Beacon

by Kyle West

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  MONTHS PASSED – MONTHS OF LEARNING, months of prophecy, months of planning. Prophecies from Annara arrived with frequency, to the point that Elder Marius said that no such thing had ever occurred in history.

  And from the prophecies, a story was beginning to be mapped out.

  Annara had returned to the Xenofold, watched over by the Elder Dragon, Quietus. Hyperborea had been founded against the order of the Elder Dragons, Askal and Quietus, but was founded all the same. Even Tiamat, patron dragon of the Samalites, had abandoned the people at their lack of obedience, when they were tempted by the power of the Sea of Creation.

  And when the Xenofont had been made, all ties were severed for good, but the people did not miss the company of the Elder Dragons, instead thinking they would return. They set about on the work of constructing the city, and in time, subjugating the minor tribes and incorporating them into the growing kingdom.

  And so Hyperborea’s power grew, the city dominating all the Northern Wild while exacting influence over the barbarous Eastern Kingdoms, teaching them knowledge that had been lost ever since the Ragnarok War. They had even planned to expand the Wild in that direction, and had somewhat succeeded, but upon the ascension of King Isandru Farl III – my own father – things had changed.

  Always, there were visions of war. Terrible destruction wracked all over the Wild and beyond. For the first time, Hyperborea fought a nameless enemy that was their equal. Marius and I tried to discuss who they might be, but all known nations were too weak. Even Brasilia, the empire south of Nova, was no match for Hyperborea’s strength.

  So, the only conclusion was that this great power had to come from beyond the Western Ocean, or perhaps beyond the Atlantic. There was only one place in the world that made any sort of sense, and that was the Shen Collective, who lived on the far side of the Western Ocean.

  Only, why would they attack? We should have been of no interest to them. All the same, we couldn’t think of any other place that was as strong. Hyperborea’s dominance of the Americas was unquestioned. The Shen’s dominance of what came to be known as Shenland was equally unquestioned.

  Very little was known of them because of their isolation. Marius and I read all accounts we could of exploration missions to the west, and even Hyperborean exploration parties revealed only domed cities that could not be accessed. Any contact had been impossible with the Shen.

  Only, if Marius and I were right, they were just waiting for the right moment to strike.

  Marius posited that they would strike when Hyperborea was weakest, and that would happen when the Sea of Creation was lower.

  Isandru was brought in, and in time, he began to change his mind about Aether. It wasn’t easy…not at first. But he soon became convinced of the veracity of my prophecies. Getting him off Aether was a challenge, but through meditative Xenohealing performed by one of Marius’s trusted Cleric friends, he was able to become free of the influence of the drug. When this happened, he became much more receptive to what Marius and I were saying, even adding his own ideas.

  All of this did not go unnoticed by Shal. At all times, it seemed as if one of his spies was watching me. All the same, so long as Marius, Isandru, and I spoke behind closed doors, there was nothing he could do, and nothing he could prove.

  That was, until the day Elder Marius was exiled from the city forever.

  It happened on a single day. I didn’t even know how it happened. All I saw was that he wasn’t in the Highgrove on the day we had a lesson. I searched for him, and my path brought me to the throne room, where he was kneeling in front of where only mother alone sat, with Shal standing at her side.

  His head was lowered, and two black-armored guards stood behind him. There were few in the room; this had been done in a rush, likely before I could ever have a chance to stop it.

  I ran into the room, but my mother, seeing me, called out.

  “Mia, stay out of this.”

  Even as the guards obeyed, I screamed. “No! You can’t do this. The charges are a lie!”

  I saw nothing more. I was escorted out of the throne room and the door slammed shut.

  Marius was not killed, but instructed never to return to the city on pain of death, and ordered to never contact anyone living in the Palace again, on pain of death. It was only later that I had learned of what he had been accused: treason, and poisoning the minds of the heir and princess to destroy the city. Apparently, many had listened to our conversations – spies planted by Shal at just the right places, at just the right times, sometimes even in the ceilings and walls, that were frighteningly close to knowing the full content of all of our discussions.

  And so, all hope of changing the city died. When I went out into the forest these days, there were no more prophecies. It was as if Annara herself had turned her back on me. I tried not to think of things in such a way, but it was very difficult. I was disallowed from going to the forest, but I found ways around it. And the pressure from my parents, and from Shal, to begin Aether treatments was growing more and more with each passing day.

  I thought there was little I could do but run away. And I was making such a plan, but I didn’t know where to run. Finding Marius would only get him killed, and anywhere else meant living a life alone without knowing anybody.

  I was almost ready to surrender.

  Until one day there came to the Palace two strange and curious people, outlanders by their form of clothing. They claimed to be Heralds of Annara, and I was desperate enough to give them a chance to explain themselves.

  And then, what they said changed my life forever, telling me that Annara would be coming soon to the Palace.

  I was skeptical at first, but they knew things that only I would know, and were even able to guess some of my visions, and even knew about my prophecy of the city falling.

  I felt so hopeless that I was willing to try anything. So together – Isandru, these Heralds, and I – have been devising a plan to topple Shal while waiting for Annara to come. So far, she hasn’t, but that doesn’t mean she won’t.

  It will just take time.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  THE NEXT MORNING, I KEPT my dream to myself, mostly because Shara was always around us. I would have to relate it sometime when she wasn’t around, but that would be difficult, considering that she almost always was around.

  This one had been different from all the others – more like a stream of thoughts and less like a stream of events that were actually viewable. In fact, I wasn’t sure if it even had been a dream. I had dreams of Mia that were not, in fact, prophecies, and I knew that intrinsically.

  This, however, was strange. It was something I couldn’t exactly place, and not being able to label it made me all the more reluctant to share it.

  So that morning, I kept quiet as we followed the line of the overgrown road until, coming around a ridge, the valley lowered abruptly.

  And in the bare expanse lay, half-buried, the metallic ruins of the strangest thing I had ever seen.

  “What is it?” Isa asked.

  No one answered her as we just stared. That it was manmade, there was no doubt, but it didn’t seem like a building. If it reminded me of anything, it was an insect, but why people would build such a thing was a mystery. It had to be at least two hundred feet long, and about half as wide. It was crumpled in the middle, almost rent in two, as if something had slammed into it. Or maybe, it had slammed into something. The Road went right by, so back in the time when people used it, they had to be well aware of this thing’s existence. Perhaps it was something the Hyperboreans had built, but part of me doubted that.

  For all of its strangeness, it seemed familiar. The feeling was uncomfortable, because I knew it wasn’t my sense of familiarity, but Anna’s.

  And then, in a flash, I saw it for what it was. Curved beams like ribs supported the main body of what had once been a metallic hull. A hull meant it had to be a ship.

  But what would a ship be doing in t
he middle of the mountains?

  It took far longer than it should have for everything to click. This ship wasn’t built for sailing; it had been built for flying.

  “The stories are true,” I said. “That’s an airship, I’m sure of it.”

  As I said this, everyone looked at me, probably wondering if I was joking. It was no joke, though. Now that I had said it out loud, I was surer of it than ever. It was something Anna would have known about, and it was hard to tell if I had come to this conclusion because of her, or from my own intuition.

  “Let’s get a closer look,” I said.

  “It looks nothing like the ones in artwork,” Isa said. “Although, given that they have been lost for four hundred years, it makes sense that we wouldn’t know what they look like.”

  “The way the road goes by, people used to know about it,” Isaru said, mirroring one of my original thoughts. “Perhaps that’s even the reason the road passes it. It could have been one of many stops along the Pilgrimage Road, but I have never read any mention of it. Which I find curious.”

  A lot of people believed the ships never existed. It wasn’t hard to see why – a ship that flew seemed like something beyond possibility. In art, they were often depicted as conventional ships, wooden with sails that sort of functioned as wings. The closest representation I’d seen was in the Sanctum’s mural on the interior of the Dome, but even that didn’t come close to what I saw before me.

  We followed the road over the next hour until we were standing right next to it. Up close, it was far larger than it had first appeared. In reality, it was even bigger because half it was buried in the xen. Large ruptures in the hull were open to the air, and inside I could see ancient machinery, pipes, tubes, and twisted metal, shining in the sunlight. That wasn’t iron, then; it would have rusted a long time ago if it were.

  “Is it possible to get inside?” Isa asked.

  “It’s probably dangerous,” Isaru said. “With something that old, there’s no telling if a deck might give out from under you.”

  It was a good point, but still, my curiosity was too great. “I want to see it, too. We might learn something. Not all of us need to go in.”

  “We can’t spend long here,” Shara said.

  I circled around the ship as the others followed. I came to a stop when I had arrived at what I believed to be the stern. There was a slight opening between the top of the ship and the xen below. The opening was wide, but not very tall. There was just enough space to squeeze through on my belly, if I wanted. The entire stern may have once been open to the air, but over time, the xen grew very thick, almost completely blocking the entry.

  “Do you still think it’s a good idea?” Isaru asked.

  I wasn’t sure of that, but I was resolved all the same. “You still have that torch?”

  Isaru reached into his pack to get it. Once it was in my hand, he fetched his tinderbox, and after gathering some wood from a nearby hillside, he got a small blaze going. With it, Isaru lit the torch.

  “Try to get in and I’ll hand the torch through,” Isaru said.

  “You’re not going in by yourself, are you?” Isa asked.

  “You can come if you want,” I said.

  Shara, however, was silent and glowering. It was unnerving, the way her eyes glowed as she looked at me. It was clear that she thought we were wasting time.

  I hesitated a bit, not really wanting to leave Isaru alone with her.

  “This won’t take long,” I said.

  “Be careful,” Isaru said.

  With that, I got on my stomach, shimmying backward though the opening. It was a tight squeeze, but there was enough xen growing inside the ship that I could climb the rest of the way down. By the time my boots thudded on the metal below, Isa was working her own way down. There was plenty of light in this hold, but that might not be the case later on.

  Isaru appeared above a moment later and passed the torch down to me. I held it as far in front of me as I could.

  The space was wider than I initially expected. The metallic deck was warped – not surprising if this thing had crashed. There were also many black streaks along the walls. A fire, then.

  Even with all the damage, it was recognizable. I felt a surge of excitement, and I knew that excitement wasn’t my own.

  “They kept cargo here,” I said.

  Most of that cargo was gone. There were still a couple of empty plastic barrels, mostly melted. The metal was elevated in the center of the hold, and took me a moment to realize that it was a platform. It had been designed to hold something, though I didn’t know what.

  All that said, it was surprisingly empty. Isa and I made our way forward. The deck sloped slightly upward. It made climbing the steep stairs we came to a bit difficult, but we managed to reach an upper deck that was so laden with debris that it was nearly impossible to proceed.

  “Should we go back?” Isa asked.

  “Just a minute. There’s a way through here.”

  It was narrow, but there was a way. People must have cleared a path at some point, perhaps even centuries ago. There was plenty of light from a rupture in the ceiling, but I kept the torch, just in case I needed it later.

  We ducked through some twisted rebar until we had entered a comparatively open space in the same hold. It was hard to tell what this space might have been used for. There was another staircase leading up, attached to the bulwark, but it was completely buried in debris, so it was impossible to traverse.

  I didn’t want to go up, though. I wanted to get to the bow, if it was even possible.

  “Does this place look familiar?” Isa asked.

  As soon as I heard the word “familiar,” I felt a strange sense of vertigo. I didn’t just feel like I had been here four hundred years ago; I knew I had. I remembered the bulwarks bathed red in the emergency lighting, the wailing of the klaxons, the thunderous pummeling of the Radaskim dragons. That was how it had crashed, then. We had escaped, only just in time…

  Only I hadn’t been in this ship, but another. That one couldn’t have crashed far from here, because there had been two. It had been even bigger than this one.

  “Shanti?”

  Isa’s voice snapped me back to reality. She was looking at me, concerned.

  “You all right?”

  “I remember that day,” I said, finally. “We got to the escape pods only just in time. We landed in the mountains, not far from here. I…don’t remember how we survived. I just remember it being unspeakably cold.”

  “You remember that?”

  I looked at Isa, who seemed to be even more worried, now. I didn’t blame her.

  “I sometimes feel she’s coming back, stronger and stronger,” I said. “Her memories mix with mine, sometimes to the point where I don’t know the difference. But yes. I remember it. Not clearly, but clear enough.”

  “Do you actually think you’ll become her?”

  “I…don’t know. I hope not.” The thought made me uncomfortable, and now, I wanted nothing more than to get out of here. “I think I’ve seen enough, anyway. This ship was called the Gilgamesh. I remember that much as well.”

  We made our way back out the way we came.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  OVER THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, we followed the road, which made travel far easier than we had expected. It was well-worn, despite all the years, and aside from plenty of rock slides, it was mostly passable and we made good time. Traveling through the mountains was hard work, but they were untouched by the poison of the waste or Northern Reversion.

  That, however, would change in the coming years.

  Hunting was actually plentiful here. Game teemed in the valley forests, more than enough for Isa to find something most days. We stuck to smaller game where possible, and even had the luxury to do so. It was only with our last few days in the Red Mountains that the land turned nastier, and hunting became scarcer.

  And then, finally, the land fell away, to be replaced by a dark and lonesome plain that str
etched as far as the eye could see. I thought it would be warmer down there, but if anything, it was colder and windier. There was little xen, and what xen there was clung to sharp rocks, looking just days away from dying. There wasn’t much talking. There was a feeling of emptiness similar to a reversion that was barely detectable, and as each day passed, that feeling only grew stronger, even as the sky became dimmer and grew thick with clouds.

  There was no wildlife, either. The land was simply empty and bare, the only sound being the wind constantly gusting across the plains.

  I could see why they were called the Plains of Decay.

  And then, on the fourth day, the monotony was broken by a still distant ridge, slightly obscured with mist. The sky was grayer and darker than even where we were, and that darkness had nothing to do with the onset of evening. It was hard to tell time here, but we had woken up not four hours before.

  When we made our evening fire with dead xen, the darkness seemed all the more complete.

  “This place is evil,” Isa said.

  It was the first thing anyone had said for hours. Even so, not a one of us could bring ourselves to respond. Even Shara, as unshakeable as she was, seemed more reserved than usual.

  That night, my dreams were troubled. There was fire and smoke, but despite that, deep darkness. Within the flames was a dark figure that the fire did not seem to touch. His eyes glowed white as a thin, cruel smile spread across his lips. He looked familiar to me, although I could not remember where I had seen him…

  The scene flickered, until it showed Mia with her brother, Isandru, in the Cloud Palace. They were talking low, as if afraid of being overheard. Mia glanced over her shoulder, her eyes widening. She screamed…

  Again, the scene shifted. I found myself on the deserted streets of Hyperborea between high, broken towers. There was nothing – not a sound, not another being within one hundred miles, and not even a thought in my head. In the distance, down the long road, was a blur. The blur spread, until it became clear that it was fog, rolling forward. I knew the fog would kill me, and yet, I couldn’t bring myself to move.