It's All Because of Me
It's All Because of Me
Ariel felt her heart shattering into countless pieces upon hearing those words.
"What are you saying?" she cried out loud.
However, without saying anything else, Damien let go of that vampire's hand.
"My lord!" that vampire tried to grasp Damien's hand.
However, he had already fallen deep into the dark abyss and disappeared.
"No!" A stunned whisper escaped Ariel's lips.
And before she could even process what had just happened, the earthquake stopped, and the portal to Hell also closed.
There was not even a single crack left on the ground. It was as if none of that happened at all.
Ariel dropped down to the ground on her knees. She touched the ground with her palms and wailed like a banshee, "Nooooooooooooooooo! Damieeeeeeeeennnn!"
That vampire had thought of killing Ariel earlier. However, after witnessing the bond between her and his late King's heir, he gave up the idea. He left Ariel all on her own and ran before he changed his mind.
Ariel slammed her fists on the ground and screamed so loudly that her throat hurt, "You cannot run away from me just like that. Come back, you idiot! Come back!"
She recalled Damien's last words to her. It finally occurred to Ariel that she might never see Damien ever again.
"Why would he even say that? Why would he even say that we would never meet again?"
The whirlwind of emotions spiraled in her heart and came out in the form of a flood from her amber eyes. She started to bawl her eyes out at the thought of losing her friend forever.
Her heart couldn't take that dreadful thought of never seeing her friend again.
Her gut-wrenching cries filled the whole sky as she further screamed, "Does he hate me that much that he thought it would be better to get swallowed by the ground than to take my hand?"
"Why? Why did all of this happen? Why did I have to run away from the Palace? It's all because of me... It's because I stepped out of the barrier. Everyone warned me that bad things would happen to me if I stepped out. But I ran away anyway!"
"If I knew that I would lose him the day I stepped out of the barrier, I would have never come outside. Ever."
Ariel gritted her teeth and slammed on the ground even harder. With every slam of her fist, her fist started to bleed and the ground started to crack.
When the crack was wide enough, a sudden thought came across her mind. She felt that if she kept on going down through the cracks, maybe she would find Damien somewhere inside.
Her heart ached when another thought hit her hard, "Maybe he is stuck somewhere. What if he is suffocating?"
She hurriedly got back up on her feet and with all her might, she forced the crack to open further.
"Arghhhhhhhh…" she screamed and put all her energy into making the crack deeper.
Her action caused another tremor. The tremor not only affected some villages of Mihir but also some of the villages of Wyverndale that were close to the border.
She had made a crack wide enough for several elephants to fit in at once. The slim cracks even reached the Mystic Red village.
And the crack was so deep that Ariel could hear underground water falling further down.
"Damien!" she shouted inside the crack.
Obviously, there was no answer. All she could hear were her own echoes.
"I will go and fetch him myself," she wiped her tears and got ready to jump inside.
But right then, God flicked his hand and restored the portals connecting the Heaven and the Earth realms.
He looked at his wife and asked, "Asherah, take our granddaughter home. And ask Theodore and Adeline not to scold her for running away."
The Goddess gave a slight nod to her husband and in the blink of an eye, she was standing in front of Ariel.
She closed the cracks back up before Ariel could dive in.
"Ariel," she gave a sad look to her granddaughter. She kneeled down and held out her arms for Ariel.
Ariel instantly broke down into tears again and ran into the safety of her grandmother's arms.
She tried to explain what had happened while crying and hiccupping, "Granny, Dam-Damien… fell inside. He fell… the earth cra-cracked…"
"Shhh…" the Goddess lightly caressed Ariel's disheveled hair and tried to calm her down, "I know, Ariel. I'm sorry that I didn't come here earlier. I am extremely sorry for what happened tonight."
Ariel put her arms around her grandmother's neck and begged, "Granny, please bring him back. Find him, please. He will die."
The Goddess kept on caressing Ariel's hair and spoke in her ever-so-soothing voice, "Ariel, nothing bad has happened to Damien. He simply went back home."
"Then take me there. I want to see him with my own eyes," Ariel demanded again.
However, the Goddess politely declined, "Ariel, he is also going through the same pain as you. I would say even worse. Give him some time. He will come around."
Ariel's crying slowed down to some extent. She wanted to believe her grandmother that Damien would indeed come around.
When Ariel calmed down some more, the Goddess got up on her feet while holding Ariel in her arms. "Let's go home, shall we?"
Ariel lightly nodded. And she further added, "Take me to my father. I want to talk to him. No, I need to talk to him."
"Yes, the two of you need to talk," the Goddess also agreed with Ariel.
She didn't want Ariel to do any more stupid things just because she was kept in the dark like Damien. And she definitely didn't want Ariel to blame her father and make him the bad guy.
The Goddess teleported both of them inside Adeline and Theodore's antechamber.
It just so happened that they also entered the antechamber from outside after seeing Niylah.
"Mother? What are you doing here in the middle of the night?" Theodore asked.
He sensed that something was off after seeing the swollen and red eyes of his daughter.
Everyone in the Palace had been so occupied because of Niylah that none of them realized Ariel and Damien were missing from the Palace.
The Goddess lost her calm voice when she reprimanded her son, "Didn't you even realize that your daughter was missing from the Palace? Were you in that deep sleep?"
Both Adeline and Theodore felt their heart sinking.
Adeline hastily sprinted to her daughter and asked, "Right! Where were you, Ariel? Did you get hurt?"
Instead of answering her mother, Ariel slid down from her grandmother's arms and ran to her father.
She kicked her father on his knee and shouted while shedding her tears which she had barely held in, "Why did you kill Damien's father?"
Even though his daughter kicked him on his knee, Theodore felt the pain in his heart.
He couldn't help but wonder, "How does she know?"
But still, he tried to feign ignorance and asked, "What are you saying, Ary? Who told you such nonsense?"
Ariel sat down on the floor and curled herself into a ball. And she mumbled while crying, "I went to Mihir. A vampire told us. Why did you kill…"