CHAPTER 32: RISING HOPE
Mathias, stripped of his Gaianar armour and glaive, was dragged before the Fathers of Osiria, chained inside a cage. The great statues looked down on him without pity; their faces frozen in vigil sleep.
His swollen eyes flickered open and gazed upon the pile of dead Library soldiers heaped before the steps of the Chamber of Lore. Familiar faces, some friends, men and women who had served him during the Fall, all looking back in lifeless agony. There were three Order Knights among the dead too, one Auralar and two Kratoth—but from the numerous rebel bodies laying around them, Mathias surmised the enemy had also taken a great lose. Rage suddenly caused through his veins, and he screamed against the gag in his mouth. Screamed for the sacrifice his army had made for his people. Screamed for their families, for their vengeance.
“Up here, old friend!” spoke a voice suddenly from up high, pulling him from his sorrow.
The general lifted his head and looked upon the shadowy figure of Kaelan standing proudly like a ship's figurehead on the chamber's balcony. Seeing his old friend, he didn't flinch. His old enemy. Mathias already knew the rebel would be waiting for him.
Then he saw the silverfire reef on Kaelan's brow, and he silently made a prayer for Oreus.
“It is strange that we find ourselves here, like this. I didn't expect to come back here. You know, after the war in Avalon, after we almost tore that city to pieces, I thought you would have known better than to have resurrected another secret city. I was hoping that maybe you and your followers would have finally joined us and made a move to claim back the lands of our people.”
You know, the gag is redundant for people like us, Kaelan.
“I know, I know,” the rebel leader laughed in an erratic manner. “I just like having the ability to hear myself talk, when all I have ever done is listen to you talk. You and Toram. But not any more—”
What did you do with Oreus? Kill the only person who ever cared about you.
Kaelan's strange mirth disappeared and his face darkened. He leaped over the balcony rail, floating to the ground with arms widespread and eyes trailing white fire. He looked like an angel.
When he landed before Mathias' cage, a djinn warrior unlocked its door to let him in. Kaelan stalked up to his prisoner and punched the general hard in the stomach several times, smashing the air from his lungs. “Don't you ever bring that name up in my presence again! Do you hear me, general?”
Mathias, blinking in and out of consciousness, refused to nod in a fashion that said he understood. His unwavering Atlantean stubbornness and pride kept him stoic like a rock. Why do you keep me alive?
“Because it is a gesture of my generosity to the people of this fair city. I will not martyr you just yet. You have to tell me where Thomas' son is first. Tell me where the little worm is hiding.”
You know that I will die for that information, Kaelan.
“I don't need your death to find me his location,” the Dark Tide rebel said, pulling out the Akashic Eye from under his cloak. Mathias stirred uncomfortably; and seeing this, Kaelan smiled sinisterly. “You know what this is, don't you? I just need your memories and the boy's location will be mine...”
“My lord!” a rebel shouted from the darkness, breaking Kaelan's concentration. “Djinn scouts report that Bast and his forces were defeated in the Sun Garden! They say that a ship has emerged from the ground!”
“What ship?” Kaelan demanded, turning his attention to the runner. “Who is—Thomas' son! A distraction, Mathias? Is that what you were doing. Well, now I know the truth. I will not let the boy escape.”
It is too late, old friend. Mathias' thoughts said confidently. All this time the Rising Hope has been preparing to leave. The Son of Thomas will never be yours.
Kaelan swallowed that thought bitterly, turned and punched Mathias' already beaten body again and again and again until the man passed out.
“Send the warhawks,” he finally said to the waiting messenger through laboured breaths. Kaelan did not turn to face him. “Cripple their ship and pry that boy from the wreckage. I do not care if he is half-dead!”
“Yes, my lord!” came back the answer, and the sound of feet hurried away.
I will have you yet, Jack. The rebel leader thought, turning and walking away from Mathias as if he wasn't even there. Kaelan's dark obsession for the Crown of Dreams consumed him like a hungry void that could never be filled. The taint of madness it was inflicting on him was tearing his mind to pieces...
“William!” Layla shouted over the rumble of the Rising Hope's psychic-charged Heart—a gigantic diamond that gave the ship its ability to levitate and move in sync with the pilot's mind—throbbing to life. “There's something trying to pry the hatch open—its Cloak!”
Open the hatch, fools! Cloakʼs angry mind-voice resounded in their thoughts.
“I heard him too,” the Hy-Bresailian said, not pulling his eyes away from the control panel in front of him. His hands deftly glided above the panel, pulling switches and turning nobs. “Give me a sec—”
“She's gone,” Jack said, tapping Will on the shoulder.
Sparing a glance over his shoulder, the pilot found her seat empty and saw a flash of boots disappear up the ladder. “Stubborn woman!” He laughed, then turned to Jack. “Strap yourself in, this is going to be a bumpy ride!”
Layla heaved the circle hatch open and a spiral of black shadow rushed passed her, like water swirling down a sink. When she looked down, the ethereal shadow had transformed into an opaque figure. Cloak looked up the ladder and locked eyes with Layla. Her heart stopped. Two black orbs looked back from a horridly pale face; and the tip of a red stone protruded from his forehead, a bloody scab forming around its circumference. “Cloak?” she whispered.
The Nysaean's face suddenly reflected an old familiar expression: impatient arrogance. Tearing his eyes away from Layla, he stalked over to Will. “When are you going to get this bucket of bolts moving? It won't be long before the djinn reform beyond the garden and return for another attack!”
“I'm doing the best I can—Cloak! What is that in your forehead? Is that a Doom Stone shard?” Will gasped.
“I'm a Revenant now, dear friend. Something I have loathed and hated all of my life.” He seemed to falter, took a ragged breath and continued. “The very creature that killed my father. A Slave of Meztor. But... there was nothing I could do. I had to sacrifice myself to protect you meandering morons. You practically led Bast to the ship!”
“I didn't know we were followed, Cloak,” Layla challenged his accusation with an edge in her voice. She took the last step off the ladder and walked over to him, standing close enough to inspect the wound on his forehead. The blood drained from her face, and Layla reached out to touch the spike of red stone protruding from his flesh that glowed softly.
Cloak reeled away from Layla's hand and stumbled against a wall. He suddenly seemed disorientated, and began waving his hands in front of his face as if swatting away invisible adversaries. “Don't touch me!” He cried in a mixture of anger and pain.
“Erin!” Will shouted, turning from his controls and half rising from his chair.
“Stay at the helm!” Layla commanded, pointing at the cockpit's window, which was slowly revealing the surrounding garden as the ship rose out of the ground. “Jack and I will take care of him, you focus on getting us out of here.”
Jack moved slowly towards Cloak who, in his deep delirium, looked like a wild animal that had been cornered.
“Erinaeus,” Layla said his full name, “its going to be okay. What happened up there?”
“I-I had to make the change... the metamorphosis.” His eyes were black again. Deep pools of midnight. “I crave... flesh. I need life. I need to eat!”
“Stay away from him, Jack!” Layla shouted, lifting a hand to stop his advance. “He is going through the Revenant hunger. They need the living tissue of other creatures to rejuvenate their—” she hesitated before saying, “—decaying bodies.”
Cloak screamed again and toppled over, writhing in pain on the ground.
“For the sake of the Ancients!” Will cried in desperation. “Do something for him!”
“I'm trying!” Layla looked worried and confused as she knelt beside Cloak, uncertain of what to do. Then he stopped moving, and for a moment she thought he might be dead; however the rising and falling of his chest brought a sigh of relief from her lips. “You fool, you fool,” she whispered. She attempted to touch his face again, but her skin suddenly began to ripple and pull—by some invisible force—towards the Revenant's sinewy flesh that was separating in strands. She recoiled, yanking her hand back. “There's nothing I can do!”
“What about one of the dead djinn on the field?” Jack suggested, wide-eyed, keeping his distance.
Layla looked like she was about to refute his idea, then her face dropped into realisation. “You are brilliant, Jack. Wait here. I will try and get one.”
“Do you want me to stop?” Will asked from the pilot's chair, not turning away from the fast shrinking landscape of the park before him. “Or land again?”
“Just hover over the field for a bit!” Layla said, leaping up the rungs of the ladder. “I will levitate one up!”
The sound of metal grinding against metal resounded as the gigantic circle of Lemurian symbols, which had rested undisturbed in the field of grass for decades, suddenly split down the centre and both sides of the plate pulled back into the turf, revealing a hidden docking bay. The Rising Hope emerged from the ground like the morning sun above the horizon: an orange glow heralding its ascension.
A roar of wind thundered across the trees' canopy as the airship crested the Sun Garden and remained hovering—a black shadow engulfing the field like the descent of night. Its armour was gold and red and the ship itself was shaped like a mythical dragon; huge mechanical wings extended outwards, absorbing the glow of the park's gloam light. The Rising Hope's own light came from dozens of diamonds glittering from its hull and wings, reflecting the colours of the ship's metal in a ghostly aura. A glass dome rested in the brow of the dragon's cyclopean head—the cockpit. Below the body was a cog-jointed tail that dangled eighty feet long, ending in a huge trident. It, like the other parts of the ship, was controlled by the pilot's mind-link to the Heart.
Will was one with the Rising Hope. Much like when he flew the Silversong, he had merged his consciousness with the ship's Heart. When the link was made he found himself, like always, somewhat distant from the cockpit and his own body. The psychic bridge spread his mind out to the Heart and then to the various other diamond nodes throughout the ship. The strategically placed nodes allowed Will to completely control the reflexes and movement of the ship as if they were nerves. Using levitation and flight was as simple as pushing one's thoughts deep into the Heart's stored power and then exerting outwards, pushing in the direction one wanted to propel the ship.
Warhawks. Will thought, and the Rising Hope's hull trembled, reacting to his anticipation. He had felt their approach as soon as they had entered the Sun Garden. Five of them, all from the landing fields. The Atlantean fighters had been scavenged from the sea many years ago by the Library and used for reconnaissance missions in the desert. A little larger than the Silversong, the warhawks were outfitted with marika cannons on each wing: long metal pipes that contained a myriad of mirrors and psychically-charged diamond nodes to channel energy blasts at the pilot's adversaries.
Stretching out his thoughts, Will located Layla. She was standing above the hatch on top of the dragon's head, her gaze cast down upon the dead djinn sprawled on the field below, searching for a body for Cloak's dark hunger. His unconscious friend needed to regenerate from the tissue of another organic being—the curse of the Revenant demanded it. Will hated what Cloak had become; as much, he surmised, as how Cloak must have felt towards himself.
There has to be another way! He shouted desperately in Layla's thoughts. We cannot be so barbaric!
There is no other way. Layla replied grimly and reached out her psychic hands, dragging a dead djinn up into the air from where Ramose's bomb had exploded.
Shaking the thoughts of despair away, Will turned his attention to the first of the Atlantean fighters flying straight at them from out of the dark. The gold warhawk flew like a lightening bolt, sending the top leaves of the gloams into a spiralling vortex along its flight path. When it was above the field its marika canons unleashed a blast of psychic-fire at the Rising Hope.
They're here! Will's thoughts warned the others, emanating from the ship as if they belonged to it. He felt Cloak stir and Jack panic. Layla's thoughts were troubled but determined, focused on the levitating body nearly in her grasp. The blast of psychic energy smashed into the dragon ship's body, exploding and sending shockwaves through it. Layla nearly lost her balance and dropped the corpse. Will reacted. The dragon head opened its jaw and returned fire from its own marika cannon. A blast of psychic energy tore through the warhawk, blowing it to pieces. Burning shrapnel rained down on the field, extinguishing the luminous glow of the lamp-grass. One down—!
Before Will could finish his victory mantra another two warhawks shot out of a storm of swirling leaves, firing relentlessly at the Rising Hope. Will was slow to stop the first shot, which penetrated the armour of the ship's left shoulder, causing fiery smoke to billow out of a jagged hole; but quickly absorbed the second with a psychic-shield he erected from the ship's nodes. The enemy's fire rolled harmlessly over the cockpit's dome and then dissipated. Flashing white, the nodes reacted to Will's thoughts and the dragon's mouth thundered back at the warhawks, followed by a swing of the ship's tail. Psychic-fire seriously crippled one ship, sending it spinning away from the battle, while the tail smashed through the second one, igniting it into a ball of flames. Its smouldering remains crashed into the field, setting it alight.
Keep still, will you? Layla suddenly growled in Will's head. You are turning the field into a sea of fire! I have to salvage at least one body.
I'm trying! Will shot back. You better make it quick. We have to get out of here while we still can.
Then out of the trees came the last two warhawks—in tow was the damaged one that had flown away in the previous attack. Will knew that Kaelan's retribution against deserters was a fate far worse than death.
A volley of psychic-fire hurled towards the Rising Hope.
Will—not being able to move until Layla grabbed the body—erected the shield again. Upon impact he could feel the Heart weakening as it diverted most of its power to absorbing the blasts. Another lash of the tail and one warhawk went down in a trail of fire.
The smoke from the Rising Hope's shoulder disappeared, but Will knew the damage would hamper his manoeuvrability. Sacrificing a portion of the Heart's power to the diamond nodes near the damage, he melted and sealed the metal with his thoughts as fast as he could.
I have it! Layla said just as the blast hole was melted shut. Will felt the Atlantean reenter the ship with a djinn in her arms. The hatch closed behind her; he moved into action. The Rising Hope soared further up above the garden until it almost reached the roof of the cavern, then it descended upon the remaining warhawks. Its wings retracted in, giving it more speed. The damaged fighter that had returned to battle wasn't fast enough to avoid the attack and was blown to pieces by the dragon ship's firepower.
Swerving left and right, the last two warhawks split up and circled away from the Rising Hope, disappearing into the smoke from the burning rubble of their fallen comrades.
Two giant mechanical claws unfolded from underneath the Rising Hope's body, ready to absorb the ship's impending impact. Moments before it looked like they would hit the ground at full speed, Will pulled the ship up out of its collision course. He levelled it above the treetops, flying after one of the warhawks that had become visible. The smaller ship suddenly did a u-turn and flew back at the Rising Hope, firing indiscriminately. Will leaned to the right and whipped the trident-tipped tail to the left, destroying the s
hip as it flew into the weapon's path.
One left. Will thought, feeling the weariness of the battle begin to weigh on him. The Heart was not depleted yet, but the power was quickly draining from the diamond core, which in turn had physical implications on him. The link between him and the ship was absolute. Should the ship be destroyed while he was fully immersed...
Out of the black oily smoke flew the last warhawk. It fired at the Rising Hope's right flank, taking Will by surprise. Psychic-fire ignited the right wing in flames, causing significant damage. The ship lurched and then lost its balance momentarily, dipping into the top branches of the gloam canopy and sending a cloud of leaves into the air. Will, however, managed to pull the ship back up just as it was about to have a near-fatal crash into a tight knot of trees. Swerving towards the field, he pushed the Heart with all his power, increasing the ship's speed, and then set the nodes on the wing to absorb the fire before it spread. The last lick of flames was gone when the warhawk flew back into Will's sight again. The Rising Hope opened fired, but the Dark Tide pilot managed to duck and weave between all the blasts, unscathed.
They're good. Will thought. But why aren't they flying out of my path?
Another thunder from the Rising Hope's marika shook the canopy. The warhawk spiralled around the blast and kept flying.
It's trying to crash into us! Will exclaimed. The Heart was almost spent. He could feel the connection between it and his mind breaking. The ethereal anchors snapping. Not being able to risk using the cannon, raising a shield or exerting the trident tail and losing the last of the ship's power, Will pulled the last of the psychic energy from the nodes back into the Heart. It is now or never. He thought desperately.
Then the warhawk opened fire at the Rising Hope.
Will seemed unconscious in his deep submersed state with the ship's Heart. Only the flicker of his eyes showed that he was alive. A silvery blue spiderweb of light glowed under the surface of his temples like lightening above the ocean. His eyes also glowed behind their lids.
Layla carried the dead djinn over to Cloak. Jack could barely watch what was unfolding. Cloak was now a shrivelled, twisted husk of a man. His face was skeletal, and his eyes were still as black as midnight. The poisonous power of the Doom Stone shard held its grip on him tightly; his body eating itself.
The ship suddenly lurched to the right. Jack stumbled and was pushed forcefully against the wall, and Layla fell backwards, dropping the body. After a violent series of shakes, the ship finally righted itself and began to level out.
“May the Ancients guide you back,” Layla said as she scrambled to her feet and dragged the djinn over to Cloak. His face was cracked and dissolving by the second, revealing more of his skull beneath. Not giving in to the anguish she felt inside, Layla clasped the djinn's limp fingers with Cloakʼs and stood up, taking a few paces back. “Jack, look away!” she commanded.
But it was too late. Jack could not pull his gaze away from the horror. He remembered Gha'haram draining the tree back in the Southlake woods and felt he was reliving that horrible scene once again. This time, however, it was happening to one of his friends.
A red light pulsed from the Doom Stone shard and shimmered along Cloak's fingers. When it reached the djinn's hand, the dead man's flesh seemed to lose all of its moisture, darken and dry out faster than Cloak's own decaying body. Less than a minute later and the djinn was nothing more than brittle bones and grey dust. Jack bit his fist and pulled away from the scene, a swell of sickness stirring in his stomach.
Black tendrils suddenly lashed out from Cloak's body like living shadows and snaked around the bones absorbing them whole as well.
“Curses!” Layla hissed, crouching low in a battle-stance, her glaive unsheathed. Jack hurried to her side with his own in hand.
No attack came however. The shadow tendrils whipped about in the air with no particular intent and then quickly withdrew back into the crumpled figure of Cloak. After a moment of silence the Samatar groaned softly.
“Erin!” Jack was the first to rush to his side, not fearing the newly made Revenant. He knelt down and saw the flesh restored to his friend's face. The black pools were gone; shrunk back to their normal pupil size. His breaths were deep and slow and it was if he had come out of a long sleep. “I thought you were going to die...”
The Samatar climbed up on his elbows and looked from Jack to Layla. “It will take more than a handful of djinn to kill me. This mission was set upon my shoulders—like the rest of you—by Mathias to complete. And I will see that it is done lest the might of all Osiria and Rama bury me.” Cloak nodded a silent thank you to Layla for saving his life.
Layla reached out a hand to her companion. Even though their friendship was often turbulent, Cloak's loyalty to Mathias was something she shared. A smile crept slowly on her lips. “Welcome back, Erinaeus.”
Cloak grabbed Layla's hand and climbed to his feet. As he did so, he winced, clutching at his chest. Then, looking Jack and Layla in the eye, he pulled up his black pullover underneath his leather jacket.
Jack gasped.
A large metallic, eight pointed star was buried in Cloak's chest. Dark gunmetal grey, with a red glow in the middle where the points intersected. Where the metal disappeared into his flesh, thick scarring formed along the edge, and small webs of veins were visible under pale, translucent skin.
“The, the...” Jack could not say what had been weighing on his mind since Oreus' feast.
“The Obsidian Escutcheon,” Cloak rasped wearily, leaning against a wall. “The very same. Taken from the body of Meztor Tae'am himself.”
Before anyone could say anything more, the ship suddenly shook and a roar of fire consumed the cockpit's dome...
He had been trained his entire life on how to pilot the Rising Hope. Learned the 'mental weight' or feel of its psychic controls. Became familiarised with every part of the ship as if it were an extension of himself. Its first pilot, Mathias, had made sure of it. “There will come a time, Will, when I will ask you to pilot this ship beyond the city,” he had said, “back to the time we once knew. Back before the Fall.”
That time was now. Will reached his thoughts deep into the Heart and found a portion that had been locked by a psychic key—a memory needed to be recalled by the pilot so as to pass the barrier, otherwise defence mechanisms would see the intruder's mind destroyed. Summoning the memory, the invisible wall dissolved and Will's consciousness passed deeper into the Heart, into the Time Vault. There memories of each great century was stored. Memories taken from the planet itself. The Sorrarani had long ago learned how to read and manipulate the Aether—the Earth's memories—and contain them in devices such as the Heart. Time travel was done by triggering a particular earth memory, which would force the planet to pull the ship into the Aether and throw it back to that time.
When the Rising Hope was first built, the Sorrarani and their Gaianar Knights sacrificed many of their number in attempting to psychically travel forward in the Aether, to look into the Earth's distant future. To see what had not yet happened. This drove many mad; but those who survived used the last of their crumbling sanity to record that one great memory that would be their salvation from the Fall.
It was the memory of Jack's time that the Sorrarani had saw and captured in the Heart. The twenty-first century of man and their machines that were driven by fossil fuels and not by the mind. A time of tall cities made of glass and metal that sprawled across the face of the world. A time that had risen from the rubble and receding oceans of the great flood.
A memory of a great city suddenly flashed before Will's eyes. It was bigger than any city that he had seen in Jack's time, and it sat upon an island of Lemuria. Towers that rose above modern man's greatest skyscrapers, and statues mightier than the Statue of Liberty, carved from white marble, gold and silver and studded in all the precious stones of the earth.
He thought of Atlantis upon a great expanse, shouldered by mountains beyond the shores. The warmth of a full sun
was on his skin, the smell of sea filled his lungs, and the sound of thousands of men and women singing praise to the High King was in his ears. The scene was palpable; yet a distant memory, unravelling inside his mind and tingling his senses. A mirage of that ancient land was taking shape and he could feel that it was only a breath away. All he had to do was let the memory consume every node in the ship, then the gateway would open. The planet would shift on its ethereal axis and pull the Rising Hope into its embrace.
The Aether—the living memory of the planet that connected all sentient minds together in a web of invisible light—would take them back. Back to the Earth before the Fall.
Will inhaled one last time taking in the salty air-filled the cockpit.
A'tahail. He said, speaking the word: return. A'tahail...
Psychic fire ravaged the head of the dragon. The warhawk fired again and again at the unprotected armour, and it flew hard and fast, unwavering from its path. Determined to crash into the Rising Hope. Determined to sacrifice itself to stop the son of Thomas from escaping into a time Kaelan could not reach him. The Dark Tide rebel would not fail his master.
Then, just as the ships were about to collide in a disastrous explosion, the Rising Hope became as transparent as a ghost and as bright as the sun. Slivers of gold light entwining and swirling into a vortex of fire. The rebel covered his eyes with an arm, but could not shield the painful glare that consumed everything. That burned his flesh and turned him to ash.
A great sound of thunder resounded in that mighty cavern and when the light was gone so was the Rising Hope.
The warhawk sailed through empty space and then fell from the sky like a shooting star, exploding into the gloams below.
Kaelan's plan for Jack was thwarted.
Flames from all the fallen warhawks consumed the Sun Garden. They ate everything, including the lamp-grass that had lit the floor of the cavern for many decades. The djinn and rebels that had come to assist Bast's assault on the Rising Hope fell back and skulked in the darkness of the surrounding city. Their faces twisted in anger and fear. They had lost their prize and they would feel Kaelan's wrath for it.
On the outskirts of the burning park, in the shadows of a lightless pillar, a silhouette of a man stood against the glare of that mighty furnace. Hands clasped a long staff to support a weariness that seemed heavier than the stones of the pillar itself. “Safe journey, my friends,” Ramose said as the light of the dragon ship in the sky disappeared. “May the Ancients keep you safe. And may you find yourselves back here in one piece.”
The djinn then slipped behind the pillar and disappeared into the city to fulfil the pledge he made to Cloak to save the Library.
And to discover the fate of Vesphaeon and his sister Eleena. Yes, Eleena. He thought as he ran through the darkness, the fires of the park roaring behind him. That beautiful woman with those amazing blue eyes, and hands that made the softest silk seem coarse. Eleena, a woman who he could one day fall deeply in love with... if he had not done so already. And he believed he had.