I'm back! Thanks to everyone for their emails, feedback and encouragement! Also special thanks to Shadow, Neto, Susz, Mags...thanks for being my friends. Thank you to David, "'cause every moment we share together/is even better than the moment before/if every day as as good as today was/then I can't wait till tomorrow comes". Now just a little note for everyone...fans of JC, AJ, Howie and Chris, these boys are coming back into the picture! In this chapter! Also, this chapter won't be very long because it's a "bridge" to connect the last parts together. Sort of like the domino I need to push before the rest come falling down. Don't worry, though, because all the chapters after this one are going to be much longer in content, but that means it will be a slower time of coming (which is still better than waiting a few months... ;p ). And not only the above-mentioned boys, but also the guys of Westlife are coming in too! Do I hear a cheer? ;p Also, I know that having a whole big bunch of characters is gonna be very confusing, so I'm going to make it easier for everyone. Not going to explain how, but no, I'm not killing anyone...or am I? Insert evillaugh.wav here Just thought I'd let you know... anyway, here's the story (after the stupid legalities underneath this passage, of course...) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This story contains homosexual content and should not be read by anyone under the age of 18. Also, this story does not imply anything about the sexualities of anyone from Nsync, Westlife, Backstreet Boys, a1 or any other celebrity mentioned here. I do not know them and their characteristics. This also does not imply anything about any other people mentioned in this story. Their names and descriptions are there but that doesn't mean that their characteristics are the same in real life. And none of them possess any special powers of any sort and this is totally fiction! And now you may read this next chapter! Happy reading!
For David L.Z. (Was there any doubt?) ______________________________________________________________________________ |The Daemon Gate - Chapter Seven|
JC paced worriedly around his hotel room. It had been almost two days since he had last contacted his friends. Chris was on his way to JC right now and his plane was scheduled to land in four hours time. JC had not heard any replies from Justin, Lance or Joey, and he wondered if anything had happened to them. It seemed, according to the hotel, they had just disappeared leaving everything behind, including their mobile phones and even clothes. The hotel management had kindly sent everything over to Justin's house but there was no trace of his friends. Lost in his thinking, JC started when his hotel room phone rang. He slowly walked over to the phone, hoping it would be one of the guys.
"Hello?" he answered, squeezing his eyes tightly and hoping.
"Hey J," replied the voice which JC recognised as AJ's.
"Hey AJ, what's up?" JC asked, a little disappointed.
"Oh, same old, same old," AJ responded lightly. "Except for the fact that Kevin, Brian and Nick have disappeared without a trace."
"You too?" JC asked, not really surprised.
"What do you mean 'you too'?" AJ asked.
"Justin, Lance and Joey have disappeared without a trace as well," JC replied. "Where are you now?"
"Err...downstairs," AJ said. "Howie's here too."
"Oh, okay then," JC said. "Come up to my room. Chris should be here in four hours or so."
The Boss smiled gleefully as she watched Ghaunadar approach the screaming human in the pit below. The great mass touched the human, a young man, on his exposed arm. There was a strange sucking sound and the screaming teen disappeared without a trace, his clothes falling to the ground. The Boss gaped at Ghaunadar's power. She tried to remember the teen, but she could not even remember his hair colour. She picked up his pink identity card (note: all singaporean IC's are pink) and read his name and looked at his face, remembering neither one. She smiled wickedly and muttered, "The sithi will be swallowed whole and none will remember them. All who are killed by Ghaunadar never existed in the eyes of everyone."
"Boss," a male malenta strode into the room, his yellow eyes gleaming evilly. The Boss turned around to look at him.
"We are set?" she asked. The malenta nodded. He broke into an evil grin and snorted in a twisted sort of happiness.
"Our mages have managed to tap the powers of the daemon gate," he said. "The vampires have been notified. Their power has been increased, and they are ready to attack the sithi force."
"Good," the Boss smiled. "We will not attack."
"What?" the malenta was shocked.
"We won't attack," the Boss repeated. "We do not have to. Already the sithi and their allies are preparing their attack on our different bases, the locations of which I have convieniently let them know subtly. They are after the bait, and we have set the trap. All we need now is for them to stumble into it. My spies are keeping me well updated."
"Will our spies rat on us?" the malenta asked. The Boss shook her head slowly.
"It is unlikely that they will," the Boss said. "Both have everything to lose if they do, and their lives to keep if they don't. Just keep one or two of our mages on hand to hide the energy of their telepathic connections with me from the sithi and their allies. This is one fight we cannot afford to lose by being found out."
"Yes Boss," the malenta nodded, turned and left the room. The Boss looked through the glass down to the pit. She pressed another button and let a human, a young girl this time, screaming out of her cage. She smiled evilly and contentedly as the girl's screams faded away, as did all memory of her.
Chris knocked on JC's room door. He had unpacked most of his things and was rushing to find out why JC had sounded so urgent on the phone. JC opened the door and ushered Chris in. Chris smiled at AJ and Howie as he stepped in. Before he could say anything, JC closed the door and said, "Okay, now we need to find out what happened to out missing friends."
"Talk about missing friends," Chris said, reaching into his pocket. "Look who I found. Or rather look who found me."
Chris withdrew a familiar crystal unicorn from his pocket. AJ's eyes widened and he grabbed Tilkeleb from Chris' hands. He closed his eyes and a blue mist formed outside the statue. The blue mist floated in front of AJ and Tilkeleb materialised.
"Tilk!" AJ yelled, hugging the unicorn. Tilkeleb whinnied a welcome and nuzzled AJ. Chris smiled happily.
"How did you find him?" AJ asked Chris. Tilkeleb playfully knocked AJ with his hoof.
"Actually, I found Chris," Tilkeleb said in his crystal clear voice. "I sensed his presence near the store where I was in and I sent him a telepathic message. He recognised me and bought me to bring back."
"Cool!" Howie said. "Now we may be able to find out what happened to our friends."
"And how's that?" JC snapped. "What good is having a unicorn if we don't know how to find our friends?"
"Maybe Estel took them away somewhere?" Tilkeleb offered.
"Estel's dead," JC said. "Has been for almost two thousand years already."
"How do you know that?" Tilkeleb asked patiently.
"Because no one can live that long," JC practically screamed.
"What's eating him?" AJ whispered to Chris, who shrugged.
"Maybe he's thinking of how foolish he was to break up with Lance," Howie said.
Tilkeleb looked JC in the eye and said slowly, "Estel is alive. Lalaith is alive. The sithi are immortal, they cannot age."
"Sithi?" JC, Chris, Howie and AJ asked in unison.
Tilkeleb began to tell the four boys about the wars, history and origins of the sithi and malenti while they listened intently, catching up on what they had missed the past two thousand years. When he was done, JC asked, "So how are we going to make contact with the sithi then? It still leaves us nowhere."
"That's where you'd be wrong," Chris said. "I happened to meet Mariah Carey recording a cover of Phil Collin's Against All Odds with this group called Westlife. After Mariah left, one of the guys came up to me with his eyes wide and asked me if I was Chris."
"That's nothing," JC said. "What has that got to do with our situation?"
"Well, he asked if I was Chris, not of Nsync, but of Nirnaeth Arnodied, and I recognised Nirnaeth's name so I said yes," Chris explained. "Mark Fillysilly or something like that, the guy who asked the question, told me that he was fighting daemons and would hope to maybe see me around since the sithi were trying to recall the heroes of Nirnaeth Arnodied to help out. He gave me the phone numbers of the group, introduced me to them and we talked until someone noticed he was gone and they went back to their hotel to look for him."
"Mark?" Tilkeleb asked. "Mark Feehily?"
"Yeah, that's it!" Chris exclaimed. Tilkeleb nodded.
"Who's that?" Howie asked.
"Mark is Estel's new love," Tilkeleb replied. "I don't know much about him except that he was supposed to inherit Stile's powers, though I have no idea when it happened if it has happened."
"Then we should contact that Westlife group," AJ said. "But will they be able to help us? If they don't have powers, we're just going to look like fools in front of them."
"They have powers," Tilkeleb said. "All the people from Ireland have powers, they just don't know they have them or how to use them. I can show them how to discover and use their powers."
"Okay, good," AJ said. "Contact them, Chris."
"Sir, yes sir!" Chris said, saluting, then rushing to the phone to call Westlife.
Shane had just woken up to go to the toilet and was ready to plop back into bed when his mobile phone rang.
"Bloody hell," he exclaimed, digging out his phone and trying to answer it before it woke up his room mate Kian.
"What in the bloody blazes are you doing calling at two thirty in the morning?" he screamed softly into the phone.
"Err, hi, did I catch you at a bad time?" the unfamiliar voice on the other end asked sheepishly.
"Who are you?" Shane asked irritably.
"Hi, I'm Chris, and I don't know if you remember me, but I need your help," Chris replied quickly.
"Oh, yeah, you're the shaggy haired guy," Shane said. "What help do you need?"
"We need your help to find Mark," Chris replied. Shane's eyes bolted open.
"Where's Mark? What did you do with him?" Shane accused.
"Nothing, I swear," Chris replied quickly. "We have a friend here who knows where he might be but we need your help to find him, as well as our friends too. How quickly can you get here?"
"Now," Shane said sarcastically, even though he spoke the truth. His sarcasm was lost on the enthusiastic Chris who instantly replied, "You can teleport?! Cool!"
"Okay, so what do you really want?" Shane asked.
"Just teleport here and we'll tell you," Chris said, and hung up.
"Bloody bugger," Shane muttered as he switched his phone off. He closed his eyes and tried to remember Chris' face and willed himself to Chris. He did not know how he was able to teleport, he just knew that he could when a car was about to knock him over and he willed himself to the other side of the road with his eyes closed and when he opened them, he found himself where he imagined himself to be. He felt the unknown energy surge through him and fade away and he opened his eyes. He glanced around the room and saw Chris and three other guys he vaguely recognised. And a unicorn. Shane blinked his eyes, rubbed them, and stared at the spot again. The unicorn was still there.
"Bloody hell!" Shane stumbled backwards, his eyes wide open in shock.
"Actually, I'm a unicorn," Tilkeleb smiled at Shane.
"Oh my gosh," Shane said, still in shock. "Bloody hell."
The Boss smiled as Aalakab entered the room. The vampire master was huge, standing almost eight feet tall, and was muscular and agile. He looked and was deadly, but powerful as he was, the Boss did not fear him. She knew she was more powerful than him.
"Has it worked?" she asked Aalakab. He nodded.
"My people are testing it out on each other," Aalakab said. "We have taken those weakest among us to test them."
"And what are the results?" the Boss asked, crossing her arms across her chest.
"We no longer crumble into dust when staked," Aalakab reported. "The stake prevents us from regenerating our wounds, but when pulled out, we heal almost immediately. Magic is only thirty percent effective against us, but it can hurt us. It takes a lot to kill us. Fire still destroys us, but only if we are staked."
"How about magick?" the Boss asked. Aalakab looked confused.
"Magick," the Boss said. "With a 'k'. It's the magick of the Wiccans, and it's different from the magic wielded by the mages."
"We have not tested that since we have no Wiccans to cast magick on us," Aalakab said. "We are confident that it will have the same effect as normal magic. Holy water still affects us, but it no longer kills. It just burns us like weak acid."
"Good," the Boss said. "Anything else to report?"
"Yes" Aalakab replied. "When my people died, the dust remaining began to form back for some of them."
"Which ones?" the Boss asked.
"The ones that were killed by beheading and injuries," Aalakab stated.
"Injuries?" the Boss asked.
"Those we did not remove the stakes from died from inflicted wounds, just like a normal human, and they crumble into dust. After they turn into dust, the stake is no longer inserted in them and as a result, they are able to regenerate again, in approximately five to ten minutes."
"Great!" the Boss replied cheerily. "Now all we need to do is seperate your people into seven groups and go to the ambush sites and we're all ready!"
Aalakab nodded and faded from site. The Boss threw her head back and began to laugh diabolically.
"Bloody HELL!!" Shane screamed as soon as he saw Mark. Mark was in the lounge of Estel's hideaway and his back was turned to the newcomers. As soon as he heard Shane's exclamation, he turned around as quickly as possible.
"Shane!" Mark was shocked. "Kian? Bryan and Nicky? And Chris, AJ, Howie and JC? And a...unicorn???"
"You little bugger, running out on us without telling us about all this?" Shane yelled at Mark, causing the boy to blush.
"Calm down, lad," Nicky said, patting Shane's shoulder.
"Calm down? BLOODY HELL!" Shane yelled. "How could he just disappear like that and not tell us about all the cool fighting?!"
" 'Cool fighting'?" Mark asked. "You're here to help in the fight? You know about the fight? You know how to use your powers? What are your powers? What's going on?"
"There there, don't strain it," Bryan said, patting the confused Mark on the head. "Just tell your dearest that we're here to help."
"No need for that," Tilkeleb said. "He's already expecting us."
"And you're right on time," Estel said appearing from nowhere. "Come on, everyone's waiting. No time for introductions, we have to go."
He closed his eyes and transported the group to the meeting hall one level lower. He opened his eyes and blinked to a table with two boxes, one big and one small, at the front of the room.
"Attention everyone," Estel spoke. "Justin and Peter have recently discovered the location of seven strategic malenti hideouts. Since there are forty two of us including the recent arrivals, I have decided to split us into seven groups of six."
"How are we going to decide that?" Sidney asked.
"We're going to draw names from this box to see who's working with who," Estel explained. "The malenti may be familiar with how we might group ourselves and our only chance is to surprise them by grouping with totally random people. They might try to figure out some sort of pattern to it, and they'll just end up wasting their time. Now we draw names and places."
Estel fished into the small box and read,"FunDazzle. The malenti keep a special orb in there of uncertain power. People think it's just a toy for the kids to play with when they're there. The following group will go to FunDazzle and steal the box."
He dug his hand through the large box and withdrew six names and opened them one by one, reading them aloud: "Charmaine, Paul, Brian, Britney, Ian and Lalaith."
The six in question nodded and left the room immediately.
"Second is United Square, an office building where they keep their official documents and results of magical tests. The following people will go there: Joey, Chris, AJ and Tilkeleb counted as one, Marcus, Shadow and Kenny."
Before the second group could leave, Estel had already dug out the third location.
"KK Mother's and Children's Hospital. They have hidden technology hidden there. Group is Mark, Justin, Bryan, Magenda, Susan and me. Fourth is Mt Alvernia hospital, also with hidden technology. Group four is Lance, David, Jason, Lydia, Steve and Leo. Location five, Temasek Polytechnic, reputed hideout similar to this one. Group five is Denny, Peter, Tara, Shane, Veron and Nicky."
Denny and Nick looked at each other sadly.
"Oops," Estel said sheepishly. "Error...that reads Nick, not Nicky. Location six, the old, abandoned San Yu High School building. There's a cemetary across the road from it so expect undead. Group is Kevin, JC, Chelsea, Grace, Neto and Sidney."
A large groan came from group six the moment they heard Sidney's name. The remaining people either sniggered or sighed with relief.
"Last group, you get the Science Centre. Possible entrance of the daemon gate. Your group is Vincent, Karene, Fariz, Kian, Howie and Nicky. It's possible that Ghaunadar is there as well."
"Ghaunadar won't show up until all of us are together," Vincent said boldly. "He won't be a concern to the very end. It's always the same in stories, the toughest guy is the last to show up and only when everyone's there."
"Of course, but don't forget that this is NOT a story," Estel said. "Go, we don't have much time. The malenti have managed to tap the powers of the daemon gate and are beginning to open it." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Well, that's it for this chapter... enjoy. Comments to be sent to ensstyenlc@hotmail.com Hope to hear from you soon! :)