The walls of the vault cracked around her.
["Ahben depths!"] This was worse than she imagined. Chips of stone rang off the glass around the crystal. At this rate, the whole vault would collapse.
Isn't that what she hoped would happen—to destroy the crystal?
No. They could use it. She wanted to seal it up but keep it accessible in case it proved useful later. She didn't want it destroyed.
Amid the cracking walls and rumble of rock around her, Atia snatched the glass globe from its perch and rushed up the steps.
Behind her, the cavern collapsed in a thunderous boom. Boulders rained down on her and the dust of the collapse rose into a cloud, obscuring her vision.
She spread her wings to fly free of the debris and dust but a boulder knocked her left wing aside, bruising it and throwing her to her knees.
Pain stung her wing and her back as more rocks struck. The glass slipped from her fingers amid the thunder of the avalanche.
["No! Where is it?"] On her hands and knees, she felt for the pieces.
Something sharp pricked her finger and she snapped her hand back, sticking her finger in her mouth and tasting blood. The crystal lay amid the shards of its protective casing. Atia reached for it and coughed from the dust. While the avalanche lessened, she lifted the crystal cluster.
A second later, pain pinched her legs and sent her crashing to the ground.
Light flashed through her mind.
The tumult of voices drowned her amid their discord.
[SHE'S HERE. SHE'S HERE…] The feeling of confirmation echoed around her amid shimmering colors bearing a feeling of lightness, which passed through her in an instant.
This was a dream. It had to be.
[Wake up.] She tried to open her eyes but couldn't. She felt nothing.
But she noticed something.
She stared at her own face.
The Fall of Atlantis
[I must be dreaming.] It had to be. Why else would she be staring at her own face?
The avalanche slowed to a trickle of pebbles. Atia felt no pain. In fact, she felt nothing.
[Someone help me!] The scream went nowhere, but voices whispered all around her.
[Who are you?]
Nothing.
[Speak up. I can't hear you.]
[WE ARE HERE.] The certainty of the thought trembled through her with the clarity of a single musical note.
[Who are you?]
[WE ARE…]
What? Ahben depths. Where was she? Was she dead, dreaming…What?!
Through the dust, a winged shadow landed nearby. Dark wings disappeared behind the straight, slender figure of a man.
["Lady Atia!"]
[Darus!] His voice sang a sweet note to her, but she could not call back to him.
Through the cloud, he appeared and knelt over her body.
[Darus! Darus, I'm here.]
["Atia. Of all the sky above…Lady Atia."] He smoothed the hair from the closed eyes with the gentle touch she had always longed to feel on her skin but had never allowed herself to indulge. To do so, especially in the uproar over his appointment, would have sabotaged her plans for Lantis. She had sacrificed her happiness for her son and her people.
His eyes fixed on her legs and widened in shock. A second later, he hurried to the stone and grunted and heaved to move it.
After an effort by him, it finally crunched onto the rocks beside her feet. Darus gasped, his wings lifting slightly.
Without a word, he unclipped his belt and unfastened the middle piece of his waistcoat from the back of his neck to remove it.
How bad was it? If only she could speak to him, but she wasn't even in her body.
[YOU ARE HERE.]
[Where?]
[WITH US.]
[Who are you?] Damn the voices. What was going on?
[ENERGY. CRYSTAL. UNITY.]
The crystal? No. That couldn't be true.
[YES. WE LIVE…]
Alive!
A ringing confirmation flowed through her and around her. It was her. The crystal was alive. How was that possible? She'd never heard of such a thing.
Darus finished wrapping her legs and slid his hand under her head. He withdrew it a second later, his fingers smeared with blood.
["Lady Atia!"] In a new sense of urgency, he scooped up her body in his arms and spread his wings.
[Wait! Don't leave me!] But he flew off with her body, her brown and gold wings trailing beneath. No. Her Darus. The man she should have taken as a lover when she had the chance. He'd left her.
Anger seethed through her conscious, an emotion dulled by the energy around and through her. She hated the entities that had taken her from her body.
[SAVED YOU.]
Saved her? Saved her? They did nothing. She should have remained in her body. How had they saved her?
[DYING. LIFE FAILING. YOU SAVED US. WE ACCEPTED YOU.]
She didn't care about them, whoever they were. She wanted her life back, the life in the body she knew. She was Inari.
Now she was nothing but a rock with a consciousness.
[LISTEN. LEARN. DISCOVER.]
She didn't want to discover, but there was something whispering through her, a part of her in them. All at once, she was a part of the universe. It opened to her in all its breath-taking splendor and belittling vastness. She'd never realized the enormity. Her problems seemed small by comparison, a mere speck in the capacity of eternity.
Raea gasped and struggled for a breath in the flood of information.
"Dear God. What's going on? Raea! Raea, can you hear me? Wake up!" The familiar voice broke through the vision, shattering it. "Debbie. We have to do something."
"I don't know…She's catatonic."
"Call Nare. She'll know."
A pause, then the second voice said, "And we'll have to tell her about Elis."
Elis? Memories flashed past of faces and voices and focused on one in the crowd of students in class. In dark clothes and black fingerless gloves, he sat in his desk a few rows over. Wild black strands of hair covered his face, nearly hiding the deep purple eyes when he looked up.
Scenes blurred and refocused on that same quiet demeanor standing tall with black wings rising behind him. Scenes rushed past again to her pressed close to someone in the dark, a faint outdoorsy scent hinting of a light musk making her pulse race. A moment later, it all crumbled into chaos as she knelt beside him in the grass, stunned by the hole in his chest and crying.
No. Not again. She didn't want to remember that terrible moment.
To her relief, it faded away, replaced by the face of Lantis peering directly at her. The scene shifted, apparently as he lifted the crystal before him. ["All this trouble…"] he muttered.
[Lantis! It's me. I'm here!] Atia's cries rang through her consciousness.
["My mother rescued you even when she wanted to bury you. Why?"] He closed his eyes and a tear shimmered down his cheek. ["It's not fair."] He ground the words through trembling lips and clenched teeth, his eyes glazed with tears. ["You took her away!"]
[No, Lantis. It's me. I'm alive, my love.] Why couldn't he hear her? Her thoughts shrieked through her core.
But it wasn't her. She had merged with the entities of the crystal, a living crystal.
Her son. Her beloved son, the only remnant of a man she had loved deeply against the rules of their society. He had to hear her.
["Damn them! Supervisor Sorakin will pay for this."] He spread his wings and, with the crystal in his hand, flew over the city.
Copper spires tarnishing into green over marble columns marked the different structures. Glass-segmented domes glared a brilliant reflection of light from five points around the perimeter of the city. The tallest building rose from the center of the star, balconies and platforms spiraling around the central column rising into the sky. Several guards and workers took off or landed from different heights.
Not Lantis. He circled down to the west wing of the administration co
mplex and landed on a familiar balcony. The door slid open to a simple but elegant room. Lantis tucked his wings to his back and stepped through to where Darus stood at the foot of the sleeping mat on which her body lay.
A medic knelt over the body, a scanner in her hand.
["She won't wake up,"] Darus whispered, his soft brown eyes glistening with moisture. ["Her brain functions are at minimum, and her lower legs are broken."]
["She'll be all right, though?"] Lantis stared at her body. ["Right? Tell me she'll recover."]
[I'm here. I could return…maybe.]
Ideas swept through her—some certain she could return to her body and others not so sure. The turbulence distracted her until she saw only her body with bandages wrapping most of her extremities. The medic stood by the two men.
["I don't know if Lady Atia will recover."]
Lantis's lips curled into a vicious snarl, his yellow wings lifting with his agitation as if to take flight. She had never seen him so livid. ["They will answer for this. I swear it! They were told not to test the engines."] His lips quivered and he hiccupped on a sob. ["I shouldn't have left her."]
["Why did you?"]
["She sent me to order them to stop. I don't know why she stayed, except for this."] He held up the crystal. ["This is the reason for everything. The Risaal were after this. Mother forbade me from speaking of it."]
Darus took the crystal in his hands, staring at it.
[I'm here! I'm right here.] Ahben depths! This wasn't working. How could she communicate with them?
Touch. Somehow by her touch, the entities had transferred her consciousness into that crystal with them.
But if she tried or they tried, Darus or Lantis might fall of the same fate. She couldn't let that happen.
There had to be another way.
["It's beautiful. Why is it glowing?"]
Lantis sniffed and wiped his eyes. ["I don't know. It does that sometimes. All I know is that it was a gift to our envoy to Ch'tor and then the Risaal came and accused us of stealing it. Lady Akarin told me to take it with us in our escape, to be sure they never got it. She said it was a powerful tool they could use to destroy us. But it's done that without the Risaal."] He swallowed and sniffed again. ["She had the chamber hewn from the mountain to hide it until she decided we were ready to study it…I wish she would have let the rubble bury it!"]
Darus said nothing but turned to the boy and drew him into his arms. ["I'm sorry about your mother…very sorry."]
Lantis broke down in sobs. If she had her body, she would have embraced him and soaked up his tears herself. If she had her body, they wouldn't be crying. She could wake up and assure them she would be all right. She wanted to hold her son more than anything, to feel his soft hair against her cheek and console him.
No longer. She had no body. She was trapped.
[SORROW. REGRET…INTERESTING…]
[Leave me…or put me back.]
[CANNOT.]
[Why? Because you don't know how or because you need to touch my body?]
[YES…BLENDED, A PART OF US.]
A part of them? Blended? In other words, she could never separate? No. She refused to believe it. There had to be a way.
[Like Keepers.] Whose thought was that? Where had it come from?
Keepers, Inari blended with the Starfire in their bodies; but in Atia's case, an Inari consciousness blended with the Starfire. Why had she never spoken to warn Raea of the Risaal before it happened?
[I could not, until you contacted me.]
What? Who was she? They were the same.
No…maybe. Who was she?
[Raea. I'm sorry. You are not me. It seems so real to you. Remember who you are…]
Remember. Yes, she was Raea Dahlrich, an Inari born on Earth and she—
No. She didn't want to remember. So much loss. So much pain. She wanted to forget.
[Raea…]
Lantis's face returned, hardened by a steel determination overlooking the construction of a large disk in a room below. A wheel glowed within the framework while technicians covered head to toe in gray protective suits made adjustments and studied panels.
["Lord Lantis. It pleases my ears…Mother would be proud."] He glanced down at the crystal on a table next to him.
[I am proud. I always was.] If only she could tell him.
["She believed men to be equal to women."] She recognized the deep voice. Although it came from the shadows, it could only be Darus. ["She gave us the opportunity to prove ourselves."]
["Only because her heart guided her."] Lantis's voice softened.
Darus stepped into view, his features cast in the soft light from the room beyond the glass. ["Her heart?"]
Without looking back, Lantis said, ["She liked you. I saw the way she watched you, and she talked in her sleep…but she couldn't let her needs get in the way of our people. Mother was strong."]
[I should have allowed some pleasure. I was attracted to you, Darus…but Lantis is right. Once I made the appointment, I could not give in to my feelings. I could be close, but it was never enough. I wanted to tell you. Now…it's too late.]
["Lady Atia was…special. I won't forget the first time I saw her. We were on the Miru ship and she flew down to you. I was alone and had to say something, but when I realized who she was, I knew I would never be worthy. But I always wondered. Those times when she knew no one could see us, I thought I saw…something in her eyes."]
Lantis turned, his wings lifted slightly. ["You should have told her how you felt."]
Darus shook his head and stared down through the glass. ["It would have been inappropriate."]
[No. No. No.] Had she her body, her heart would have stopped. Darus had felt the same attraction and said nothing. All those years that they could have shared together in happiness they had spent apart. If only she could go back and change everything. If only she had known sooner.
Why now, when she could not share her feelings, did she learn all this? It wasn't fair.
[It never is.] Raea's thought echoed through her head.
["Regrets will not bring her back. The memorial will endure in her honor. No one will forget her sacrifice. We must look to the future, Lord Lantis. This is your city now."]
Lantis straightened, his wings tightening to his back. He stood proud, a young man ready to lead. No young woman could match that. ["Our city."]
["She would be proud of you."]
[I am!] So very, very proud. Her son had grown into a finer person than she could have hoped.
The corner of Lantis's lips crooked up, despite the deep sadness in his golden eyes. ["Thank you."]
Silence surrounded them, thickening on each second. The women below sealed the power source for the disk with another piece before removing their hoods.
Through a speaker, a voice said, ["It's ready, Lord Lantis."]
He picked up the crystal and paused before stepping past Darus. ["Join me?"]
Darus bowed his head. ["I am honored by your request, Lord."]
["The honor is mine. You served my mother well and brought honor to House Mikael through your dedication to Lady Atia's ideals."] She couldn't have said it better. Pride swelled within her, washing through the core of her consciousness to share with the beings now blended with her. She might be blended but still retained her individual thought processes.
The two men left the room and traveled in silence through a corridor and down a staircase to another door. After a code by Lantis, it slid open and the two men approached the large disk, its center rounded as if scooped out.
One of the faces lifted from the opposite side of the large disk, which formed a sort of table top. ["Lord Lantis, you brought the crystal?"]
He held it out to the woman and she took it in her gloved hands. ["This would have been easier if you had allowed me access sooner."]
Lantis's wings shifted behind him and his face hardened. Good for him. He recognized the criticism in the woman's tone. She had no right to question his judgm
ent.
["This crystal is my responsibility, Mara. Until it is secured, I would not risk anyone else's life defending it."]
[Well said.] Her son would not be forced into submission to any woman, nor did he insult the scientist, except for neglecting her title. Confident and diplomatic. Atia had taught him well.
The scientist's lip twitched but her covered wings made no movement within the confines of her protective suit. ["The shield harmonics should block detection of the crystal's radiation. It is minor, so it didn't take much adjustment."]
Block detection? That didn't sound good. Rather, it did but not for her.
["Should? Make it happen, Mara. My mother gave her life to protect this. I won't fail her."]
The scientist's throat flashed with a swallow, a hint of annoyance in her pinched brows. ["Of course, Lord."] She stretched over the disk with the crystal to deposit it into the scooped center.
[What are you doing? What's going on?]
After setting the crystal into the pit, Mara touched a few buttons around the edge of it. Something red slid over the view, clouding and discoloring everything and muffling voices. Liquid oozed over the crystal. The shapes of people brought large objects, which they settled around the view.
[The monolith!] Realization rang through Raea's head, but everything Raea had experienced felt like a dream compared to the reality of sharing Atia's life. A Starfire crystal was at the heart of the monolith. A whole other crystal.
It made sense. Memories slammed back of a vision her shard had shown her of their exodus from their home dimension to explore the universe of the Inari and other creatures. Another group had left before the cluster from which her shard had originated.
Two Starfire crystals.
She couldn't believe it.
[It's true. What you call the Starfire is the D'Nuvar sought by the Risaal.]
Lady Atia?
Yes, it was. She remembered. She was Raea and had been experiencing the life of an Inari dead for…for twelve thousand years. [This is impossible.]
Crystal Tomb (Starfire Angels: Dark Angel Chronicles Book 3) Page 15