Two Worlds Apart

XVII

Gemma fiddled with her long black hair, staring at some sport on the floor of their cell-on-wheels. "How the hell did this happen?" she muttered, and Asha scowled. 

"Oh, I bet I could tell you," she growled. "Our ever-so-wise and responsible leader," Asha began, eyes darkening, "decided to meet up with an angel, and then we all got punished for it. And now we're heading to the Hall of the Damned in these awful wagons, where we'll be beaten and tortured for who knows how long!" Asha rushed out in one breath, turning back to Gemma. 

"Well yeah, I know that," Gemma rolled her eyes. "I meant how are we the ones getting punished? It was Shawn and... that angel girl!"

"Penelope," the blonde angel in the corner corrected but was immediately met with four death glares. 

"Don't say another word," Valerie growled and Penelope sighed, turning back to the window she'd been looking out of. 

"It's not all her fault. Shawn is mostly to blame," Camilla murmured. But she didn't look at her friend and had been quiet the entire ride, only deigning to speak when she needed to ask for more wing room in the cramped space. 

Lizbeth sighed, breaking the silence and looking around at the rickety wagon. "Well, I'm exhausted," she announced to no one in particular and laid down, placing her head in Valerie's lap. 

To everyone's surprise, Valerie didn't move. She figured that this was a tight space and she wouldn't have anywhere to move out of the way. Plus, this girl had two large horns poking out from her purple-streaked hair and Valerie had no weapons to defend herself with. 

But if she did, she'd cut the demon's head clean off of her neck. 

However, while the girl's prison wagon was dead silent for the rest of the ride, the boy's was quite the opposite. 

"What the actual f**k, Shawn?" Aries shouted at his leader, face red with fury. 

"What, you think I wanted this?" Shawn yelled back. "You think this was my fault?" 

"Of course it is, dipshit!" Samuel shouted, replying before Aries could. 

"Who else's fault would it be?" Leo hollered. 

Shawn chuckled darkly. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe Penelope?" he responded loudly. "She was the one who told me to meet her on the rooftop in the first place!" 

Aries looked like he might explode. "Oh, and that makes you so innocent?"

"If you hadn't gone, none of us would be off to the Hall fo the Damned, including Penelope!" Terrance shouted. 

Charles nodded. "We're all in here because of you," he growled. "You didn't have to accept Penelope's invite. But you did it anyway, knowing the consequence, and now we're stuck in a prison wagon." 

But they weren't stuck there for much longer. Because soon, the cells-on-wheels rolled up to a large, black, sprawling castle, all sharp edges and points. The gates opened and the wagons rolled toward the tall, obsidian doors. 

The angels and demons were escorted by guards already stationed at the Hall, and took them all down to the second-lowest level of the building. There, they were all thrown into a large, dusty cell. It looked like it could hold up to almost twenty prisoners, so there was a good amount of space for the twelve of them. 

A generosity, considering what else awaited them within the tall, sweeping walls of the Hall. 

When Asha had been thrown in as the last prisoner, the guards locked the barred door. "Your dinner will be served in two hours. Save some for tomorrow morning." And then they were gone. 

There was a moment of silence before the demons and angels separated, checking up on each other. "Are you okay?" Terrance asked Penelope, enveloping her in a soft hug.

"Yeah, I'm okay," Penelope whispered, clutching the back of Terrance's jacket, underneath his wings. 

"They didn't cut you up, did they? That's gonna be our job," Gemma growled, staring down Shawn, who didn't deign to reply. 

Lizbeth snorted from where she and Asha stood together in the corner, with Samuel and Aries soon to join them. 

From that point on, it was unspoken that the right side of the cell was for the angels, and the left for the demons. And there would be no communication between them, because that's exactly what got them there in the first place. 

Lizbeth sat with Gemma against the right wall, fiddling with each other's fingers absentmindedly. Shawn sat alone, with Asha staring him down nearby. Aries and Samuel played some sort of hand game to pass the time until dinner, but it went by as slowly as ever. 

The angels were, unsurprisingly, more solemn. 

But all silence was broken when a guard came to unlock the door. Everyone stilled as he pointed to Penelope, and gestured for her to come toward him. Penelope obeyed and the guard locked his fingers around her arm as he locked the cell door behind them. 

No one said anything as the guard dragged Penelope away, but the silence was broken a few moments later. "Oh, so she gets to go free but we don't?" Lizbeth grumbled, crossing her arms with a huff. "It's her fault we're in here!" 

"I don't think she's getting free," Charles muttered, watching Penelope leave. 

She wasn't. As the guards dragged Penelope toward a dark, dank stairwell, she knew that she was going somewhere to be interrogated. Or tortured, whichever came first. 

Penelope had never been whipped before. But it seemed that there was a first time for everything as she entered a small room with a stone table in the center, on top of which lay a shiny new whip. 

Aries was staring at the metal bars caging them in, and Gemma watched him peculiarly. "You good?" she asked after a moment. 

Aries shook his head. "I'm trying to think of a weapon that could cut those bars in half," he grumbled, but Valerie snorted. 

"Good luck." Aries turned his gaze to the angel, seething, but Valerie only shrugged. "We can't use our magic here. There are wards that prevent it." 

The group was silent. Deep down, they all knew that was the case. But there was that small, foolish hope that there was still a way out. 

But there wasn't. Because no one escaped the Hall of the Damned.