Thanks to a dare gone wrong, Maggie Brumfield finds out the hard way that Heaven and Hell are real.
Prince Laudon, Lucifer's son and the current ruler of Hell, has locked Maggie into a sinister deal that grants him temporary ownership of her soul...
When the deities would come together to discuss the implementation of new laws regarding their kingdoms, God's proposals were rarely rejected. He is the one who presented the law that prohibited deities from mating with their creations. Three out of the seven deities opposed the law, and God's sister was one of them. With four against three, the law came to pass. Those that broke it would be punished by God, the deity who created the law.
What was once rumored but later turned out to be proven as fact is that Teleste, The Queen of Edreial, had a giant as her secret lover.
The giants were her creation. They were eccentric beings who had free will and no special powers. For many years, they successfully ran Edreial on their own. When resources went low and couldn't be replenished, only then would Teleste interfere. She loved her giants and would never let them suffer unnecessarily. When outsiders from other kingdoms tried to attack Edreial in the effort of taking over the land, Teleste would protect them fiercely. When the giants would pray to her, she would always answer. The love that the giants had for their Goddess was so intense it was almost palpable. A true bond existed between them and she.
Then, one day, having developed the desire to get even closer to her creations, Teleste cast a spell upon herself and transformed into a beautiful female giant named, Isolda. She wanted to experience the life of the giants firsthand rather than watching from above as a silent spectator. In secret, Teleste lived amongst her creations for five years. And as she later made plans to return to her palace in the sky, she met Hekall—the one the giants viewed as their king.
Hekall was intelligent, strong, and a good conversationalist. An instant, otherworldly connection formed between Teleste and Hekall. Unaware of who his lover truly was, Hekall and Teleste lived happily together for over thirty years. The same day that Teleste discovered she was pregnant—a rare but not impossible situation for a deity—God had learned about her relationship with Hekall.
A stickler for upholding the law, God imprisoned his sister and then made a case against her. He would go on to present it to the other deities and, after Teleste fearlessly admitted her sins and defended her right to love whomever she wanted, she was immediately found guilty and sentenced to death. With it being God's law that she had broken, he would be her executioner.
No one knew about Teleste's pregnancy, not even Hekall. On the day that Teleste was set to perish, God revealed himself to her giants. He prayed for their souls and then eradicated their kingdom, saving Teleste for last. She and Hekall never got the chance to say goodbye to one another. God became the new possessor of Edreial, and he went on to fill the land with his own version of Teleste's giants. He purposely made them smaller and weaker. Throughout history, they were called many names, including that of Human.
But Teleste was no fool. She always stayed one step ahead of the enemy, and for that, she did not die without a Plan B. Mere minutes after discovering she was pregnant, Teleste made a desperate and dangerous trip to Limbo, home of the unwanted and abandoned souls; a place where those who didn't deserve Hell but were rejected by Heaven came to rest indefinitely. Maaket, the guardian of Limbo, had magnificent powers. Only he could pull angels and demons from out of The Void if he deemed them worthy of a better afterlife.
Teleste bravely traveled to Limbo to speak with Maaket. The deities, all seven of them, had little in life to fear. Maaket was the exception. There was no Heaven or Hell for a deity. If killed, their soul merely ceased to exist. The only thing powerful enough to kill a deity was another deity. And Maaket. For that reason alone, he rarely had visitors.
Teleste knew that her brother would stop at nothing to see her punished, her death was inevitable, so she made a deal with Maaket to save her unborn daughter, Kalleste. For one to enter Limbo, they must give up a piece of themselves. In exchange for her knowledge and power, Teleste wanted Maaket to cast a special soul blocking and reincarnation spell on Kalleste, so that she may live undetected from the gods and never die. Maaket, an epistemophiliac, accepted her offerings and agreed to the deal.
Teleste returned to Edreial powerless and without a baby in her womb. She was at peace when she died.
. . .
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a/n: these flashback chapters are meant to provide a little more detail about the seven kingdoms/deities before everything collapsed. these chapters won't necessarily be told in order, so there will not be an additional storyline to follow. hope that makes sense.
