The aeternum chronicles.., p.34
The Aeternum Chronicles- The Complete Trilogy, page 34
part #1 of The Aeternum Chronicles Series
She covered her mouth and coughed. “Eleu…He’s gone, isn’t he?”
Oren nodded, frowning. “The hillside…it was completely destroyed.” Oren finished removing the last of the stones and put his hands on her shoulders. “Listen, we have to get out of here. Do you think you can stand?”
She pursed her lips together, and nodded. By the second attempt, she was on her feet, eyes open and alert.
She coughed, crouching low. “Keep your head down. Easier to breathe.”
Oren nodded and followed her example. They stumbled up the gradual, rocky slope at the base of the volcano, until the smoke and fumes began to thin. Small black ashes rained down from the sky, and light tremors shook the ground. “Do you remember where the waygate should be?” he asked.
“I think so,” she answered, “I saw the entrance from the air.” She stood straight and put a hand over her brow, scanning the volcano’s surface.
The orange sun was rising, casting everything in an eerie twilight. Hadn’t it just gone down? It occurred to Oren that time itself might be breaking along with the landscape of this world. His head throbbed, and he was dripping with sweat from the wretched heat rising from the ground. A brilliant, bright red meteor suddenly burst through the cloud-cover, crashing into the broken plains with an explosion so powerful it shook the ground. If there was a hell, Oren was pretty sure it looked something like this.
“Clem! We have to hurry!”
“You think I don’t know that?” she fired back. “This way!”
They continued, stumbling over the sharp, unforgiving rocks for several minutes before Clem stopped and pointed. Oren followed her gaze to a small opening in the blackened slope of the volcano ahead. They were rushing toward it when a second, far greater explosion knocked them to the ground. Oren covered his head with his arms, pressing hard on his ears, but was unable to shut out the unrelenting torrent of sound. After what felt like an eternity, it finally subsided, and they were cast into darkness.
Oren slowly staggered to his feet and reached over to Clem, who was also trying to regain her footing. Even in the dim light, he could see her eyes were wide with panic; she appeared to be shouting, but all he heard was a high pitched ringing. Lifting his gaze toward the volcano’s peak, Oren was gripped by a powerful, instinctive fear. A massive column of black and red smoke rose up into the sky. Above it, an immeasurable mushroom cloud loomed, shadowing the entire landscape.
Clementine was pulling at his shirt, pointing frantically toward the waygate entrance. The ground again began to rumble, and Oren snapped out of his shock. Together, they half-ran, half-stumbled, toward the cavern they hoped would lead them off this doomed world.
Oren’s foot kicked something hard, and he looked down at his feet. Small stones had begun floating up from the ground. That can’t be good. He looked back up toward the erupting peak, and squinted. What is that? A great wall of white was growing larger, and Oren realized it was rushing toward them with unimaginable speed. Clem hadn’t seen it yet.
“Hurry!” He shouted, but couldn’t even hear himself.
This time it was Oren who grabbed Clem’s arm, pulling her forward as they ran recklessly toward the waygate cavern. Oren kept his eyes on the shadowy entrance. Almost there! He spared a glance up at the volcano and immediately regretted it. The roiling white wall of molten ash was mere seconds away.
They were just a few short paces from of the cavern when the wall struck. Oren wrapped his arms around Clementine and in a final, desperate attempt, dove for the opening.
They landed hard on the smooth stone floor of the cavern. Oren slowly opened his eyes to see a blizzard of lethal white ash just beyond the entrance. We made it! He swatted away a piece that had blown in and landed on his arm with a sizzle. They quickly scrambled back away from the entrance, beyond the reach of the deadly ash. Oren looked around. They were in a polished, onyx passage with a domed ceiling. He could feel a low rumble in the ground beneath his feet. Dust and small rocks fell from above.
Clem said something, but her voice sounded small and far away. Oren had only a few seconds to worry about his hearing before realizing they had bigger problems.
Clem was pointing toward the back of the passage, where an eerie red light emanated from cracks in the ground. There was a particularly violent shudder, and another crack appeared, closer to them. They shared a look, and rushed deeper into the tunnel.
Crack!
A fissure had appeared in the ceiling ahead, leaking molten rock. Oren pointed it out to Clem and they maneuvered around the flow, nearly tumbling over the edge of a chasm where the floor had almost completely fallen away. They flattened themselves against the wall and side-stepped along the narrow strip of floor that remained.
Further ahead, the passage opened up into a cavern. They hurried toward it, dodging falling debris. As they stumbled into the open space, Oren immediately noticed the air was cooler.
The shaking had subsided to intermittent rumbles, and he squinted, peering into the darkness. He could just barely make out a structure, standing a little ways in. “I think I see it!” he shouted. This time he heard himself, though his voice sounded like it was trapped in a bottle. He turned to Clem, but she was already moving ahead.
“Clem wait!” He reached out toward her, but she had vanished suddenly.
“Clem!” Oren scrambled forward as carefully as possible in the faint light. He reached the point where she disappeared. The floor simply ended, falling away before him. He looked down in shock at Clem’s terrified face as she dangled from a tiny ledge jutting out over the pitch black abyss. Stepping back, he quickly lay down and reached over the edge to grasp her outstretched hand. Heaving with all his strength, he pulled her up until they both lay on the floor, panting beside the drop-off.
Once they caught their breath, Clem hugged him fiercely, gripped either side of his face, and spoke. He still couldn’t hear her, but he didn’t need to. The gratitude was written plainly on her face.
Oren nodded, and looked out past the drop to the structure beyond. The waygate. He stood and moved carefully along the edge of the drop-off. It spanned the entire width of the cavern. There’s no way across…unless. Oren was still new to gathering, and even more so to shifting.
“I might be able to shift us across!” he yelled.
There were just two problems with that plan. Oren recalled training with Khalil in a clearing of the Wyrewood. ‘You must never shift in an enclosed space,’ he said. ‘One misstep, and you will be spliced with whatever happens to be where you end up.’
That was problem one. Problem two was Clementine. He had no idea if it was possible to shift with her. If something were to go wrong it could be disastrous.
He found her tossing stones across, gauging the distance. She looked at him as he approached and shook her head. “I might have a—”
The ground jerked violently, nearly knocking them both over the edge. Oren grimaced and crouched down to lower his center of gravity. Something bright red caught his eye from the passageway behind. Lava had exploded up through the fissures in the floor and was spilling out toward them. We’re trapped! There was nowhere to run, and the part of the ground that wasn’t lava was shrinking rapidly.
“We have to jump!” Clem was shouting, but her voice was barely audible.
“It’s too far!” Oren shouted back. “We’d never make it!”
“We have no choice! We have to try!” Clem grabbed his shirt. “On three!”
“One!” she shouted, backing up for a running start.
“Clem there’s no way!” Oren pleaded.
“Two!” The lava was inches from their boots.
He glanced down at it, and back at the waygate.
“Three!”
Before she could spring forward, Oren wrapped his arms around her, gathered enough kai to make his skin tingle, closed his eyes, and shifted.
There was a powerful discharge of energy, and a deep THWUM filled his ears.
When the feeling faded, he was relieved to find Clem still in his arms. It didn’t feel like any of his body parts were embedded in stone. He cautiously opened his eyes. They were standing directly beside the archway.
Clem looked at him. Her jaw was hanging open. “Did you just…I didn’t know you could...”
“Neither did I!” He grinned.
Oren released her and went to turn around, but something held him in place. He looked down and his heart sank. The hilt of his blade, and much of the sheath were embedded in the stone of the waygate. He yanked at it, but it wouldn’t budge. He unbuckled his sword-belt, and began tugging at that while Clem ran her hands along the archway, searching for the indentation that would allow them to activate it.
What started as a low rumble slowly grew into a roar, filling the cavern with noise. Oren went from trying to pull the sword free, to grasping it for balance. He felt Clem gathering and the waygate began to glow. Daylight poured out through the archway. There was another crack from above, and Oren looked up just in time to dodge more molten rock pouring in.
Clem was yelling something, but the roaring drowned her out. He looked regretfully at the sword—his last physical connection to Khalil—as Clem grasped his arm and dragged him through the waygate.
***
Oren shivered as he passed through the thin membrane separating their world from Eros. He had forgotten about the icy cold sensation that came along with travel between worlds. He and Clementine collapsed onto the grass in exhaustion, watching as bright red, molten rock poured down on the other side of the waygate. Their view of Eros flickered and distorted, eventually going completely dark and vanishing all together.
Oren looked around, taking in the surroundings. They were encircled by large weathered stones, stacked at odd, varying angles. Beyond the circle were foothills and valleys, covered in short grass and shrubs; and beyond that, colossal white-peaked mountains loomed. The air was crisp and fresh—a welcome change from the sulfurous fumes of the volcano.
Oren breathed deeply, filling his lungs with cool mountain air. Clem did the same.
“We made it,” she said with a sad smile.
“Yeah,” he responded. There was a hollowed out sensation of emptiness somewhere deep inside. It wasn’t for the loss of his sword, or even for Eleu’s death, though both saddened him. This felt different. It was subtle, yet profound. Oren realized he and Clementine were mourning the loss of Eros—an entire world was dying, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.
Oren swallowed, allowing the feeling to wash over him. They sat in silence for several minutes, and he did his best to etch some of the memories there into his mind. Many were terrifying, but the world held such incredible beauty, and life like he’d never seen before. It was difficult to wrap his mind around the fact that it was all gone, forever. Trying to memorize his experiences was the only way he could think of to memorialize Eros.
Oren took another deep breath and stood. He offered his hand to Clem, who was still sitting. She wiped a tear from her eye, took his hand and stood. They remained there for a moment, sharing the experience. She squeezed once, then let go. Oren looked at the sky. Several wisps of white cloud drifted across it. He hadn’t realized how badly he’d missed that deep blue sky until now…it was as familiar as ever, but something seemed fundamentally different about it. Oren frowned. The sun, he thought, it should be rising from the east, not over the mountains. Unless…
He stared at the massive, peak before them. “Clem.”
She didn’t answer, so he turned to her. She was looking in the same direction he had been, her brow furrowed.
She spoke without looking at him, “Those are the Shattered Peak Mountains.”
“Uh huh,” he answered.
“They’re on the wrong side.”
“Yep.”
“We’re on the wrong side.” She looked at him.
Oren nodded. “The Eros waygate must connect far west of New Arcadia, on the other side of the mountain range.”
“But the mountains are impassable, there’s no way home without going around…”
Oren didn’t answer. He hadn’t thought of New Arcadia as home for a long time, now. His mind turned to survival, as it had been trained to from his time in the Miralaja. He shaded his eyes and scanned the landscape. They would need water, shelter…and something to eat wouldn’t be such a bad thing either.
A small white discoloration at the base of a distant foothill caught his eye.
“Buildings,” he said, pointing southwest. Clem turned to look. He couldn’t tell exactly how many there were, but he was pretty sure the structures weren’t natural.
“I think we could probably reach it by sundown, if we hurry.”
Clementine nodded.
Oren took one last look at the waygate, saying a final goodbye to what would forever exist only in memory. He went to rest his hand on the hilt of his sword, and found only empty air.
They began their trek down the hillside toward the small town in the distance, stopping along the way to drink from a mountain stream. The sun shone down, warming the ground and highlighting the vibrant green of the grass beneath their feet. At one point, Clem spotted a strange herd of three-horned creatures grazing in the distance. As the sun traveled farther across the sky, an occasional cool breeze would tug at their tattered clothing, and Oren found himself hoping they’d find a warm place to sleep before the cold night descended.
“Do you think she made it back to Masada in time?” Clem asked as they hiked over a grassy hill.
Oren turned to her, his brow furrowed. “Who?”
“The soldier who warned us about the attack on New Arcadia…I think her name was Anzien? She said she had orders to return to Masada.”
Oren thought back to their time in Tectum Caverns with Khalil and Magdalene. Anzien had arrived exhausted, and soaked to the bone, but somehow she’d found the strength to keep going that night.
‘I wish to return home tonight to defend my brothers and sisters.’
“I hope so,” Oren said. If she was right about the attack, Masada was going to need all the help it could get. A part of him still regretted not going back to defend his home.
“Did you know her very well?”
“We trained together…sparred a few times. She’s from New Arcadia, like us. Grew up in sector three.”
Clem looked at him with renewed interest. “She’s from New Arcadia? How did she come to leave?”
“I’m not sure. She wasn’t the type to open up about her past. She was a skilled fighter, though. Incredibly fast, and resourceful, from what I remember.”
“Maybe we’ll see her again,” Clem said.
They spent the rest of the hike in silence, though on more than one occasion, Clem turned to him as if about to speak, then changed her mind.
Oren did his best to manage the emotions surging through him. This was his first respite from the chaos of the past twenty-four hours. His mind began trying to process everything that had happened. Magdalene’s betrayal, Khalil’s death, being ripped from his body, and finally, the death of an entire world…it threatened to overwhelm him. Somehow, Clementine appeared to be handling everything far better than he was.
Oren concentrated. He fought to hold his emotions at bay, and soon found refuge in a fire burning deep within himself. The flames were the only constant amidst a sea of perpetual turmoil. They burned angry and hot, fueled by his desire to make things right. It was in these flames that Oren found focus, purpose, and strength. Everyone and everything that had been taken from him: his home, his parents, Khalil…all of it could be traced back to the Ministry. How many lives have they destroyed? They had to be stopped, permanently…but how?
For Oren, and everyone else in New Arcadia, the Ministry had but one face. The Voss commander of centuries past—Gabrial Penumbra, Ministry Overlord and Patriarch of the Arcadian Expanse.
Oren’s eyes narrowed.
“Oren? Hey, you okay?”
I will find him, and I will make him pay for it. All of it!
“Oren.”
“Huh?” He realized he’d been clenching his jaw. He tried to relax and answered, “Yeah, I’m fine.”
They were nearly half way to the town, which was now clearly discernible. There was indeed a cluster of buildings. Some were large white rectangles with square black windows. Others were wooden with grassy rooftops.
“I haven’t seen any people coming in or out of the buildings,” she said.
“We’re still pretty far out…maybe they’re just inside.”
“Maybe…” she didn’t sound convinced.
As they approached, Oren had to agree that there was something strange about the little town. The structures all looked well maintained and in good condition, but there was no movement—inside or out.
“Maybe it’s abandoned,” he said doubtfully.
The first building they reached looked to be someone’s home. It was small and rustic, with a low grassy overhang above the front entrance. Oren walked up and knocked on the wooden door.
“Hello?” he shouted, “Anyone home?”
He knocked again, but there was still no answer.
Oren shrugged and followed Clem around the side, where she was peering in through a blurry window. He peered in beside her. This doesn’t make sense. A dinner table sat in the center of the room with four chairs around it. There were plates, glasses, cutlery, and napkins all set out. Serving dishes sat at the center of the table, all of which were empty.
“I don’t understand…Where is everyone?” Oren asked.
“Let’s check some other buildings. Maybe there’ll be someone here who can tell us.”
The next three homes they found were in much the same state. Clean dishes set on tables, children’s toys left as if dropped mid-play, workbenches with tools left sitting out. One house even looked like it had just received a fresh coat of paint.
