stopped, and they looked up at Bestol with angry looks on their faces. Bestol snickered as he looked at the two little angry faces.

“Well, now, what do we have here?” Bestol asked, and then he laughed a little humorous laugh.

Swiftly, Chelsea pulled the two boys close to her and held on to them tightly.

“You stay away from them,” she snarled protectively, and Liam put his arm around Chelsea protectively.

“Well, aren’t you a little young to have a girlfriend?” he laughed, and Bruce crossed his arms over his chest.

“No,” he mumbled, and Bestol laughed, amused.

“Well, once your girlfriend figures out she has to die, then she will come back to you, but I don’t think she will take her own life,” he said, as his eyes burned into Bruce’s eyes, and Cellic looked up at his mother with wide eyes.

“She will come back,” whispered Chelsea as she wiped a tear from her son’s cheek, and then she looked up at Bestol angrily.

Bestol made a face at her as he stuck his tongue out at the boys, and then he turned his attention back to his uncles.

“If my sister makes it out of there, if she ever does, then she will be dealt with. Now, off to the castle with you all. I have a lot of work to do,” he said, and he flicked his wrist.

At that moment, four shiny, black demons appeared before them, and Gale, Liam, Chantelle, Chelsea, and the boys were escorted to the castle.

After the demons had pushed them into the castle, they stood outside the castle doors and guarded them. The same thing happened with the villagers. The demons pushed the Slayers and the Selvempts into their homes and guarded their front doors. Bestol had ordered them to guard each of the homes, and no one was to come in, and no one was to come out. The dark cloud over the kingdom had grown in size and flashed with bright blue lightning.

Happily, Bestol opened his arms, and more and more demons began to appear on the land.

“My children, you will guard this place now. No one leaves until I return,” he yelled, and the demons bowed their heads to him.

Surprisingly, one of the demons didn’t bow to him, and Bestol looked at the creature in question.

“Do you object?”

Without a word, the demon phased into a tall, slender man with shiny black hair and yellow-green reptilian eyes.

“Ah, Mertheis,” said Bestol, and the man smiled at him with sharp fangs.

Mertheis was not of Slayer or Selvempt descent. He was the prince of the Underworld. His mother was the Goddess of Fire, and his father was the ruler of the Underworld before he was slaughtered. His mother was the one who had taken his father’s life during the great war.

Before Halondelle split into two kingdoms, Merthies’s father tried to conquer all the realms. He wanted to kill all the humans and the magical creatures in this realm, and he tried to make the gods pay for banishing him to rule the Underworld.

His father once was the God of Fire, but he turned on the gods when he became too power-hungry. His mother had no choice but to take his life. She stabbed him in the heart with a spear, and that’s when she became the goddess of fire.

Mertheis was just a baby when this happened, and he ended up in the Underworld with his father. When his father’s soul left his body, he grabbed the child and pulled him down to the Underworld with him. The Goddess of Fire never saw her son again.

It wasn’t like Bestol’s parents, where they truly loved each other, but once they found out that his mother was pregnant with him, they knew that she had to leave. She fled down to the Underworld because she knew that the gods would never find her there if they had ever found out about the child she was carrying. That is when she met the soul of Merthies’s father and helped him raise his son.

Bestol and Mertheis grew up together, and they were more like brothers even though they didn’t have the same blood running through their veins. They were both considered the princes of the Underworld, but Mertheis was the one who would take over for his father. Even though his father was just a soul, he raised him until he was old enough to understand the responsibilities of taking his father’s place as ruler.

“Brother, you have done well. Pretty soon, the gods won’t have any choice but surrender to us. Now that their precious guardians are gone, and their people are suffering,” said Mertheis, approaching Bestol and standing next to him.

Bestol nodded to him, and he took a deep breath as they both looked at the statues.

“Which one is your sister?” he asked, and Bestol pointed to Ashta’s statue.

“The Fire Guardian? How interesting,” Mertheis said, and then he walked over to the statues.

Slowly, he inspected each statue as he circled them, and then he looked up at his brother.

“Wow, she is a looker,” he said as he whistled, and Bestol scoffed at him.

“Dude, that’s my sister.”

Mertheis gave him a knowing look, and then he looked over the other statues closely.

“Hmm. Look at the way the Air Guardian is looking at her. I wonder…”

Mertheis trailed off as he lifted his hand, and a ball of green magic appeared in the palm of his hand.

“Ah, ah,” said Bestol, and Mertheis looked at him as the little ball of green magic faded.

“Don’t you dare. I don’t want you to put a rift in the magic I have going. They are not coming back.”

Mertheis put his hands up defensively and made a face at him.

“I was just going to have a wee bit of fun. That’s all,” he said, and Bestol gave him a knowing look.

“Remember the last time you tried to just have a wee bit of fun?” he asked, and Mertheis shivered as he nodded.

Suddenly, there was a noise, and Bestol looked away from Mertheis. Evilly, Mertheis grinned, and when Bestol wasn’t looking, he sent a ball of green magic at Roman’s statue. The ball hit the statue, and then it fizzled away.

“Mertheis?”

“Hmm?” he asked, as his head snapped towards his brother.

“Are you coming?” Bestol asked as he gestured towards the castle.

“Yes, why, yes, of course,” he said, and he walked over to Bestol.