Is he able to see me?

Aralyn’s POV

Oh fuck, forget what I said. I prefer to slowly die of starvation in the desert rather than have this beast disfigure me. That way, I would have at least a slim chance of survival. Even if I had a bit more energy to try to summon some of the mothers' power, there was no way that I could fight this Sasquatch, mammoth-sized, two-legged, wolf-like demon. Let alone the fact that I am a twelve-year-old girl on the run from the experienced, original, first Lycan king who went through centuries of training and battles. Well, Aralyn, make a death wish, say goodbye to the world, and pray that daddy dearest gives you a quick and at least somewhat painless death.

I closed my eyes and expected squelching sounds, blood cracks, pain and death. I even pictured him dismembering my head from my neck with his fangs, ripping off my heart with his bare hands. Same as he did to my mum. The pain and demise were palpable.

But that never happened.

Instead, I heard a roar of fury in the background and felt antigravity-like energy starting to encase me. A seismic surge of unknown warmth, power and an earthquake-like feeling followed it. I created this energy somehow. I didn’t understand how, but given the hand stuck in the sand, it seemed that I had syphoned the energy from it, and I leapt in the air, levitating. I took a look to see where is Malleteagan. He stood down, a few inches away from me, paralysed on the spot in mid jump with his jaws opened; he was ready to snap my neck with his fangs. Some unknown reason and force within me raised my hand in the air. It was like my body, and actions were not coordinated nor controlled by me but by some unknown inner guide within my body. My lilac hair danced like someone without hairdresser skills ruffled and blow-dried it. I am sure that I looked ridiculous.

A surge of lilac energy rippled in wavelets from my hand, opening a new vivid and lustrous oval portal with edging that pixelated in bouts of endless tones of lilac and violet shimmers. The scenery on the other side of the portal was in striking contrast to what I was surrounded with. The last thing I remember was that I recklessly jumped in, as I had no choice. I soared towards the portal when I spared one last glance towards paralysed Malleteagan, who stood still in his mid jump open jaw strike position, unable to move. I fell on the ground of this new realm, and the portal shut. Then everything went dark. Dark. Again.

I woke up sometime later, baffled by my surroundings. Everything went back to my head. Then fear flew through me, and I started to tremble. Where am I? Where is Malleteagan? Fuck, did he kill me? If he did, am I in heaven? It certainly doesn't look like it. It seems more like hell, with the sulphurous stench and an earthy, mouldy, rotten scent. Stalactites were all around me, and I was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by pitch-black darkness. I am engulfed by the putrid smell of damp soil, mixed with the stench of death, decaying corpses and rotting. Where the fuck am I?

I started to walk without aim, wondering when he would show up, granted if I was alive. If I am dead, why am I in a place that looks like hell? If I’m in hell, where are the demons and devil? Where are the crying souls begging for salvation? Maybe his desire to kill me was justified if I ended up in hell because this certainly looks like a one. No sound of life in here. I started to stumble against the rotten corpses. I instantly felt the bile rising in my throat, together with an urge to vomit. Buzzing of the flies who feasted on the semi-dissolved flesh of cadavers already swarmed by worms was the only sound breaking the silence. I would probably vomit if I ate or drank anything in the past five days. I am scared and disgusted to the core, and I miss my mother. And as on command, tears started to fill my eyes again. I am so lonely now. Will death ever come? Hopefully, the quick one. I have no choice but to advance ahead.

The more I came into the insides of the cave, the less I felt the putrid smell and fewer corpses were on my way through. Only the sulphurous scent stuck and became more and more intense. Flickers of the red light started to graze dimly through jet-black darkness and to mix with the hazy purple tones. I must continue. It became less dark as I continued, and corpses scattered around became scarcer. I came to a clearing and now had a better view of my whereabouts. I was in some kind of an underground cave tunnel. It started to look like a maze of epic proportions. It looked like some morbid underground slum for demons but with no living soul around. As I advanced into the cave's depths, the ruby river transpired through the purplish crimson fog as I continued walking. Sounds that reminded me of oar kicking, spluttering, and splashing on the water became louder. Out of nowhere, the eerie creature that vaguely reminisced of the woman with clothes in tatters and a foggy face cluttered with wrinkles emerged on the crimson water. She was in a wrecked little boat that certainly saw better days. This boat should have been long forgotten on the bottom of this cursed-looking river, given the derelict state and according to any logical law of physics. But this creature was in the boat, and the boat was flowing in my direction.

Then she opened her eyes, or what it should be her eyes. However, instead of eyes, she had two obsidian pits with cracks filled with traces of the same crimson purplish hazy shadows that encircled this cave-underground-maze town. She had wings like a bat, but these were gargantuan.

I was scared shitless now. What kind of twilight zone experience I am living through? Each scene seems to be worse than the other. My thoughts were interrupted by a gleeful cackle followed by a distorted voice, which sounded like the council of beasts had been morphed into one diabolic and sinister voice.

"Welcome, lovely. Sentaya had been waiting for you for centuries." the creature said.

"Who is Sentaya?"-I asked when I mustered some courage to form the words.

"I am Sentaya, the one who will help you to stay hidden from the one who is looking for your blood," she said.

"Can I trust you? Why would you help me?" I asked. She broke into an eerie, high-pitched laughter that echoed through the cave.

"Oh, my lovely, you are in Oribus, first level and entrance to Wengrathria…how can I explain?” she grinned deviously.

“…in Soovaree realm, Wengarthria is what humans would call hell, inferno, but you… you can call it whatever you like. So, the short answer is no. No one in here can be trusted. You can-if you want to join the corpses piled at the entrance. But…what you can trust to at this moment is that, for now at least, it suits me to help you to hide from Malletigan, from your father, that is."

"Why would you do that?" I quipped cautiously. "None of your concern." -she quipped back quickly with slight irritation.

"Who are you," I asked.

In a swift move that I barely managed to catch with my eye, she moved from the boat amidst the bloody lava-like river to stand a few inches apart. She just teleported in front of me. God, do I talk too much!! I have surely pissed her off, and she will rip my head off now. Stupid, malfunctioning brain-mouth filter of mine.

She looked at me with her pit-like eyes whilst exposing her rotten black teeth drenched in the same substance of the river. God, she looked like a hideous banshee. She was hissing and clicking with her tongue that morphed between the obsidian and amethyst whilst saying:

"I am Sentaya of Oribus, mistress of this Ortelvan river and wife of an infernal river God Denexus. You do not need more information than this. Now, my patience with you, little girl, had ended.

You can either accept my help to hide in here or meet your end by the hand of that crazy psycho father of yours. The choice is yours." And that's how I became what you could distantly define as a protégé of Sentaya for the next five years.

I got warm clothes and barely edible food and drink, but I had to clean up and transfer the corpses daily. With time I became desensitised to the stench and their crippled, decayed bodies. Maybe even I started to stink like them, I don’t know.

I have learned that these are the corpses of those who have served their time in Oribus and are transferred further down in hell or are to be cast away. It turned out that Ortelvan River was fuelled and powered by souls, sweat, blood and tears of forsaken souls who were waiting for the judgement on further transfer within the hell. The river can become hot as lava, as the temperature rises with torment-ridden emotions, especially with guilt and despair. Fresh corpses of those destined for hell are brought up all the time. The river is being powered and preserved by tormented souls. It is depressing to see it all, but I am alive and relatively safe.

Sentaya never harmed me as long as I listened to her orders, and I was hellbent on doing so from day one. I was afraid and wary of her and Denexus. I had seen the vile and sick things they did to corpses while slurping and sucking their lives. Both were sinister to their core, bat shit crazy and cunning.

Aralyn’s POV

It was dusk and bloody fog again when Sentaya sent me to yield new souls from the entrance again. They would usually be in a semi-dead state and a stupor or would crawl helplessly, hanging on the last threads of life and attempting to get their asses out of the cave when I'd come to collect them. They would usually not have much energy left in them to give resistance. This makes things easier as I usually struggle to drag them through the cave, even when they offer little or no resistance. They are as heavy as stranded whales on shore, although carrying corpses through hell improved my strength and stamina. Still, fuck, they were heavy. This is because I am not dragging their physical body. Their physical form is probably on some graveyard. Souls accumulated here are scythed across the different realms, like Earth realm, Soovaree realm and many others. The corpses I am dragging through Oribus present the weight of their sins. So, resistance would represent their remorse, guilt and inability to acknowledge their sins or some unresolved conflicts or businesses they have left behind before their demise. The greater their acknowledgement of the sins is, the lesser the resistance to be dragged into Oribus would be.

The resistance would make things even more challenging for me and them even heavier than they already were. Luckily, as their sins would almost always entwine with a shitload of guilt, I would usually get no resistance. That means their souls are guilt-ridden, and they have succumbed to punishment for their sins. This is great, as dragging resistant souls was a slog.

I was in the middle of my thoughts when I spotted contours of people in my proximity, and it looked like there were many of them. Despite the vicinity of the upcoming crowd, it was hard to discern who they were. This is because my eyesight and surroundings were blurred with everlasting Oribian purple-crimson fog.

But regardless, I quickly gathered that these were not lost souls; something was wrong here. A familiar scent which I had dreaded since the night of my mother’s death wafted to my nose. The fast-approaching creatures were not dead, nor were they people. Well, not people in a conventional sense. They were Lycans. Army of Lycans, for fuck's sake. An army led by the monster itself-Malleteagan. Cold sweat and raw fear engulfed me while cold shivers went down my spine when the murderer of my mother came into my sight. Is he able to see me?