Canticum Tenebris (Wrath of the Old Gods Book 2)

by John Triptych

  They were small, dwarfish humanoids with jet black skin and silvery long hair and beards. With thick, stumpy legs attached to barrel like torsos, the dark elves kept scurrying about as they continued to toil and mine the black ore that seemed to sprout like mushrooms everywhere. Elevated metal platforms and ladders that were several stories high were a testament as to how extensive the work that was being done. The upper walls of the great cavern were dotted with numerous grottos that these elves would seemingly come in and out of.

  “They seem to be working pretty hard,” Ilya said. “But for what?”

  Gyle pointed at the far end of the cavern. “Over there.”

  At the outer edge of the great cave, there seemed to be a raised metallic platform. Numerous ramps from the stone floor were attached to it as a constant stream of elves carrying silvery sacks of ore on their backs were streaming towards it. At the edge of the dais was what looked to be a huge polished mirror that was supported by iron struts in order to keep it upright. As Ilya peered closer, he realized that it wasn’t a mirror at all, it looked like a vertical pool of silvery liquid that sloshed about. It seemed to be alive, like a membrane of some sort. A few minutes later, they saw a figure seemingly coming out of the surface of the pool and walk upon the platform. It was a man wearing goggles and dressed in a black robe.

  “I thought it was a mirror,” Ilya whispered. “But it looks like a doorway of some kind.”

  “A portal that leads to another world, to be exact,” the raven said softly.

  “Humans and these creatures are working together,” Gyle said. “But whatever it is that they’re working on clearly isn’t doing the Earth any good.”

  Without warning, a dozen small hands grabbed Ilya from behind and started to pull him back into the dark tunnel that they had come out of. The raven instantly flew up to avoid an elf that attempted to grab at it as the boy let out a cry for help. Gyle turned and used his arms to swat away over a half dozen Dokkalfar, throwing them thirty feet into the air as he started to make his way to Ilya.

  The robed man was standing about fifty feet away when he noticed the commotion at one of the side tunnels. He parted his robes and then pulled out a metallic, cylindrical device with a handgrip attached to its bottom as he shouted out an alarm. Within seconds, another man wearing identical robes emerged from a cave mouth three stories above as he too cradled a similar device.

  Gyle had almost fought his way to the boy’s side when a man-made lightning bolt struck his back. The former CIA officer screamed as he fell on his knees, his body wracked with pain as he sensed his back was burning. The dark elves were able to overwhelm Ilya as the boy was mobbed by over two dozen of them, they dragged him kicking and screaming through the dark passageway.

  But just as the robed man in the caves above them had pulled the trigger on his lightning gun for a second blast, the lightning bolt hit a bare patch of solid stone as Gyle instantly sprang up and landed on the ledge beside him. The robed man quickly turned and brought his weapon to bear but Gyle was much too fast for him. The former CIA officer had been transformed into something that was more than human as Gyle’s claws went through the guard’s torso and tore out his heart. The robed man on the platform saw what had happened and fired his lightning gun at the ledge where his colleague was, hoping to kill that pale monster before it could get to him. Gyle easily leapt out of the way as the blast from the weapon tore through some of the scaffolding and pieces of metal began cascading down to the cavern floor.

  Ilya struggled as a dozen hands were trying to hold him down but he managed to get one of his arms free. He then pulled out the firebird feathers from the pocket of his coat. The tunnel was instantly engulfed in a blinding light as the dark elves shrieked and backed away, covering their eyes. Ilya sat up and then quickly got on his feet as he kept showing the brightly shining feathers between him and his assailants.

  The robed man in the platform had fired over half a dozen times, hoping for a hit, but Gyle kept leaping from one scaffolding to the next as he easily dodged the lightning bolts coming his way. As Gyle got closer, he could see the robed man in the platform below was now in a state of panic as he fired one more shot at him that narrowly missed, before turning around to run through the portal. Gyle quickly sprung and landed on the man’s back just as he was about to go through the membrane.

  A brief surge of energy cascaded through Gyle’s body as he transitioned into another world. The next thing he knew, he was lying on top of a squirming man while on a barren rocky landscape. He could see mist-laden mountain ranges stretching out into the distance. The sky was an overcast grey but the daylight was a welcome sight over the lightless, suffocating caverns that he had just come from. It reminded him of the time when he took the family on a vacation in Alaska, the barren tundra was miles in every direction. Only this time, instead of arctic grass, he seemed to be surrounded by crumbling, fossilized rock. Looking around, he saw that there were over two dozen giant piles of black ore nearby.

  The robed man continued to struggle feebly underneath him. Gyle had finally had enough as he placed a clawed hand over the back of the man’s throat. “Calm down, I’m not gonna kill you.”

  The robed man whimpered. “P-Please don’t eat me!”

  Gyle snorted. He could smell a pungent, sulfurous odor. The man had evidently pissed on himself. “I don’t eat people,” he said. “So just take it easy.”

  Hearing a vibrating noise behind him, Gyle turned around and saw Ilya step through the portal while still holding his firebird feathers. The raven was perched on the boy’s shoulder once again.

  “Thanks for the rescue,” Ilya said. “If I hadn’t gotten one of my hands free, I would have been torn apart by those dark elves.”

  “Oh they weren’t going to harm you,” the raven on the boy’s shoulder said. “The Dokkalfar were just planning to take you captive, as per their orders.”

  Ilya rolled his eyes. “Well, that makes me feel better then! To be a prisoner rather than be eaten alive, how could I possibly choose between those two choices?”

  “I’m sorry,” Gyle said. “I was going to restrain this man and then go back in after you.”

  The robed man was sobbing. “Please, don’t kill me!”

  Gyle stood up and grabbed the man by his robes with one arm as he held him aloft like a dangling piece of meat. “I won’t kill you as long as you answer our questions.”

  The man was so terrified of Gyle that he kept looking away from him. “I-I saw you kill Martin with those claws, p-please, I have a family!”

  Ilya rolled his eyes. “What a coward.”

  “I already said I won’t kill you,” Gyle said. “But if you don’t answer my questions, I might just change my mind and then feed what’s left of you to my little black bird.”

  “I prefer moose,” the raven said nonchalantly. “The taste of humans is so …vile.”

  “There were two of you in that cavern,” Gyle said to the man. “Are there any more?”

  “N-No,” the man said haltingly. “We had just relieved the last guard shift for the portal.”

  “When is the next guard shift?”

  The man closed his eyes. “Not for at least s-six hours.”

  Ilya moved closer but quickly stepped back when he caught the smell of the robes. “Are you from Earth?”

  “Y-Yes,” the man said. “My name is Heinrich. F-From Germany.”

  Gyle looked closer at Heinrich. The man looked to be in his thirties. Sharp nose and blond curly hair. “Why are you wearing robes?”

  “I-I’m a member of the Temple.”

  “Temple? What temple?”

  “T-The Temple of the Black Sun,” Heinrich said nervously. “Our Grand Magus says w-we shall be the new rulers of Europe.”

  “I’ve never heard of this Black Sun before,” Gyle said to him before looking at the boy. “What about you?”

  Ilya just shrugged his shoulders.

  “W-We are an order of magicians, our power has
somehow increased when all these old gods returned to our world,” Heinrich said. “I was only recruited a few months ago, please have pity on me.”

  Ilya took out some raskovnik and held it out in front of him. “He’s telling the truth about his organization, but he’s lying about how long he’s been a member. He joined up three years ago as a security officer.”

  Gyle’s other hand instantly grabbed Heinrich by the throat. “We can tell when you’re lying. Do it again and I’ll rip your head off.”

  “Ahh!” Heinrich cried. “I’m so sorry! I promise, I will say nothing but the truth! Please don’t hurt me!”

  “Now,” Gyle hissed. “Tell us everything, from the top, what are you doing here? What kind of alliance you have with those elves, where’s the faerie princess, and where’s Tara?”

  Heinrich gulped. He knew he needed to tell them everything. All he cared about now was to just try and stay alive. “Princess Charissa is in the tower, a-along with that other girl. The king of the Dokkalfar is in the battleship, he is being held hostage there. As long as the Temple has him, the dark elves are cooperative. If he is freed, the elves will revolt against us and throw us out of their world.”

  Ilya’s eyes widened at the news of Tara. “Where is this tower?”

  “Over there,” Heinrich said as he pointed to a mist-filled mountain range in the far distance. “It’s built on the base of that along with the dry dock for repairs. The elves constructed the whole thing and it’s powered by that cauldron. That is what makes it float in the air.”

  Gyle gently placed Heinrich down on the ground. “Cauldron? What cauldron?”

  “I-It’s an old metal cauldron that we found a few months ago,” Heinrich said. “The Grand Magus said that it’s magical, it used to bring the dead back to life during the time of legends, but it was damaged so we used the help of demons and the elves to repair it somewhat. But the repair work wasn’t exact and the artifact is flawed somehow, instead of bringing the dead back to life, all we could do is put sacrifices into it and the dead souls would transform into some sort of mystical energy to power the ship.”

  “So you have a flying battleship powered by the magical cauldron,” Gyle said. “What does your Temple hope to do with that?”

  “Conquer Europe,” Henrich said. “We already bombarded parts of Berlin and it will just be a matter of time till the remaining countries fall under the Temple’s domination. The giants and the Fomorians can’t touch us because we are in the air. The dragons and the other flying creatures may be a problem, but the lightning cannons mounted on the ship should keep them at bay.”

  Ilya picked up the lightning gun that was on the ground. It was bulky but surprisingly light. “So this is one of the weapons you are using?”

  Gyle quickly took the weapon away from the boy. “Be careful with that, it almost killed me.”

  Ilya frowned as he crossed his arms. “Why won’t you let me have a weapon?”

  Gyle snapped the lightning gun in two and let the bits fall to the ground. “You haven’t been trained to use it. If you don’t know how to use something as powerful as this, it’s better to leave it alone.”

  The boy didn’t argue any further as he moved behind Gyle and took a look at his friend’s back. “You were burned somewhat, but I can see that your back is healing quite quickly.”

  Gyle stood upright and stretched his back. “Still hurts though.”

  Heinrich looked down on the ground. “I am ashamed and would like to help if I could. I just want to get back to my family. I don’t want to die.”

  Gyle turned his attention to Heinrich once more. “That tower, how many guards are in it?”

  “Perhaps a few dozen at the most,” Heinrich said. “We are training new apprentices there, but most of them are too inexperienced to operate the lightning guns, so they won’t be much of a problem for you.”

  Gyle pointed to the piles of black ore beside them. “Is this some sort of transit point for the ore to bring it to the tower?”

  Heinrich nodded. “The Temple needs the ore to repair the battleship with. A group of horse drawn carts will be here soon along with a few men to transport the ore to the tower and then to the dry dock. From there, it will await the battleship’s return from earth.”

  “That’s it then,” Gyle said. “We make a plan to insert ourselves into the castle using the ore transports.”

  “And then rescue Tara, and the faerie princess, and the king of the dark elves too,” Ilya said.

  Gyle nodded. “And kill everyone else.”

  23. Law of the Pursuer

  Israel

  David Zim stood outside of the entrance while the camp guards took his mission orders to the command post. The refugee processing center was located a few miles to the southeast of Jerusalem. The inner buildings of the camp were formerly an apartment complex at the edge of the Israeli settlement of Har Homa before its residents were evacuated deeper into Israel, and the rest of the place was allocated back to the government. That was where he needed to go, since the inner camp served as the personal proving grounds of Rabbi Elijah Ba’al and his followers. David could see that the outer ring of the camp was more rudimentary, with several miles of temporary shelters encompassed by a series of chain linked fences and guard towers. Several children could be seen playing beside a number of tents, oblivious to the fate that awaited them. He couldn’t help but notice the parallels between this place and the other times in history when helpless innocents were victimized by an inhuman government.

  A few minutes passed before the guard finally came back out and walked towards him. David was relieved the guard didn’t have his M-16 rifle on the ready. It meant they believed his papers to be authentic. So far so good.

  The guard handed him his papers back as he signaled the others to open the chain linked gate. “Here are your mission orders, sir. Please wait in the administration center and one of the staff will escort you to the inner compound.”

  “Shalom,” David said as he placed the papers in the front pocket of his collared shirt and walked inside. With Amel Kasem’s help, he had created the mission orders and forged the signature of his Uncle Ariel Weizman along with that of his chief administrator in the Mossad. With all the frantic orders that had been issued by the military and the government due to the ongoing crisis, they had hoped that there would not have to be any sort of security confirmation in order for David to pass through the numerous checkpoints. So far, their paper-thin plan to get into the inner compound was working.

  The administration building was once a large house that now served as offices for the numerous departments that ran the camp. David leaned on a nearby wall as a number of guards walked past him. All of the camp sentries were wearing the standard IDF olive-green field uniforms, but with black armbands to denote their status. He tried not to make any eye contact lest someone he knew might recognize him. The Israeli military and intelligence communities were small enough that all of the major players knew one another. The last thing David needed was for an acquaintance to come up to him and start asking questions.

  After a wait of almost half an hour, a young bearded man in a black suit and wearing a yarmulka came down the corridor and walked up to him. “Shalom, are you David Zim from the Institute?”

  David nodded as he showed the other man a sealed folder marked TOP SECRET. “Shalom, yes, I am David. I’m here to see Rabbi Ba’al with an urgent report for his eyes only.”

  The young man was obviously one of Ba’al’s rabbinic recruits. “It’s best you give those papers to me for now. Rabbi Ba’al is rather busy, I’m afraid. He cannot see anybody today.”

  David shook his head. “I’m sorry, but my orders were to give it to him personally.”

  For a short while, both men just stood there staring at each other. David had hoped that they would not attempt to call IDF headquarters to confirm that the order was given. If that happened, he would be caught for sure.

  But the other man turned and started wal
king as he beckoned David to follow. “I cannot guarantee that he would see you, but perhaps I can ask him to take a minute or two to take a look at your message.”

  David smiled as he moved right behind the young rabbi. “Thank you, I really appreciate this. My superiors would not be pleased if I didn’t place these reports in his hands personally.”

  The other man said nothing as he just kept walking while David followed. The two men walked out of the building and moved through a pathway between two sets of chain linked fences. David could see a guard tower manned by IDF soldiers with rifles on the ready above them, while two women emerged from a nearby tent on the other side of the fence. The women were dressed in black from head to toe as their dark veils covered everything but their eyes as they just silently gazed back at him with tired, pleading stares. As they made it to the outskirts of the inner camp, David estimated that the outer camp must have been housing over a hundred thousand Palestinian and Jordanian refugees. He didn’t see a single Arab man of fighting age, almost all of the people in the tent areas were the old, the women, and the very young.

  “Through here,” the young rabbi said as he opened up a door that lead into a building compound.

  As they walked inside, David could see that the whole character of the camp had changed dramatically. Gone were the signs that said REFUGEE SANCTUARY and FOR YOUR PROTECTION in Arabic. He could see that the walls and ceiling were fully enclosed and were sound proofed to prevent anyone from the outside to know what was happening in here. The whole building they were in resembled some sort of sterile lab. The passageway that they were moving in was also deserted, there didn’t seem to be anyone else around.

  They soon turned into another corridor that had two-way mirrors along its walls. As they started walking towards a set of doors at the rear, David saw a crowd of several hundred Arabs in the other side, apparently unaware they were being observed from the hidden corridor. The large room that they were in was fully enclosed, and quite a number of them were just standing or sitting down on the tiled floor. The ceiling above the crowd seemed to have multiple metal panels on the top of it, like vertical swinging doors but they looked so unobtrusive that only someone with a keen eye would have spotted them. David stopped as he tried to figure out what the crowd was doing, but it seemed like they were waiting for something. There didn’t seem to be any guards with them either, the Arabs were seemingly left alone to fend for themselves. Children darted in and out amongst the crowd while being chased by their mothers as the older people just kept sitting down from apparent exhaustion. The crowd was subdivided into smaller groups as people seemed to be talking to each other, but David couldn’t hear what they were saying.