Filed to story: Sorry Alpha I Am Wolfless Novel
“Hmm. Let’s see, it’s..” I stopped speaking to myself and just froze. I could not be reading that right. Not at all.
“What is it, Joaquin?” Trevor came over to me then. He waved his hand in front of my frozen face as I watched the time on my phone.
“Do you guys know how long we have been in here?” I didn’t say anything else to him or the others. Just that.
“Maybe two hours?” Trevor was pulling out his phone now too.
“Yeah, that would be my guess too.” Noah added, also grabbing his phone from his pocket.
“Yeah, it hasn’t been any longer than that. I mean, it’s not like it’s been.. It’s been sixteen hours?” Carter was about to agree with the others when he saw the time on his phone. All of them were now pulling out their phones, aside from Gloriana and Valerian since they didn’t have them.
“How in the world has it already been sixteen hours? I mean, Riviana hasn’t been in the Hall of Damnation that long, I just know that she hasn’t. So how is it that time is passing that quickly?” Gloriana was perplexed as she looked at Trevor then at me.
“Yeah well, that question took you fifteen minutes to ask.” Carter held up his phone. “Time is moving insanely fast right now.”
“Does that mean that we are stuck in here right now?” Juniper looked around at everyone. “And is time passing this quickly for everyone else? If time is passing us by that quickly then it would basically make us all look like we’re frozen to everyone moving at normal speed.”
“Or would we be moving at super hyper speed or something? We’re obviously moving at an accelerated speed for some reason, but I don’t know what it is right now.” Paul shrugged and pulled Juniper toward him and held onto her.
“I think this has to do with the magic that Talia used. We’re seeing into a place where time moves differently there than it does here. I think time there is slower than it is here.” I was watching the screen now, just seeing my Little Bunny and the others flying through the hall. “I think time here moves quicker than it does there. So, if we were to be watching her at our normal speed then they would all be moving super slow. There would be no point in watching Riviana and the boys on this screen if we couldn’t see what they were doing. This super speed that we seem to be moving at, I think it’s the only thing that is stopping this from being a picture.”
“Now that you mention that Joaquin, I do believe that I have heard about that before.” Gloriana looked at me with thoughtful eyes. What about you, Val?”
“Yes, it sounds familiar.” That was all that Valerian had to add.
“So, what do you think will happen if we leave this room while the magic is in effect? Will we be able to get back in, or would we be stuck out there until we close the magic? And how do we close the magic?”
“Those are good questions, Mom.” I thought about it for a minute, trying to give her answers that I didn’t have.
“I don’t think that all of us can stay in here that long. That would not be fair to everyone else. If we’ve been in here that long, I know that my kids are missing me.” Juniper was on the verge of tears when she said that.
“And I have work to do. As the mayor of Riviana Falls, I need to be there.”
“I think some of us need to leave. And one will try to come back in. If they can’t, then we know that they’re stuck out. But only a few of us should stay.” Samuel was trying to be helpful and diplomatic here, so I let him say what he needed to.
“I agree.” Noah nodded at him. “And those of us that leave, please inform the others what is happening. We don’t want more people to worry about us.”
“I am staying.” I wasn’t going to let anyone talk me out of it.
“As am I.” Noah added, though I knew that was going to be the case.”
“I will stay as well.” Valerian stepped up next.
“And me.” Trevor was the last. Everyone else was too busy to stay here too much longer. I didn’t know how long we were going to be in here for. Another day. A week. Who knew? I would miss so much with the kids, but they would know that I was watching after their mommy and brothers so that should make things a little easier on them.
Gloriana, Juniper, Paul, Eve, Wesley, Samuel, Mom, and Carter all left the room. It was just the four of us left behind. Samuel had agreed to try to come back in, but it obviously wasn’t working. Or he just hadn’t tried just yet.
Now that it was just the four of us, Valerian used his magic to put a very large couch in front of the screen. We all sat there among a mound of fluffy pillows and hearts filled with worry. It was time to see what happened to my Little Bunny.
****
Riviana
****
Now that I was doing my best to keep my emotions in check, I was able to move us through the Hall of Damnation at a rapid pace. Albeit one that didn’t scare the boys or the men with me.
If I didn’t know for a fact that I was moving way too fast, I would have just called them all a bunch of babies. But that wasn’t fair, especially to the boys. They were unborn babies. They didn’t have any experience in life at all and yet they were following me through the depths of hell. They were braver than more people in the world, simply because they had been trying to help me out from the beginning. I would never insult them like that, ever.
The cells were flying past us on either side now. They were moving by us so quickly that we couldn’t see who was in them, nor what was happening in them. That was actually the best way that these things could be. It was better for the others not to know what was going on in this place. Rudy and Alexio may be demons, but they don’t belong in this part of the underworld. And the boys didn’t need to see that at all. I needed to protect them as much as I could. Now and forever.
There was one thing that I noticed the further back that I went into the Hall of Damnation. It got quieter. The deeper in, the less the souls that were being tortured screamed. It most likely had to do with them accepting their fate or just losing all touch with their reality. Whatever it was though, they didn’t make a single noise as the shadow reapers worked on them.
I had seen more than one of those reapers out of the corner of my eye, but I never looked close enough to make it so that I could see them clearly. That would have made me slow down and actually see the tortures. I didn’t want that either. No one, not even me, needed to see the tortures.
It was also getting darker. There was less light. And there weren’t any brightly glowing souls to light up the hall either. It seems that, out of everyone we had passed so far, only my father had repented for his sins. Only my father seemed to regret what he had done. That was pretty awful to think about. How much hatred were the others harboring? How much was still weighing down their souls?
I didn’t really have a lot of time to think about that. The moment that the thought slipped into my mind, I could see the end of the hall looming before us. In the distance, I could see what was essentially an enormous and ornately carved cell door.
The door seemed to be shaped like an Ankh. That right there told me that it had to do with Thoth. That was his symbol after all, and on top of that, the cell beyond it was a lot larger than what the others appeared to be like. And there was light coming from within that cell as well.
It was like everything about Hekate’s cell was completely different from the other cells around her. This evil goddess may be a prisoner, but she didn’t seem to be getting treated the same way. She didn’t seem to be getting punished and she had a lot of creature comforts that the others didn’t have for themselves.
In the cell that housed that evil goddess, I saw a large bed that was made out of white marble. On top of that marble bed, there was a mattress that looked luxurious and soft. It was definitely not the bed of someone who was in prison. It looked like the bed of someone who was being pampered.
