"Keep going Second, tell us about your master!"
When the Second Elder paused his words, Sheikh Atractivo asked him to continue; his expression was more serious than ever. In the moments he felt sorrowful, he didn't allow his right arm to catch a breath.
Mora was nowhere to be found; the King managed to straighten up with difficulty and got to his feet in the arms of the soldiers rushing to his aid. His daughter, sobbing uncontrollably, was hugging his ruined body and crying. The man's eyes, however, were on his wife, whose head was severed from her body.
"What happened?"
He wasn't in his right mind; he kept repeating the same words over and over.
"Father, Mora killed my mother, my brother. She was going to kill me too, but the fiends and you stopped her. Traitors father, they want to destroy our Royal Family!"
Eyshan was both crying and using her venomous tongue to twist the dying man's perception of reality to her own advantage. Yes, what she said had most likely happened, but we had no intention of rebelling.
"Your Majesty the King, I am ready to pay the price for my daughter's actions!"
Abarran stepped forward; seeing the name and existence of the sect in jeopardy, he didn't hesitate for a single second.
"My mother is dead, do you think your life is enough?"
The King, coming next to Rojo on the altar with the support of Eyshan and dozens of soldiers, held his son's hands that hadn't grown cold yet.
"My son, my dear son!"
The King of Hell wasn't here. Instead of him, his daughter next to him, Eyshan, was doing the talking.
"My brother is dead, the Six Fiends are dead!"
The young girl's crying had stopped; her voice was booming. The warriors were smart men; seeing who the new center of power was, they immediately started rallying around her.
"What do you want?"
This time, my master, the Holy Blood Sect Sheikh, spoke; I still remember the sheer power of the energy he emitted even today. The warriors involuntarily took a few steps back; there was no way they were his match.
"Are you going to kill me too? I'm not afraid of you!"
Eyshan was playing the hero, but those around her didn't buy it. The young girl instantly changed her tune and dragged the other sects into the mess.
"If you wipe out my family, the other sects won't let you off the hook. They will come with an army spearheaded by the Holy Fire Sect and wipe your sect off the face of the earth."
Eyshan knew how to manipulate the others. What she said caused the warriors flooding into the hall in droves to form a human shield around her.
"Name your terms, little girl!"
The Grand Master cut in. Separating from the arms of her father hugging Rojo's lifeless body, Eyshan stood up and got right in his face.
"You will leave the Holy Blood Sect and live here, in the dungeon beneath my tower!"
"Do you have any idea what you're saying?"
When Eyshan, who is now the Queen of Hell, tried to throw her best friend into the dungeon, my master couldn't take it. His move was met with a response; a few of the warriors surrounding them went on the offensive.
Their goal was to suck up to the new center of power, but their end was an absolute disaster. When Abarran sliced their bodies in half with the knives he threw, their lower halves were still trying to run.
"I accept!"
No one can convince me otherwise. If my master and his friend Abarran wanted to walk out of there, no one could have stopped them, but they didn't. The man, who was one of the three grand masters in the world, was agreeing to the little girl's terms.
"Not enough! When you return to the sect, how can I be sure you won't raise an army and come to rescue him!"
Having gotten an inch, Eyshan started pushing for a mile. Even though she was hanging on by a thread at that moment, the situations she would drag the Holy Blood Sect into were way over her head.
"The Holy Blood Sect Sheikh will kill his Spirit Animal!"
I saw my master trembling uncontrollably; his energy had become so erratic that it turned into a pillar piercing the sky.
A moment later, a transparent being appeared next to him. It was in the shape of a human, but genderless. When looked at from one side, the other side could be seen. The sword my master used while fighting materialized in his hand, and without uttering a single word, he cleaved the being right down the middle.
The sword, starting the cut from the head, went straight through its legs without stopping and slammed into the floor. The crack formed from the force of the blow was so massive that the few remaining pillars of the hall also exploded and vanished.
"We did what you wanted, now you will give me your word!"
Abarran, stepping closer to her step by step while looking dead into Eyshan's eyes as he spoke, the warriors tried to get in his way, but the events that just went down kept them all rooted to the spot.
"You will not go after my daughter! You will forget your revenge and become the new Queen of Hell!"
The grand master extended his hands and allowed himself to be clapped in irons of his own invention; his energy was sealed. My master and I parted ways and bounced from the Hell Palace before the portals closed.
When the Second Elder finished his story, Sheikh Atractivo shoved a glass of booze into his hands. He didn't object and downed it in one go again; his imposing frame couldn't hide his fragile heart. The disciples, having learned the bad blood between the Holy Blood sect and the Hell Palace, also stepped aside.
The events they crammed into a single day were more than what many people would experience in a lifetime. First, they lived through the rebellion of the Clans at the ceremony hosted by their sect. Just when they barely dodged that bullet, Sheikh Atractivo went and opened a portal into their sworn enemies' dining hall. The stress caused by being tested with the tense atmosphere finally came to an end with them learning the century-old secret.
The Sheikh was walking down the narrow stairs. While his footsteps echoed in the room, the Second Elder moved in front of the stairs and sat down. The Third Sheikh's power animal climbed onto the sill of the wide window; the two of them were securing the hall.
The Hell Palace was hostile territory for them, and they had to stay on high alert. Ralf passed out cold right after the Second Elder's speech; his battered body couldn't take any more.
Lareina and Jashua were sleeping huddled tightly together in a corner. The young girl needed to process what she heard about her father.
The Second Elder retreated into his tough shell. As a result of the wall he built around himself cracking even a little bit and the light getting in tearing open his darkness-wrapped wounds again, he sat at the top of the stairs ready to throw down at any moment.
Alis joined the woman in red watching the outside from the window. The former power animal Alis wanted to be with the weasel he had fought for days and nights on end. Nafız was alone, soaking in the coldness of the wall she leaned her back against.
She knew what happened thanks to Mora, but she could only guess the fallout of the massacre she pulled off in the blink of an eye. When the missing pieces fell into place, the puzzle seemed to be completed, but there were still blank spots.
"Even if Eyshan broke her word, she didn't have the juice to send that many warriors after Mora. This whole thing can't be limited just to the Hell Palace; I bet my bottom dollar someone else had a finger in the pie!"
Time flowed differently for everyone throughout the night. For some, it went by in a flash, but for others, it felt like reliving a whole lifetime. The first rays of morning hit the hall; the squalor of the place wouldn't be able to hide behind the shadows.
A new day, along with the sound of footsteps coming from the stairs, was dawning over the Hell Realm once again. The Second Elder snapped to attention, but then moved away from the top of the stairs and cleared the way. The one coming was none other than Sheikh Atractivo, and he had a huge grin plastered on his face.
"Nora, Jashua, Lareina, and Alis, you're coming with me!"