The Afterlife

Chapter Seven: The Choice Of Ages

"France/Calais: December 2018"

"I thought I'd told you not to come here." Joan complained to the three newcomers.

"We obeyed, until the big man said otherwise." The man said. He was tall and he wore a French knight's armor minus the helmet, the grey polished metal glistening in the light. In his hands he held a very long and big sword which was probably as heavy as it looked. His face was almost baby like with his chubby cheeks and deep blue eyes, what spoiled the look was the exaggerated moustache.

The two women with him seemed as threatening as the man or even more. One of them was short and she wore a rather simple armor made of leather and had a long thin sword. Her blond hair was messy and her face seemed battered; she was probably used to war and she liked it.

The other woman seemed almost gracious despite the situation; she was tall and her golden armor fit perfectly, she even wore a golden helmet restricting her long black hair. Other than her murderous look she was definitely beautiful with a perfect body and charming brown eyes.

Ivan got up from the table he had been sitting on and scanned the three people standing in the center of the room, "Who are you people? I'm sure I would have recognized you if I had seen you."

"I am Gilles de Rais, I was a knight and lord from Brittany, Anjou and Poitou, a leader in the French army, and a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc." The man said with a courteous bow, "Later I was executed for being a serial killer of children. Which is true and still holds."

Ivan made a terrified face, "Owie, I'm so terrified of this children killer with a silly moustache." He said sarcastically.

"Well you should be terrified." The tall gracious woman said in Russian accent "I am Olga of Kiev and I have vowed to send you and all your allies back to where you belong."

The statement earned her baffled looks from everyone across the room. "What are you looking at? I'm damn serious."

"I am Blenda..."the short battered woman started but was immediately interrupted by Ivan who didn't seem eager to hear her story, "I know who you are, your size kind of gave it away, I remember when I was in the underworld they used to tell stories about you, turns out they were true."

"What do you mean." Blenda said gritting her teeth with her face becoming cherry red out of anger, her grip tightened on her sword and she got ready to pulverize the all too annoying grin at full display in front of her. "I'm going to rip your mouth apart and pull out your teeth so we won't be burdened by that stupid grin anymore."

"As much as I'd like for that to happen now i think it'll have to wait a little bit because we have a special communiqué from the King himself." Gilles cut in stressing his accent on the word communiqué.

Evelyn took steps closer to the tall man in shining armor, "I once trusted your King, then he let me down. I don't think I'll make the same mistake again, and judging by your clothing You don't believe we will comply either so why not just do what you came here to do."

For the first time in the whole conversation Perenelle Flamel got up from her seat, "calm down kid, aren't you the one who said that we owe a word or two to the poor souls we send back to the pit? Let's just hear them out."

For some reason Nicholas gave her a weird look but she ignored him, Ivan got a feeling that things were a lot worse than they seemed; he remembered that they had not been together when he and Evelyn had gotten to their house which was something so rare that none of the twins had seen it before both in the Underworld or the Afterlife, Ivan shot a glance at his sister who nodded in agreement; there was definitely a problem.