Marcus stared at her with wide eyes. "She can't be back! The gods sent her away with the Lord of Chaos to the Underworld dungeon, rumored to have been trapped down there for thousands of years!"
Natalia looked at him thoughtfully. "But didn't Walter say something about the Underworld being ruled by someone else?"
Marcus looked her, his head racing with thoughts. "His uncle Rais! I remember him saying something about his uncle taking over the Underworld, he must be the one who freed them."
Natalia groaned, "Who would be stupid enough to free the LORD of Chaos? This is not gonna be easy."
Marcus smiled, "It never is."
Natalia sighed, "I guess we better figure out what is going on with Moonflower."
"I'll try to go find Evanya", he added quickly, racing out the door before Natalia could say anything.
Natalia was about to go to Moonflower but a small groan interrupted her. She got up and saw Ramone trying to get up, and she raced over. "Stay still!", she ordered, pushing him down onto the bed.
Ramone looked at her, pain clouding his eyes. "No, I need to know what is going on, where are my sisters?"
Natalia looked at him solemnly, "We don't know. Hurl was... taken over and..."
Ramone looked at her, confused. Right, she thought to herself, he has been in a coma for almost 5 months, he has no idea of the horrors coming.
She looked at him slowly, thinking about what to say. She stared into his brown eyes, and knew that whatever she said, he would figure out it out on his own, so why not just tell him everything anyway?
He looked at her intently, his long overflowing brown hair covering half his face. She started from the beginning, when they had first came to the hut, until to where Evanya had gone missing.
He stared at her disbelief high in his eyes. He looked at her, and the bed he sat in shook. "My sisters are gone?" Natalia saw the flash of tears in his eyes.
She gazed at him sadly, longing to comfort him in some way, but the truth is the truth, and nothing can make that better, she knew it first hand. When her parents disappeared, the orphan caretaker tried to make it as though they had left, and would come back soon, but she had known better.
She placed her hand on the small of his back and slowly whispered, "Moonflower's in a bad state of illness right now and we can't find a cure, your sister, Evanya, has gone missing and we are assuming she may be hurt. We haven't found any clues about where they took her, but there is still hope."
Ramone fell back onto the hay bed and lay still for a moment, taking in the fact that they were gone, taken from him. "What about Hurl?"
Natalia sighed, this boy was only making it harder for himself. "She's been taken over by... evil forces."
Ramone's eyes went big, and filled up with tears, tears not of sadness, but of guilt and regret. "I should have been able to protect them, I should have known something would happen. All of this happened while I was nice and asleep. How long was I even out? Four months?!"
Natalia whispered guiltily, "5."
"Ugh!!! Great, just great! I wake up only to find my sisters all in trouble, and all with the slightest sliver of hope of survival. By the way, WHO THE HECK ARE YOU, LADY?!?! Why are you not doing every frickin' thing you can to save them!"
Natalia would have usually spit an insult back, but this boy had already suffered so much, and it was way to much to handle, so of course he was angry. That's exactly what she would have felt if it had happened to her.
Ramone struggled to get up, but one look from Natalia was all it took for him to lay right back down again. He shied away from her intense glare and turned his head to face the wall. He stiffened as she spoke again, afraid at what horrible news he was going to receive next. Ramone rubbed his hands so hard that tears started to form in his eyes.
Natalia took a deep breath and he prepared for the worst, but then he thought, How much worse can this even get! But her voice came out soft and sympathetic, "I know. I know how hard it is, the same thing happened to me."
Natalia shuddered at the nightmarish scene that formed in her mind, the horrifying events that happened many years ago. She remembered it all too well. The day she lost everything. She had almost lost everyone she held dear. All of a sudden, the terrible thought hit her. The fact that history could repeat itself and that the chance she would have to lose everything again... it was undeniable. The risk was real and it was too big to ignore. As small as it might seem to a "normal" person, for them, it was ginormous.
Their history was a living nightmare to them. They had just found out their parents were gods, minor as they were, it was still surprising. Soon after, their parents were told that they had to go back to Anthrio, for something. But they never told them what, and they never came back. The demigods didn't even begin to understand the events of which were to come...
