Chapter 13: Deceiving Appearances

Damious watched in the magic mirror as Rini wandered further and further into his castle gardens. Amazingly, she was now halfway thru the gardens and, with any luck, she would reach the castle soon. "She's getting close," Damious told himself angrily. "She must be stopped somehow. But how?"

He began to pace the room and as he did, he came upon Helios' form again. As he looked at Helios, Damious suddenly felt a stab of guilt and sadness in his heart again. Damious crouched onto the floor, holding his chest in pain. "What is happening to me?" he asked, pain clearly showing in his voice. As he stood on the floor, he remembered how he had felt this pain before, when he had first brought Rini to Hadesion and she had begun to cry and beg him to release Helios. And then when he had tried to smash the crystallized Helios, he couldn't do it. Damious even began to look back at his own life, remembering all of the bad things he had done and what he was doing now. "Why are you doing this?" he asked himself, for once, questioning himself about his evil deeds. Suddenly, the black crystal around his neck once again began to glow, and Damious became his evil self once again.

He laughed evilly as he walked back to the mirror, viewing Rini again. "You won't be getting into my castle, Rini," he said, an evil grin forming on his face. "I will make sure of that!" With that, Damious vanished in a blaze of black smoke.

Helios was now very worried. Damious was becoming more and more desperate to keep Rini from reaching the castle. He wondered what Damious would try to do to her this time.

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"Am I lost?" wondered Rini as she glanced around the gardens. She was afraid that she hadn't gotten very far and was going in circles. "This garden just isn't natural," she said as she continued to look at the gardens. Indeed it did not look natural with its' strange menagerie of flowers. Rini had never seen these types of flowers and was sure that most of them didn't even exist. Some of them even had unnatural colors to them and as Rini proceeded further in this maze-like garden, she came upon some rose bushes. But these roses were strange. Rini had always seen red, pink, and white roses all her life. But these roses, they were black, not just any black, but black as a raven's wing. Black as...death? Rini shuddered at this thought as she stared at these roses. Everything about this garden seemed dead, almost as though a spell had been cast on it.

Rini was abruptly pulled out of her thoughts as she heard a cry somewhere in the garden. The cries of a small child! Rini ran towards the sound of the crying child as fast as she could, fearing that the child might be in some kind of danger. "I'm coming!" she called out to the child, "Don't worry, I'll save you!" She ran almost frantically thru the gardens, nearly tripping on a tree branch. Finally, she came upon a clearing in the gardens and sitting on the ground in the middle of it was a small boy. He looked five or six years old to Rini and he seemed to be hurt as she saw him clutching his hand, pain showing on his face. Rini went up to the child and as she did, the child looked up and started backing away from her in fear. "Don't be afraid, little one," reassured Rini, "I just want to help you." At this, the little boy relaxed as Rini sat down beside him and placed her hand on his shoulder. "Why are you crying?" she asked the little boy.

"I hurt my hand while I was playing," he whined as he held his hand in pain. "It's bleeding and it hurts so much!" he exclaimed, tears streaming down his little face again.

"Don't cry, you'll be ok," Rini told him in a soothing, comforting tone. "Let me see your hand." The boy obeyed as he showed her his little hand. As Rini had anticipated, it was just a small cut and it was only bleeding a little bit. She smiled down at the young boy, remembering how when she was young and would also cry when she got hurt just a little bit. "You're going to be all right," she told him. "We just need something to use as a bandage." Rini glanced down at her dress and thought the material would make a perfect bandage. She reached her hand down to the bottom part of her dress and tore off a piece of it. Then, she tied the material onto the little boy's hand like a bandage. The little boy smiled up at her after Rini finished.

"Thank you so much, pretty lady," he said to her, smiling. "Because you helped me, I'll give you something." At this, the little boy got up and walked up to one of the bushes nearby and picked something from it. To Rini's surprise and delight, she saw that he had picked a beautiful pink rose. The color matched her hair perfectly.

"What a sweet child!" she thought to herself as the young boy walked back to her with the pink rose.

"Please take this rose, miss," he asked Rini, "I found it while I was playing and since it was the only pink one, I want you to have it. It looks special, just like you."

Rini almost cried when she heard him say that. "How could I refuse such a sweet and thoughtful gift?!" she thought to herself as she reached down for the rose. "I will gladly accept your kind gift, little one," she told him as she took the rose. When she touched the rose, she accidentally touched one of the thorns on it, pricking herself. "Oh!" she cried out as she looked at her finger. Tiny drops of blood dripped down her finger and onto the rose. The mixture of red and pink looked lovely on the rose. Suddenly, Rini felt a little woozy and walked over to the nice, green grass in the clearing and sat down. She felt more and more tired by the minute. "I'm so tired," she murmured as she laid down on the soft grass, "I'm going...to go...to sleep..."

With that, Rini fell asleep and looked so peaceful and calm. The little boy was still standing there and when he saw that Rini had fallen asleep, he suddenly grinned, a satisfied, evil grin. As he did, he suddenly began to glow with a strange dark energy and when he did, the young boy's true identity was revealed. It was Damious! He walked over to Rini, laughing and said, "Sorry for meeting you in disguise, my dear Rini. But I knew you wouldn't have accepted a rose from me! And it seems that my rose's spell has taken effect! Now that I have you asleep, I will now enter your dreams and this time, you will not escape me! For now there will be no waking up for you, Rini, ever again! You will be my sleeping beauty forever and ever!"

With that, Damious transformed himself into a black mist and went inside Rini's mind. Rini shuddered and moaned lightly as she felt him entering her body.

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Dream Sovereign