There was a gargoyle resting in center of the furthest gallery.
There were five in the Academy map, buy this one was the furthest and on the underground floor where Felix's lair is, though in the opposite wing to his. And as I used my green flame to lighten all the black candles of the seven chandeliers spread above on the fancy emerald ceiling, I noticed that everything was covered with a different black silk sheet. Then, I used my telekinesis to take all of them and my wind magic to clean all the thick layers of dust away.
That was when I saw the pretty gargoyle female in the center of the gallery, frozen in a peaceful stance where she's kind of sitting down on her ankles, with a huge lance in her hand.
Her frozen figure over a marble pillar in the center, three meters up.
["Uh, I don't think this place is used."]
"No shite," I put Skyfall by Adele on the speaker. "What gave that up? The seven magical locks in the also magically locked marble doors, that I had to use the Serpent's key to open? The dust? The sheets? Or the fact that it looks like it hasn't been visited by anyone in centuries?"
["Everything together?! I don't think we should be here!"]
I rolled my eyes, "I think this place was just waiting for me to come here," then I pointed to the intimidating gargoyle of medea stone. "She was. If what Mia told me is to be believed!"
After a second of ponding, he grinned, ["Will you try?"]
"Connecting myself to her and testing the theory out?" I flashed a grin with fangs, propelling myself in the air enough for me to be face to face with the gargoyle. "Of course."
["How will you do this?"]
"I have no bloody idea," grinning in excitement, I raised my right ring finger, the one with mom's ring, and touched her forehead softly.
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When I found myself in an entire different place, as if teleported to another time where the gargoyle was frozen, I gasped at the realization that all Mia told me was indeed true. My kind does have a connection to all the gargoyles. I do.
"Jack, it worked!" I gasped.
But when he didn't answer me, I looked around and he was gone.
"Seems like only I am here," I calmed any anxiety down, and took a better look around, feeling as if I was in an entire different world. A incredibly beautiful and ancient one.
As my feet touched the adorned garden, and I scanned the royal-ish place, in the back of the most beautiful emerald palace I've ever seen, so large that my eyes couldn't see the end of it, so tall that it touched the skies. No. The sky is everywhere, I realized.
"Is this bloody shite a sky palace?" I gasped, and as I walked further to where I felt the gargoyle from the gallery, I found at least seventy frozen gargoyles spread around, except for one in the middle of the place I believe to be a training ground.
She wasn't in stone, she was in flesh and bone and ripped, her muscles a proof of her intense training. Standing tall around 1.80m, she held her emerald with medea stone lance high with her right arm, and a enormous stone shield that must weigh a bloody lot on her left arm. Sweat glistening her perfect olive skin, her waist-length straight light brown hair tight on one root braids, and her chestnut eyes beaming with resilience and determination.
But she was the only one moving, the only one not frozen. And when she turned to me, she blinked thrice as if not believing what she was seeing, then, she put her weapons aside and fell to her knees with grace, "You've finally came, my Queen!" Then she held my hand and kissed it.
She called me what? I gulped, "Do you know me?"
She kept her head down, "You look like our liege, you have the Royal ring, and you came to me," she said calmly, but her rich voice in a ancient accent was powerful. "You are our Queen. A black winged serpent. A Miralanthor, are you not?"
I looked at my ring which mom made for me, gulping, "Did you just said this is a Royal ring?"
A nod, "Yes, so is your necklace, my Queen." Now that's weird.
"My name is Hel," Queen is too much. "What is yours?"
"Lydia Van Den Akker, Queen Hel!" Oh, Crone be damned.
Sigh, "You may rise, Lydia," I touched her shoulders and she did so, growing taller than me by a lot. "What do you remember?"
"His Late Majesty, your grandfather, King Umbra Miralanthor, had to make a decision when war was on the horizon," she clenched her fists, "let us fight for him as we should, or fight himself with the other winged serpent clans so the causality would be catastrophic. Your grandmother, Her Late Majesty, Queen Wilhelmina Miralanthor wanted to let us fight, but she respected her mate's decision. We all did."
Grandparents is a way to sum it up, though there are probably about a hundred 'great' before that. "My grandmother's name was Wilhelmina?"
A nod, "Yes, Queen Hel!"
I gulped, "Wilhelmina Rosalind Miralanthor, that's my name, but I prefer to be called Hel. Seems like I got it from her. My mom must have had a vision of the past and decided to name it like that," I held her hand. "What else happened, Lydia?"
She pressed her full heart-shaped lips in a thin line, "War happened, my Queen. Dragons, witches, vampires, seraphim, all shifters, fairies, elves, giants, nymphs, dwarves, sirens, krakens, demons, satyrs, centaurs, cyclops, gorgons, basilisks, unicorns, wolpertingers, felidars, wendigos, hippogriffs, manticores, banshees, harpies, sphinxes, hydras, deer foxes, and humans. All got together for the first time to destroy us."
Shite, that's a lot more races than I thought, "And you were all alone? No allies at all?"
"We had, but they were just a few, races that were small but loyal to our King. Nine-tailed foxes, phoenixes, pegasus, vulpids, eldricorns, cat sìths, and blood stags. The winged serpents, though in seven clans, were also small in comparison. But the biggest strength on our side was always our gargoyle army, which the King and the council decided not to use."
"Because using it may have guaranteed our victory, but it would be at the cost of the lives and extinction of all those races," she nodded at my words, lips trembling. "Is that why grandfather chose to froze you?"
"His Late Majesty chose to freeze our gargoyle bodies in time to gain time, my Queen. To keep us untouched as the war broke out. To keep us for you. For when his only surviving descendant came to take us out of our induced-stasis and use us to save everyone. That was the type of King he was, Queen Hel. He had the power to destroy everything, but he chose to try and save it, even though all those damned races knew was envy of the power the Triple Goddesses gave the winged serpents and the gargoyles."
I clenched my jaw feeling sick, "Our purpose was to bring union for the races, peace, to balance all of them out, and they did this?" I growled, "I'm sorry, Lydia. How long did you wait?"
Her eyes shone sympathetically, "Seven millennials, my Queen."
My mouth went dry and I lost my breath. Mia is more than seven millennials old? What in actual bloody fuck? "Seven. Millennials?"
A nod, "We feel the time passing outside, but we can't do anything except wait for the descendant to find the crown and come to us, as the third Goddess assure us, a long, long, long time ago, it would happen!"
"The Crone?"
"Yes, Queen Hel. The Crone did all she could to help us without interfering on the events, while the Maden and the Mother only watched it all unfold and did nothing. The Crone came out of her way to secretly help us, and when King Umbra told her what he had decided, though she felt hurt by what was to come, she helped him on the time spell to keep the army as it is now. In here, it's like a difference dimension where we live out life as we always did back then," shite.
"She knew I would come?" I gasped.
"Of course, she had the most powerful foresight of the future, my Queen. Maden sees the past. Mother sees the present. Crone sees the future. And it was thanks to her reassurance, that we were able to accept it all!"
Wait, "Did you felt when my kind… fell?"
"Yes. We were connected to the King, and he was connected to all the winged serpents and his allies. We felt it through him. Those who could not die, were imprisoned in a place no one ever escapes from," a chill ran down my spine.
Subconsciously, I knew where it was, "The 9th circle of hell."
Her eyebrows twitched as if she was in physical pain, "Yes. In the Pit of eternal suffering, the worse punishment anyone who be cursed to. The ones who survived the war as winners felt in the right to do so, to avoid the remaining allies of the King to have any chance of coming back on them."
My eyes burned and before I knew, tears rolled down my eyes, "I… Lydia, I need the Crown of Chaos to connect myself with all the army. I'm only able to be here with you because your frozen body is in the depths of forgotten gallery of Belladonna Academy, where I am right now. I see the other gargoyles around you, but I can't really seem them, they are all frozen to me."
"I know, my Queen. We'll wait, but now we have hope. We know you are here and doing your best to get to us. It's a concrete hope of what will come. There is a war in he horizon, a different one, but a war still."
A nod, "Yes. Our enemies this time are the dragons. I myself have been imprisoned by the Supreme Dragon Queen, who happens to be the mother of my father, for two thousand years. She killed my mother when I was 7 in front of my eyes, kidnapped me, tortured me, and put me on stasis. She's a tyrant who is governing over the other races, trying to play God."
Her eyes narrowed in determination, "I'll spread word. We'll train harder, and prepare for war. We'll help you destroy her and get revenge. But I beg you to use us, my Queen."
I grinned, "I'm not my grandfather, Lydia. I will use you!"
And the relief that exhaled from her, was outstanding, "You are different, my Queen. Your suffering build you like one of us. I can smell the yearning for war and justice in you. It resonates with me. With us all."
"The only problem is that I have no idea where the Crown is."
But she didn't seem surprised on the least. "It's with King Umbra. I don't know where, none of us do, but we feel it in him. If you find where they sealed his dead body, Queen Hel, you will find the Crown."
How cruel can they be to seal my grandfather's dead body? "I will. I will search everywhere. I will go to hell if I need to, but I will find it. I can promise you, Lydia, I'll do anything in my power to find this bloody damn Crown of Chaos, unfreeze and gather the army, and we'll destroy all of our enemies of the new world."
Her face beamed and she looked breathtakingly beautiful, "We are will you no matter what you decided, my Queen. We were made to serve you, and we'll do so until our last breathe."
Gulping, I felt more tears running down my eyes. "Thank you."
"There's no need to thank me, or any of us, my Queen."
"Thanks to you, I'm now able to feel hope that we'll get through all this, Lydia. So, thank you," I held her hand firmly. "It means a lot to me."
"Find the Crown of Chaos, my Queen. We'll wait for you!"