“You poor thing.” Hazel picked up the animal and cradled it, while its yellow eyes gleamed at me with undeniable malevolence. It looked like it would claw us to shreds given half the chance. I also remembered where I’d seen it — the lynx belonged to Tejus.
Ruby glanced at it with misgiving.
“Are you sure it’s…domesticated?” she asked warily, taking a step back.
“He’s all right,” Hazel replied, cooing at the devil-cat, “he’s never been this friendly to me before, though…I guess I must smell like Tejus. We’ll get you home, buddy.” She returned her attentions to the lynx, while I motioned to Ruby that we should get going.
“Come on,” Ruby announced, “you think it will follow us?”
Hazel placed it gently on the ground. It moved away gracefully – not bothering to glance back in our direction as we started to climb back the way we’d just come.
“I’m sure he’ll find Tejus now that he’s not trapped,” Hazel declared, watching him saunter off.
Great.
Another welcome addition to the palace.
We continued our way along the hallway, clambering over more broken rock till we came to what would have been the Emperor’s room – the recognizable gilded gold wallpaper still hanging in some places – though ripped and burnt.
“Here,” announced Hazel, coming to a half-broken wall. I looked up to see the rest of the sentries peering down from above.
“Hazel, be careful,” Tejus shouted down. I rolled my eyes at Ruby, but she didn’t share in the joke. Maybe she was starting to dig overly protective men?
Whatever.
We started exploring the room, being directed by the guard who shouted down instructions.
“It’s under here,” Ruby muttered, shifting a large stone away from the headboard. Hazel and I joined her, moving the debris until we uncovered a heavy metal box. Ruby picked it up with difficulty, and then gave it a shake. It sounded hollow, with a single, heavy object hitting the sides.
“How do we open it?” Hazel asked.
There was no lock—the box appeared to be completely smooth, without any kinks in the metalwork that would suggest an opening.
“We could just try chucking it on the floor?” I suggested.
Both of them turned to look at me as if I was stupid. I shrugged. “It’s worth a try… anyone got any better ideas?”
“I guess not,” Ruby admitted. She slammed the box down as hard as she could. It made an awful sound, high and screeching, but the lid popped open.
“Told you,” I said, feeling more than a little bit smug.
Both of them ignored me, staring down at the large, gold-plated book that had been contained within the box. Hazel bent down and picked it up, holding it aloft for the others above to see.
“It’s so cold,” she whispered. “And it weighs a ton.”
“Well, what does it say? Is it the right one?” I asked impatiently.
There was nothing written on the cover, just a blank sheen of gold, with an equally plain spine. It looked old though—and like it hadn’t been removed from the box in over a millennium.
Unable to wait another moment, I took the book from Hazel, opening it to the first page. My heart sank. I flicked through quickly, looking at more pages, my hands starting to grow clammy as I reached the end of the book.
Every single page was the same.
Completely blank.
Jenus
The power is yours…
Yours alone, son of Hellswan…
Release me.
Release me.
The voices came, over and over again—tantalizing, calling to me, whispering the deepest desires of my heart. Offering me all the power and the glory I had ever dreamed of. Not just the kingdoms of Nevertide, but realms far out in the ether, humans, supernaturals, all kneeling down to me. All quaking with fear at my name. I was a god, an omnipotent thing, beyond the body of man or sentry, beyond all…
“Busy?”
Queen Trina stood in the doorway, a sly smile on her face. She reminded me of a viper, snaking through long grass, poised for a moment of stillness before darting forward to claim its prey.
I lowered myself deeper into the black tar, letting its thickness pull at my shoulder blades, slowly starting to snake up around my neck like some living thing. She couldn’t touch me while I was so close to our master.
“Be careful not to submerge yourself, Jenus. It’s hungry.”
She smirked, coming to seat herself on the edge of the pool. She dipped her long nails into the liquid, her pupils dilating as the waters called to her.
“What do you want?” I asked sharply. I was in no mood for her games today—or her interruptions.
“I had a vision last night,” she announced.
Now she had my attention. The visions were the way our master communicated with Queen Trina, and she had been anxiously waiting for another one since the night before the earthquake.
“Well?”
“The plan to use the unexpected visitors our master sensed at the mouth of the portal has failed – the boy’s stone did little use. Someone on the other side of the portal interfered, keeping it closed.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we go back to the original plan. Nevertide’s purest energy needs to be collected, and then drained to generate enough power to reopen the portal.”
“And you’ve seen this?” I asked.
“I’ve seen it.” Queen Trina’s eyes flashed at the suggestion I might doubt her. I returned her glare, not willing to back down, not anymore—not since the master had started to communicate with me, too.
“He wishes you to perform this task.” She smiled. “It is what I saw, and so is what shall be.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you will not have proved your worth—to him, or to me.”
I remained silent, contemplating my response. Sometimes I doubted whether these ‘visions’ Queen Trina received were accurately communicated to me, they differed so greatly to the ones that I had been receiving. The dark dreams that came to me in the middle of the night were only glimpses of images—faces of strangers contorted in pain and misery, screams so loud they would wake me, thinking that there was either human or animal at the end of my bed in unimaginable pain. I also saw death; I saw the bodies of the sentries crushed beneath the arch at Hellswan, souls trapped in stones, frozen in their horror for eternity, children bleeding, their crimson blood falling on an ocean.
When Queen Trina told me of her visions, she spoke of a benevolent spirit whispering to her, weaving tales of things which were to come and things which had passed.
Did the entity favor her above me?
Perhaps that was why her visions were of love and guidance, and mine were nightmares—dark, unforgettable nightmares.
“I will do it, gladly,” I replied.
She smiled at me, and this time it was almost genuine.
“I am pleased to hear it. We shall make an Acolyte out of you yet, Jenus.”
“I want assistance,” I interjected hastily before she could leave. I was suddenly wary that this could be a ploy of hers to be rid of me. “I will need a distraction, and time to formulate a plan.”
“And you shall have them,” she replied, “as much as you like. We will not abandon you, not while you faithfully follow the cause.”
I nodded, only half reassured. She wasn’t to be trusted, and until the task was completed, I wouldn’t know for sure whether or not her promise was a genuine one. She knew I didn’t trust her either—the smirk she gave me as she rose from the side of the pool made me grit my teeth.
She was a malicious, calculating monster.
I watched her retreating figure as she sauntered out the door, shutting it behind her.
I settled back into the black tar, waiting to hear the soft, soothing whispers of the voices once again. I didn’t have to wait long.
Lord…King…Master…
We are wa
iting for you…
The world, and all other worlds are waiting for you…
Ash
We clambered down to join Julian, Ruby and Hazel back on the ground. When they reached us, their faces were downcast.
“There’s nothing in it,” Julian panted as he stumbled toward us, the book held out for me to take.
“It’s for the emperor’s eyes only,” corrected one of the ministers, “of course you wouldn’t be able to see it.”
I took the book from Julian’s hands. As soon as my fingers touched the cold, gold metal of the cover, the book started to hum with energy. A white light burnt brilliantly across it. I turned my face to shield my eyes from the glare for a moment, and when I turned back, the book had changed.
The blank cover was now filled with elaborate carvings: runes, flowers and patterns all etched into the gold. The book had no title, no name, but I had no doubt that this was the book I was meant to see: the book that would save us from the entity and the Acolytes and restore Nevertide.
“Open it!” Julian exclaimed, his face marked with relief.
I turned to the first page in the book, my hands trembling slightly—partly because of the extreme weight of it, and partly with the adrenaline that was pumping through every single nerve in my body.
The pages were devoid of text, but as soon as I placed my finger on the page, words started to appear—written by hand in navy ink, the handwriting a careful calligraphy that I hadn’t seen used since I was a small child, and only then on official documents of the ministers.
I started to read.
The book started with a written account of Nevertide’s history, how humans had sailed to the land, only to find it was overrun by creatures that they’d never come across before—evil, malevolent and bent on destroying the human race. The visitors were taken as slaves by the creatures, but after generations of servitude the humans led an uprising with the help of a magical creature who saved them, locking the creatures into stones.
“Ash,” Tejus barked at me, “what does it say?”
“Nothing yet. It’s just an account of the history we already know.”
I sat down on the nearest rock, irritated that everyone was hovering over me—I’d never been the world’s quickest reader as I’d never had much use for it in the kitchens.
“Just give me some time,” I snapped at Tejus and the ministers. They took a few steps back, and started murmuring amongst themselves. Tejus grunted with irritation, and then proceeded to pet and pamper his moody lynx – both he and Hazel murmuring over it like proud parents.
The more I read, the more disheartened I became. A lot of this stuff was already known to us, most of it pieced together by Tejus and Hazel when they’d read the old ministerial accounts.
The author, whoever it was, wrote about a creature – a ‘jinni’ relinquishing the stones and the entity’s lock to the emperor, and that henceforth, over time, whoever was emperor would be responsible for keeping the land safe from the scourge of the entity and its followers—the ‘forbidden’. Beginning to skim-read in haste, I tried to look for a contingency plan…what happened if the lock was opened?
Finally, I found something.
“Listen to this.” I called the group back. “It says that if the entity is released, the forbidden will rise again—the entity will open the portal, and the forbidden will seep into all the dimensions, and once again reclaim Nevertide as their home…” I trailed off. That wasn’t as helpful as I’d thought it would be.
“The portal is closed?” Tejus asked.
“Apparently…” I re-read some of the pages I’d just gone past – finding the part about the jinni’s warnings; the ice-fires, pestilence of silence and red rains.
“So, it also says that once the entity breaks free of the stones, the portal to Nevertide will close – ‘keeping in the evil, lest it spread about the lands and populate itself across dimensions.’ So yes – the portal must have closed, and the entity is going to try and open it again.”
“Huh,” Julian replied, looking thoughtful. “We would never have gotten home anyway, even if the borders hadn’t been up.”
“But what about stopping the entity?” Ruby interrupted. “What does it say about that?”
I flicked through the pages again—the words started to blur and shift on the page, and I began to feel panicked.
“It… It doesn’t say anything…It just talks about guarding the locks as the primary duty of the emperor—about not succumbing to their power, or using the stones for one’s own selfish needs.”
“That has already come to pass,” Tejus hissed.
“What about the Acolytes? Does it say anything about them?” Hazel pressed.
“Hang on,” I muttered, flicking through the pages once more. Eventually I found an extract that mentioned them, and once again I started to read out loud.
“Since the uprising of the humans, there have been friends of the forbidden. They called themselves the Acolytes, and claimed that they were able to communicate with the entity through visions, and are dedicated to bringing about their master’s rule. They took to regularly sacrificing humans and animals to their master in order to feed him energy…’
“So, nothing remotely helpful once again?” Tejus questioned sarcastically.
“No, nothing helpful,” I retorted. I was just as angry about this as he was, and I didn’t like his accusatory tone—it wasn’t my fault that the book didn’t hold anything of use.
The only information that I hadn’t heard before was the inclusion of the ‘jinni’—I’d never heard Tejus mention it when he’d passed on the information he and Hazel had gathered.
“What’s a jinni?” I asked.
“A kind of supernatural creature, really powerful—it’s rare to hear of one on their own though, they tend to live in tribes,” Hazel replied, pacing up and down on the debris and rubble.
“They live on Earth?” I asked.
“Well… some. But they originate from the supernatural dimension.”
I nodded slowly, wondering how Hazel knew about a dimension different to hers. Before I could ask, Tejus interrupted.
“Does it mention at all what these ‘forbidden’ are? What the entity is? How the jinni managed to trap them in the first place?” He shot the questions at me, one after the other, but I could only shake my head wearily. The book didn’t disclose anything that might answer those questions.
“So this is a dead end.” Tejus sighed.
“Not necessarily,” Hazel said. We all looked at her in astonishment, wondering what she could have possibly understood from what I’d read out that might lead her to believe that there was a way out of this.
“Listen, it said that the ‘forbidden’ are going to open the portal—that’s good news. If we can get all the sentries out of Nevertide before it’s destroyed, then GASP has a chance of either shutting the portal, or battling whatever these creatures are in both Earth and the supernatural dimensions. It’s a risky strategy, but it might be the only chance we have.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Ruby murmured, deep in thought. “These creatures can’t be much worse than what we’ve faced before…and at least we’d have an entire army of jinn to help out, not just one.”
What?
“What’s GASP?” I asked.
Hazel stopped pacing, and looked over at Ruby with a guilty expression on her face. Ruby glared at her for a split second, and then turned to me.
“Um…I guess I have a couple of things to tell you…”
Benedict
We surveyed the kitchen in the summer palace, the dirty plates and leftover food, and winced as a globule of oat paste slipped off the kitchen counter with a heavy slop.
“This is gross,” I remarked to Jenney.
“This is nothing. Try cleaning up after a banquet of over one hundred ministers.”
I sighed. My friends were off searching for a way to save Nevertide from the entity, and I was here babysitting. Even Julian
had gone, declaring that he’d made a full recovery from his time in Queen Trina’s dungeons. I didn’t believe him for a moment.
“You’d think, after being the entity’s puppet for weeks, they’d let me join them,” I muttered.
“Haven’t you had enough excitement to last you a lifetime?” Jenney countered. “I’d have thought you’d be happy to take it easy for a while.”
“This isn’t taking it easy.” I gestured at the mess. The kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it. I could hear the kids next door as well, sounding like a horde of elephants running rampant around the room.
“You can go and join them, try to keep them under control while I clean up here?” Jenney offered.
“No, thanks,” I replied hurriedly. “I’ll clean.”
Jenney gave me a knowing smile and then handed me a grease-encrusted cooking pot.
“Get to it then.”
I started washing up, using mostly cold water—the plumbing wasn’t great here, and for baths we’d had to heat up water on the stove. Since arriving here, Hellswan had started to feel like a luxury. At least we’d had beds there and a constant supply of hot water. Still, it beat the temple, and at least I was getting some sleep, not wandering around hallways trying to collect stones.
“Cut the water a second,” Jenney said. I did as she requested, waiting for her to explain why.
“Can you hear anything?” she asked.
I stopped clashing the pots around and stood still for a moment.
“Not a thing.” I shrugged. The palace was silent.
“Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?” she replied, wiping her hands on her apron, and moving toward the door.
Where are the kids?
I couldn’t hear a sound coming from next door, and immediately started to feel a bit tense. It was pretty rare that Yelena stayed silent for longer than a couple of seconds…I hurried out behind Jenney.
She flung open the door to the next room and tried to walk through—only to be bounced back.
“Barrier!” she shouted. “It’s the Acolytes!”
The floor of the ballroom was almost entirely obscured by the fallen bodies of the kids. Six black-cloaked Acolytes moved around them, gathering them up in their arms and piling them up by Jenus. He was clean-shaven and dressed in the same black robes as the rest of them, but hadn’t bothered to put his hood up. Clearly he didn’t care that he might be recognized. He turned toward the door as we opened it, smiling at me.