by Clayton Wood
“Hey,” Kyle mumbled. Darius said nothing until Ariana had disappeared far in the distance, no doubt in consideration of her remarkable hearing.
“You want to go home?” he asked.
“To Antara?”
“Your home,” Darius corrected, staring at Kyle with his intense blue eyes. Kyle felt his jaw drop open, and snapped it shut with a click.
“You mean...” he began, then stopped. Darius nodded. Kyle turned his head away from the bodyguard, coming to a stop on the cobblestone path. He suddenly had the urge to sit down. “When?” he asked.
“Tomorrow.”
Kyle said nothing, feeling a strange numbness come over him. The thought of going home – of seeing his mom and dad, and his best friend Ben – should have filled him with joy, but instead he felt a sort of dread come over him. He thought of Ariana, of her kissing him, and suddenly had no desire to leave.
“It'll only be for a day or two,” Darius added, undoubtedly sensing Kyle's trepidation.
“So you'll bring me here again?” he pressed. Darius nodded. Kyle frowned. “Wait a second...how many days will go by here if I go back to Earth?”
“Forty or so days here for every day on Earth,” Darius answered. Kyle's eyes widened.
“Forty?” he exclaimed. “So if I go home for a week...”
“Close to a year,” Darius replied.
“Oh, man...” Kyle breathed, feeling despair come over him. “I don't want to be gone for a year,” he added miserably. There was no telling what could happen if he were gone that long. Ariana would miss him terribly, not to mention Kalibar.
“We'll make it half a day then,” Darius proposed, putting a heavy hand on Kyle's shoulder. “Twenty days on Doma.” Kyle smiled with relief.
“A half-day at most,” he agreed. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
Darius resumed walking forward, and Kyle joined him, feeling a remarkable weight lift off of his shoulders. He realized that he'd been worried sick about whether or not he'd ever get to see his parents again. He turned to Darius, staring at the taciturn bodyguard for a long moment, a smile on his lips.
“Thanks,” he said, leaning to the side and resting his head on Darius's gold-plated shoulder. To his surprise, Darius did not pull away.
“You're welcome.”
“You know,” Kyle continued, “...you're a terrible grandfather.”
“Oh really?”
“Well, first of all, you're supposed to give me presents all the time, and candy, and let me do whatever I want.” Darius raised one eyebrow.
“Your other grandparents do that?”
“Yup,” Kyle confirmed. Darius shook his head.
“That explains a lot,” he grumbled. Kyle frowned, lifting his head off of Darius's shoulder.
“Hey, what's that supposed to mean?”
“Never mind,” Darius replied. “Now, about your parents...”
“Yeah?”
“Tell them nothing.”
“Okay,” Kyle agreed.
“Come on,” Darius said, stopping and turning about on the path, back toward the Tower far in the distance. Kyle turned with him, and they resumed walking. “Finish your presentation.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Kyle sighed. He'd almost forgotten about his upcoming presentation. Butterflies flitted about in his belly.
“It's a good idea,” Darius opined.
“I'm sure you already came up with it a long time ago,” Kyle countered.
“Nope,” Darius replied. “Never needed it. I can see patterns.”
“Oh, right,” Kyle mumbled.
“Ideas,” Darius stated, gazing at the Great Tower in the distance, its pyramidal peak shimmering in the sunlight like a giant diamond, “...change the world.” He turned back to Kyle. “But only if you act on them.”
“Why didn't you just destroy the Void Behemoth?” Kyle asked. The question had been bothering him ever since they'd won the battle against the massive machine. “Heck, why don't you just rule the Empire yourself?”
“I tried something like that once,” Darius admitted. “Somewhere far away from here. It didn't turn out well.”
“What happened?”
“People are all too eager to be led,” Darius replied. “I was a god to them, and they grew to rely on me instead of on themselves.” He shook his head then. “The best god for Man is a god that forces them to do without him.”
“But you helped save the Southwest Quarter,” Kyle countered.
“From another god.”
“Right,” Kyle mumbled. “But what about all the Battle-Weavers and Runics that died? Why didn't you save them?” he pressed. “You could've killed the Void Behemoth without even blinking!”
“True,” Darius agreed. Kyle waited for him to say something more, but he didn't.
“So why didn't you?”
Darius remained silent, and Kyle sighed, knowing what that meant...the dour bodyguard wasn't going to answer. He kicked a stone on the pathway, watching it roll into the grass.
“I wonder who Xanos is,” he mumbled. He frowned then, recalling what Ariana had told him back at the makeshift bedroom in the Tower a few nights ago. “Ariana said something about the Chosen being controlled by someone other than Xanos,” he recalled.
“Who?”
Kyle scratched his head, struggling to remember their conversation. Then he snapped his fingers.
“She said it was an old man,” he recalled. “I think it was the same guy we met in the Arena, and after the Void Behemoth died,” he added tentatively. “She said his name was Sabin.”
Darius stopped suddenly, staring off into space. Kyle stopped as well.
“What?” Kyle asked.
“Go back to the Tower,” Darius ordered, stepping away from Kyle suddenly.
“Why?” Kyle asked. “What is it?”
“I'll tell you later,” Darius replied tersely. “Go on, prepare your presentation.”
“Where are you going?” Kyle pressed.
“Back to Antara,” Darius replied. Then he put a hand on Kyle's shoulder. “Say goodbye to Ariana and Kalibar tonight. Let them know you're going home, and nothing more.”
“Okay...”
And then Darius was gone.
Chapter 30
Kyle stared up at his bedroom ceiling, at the crystal chandelier in the center, its facets no longer glittering in the near-complete darkness. Then he sighed, rolling over onto his side, his head sinking into the plush pillow so that he could barely see over it. Despite the late hour – it was almost midnight – he couldn't sleep. The day had gone well, he supposed; his presentation to the Runics had gone almost too well. He'd stammered his way through the first part of his speech, which would have been humiliating if the gathered Runics – mostly old men in white robes, none of whom had battled the Behemoth – hadn't been so kind and patient. Their kindness wasn't exactly surprising given the fact that they all knew what he'd done to save the Empire...and that the killerpillar weapon had been created as a direct result of his idea.
After he'd gotten more comfortable, Kyle had managed to explain his original idea well enough. Of course, the Runics been a bit skeptical until Erasmus unveiled the prototype sensory rune array, and showed them that it actually worked. When Kalibar unveiled the killerpillar gun, demonstrating on an unfortunate animal, the Runics had been absolutely astounded.
By the end of the presentation, the gathered Runics – over thirty of them – had glorified his simple idea, claiming it was the greatest piece of magic theory they'd ever heard of. He'd been called all sorts of names – and not the kind he'd become accustomed to at school back on Earth. He hardly thought of himself as a genius; his idea had been awfully simple, almost to the point of being obvious.
Still, he couldn't help but feel flattered at all the praise he'd received. His idea to use magic-depleted mud to insulate himself from Void spheres had also been met with enthusiasm. Even now, Runic engineers were busy constructing crysta
lline armor that used magic to generate a powerful light deep within its recesses – where no one would ever see it – any time it filled with the slightest bit of magic. This used up the magic, keeping the armor effectively depleted, providing constant insulation.
Kyle smiled when he thought of how happy the Runics had been, and how proud of him Kalibar had seemed. While he'd once been depressed about his failure to succeed as a Weaver, he knew now that he was destined to become a Runic. Flying around and blowing things up just didn't hold the same allure it had before; it wasn't nearly as exciting as the idea of building fantastic magical items of enormous power. Or even, he thought, his own armor, like Ampir's.
Like his grandfather's.
Kyle sighed again, rolling onto his back once more, staring at that chandelier some ten feet above his head. He was still trying to process the fact that Darius was his grandfather...and that he was Ampir, marked by history as a traitor that had doomed the Ancients, yet in reality a silent, unsung hero. It hardly seemed fair that the man should slip away into the shadows, with hardly anyone knowing that he'd helped all those people in the Southwest Quarter. But that's how Ampir preferred it...and he'd made it quite clear that Kyle was to tell no one about him.
Except, of course, to let them know that Kyle was going home.
Kyle sighed a third time, absently picking at his lip. He'd told Kalibar after dinner. The Grand Weaver hadn’t been too surprised that Ampir had been the one to bring Kyle to this world in the first place, having already figured it out for himself. His surrogate father had not taken the news of Kyle’s leaving well at first – not until Kyle had insisted that he'd return within a few weeks. Then he'd been happy for Kyle, that he could see his real family again. Of course, Kyle had insisted that Kalibar was part of his real family, after which the Grand Weaver had given him a hug, even getting a bit teary-eyed. It had been a difficult conversation, but good.
Ariana, however, had been a bit tougher.
At first she'd been terrified that he was going to leave for good, to never return. Kyle insisted, as he had with Kalibar, that this was not the case. Then she'd insisted on coming with him. He'd had a much harder time with that request; if Darius had been around, Kyle would have demanded that she be allowed to come with him. But the bodyguard had still not returned from whatever it was he was doing, and so Kyle had to say no. She'd been mad at first, but recovered quickly, saying her goodbyes and hugging him for a long time. Then she'd given him a kiss – on the lips! – and promised him there'd be another waiting for him when he returned.
Kyle pressed his fingers to his lips, remembering that kiss, and sighed a completely different kind of sigh. He was suddenly less enthused about going back to Earth tomorrow, eager to spend more time with Ariana. But only slightly less enthused; he was still practically giddy at the idea that he'd be seeing his parents soon. He smiled, imagining walking up to the front door of his house, of ringing the doorbell. Of his mom answering the door, then rushing to hug him and smother him with kisses. Of his dad picking him up from school and giving him a big bear hug, tears in his eyes. The thought made him have to wipe some of his owns tears away with the back of his hand.
He stared up at chandelier above him, thinking of how Ariana and Kalibar would feel while he was gone. He'd be back – Darius had promised, after all – and he would be ready for whatever adventure awaited him then. Not that he was looking forward to any more action; no, he'd had quite enough of that in the last week or so. When he thought of everything that had happened to him since he'd arrived on Doma, it was mind-boggling. He tried to think back at the boy he'd been then, when he'd woken up in that strange forest, and felt like an entirely different person now. He'd experienced more in the last few weeks than most people experienced in a lifetime, narrowly avoiding death time after time, all in an effort to save himself...and the people he loved.
The experience had made him a little braver, a bit more confident, and had made him appreciate life – his own and those of his friends – more than he ever had on Earth. He vowed not to take a moment of his life for granted now, knowing that it could end tomorrow, and that the moments he spent with his friends were the most precious of his life. He knew now that Darius had been right back on Antara...if he didn't fight back, his loved ones could be taken away from him. And they would have been taken away had he not risked his life to save them.
And that, he supposed, may have been Darius’s plan all along.
Suddenly, there was a gust of wind, followed by a loud thump. Kyle bolted upright in his bed, staring off into the darkness, seeing a shadowy figure at the other end of the room. It moved toward him, and he cried out, frantically creating a gravity shield around himself. The shield blew back his bedsheets, shoving them across the room. The mattress caved inward under the curved surface of the spherical shield.
The dark figure reached the edge of Kyle's bed, and leaned over it, putting two black-clad hands on the footboard. A beam of starlight from the window reflected off of a silvery visor. The gravity shield around Kyle vanished suddenly, and Kyle fell onto the mattress with a thump.
“Get up,” a gruff voice commanded. “It's time.”
Epilogue
The old man hobbled down the long underground tunnel, the butt of his wooden cane clanging on the metal platform below with each step he took. The platform extended far into the distance, surrounded by a tubular tunnel made entirely of large white crystals. Each crystal was over seven feet long, with a broad hexagonal base that tapered to a razor-sharp tip pointing toward the center of the tunnel. The metal platform levitated a few feet above the crystals below, suspended by an unseen force.
The old man smiled to himself, countless wrinkles on his face deepening as he did so. His face was ancient, his features ruined by time. He gazed forward with cataract-glazed eyes, continuing down the shaft at a glacial pace.
A shaft he'd been walking through for miles.
He hardly minded the walk, no matter the hours he'd spent taking it. The automatic nature of this body's shambling gate, the repetitive clang, clang of his cane on the metal below, freed the better part of his mind for more important matters.
He vaguely recalled being mortal, engaging his body with some mindless task to allow his mind to wander free. A mind freed from its overbearing consciousness proved fertile soil for ideas to grow forth from, after all. And how many wondrous ideas had come to him during such walks, during his mortal life and far beyond! He would hardly be here today, walking in the midst of his own creation, had he not so exercised his brain.
After what seemed like an eternity, he finally made it to the end of the metal platform. The tunnel continued forward ahead, but was much narrower, the crystals forming a channel barely large enough to fit a human head through. There was no way forward.
The old man glanced upward at one of the crystals above his head, focusing on what lay beyond its glittering facets. There, embedded in the broad root of the crystal, he could barely make out a shadowy form. A long-dead corpse forever encapsulated in its crystalline grave.
An unwilling Chosen.
He turned his eyes forward again, at the narrow channel beyond. There were Chosen in every one of the countless crystals – his Void crystals – lining the shaft he'd been walking through. A brain entombed in every crystal, each connected to one another in one massive network.
The old man smiled, staring into the narrow tunnel beyond. No man could have gone further, nor even a Chosen. And no one ever had...except for him.
With a thought, the Void crystals around him flashed, then stopped their faint glowing. The old man rose up from the metal platform, levitating a foot above the grated steel, his cane dropping onto it with a clang. He closed his eyes, raising his arms out to his sides.
Then his head tore off, rising above his neck.
It flew forward down the narrower tunnel, barely clearing the countless razor-sharp tips of the Void crystals. It accelerated forward, rapidly picking up speed. The tunnel cur
ved downward, traveling deeper into the earth as he went. Faster he went, Void crystals zipping past him in a dizzying blur.
Then the narrow shaft opened up into a massive cavern, a Void chamber so large that it defied explanation. The walls, the ceiling, the floors were all made of glowing white Void crystals. Massive Void crystals hung like stalactites from the ceiling, some well over a hundred feet long, their facets shimmering dully in the faint light cast by their smaller brothers.
The old man's head slowed, descending into that chamber. Down it went, his head rotating through the air, until his eyes faced the center of the chamber. A single, translucent rod-shaped crystal hung from the ceiling there, so long that it reached the floor. It was nearly fifty feet in diameter, this crystal. On the floor, encircling the base of the massive central crystal, grew a corona of green crystals some twenty feet tall.
The source of his Chosens' shards.
His head descended further downward, toward a headless body levitating directly below it. His head fused with the body's neck, leaving a thin, jagged white line between the two. Within seconds, he was once again whole.
The old man smiled, staring down at his new body's hands. They appeared much younger than those of his other body, the skin smooth and supple. He remembered being young once, long ago. Such a gift, youth. A gift only appreciated once it was lost.
He sighed, gazing forward toward the center of the massive cavern, at the huge cylindrical crystal extending from the floor to the ceiling. He peered through its translucent surface; despite its girth, he could see a faint shadow in the center of it, something suspended deep inside.
The old man levitated forward toward the giant crystal, until his nose was nearly touching its slick surface. From here, he could see what was suspended inside of it. An emaciated body, its arms and legs mere bones covered in a thin veneer of flesh, its ribs jutting out from its sunken chest. Rope-like sinews ran up its neck, and its mouth was eternally open in an agonizing scream.