Farnath: The Frozen Heart

by Poseidon Aivalis

  “Voila,” Erica said, happy and proud, when she found the last records of this room.

  According to these, the reactors were transported to the room 137. They ran there, found them and Taurus started to transfer them one by one back to the truck, while Sila was keeping the soldiers busy.

  Unfortunately, a patrol of four soldiers that were passing not too far from there, would soon be in a location, where they could see the truck. Jake tracked them down on their way down by using the cameras of a building, and hacked the system of a big truck, moving it into a position that covered the dancing soldiers and Taurus, who was carrying the first reactor.

  Andria was following the general manager around the sites of the factory and gradually they got closer to the nuclear warehouse where, he said, he wanted to show her where they keep the nuclear systems, but Andria showed more interest in the conditions of the workers to avoid putting her real mission in danger. Erica and the Taurus got into the truck with the last reactor and gave the order to Sila to come back. She suddenly abandoned the surprised soldiers who just started to enjoy the whole dance and had forgotten that they were on duty. After Sila returned, they moved the truck back to the parking area and waited inside. Andria received a message from Erica that the mission was complete and she found an excuse to leave the tour. As she was going back to the truck an unwelcomed visitor appeared in front of Erica, who was waiting outside of it.

  “How are you, Erica? Didn’t you escort Princess Andria?” Roy asked, looking at the truck behind her.

  “I’m fine thank you, Roy. Princess Andria asked me to wait for her here and keep an eye on the truck,” she answered, a bit nervous.

  “Yes, that’s obvious, you wouldn’t be here otherwise, would you? What is in the truck?” he asked innocently.

  “We just brought some machines that the managers had ordered months before, but because of bureaucratic clashes they have been delayed. Princess Andria bypassed these and solved the situation to fix the relationship with them.

  “That makes sense,” Roy said, but he noticed the overloaded tyres on the truck and became more suspicious. “Did you empty the truck? It seems overloaded. Let’s check if you forgot anything inside.”

  Erica had noticed the wheels as well and started to lose her cools. Why, of all the people under Earth, did it have to be him there? She tried to block his way to the back of the truck and divert him to another subject.

  “Have you learnt the news about the 13th district? That they will upgrade the ceiling soon because it’s overpopulated?” Roy didn’t seem to be bothered.

  He started to open one of the truck doors, despite her efforts to try to stop him nicely. At that crucial moment, when everything seemed lost, a voice interrupted him and made him stop.

  “Hello, Roy. What are you doing there?” Princess Andria asked, walking nervously to the truck.

  “Your father wanted me to check if everything is alright, Princess Andria.”

  “As you can see, I’m alright, so go and tell him and stop messing with my job. Please close this door now.” Andria appeared to be angry.

  She and Erica surrounded him, their very stance demanding him to give up his investigation. Having no choice, he obeyed and closed the half opened door and walked away, humiliated and with an unsatisfied curiosity. Suddenly, music started to play from Sila’s radio and she couldn’t turn it off. Taurus, surprised by the sudden music, lifted his head up hitting the roof of the truck, making a sound that didn’t pass unnoticed from Roy who turned his head. Jake managed to turn off Sila’s radio and Erica smiled awkwardly at Roy’s sharp look.

  “The radio is broken … Good bye Roy, thanks for coming. See you back to the palace,” she said nervously.

  When he left, the convoy took the road back to the palace, and somewhere in the middle, the truck driven by Jake and Erica turned towards Ivorin’s house to deliver the reactors and the robots. Luckily, Jake took the wrong turn before the convoy passed through the area where Roy had stopped to watch so he missed the truck’s disappearing. He followed the convoy anyway and stopped just outside of the Royal garage waiting for the missing truck to return. After five hours, it finally did, with Erica driving it. She parked in the garage and left. Roy opened the truck just to find it empty.

  “What are you up to Andria? What are you hiding?” he said to himself, suspicious and disappointed at himself for his failure.

  Part 4:

  Fire and Fury

  A ndria’s team gathered at Ivorin’s house to prepare for the trip. He provided them with grey-silver uniforms, specially made to protect them from the heat and everybody wore them apart from Arthas, who was too big to fit into his. Jake was laughing at him while Ivorin was trying to fix it. Andria was nervous and excited, while Erica was surprisingly calm, even optimistic about their mission.

  “I threw a coin in the Big Well of Wishes and asked for good luck,” Erica said, when Andria looked at her in disbelief.

  “I wish I could be that superstitious,” Andria replied, a bit disappointed at learning the source of her calm.

  The spaceship was loaded onto a big truck and covered by a cloth. Erica, Arthas and Jake got inside the spaceship while Ivorin and Andria would drive the truck until the first control point of the Forbidden Forest. Andria had left a letter on her father’s desk to explain why she had to leave, but she didn’t say how and she didn’t say when she would return either. She knew that she had passed already the “no return point”. The truck passed Ivorin’s gates carefully, as the spaceship was very wide, and entered into the national tunnel, towards the Forbidden Forest. Erica had been concerned that somebody might have followed them from the palace, but Andria appeared to be wrongfully unconcerned, as there was a car following them at a safe distance. Roy was stalking them and had been since he saw them with the truck inside the industrial estate. “What were they carrying?” he wondered and his thoughts were interrupted by a call from the general manager of the industrial area. He was informed that two nuclear reactors had been missing since the day Andria had visited. “Could it be a coincidence? Is it possible that the two girls had stolen those reactors? And for what reason?” Roy had too many unanswered questions in his mind, not the least of which was what they were doing in Ivorin’s house? He didn’t have much information about the man, but the size of the cargo on Ivorin’s truck made him very suspicious and curious.

  When the truck arrived at the control point, an officer with a round face approached it. He was fat and slow in moving and Andria recognised him immediately.

  “This is a restricted area to the Forbidden Forest, you can’t go further, I’m afraid, except if you have the appropriate permission,” he said to Ivorin, while he was glancing at the big load in the back.

  “Are you sure? Ivorin has a little friend that believes the opposite,” Ivorin said with some confidence showing Andria who was sitting just next to him.

  Roy was waiting in his car, close enough to see everything, expecting that the soldiers would stop the truck, force them to reveal the load and in the right moment he would appear to save them and take advantage of the situation. He could even blackmail Andria if she was doing something seriously illegal or he could gain her father’s gratitude if he wouldn’t testify against her at the international court. The court was beyond the king’s power and could put Andria, or even the king himself, behind bars forever if she committed a serious crime like invading the Forbidden Forest. The other kings would ask for their arrest and conviction, if it came to their knowledge and in that case he could be the first in line to take power, maybe temporarily, or keep it permanently if there wasn’t an agreement about who would be the next king among the nobles. Roy was sure that they would disagree for many years, so he could establish his power and deal with them in better terms later. Too big of a vision in his head—he had to stay focused on the present and not to miss the opportunity. He didn’t know what Andria said to the officer, but after their little conversation, quite surprisingly, the
officer lifted the barriers to let them pass.

  Ivorin was impressed by Andria’s connections and asked her, while he was driving, how she knew that the officer would let them pass.

  “He was officer in the prison were Erica was imprisoned,” she explained. “He couldn’t stand the heat and the pressure there and he asked me to be transferred to a better position. So I sent him in this control point and appointed him as the officer in charge so if I ever wanted to pass he would let me. The fresh air that is coming from the forest and the better salary was a very good motivation for him to obey. He believes that when we arrive at the gates we have to come back because the gates are being controlled electronically by the Kingdom Alliance Peacekeepers.” Andria felt satisfaction looking at the awe in Ivorin’s eyes.

  “He doesn’t know that we have Jake,” Ivorin said smiling.

  Roy tried to turn the car to follow them, thinking that he could blackmail the officer too for his illegal cooperation with the Princess, but, out of nowhere, a freezing blast of wind frazzled the car’s electronic systems and it wouldn’t start up. He couldn’t understand what was going on.

  Meanwhile the truck arrived at the huge gates where the guards were sitting inside their guard posts, lingering as they had nothing to do unless someone attempted to open the gates by force. It was Erica’s turn to use her thieving skills. Her mission was to plant an electronic device in the server room of the control tower. She was a skilful acrobat and she managed to climb the tower like a spider and entered through a very small window. She walked stealthily along the corridors, passing outside of the chambers where the soldiers were playing cards and relaxing, and broke into the locked server room where she planted a USB flash disk. Even as she was making her way back, Jake had already hacked the passwords and had taken control of the cameras first, then the gates and locked the doors of the guards’ chambers. Andria entered the spaceship, sat next to Jake and noticed in one of the cameras Roy yelling at officer Wooly who had let them pass his control point.

  “You are in big trouble! Not only you are going to lose your job, but also you will find yourself behind bars for a long time. Gather your men and arrest those intruders and maybe I’ll ‘forget’ to report you for your treachery,” Roy was saying, outraged, to the officer who was looking lost and bewildered while he was sweating like he just run on a marathon.

  Officer Wooly ordered his men to get in their vehicles and chase the large truck.

  Erica used a rope to climb down faster, but by that time Roy was almost there and the gates were still shut. She got into the spaceship and Arthas turned on the electronic systems. Ivorin turned the back of the truck at the gates and the spaceship slid down slowly towards them. After it had settled down, Ivorin started to drive back, thus his part of the mission complete. On the way back he was confronted by the oncoming military vehicles under Roy’s command, but Roy decided to deal with Ivorin later as it was more important to arrest the Princess and seize their mysterious cargo and they simply sped past. Roy had also called the guards at the gates to raise the alarm, but they found they were all locked in their chambers. The gates were opening too slowly and Roy and his soldiers arrived on time and surrounded the spaceship.

  “What is this thing?” an officer asked, with his mouth hanging open in confusion.

  “They are trying to fly away!

  Stop them,” Roy screamed at his soldiers.

  The soldiers pointed their machine guns, antitank weapons and rifles at the spaceship.

  “Andria, I know you are in there!” Roy shouted in a megaphone. “Your father will be very upset when he finds out what you are up to. Come out and don’t make your situation even worse, let’s discuss it to find a solution.”

  Andria didn’t react and the heavy gates were still opening slowly. She knew that the spaceship was designed to travel in inclement conditions but was it bulletproof?

  “I ‘m going to order them to fire at the engines if you don’t come out now!” Roy continued in the same tone.

  Suddenly another chilling wave of air came again from nowhere and froze instantly the weapons making them stuck in the soldiers’ hands. So cold, they couldn’t even move and, from inside, Arthas noticed with surprise the sudden drop of temperature on his monitor. It was minus ten and it was falling even more! The spaceship could withstand such extreme temperatures and when the gates fully opened Arthas turned on the engines.

  “What devil’s plan is this?” Roy said, while he was struggling to breathe.

  Erica was sure that it was her wish in the Big Well of the Wishes that had brought this cold and saved them, but Andria couldn’t accept this as logical explanation. She didn’t think too much about it at all though, she seized the opportunity and ordered Arthas to take off. He flew clumsily upwards, soaring left and right, losing its center, but the spaceship didn’t go forward at all.

  “Come on, I know you can do it! Make it fly!” Andria shouted, holding her arm chair with sweating palms.

  “I’m trying!” Arthas replied, while struggling to pull the rudder.

  The spaceship passed through the gates, almost crashed on the ceiling of the tunnel and then started to turn around by itself, while the crew were screaming inside.

  “Are you sure you know how to pilot this thing?” Andria shouted at Arthas.

  “I’m sorry, I only tried it on the simulator, which was a bit different than in reality,” he said with effort.

  “What? Are you telling me that you have never actually flown this ship?” Andria was shocked and she realised that she hadn’t paid attention to this detail as she was too excited with her plan.

  The spaceship started to fall towards the Forbidden Forest with speed, while Roy and the soldiers were watching anxiously still trembling from the cold.

  “We are going to die!” Erica whimpered to herself.

  “I’m going to kill you before we crash!” Andria screamed at Arthas.

  They all screamed as the spaceship fell helplessly, but the last moment Arthas managed to gain control and flew high to the top of the big hole named Forbidden Forest and outside onto the surface. Everyone felt relief and even the soldiers smiled and applauded as the cold had gone as sudden as it arrived along with a mysterious figure that was watching them from distance. Andria released her belt after the spaceship stabilized and hugged Arthas who smiled shyly.

  “I knew it! I knew you can do it!” she cried, tears of joy flowing down her cheeks.

  The spaceship travelled along the surface of the dry planet. So empty and sandy, it was impossible to imagine that life existed there again, so they decided to fly directly to the sun without wasting any more time and fuel around. Andria was more than excited watching the afternoon horizon with her own eyes, flying on the blue sky totally free. As they travelled, Arthas kept checking the external temperature, which became extremely high as they approached the sun and fire circled them as they entered into its atmosphere. A red planet, full of fire and lava, rocks and ashes, impressive and seemingly endless. They travelled for two days, searching for anything that would motivate them to land. It was Erica who noticed on her monitor some unusual square shaped rocks on the surface .

  “Nature can’t make so perfectly straight lines, there must be something else there” she said. Arthas flew the ship a bit closer and they discovered a wonder, a magnificent structure! It seemed to be a palace surrounded by fire and smoke, standing on a hill overlooking the entire site. It was impossible! How could someone build anything in this heat, this unfriendly place? They landed in the courtyard of the structure that was made by red and black by firestones which were surrounded by flames in some parts of it.

  “I didn’t expect to find something like this! Let’s search around to find if anyone lives here,” said Andria and walked away first.

  As they walked a few steps, Andria noticed a fireball coming from above and she screamed.

  “Watch out!”

  Everybody jumped in different directions, avoiding the big b
last that could burn them all. Their silver uniforms could withstand high temperatures, but such a fireball would easily melt them. Another came from the same direction, somewhere near the entrance of the palace where a dark figure was standing.

  “We are under attack!” Jake shouted and ran away.

  The second fell just next to Erica who managed to avoid it thanks to her acrobatic skills. The figure that had appeared on the top of a small hill in the middle of the courtyard, wearing black robes with raised collar, held fireballs in each hand and was ready to launch them at the intruders. Erica and Jake ran back to the ship, where Arthas had already gone, but Andria didn’t follow them. Instead of retreating she decided to move a bit closer to the figure, manoeuvring behind rocks, statues and columns while more fireballs were thrown at her. She managed to come close enough to see his face. This man, this fire wizard, was bald with fire instead of hair, blood-red skin and yellow, angry eyes! She was protected behind a big rock in the middle of the courtyard, but she found herself trapped as there was nowhere else to go forward or back and the man noticed it.