Page 50 of Chaos Unleashed

I put one of the axes behind me, and I’m surprised when the harness just seems to grip it again and keep it in place.

“Neat,” I mutter.

I then pull him out of my pocket as he adds, “I’m starting to see the disadvantages of being in a pocket for the whole time we’re here.”

“Do you want to stay out now?” I ask, “You could fly with Oryn and Meri? We shouldn’t come across anything else now,” I pause and then add, “Oh, apart from the beast in the hallway, after we get past that though, we should be clear.”

Xerxes lets out a quiet chuckle, “I think I’ll stay put for a while; knowing my luck, I’d get eaten or something by accident.”

“How do you eat someone accidentally?” I ask, aware that we’ve now become thoroughly distracted.

“Trust me, it happens,” Xerxes replies and then asks, “So, what happened, oh the axe? I take it you didn’t pick it up while you were in the vault?”

I shake my head, “Nope, I don’t suppose you know what they are and why they appeared?”

“Unfortunately not. They seem to be even older than I am.”

“Well fuck,” I reply, “let’s get out of here then. Back in my pocket, you go.”

Once I’ve put him back away, I grab my axe from my back; I may as well see what they can do and turn to face the door again. The beast is still there, only distinguishable by the darker shadows. It’s not growling at me, and I approach it cautiously. If it weren’t for the fact that I have got to break the gems on the princes’ bracelets for Hades, then I wouldn’t even bother to go out this way, and instead, I’d try and find another exit.

That thought gives me an idea though so I call on my magic and step into the Void wanting it to cross me over to the door where I spoke to the staff member. When I step in though, it’s like all exits are blocked apart from the one that I came through. It’s really weird, and I have no idea if it's got something to do with being out of the Void for so long or if because I was out of the Void for so long, It’s broken something within it. I also can’t see as much as I was beginning to, and I miss it.

Oryn didn’t follow me in, so I can’t ask him what it means, and Laiken doesn’t seem to be anywhere to be seen, so I decide that this is yet another thing that can be put in the deal with it later pile, and step back out into the throne room, and the expectant faces of my creatures.

I shake my head, “It’s no good all the doors are blocked; for some reason, I can’t use the Void to travel.”

When I look back at the door, figuring I’ll try to reason with the creature before I just race past it and hope that I can run faster than it can, I see that the doorway is empty, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. I cautiously approach the door and look both ways as I step out. The creature is sitting to the right of the door, and I freeze, expecting it to do something, but it simply stays still. When I don’t move, I swear I hear it sigh, and I watch in fascination as the giant mass of shadows becomes a lot lower. If I didn’t know any better I would assume that it had just laid down.

Poca nudges my back, and I take that as a sign to move forward. I’m hoping that he knows something that I don’t and that he’s telling me it's safe. I move slowly, not wanting to startle the creature and provoke it into attacking. Every few steps that I move forward, I look back over my shoulder to make sure that it has stayed where it’s supposed to be. As I get to the corner that when I move around it will put the beast out of my sight, I glance back one final time and realise that it's gone, left in its place is just the usual dark and dusty hallway.

That can’t be good.

My creatures are alert but don’t seem to be worried, and although I know that I should take that as a good sign, I’ve seen the destruction that this beast has left behind, and I really don’t want to risk his disappearance being a distraction technique and for us to all end up dead. I grip the handles on my axes tighter, momentarily in awe at how right they feel in my hands, before I start to run.

All of my creatures keep pace with me as they return to the formation that they were in before, where Poca is behind, and Meri and Oryn are flying at different heights ahead of me. As I run, I keep an eye on the rooms with open doors on either side of me, checking to see whether the beast is running alongside me and not seeing anything at all. Despite the fact that I no longer have the magic guide lighting up the way, I can somehow see just enough to make it through the hallways without tripping over any of the dead bodies, or anything else for that matter.

The door with all of the bodies stacked behind it suddenly comes into view, but I don’t dare to breathe a sigh of relief quite yet. In my experience, if you relax too early and before you’re actually safe, then that tends to be the exact moment that you end up getting attacked, and in this instance, there are a lot of bodies stacked behind this door. What’s to say that the creature doesn’t allow them to explore this side of the castle, and then just before they’re back to safety and when they’ve let their guards down and aren’t being so vigilant anymore, it attacks them and tears them limb from limb.

To be honest, if I’d been here for centuries all by myself and had to deal with intruders all the time, then I’d probably get bored and find new ways to entertain myself, too, and if that meant trying to find ways to get my food to entertain me, then I’d probably do it as well. I become even more alert the closer that I get to the door, but the mass of shadows never appears again. When my hand is on the door, I feel a wave of compassion and sadness wash over me at the thought of the beast being here by itself for all of this time; I mean, it has been protecting Hades' private quarters and doing a damn good job at it.

These thoughts prompt me to say into the darkness, “I’ll make sure that he comes back soon so that you can rest. Thank you for granting me safe passage.”

I don’t get any sort of reply, and I don’t see any kind of movement to let me know that it’s heard me, but I feel better now that I’ve said it, and I wasn’t lying. I will make sure that Hades comes back soon and relieves him of his duty, you know after he’s told me what the beast is because I’m incredibly curious. Say what you want about the deadly creature, but it’s extremely loyal even when it doesn’t know if its master is still alive.

Chapter Twenty

Farren

With one last glance behind me, I step back through the door, making sure that all of my creatures make their way through with me and that I have not left any behind. A quick glance toward the tapestry shows that no one is looking through it at the moment, so hopefully, that means that the girl has told everyone that the castle is safe, the princes are dead, and that they can all go home.

Shit, I hope they haven’t released the horses or something. From what I can remember, it’s a long walk to the nearest village, and it would be a lot easier and safer on horseback. I can cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, I need to find all of the princes' bodies and break their gems. It only takes me a moment to orientate myself and I realise that the closest prince to me is actually Dagon, the room that I tortured him in is not too far from here.

It takes me very little time at all to get to Dagon, I have to admit that I’m kind of relieved that his body is still where I left it, and he hasn’t started to do something disturbing like grow a replacement head or something equally ridiculous. I’m actually really hoping that the vision that I saw was an accurate representation of the past and that they are all wearing the bracelets because that means that I can help Hades get his magic back. Thankfully, I glance at Dagon’s right wrist and find the gemstone bracelet looking exactly like it did in the vision, except, to my surprise, it’s broken and covered in cracks.

I take it off his wrist anyway, just to make sure, but it’s not a trick of the light or anything. It really is broken. That’s got to be a good thing. I start to drop it on the floor before I think better of it; it could need to be broken more in order to give Hades his power back. I mean, Azreal and I completely destroyed his one, and this one is just cracked. I don’t sense any magic from it, but just in case, I want to take it with me. Maybe if I show Hades he will recognise the craftsmanship or something and be able to identify who made them and then figure out who is behind all of this and stop them before they make another move against him and the Underworld.

With this in mind, I put it in my pocket that’s not containing Xerxes and head out of the door to find Yeal and Jomieal, for some reason I don’t want to put the bracelet in the Void, preferring to keep it close to me. I guess it might have something to do with the fact that it’s got another god's magic on it, and a bad one at that. I don’t want to alert him somehow that I have them and that something is amiss. Of course, that's assuming that he doesn’t know already.

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