E L E V E N
Journey To The Old World

WITH A DRAMATIC wave of his hand, Wilhelm began to read the words that were carved into the stone, his tongue curling around the language smoother than he could speak English. It seemed like a second nature to him, something that he had grown up doing. In other words, it was most likely his native language. Perhaps it is not so much as a dead language as we humans had thought after all.

The edges of the stone began to crumble, dust flying in wild directions as a strong continuous gust of wind blew out from within wherever the stone was blocking. I gasped in shock when Dimitri took a step in front of me, shielding me with his body as I curled into his chest in an attempt to shut the dust and debris out.

There was a strong rumbling sound and I could feel the earth beneath my feet beginning to shift and reshape itself. Though my eyes were not opened to witness the phenomenal event, I could feel it tremble against every single fiber of my body.

In a split second, as soon as the shift came, it was gone. Silence engulfed all four of us as the earth moved back into place. When I opened my eyes and peered out from Dimitri's hold, I could see a large opening where the stone once was, a pile of rubble on the ground.

"The stone stays broken?" I asked dumbly, gesturing towards the remains as we stepped into the dark hole.

As if to answer my question, once we were all through, the ground began to shake once more. Each piece of the broken stone began to levitate into the air, piecing themselves back to where they once were as I gasped. Darkness returned, filling the entire place when the last slab was slotted back into its place, the dead end back to where it once was.

A soft glow came from my side in three different distinct colors, and this time I immediately knew that it belonged to the tattoos of the three out of four brothers.

"How convenient it is for you guys to glow," I remarked, patting Dimitri on the shoulder.

He smirked, lips twisting into a crooked smile as he shook his head.

"So, why is it that the rock doesn't stay down? Wouldn't it be easier for you guys if it stayed down?" I asked, casting the stone one last look.

"It is to keep out trouble. The heart of Hell contains heavy magic which ill-doers might wish to harvest. And since only a limited number of us can speak and understand Biblical Hebrew, it is a sort of password for safety purposes, I suppose." Calvin explained with a wave of his hand.

"We must proceed. We're wasting precious time by just standing here."

Step by step, we began to tread down the path once more, following the lead of Calvin and Wilhelm as Dimitri and I stayed at the back of the group. He had slipped his shirt back on, dusting the specks of dirt off from the opening of the gates with a wave of his hand.

I couldn't help but pout a little when he made the decision, knowing fully well that my splendid view was now covered and gone. Dimitri must have noticed my expression for he had a smug smile on his face, lips turned beautifully happy as he reached for my hand.

"No need to pout, princess," he simply said with no further explanation. At his words, I blushed a bright scarlet red.

"No need to be delusional, Dee. Who said I was pouting?" It was a blatant lie to his face and in an attempt to hide my bright red face from his view, I walked a little faster right by Wilhelm.

The red-headed man smiled wistfully when I approached his side and I could tell that he was desperately trying to hold something from me; knowing him, it would probably be a snarky comment or a flirtatious joke. Nevertheless, he kept quiet, content with just the display of a mysterious glint in the corner of his eyes.

And so we walked ahead in complete utter silence, trudging through the deepest and darkest pit in an attempt to reach the heart of a realm I had thought to only exist in fairytales a little over a year ago. How strange isn't it, the way the world worked? I am now living in a life in which I had thought to be impossible, much less placed into consideration, and yet here I am. Dead, living in Hell, and fighting against a band of angels that were after me and the people I love.

When we had finally reached the very center, I did not know to be disappointed or delighted to find out that there was nothing but a simple enclosed coffin. The grave was extravagant, with carvings that showed different floral and fauna. Other than that, the room was a round shaped enclosure. It had no doors or archways to lead anywhere else. There was a small inscription on the side of the coffin that rested in the center of the room and I squinted to read.

"What does that say?" I asked, gesturing to the inscription when we neared the grave.

I wiped a hand over the top of the coffin, sneering in disgust when I realized that the palm of my hand was now covered in an intense layer of dust and soil.

Calvin bent over to the grave, dusting off the inscription before he read the words out loud. "The Benevolent Queen."

"This coffin wasn't here the last time we extracted Lucifer." Wilhelm frowned in confusion. "So who's in the coffin?"

Calvin grimaced at Wilhelm's question, standing to his full height as he stared down at the grave. "I have a feeling I know why Fabian did not want to follow us to the Heart of Hell. His beloved now resides here."

My jaw dropped, eyes going wide as I stared at the grave. From beside me, I could feel Dimitri's own stunned expression as well as he gaped at the grave.

"Since when did he place Ida here?" He asked, flabbergasted.

"I have no clue." Calvin shook his head. "But think about it. The only person that comes close to being the queen of Hell would be Ida. She was to marry Fabian, remember? Fabian must have had this made for her when she died."

"So technically I am looking at my own dead body?" I asked, gesturing to the coffin. Wilhelm nodded without a word. "How... pleasant. Can't say that this happens every day, I guess."

"I thought we all agreed that you had already gone past many stages that a normal human being wouldn't?" Wilhelm piped up, giving me a playful nudge at the shoulder as I rolled my eyes.

Ignoring him as best as I could, I took a step even closer towards the grave, my face hovering over it as I stared at the cover. It was a simple stone slab, straight and without a single carving. It served as the top to cover whatever the grave contained. I grimaced, thinking about the corpse of one of my past lives that was now here, most likely nothing but a pile of bones.

"Get on and lie down," Calvin instructed, gesturing to the grave as my eyes widened to the size of saucers.

"Excuse me but what did you just say?"

"Lie down on the grave. How else do you want to harness the magic? The grave is situated at the center of the room and only at the center will you get the maximum amplification. So hop on."

"This is a grave, Calvin. There's a dead person inside. Isn't it, I don't know, disrespectful?"

By now I was just fabricating any possible reasoning to wiggle myself out of the situation. Yet the three brothers were having none of it. With a roll of his eyes, Dimitri walked over. His fingers gently rested on the curve of my hips before lifting me up into the air, placing me down on the top of the grave as if I weighed no more than a single feather.

"The dead person was your past life. So technically, no, this isn't disrespectful in any way."

With a dashing smile that showed his delight for this mini victory, Dimitri walked over to the head of the coffin, patting the stone to signal me to lie down. With quite possibly all the reluctance in the entire world, I laid my head down flat against the hard stone, hands glued to my side as Calvin and Wilhelm walked over to my left and right respectively.

"In order to contact your past lives, we will have to send you into your own mind. On this trip, concentrate on the past life in which you have the strongest connection to. In this case, it would be Ida." Dimitri informed, placing his hands on both sides of my head.

"Once you have made a connection, do not break it. The conversation will be held inside your own mind. Should you accidentally break the connection, your consciousness will be forever trapped in the labyrinth of your mind. Meaning, you will forever be in a comatose state. Is that clear?" Wilhelm hovered over me, his dark amber eyes staring into my very soul as I gulped, nodding. All of a sudden, this journey to the old world seemed more dangerous than I had previously assumed.

"As long as you are in contact with Ida, she should be able to return you to your body. Other than her, do not trust any of your other past lives." Calvin warned.

"Why not?" I asked, eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

"That is because they might try to take over your body. If you trust them and they succeed, you may never return. You will then take their place as a 'past life', a memory, while they control your every limb and your every movement."

"Then how do you know I can trust Ida? She is the one with the most connection to the material world. Wouldn't that make her the biggest threat?" I rebutted. My mind went out to Fabian, to the man that had lost the love of his life to a monster.

"She has moved on. Evidently, when she last took control of your body, she had asked Fabian to help you. Besides, we know Ida. She isn't like that and she will help wherever she can." Wilhelm did not allow a place for rebuttal, his eyes set hard and confirming. I could hence only nod, hoping and praying that he and the rest of the brothers were right and Ida could actually be trusted.

"The process is going to hurt, Addison. No matter what, keep your focus on Ida, on that part of yourself."

With all the instructions and enlightenment in place, I took a deep breath, bracing myself. I thought back to Ida, of my first memory of her name when Fabian had explained their unfortunate star-crossed situation to me back in the ball held during Hell Week. I recalled the very moment in which she took over my body, the sensation that had filled every inch of my nerves and I concentrated on her feelings that had enveloped me back then.

For every time in which Ida was brought in, Fabian would either be the cause of it or part of it. As a result, I also concentrated on him. His dark stubborn eyes that resembled glittering onyxes, his lips that were formed into a sneer and only ever lightened when speaking about Ida. I thought back to every single expression he had ever formed when thinking about her and I focused on it.

I focused on their love for one another.

"I'm ready," I said, attempting to calm down the rapid anxious beating of my heart with deep breaths.

"Concentrate, Addison." Dimitri's voice was barely even above a whisper as I closed my eyes, burning the images of Fabian and Ida into my mind. "Let's begin."

That was the last thing I heard before an unbearable pain tore through me, my screams of horror following shortly after as it echoed around the walls of the room.

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