by Kyle West
Where did they come from? I wondered, though my thought could be heard by Flame.
The Radaskim’s vessels towed them from outer space, Flame said. Many burrowed inside the larger vessels, escaping them before they were thrown toward the planet.
That invasion force had traveled for centuries to get here . . . almost four hundred years. Who knew how much of that time they’d spent in our solar system, building strength.
It was scarcely imaginable.
We will arrive in Hyperborea soon, Flame said.
How soon?
Before the sun rises.
I wondered how the others were doing. No one had signaled that they needed a break. Then again, everyone must have been afraid to go down into the fog, save for short meals and quick warmth around a flame.
If I fall asleep, wake me about an hour from the city. You can feel when we’re close, right?
Yes, Flame said. I will know when we’re close.
* * *
It didn’t feel like long at all before Flame awakened me. The time was so short that I wasn’t even sure I’d fallen asleep. While Flame hadn’t said anything to me directly, I felt his presence in my thoughts. Dragons didn’t need to communicate with just words. Feelings and images could be transferred as well, and the feeling I received from Flame seemed to say, pay attention to this.
There’s a vale up ahead where the mist isn’t so thick, Flame said. It seems safe to put you down for a final meal before the city.
Sounds good, I said. Any sign of Odium or his dragons?
Nothing whatsoever, Flame said. Though it feels . . . dead around here. Once on the ground, you will no longer be safe.
I will also not be as cold, I thought, more to myself than the dragon.
We go down now.
As good as her word, Flame angled himself down. The vale that was clearly visible to her was still hidden from me, but human eyes were not as good as a dragon’s.
We plunged through the wet mist and landed next to a stand of tall trees bare of foliage. Whether their bareness was due to the cold, altitude, or the spreading reversion, I couldn’t guess. We checked on each other while the dragons went off in search of healthy xen to feed on.
“Everyone doing all right?” I asked.
“Cold,” Shara said, miserably. “Though I suppose I signed up for this.”
“The north is always cold this time of year,” Isa said. “You always need a layer or two more than you think.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Shara said.
“Isaru?” I asked.
He raised his eyebrows as he turned toward me. “Yes?”
“Doing okay?”
He nodded. “Physically, yes. Mentally . . . I’m quite troubled by what lies ahead.”
“What, in particular, is troubling?” Shara asked.
Isaru began to explain while Isa prepped a fire and I got our meal ready. “I don’t know what your dragons told you, but Falling Star was telling me how the land below is dead. We aren’t far form Hyperborea, true, but if the Northern Reversion has spread so far already, I can’t help but think just how many people have already died . . . whether that’s from the Mindless monsters, or the simple blighting of crops and forage that people rely on. Many Elekai don’t live in cities; there are dozens, if not hundreds, of tribes that live and call no man master.” Isaru looked at me. “We met some like that when we left the Sanctum the first time, Shanti.”
“The Avekai,” I said. “I remember them.”
“Basically, every tribe like that simply no longer lives in the north,” Isaru said. “Not unless they wish for death. This land is the domain of our enemy.”
Isa had finally succeeded in stoking a flame. “If this land is his, then why did he land by Dragonspire?”
“To catch the Elder Dragons by surprise, perhaps. He killed many of them.”
None of us wanted to be reminded of that fact, a fact so horrible that it didn’t even seem real.
“This land is his,” Isaru continued. “And he doesn’t even need his army here to conquer. The reversion is doing his job for him.”
I felt a sudden onset of weariness. In just hours, we would all be at the Hyperfold.
We ate our meals quickly and gathered around the fire. I looked into everyone’s eyes as they watched the flames. I wondered if I was leading them all to their deaths, or if this would be our last meal together.
“Whatever happens up ahead . . .” I began. All of them looked at me. I found I had nothing more to say.
“Everyone knows it’s a fool’s hope,” Shara said. “For my part, I’m willing to fight with you, whatever end may come.”
Isa nodded her agreement, and last of all, so did Isaru.
“This is the last chance we might have to defend our world,” Isaru said. “I don’t know what will happen up ahead. But I know that we will learn more, and perhaps learn enough to do something to stop our world from being consumed by the Radaskim. I . . . know what that feels like. I will do whatever I can to stop others from experiencing it.”
I looked into Isaru’s eyes and saw no doubt in them. We would need that resolve up ahead.
Soon, the dragons returned from their forage. It didn’t seem as if they’d found much, judging from the lack of vegetation in these heights.
Is it time? Flame asked.
It’s time, I responded.
We put out the fire and were in the air within minutes, back into the cold and dark. When the broken towers of Hyperborea at last came into view, we could almost reach out and touch them. The mist was so thick that we hadn’t seen their approach.
The city is empty. Isaru’s voice entered my mind. Truly dead.
And it would likely stay that way until the end of time. The towers were soon lost, and we flew blindly into the mist, until the dragons put us down on the long bridge leading to the entrance of the Thought Dome, where the Hyperfold was housed.
And standing outside was a figure I would have recognized anywhere. In another time, he had been the love of my life, and those feelings still burst to the surface.
But so did the fear, because I could see that he was clutching his side, and kneeling right in front of the entrance.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
FLAME SWOOPED DOWN, AND AS soon as he landed, I was sliding off her back and running forward.
“Alex?”
Even in the darkness, I could see that there was no blood where the apparent wound was, though Alex was quite pale.
“It’s done,” he said. “I sensed you coming, so I left it . . .”
“Hush,” I said. “Let me help you.”
“What’s happened?” Shara asked, running to join me. “Who is this?”
“This is Alex,” I said.
The others stood silently around me, gazing at awe at the one who had once been Elekim, but had since passed his powers onto me.
“I don’t have long,” he said.
“What happened?” I asked, tears coming to my eyes. “Let me heal you.”
“No,” Alex said. “I . . . wasn’t supposed to last there. It’s not where I belong. I’ve done my part.”
“Your part? What part? You’re just going to go as soon as you’ve come?”
I reached for the Xenofold as I took his hands. I searched within him for the hurt. There was no physical wound, but something was missing that had been there before.
“You’ve lost your connection,” I said.
His brown eyes gazed at me sadly, though his face was one of steely resolve. “I gave it to the Xenofold, Anna. It was the only way.”
“The only way for what?”
He closed his eyes, and though I tried to heal him with the power of the Xenofold, there was nothing to connect that power to. With great strain, he opened his eyes again.
“Rakhim . . . nearly overpowered me. To stop him, to hold him in place, I had to give that part of myself up. But when I pass . . .”
“Don’t talk like that,” I said. “T
his isn’t over.”
“No,” Alex said. “It’s not. It’s up to you to finish it.”
“Alex . . .”
But he was already fading. His muscles stiffened, but he choked out his final words as I held him in my arms.
“I love you, Anna. Always have. Always will.”
“Alex . . .”
And like that, his body relaxed into my hands as his full weight pressed down into me. Anna was in turmoil inside of me, and I couldn’t help but let out a scream.
“No,” I said. “No . . .”
As soon as Alex had come back to this world, he was gone from it.
“He will pay for this, Shanti,” Shara said. “This ends now.”
I wiped my face of tears, and clenched my fist. “I must go into the Hyperfold to deal Rakhim the final blow. All of you must stay here to watch Alex.”
“I’ll go, too,” Isaru said. “I want him to see me as myself. I have my own revenge to exact.”
I nodded. I had to give Isaru that, at least.
“We’ll take care of things here,” Shara said. “Go now!”
I kissed Alex’s cheek as a final goodbye before my anger took over. Isaru and I walked through the sheer barrier that separated the inside of the Thought Dome from the outside world.
* * *
The white shining walkway leading to the central shining orb was empty, as usual. The sheer interior curve of the Dome shone a faded pink, dimly illuminating the vast space. As we walked forward, I did notice one difference in the central orb. It had gone darker, now shining an orange hue instead of its usual white radiance. The light emanating from it felt weak and sickly. There was no need for any of us to shade our eyes.
The Hyperfold was weak, now. There could be no other reason.
When we neared the orb, I felt Anna losing it inside me. It was all I could do to keep control of her emotions. My own emotions were grieved, and I had never personally known Alex. Where did I end, and she begin?
“We should go in now,” Isaru said. “The longer we stay out here, the more opportunity Rakhim will have to play with time in there. We shouldn’t give him that, if we can help it.”
I nodded my agreement. “Let’s go, then.”
I reached out to the Xenofold, and found connection to the orb. It resisted a little against my power, but it was no match. A circle began to open, from the central point and outward, a black painting across the orb’s sickly light. Within the swirling blackness, I could see shapes of broken buildings amid lightning and falling stones. The world within the Hyperfold was in ruin, and it was a ruin into which we had to go.
With one last look at each other, Isaru and I walked through the portal, into the cold darkness.
* * *
The first sensation upon entering the Hyperfold was one of falling, and the second was of blindness. Just before I could scream, I hit the hard ground under me, somewhat clumsily, but otherwise unharmed.
I looked over to Isaru who had rolled onto his side.
“You okay?” I asked.
He gave a firm nod. “I can stand.”
We both got up and surveyed our surroundings. There was nothing here but brown dirt, endless plains, and a black, starless sky. We could see in the dimness, but it wasn’t apparent where the light was coming from. It seemed to shimmer from the very air. In the distance I could make out the ruins of towers and hear the rumble of thunder in the distance.
“Where will he be?” I asked, gripping the hilt of Katan.
“Somewhere by those towers, I imagine. The ruin of his city.”
I felt anger burn within me: both mine, and Anna’s. Alex had died, and would be avenged. He had given his powers to me, and I would use them to see this travesty ended.
We walked forward, and the distance seemed to melt away. The towers loomed ever closer, much larger than they had seemed at first glance. Before long, we were walking between them, down broken avenues, in the center of which stood long-dead trees that hadn’t been in bloom for almost two centuries. The dark windows were like lidless eyes, while the open cavernous doors like frowns in the melting faces of the edifices. Broken bridges that once spanned the streets by the dozens lay in ruin, bearing only ghosts if anything at all.
Though this Hyperborea was a dream, a fiction, I couldn’t help but feel it was reproduced exactly as it stood today. Even the Hyperfold no longer had the strength to maintain its illusion. The people were gone. Where to, I couldn’t say. I almost didn’t want to know.
“Rakhim!” I cried out, my voice echoing off the decaying walls. His name echoed several times until it was reduced to nothing. “Show yourself!”
“He has little power, now,” Isaru said, after we had waited a long moment. “He will hide and bide his time.”
I reached for the Xenofold, and too my surprise, found that its power was strong here, that it could even penetrate the veil of the Hyperfold. What had Alex done to weaken this place as he had?
“If he insists on hiding,” I said, “then I insist on destroying everything that can keep him hidden.”
Isaru watched as I walked to one of the central trees lining the avenue, one larger than the rest. I placed my hand on it, searching for any sign of life. Life did not exist in this place in the same way as the waking world, but it still obeyed the same rules.
There was a small kernel of life, of wakefulness deep in the tree’s dormant state. The power of the Xenofold flowed from my hand and into that kernel, willing it to life the way a fan fosters a flame. Before my eyes, as the life in the tree grew throughout its stony limbs, color returned to the bark and leaves, which bloomed one by one. Soon, hundreds of leaves were green with life, shining as if the full noonday sun shone down on them.
Last of all came the blooms of white flowers, opening their buds for a sun that didn’t exist, a sweet fragrance spilling forth, giving an aroma to a land that was bereft and dead.
I took my hand away and stood away from the shining tree. Its trunk was thick, brown, and hardy, and its boughs and leaves made a rounded top filled with wide white flowers.
“What did you do that for?” Isaru asked.
“The tree is now our anchor,” I said. “So long as it stands here, it’s a bridge between us and the outside world. If you couldn’t reach the Xenofold before, now you can.”
Isaru’s eyes sparked as I sensed him connect to the Xenofold, too.
The tree shone bright as the power of the Xenofold flowed into the Hyperfold. But still, there was no sign of Rakhim.
It was time to end this illusion once and for all.
Channeling the power flowing from the tree, the buildings began to melt away, crumbling at their foundations. There was no sound as they fell; it was as if the simulation of the Hyperfold wasn’t powerful enough to produce sound. As the buildings toppled and their debris rained down, they seemed to disappear into the very air. The image of the city swam before me, erasing itself before my eyes.
Leaving only an endless, brown field under a dark sky, the only source of light the white, shining tree.
“The city’s gone,” Isaru said.
“Nowhere to hide.”
I peered into the distance, able to see much farther than I would have in the waking world. I became aware of a figure in the far distance, standing alone in the darkness.
“He’s out there,” I said.
I reached with the Xenofold and found him. I felt his internal scream as I seized his mind.
Come here, Rakhim, I said. You have much to answer for.
Slowly, forlornly, Rakhim walked forward, and it wasn’t long before his ghastly, emaciated figure was lit by the light of the tree.
His form stood there shriveled, his gray beard scraggly and his robe a patchwork only hanging onto him by threads. His skin was white and ghostly, and his head was bald, as it had been in my very first visions of him involving Mia and Isandru. The only life was in those dark, brown eyes, which seemed to glow with hatred as they stared into me like two coa
ls out of a flame.
“Your time here is done,” I said.
“Wait,” he croaked. “I have things to say.”
“Don’t let him speak,” Isaru said. “Even as he is, in this place, his words can have power.”
I considered this for a second, but I didn’t have much time to consider. Rakhim took my hesitation as assent.
“You have defeated me, mighty Elekim. Odium of the Dark has proved faithless to me, though I was nothing but ever his faithful servant.”
“And you have caused a lot of destruction not just in our time, but in the past,” Isaru said. “Your crimes deserve condemnation.”
“That may be so,” Rakhim agreed. “But now, without my powers, without the Hyperfold . . . you see me in my true state: a powerless, weak, and pathetic old man.”
“An old man who would have killed us all, and would kill us now, if he could,” Isaru said.
Of that, I had no doubt, but I decided to let Rakhim continue nonetheless. Perhaps he would say something that could help.
“You’re wearing my patience thin, Rakhim,” I said. “Get to the point.”
“I . . . repent of my actions,” Rakhim said. “And pledge my service to you, if you would have it.”
I almost smiled at that. “What value would I find in the service of the man responsible for the deaths of my friends? Of nearly killing Prince Isaru, and through him, killing Mia and Elder Isandru? You must answer for all the deaths of the people of Hyperborea you deceived into entering this cursed place, for using their sacred connections to the Xenofold to fuel your own lust for power. And you, above all, are responsible for the slow death of the Xenofold, our only defense against the Radaskim who, even now, are assaulting our world.” Then, there was the last thing. “Last of all . . . Alex left this place with a wound that I couldn’t see. He died in my arms outside the Thought Dome. You have to answer for that as well.”
As I said all these things, Rakhim only seemed to shrivel into himself further. He offered no counterargument.