Elementis 1: The Heir to the Stone (24 page)

"She is unlike any other girl I’ve ever met," Jonas thought out loud, with a warm glow in his eye. "But you’re right, she is dangerous," he agreed.

Calyx smiled. "Stay away from her Jonas. You do not know what she is capable of!"

Another change of subject was forced onto Jonas. Who does Calyx think he is telling me what to do? Jonas thought to himself. And had Jonas not kept such a diplomatic stance, Calyx's sharp tongue could well have brought the brothers to blows in their first real conversation. But Jonas chose to ignore most of what his brother had to say, it was full of bitterness and jealousy. Jonas didn't want to be hard on him though, he supposed those feelings were at least to some extent understandable.

"Goldheart tells me the Zohr will reach Destus some time before this old ship does," Jonas added, using small talk to ease his tension.

Calyx cut deeper into his brother. "You’re really not doing a very good job so far, are you, Spider!"

Jonas caved, clenching his teeth. "What would you have me do, Calyx? What would you have done?" he said, his face blushing with anger.

"I wouldn’t have let the Elementis leave my energy-star for one second. And I would have wiped out the entire dydrid threat a long time ago! Our father was stupid," Calyx shouted.

"There are millions of innocent minds amongst the converted dydrid. The Zohr controls all of them," Jonas said, spelling out the delicate fact of the matter.

Calyx calmed but his passion remained. "So a few innocent souls would die to save us from losing our power," he said casually, as if others lives were unimportant to him. "If I had known that I trained my entire life to protect nothing more than a pebble, I would never have bothered."

Jonas was seeing his brother's true feelings. He had never imagined he would be this bitter about his life. He wished he could drill some sense into his skewed thoughts on the world, but it seemed that Calyx had gone beyond the point of caring.

"Our father was wise and kind. He made mistakes but he tried his best," Jonas said.

"What would you know!?" blasted Calyx.

Instead of pushing his brother to the floor by his throat, not knowing how that would end, Jonas turned and walked away.

He stopped, "You’re right. I knew him only for a short time," Jonas said, feeling Calyx's eyes fixed into the back of his head. Jonas turned back around to Calyx. The twin boys stood staring into each other's eyes. "At least you had a father," Jonas said, pausing to let the words sink into Calyx's metal brain. He turned and walked away from the lost soul who stood before him.

*

With Twain sat by his side, Hawk held his rough hands around the controls of the ever useful dydrid transporter. Flying low, beneath the blue skies of Aquilla, the readings were a steady line of nothing on the ships scanners as they searched for any signs of life on the fast-moving floor below. Having scanned the surroundings of Mercron, the entire forest of Andawan, and spent hours scouring the old civilizations of the outerlands to the east and south of Enterra, there were still no signs of the captured cythereans. They had disappeared from any of the habitable regions of the planet.

Flying back across the forest from the south to the north, the tree line ended and a vast desert beyond began. A huge wasteland of dust and silt stretched out beneath them with the mountains of Calendale rising from the desert in the distance. Twain looked on in desperation. He would search under every rock of those mountains until he found where the Zohr's soldiers had taken his mother. The longer they went without finding the captives, the more Twain and Hawk believed they could have already either been murdered and disposed of by the fantoms or perhaps, even worse, converted to a life of slavery by the same process that gave Calyx his new metal heart, and they could now be hidden beneath a fantom uniform and living as a mindless part of the dydrid army. The Zohr had already killed the king, as far as Twain knew. There was no limit to what evil he was capable of. Twain played it over and over in his mind, what was the purpose of Oreaus taking these people if not for leverage against the king? Perhaps he would hold on to them until the Elementis was found, perhaps he wouldn't. If he could just understand why, it would help him think more clearly about where they may have been taken. The Zohr was not of a sound mind and unfortunately for Twain, rationality didn't exist in the world of a man whose only wish was to rule everything in existence.

Hawk had mentioned to Twain about a dumping ground at the base of the mountains where the dydrid recycled old body parts from dead fantoms along with the precious metal blood that pumped through their veins. Hope remained in both of their hearts while there were still places to search. They headed towards the dump.

Twain held his stare out across the desert floor, squinting his eyes to focus on where the rock met the sand, "They have to be at this scrap-dump, we’ve looked everywhere else!" he said to Hawk.

Hawk tapped away at a few buttons. "Magnifying now," he said, as the windshield's data-screen zoomed in, scanning the rocky hills on the desert's horizon.

Catching some bright sparkles of light on screen, they focused in on a body of water at the bottom of a canyon. The river shimmered, catching rays of light and throwing them into the lens of the magnifier. Hawk moved the viewer up to the top of a steep cliff, shifting left a little and zooming in. Their faces lifted and dropped with a short-lived celebration when they saw a gathering of dydrid transporters parked beside a long building which ran along the cliff top.

"There it is, the valley of Gulga," said Hawk, "and it’s crawling with fantoms!" he affirmed, moving the viewer across to a group of parading soldiers for Twain to see.

"There! Look!" Twain said, pointing to a long row of rectangular holes in the cliff below the cliffside building. Fifteen holes in all. Hawk zoomed in further to one of the caverns. Twain pushed his nose right up close to the screen. His eyes needed a double take. After a second blink, he knew there and then that he may have found his mother. He saw people sitting still in the darkness.

"They’re trapped inside, on the scrap-conveyors! Anytime the Zohr gives the word they’ll be crushed in minutes," said Twain, with panic sticking in his throat.

Hawk moved the viewer downwards back towards the sparkling river, "Those aren’t scrap-conveyors, kid, that river is filled with exopedes," he said.

Twain saw it. The river flowed not with water but with a silver liquid where exopedes leapt above the surface like a flurry of flying fish evading their predators. Except they were the only predators in this river and they flapped around snapping up at the air, waiting for their next victim.

Twain watched the exopedes splashing in the river of silver slime. "It’s a dydrification plant," he stammered, as his mind filled with images of thousands of people being converted by the heart-killing exopedes.

"We'll never get them out," Hawk said.

Twain couldn't accept that; he knew there had to be a way. He had to get inside somehow; he wouldn't let the Zohr turn his mother into one of them, taking her body and her mind away from him. His plan became clear as soon as he felt for his tekron that sat firmly in his pocket.

"We need to disable those conveyors, then we’ll worry about getting them out," Twain told Hawk, with a new-found determination.

"How will we do that exactly?" said Hawk, airing the impossibility of the thought.

"I'm going inside," Twain said. "Alone!" he confirmed, with all the courage of a loving son.

"You'll get caught!" Hawk said.

"That's the plan!" Twain smiled, looking up at the bewildered face of Hawk.

They flew close to the desert surface in an effort to remain undetected. Even being in a dydrid ship, arriving unannounced would raise suspicion from the fantoms in the cliffside unit. Hawk couldn't say he altogether liked the plan, Twain was putting himself in too much danger but there was no other choice. There were few of them and thousands of fantoms at the dydrification plant. Twain was to go in alone and somehow find a way to save his mother and half a million of their race from joining the warped minds of dydrids. And if he couldn't do it, he would die trying.

Chapter XX

Small Cruelty

A thousand star units away from Aquilla and in a greying sky filled with tens of millions of flakes, snow fell and settled on the roofs of miniature ice houses, sculpted by the tiny hands of the geisendorfers, the only natural inhabitants of planet Destus.

Children chased each other through garden gates and into the white snowy streets, skipping and laughing with all the happiness of a simple life. Plump mothers swayed their darling newborns in their arms, and chin wagged with neighbours about housework never being finished and the children always being hungry.

Walking down from the surrounding hillside were some well wrapped up men in furred coats, keeping warm while out on their hunts. They returned to the village with some hoofed ungulates, skewered on wooden spits and carried across their shoulders. The children larked around, running beneath their father's footsteps ducking under the hanging animals and weaving back around for another pass. The father's smiled at their children's games, remembering back to the days when they had done the same.

Heavy footsteps crushed down layers of fresh snow to the icy ground beneath. The Zohr and Mutus walked into the ice village. Fantom soldiers marched by their sides, lining up down the main street to form a path for their master. The hunters swallowed a worried gulp, dropping their catch to the ground and calling out to their loved ones. The women's hearts beat with fright, running out to gather up the children who still played their games, and hadn't noticed the approaching darkness. The entire village fled into their homes and the streets were lined only with the black metal-suits of the dydrid.

The Zohr watched the villagers escaping into their homes with steely eyes. He looked around him, sneering at the small houses and pitiful sweetness of the village. "I am looking for something," he called out to the village.

"One of you knows where a stone is that I seek. I shall ask each and every one of you, and if you do not know the answer—you will not live," he explained.

Three soldiers went up a garden path towards the first house in the village. With a strong black fist the door was shattered open. They disappeared inside, shortly afterwards carrying out a struggling father, mother and three small boys in their hands. The father and mother kicked their dangling legs in the air and banged their small hands on the coldness of the soldiers' armour, trying their best to be unleashed. The children stayed silent with shock as they were thrown at the feet of the Zohr. The dwarfed father pulled his family in close, looking up in disgust with brown shining eyes at the man responsible for their terror. Vulnerable tears filled the father's eyes as five sharp-ended spikes were driven hard into the icy ground beside them, vibrating with a piercing sound each time the soldiers released their grip.

The Zohr reached down and lifted the man away from his family with one clenched fist, holding him dangling in the air. "Tell me, little one, where is the stone?" he asked, bearing his silver eyes down on him.

The father shivered with more than cold. "P-please don’t hurt my family, kind sir," he stumbled, his eyes now streaming with tears.

"That is not the correct answer," the Zohr said.

He pointed to the mother who wrapped her arms tightly around her trembling children. A fantom snatched her away, holding her up above a spike.

"I don’t know! I don’t know! Please!" shouted the father, his whole body tensing up in fear.

The Zohr nodded and the soldier pushed her body onto the spike. The father dropped out of the Zohr's gripped.

"Marnia! Marnia!" the father cried.

He ran across to the base of the spike, looking up to his wife, clutching his hands around the steel as her blood trickled down onto them. Saliva poured from his mouth. Marnia struggled with the coldness coursing through her body. Holding on with both hands as she edged down the steel, her eyes screamed to her love in a wordless stare. Her struggle stopped. Her bright eyes closed and her limbs were frozen in time. The father reached up for her. His outcries filled the silence of the snowy air. The children knelt as quiet as angels in the snow. The fantoms pounced, taking up the father and his children, moving each one of them above a spike of their own. With a nod from the Zohr they were forced downwards as the spikes' arrowed heads pierced through the clothes on their backs. The youngest boy died first. His father attempted to speak some words of comfort to his sons but the drool of pain that leaked from his mouth turned to blood. His blood fell to the ground, joining the expanding patterns of red that stretched out across the ice at the bottom of each pole.

The fantoms marched down the street planting spikes outside the gates of every house. The cold sound of steel resounded through the air as each pole of death was slammed into the ice.

From the top of the street a small figure hobbled towards the soldiers. The small man wore thick woollen robes and walked with the aid of a stick taller than he was. The closer he came the older he looked, wrinkles took over the shape of his face and his singular bushy eyebrow sat above two golden eyes set above a large blushing nose that had spent too much time in the cold.

"Take away your spikes!" he shouted, with a squeaking, grunty voice. "You have made your point!"

He limped past his fateful friends, his eyes glanced to the mess that this beast had created in his peaceful little village. "I am Solipa, elder of the geisendorfers. I will take you to that of which you speak," he said, as he walked closer.

He came right to the feet of the Zohr and dropped his head back to look up at his face, "What you're looking for… is in the forest, guarded by Shardwey, the cytherean of the woods," he said, hurting inside as he told them all that he knew.

The Zohr peered down at the small man, "The old king. He is still alive!"