THE HAUNTED KINGDOM 3 by CHARLES E.J. MOULTON (ereader that reads to you .txt) 📕

So the rider’s face winced as his black knees bumped against the stallion's ribs. His master was trying to crush him with painful memory. Stop his horse to give himself up to the Rumzils, who would not catch him if he did not give himself up. The slow munching of the beast was far more soothing than the painful still wrath of the devil. He clutched the mane of the horse angrily, realizing then and there that his master had deceived him. He had only been a tool. Maybe, after all, the man by the lake would trust him after their encounter. Lucifer would be there to stop him at all costs with his almost complete control.
He would not back down. He would not give in. In the face of the Rumzils, Centurion rode through the forest like an eagle flies through the night, the hairs on his neck flapping and flying in the breeze. There was a look of desperation that was mirrored in his eye and it almost seemed as if they were both one and the same person. It didn't seem as if they were different from each other at all. They were but human and animal side of each other. Looking at them one would think that they thought of losing the game. The evil air of even the stallion would give food for thought. They were made to ride.
The moon shone down on them and made their black muscular bodies glitter in its light. The gloomy birds and owls in the trees looked down on them. Wondering. Thinking. Hoping. Waiting for a solution to come. He was not waiting. He was riding towards a war. A war against his master. War against betrayal.
At stake was his own soul.
His one uncrossed eye winced, wondered if there still was time ... and was bribed to remember his master's original anarchy.

As for Alexander, I.N.R.I. shone in his mind, H.E.L.L. in his eye.
Lucifer haunted his vision, Michael owned his heart and Belinda possessed his soul.
Thoughts travelled through his brain as he watched Lucinda standing there in full demonic splendour . Watching her brown eyes, the glee of a thousand demons danced in her blackness of soul. He saw that this woman was a tool of the devil and only on the surface his sister. She was the devil's arm who had gotten her own will in its limb for a while but lost it to Satan’s full power. Now she was all his. All the devil's bitch. All Satan's love.
Then, he realized she was but a vision.
He had experienced horror before. He had fought Nocturania all his life . He had been raised by his father King Bertrand to do so and never known why it had such importance to him. Now he knew. Standing face to face with Lucinda, having feared her for most of his life, he realized he had always been more or less uptight. Nocturania was the devil's land and Prosperania was God's way to get back at his firstborn son. The fallen archangel. Lucifer. The Morning Star. Yambalahs creator. But this time his entire country's existence would disappear from the map if he did not win. Not only that. The world, the alternate reality (his own reality), would belong to Satan if he lost.
Like all men of his family, longevity was on his side. The last years had taken away at least ten. With sixty he had the vigour of a thirty five year old. Now with seventy, still strong and powerful and over six feet tall and large, he had been robbed of at least fifteen of these years and illusion had still made him look twenty. Elegance and flair, regal splendour and a quiet air of having won against misfortunes early in life brought him a masculine aura that brought respect to his gentlemanliness . But his face was scarred by trouble. His features battled over with struggle.
There had been a time of waiting. This was not it. There had been a time of struggle. And although this was a struggle, it was not. There had been a time of confusion. This was clear cut. The lines were drawn. This was very final. This was good against evil. Romulus against Remus. Simon against John. Jesus against Judas. Cain versus Abel. Alexander versus Lucinda. Lucifer against Gabriel. God versus Satan. This was the retrieving of the haunted kingdom. This was a divine war. God's last battle. And the rest was just icing, puppetry. It was all about God, Lucifer and Gabriel, the Archangels, Rebecca, the Fields of Nostalgia, Yamabalah, Nocturania and Prosperania.

Alexander's road had been paved with stones. And in his hand lay a sword with the symbol of a hawk engraved in its handle. Pure heavy silver blade. He was standing on the shore of this underground lake, behind him the tunnel up to the surface. In front only water and the whitewinged angel on the rock maybe twenty feet away. All that Alex could feel when seeing this poor creature was sadness. It was the angel that had been and it was as lifeless as dust because of the sins of its own spiritual vanity.
On the rock, right above the water, the initials H.E.L.L. were engraved. Alexander knew the word itself, of course, although the initials meant more. Just a week ago at Rigor Mortis he had learnt their origin.
As he stood there, letting all of these images sink in, he was reminded of Adnicul, by a distant campfire, telling him: “The fact is that when the dark empire falls, you will know by a raven or a dove or an eagle that it has fallen and it will be surprising, I guarantee it.”
The dampness oozed away from the walls and water trickled down the stones. Maybe one hundred feet away the larger lake like structure narrowed down to a tunnel, perhaps fifteen feet high and twenty feet wide. At the end was a bright light. The light was quite deceiving for the tunnel lead to heaven the right way, but one wrong step into hell.
Lucinda had not arrived yet. Her presence was here like a ghoulish nightmare scenario that breathed death upon the water and turned it into ice. He would not be fooled again.
"Hello!“
His deep voice echoed down the tunnel making it sound like a thousand voices.
"Hello?“
He heard a dog bark. It was Reficule. There was a growl now of two dogs, then three . Reficule's three heads were barking at once. Then there was shrill scream and a whimper. Reficule stopped barking. It had been Lucinda and now her own voice came from the end of the tunnel.
He looked down the tunnel's deep long stone tube and saw something slowly arrive in calm, slow splashes. Standing upright in a boat carved out of black Hustilar-wood, a tree that only grew beyond the cave past the gates to hell, Alex realized the boat was actually too small or unstable for her to stand upright in it. But she did. And behind her, on a leash, was Reficule. Charon was at the very back now, not like before, the last time he had seen them, his long bony finger clutching the ore and foot by foot bringing them closer to him.
She was wearing that same dress she'd had on that same night at the wedding. It was black and diamond studded. But now the cape was gone. There was an expression of pure victory on her face that spoke volumes it said (he could almost hear her voice speaking to his mind):
"Milleneas have brought me to this place ... Mr. Darkness: Please show me your face ... being here finally is a battle won ... Alexander, you might as well run ..."
Her half closed eyes looked straight ahead at him without mercy. She was like a queen arriving in a new land.
Actually, it was a very old land under new circumstances.
But Alexander was going to stay here until the bitter end.
The boat bumped softly on the shore and Alexander stood there, the tip of his hawk-handled sword touching the ground. For a long while nothing was said. The two siblings just looked at each other, Charon with his long black cloak anonymous presence behind her and Reficule on a leash now in Charon's hand.
Lucinda lifted out of the boat and landed a few feet away from Alexander, who lifted his sword as the slowly drifted away to the other side. The splash of Charon's ore was the only noise in here for a long while and the silence between the siblings was almost unbearable.
Alexander tried to smile.
“Speaking in rhymes, are we? Trying to be eloquent?”
Lucinda shrugged, majestically. It was royal coolness incarnate. It made her look regal in her darkness.
“You know how I love poetry.”
“Try something that you have a talent for.”
”Like what?”
”Being insulted.”
”Stings of a bee. Well, the bee dies when it stings you, didn’t you know?”
“I don’t plan to die.”
”There is no planning involved in dying, brother.”
For the first time in ages, the angel on the rock started to glow. Inside the heart the pieces of the diamond began to glitter inside him. The time had come.
Lucinda lifted her sword and crashed it down on Alexander's who lifted his just in the last second to defend himself. There was a spark when the two swords met.
“So, we finally meet, Sire.”
Charon was rowing back, away from them toward the end of the tunnel.
“Yes.”
”A meeting long overdue, don’t you think?”
“I would say we have put it off at least two or three decades too many.”
The two siblings were at the shore, just feet away from the horse. It was a stallion that, Alex realized it now, had shifted colour all along. It was white now. Alex knew it to be brown, but its colour had shifted.
The clanging of weapons echoed in the cave and Alexander had seemed intent on losing Lucinda’s attention. Who knows where she would direct her powers?

And so it came to be that in that last night a man in a black cloak was riding thru the darkness of the Nocturanian forest on a blue stallion named Centurion. Centurion was quite a beautiful horse. Its muscles moved with a grace that seemed to sing in chorus with its rider. But the piece, beautiful as it may have been, was a first draught of a Requiem for God.
The man with the uncrossed eye patch smiled no more than the horse had a life of its own. His face bore the markings of a life unlived in light and a spectre waiting to strike, travelling at airspeed toward the markings of a cave from the beginning of time.
A rhyme was haunting his mind and he knew not from where it came.

( Oh , wicked eye , you will pay ...
The dark one burns the weak astray ...
Screams of laughter gave him away ...
You never ever deceive Alex that way )

He was hurrying toward the sibling rivalry.
Before it all began, all that was ... was silence.
After it began, a storm swept across the lands that