A Warrior's Revenge (10 page)

I’d said the words with all my heart, but as
for an answer I still received nothing. Bitterly, I confessed to
myself, while still on my knees that God’s will for my people must
be to perish. Who was I to stand in the way of His mighty will?

I looked up and out into the pouring down
rain, the day’s dreary state being a fit companion for my thoughts.
My eyes widened, as the rain stopped, as if it had never been and
the brightness of the sun shone full on the crumbled remnants of
what had been my father’s capital city and the pride of our
Sallaconese Empire.

Such a change in weather was different from
anything to be expected in the normal range of natural weather
fluctuations on this world. I had never seen such an abrupt change
of weather like this before in all my lonely years and
instinctively I knew this must be of the Creator’s doing. I stood
up in excitement and as I did a warm wind gusted through the hole
in the wall and knocked me onto my back.

Fear filled me. God would surely now kill me
for all my insolence of thought against Him for so many years now
and even though I wanted to die I regretted making my Creator feel
so angry toward me. I waited to be burnt from fire above or have my
breath released from me.

Nothing happened and cautiously I sat up.
Something caught my eye that was resting on my lap and I looked
down and beheld the beauty of a blue throated fire flower blossom.
I picked the delicate flower up with a sense of awe. No such
flowers grew anywhere near the old city. Where had it come from and
what did it mean?

I got back up to my feet and this time no
gust of wind knocked me to the floor. I approached the broken down
wall and stared out into the deserted city wondering what was
different. Wondering what God was up to. A dark shadow appeared
overhead and I looked up and as I did I beheld a great ship barely
gliding just over the top of the ruins not making so much as a
whisper of sound, as it glided along overhead.

I had never seen such a ship, but I knew
beyond a doubt that the ship was not Orlandian.

Strangers?

I glanced at the flower in my hand, which is
when I sensed something else or to be more correct someone else.
Someone who could think and use everything of their faculty just
like I could and I recognized the softer outline of thoughts, as
those belonging to a female.

I watched the great ship touch down to the
ground at the edge of the ruined city. I lifted the blossom to my
nose and smelled its musky sweetness. What strange tidings this day
had brought. I would pay these strangers a visit tonight. Perhaps
there was yet hope of a positive change for not only my people, but
also for me. I hoped so. Something had happened beyond what I
could’ve expected and I felt excitement flow through me at the
prospect of something unknown and new to discover.

Deep within the underground chambers of
Thunder Ridge.

Ellanara looked around the rested faces of
the young women and tried to not care how it was that they looked
at her. So her eyes glowed, big deal, did they have to look at her
like she was a monster? Apparently they did, because they kept on
doing it. Well at least she could do the right thing.

Ellanara smiled charmingly at those gathered
before her. Her heart was briefly touched to see a few looks of
self contrition and hope grew within her that perhaps one day she
could convince them that she was no monster, but instead a
friend.

Ellanara turned to Loric, “So you say that
these other Hunters are all Valley Landers too?” She asked.

“Yes.” Loric affirmed.

“Then let’s go rescue them.”

Loric looked from Ellanara to Kana, who
stood by his side, and then back to Ellanara, “How are we going to
do that? How are we even going to get to the Tranquil Islands.
Beyond that the Tranquil Islands are heavily defended and all the
Hunters reside within a deep bunker. There is no means of access to
either the islands or the bunker that will remain undetected.”

Ellanara smiled charmingly, “Let me be the
judge of that, as to how we’re going to bring the Hunters into the
fold well that will be your responsibility Loric.”

“Me! What can I do? They see me and they’ll
start shooting.”

Ellanara shook her head, “No they won’t. In
the tests that I ran on you last night I found the circuit that
Zora shorted out and I have duplicated a power wavelength that’ll
have the same effect and that can be broadcasted over a large area.
The tricky part is that the device that will emit the wavelength
has to be in the facility where the Hunters are kept. Once the
device is engaged the other Hunters will be lost in their thoughts
just as you were.”

Kana raised a hand, “Yes?” Ellanara
asked.

“That might be a bad idea to have them lost
in their thoughts like Loric was.” Kana said.

Ellanara looked at Loric’s grim face and
after a moment said softly, “I see what you mean.”

“It won’t be a problem. I’ll see to it that
they come together as a unit.” Loric said.

Kana looked puzzled and Ellanara enlightened
her, “The Hunters have a way of speaking to each other in their
heads over short distances.”

Kana nodded, but looked like she didn’t
quite understand.

Ellanara turned to the group at large,
“We’ll be leaving in a few hours, until then feel free to do as you
please. If you have need of anything Abby will see to it.”

As the group broke up Ellanara approached
Loric and put a hand on his shoulder, “There’s something we should
both do before we leave. We should say goodbye and collect some
items that have been left for us.”

Loric nodded woodenly and together they
started off down a hallway.

Kana looked after them longingly wanting to
go along, but she was too timid to ask. Ellanara noticed and
motioned for her to follow, and when Kana had caught up Ellanara
took one of her hands and Loric’s in her other hand and led them
down a hall that didn’t have lights and looked to be of an older
construction than the rest of the facility.

The only light was the bluish castoff glow
of Ellanara’s eyes, as she led them through the darkness. It seemed
like they had gone a long way, when two massive doors ahead of them
snapped into movement and pulled ponderously open.

Kana gasped at what was revealed beyond the
doors. Natural light filtered down through skylights set high above
in the long vaulted ceiling of the room. A row of massive double
pillars ran the length of the room stretching a full eighty feet in
height, until they met and connected with the vaulted ceiling.

The pillars and the room itself had been
carved out of solid rock. The smooth walls were intricately covered
with chiseled designs of beautiful craftsmanship. In the side wings
of the central walkway between the massive pillars were the ornate
burial casks of those long since in the passing. The burial casks
were spaced neatly apart along both sides of the central corridor
of the long room.

This was the ancient burial chamber of the
Ta’lont family.

Kana stepped further into the still hushed
atmosphere of the hall completely at awe with the place. She had
seen much of death and the finality of it. Once, she had come
across a ruined village at the edge of the Barrens. The streets of
the village had been covered in the castoff bones of what had once
been humans that scavengers had gotten a hold of. The sense of
death in that village had been awful and she had run from it as
fast as she could to escape the cloying feel of death inherent to
the place, but there was no such feel of death in this place of
burial.

The burial chamber was beautiful, but that
wasn’t what gave the peaceful almost reverent feel that was in the
very atmosphere of the place. It must be some leftover blessing of
the people themselves that had infused the place with such a
peaceful ambience. There was no air of death to the place or dark
harbingers of fear for what lay beyond the grave. Peace. Peace was
all Kana felt.

The sound of a heavy sob turned Kana around
to see that her companions had left her and were interspersed
throughout the room lost in their own grief for loved ones that had
gone on before. Kana looked to the right and read the first burial
chamber’s plaque,
‘Tadias & Evala Ta’lont’
. Kana did a
double take when she read the dates. The wife, Evala, had lived
over six hundred years! Kana glanced at the dates further in shock.
Tadias’s dates of existence were beyond astounding. Truly people
had lived longer at one point in time just as the Bible had said
they’d done.

Kana couldn’t ignore the crying that she
heard from her companions any longer and she quickly made her way
down the hall toward them. She found Ellanara on the floor before
an ornate burial chamber. These must have been her parents,
‘Roric & Krista Ta’lont’
. The dates of life, while
longer than most were much less than the first casket she had read
had been. Kana noticed something else too about the dates. The
couple entombed beyond had died the same day. They had left life
together, neither of them wishing to linger on without the
other.

Kana felt tears come to her eyes as the
emotional connection formed in her mind of what a love like that
must’ve been like. She knelt to the floor and pulled a crying
Ellanara to her, as all reservations about the strange blue-eyed
woman had left, at seeing how pitifully lost she was in her grief
for her parents.

Ellanara sobbed against her and Kana heard
her say something, “It feels like it was just yesterday that I saw
them and held them in my arms.” Kana held her tighter, as she heard
the broken quality of Ellanara’s voice.

“They must’ve been wonderful parents.” Kana
said.

Ellanara drew back slightly and asked
curiously, “Why do you say that?”

“Because they had a daughter that loves them
so much, such emotion as yours cannot be faked and truly you honor
them by your love for them.” Kana said emotionally, as she
remembered her own parents only vaguely and how she would’ve wished
for the memories that she saw in Ellanara’s eyes.

Ellanara wiped at her eyes and said, “That’s
such a sweet thing for you to say. You’re just like her.”

Puzzled Kana asked, “Who?”

“Zarsha, your great maternal ancestor.
You’re just like her in how sweet and kind you are. My father
adopted her as his daughter. She and I were sisters growing up. I
would like it very much if you and I could be like that.” Ellanara
said in earnestness.

Kana looked into her eyes and saw the person
beyond, “I would like that. I’m sorry I haven’t been friendlier.
This place and all this new stuff and well you have to admit your
eyes are kind of scary.”

Ellanara smiled and nodded her head, “I know
they are, but I had to do it. To sleep so long without my body
aging I had to take a metal supplement for weeks before I went
under the water. My eyes came out a bit more blue than they went
in. Come we need to go to Loric!”

Quickly both women got up and moved toward
Loric, who was standing at the far end of the hall. Reaching him
Kana and Ellanara went to either side of him and drew close
saddened beyond words for him, as he stood there staring at the two
coffins that plainly lay on the floor.

There was no elaborate chamber of burial or
gilded craftsmanship. There weren’t even names or dates. One coffin
had been faceted out of stone, while the other one that sat next to
it was crudely made of oddly pieced together boards, some of which
were charred in places indicating how they must’ve been pulled out
of a fire at some point. Next to all the grandeur of the other
resting individuals in the room the sight of these two forlorn
coffins was a sad sight to behold.

Ellanara leaned forward and picked up an
envelope of paper that lay on top of the stone casket. She read the
front of it and then placed it in Loric’s hands closing his fingers
about it with hers, “It’s from your father and it’s addressed to
you.” She said softly.

A long moment passed before Loric opened the
envelope and pulled out the letter that was only a single page in
length, but filled with jerky scrawled writing indicating the pain
of the one who had written it.
“Dear son, I write to you now,
while I am still able to. There was so much I wanted to teach you
yet, so much I wanted to see you experience in life. If you’re
reading this son it’s because you’ve come through adversities that
no child should ever have to face that have no doubt made you into
a man. I hope that your experiences have not made you too hard of a
man. My advice if this is so is to get yourself a good woman. Women
have a way of taking the hard edges off so to speak. I know I could
never have done what I was able to do in life without your mother
by my side. She has always been my ministering angel and a source
of comfort in the storm of responsibilities I have faced, as the
head of our family. That will all be over soon. I do not know what
the world that you now live in is like, only that it’s time to
leave it. The worst decision I ever had to make was not to start
the evacuation early. Two things stopped me, there wasn’t enough
room for everyone and it was not yet time. May God forgive me for
the lives that were lost, because of my decision and my hope is
that some greater good will come out of the sacrifice of so many of
our people. Embrace the future with faith my son and know that I
always believed in you, if you in return believe faithfully in our
Creator’s ways than nothing will be impossible for you. God bless
you son and may your future be bright, as well as that of our
peoples. Take the rings. Your mother gave me hers to enclose in
this letter just in case something should happen. I hate dying, not
because I’m afraid of death, but that I hate to leave my family and
people in this moment of crisis, but I must trust my Creator that
everything will turn out right in the end. Goodbye son, I love
you.”