“Come Sophia, say goodbye.” I noted for the first time during her speech that tears were streaming down her porcelain cheeks and the sight made me want to plough my fist into something unshakable. She looked me in the eyes as if searching for something, anything to indicate that what she had said would make a difference. She found nothing. Because she simply didn’t understand.
I saw one last tear fall to the floor where it had all began and then she turned away from me wrenching at my heart painfully. Vincent took note of my feelings and gave me what he considered as a ‘stay strong’ nod before escorting our sister out of the door. She was just walking through the broken frame when her hand shot out and gripped the splintered edges as if needing to hold on. It was as though she had just been shocked with information that had her locking down her vessel.
“It’s just as he said it would be…selfless acts, the fates…Keira’s heart finding…”
“What?!” I shouted and at the same time my back straightened in response to my veins igniting with raw power.
“He told me…” Sophia was talking to herself and on hearing my growl of frustration finally looked up at me.
“Who?” I demanded.
“He said it would happen this way and that only when you started to seek the truth would you realise…”
“Who, Sophia?” I asked again feeling something other than pain for the first time since I left her that day. Since I left her to go and die. Since I left her with nothing to do but mourn me.
But with the next words out of Sophia’s mouth, I knew the balance in my future was about to shift once more and with it, Keira had no choice in following me down fate’s path, whether I liked it or not.
“Who Sophia?” This time it was Vincent who asked the question but the answer that came was a shock to no one…
“Our father.”
Chapter 2
Hell’s Lasting Footsteps
As I took my first steps in a place I was long overdue in visiting, I did something I had never done here before and that was simply to stop and take a moment to think. I looked around the vast wastelands that bordered my father’s kingdom in the Second Circle of Hell, noting how little had changed.
Whenever I travelled back through the portals I felt the Demon side of me sigh its relief in coming home. Being this close to one of the life forces that made my unique mix possible was difficult to deny, even if I was seriously pissed at the reasons I was even here in the first place. However, this didn’t mean I could stop myself from raising my head and taking in the constant storm that lashed around me, gifting me with an essence of power I could absorb.
Of course this meant my father knew I was here. He always did. I circled my neck and inhaled the scent of the red sand dunes that went on for miles.
What humans didn’t realise was that Hell was far greater in size than both the surface of the Earth and Heaven combined. This was due to the great depths in which it was forged. Layer upon layer and kingdom on top of kingdom lay in hiding, waiting for the unsuspecting souls to be cast down here from a lifetime of sins accumulated. Some layers even had their own atmospheres producing its own gases and storms like the one that endlessly raged overhead, whipping sand around in little twisters.
But it was the endless sea of dead trees that howled like tortured souls from the wind travelling through their hollowed insides. Their tops were void of any leaves or reaching branches, that earth boasted a beauty created throughout the seasons. No not here, not in this place. Instead there were twisted roots that held the remains of broken bodies and limbs that were no longer needed but had grown from the lower layers of Hell, like demonic seeds of the dead.
At least some humans had some things right when describing Hell, I thought dryly. Although granted, these were always ones to have been under the influence of my kind at the time. I thought back to the English poet John Keats and his sonnet ‘On a Dream’. His version of the Second Circle was correct when he wrote of this place but for me, personally it was punishing in more ways than one.
I closed my eyes as I walked, striding towards the large castle I knew was being hidden by the very sands that belonged to my father and with each step recited the passage…
“But to that second circle of sad Hell,
Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows—pale were the sweet lips I saw…”
Then, just as the storm started to gravitate tighter around me I let loose my wings. The feeling of liberation stole the breath from my lungs when they surged from my confining vessel, giving birth to the very meaning of the words ‘to be free’. My body shot into the air through the funnel of sand until I burst from the torrent of power continually displayed in my father’s realm.