Shia wanted to touch their sleeping figures, but she could see a thick film of grayish light hovering around them, and she knew it spelled something bad. She wanted to curse Sirion.
“What are you doing to them? Remove that barrier!”
“Dearest, sorry to disapoint you like this, but you aren’t the commander here,” he said softly towards her.
Side by side with Khailis was another woman whom Shia had never seen before. She was dressed in a tunic similar to those worn at the temple, so she knew she was someone from Teotroly too.
As soon as the woman heard her cries against Sirion, she stirred and immediately cursed when her eyes fell on them.
“Sirion, what the -!”
“Glad to see you too, Eily. I see your tongue is still as sharp as ever.”
Shia gasped. Eily was the Goddess of Childbirth. Why did he bring her here too?
Eily looked around her, and when she saw Khailis lying next to her, her eyes widened. “Damn you, this lad
“Extracting energy? What do you mean by it? What kind of process is it?” “Why... Why are you doing this?” Goddess Eily asked the boy. “I understand your master, but how about you? You’re human. Don’t you know what Sirion is planning to do? He is planning the annihilation of the human race!” Shia gasped internally. Sirion was planning to end the human race? That was his grand goal? She regretted what she had said earlier to him about going though with his plan as long as he leaves her and Langrion out of it. How insane has Sirion been to even dream of such an abomination? The gray-haired Gilyan looked back at Eily with calm eyes that it was a little frightening. “Humans are troublesome things. They sell each other out and kill each other. Master only wants to purify human souls.” Eily gasped. “Purify? You mean kill everyone?” “Not everyone. Only those who displease the master will go.” Shi
At that exact moment, the door of the room burst open, and Gavil, Templar, and Galahad walked in. “Did you find any other survivors,” Langrion asked, and Templar gravely shook his head. “We couldn’t find the commander back at the place you said.” “He could have returned to the Ancient Evil’s side. How about the void opening, did you find it?” “I have found traces of it. It has been sealed,” Galahad replied. Right after he had received the power of the silver-haired god he and Shia met at the underworld, Langrion rose from the depth of the sea, but when he returned to the edge of the cliff where he had last encountered Shia and the Ancient Evil, they were no longer there. The only thing that remained was an open void in the middle of the sky, shining fiercely at the dead of the night. Langrion tried to fly to it as he had done so earlier, but this time, he used the silver-haired god’s power. He was sure that the Ancient Evil had taken t
Hours after coming back to the temple, everyone was in a morose state, especially Gavil, who had reluctantly witnessed his wife being taken away in his very eyes. “We must come there now and rescue them! My Khailis’ life is in peril,” he reasoned with Templar. “But we don’t even know where they are. How can we rescue them and charge blindly up ahead,” Galahad explained. “Prince Rahul, calm down. Eily and my sister are with her. I’m sure they will take care of Lady Khailis,” Templar seconded. “How could I stay calm? We all know why he had taken Khailis! He must be thinking of extracting energy! I can’t stay still!” The anguish in Gavil’s voice was so strong that it felt like he could cut a knife through the air with just the ferocity in his voice. Langrion knew exactly how he felt. He has been keeping his emotions at bay too so that he could form a sound strategy, but it does not seem that things are going the way he really wanted. The
“You were a knight,” Goddess Eily said, looking back at Khailis with dubious eyes. It felt like she was sizing her up and that she didn’t believe a single word she had just said. “Well, the last time I checked I haven’t resigned yet, so I still am a knight of this castle,” Khailis proudly said. She sighed afterwards. Out of all the people in the temple, why did this irritating goddess, who used to obsess over her husband, have to be kidnapped alongside her? “If you were a knight, why were you so weak back there? You didn’t even fight back when that young boy kidnapped you,” she grumbled. “Excuse me?” Khailis can’t believe that those words really had to come from the person who was kidnapped along with her. “You were a goddess, so how did you get kidnapped that easily?” Eily’s face immediately went red. She fumed in anger. “Someone was throwing rocks at us. I had lost consciousness.” “Well, I don’t have an ounce of magic in me, so I cou
Shia tried shaking her feet. It was nice to be able to regain the feeling of her lower limbs like this again. “You are using wind power, aren’t you, Sister Eily? Let’s see if I can amplify your magic.” Still unable to stride normally like before, she walked a bit slowly towards the bed where Eily and Khailis were detained. “Don’t push yourself too far, Shia. You just got a little better a few minutes ago,” Khailis frowned when she saw her walk towards them. She remembered how frail she looked when she opened her eyes earlier that day and requested to see Langrey. It hasn’t been long since that happened, so she couldn’t have recovered her strength in such a short period of time. “We have to be quick. Sirion is not in his right mind. Who knows what will happen to us,” Shia said in return. Shia’s heart was quivering in fright not for her own but for Khailis. If what Eily and Gilyan said was right, Sirion is planning to harvest her babies’ energie
“I’ll help you and Lady Khailista escape,” the man they knew by the name Gilyan declared. Everybody fell silent when he said this. No one wanted to be the first to speak. Finally, it was Commander Rus who broke the heavy silence in the air. “And why would you do that? Aren’t you the Ancient Evil’s lap dog? Also, do you think we’ll trust you just because you say that you can’t let Lady Khailis die?” Shia held her tongue. She was actually thinking of the same thing. She had seen him fight side by side with Sirion several times now, and he had endangered their lives in the past without batting an eyelash. It seemed he had also known Khailis based on their past encounters too, so what had changed since then? Why would he suddenly turn to their side? “Perhaps you’ve finally known the truth, right,” Eily said, sneering at him. “Did you discover the truth about your past and your powers?” Gilyan returned a blank stare at her. Before Eily could say so
At first, Gilyan was confused. Why would His Darkness lie to him to this extent? Why would he say such words when that wasn’t the case? He couldn’t fathom why he would go to such lengths to secure his trust, if it was that. He remembered how he had met his master and rescuer not too long ago. It was in the summer two years back. Gilyan vividly remembered the stench of rotting bodies that was mixed with the smell of blood, urine, feces, and molten trash on that day. He had been caged for a month with the dead, the sick, and the decrepit for far too long then that it didn’t even matter anymore that he was there... He already felt dead just like them, so there was no point in minding where he was and where he will be headed. Everything has always been the same since his mother died when he reached his twelfth birthday. Of course that wasn’t always true. He was happy when he and his mother were working for Duke Humphrey’s estate in Gaulane, his hometown.
At the end of this secret passageway, Gilyan knew what was coming... The question now was how can they avoid it? “In order for me to become invincible, we must awaken Freya’s full powers. It is only after she has reached her fullest potential that I must take it for myself,” the Lord of Darkness said before when he had informed him of his plan. His master firmly believed that, to awaken his beloved’s power, he must break her down in the cruellest and most unimaginable way. “Freya’s weakness has always been her heart. She loves people too dearly. I must start by killing those who are dear to her as violently as I could. Only with violence and hate will she be forced to tap into her full potentials,” he said. At the end of this tunnel, His Darkness will be laying in wait for an ambush. He was planning to kill the commander in front of the object of his obsession, and then after that, he’ll kill Lady Khailista right in front of Goddess Freya. “We