Ultimus Thesaurus: The last Treasure (Era of Change Book 1) (33 page)

“You can't beat me. This here in my hand is a manticorewhip and I have enhanced it. It allows me to dominate everything in this room, even you.”

His words may have controlled the room, but even the prince has had problems to bring me under his control. I did not stop my attacks, but with each additional charge I became more and more furious and the heat of my body rose up. The fire began to burn the room, but the man stopped it with a simple whack of the whip.

“This force is impressive. Without question a gift of the master himself. Why are you not grateful for his gifts? The fear that you feel makes you weak and predictable. Without it you could be a true king among the people and perhaps even a god!” he told me and laughed like a lunatic.

“Neither king nor god could stop me from achieving what I want. I must not lose anymore,” I roared in a last fit of anger, but I also felt the severe pain permeating my whole body.

My actions become uncontrollable, I stumbled over everything in my way and the weight of my body proved to be unacceptable for my mind. I fell over just past the man instead of hitting him and he stopped my fall with the whip, which he wrapped around my neck. Its thick spines drilled into my flesh and any attempt to breathe let me wish that I had not.

“You're right with your words, because neither king nor god would even appreciate you. A miserable man, who can’t unleash his full potential, regardless all the gifts he received. Perhaps you know now, whom you are up against? I should end you here and save the valuable time of my master.”

I saw that Isaac rose off the ground. His body shone in a bright blue colour just like Aton before. The book was hovering over his hand, as he approached us, but the man did not notice him. Just as he came closer and closer to the man it became clear that he was not able to control both of us at the same time.

“Sit down! I command you!” the man demanded over and over again, but Isaac seemed to perceive nothing anymore.

The expression on his face was scary and I was not sure what had been done to him. The bright blue light, which made his eyes shine forth, made the anger in my heart disappear. It calmed me so much that I had no more strength to fight against the whip and simply fell to the ground. The man loosened the grip around my neck and pointed his weapon towards Isaac, who still showed no signs of submission.

“Don’t force my hand! Put the book down on the floor and submit yourself!” exclaimed the man in despair, but none of his words reached Isaac.

I knew now that he was not allowed to raise his hand against Isaac and so I utilized what was left of my strength and grabbed the legs of the man, so that he could not escape. The closer Isaac got to him the louder the man’s grovelling became and he tried in vain to free himself and when Isaac finally touched him, he became petrified.

Isaac sat down on the floor and continued browsing the book, as if nothing had happened.

“Can you hear me? Isaac?” I asked him while I tried to lift myself up.

When I touched the shoulder of Isaac, such an amazing power travelled through my body that all of my emotions disappeared. The heat which I felt before was gone and the few scraps of my clothes that were still left, now fell to the ground and revealed my burned skin and the coin, which I had almost forgotten. Naked and helpless I lay on the ground now, with the coin of Lucia in my hand, and I waited for someone who would help me, but no one came. Isaac was unable to help me and whatever they had done to him, forced him to read the book to the end. All of this knowledge overwhelmed him and made him something else.

“To say ‘I am sorry’ seems not enough anymore. I have promised too much and now we lose everything. Your greatest fear, of which you have told me about in friendship and trusted me with, is now for me to observe. Perhaps this world would be a better place without science and without the urge to control. Your father did mean nothing to you when we started this journey, but now you have sacrificed everything in order to rescue him, just like I would give up anything, to see my own father again. Mistakes are sometimes everything that we have left.

The truth is that I am unable to live normally. I am not like the other people out there who will adapt and do what they are told to. I have dreams and their fulfilment means everything to me. 

Without them I don’t want to live any longer and without them I feel a pain that goes beyond all my limits. I was always alone, knew no friendship or true love and doubted that such things truly exist. Lucia was for me something natural. I did not take it seriously, what I felt, tried not to understand it and maybe I wanted to be close to her, but I never knew at that time.

That time has now been taken away from me. All of it could have been mine and now I have nothing more than my own life. A worthless object, I know, but I care for it more than anything else. The conviction, which is required in order to be a martyr, like Jasper, I do not know if I could do the same. But and this is something I have never said to anyone, if I had to do it, it would be for someone like you, Isaac. You are my only friend, my only ally, and no matter what I did, in order to earn your favour, I would like to thank all the gods for it. Of all the mistakes on this journey, I only deeply regret one thing and that is that I did not trust you at the beginning.”

When he heard my words, the lights surrounding him died out and he fell to the ground, as did the book in his hands.

“I told you that we would escape,” he said with a sigh of relief.

“I have a wish, Jacob. I want to help the people who are unable to help themselves. I want to be a symbol of hope to all those, who are desperately looking for one. But what happens, if we do not win? I can understand everything, every word in this book. My father ... his knowledge, it is unlimited. I would never have thought that I would see such a place in my life. I always ran away, I have neither known the law nor any kind of decency and now I will lose perhaps the only thing that ever meant something to me.

The truth in this book has given me a clearer sight. I now understand why my father never wanted to share his knowledge with anyone. The prince is not who we thought him to be, none of this is. There are things that change everything, secrets that disfigure every dream. Therefore I have a request, Jacob. I would like you to help me achieve what I dream of. Help me escape from here and find a place where I can find peace. Can you do that for me?”

I lay on the ground and beheld the ceiling of the library, looked out through the windows to my side and saw the enormous crystalline moons on an imaginary sky.

“I will. But you need to tell me what you have read. We must destroy this book if it is too dangerous.”

He looked at me and at his sight alone I realized the truth.

“You cannot destroy this book. It was created by a man who wished to destroy the world, a deeply desperate man. He writes of a world which descends into chaos, a world that nobody can help and that knows nothing than death. This is the world where the dragons originated. If the prince ever reads these words, then I do not know what he will do. Why do creatures like him exist? Why do we suffer?” asked Isaac and stood up from the ground.

“I know where the prince is located. But I do not think that I can stop him. Not without the knowledge of this book. There is nothing that can help us? No reference?” I asked curiously and noticed already that it was a dangerous path that I followed.

Isaac looked at the book and picked it up from the ground, whereupon I myself stood up and looked for clothing to wear.

“Wait,” said Isaac and opened the book. With his bare finger he wrote something and clothed me as if by magic. Immediately I put the coin back into my pocket.

“I can help you, but I do not know the price. The man, who has created this book, voiced a warning. Whoever would use this book to change the world or to influence it in any way, his life would be plagued by suffering and loss.”

“In that case we do not change the world. Can you move this castle? If we could take it back to the surface, then the prince would not be safe anymore. And when he loses his safety, the world will sooner or later turn against him.”

“Isn’t this exactly what we have been warned of? When we turn the world against him, doesn’t it change everything?”

“It is our last chance to stop him. We can no longer run away,” I said and was about to make the same mistake that had haunted me for so long before.

“How do we want to protect the world? How should we help the people?” asked Isaac and lowered his hand.

“We cannot do it. I understand now that I am not the one to save humanity. It must rescue itself. The prince is responsible for the death of so many, but if he has no longer any space where he is safe, then he also becomes vulnerable.”

The ring on my hand shone again in a white light and this light slowly flowed over my body like cleansing water. I looked at my skin as it regenerated ever faster and hardly felt any of the pain, which had forced me to my knees before. But the anger that had brought me here was seething even more furiously.

“You should hold on tight somewhere, I have no idea what happens next,” said Isaac and wrote in the book.

First nothing happened, but when I looked out of the window, I noticed how everything changed. The darkness disappeared and so did the large crystals in the sky. From one second to the next we could finally see the sun and its beams appeared brighter than ever before.

“We have succeeded. But now we must hurry. The prince is now vulnerable,” I said to Isaac and ran ahead and led the way.

He was still surprised that he had been capable of turning the man, who had tortured him previously, to stone and I understood what he felt in consequence of the knowledge that such a threatening power was sleeping within him. But now it was time to find out what the limits of this power were, because I was sure that a simple man had no chance to preserve this world.

“Should we have no other option I would like you to use the book and bring us all to safety. Sooner or later we will have to fight the prince, but we must not make the same mistake again and risk our own lives.”

Isaac hardly heard my words, but I was sure that he had at least understood them. We kept on running through the tremendous palace and eventually reached the chamber of the prince. It was a small room, relative to the scale of things for this castle, and many books, artefacts and paintings adorned it. The prince was sitting on a simple chair and looked into a large broken mirror. His scaly skin was fragile and had become weak as he breathed heavily and turned around as soon as he noticed us.

“I have underestimated you, Albus. Now we are facing each other again, but this time I can feel the might of a dragon within your spirit. It is a rare gift, which not many have seen. Will you use it to destroy me? Or do you want to convince me that I could be of use to this world?” he asked laughing and rose from his chair.

I signalled Isaac that he should hang back, but we soon realized that we had made a mistake. Mel appeared and grabbed the book and his shadowy figure made it impossible to keep up with him. Where he was just behind me, he suddenly stood right next to the prince and gave him the book.

“You keep showing me the power of this seemingly simple object and yet I keep questioning its value. My father once told me on a daily basis about the power of this book, of the terrible gift that would befall those who use it. For me, all this is a fairy tale, feverish fantasies of old scoundrels and tricksters, but perhaps they are true. A bit of truth rests in everything, right Albus?” he said and threw the book behind him on a table.

“The time for petty words is over, we are here to stop you,” said I, but the prince did not want to fight against me.

“Your weakness makes you susceptible to many a madness, or so it seems to me. Do you want to truly die in this place? Don’t you want to run away from me, waste all of your life and exist like a coward, only acting from the shadows? You will fall like all those who came before, but it would be a shame if this was your last day. I had seen such a wonderful future for you. On some days I even dreamed that you are the foundation for a new generation of dragons, but for what you were, you were enough.”

The words of the prince were confusing and numerous, like those of my father and Jasper.

“Was it not you, prince, who acted cowardly from the shadows? Who ran away, struck by a heart full of fear? What secret do you share with all these people that I once knew?”

“Vanquish me and I may even tell you. For me the truth has always been nothing more than a means to an end. I was never interested in it, as it was formed by me, I was the one who created and distributed it. So why do I need this book? Because I am a coward? Because I hide in the shadows?” he burst out laughing and the vibration of his voice tore the curtains on the windows to the floor. “Do you not see this world? It is already mine. I do not fear it and I'm not hiding in this palace, it’s the crystals that interest me. You have seen them, right? Like planets they reside deep in the core of the earth and they will free those of my kind.

Every time a spirit leaves the body of a dying being, it travels to a world beyond our perception; a world that you have already seen. This world now belongs to me and every spirit therein serves me. The mystery of eternal life is simple, but immortality? That is something else. But I also found something that protects me from being killed by my enemies.”

He held a small medallion into the air, made of pure crystal and divided into ten small chambers.

“Every spirit in this medallion protects my own and dies in my place. You want to kill me? Perhaps you would even be able to do just that, but can you accomplish eleven times in quick succession, what no man previously succeeded at in the slightest? I am not looking for more power; I am searching for creatures with which I can share my power. You have seen the goblins, the powers I gave one of them, the changes he experienced and the greatness he achieved. You are no different, because you originated just the same.