In the search of her goddess mother who abandoned her on birth, Jevelene leaves behind a cold Italy to the magical kingdom of Alkinshime in the icebergs of North Sweden. But what she ends up finding was completely beyond her fantasies. A demon and a...
Jevelene began pushing the tower back to its original position, but it was too heavy, and she felt weak. She pushed with all her strength, her forefoot dug into the mushy, green land beneath her and she slipped, but regaining her balance, she dug her heels underneath the sand and the sand turned to gold. She looked behind her shoulder because she knew that she carried spring beneath her feet and sunshine behind her shoulders, within him.
Him. Ariel.
He stood on the scattered battlefield, holding Jevelene's feet down with gold to make the marsh sturdier, "My love..." She turned back towards the tower and continued pushing, all the gods gave her their blessings of strength, vitality, and vigour. Aries flew by her, "I give you strength," And so did Athena, "I give you defences"
Nate jumped back as the tower moved, and through the ice, he felt Jevelene's energy, "Jevelene?" "What is happening?" Aleksei looked at the tower slowly coming back to its centre. With the strength of Ares and all gods of strength, slowly Jevelene pushed the tower against its flow of fall, standing as erect as before.
"Jevelene," Nataniel's eyes glowed bright blue as the tower began freezing and the ice moved upwards, freezing the lower half of the tower. Nataniel closed his eyes and focused on the energy inside of him. Something that made his chest warmer. And warmer. And warmer. His feet slowly began floating in the air and he rose up in the air while the tower continued freezing.
Beelzebub looked furious, "My dream! She's turning it into an utter nightmare!" He flew towards her and so did the other demons. But Athena's defences made her skin quite impenetrable, and strong. Beelzebub flew at her but got caught in a golden web thrown by Ariel.
"Curse you! Ajax, son of Aphrodite!" He tore the web and flew toward Ariel but Jevelene caught him in her palms and looked at Ariel, "Ariel," She leaned towards him, "Now, it's your turn," He smirked and clipped his fingers, the tower began freezing into a pale gold and Jevelene looked at his small frame, tucking his little boots which turned to gold and wearing his skin as green armour, he ran towards the tower and jumped down its surface, freezing it so fast that it caused a huge explosion of a snowstorm.
Beelzebub jumped out of Jevelene's hand but she grabbed him by his foot and smashed him to the ground. And the other gods attacked him, "LEVIATHAN! WHERE ARE YOU, YOU GOOD-FOR-NOTHING?!"
Skidding through the vines, freezing the tower behind him, Ariel moved down the tower. The snow seemed to look like a dense network of spider webs, all reaching and all cooling. He slowly froze the upper half of the tower as he fell down the tower. "ARIEL!" Jevelene yelled. "AJAX!" Aphrodite ran towards him but the opening to the worlds beneath closed with the growing ice, "NO!"
'Mother' Ariel closed his eyes as he fell, the tower froze beside him, 'This time...I abandoned myself before you could abandon me. And so I am, your seed. I am such that represents what you have become...Because
...Each of us eats a little bit of the people that we once knew.
Nataniel's eyes twitched as the tower continued freezing, he felt a gentle, warm touch on his palms, palms that were so cold, they could make one's skin tear apart. He felt someone clasp fingers with him, intertwining them, so close, that he could hear heartbeats, breathing, and tears fall down his face, "Don't forget. If he haunts you, freeze it,"
"You have destroyed me, Sylvester," He spoke in Finnish, his voice horse, yet gentle, as if he was about to cry, "And I allow you to dare, because nature is destruction. It is destruction that brings construction and regeneration. And that is beauty. And that is us. But no, that is not us.
No, that is me. I am beauty, the sixth star of the twelve heavenly stars, And this, this is my universe, you dare control me in my universe! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"
His eyes opened to a bright rainbow huge and a huge gust of energy and ice went through his body, tearing away the shadow of Sylvester and piecing through the tower, like a structure of significance. Akagi looked at Nate, whose body by now, was glowing so white that one must think of him truly as a star. His pale skin turned white as light, and his body started disintegrating, "NATANIEL!" Akagi ran to grab him and pull him down but Aleksei and Maks held him down, "Calm down,"
Lobelia made a wall separating them from Nataniel.
"HE'S OVEREXERTING HIMSELF!" "He's doing it for us... For the greater good," Evgeni had just begun to explain, but Maks intervened.
"My lord...Something is happening to Nataniel," They all looked up at Nate, whose body had reintegrated into longer, slender proportions. His skin was white and his hair slowly outgrew his pink skull to reach till his shoulders, then lost its colour to a warm-toned golden. His facial bones were restructured so differently that one couldn't tell if it really was Nataniel anymore or any different being, his nose lay higher, and his eyes were in perfect proportion with his ears, his deep brown eyebrows laid beautifully over his delicate skin and his lips looked gentle and perfectly arranged. Everything was in a magical symmetry, and his body was covered by a gentle fog, which slowly turned to fine linen, covering his body, and adorning it with ornaments.
And when he opened those heart-wrenching eyes. Everything went freezing.
The tower glowed brightly and the ice and energy went ahead to crash with Ariel's liquid nitrogen, overpowering it, and going further up, it tore open the closed ice opening and began spreading through heaven, it froze the demons and melted them into the soil. From there, their souls penetrated the walls of heaven, and again, they fell to hell for nine days, as the realm gates closed behind them. Jevelene's body began shrinking back to its normal size, and heaven, for the first time in millions of years, felt cold and dark. The plants began dying to the cold and losing their beauty, the gods lost the shimmer in their ornaments, and the sky turned dark with snowfall. The ambrosia rivers started freezing. The gods tried stopping the ice, but it wouldn't, it slowly invaded their homes and turned their gardens gloomy and ugly. The flowers lost their colours and turned white.
"Our home..." Dionysius gasped, "It's losing its beauty," "It's dying! We're dying!" Just then, Jevelene saw a field of blue flowers, blooming out of the Gatekeeper's castle and reaching the battlefield. Vierne and Lict ran after them and as soon as those blue roses touched the ice, the ice stopped spreading. In fact, it curled itself into a fence, guarding those flowers, like a mother. The ice stopped and nourished. Vierne remembered how the roses always grew in the winters, on the snow, and how she found it odd. But now, it all seemed to make sense. Those were the roses of snow, and this was a star of ice.
Hell froze completely, and Nataniel was gone. The tower fixed, and the sky of the mortal world began turning blue again as the clouds cleared out. Akagi, Aleksei and Maks stood at the decapitating landscape, cold and deserted. Aleksei put on his cap and fixed his coat, he turned back to leave and Maks followed him, crushing through the dried ice beneath their feet. Once swimming in lava was now empty and cold. And it would continue to be so for the next few billion years. The demons would have to live not in the warmth of hope but in the frost of perpetual hopelessness. A hell of the mind.
-To be continued
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