Chapter Eleven: Simple. Or Nearly So.
Part 1
The Mage straightened his shirt, then folded his hands in his lap and turned to look out of the window at the city below. The Writer waited in the silence. The sounds of the city drifted up and through the window. The sound of engines and trucks making deliveries seemed like a distant, haunting song. Finally, the Writer made a notation on his slate with his stylus.
“How many times have you been captured?”
The Mage nodded slowly, as if answering a different question. “More than I care to count. And it’s not often that I find myself subject to things like traps or the object of intense subterfuge.”
“You’re not infallible.”
The Mage smiled ruefully, his eyes reflecting some of the light from the sky.. “I am very, very old. And there is a certain aspect of life that humans have not yet experienced having to do with long life and everlasting youth — relatively.” He raised a hand to a sprinkle of grey hairs. “I am clever, brilliant, even. Even among the Others, I was considered a genius. But these facts sometimes cloud the reality of what it is I experience.”
“And so Rhiannon laid a trap for you.”
“I was foolish to think that with all of the time Rhiannon had I would be able to simply act as I always have. She’d been watching me and learned how I operated in this world. How, rather than walking amongst you as a deity, I assumed the guise of…” the Mage gestured to himself. “She knew far more than I understood at the time. And still, far far more than that.”
“This sucks,” Aiden grunted. I managed, pressed against the wall as I was, to glare at him. The two of us were pinned against the far wall of the stark white room. The wall behind us was as smooth as it had first appeared and very cold to the touch. The Dactyl stood between us and the Tower, two of her forms pointed at us, holding us still while the third stood near Rhiannon.
Rhiannon, shorter than the statuesque Dactyl by a head, reached up and toyed with the figure’s hair. Her hand passed through the dark strands. “You know, I always liked the Dactyl,” she said fondly. “Beautiful and deadly. Perfect. Well, perfect now. It needed a bit of improvement; though I still can’t figure out how to make it move any faster.”
“What do you want?” Aiden called out. I admired his strength even in this situation. Too often I find people his age inneffective in these sorts of senarios. Oh, to be certain, when faced with them, they can act given direction, but there experience of age simply isn’t there.
Rhiannon eyed Aiden with curiosity, sizing him up, calculating. “What I want is the control program from the Tower. Fortunately for me, this one is unprotected. Not like the one in that damned hotel.” She stepped around the Dactyl woman and approached the Tower and reached a hand out to caress its smooth side.
The control program of the Tower was one of the most powerful aspects of the device. It enabled the force of thought and the power of will to be converted into forces that would affect reality. In a sense, it was the reason for the Tower’s existence. Without the control program, the Tower would just be a gigantic battery. I would still be able to use the materials from it to create the weapons that I needed to help stop the invasion and enable people to evacuate, but the Tower itself. The control program…
“What happened to the Towers on your world?” I asked, then gasped as a wave of pressure slammed into my chest. The Dactyl that held me telekinetically pinned smiled wickedly.
“Your little stunt with the moon destroyed them. Well, close enough. It put them out of my reach,” Rhiannon replied easily.
“So now you’re here to, what? Take the control programs from this world to power another death moon?” I asked.
“I called it the Lunar de Morte,” Rhiannon said, laughing softly. “Has a bit of a better ring. But no, I don’t need it to build another death moon. While it’s being rebuilt, I don’t need the control program for it. What I do need it for is to build something else.” She leaned against the floating Tower and smiled. “I’m going to build a gateway.”
“You can already do that. Even demons can do it without the use of a Tower’s control program,” I said, trying to discern the truth behind her words.
“Oh, no, not just for this world. But for every world. Every single Earth in every single reality. A simple gateway which my armies can pass through and devour. You see, while I was thinking about coming back to this world and simply taking it over, I got to thinking what would I do after that? What, would I simply stage another invasion? Well, that’s boring, I tell you. So, why not just take them all at once? The power of the control program will let me send my armies through and replicated them across all quantum realities. A full scale invasion of all reality.”
To this point, I had been thinking so very very small. I should have known that simple exile would never have kept her at bay and that a simple planet would never have sated her hunger for dominance. “You’re mad,” I managed through a dry mouth.
“Oh, this is I don’t dispute, Adol. Not in the very least. But I will tell you this: I’m also going to win. Dactyl, begin extracting the control program.” Rhiannon turned and spoke, her voice was muted but she was obviously speaking to someone we could not see. A moment later a shimmering sphere of darkness expanded in the white room. Looking into it was like looking into nothingness. Not black, not darkness, but something far deeper than anything those words could convey. “Oh,” Rhiannon said as she turned and began fading from view. “Kill them.”
Pain blossomed in my head and I felt my chest tighten as the Dactyl began to exert pressure. Even so, I searched for the solution. How to stop the Dactyl. They were entranced by song, but even if I could take a breath I couldn’t emulate their singing. They were afraid of fire, but there was none nearby. Then, i saw the Tower pulsing with energy as the last of the three forms focused on it. The Dactyl. One mind in three bodies…
It began the process of extracting the control program from within the interface. As the Tower began to decouple the control program, I focused and initiated the creation circut. The Dactyl’s mind was drawn along with me, us both interfaced at the same time. The Dactyl tried to withdraw from the Tower met with firm resistance. Niether of us could withdraw without cancelling the decoupling of the program.
I reached out with my mind and connected with the Tower even as the Dactyl tried to fight against me. I felt the pain in my head lessening, but the pain of death still rushed upon me. I focused and threw the Tower into production overdrive. As the infinite infinity of creation spread out before me and the Dactyl in the interface, the Dactyl reached for her eyes and began screeching. The pain of comprehending all that the Tower entailed hammered upon the mental capacities of the three-fold being.
Distantly, I felt myself sliding along the wall of the room and hitting the ground, but still, I focused. In the Tower, I turned to the Dactyl, watching as it tried to comprehend what it was it was seeing. If I let if free, it would be upon us again in a moment. Instead, I occupied its time as I drew it into the trillions of calculations needed for even the simplest of molecules. Then, I set to work.
The Dactyl began scratching at its eyes as the control program, still decoupling, held it within its confines… Until, finally, it was over. The Dactyl disappeared from the Tower and I brought my awareness out and back into the real world. The Dactyl lay on the ground in three bodies, all unconscious. Aiden shook his fist even as he dabbed at the trickle of blood coming from one ear. “That was handy.”
I smiled and stepped over to the base of the tower to retrieve two things. First, the crystal containing the control program for the Tower. This I pushed back into the surface of the Tower, where it disappeared like dropping a bowling ball into a pool of water. Next, I picked up a cylinder about two feet in length and four in diameter. It seemed to be wooden wrapped with leather but as I activated it, the cylinder lengthened into a long pole, topped with a heavy stone head. It was a maul but its weight was so great that I dropped it where it promply collapsed back into its innocuous form.
“Oh cool!”
“It’s not a lightsaber,” I said, shrugging lightly. “But I imagined this was more your style.”
Part 2
The control program of the Tower. It was, perhaps one of the most advanced pieces of technology in the known universe and it seemed that Rhiannon was after them. The Tower in the hotel was safe, protected by the wards that I had bestowed upon it soon after my run in with the quantum creature. The Tower there, in the Smithsonian, was safe while I was there in its presence.
But there were two others left unsecured. That which was in Antartica and the other which was located in the ancient kingdom of Shambhala. With Rhiannon’s ability, she might have been able to reach the other two locations mere heartbeats after appearing there in the hidden vaults of the Smithsonian. I had to make the journey myself to check to see if the other Towers had been affected or had their control programs already removed.
“We need to get this back to the hotel,” I said, as I gestured to the Tower. I ducked as Aiden swung the hammer about and glared as he retracted the weapon.
“Sorry,” he said, then pointed to the Dactyl that now lie unconscious on the ground, their chests still moving up and down in time. “What about them?”
I looked around the solid white room. “These walls were designed to keep out the kind of interference that many of the ancient devices here output.” I walked over to the wall and licked it. “Yes, it should hold them. Come on, you’ll have to move that thing.”
Aiden looked at me as if I’d grown another head. “Like you’ve never licked a wall before?”
“Yeah, when I was three.”
“Not too long ago, then,” I said, gesturing to the Tower. “Push.”
“Oh, ha ha.” But Aiden moved behind the Tower and leaned heavily against it. Despite the fact that it was floating, the Tower moved slowly through the air. We took a moment to set the door back in its frame, then moved on down the hallway. How had Rhiannon managed to affect the Dactyl so greatly, especially to the point of giving it telekinetic powers. There had to be something else going on and I could not quite place what it was, exactly. But the problem stayed with me, whirring in the back of my mind.
Rhiannon had centuries to plan this. I only had hours to respond. What other sorts of traps or ticks had she laid for me? And, would she be waiting for me in Antartica or in Shambhala?
The way back was far less eventful than the journey down to the lower vaults of the Smithsonian and we made our way out to the back loading dock where Williams and two other associates of hers waited in a large truck, clad in delivery uniforms. By then, the sun’s light had completely disappeared from the horizon and the moon’s light cast a silver pale over the dock. Williams waved Aiden and me into the back of the truck. She stepped in behind us and pulled the door down and locked it.
She looked over Aiden, then the Tower, then me. “You look like crap.”
“I feel it,” I admitted, though outside of the influences of the Smithsonian’s vaults, I felt my powers returning to me. The vitality I had come to depend on rushed through my limbs and ribs and even as I stood I felt the injuries knit. “We came up against some resistance.”
“What resistance?” Williams asked quickly. She stepped to the front of the delivery truck and slapped the partition between the cab and the trailer. The engine fired up and we were off.
“The Dactyl and Rhiannon,” I said.”
“Rhiannon was there?” she looked between the two of us. Aiden nodded and I explained.
“She’s planning on something far greater than a simple invasion of one world.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not sure if I heard you correctly. She’s planning on something greater than a full-scale world-wide invasion.”
“She wanted the Tower and had been planning to pull the control program from it to use to create a gate that would allow her to pass through to all realities at once,” I said.
“Which means that if she succeeds, evacuation won’t even be an option?” Williams asked, frowning.
I shook my head and her frown deepened. “As soon as we get the materials that we need at the research facility, this Tower will need to be delivered to New York to room 1401 of my hotel.”
Williams nodded, “I can arrange that. By why couldn’t you manage that yourself?”
“I need to get travelling again. And I’ll need to borrow the team you sent to Truth or Consequences. There are two other Towers that she will be going after. I need to get to them first.”
“Where are they?”
“Antartica and Tibet.”
“And how do you plan to get to Antartica?”
“The Concord.”
“Ma’am,” one of the deliverymen in costume raised a hand. He seemed familiar and I pinned down his voice soon after he spoke. “I trained for time in the Antarctic. This time of year it will be impossible to get a commercial plane down there. You’ll need to take military transport to the continent.”
“You’re the same one from New York, aren’t you? What’s your name?” I asked.
“Felix, Sir. Adam Felix,” the man said, ever professional.
“He’s like a male version of you,” I said, glancing at Williams. “Fine, can you make the arrangements for transport?”
“I can, but it may take some time -”
“In that case I’ll be going straightaway to Shambhala.”
“One second, I am not familiar of any place called Shambhala,” Williams said as she brought her hand up to the earpiece in her right ear, presumably to initiate a call.
“That’s because it doesn’t exist.”
Part 3
“I always thought that you had a place where all of these things were kept. A special sanctum where you had magical swords or books filled with spells so that when the need arose you wouldn’t have to go around the world looking for the different pieces of the puzzle,” the Writer said as he turned off his slate and stowed it and his stylus into his bag. The device still recorded, of course, but there was no need to let the Mage know that.
“One would think. And generally that’s the case. Or I already have the tools at my disposal, but the Towers were not things I simply had available to me, mind you,” the Mage replied. “Indeed, most of the stories you are thinking of have clues and paths cleverly laid out for their characters. Real life is not quite so easily guided.”
“It seems very much like a story to me.”
“Oh?”
“You’re a Mage — one of the most powerful beings in the world who has, presumably, arrived to take care of humanity’s safety. You have an old rival who is trying to destroy you, you have a journey, companions and, well, you win in the end, don’t you?”
The Mage tilted his head, then laughed, “When you put it that way it does seem like a story. But this particular story does have me going around the world. It does have the journey. I’m sorry if my adventures seem to be boring you.”
“It’s not that,” the Writer said, shaking his head. “No, it’s that I hadn’t realized that behind that image of you floating, pulling the world back together, you had a great deal of other adventures leading up to it. I mean, no one even knew about the invasion or Rhiannon, let alone how you managed to do what you did.”
The Mage nodded slowly, “You were too young, but during the time between Tokyo’s disappearance and what you saw was punctuated by a number of other strange things. For one, the Moon disappeared several times. Despite the fact that one of the world’s most economically powerful cities disappeared, the world stock markets remained stable. Completely stable. And, mind, we’re speaking of a world in which the market fluctuates when the President sneezes.
“This invasion had the result of shaking up the entire world. Nearly overnight, what it meant to be human was changed because it no longer meant that humanity suffered alone.”
“Let me put it this way,” I explained to Lorenzo as I walked along the tarmac to my plane. His face looked up at me from the tablet computer I had in hand. “If you or any of your crew set foot on Shambhala ground, your life would be forfeit and there would be next to nothing I could do about it.”
“This coming from the man who is planning on stopping an invasion the likes of which reality has never seen before?” Lorenzo shook his head. “Fine. Then let’s go over your itinerary.”
It had been nearly eight hours since my altercation with the Dactyl and I felt the weight of time pressing upon me. First, the Tower was delivered to my research lab where Dr. Olyphant took several gram from the structure of the device for use in the manufacture of weapons. When Williams gave her a strange look, Dr. Olyphant explained, “Think of it like a nuclear explosion. A little bomb goes a very long way.”
Next, we had it shipped back to New York. Aiden and his mother went along with it to guarantee its safety. I spoke with Lily who assured me that room 1408 was clear of all guests and would be for the indefinite future.
Then there was the matter of getting to my first destination without actually revealing the location of the Shambhala entrance. Wouldn’t be able to get there the way I had been accustomed especially now that time was of the essence.
“What itinerary? I’m going to go retrieve the towers and get them to where they will be safe,” I said as I climbed the stairs to my plane. “Let me put it to you this way, Lorenzo: You and the rest of the office need to be handling the evacuation and the weapon creation. And, let’s face it, any itinerary I come up with will be tentative at best.”
Lorenzo glared up from the tablet but didn’t argue.
The kingdom of Shambhala is hidden deep within the mountains of Asia. I won’t go into the particular details as it is still hidden and its denizens wish it to remain so, but suffice it to say that it is incredibly difficult to reach. I checked the controls of the Concord, programmed the autopilot then moved back into the cabin proper. There two men sat buckled snugly into their chairs. They were both US Air Force pilots well trained in flying large aircraft. This was good because the Concord cost me a great deal of money to purchase and I didn’t want to abandon it once I left the plane.
The two were under orders to fly the plane to Hong Kong and wait for my transponder signal where they would dispatch other aircraft to rendezvous with me. The Concord, with the Tower, would return to New York to be stored in the Hotel and I would be transported directly to Antarctica were I would make pains to retrieve the last Tower.
“Sir,” one of the pilots said. His hand twitched, as if expecting to salute. I nodded to the both of them.
“Right, you have your orders. After the cabin depressurizes, there’ll be a little turbulence. If things get out of hand, feel free to take control of the aircraft.” The two weren’t tied up, but I believe they kept themselves buckled for my own comfort. While the Kingdom of Shambhala wasn’t a UN recognized sovereign nation, it did have its own rights to be protected against unwanted trespass and discovery. More than that, after more than ten thousand years, I didn’t want to be the one that gave away its position.
I checked my watch and made arrangements for my dive down to the ground below. I stood next to the door a short time later, waiting for the plane to arrive at its destination. I considered just what was going on with this invasion. Surely Rhiannon was insane and power-hungry. There was very little I could do about that.
But why?
Why had she gone down this particular path where I had never gone? I suppose it had always been the case with her. There seemed to be an internal drive to simply… win; to triumph over all things in the past. It was the reason why she had been sent away in the first place. She was far too dangerous, too ambitious to promote the kind of peace and prosperity that I wanted for the world. It was in her nature to be victorious, but how had that warped into this?
I had known Rhiannon for a very long time and… I do not regret my decision to send her into exile and I don’t know if I would have treated her differently had I known that thousands of years later this would be the result.
Still, the fact of the matter was that this invasion, for all its dangers to the world, was my fault. Who is the prison-keeper to blame if he allows his prisoner to escape?
My watch beeped and I peeked out of the door’s window. I pushed it open and the sudden explosive release of air pressure sucked me out of the aircraft. I tumbled in the air and fell the thousands of feet to the mountains below.
Wind tore at my suit as I hurtled through the air until, finally, a minute after I left the plane I pulled the cord to my chute. It billowed upwards behind me and with a jerk I felt myself decelerating.
When I jumped I leapt in the approximate area of where I wanted to go. It had been millennia since I last visited Shambhala, but few things changed about the rock of mountains in that time. What did change, however, were the paths, passes and snow drifts that collected on the rock itself. I scanned the area and, there were things that seemed familiar while there were others that seemed completely alien. Had that patch of snow always been there? Had that rock always peaked out from the pointed out in that way?
I angled my descent towards where I knew there had been a path leading up to the summit I needed to get to, but a gust of wind caught my parachute and hurtled me off course. The ground was coming quickly now, and that ground was jagged, hard and unforgiving. The wind continued to buffet my parachute farther and farther away from my goal until a brutal downdraft caused my parachute to collapse altogether.
It’s not the falling that particularly annoys me. Falling is like flying…downward. No, it’s the impact that causes me particular annoyance and, in this case, the impact was long.
It was much like those clips of skiers tumbling down nearly vertical cliffs. Instead, with me, I had nowhere to go. The brutal, jagged mountains held little mercy for those as foolish as me to dive directly into their midst and I was thusly punished by a rather long tumble. Initially, I tried to stop my fall. I positioned my body to try to slow my momentum, but the twin enemies of frozen water and steep mountain faces made it impossible for me to find purchase. And so I fell.
Minutes later I struck the ground with far less grace than I’d like, but I had arrived, in so much as can be expected after a thousand-foot tumble down the side of a mountain. I pulled myself to my feet and took stock of my surroundings. Here on the ground I was able to make out landmarks that I hadn’t been able to while I was in the air. There are those who will tell you that seeing things from the sky gives you a better visual representation of the terrain – landmarks are more easily recognized, and for the most part, they’re right. But once on the ground, one has a better feel of his surroundings. Where from the sky it is much like seeing the color of a thing, being on the ground is like feeling its temperature.
I checked my small pack and was relieved to find that the transponder that would signal my pickup had neither been destroyed nor activated. It wouldn’t do to have them circling back so soon after I left anyhow. There was still the secret of Shambhala to protect after all. And, I suppose in the grand scheme of all things concerning secrets and the world, it wasn’t quite as important as the very really possibility of a full scale reality invasion by an insane queen.
With my resources confirmed, I also had a large stash of granola bars, I started my way around up the very same mountain that I had just fallen down. While it was an impressive thing, it was not the entrance to the Shambhala kingdom. For that, I would need to climb a far taller, far more dangerous rock.
Part 4
“How long did it take you to climb the mountain?” the Writer fiddled with his spoon, twirling it slowly in his fingers so that his face stretched, appeared upside down, stretched again, then disappear, only to repeat the process over again. He made note of the darkness growing in the sky beyond the large windows.
“That particular leg of the journey is rather dull. Do you really want to know how long it took me to climb a mountain?”
“For many it takes quite a long while. For example, those who have gone to climb up mount Everest have taken about three to ten weeks. With the fate of the world on the line…”
“Ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes?”
“I would have done it in five but I tripped and fell back down the mountain as I reached the top,” The Mage grimaced. “Not my best day.”
“You mean to tell me that you climbed… how tall was the mountain, exactly?”
“About twenty thousand feet from the base to the top.”
The trek itself was difficult insomuch as such things are for me. Packed snow and ice affect all things equally and I hadn’t thought to bring climbing shoes with me. But the journey itself was uneventful. It was arriving at the top that was the largest obstacle.
I arrived at the summit of the mountain where I knew a large cave opening had been. It was now covered with tons-centuries of ice and snow. Unfortunately, I also hadn’t brought any dynamite with me to clear the path for myself. Indeed, I was mistaken in thinking that such things would remain over time. Especially in such a dynamic environment. It seemed to me that I was making a great deal of mistakes.
Even still, I would need to continue on and find a way through. The fate of infinite worlds lay with me and I was not going to allow a blocked door to stop me from saving them. I moved around the ice-covered entrance, looking it over, trying to discern how best to tackle the issue. I drew my hand along the ice , moving along the small plateau that comprised part of the summit until I hit stone. There.
I felt along the juncture of stone and ice then shifted quickly. I brought my hand back then forward quickly, pounding my fist into the place where the ice met the rock. The rock shuddered and there was a shower of snow from overhead, but nothing else happened. So I continued my assault against the mountain, each blow landing with considerable emphasis and effect, but after a while it becomes clear to me that I will not be able to force my way into the cave beyond.
The ice must have been hundreds if not thousands of tons and, while my strength is great, there are limits to leverage and balance that even I cannot overcome. For an example, see the thousand foot fall from the top of the mountain. I had little to nothing available to me as tools so I needed to think…
I took a step forward and placed my hand against the ice and allowed my mind to expand. I reached out into the darkness, into the space between realities. The infinitely small and yet infinitely large gap that separated universes. I reached out for other minds lime my own and found, with a jolt, that there were none there.
Usually when I reach out to connect with other minds, there are millions of other versions of me working on the same problem at the same time. Sometimes there is a time difference, but never have the minds simply not been there. In no reality in all of existence was there another mage working on how to get past this particular ice barrier to get into Shambhala.
My mind recoiled at the silence and I withdrew back into myself to think, singularly.
Why was there silence in the darkness? Why could I not connect with the other versions of myself? Had there been a barrier I would have known, and, truly, there was no barrier that could block off the spaces between existence. No, there was something fundamentally wrong that I could not yet discern, and that issue frightened me nearly as much as the fact that Rhianna was planning an invasion of all realities everywhere.
Still, that was a problem that I would not be able to solve just then. There were issues that were far more pressing. Like, for example, the impending invasion.
I gritted my teeth and circled the small platform again, looking for any sort of clue or solution, but I could find none. I looked up toward where I expected the top of the cave entrance to be and grimacd. It was ice. Pure and simple. Just. Ice.
I sighed and took a careful handhold and began to climb even this frozen water face of the mountain. After several minutes of slipping, I managed o reach the top only to slip and fall, sliding, to the small platform and, unfortunately for me, past it. As my legs slipped over the edge and into the void of twenty thousand feet, I caught a rock – where had that come from? – and it shifted beneath my hands. The ice flow shifted and began to split. My hand slipped and I fell, careening down the mountain.
Part 5
Luckily, it wasn’t the full twenty thousand feet. A moment after I started falling, I struck rock and I was able to climb back up onto the platform.
The Ice stood, split perfectly down the center, revealing a dark cave within. Still, somewhere in the cave was a single pinprick of light that shone out and illuminated my face.
“The other minds have gone silent,” a voice said slowly, ponderously, echoing forth from the cave. “When is this?”
“It’s a new calendar since I spoke to you last, Metatron,” I said. Of course, mind you we weren’t speaking English. I translate this for ease of the story.
“How many years?”
“Twenty thousand.”
“So very long. It is little wonder I feel weary.”
“Metratron, I require transport to Shambhala.”
“I have not allowed another within my doors since the battle. Nor have I allowed any to pass from them. What is your purposed, Mage?”
“I have come to collect the Tower.”
The pinpick of light flickered slowly, glittering like a gem deep within the darkness of the cave. “The Tower has been claimed. I keep it. Hidden. Safe. Until He wakes.”
“I have come because there is another who seeks the Tower. She wishes to use it to destroy this world and all others.”
“There is none who –“
“Rhianna.”
The light, which had been blue, shifted ever so slightly into the red spectrum. “Even she cannot breach my.”
“She doesn’t need to. Check your internal scanners. She may already have agents within searching for the Tower. If she gets the Tower, if she retrieves the control program, all things are lost even before I have an opportunity to put up a defense.” I waited as the Metatron did as I asked. A moment later a tremendous tone rang out, like that of a massive bell or gong. The tone rang out continuously until I waved my hands to stop it. It abruptly ended.
“There are creatures of unknown origin within my boundaries,” the Metatron said simply. “I shall wake the king.”
“NO!” I bellowed. “He need not be awakened. I will go, remove the creatures and keep the Tower safe.” The last thing this world needed was another insane powerful being running rampant. In some ways the King would be worse as the being who called himself such would think he was doing good where Rhianna knew that she was, well, evil.
“Very well. You have one hour after which I will wake the king and his defense,” The Metatron said slowly. The platform beneath my feet began glowing as I stood, unable to move. “By the way, Adol, That was a spectacular fall.”
The world around me blurred to white and, in a rush, my molecules were ripped apart and transported downward.
I appeared suddenly, the tingle of reconstitution running through me. The fine hairs on my skin rose as if in response to a chill that did not exist. I stood upon a great golden platform which was embossed in painstakenly precise detail, script from languages long since lost to humanity. I knew from previous experience that even beyond what I could see with the naked eye, there was script etched into the platform that detailed volumes in the span of a human hair.
Beyond the platform there was darkness which rapidly disappeared as a light source whose location I could not determine began to light the area around me in sections. As gold-inlayed stone gleamed at me from one direction, I saw what appeared to be a great mass of a city built into the wall of this massive cave-chamber. Lights flickered out from countless windows and, as I watched, one smooth area of stone grew slick with water. Then, suddenly, a rush of water rocketed out of the cave wall and cascaded gently down into a chasm that extended down into the darkness. I peered over the edge and watched as the water grew dim with darkness only to grow illuminated with further lights from below.
I turned and stood stunned.
Opposite the wall that was a city was an endless expanse of green and light. A field of green grew bright as, above, what I had thought was the cavern ceiling thousands of meters above ignited. A swirling massive of fire, light and plasma erupted, casting its illumination down, creating daylight and heat comparable. The field continued into the distance. So far, in fact, that I could not see the other side of the cavern.
A flash of gold appeared on the horizon, then quickly grew in size as it sped towards me. As it came closer, gold resolved into what appeared to be a levitating monorail, though I could see no tracks which it was following. It slid, soundlessly, to a stop next to my platform and with a hiss, it’s gleaming doors slid upwards.
“The creatures are near the King’s palace. Please allow me to escort you,” the Metatron’s voice said, gently, a pinprick of blue light shining out of the vehicle. It winked away as I stepped into the train.
Shambhala was far, far larger than I’d remembered.
just a quick note…the link from the previous chapter is not set, and the folder for this chapter is missing the first “S”.
Have been waiting for this continuation. Thank you for getting it back up and running!!!
Thanks, Oliver! I’m really excited about powering through the next act of the story.
Just got through it all. Great stuff!!! Love the ending for Chapter 2…:P
A couple of points to look at maybe:
Part 1/Par 10
“I called it the Lunar de Morte,” Rhiannon said, laughing softly.
Lunar de Morte? Sounds likea combination of English, French and Spanish, was that what you were looking for?
Part 1/Par 14
“Oh, this is don’t dispute, Adol. Not in the very least.
“This I don’t dispute” ?
Again great stuff…eagerly awaiting the rest of the chapter.
Just checked back after a couple of months to see if there were any updates to the story, and I found myself pleasantly surprised. I’m liking the direction the story is heading in, and I appreciate your ability to give your characters personality, even when they only have short appearances.
I didn’t notice any particular grammar or spelling errors, so good job with that. Keep up the good work Origic Codex, this story is really engaging. I’ll be looking forward to future updates.