She Belongs To The Devil

"What in the name of hell?" Joyce jumped a little and screamed inwardly. "She needs help? Who is 'she'?"     

Joyce felt chills in her heart and wondered, "Is it Ariel? Did they get into some trouble?"     

"Walk…"     

The moment Joyce heard that eerie whisper again, the capsule around her neck tugged forward. She tried to press down that capsule. But it did the same thing again.     

"Is it trying to take me somewhere? Perhaps to where Ariel and Damien are?" Joyce thought to herself and without giving it another thought, she began walking in the direction that the capsule was pointing at.     

Inside the girl's room, Niylah was woken up from her sleep when she heard the floorboard creaking when Joyce had jumped after getting startled.     

She half-opened her eyes to check the source of the sound. She found out that both Ariel and Joyce weren't inside the room. But she didn't think much of it other than guessing that the two of them had gone to the bathhouse.     

Niylah closed her eyes again and fell asleep.     

---     

Up in heaven's garden, God was busy watching over his creations and admiring the daily lives that some excellent ones were living.     

Every once in a while, he would focus on Wyverndale Palace boundaries and he would get back to watching the others again.     

"That Kingdom has managed to prosper a lot," he looked at one of the small Kingdoms across the sea and admired the hard-working people. His heart would be happy whenever he saw humans making progress.     

But no matter how happy he was by watching over his creations, one thing would always keep bothering him at the back of his mind.     

And that was, of course, his granddaughter Ariel.     

Though the Goddess had practically blocked the live view of the Palace from Heaven, and he couldn't directly see his granddaughter, God still kept up with Ariel's progress through the memories of others who frequented in and out of the Palace barrier.     

He mostly looked into Theodore and Damien's memories because they were the ones who had very close interactions with Ariel.     

"I can see the improvement in her powers. I must say, Adeline and Theodore are doing a great job in teaching her and training her. Asherah has also been guiding her. But…"     

He heaved a deep sigh and thought, "But I can't help but notice that behavior-wise, she takes a lot after her father. Not that I don't like her playful and mischievous nature. In fact, most of the children are like that."     

God's vision dilated when he recalled how Theodore, being the youngest son, was very dear to him. And in the end, how he sided with Lucifer to try and ruin his ultimate creation.     

So, he couldn't help but wonder if Ariel would be the perfect granddaughter that he desired, or if she would also follow in her father's footsteps.     

As Ariel had never stepped out of the boundaries ever since she was a three-year-old, he could not see into Ariel's future.     

That was also the reason why he was constantly looking around the Palace boundaries. From Damien, he knew that today his granddaughter was going to try to sneak out of the Palace.     

He wanted to see her with his own eyes and he also wanted to see the flow of her future.     

"Looking very happy, aren't we?" he suddenly heard his wife's voice from behind him.     

He smiled and turned around to see his beautiful wife. And while maintaining that calm and serene smile on his face, he threw a satire at his wife, "I hope you won't try to come in between my granddaughter and me if she decides to walk out of your shackles today."     

The Goddess also gave a smile to her husband and walked towards him. She gently held his hands and said in an equally satirical tone, "And I hope that you won't try to run off to the Earth Realm to hug your granddaughter. You might scare her."     

Ever since the last bitter incidents during the war, the two of the supreme entities of the universe barely looked eye-to-eye with each other. And their relationship became more strained than before ever since the birth of Ariel.     

Both wanted to protect Ariel from each other's shackles.     

God gently rubbed the back of his wife's palms with his thumb. And he reassured his wife, "Don't worry. I won't go running after my granddaughter. I don't want you to put up even more barriers at the cost of your divine life force. I don't want to make my wife weak."     

"Oh, isn't that very sweet of you," the Goddess smiled at her husband.     

However, she refused to leave his side. She didn't trust a word he said. And she wanted to keep him in check if Ariel did indeed run away from the barriers that she had set up.     

Unlike God, she could see Ariel and Damien already approaching the walls of the Palace.     

She would have already gone to the Palace herself to stop those two if it wasn't for her husband who had sneakily barred all of the means of travel as well as communication between the Heaven and the Earth Realm.     

So all she could do was helplessly watch everything play out from Heaven. And also, stop her husband from going to the Earth Realm to sweet talk Ariel into following him, or worse, kidnap her and bring her to Heaven.     

---     

"Do we fly from here?" Damien glanced at the tall wall and asked Ariel in a whisper. "If we jump and try to scale this tall wall, the sound might alert the guards."     

However, Ariel had already well thought of a different plan. "The wind pressure will be too high when we take off."     

"What do we do then?"     

"Leave it to me. Just hold on tight," Ariel whispered to Damien.     

In the next moment, Ariel did a series of hand gestures and when she was done, the air started to funnel under their feet.     

Soon after that, both of them were slowly lifted by the air. Ariel controlled where the air was supposed to take them. And after crossing the wall, the air gently put them back down on the ground.     

Ariel looked down at her feet for a second. She couldn't believe that she had finally stepped out of those tall walls that had confined her.     

She looked around her and waited to see if anything bad would happen to her. Her whole life she had been hearing that something bad would happen to her if she was to step out of the Palace boundaries.     

But when she finally got out, she felt that all those things she had heard from her parents and her granny were lies.     

She took a deep breath in and glanced at Damien.     

Damien gave an appreciative look to Ariel for safely bringing them out of the wall without making a sound.     

And the two of them covered some more distance by walking. When Ariel was sure that they had reached a safe distance, she glanced at Damien and gave a knowing nod.     

And both of them spread out their wings and took off to taste the cool breeze high above in the sky.