Chapter 10
The stars screamed their way down to Hell and awoke together engulfed in complete darkness.
This couldn’t be. They were gods, after all. Destined for the Kingdom of Heaven. To be felled by a mere mortal was insulting enough, but to be banished to Hell despite their divinity was a slight of unforgivable proportion.
They confronted Death together, seething with self-righteous fury.
“Remedy this at once,” one of the brothers demanded.
“An outrage, an outrage!” cried another.
“We deserve better than to wallow in all this filth!” wailed a third.
The lord of the underworld merely looked upon the star gods one by one, seeing neither higher power nor lowly life-form. In the eyes of Death, all were equal—and the star gods were no exception.
“It is not I who keeps thee trapped here,” he explained, “but the heavy weight of sins bearing down on thy souls. Redeem thyselves in servitude and earn thy place once again among the Heavens.”
With a sweep of his hand, Death trapped them within the shifting structure of his palace, separating the nine brothers to nine different courts, standing in the way of the Gates of Hell at the very center to make ten full circles.
They were sentenced to serve out the next millennia among those whom their cruelty once touched in life.
That was, until one day, when the youngest star god made his daring escape. He quietly slipped through the gate between worlds, vowing to one day return to free his dear brothers.