“She is back at your manor, with your other protectors.”
“What do you mean: ‘She is fine for now’?”
“I’m sorry, I cannot tell you more. It is part of the path you must follow.”
Great, another mystery to add to the list. And another person telling me I’m not ready to know everything.
“This has nothing to do with you being ready or not,” Charon interrupts my thoughts. “You have a destiny. This curse is part of your path towards victory. You have to carry certain burdens to get to the end.”
I wet my lips. “Will she be alright? Vicky?”
“I cannot tell you.”
My hands ball into fists and I stare into the water. There’s nothing but blackness there. Just as much as what is waiting for me. But I don’t want to drag Vicky with me.
“I cannot tell you the outcome of this curse, because I do not know. But the currents of the Five Rivers speak of strength and endurance.”
I rub my face with both hands. “What does that mean?”
“It means that you will win this battle if you don’t give up. Keep your head up and trust in your own strength.”
I sigh. “Thanks. I’ll try that.”
When I look back, the portal to the Shadow World has closed completely. I want to ask how soon I can go home, but I don’t want to seem ungrateful. He told me he needed to show me something. A man as powerful as him must have something important to say.
So instead I ask, “Do the currents say anything else about me or my quest?”
“Oh yes.” The corners of his mouth twist up. “They say that if you fail, there will be a change of power in all worlds, not just in yours. This will mean the end of my existence, along with others. Therefore, I will do my best to help you.”
“That is… great. Thank you,” I mumble. His words weigh heavy on my conscience. How did I change from a normal sixteen-year-old worrying about a boring summer break, to a chosen one responsible for the fate of not only earth, but all existing worlds?
“It is wise not to think too hard about this. Just remember that you are very important and that many beings depend on you for their survival.”
I groan. “Oh yes, that is so much better.”
“Your human mind is too small to wrap around the whole meaning.”
I massage my temples. “You must be right, because my head is really starting to hurt.”
“There is no need for that.”
His imperturbable composure is starting to get on my nerves. “How can you stay so calm? Aren’t you worried?”
He lifts the oar out of the water and gestures at the dark river. “Like these rivers, life has its own course. It will keep flowing, even if we disturb the surface.” He drops the oar back into the water. “Our influence on its course is limited. We can only change it so much.”
My eyes follow the flow of the river. “But if we can’t change its course, then why would we even try?”
Charon moves the oar slowly, in small circles. “We can change part of it. The harder we try and the longer we persist, the stronger our influence will be.” As he increases the force of his movements, the circle around the oar gets deeper. The water around it is sucked in. “With strength and endurance, we can alter the path of life. Even if only for a moment.”
My mouth has fallen open and I close it quickly when he looks up again.
“I get it,” I say. “That moment may be long enough to change the fate of the world.”
He shows his sharp teeth. “Exactly. You are a quick learner.”
I grin back. “I have my moments.”
I expect him to stop stirring the water, but he just makes the circle bigger and bigger, until it looks like a whirlpool.
“Eh… what are you doing?”
His movements are strong and slow now, his gaze locked on the darkness below. “I’m creating a passage through the water. We need to get beneath the rivers.”
I grab the edge of the boat when it moves forward with a jolt. “Why?”
“To show you what you need to see.”
The boat dives forward, into the whirlpool. It turns until everything around me is a blur. My stomach is pushed up into my throat and my hands ache from the force with which I hold on to the boat.
Charon has pulled the oar back in. He leans on it calmly, and watches my discomfort with growing amusement. “Three, two, one…”
CHAPTER 6
Another jolt makes my teeth chatter. Darkness swallows us whole as we get sucked through the bottom of the whirlpool. Up is down and down is sideways. My eyes hurt with the effort to follow every move we make.
“Almost there,” Charon says. He is still standing straight, unaffected by the rollercoaster ride we’re on.
With a loud splash, we land in a shallow stream. The water rises up high, but somehow I stay dry.
It takes a moment for the nausea to fade. If I move too much, I’ll throw up, so I just lift my head.
That distracts me immediately.
High above us a river meanders through the dark sky. Mist curls around the shores and arms reach out.
“Welcome to my realm,” Charon says, with a wide gesture.
I look beyond the river and see more currents. They cross each other and move at different speeds. One flows slowly, while the other rages on. One is a dark gray, another is pitch black. They seem to go on forever, looming over the world below. A low moaning reaches us from far away. Unidentifiable things move in the water everywhere. I imagine them clawing their way towards a freedom that they will never find.
Charon makes me jump when he suddenly speaks. “We have to walk. Follow me.”
He floats out of the boat to the shore. His oar has changed into a staff not very different from Maël’s. Only his is a lot darker and it has skulls on the top. Bones are wrapped around it like endless fingers.
I climb over the edge of the boat and step into the water. No floating for me.
While I wade through the river carefully, I keep an eye on the ferryman. He’s a foot taller than me and moves like a snake, even on land. His rags seem to become one with the mist that covers the shore.
I shiver as it wraps around my legs. Cold creeps up my body and I cough.
Charon looks back at me and points his staff at my feet. The mist retreats instantly and I can breathe again.
“Come,” he says. “Stay close to me.”
My feet are dry as soon as I step ashore. Charon is already moving, so I run to keep up with him. The mist follows close behind me. It swirls towards me, pulls back and charges again, as if in constant doubt whether to obey Charon or catch the prey it wants.
I try to focus on something else instead, but looking at the sky full of rivers above us isn’t very reassuring, either. The more I look, the darker it all seems to become.
Fear grabs my throat. What if this ferryman is deceiving me? What if he just needs to lure me into some kind of black hole to kill me?
Charon throws his hooded head backwards and lets out a deep, choked laugh. “You underestimate yourself, Dante.”
I take larger strides to keep up. “I do?”
“You remind me of myself, many centuries ago. I was so insecure. Failure kept whispering foul things into my ear.”
Right. We are so much alike. I try not to snort. The powerful ferryman that lives in the Underworld and the chosen kid.
He waves his staff around. “Do you think I got this all for free? That it was just given to me? That I was always this strong?”
I shrug.
“Not at all, Dante. I was once young and unexperienced, like you. All these great powers were brewing inside of me. I just had to learn to control them.”
He stops and points his staff at the river furthest away from us. “When I came here, there was only one river, the Styx. It was made by the Goddess with the same name.”
The mist rises as he moves his staff. It forms a female body, tal
l and slender, with long straight hair. “She was gorgeous, like all Goddesses. But inside, she was weak. Slowly, her power poisoned her.”
The mist turns darker, the head changes shape. The mouth opens and claws push themselves out.
“I was appointed to take over, but I did not know how to defeat such a powerful being.”
The woman bends forward and smiles. “Styx tried to seduce me with her beauty. I played along, meanwhile plotting her death. I expanded her river for her, until it circled around the Underworld seven times. By the time I finished, I had learned so much about my powers, that I knew how to defeat her.”
The Goddess made of mist backs up in surprise. Small spiky balls jump around her feet.
“I created the Razorlings. You met them earlier. Their spikes are filled with adamant, the hardest mineral in existence.”
Styx’s body wriggles as she tries to get rid of the creatures. “As Styx could only leave her river where it ended, I looped both ends together. Then I released my army of Razorlings.”
He falls silent as the Goddess in front of us is stabbed by the creatures. She cries out in pain and slowly crumbles to dust. The mist scatters with a hiss.
“After her demise, I was free to explore the depths of my powers. I then created the other four rivers and everything else you see before you.”
He starts walking again and I follow. His words sink in slowly. So fighting magical beings isn’t just about how strong your powers are. Sometimes you can outsmart your enemies. I sigh quietly. I already knew that. We tricked the ice demons into a demon’s snare. Somehow I doubt the Devil will be so easy to trick.
“True,” Charon says, making me grit my teeth. He should really stop reading my mind. “But using all your abilities to fight, will teach you your strong and your weak spots.”
I nod and we walk on in silence for a while.
We seem to descend even further. When I look up again, the rivers are just a dark blur in the distance. Where the hell is he taking me?
He chuckles. “Not to Hell, I can tell you that. Don’t worry, we’re almost there.”
Sure enough, ten steps farther, he comes to a halt. I catch up with him as he waves his staff again. The mist subsides and a white lake becomes visible. In it, little dark and light spots move around, like fireflies.
Charon points at them. “This is the Lake of Remembrance. All the memories that are taken by the river Lethe before the souls step into my boat, are collected here.”
I lean forward, trying to estimate the depth of the lake.
“There is no end,” the ferryman tells me. “The memories of every soul that ever passed these rivers still linger here.”
“So it is a memory you want to show me?”
He nods gravely. “It is written that I should show you this. You will need it to complete your task.”
He pushes me back gently. His cold touch awakens goose bumps on my whole body. “Stay there for a moment.”
I watch quietly as he rips a piece of cloth from his ragged cape, mumbles something incoherent and wraps it around the bottom of his staff. Slowly, he lowers the staff into the water and stirs. The dots in the water are drawn to the rag, but more and more of them shoot away from it, leaving behind a clear circle.
Charon pushes the staff deeper into the water and pulls it back up, again and again.
Dark and light dots rush upwards at the speed of light. They brush past the rag before joining the others at the surface.
“I have to dig deep to get this one,” Charon says. “It has been in here a long time.”
Suddenly, the string of dots stops moving. The one touching the piece of cloth grows. Tiny black and white slivers shoot out of it and wrap themselves around the rag. The other specks drift back to where they came from.
Charon lifts his staff out of the water and points it at me. “Take the piece of fabric and tie it over your eyes.”
To my surprise, the cloth isn’t wet or even damp. It makes my skin, that just settled down again, tingle in a not so pleasant way.
I summon all my courage with a deep sigh and lift the rag to my eyes.
Charon’s cold hand yanks at my arm. “Wait, you’d better sit down.” He gestures at a rock two steps back and I lower myself onto it.
Breathing out slowly, I close my eyes.
CHAPTER 7
As soon as I tie the rag at the back of my head, a sharp pain shoots through my eyes. Images appear so fast they make my head spin. I grab the edges of the rock to keep myself from tumbling backwards.
As I am pulled off my feet, I lose all sense of time and space. Although that’s not the right description for it, since my body no longer seems to exist. My mind flies through a bright tunnel. I feel like I’m in an intro of a movie studio, where big historic events are displayed in flashes on both sides. There are explosions and winged creatures on my left, and outbursts of magical light and collapsing buildings on my right. There’s fire bursting from the ground, ice crashing down and I’m moving forward, further and further into the light.
For a moment I’m afraid I’m dying. Charon tricked me after all and I made it so easy for him.
But then I slow down and fall face forward into a terrifying scene.
Flames rise up high all around me as a giant head breathes fire.
“You cannot defeat me. You are too late,” it chuckles. “The Earth is mine now.”
My body is back and all the hairs in my neck stand up at the sound of this voice. I recognize it from my premonitions.
Sweat drips from my face as I look around for a way out. But the flames seem to engulf everything. I can’t even make out whether I’m inside a building or out in the open.
When I turn around, I see a woman standing amidst the fire as if it doesn’t bother her at all. She looks fierce in her brown leather outfit, which consists of a short skirt and revealing top. Flames lick her feet and her leather cape is blown back by a hot wind, but she firmly holds her ground. Her long, straight black hair whips around her beautiful face, that wears a defiant expression.
Now I understand that the giant, scaled beast is talking to her.
“This is a memory,” I whisper to myself. “They can’t see me.”
“I loved you, Lucifer,” the woman says. “But you have gone too far.”
I gasp. My head moves from her to the Devil. This is Lucifer’s lover? His wife?
I have barely recovered from that epiphany when the beast shrinks into a tall, dark-haired man. He has a handsome face, even though the scales from his beastly form shine through his skin. His eyes are dark, his pupils made of fire, and his grin malicious.
“Come on, baby,” he coos. “We had such a good thing going. Don’t you want to rule the Earth with me? You’d be so pretty wearing a double crown.”
She raises her chin. “You know my answer.”
“Oh, come on.” He flicks his wrist and a black rose appears in his hand. “Don’t be so stubborn. I’d hate to kill you.”
She fumes, but instead of the flames Lucifer emanates, a bright light awakens under her skin. “I always told you never to underestimate a woman, but you don’t listen.”
Lucifer cocks his head and pulverizes the rose with one breath. “Oh darling, I know your powers. They will never match mine. It is the combination that works well. Without me, you have just a glimpse of power.” He lowers his head and shakes it sadly. “I will miss you.”
The cape billows up behind the dark-haired woman and tears well up in her blue eyes as she whispers. “I’ll miss you, too.”
They raise their arms at the same time, but her movements are so much stronger than his.
She closes her eyes and starts turning, like a ballerina of light. Lucifer’s dark spells hit nothing but air, and the flames around him grow restless. They reach in all directions, but something is holding them back.
I see what it is seconds before the Devil does. He roars as circles of light twist around
him.
“What are you doing?” he bellows, turning back into his monstrous form. He chuckles, but it sounds strained. “You think these will hold me? Wait till I break free, my love. There will be no mercy left in me for your treachery.”
The woman doesn’t respond. With every turn she makes, she lifts her arms higher. Her lips move, but the roaring of the fire is so loud, that I can’t make out the words.
It’s a memory, I tell myself. I can walk through the fire.
Tentatively, I take a small step. The flames touch my legs, but I don’t feel a thing.
The woman is just a couple of feet away. She’s spinning quickly now. I can’t hear everything she says, but a few words drift my way. “Pagans… seal the circle… sinners…”
A deafening roar makes me whirl around.
The beast is lashing out at the circle around it. Blood drips from its claws.
Panting hard, he changes back into his human form. His blazing eyes are wide with panic and anger when he yells at the woman. “Why can’t I get out? Where did you get this power?”
Another circle blazes to life around the Devil’s feet, while the first moves to a point above his head. The light flickers over him in tiny sparks, like an infrared security sensor. The first circle solidifies with a crack and the ground rumbles. Lucifer staggers as he drops a foot into the earth. “What the hell?”
“Yes, that’s where you’re going,” the woman’s voice whispers.
I see her eyes boring into his for a moment, before she starts turning faster again.
“Isabel!” he roars. “Stop this, or you will pay for it.”
“It is too late,” a rush of air tells him as it brushes his cheek.
He breathes fire, kicks and screams, but Isabel isn’t even distracted for a moment. She raises circle after circle. Every time one reaches the spot just above Satan’s head, he drops into the earth further. At least five solid rings hover above each other, crackling with energy.
Lucifer’s efforts to escape triple, but to no use. Whatever power he releases on the circles, they are unaffected. They rise and rise, one by one, while Lucifer yells incantations, unleashes the full force of his beastly body and engulfs everything in fire. None of it harms the circles.
Cards of Death Box Set Page 46
