by Graham Brown
Still in a sitting position, Christian tried to wedge himself upward. Pressing against the altar and leveraging himself to his feet, he’d almost reached a standing position when the swirling current pulled down.
He plunged beneath the churning surface, and gazed from one direction to another, looking for anything he could find that would help him break free.
He saw nothing.
With the buoyancy of the water buffeting him he tried once again to stand. He made it to his feet and popped his head out of the water. He inhaled a deep breath, managed to roll himself onto the altar and climb to his knees.
He stood, but with nothing to lean against he was at the mercy of the swirling current and as it reached above his waist, he became unstable and was knocked from his perch.
Hitting the water again and plunging deeper now, he drifted into the lower section of the room. He tried once more to get to the surface, but it was no use. His squirming soon became less frantic and he sank back to the bottom, exhausted. He hit the stone floor with a peaceful bump.
As he lay there, the rushing water no longer sounded like death; it was soothing, like a distant waterfall. Like the fountains in his garden in Rome.
He thought of Elsa. He hoped against hope that he would see her on the other side, but guessed that the boatman would be taking him to hell where he belonged. After all, he’d failed.
A calm feeling seemed to settle down on him. At least it was over, one last meeting to have with his Maker and it was done.
He began blacking out. Thinking of home. It was time to go…
He was so far gone, that he didn’t notice the sudden change in the pull of the current, like a riptide or an undertow. He was swept along the floor, pulled violently through the widening gap of the doors and down the long tunnel.
He slid along it, bumping and banging the walls until he was spat out into the anteroom.
The water drained away to all corners of the room and when it was gone, Christian lay there on his side, coughing, sputtering and spitting out water.
The darkness was so complete and his body so exhausted by the fight that he couldn’t see through it. Nor could he speak, even as the chains were unwrapped. Some unseen hand pulled them free and tossed them away. They rattled down the grate in one corner of the room and fell into the dark. Muted echoes reached them as they landed some distance below.
“Can you breathe?” a voice asked. “Are you alive?”
A light flashed on. A waterproof flashlight. Christian saw the face of a Bedouin. He wore a sad smile. It was Fahad.
“You are alive,” Fahad said to him, helping Christian to sit.
Christian didn’t have the energy to explain. Between the chains, the battle, the flooding waters and the despair, he was probably feeling the closest to death he’d felt in years. “What are you doing here, Fahad? I told you to go home.”
“You also told me to pray that the evil ones wouldn’t find the Sphere of Power. That you would find it and protect it. And with every prayer I offered, the same answer came back to me: That’s your job Fahad.”
“You’re too late,” Christian said. “It’s gone.”
“I know,” Fahad said. “I saw who took it and the destruction he brings. And my heart is filled with more fear than I can say.”
“What do you mean?”
“Some men tried to stop him,” Fahad said. “Westerners, Europeans. Twenty or so, with swords and guns and weapons of light. He destroyed them all. It was horrifying. He showed no mercy.”
The Ignis Purgata, Christian thought. If ever he’d wished for the Righteous Fire to succeed it was then. But like him, they’d failed.
“Help me to my feet and then leave me,” Christian said.
“I will help you.” Fahad said. “But I will not leave.”
“I’m going after Drake,” Christian said. “I’m going after the stone.”
Fahad nodded. “Yes, I would guess that. You want to retrieve it, but it’s my task more than yours.”
“You don’t understand,” Christian said.
“No,” Fahad said, “it’s you who fails to understand. Protecting the stone is my reason for existing, my reason for not taking my own life after this failure, after my father was killed days ago, and after my brothers and family were slaughtered. I will not rest, lest I disgrace their valiant sacrifice.”
“That might be the only thing I do understand,” Christian said. “Help me up.”
With Fahad’s help Christian stood, and together they made their way to the surface.
Out into the dark of the night, they found nothing but carnage. They passed beyond the ashes of Tereza and the Drones, beyond the bloody obliteration of the Righteous Fire’s brave vanguard. They climbed up to the highest point on the wall of the canyon. In the distance, Christian saw the lights of Drake’s convoy tracking across the sand with the stone and Kate still in their clutches.
Even in his battered, exhausted state, he considered going after Drake again. But with the weapon Drake now held it would be suicide.
Drake had done it, Christian thought. He’d found and taken the one thing on earth that might allow him to wrestle with God and his angels and somehow prevail. With the Dark Star in his hand, Drake would destroy the Angel of Redemption, obliterate hope from existence and crush any group that stood before him; including Christian, the Ignis Purgata and the Church itself. Drakos the Deceiver had become all but invincible.
“Now what?” Fahad said. “What will you do from here?”
“I need a weapon that can overcome the one Drake now holds.”
“Does such a thing exist?” Fahad asked.
Christian wasn’t sure. “There’s a sword I was told about once,” he said, thinking back to Simon and his fatal gamble in New Orleans. “A blade the Church calls the Sword of God. If there’s anything on this earth that can counter the power of the Dark Star, that sword is it.”
“How do we get our hands on it,” Fahad asked.
That question was more apropos than Fahad could imagine. Even if Christian could find it—even if he could steal it from the very people who considered him the enemy of all mankind—it was highly possible that he’d be unable to wield such a weapon. Unable even to touch it. The Staff of Constantine had almost been too much.
“I don’t know,” he said, answering the question on both levels. “But we have to try. Otherwise humanity will fall into a dark age the likes of which has never been seen.”