230 Chapter 230 A New Threa

"What? Why? Is something wrong?" asked Aella, glancing around quickly in concern.

"No," laughed Daefina, "I'm just bored! I want to hear some of your exciting adventures."

"Oh," sighed Aella, her shoulders slumping in relief.

"Poor princess," grumbled Precious, repositioning himself on her shoulder.

"I don't know that my adventures are all that exciting."

"They have to be more exciting than sitting around staring at stone walls all day," grumbled Daefina, repositioning the thick blanket she had on her lap. "I'm not allowed to leave these chambers until the honeymoon week is over, and it's soooooo boring!"

"I thought the honeymoon week was supposed to be you and your new husband having sex and spending time with each other?" asked Aella, confused.

"Well, yes. There was lots of that, but he's a king and a kingdom can only go so long without a king."

Aella sat down on a chair opposite Daefina uncomfortably. She had left her kingdom without a king a lot.

"He's really busy right now dealing with some cult that has shown up. I think it's related to the elven noble you killed, but I'm not sure. He doesn't tell me much of anything, since I'm still new at being the queen. He hasn't figured out just yet that it's okay to tell me things and not just shoulder the whole mess himself," explained Daefina.

"The guy that kidnapped your brother?" asked Aella, suddenly remembering the altar that she had found Precious at. Precious paused licking his paw to look up at them.

"That's the guy," nodded Daefina, reaching over to grab a cracker from a plate beside her and not noticing the reactions of Aella and Precious. "Apparently some of the older dwarves that were hiding during the last royal leaders, the twins, told of an altar in the deep mines. Voluri had it destroyed, but when the elves came to live here, it somehow got rebuilt even deeper in some of the abandoned mines. My new husband sent some of the dwarfs out exploring all of the mines after the elves and gnomes moved out to make sure they were all gone, and it was found."

"Maybe he hasn't told you much about it for fear you might have some involvement?" wondered Aella, remembering being told about the altar deep in the dwarven mines. "Maybe I should look into it. The last one was tied to the demons somehow, and I still don't know much about that."

Daefina sighed and nodded. "You should probably check on it. But please promise to come back and tell me about some of your adventures?"

"If I have time, I will do that," promised Aella.

"You know you probably won't have any free time," admonished Precious as Aella stood up and teleported into the dwarven throne room.

She glanced at the two dwarves he motioned toward, and saw a look of determination on their face.

"Your wife is bored with you gone," Aella said as she turned to follow the dwarves.

"Ah, don't you worry about that," chuckled Voluri. "I'll see to it she doesn't have the energy to be bored. Just see to that blasted thing and do whatever you need to, to get rid of it."

She followed the dwarves silently for a while, until they started getting into some much older tunnels, that made her have to stoop to pass through them. Precious jumped down to walk ahead of her.

"Do you feel that?" he asked, turning to look back at her.

"The feeling of evil is thick," she murmured.

"That's coming from that altar," said one of the two dwarves gruffly. "It gets worse the closer you get. If you actually get close enough to touch the thing…"

"None of the others have lived through it," said the other dwarf. His thick red beard was sticking up all over the place, seeming to get more unruly the closer they get no matter how much he tried to pat it down.

"You should try some bear grease in your beard," said the first dwarf. "It would hold all of those stray strands in place."

"I don't normally have so much trouble with it," the second dwarf growled.

"Where do you get bear grease?" asked Aella, intrigued with their conversation.

"From the bears in the mountains. There used to be a lot of them, then they died off some when the storms hit, and have really come back thick in the past couple weeks."

"Aye, they're the best eating, after goat," agreed the second dwarf.

"You guys wait here," Aella said suddenly, noticing a dim glow ahead.

The two stopped in their tracks, not about to argue with her at all. Precious guided her further into the mines until they came to a large room. The altar was positioned in the middle, surrounded by candles burnt almost to their nubs. Judging by the melted wax around the altar, someone had been keeping the altar lit up for a while.

"There's magic in there," said Precious softly, wrinkling his nose at the scent.

Aella slipped her goggles of magic seeing on and immediately saw why everyone who approached the altar died.

"Precious, you are to stay here, outside of the room. I don't want you getting hurt, alright?"

"Fine," he grumbled, sitting down and watching, with his tail twitching in annoyance behind him.

Stepping carefully, she twisted and turned, avoiding the lines of magical traps that stretched around the room like a crazed spider had spit deadly threads everywhere. They got thicker and thicker the closer she got to the altar, but she could see them and thus avoided them by twisting and stretching in odd ways. To think someone did this to get to the altar in order to replace the candles boggled her mind.

Whispers started in the corners of her mind, as she approached the drawn runes on the floor.

"Life is most precious to those who have lost theirs," came one whisper, causing her to pause briefly.

"Who's there?" she asked, studying the altar before resuming her approach. She could just burn it and be done with it, but something told her to investigate it first.

"If you see the veil, cross it, because the dead have no will to resist it," came another whisper.

Aella tried her hardest to ignore the voices, but she had spent so long listening to the ones in her own head, she found them harder and harder to ignore.

"The dead have no fears and without a soul, don't mind killing."

"Bring more offerings to keep the dead at bay, or they will be set loose!" cried one last voice and then there was silence.

Aella stood before the altar, wondering if there were some magic drawing her closer, but glancing around, she could only see the strands of magic that brought illness and death to those who touched them. The altar itself had a clear space, free of all magic, right before it, and she stood there now, wondering what she should do. The last altar had a demon trapped in it, but this one was newly built.

"As the Demon King, I command you to speak," she growled, standing tall and glaring down at the altar.

"You have no power over us, Aella, Gargoyle King of the Realm," came the various whispers, talking over themselves to answer her.

"And yet, you spoke," she said with a twitch of her mouth, trying to hide the smirk that was fighting to respond.

"You dare to antagonize?!" howled the voices.

"I dare to command and destroy!" growled Aella, her smirk gone. "I am the King of this Realm, and you will answer to me!"

"We do not call your realm our home, but we will. And you will not stop us!" crowed the voices, speaking over each other. "Destroy this altar and we shall find another to build more. You cannot stop us!"

Aella studied the contraption, noting that it had ancient runes, similar to what her father had taught her, scrawled all over it. There were only two people left alive that she knew could read those runes. Bridgette was one, and the other was the old king Jozef. Had she made a mistake when she destroyed the old palace? Had the brother of Jozef been the one she actually freed?

"We shall gather enough life force to eventually break through the barrier your realm has created and when we do, there will be nothing left except death."

"It might surprise you what can bloom from rot and ruin," Aella whispered, creating a flame in the palm of her hand. "I am still a demon in this realm, named as such by the people who live here. I am still the Demon King, and you will not harm my realm."