Hell is Empty and All the Devils are Here

One Year Before the Present Day

Two Months After Althea Disappeared

…......

The doors to the throne room opened. Mireya sat on her throne utterly spent. She had been exhausted in the grief of loss, the pain of broken hope, and the anger over what had become of everything she loved. She had lost her color and energy as she had been up many nights with the nobles and delegates of many towns and villages since the coming of the Mist just a week ago. Even her three Healers that had been brought to replace Althea could do little against the abuse her body and spirit had so recently suffered.

Durai walked up the carpeted path towards his sovereign in his same accustomed grace and confidence. Mireya hardly let him fully arrive before her before she spoke with seething anger and disappointment, "What happened, Durai?"

Durai took a knee before her and bowed his head in a show of contrition. "My Lady, I do not know. I have reviewed the spells over and over. Some miscalculation -"

"Obviously!" She raised her voice to a near shout. "But you don't make miscalculations, Durai. You're the most careful, calculating man I know." Mireya barely let slip some of the hostility she had held against her trusted court Enchanter. Since Althea's disappearance, she had looked upon him for answers and received none where before he had them all, and she didn't know how well she could trust that.

"My Lady," Durai began feigning deep remorse flawlessly, "even the wisest and most careful soul can make a mistake. That is the nature of life itself. Don't we all have regrets?"

Mireya could hardly rebuke or argue with him what was truth no matter how much she wanted to. Too well did she know, especially now, mistakes and regret.

"Maybe some things are never meant to be and should never be tried," Durai continued.

Mireya sighed in frustration and defeat. Most of all she felt guilt. Her deepest wish and request to this Enchanter did this, so this was her fault. "What do we know, at least?"

"The spell I tried to bring your brother back is an Ancient Magic long forgotten outside the crumbling pages of archaic books. Something went wrong, some interpretation maybe. Regardless, it didn't bring your brother back -"

"No kidding!" Mireya interrupted. "He was just about the ONLY thing it didn't bring back." She sighed long and loud in her contempt. "Go on."

"From the alter of the palace temple, a mist was born from the spell. This Mist seems to be...well, alive. It moves with will and purpose. As it moved from the temple to the land beyond the castle, it appears to have brought forth the souls of ones long buried. They have escaped their rest in the earth, and they are...Immortuos."

"The undead..." Mireya whispered to herself. "So, it is true?"

"Precisely. And the Mist has not dissipated. It keeps moving and, I don't know, feeding on the land somehow."

Mireya stood and began to pace. "Meanwhile the Immortuos are terrorizing everything. They are angry, they are destructive, they are unstoppable. I mean, how do you kill that which doesn't truly live?!" Mireya sat again at her throne. Even the small pacing drained her. "How do we stop this."

Durai dropped his head feigning his false shame even more. "I have tried all I know since this began. Nothing I do seems to stop this. It's like a wound spreading sickness and death. I began studying books long buried in the archives intently, books even I hadn't looked upon before. I have been desperate to fix this. From all I could find, I cannot."

Mireya buried her head in her hands feeling utterly defeated at Durai's pause. That was it then, the word was doomed to this. If the most powerful master of the world's Magic couldn't find a solution, then what hope was there for anyone else?

"But," Durai began again, "maybe a Healer can."

Mireya raised her head at this news dumbfounded. "A Healer?" She found this news hard to believe. Her own three Healers at court couldn't even give her the strength to sleep through the night anymore. She had little faith they could do anything make this right.

"This Mist is like pestilence spreading from a wound in nature brought forth at the palace alter. It's a spreading sickness, and only the nature of a Healer's mastery into their special Magic can have hope to mend this. But," Durai paused to make sure Mireya really understood, "it would have to be an exceedingly powerful Healer."

"Althea?"

"If only we could find her, if she is even alive. Whoever it is, they would have to be as powerful in their knowledge as she was."

Mireya's eyes became distant in memory. She recalled the morning waking up with Althea gone. They searched the castle all morning and into the late afternoon. It wasn't until she found Althea's hairbrush left at her bedside that they extended the search beyond the palace. They searched for a full month. That's when Baldrik started to get worse.

And then she lost them both.

"Where could she have gone? What could have happened to her?" Mireya thought out loud to herself.

"Yes, I miss her too." At least in this he wasn't putting on a show. He had been truly destroyed at losing her. He'd do anything to get her back. Anything. "Maybe if she hadn't left, Baldrik wouldn't have chosen to leave us; he may have been more willing to stay with help."

"Don't you say that!" Mireya spat at him.

"Which part? The part where he decided to end his own life, or the part where it's Althea's fault?"

Mireya slumped in her chair. "Either."

"I'm so sorry, Mireya. My heart is broken from her leaving, and I can't help but be bitter."

"Maybe she didn't leave," Mireya quietly suggested in almost a whisper. She hated to hope that Althea had met a terrible fate, but she hated more to think that she would be so cold as to leave.

Mireya called an attendant to her and made the proclamation that all Healers be brought to the castle to try everything they could to undo what had been done.

….......

Durai closed the doors to his rooms after he left Mireya. He smiled to himself at things going better than he could have hoped. Usually in complicated plans there was always one thing or another that doesn't go as predicted. However, everything had for him. His endeavors must surely be justified if fate had smiled so highly on them.

He went out of his doors onto his open patio. He looked out upon all he could see and all he could not see spread vastly before him. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was her. His memories of her enveloped him completely, tantalizing him in exquisite agony. Though his Dove had flown away, he may have found the way to bring her back. And this time...

"You'll be back now," he said out to the horizon, "I'll be waiting."