Children of Tartarus: Underworld

By Clark Merchant

The book tells a magical tale of brave, adventurous souls travelling through the vast and dangerous underworld in search of home. The work is an action-packed thrill ride full of exciting battles and brave deeds. Even if youre twenty-five, you should read it. Im thirty-one, and I wrote it!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jul 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496984135

Clark Merchant

Clark Merchant’s insight and writing style is easily relatable and understood by children of all ages. Clark Merchant has a vivid imagination and is not afraid of controversial ideas. His stories are more than just tales; they are artistic accounts of his experiences in life.

Book preview

Bella and the Piemakers

piemaker.jpg

CHAPTER 1

Bella

A cold day in Surrey had begun. This sort of thing really put Bella in a bad mood. You see, she was blonde and had blue eyes with a constitution much more suited to summer. She always wore jeans and a T-shirt and absolutely refused to wear a coat. She often said, Winter sucks! I hate it! and then she stamped her foot as hard as she could before storming off to play in the typical English wood outside her garden. Bella and her parents lived in a very large house, and Bella was just a little spoiled. With her two bedrooms all to herself that were filled with toys and clothes. She rarely played with other children, and she was constantly in trouble. However if you scratched a little deeper, you’d find that Bella was perhaps the most courageous, endearing, and stubborn soul you could ever meet. However if you asked Bella to describe herself, you would probably get a list of things she did not like, or things that scared her, like; Sticky things, Spiders, heights, Books, Long conversations about history or school, Monsters and anything a little different. She could sometimes be out right cowardly and very demanding. Let’s just say Bella has a long way to go before she finds her real courage and often gives up hope.

Bella was in her favourite part of the wood. She liked it because it was in the middle, and she had enough space to dance and jump around without her precious face being assaulted by a tree or branch. It was just coming up to four o’clock, and the sun was setting in the distance – much too dark for skipping about but light enough to stay and daydream. It was Bella’s habit to sit on a nearby tree stump where she scratched pictures into the mud with an old twig until her mother fetched her when it got too dark. On this night, however, her mother did not come.

It was already dark and Bella was beginning to get a little scared when it began to rain. She wanted to go home but knew she wouldn’t find her way in the dark. The rain was cold and relentless, so she curled up on her tree stump, sobbing to herself and mumbling words like Mummy and help.

She was staring down at the muddy ground that she had been using as her private easel, thinking how wet she was, when she saw the smallest of lights gleaming from within the watery hole she had dug earlier. She dropped to her hands and knees and looked closer. The light was now bright enough to light up a large portion of the wood, and Bella thought for just a moment that it was enough to light her way home and that all would soon be splendid again when she was in the loving arms of her mother. Her elation soon dissolved when, as quickly as it appeared, the light changed into a beautiful black rose. At that magical moment, the air warmed, and a feeling of comfort ran through Bella’s body like a warm hot chocolate.

The rose looked almost as though it was looking at Bella, begging for her to pick it. Unable to resist its temptation, Bella lent forward, grasped the rose by its stem, and gave it a firm tug. The rose gave just a little but then without warning wrapped itself around Bella’s arm and pulled it into the hole. Alarmed and afraid, Bella pulled against the rose, and then harder, and then harder than she had ever pulled in her life, but it was no use. The rose had her, and with a whimper Bella disappeared down into the mud.

CHAPTER 2

Into the Mud

Bella held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut whilst the mud engulfed her, the mysterious black rose that had her in its grasp dragging her down, farther and farther. Just when she thought she couldn’t hold her breath any longer, she realized that her hand was free of the mud and the upper half of her body slid free beneath it. Shaking off the mud with her free hand She rubbed off her eyes as best as she could.

She was hanging upside down, waist-deep in mud but floating in an infinite sky of red and purple that churned and conjured up lightning storms so vast and treacherous that they could easily swallow anything whole. Below her the stem of the rose held her firmly, tying her to her uncertain fate. She pulled desperately at it, gasping and struggling, until it suddenly pulled her free from the mud and whizzed her through the burning air. Bella screamed, her heart pounding and her blood racing through her body. She screamed again.

The rose released her, and Bella fell down, down through the red and purple air, hurtling towards the ground. Bella could not accept that she might hit the ground and be no more – she could never admit defeat – and clawed at the air, as though it might support her and stop her fall. Her stomach felt as if it was being pulled out of her throat. The ground hurtled closer and closer and Bella’s memories of hot chocolates by a warm fire had turned to dust. As she watched the ground rise up towards her in terror, she squeezed her eyes shut and begged not to die.

She hit the ground with a thud and with no more pain than she felt that time she fell off the bed in the middle of a nightmare. She sat up, stunned, her heart still racing. She needed a minute to calm herself down, and the thought of what had just happened brought her to tears once again. While never ever had anything so terrible happened to her, what she did not know was that things were about to get a whole lot worse.

Bella let herself cry. Even the strongest of souls need to cry sometimes. She began to examine where she was. She stood up and brushed the dried mud from her clothing, arms, and face. She heard loud banging noises and steam venting in the distance and saw that s. She didn’t really like the idea of finding out just what was making that (In Bella’s words) icky noise. It was however not in Bella’s true nature to stay there crying all day.

She was standing in a vast field of thorny black branches and stems with black rose-like flowers sprouting out everywhere. Deep in the distance a vast stone fortress glowed red with industry, churning out purple smoke from its thousands of chimneys. There was nothing else as far as the eye could see. Bella knew the only way she could survive was to somehow get there. Tshe stood up and began wading through the thorns and endless entanglements.