“I’m really not sure,” admitted David. “I was feeling pretty bad until about two hours ago. I was fading in and out of consciousness. I was in so much pain. Then I had this strange dream. It was just so real. I saw my father. He was dressed in his suit and tie. He told me that I needed to survive. He told me that I was going to get through this thing and back to Earth.” David paused. He trembled. “He told me that he wouldn’t be there when I got back, that I’d have to go on without him. But he said that his spirit would always be with me.”
“You experienced this about the time that the ground shook,” deduced Abaddon.
David looked up to see the dark winged being walking toward him. He seemed unprepared for this meeting.
“It’s alright, he’s a friend,” said Debbie, “He saved our lives out there. This is Abaddon and over there is Lenar.”
“OK,” said David, hesitatingly. He gazed upon the two winged figures before him. “Any friend of Debbie’s is a friend of mine.”
“Please continue,” bid Abaddon.
“Yes, sure,” said David. “It was when that earthquake hit. I suddenly felt better then too.” He paused. “There was another thing. It was only for a moment. I could have sworn that I was somewhere else. I was in a soft bed and there was this beeping. Then I was here again.”
“You were back home, on Earth,” said Debbie, “at least for an instant. The slash across your face is gone, and your voice is normal again. But how? I had asked Dr. Wilson to bring you home but I don’t think he had enough time to pull it off. Something else must have happened.”
“Wait a minute,” said David. “I remember something odd my father said. He said something about destroying the ball, firing a bullet into it. I think he was talking about that crystal ball at the Bargo Carnival. This fortune teller told me my future there. It was my last night on Earth.”
“The destruction of one of the crystal balls,” deduced Lenar. “That makes sense. That would have caused a disturbance in the ether.”
“It would,” confirmed Abaddon.
“But could it also mean that my father is dead?” David asked.
Lenar hesitated. “If he was close enough to it to place a bullet from one of your terrestrial weapons through it I’m afraid the answer to that question is also yes. The explosion produced would have been equivalent to a ton of dynamite.” Lenar paused. “But we are not all that certain of our facts. We may be interpreting the facts we do have incorrectly. Take heart, young man, all may still be well with your father.”
David nodded but said nothing more. It seemed unlikely that he had accepted Lenar’s interpretation of the so called facts.
The group brought David up to speed on their exploits of this day including their rescue by these indeed mysterious beings. They gathered in a circle within the small cavern room. It gave Debbie time to get to better know these dark beings who had been their salvation. Debbie started asking questions; many questions.
“We have been studying your situation for months,” said Abaddon. “It is dire but not so much as you might think. The drells are not invincible nor are they omniscient. They are too confident in their power and that is their weakness. And then they’re dying.”
“Dying?” asked David.
“Yes, dying,” confirmed Abaddon. “How can I explain it that you might understand? Their genetic makeup is inviable. They are a hodgepodge of combined yet incomplete and largely incompatible genetic codes. This is the story, and it all begins some 6,000 years ago. It doesn’t begin with the drells for there were no drells. No, it begins with someone else another race of beings entirely; a race of being facing the ultimate crisis.
“Imagine if you will that you want to recreate a specific species, yours. You are endangered, as you humans put it, you don’t have so much as one member of your species that can reproduce on their own. You’re DNA is old, worn out, finished. You’re desperate because you know you don’t have much time left. You’ll stop at nothing to insure that your species or at least something like it survives. What you need to find is another living creature, something like you that you can modify, adjust, improvise, splice into a reasonable facsimile of yourself. You need to find that special creature, so you go out searching, you look everywhere within your reach but you don’t find it. What you find are a dozen different species but none of them are even remotely close to what you are looking for. But you’re out of time. So you find a place, bringing with you what you have found, and cobble it together into something that resembles yourself.”
“Like Frankenstein,” deduced Leslie.
Abaddon looked at Leslie cocking his head in such a peculiar way. It was almost bird-like. “Frankenstein?”
“Frankenstein was a character from an old novel,” noted Marci. “A scientist assembles a bunch of parts from a series of corpses and then applies high voltage electricity, lightning, to the assemblage in order to bring life to it. In short he plays god.”
“No, that is not what I’m talking about,” said Abaddon. “They were not taking an arm from one creature and sewing it onto the torso of another. What they were doing was being done at the atomic level, creating a single cell from the cells of a dozen different creatures, a cell that will grow to become something totally different.”
“I think I see what he’s saying,” said Camron. “Gene splicing. It’s just a theory. I heard of it in biology class. Scientists are years from making it work.”
“But these people could already do it, many thousands of years ago,” continued Abaddon. “Little is known of them, even by us. They are simply known as the elder race. They had reached a level of sophistication that you will not achieve for a very long time. Yet their technology was different from yours. I know not how else to explain it. What you do with tools and machines they did mostly with thought. Technology largely without instrumentality. They turned thought into reality.”
“That sounds a bit like magic,” noted Leslie.
“Yes,” confirmed Abaddon. “I suppose it would sound like magic to you. Hard as it might be to believe such things are not all that uncommon in some places. I know of a realm where all manner of things are fabricated through pure thought by beings not unlike yourselves. It is not magic but the conversion of a vast reservoir of energy into matter. It takes years to perfect the technique but it can be done.”
“Please go on,” urged Debbie, “tell us more about this elder race of yours.”
“As I said, what we know about them is limited,” continued Abaddon. “Very little of what they were or what they created survives. Something happened to them. Perhaps it was war, perhaps some sort of virulent plague, I do not know. Their race was virtually decimated. We know of the names of only two of them, the two that created the drells. They were Lilith and Asmodeus.”
“Lilith!” exclaimed Lukor. “She is the great goddess of the drells, the center of their worship even now. They refer to her as their great mother.”
“It is not surprising,” said Lenar, “she was instrumental in creating them. I suppose she is their mother in a sense.”
“And Asmodeus, that’s like the devil, isn’t it?” asked Gwen.
“No, fair maiden it is not,” said Lenar. “Asmodeus is an entirely different being. Trust me, I know.”
To Debbie that was an odd statement, though she didn’t pursue it. Right now it didn’t seem important.
“So we’re talking ancient astronauts,” deduced David. “And I suppose that they visited Earth in places like Egypt and Mesopotamia.”
“They did,” confirmed Abaddon, “thousands of years ago. Your planet was a virtual garden for them.”
“The Garden of Eden,” noted Camron.
“Yes, exactly,” said Abaddon. “Most astute.”
“I was just kidding,” said Camron, “I know that the Garden of Eden didn’t really exist.”
“Oh, is that a fact?” asked Abaddon. “To each his own opinion. Suffice it to say they obtained many of their specimens of genetic materia
l from your planet and three other worlds. Your world was by far the richest, yet its life was very different in its structure from theirs, incompatible with their own. They might have set up their laboratory on Earth but they were driven out.”
“By who?” asked Marci. “Certainly not by man, not 6000 years ago.”
“No, not by man,” replied Abaddon, “by us.”
“When you say us you mean beings like yourself,” deduced Camron. The long silence was disconcerting.
“No, wait a minute,” objected Camron, “this elder race came to Earth thousands of years ago, right?”
“About six-thousand,” confirmed Abaddon.
“And you yourself drove them out,” continued Camron, “you and Lenar.”
“No,” said Abaddon, “not the two of us, we were part of a team of about three hundred whose mission it was to safeguard mankind.”
“Guardian angels,” retorted Camron.
“I did not say that,” replied Abaddon.
“We are not guardian angels,” interjected Lenar. “Why do you people keep coming back to that? Did it ever occur to you that you are not alone in this universe and you are certainly not the most advanced society? You were but children then, you still are. We are here to help right a wrong done to you, to protect you so that you can make it to adulthood. That is all that you need to know for now. The elder race is gone, Asmodeus and Lilith perished, their work not quite complete, but the evil that they spawned lives on. Before their passing they managed to create the drells, imperfect as they were. They left it to their progeny, their creations to complete the process of perfecting themselves. Yet they weren’t up to the challenge. With each passing generation the errors within their genetic code became more pronounced. Fewer and fewer of their offspring were viable with each passing generation. They were still on the road to extinction, indeed, they are virtually sterile at this point.”
“So why do they need us?” asked Debbie. “I mean, if they’re dying why are they planning to bring even more of us to this place? Do they need more slave laborers for some great building project that will allow them to be remembered or are they just getting hungrier in their old age?”
Lenar didn’t respond, he looked to Abaddon.
Abaddon hesitated. “They need more slave laborers, yes. As food, yes, but you also serve a higher purpose. Within each of you can be found certain unique proteins and enzymes that can be found nowhere else. These are found most plentifully in the young of your species. Through a rather complex process they managed to distill from each liter of your blood, a few drops of an indeed precious liquid; an elixir of youth as it were. They milk it from you on a regular basis to obtain that elixir. Through the use of that elixir they have managed to extend their lives to over a thousand years.”
“But a long lifespan in itself does not insure the continuation of a species,” noted Lenar. “In their case it was only delaying the inevitable. If a species cannot reproduce then they must seek the only other route to their continuation; immortality. Within each one of you can be found the key to that immortality.”
“But we’re not immortal,” objected Marci.
“No,” replied Lenar, “not yet, but you will be. You see, you are special, different from any other lifeform the elder race and their surrogates the drells knew of. As your blood extends their lives, so too can it grant them immortality. But that immortality comes at a high price and it will be you that pays it.”
“I don’t understand,” admitted Marci.
“Then gain added incentive to undertake the revolution in the knowing,” said Abaddon. “A new elixir is approaching perfection; it requires a certain endorphin, a brain produced enzyme found only in youth and then found in great quantities only within one undergoing great stress, great terror, and great pain. In short it will require that the donor be placed under that stress for an extended period of time even as the endorphin is extracted. I know not how they intend to achieve this effect but it will be mentally and physically devastating for the subject in question. And it will require an even larger heard of human slaves to make it work, thousands rather than hundreds.”
“Oh my god,” gasped Leslie. “That is why we’re building the new cells.”
“That is why they must be stopped and stopped now,” said Lenar. “Humanity has enough problems, they don’t need the drells. That is why we are here.”
“But who sent you?” asked Debbie. “I think that is the question we would all like to know the answer to.”
Lenar looked to Abaddon. For a moment there was silence.
“We were sent by an interested party who loves humanity very much,” said Abaddon. “I can tell you no more than that. Just trust us.”
It was the way that Abaddon looked at Debbie that made her understand. Suddenly she knew who had sent these beings even without an answer. Angels or not, to her everything had just fallen into place. They would concentrate upon how to defeat the drells. They would perfect their plan and at last bring an end to an old evil so that no more children would suffer and die at their hands.
“Something is amiss,” observed Dre Kon, rising from his chair at the head of the long obsidian conference table. He gazed with troubled eyes at the two consuls and the eight senators of the Governing Council.
All eyes were on Dre Kon as he paced around the great rectangular room. He walked beside walls draped with long crimson curtains and past candelabras whose many brilliant red candles glowed with a steady magical luminescence. His mind was in a state of deep contemplation.
“Lex Ton is no more.”
A disquieting murmur arose among the council. “My Lord Dre Kon, surely a drell avenger as skilled as Lex Ton could not have been defeated by humans.”
“There is no other conclusion,” replied the dark lord, stopping and turning toward the senators. “I cannot sense his aura, his powerful mind. I can only assume that he was utterly destroyed, and all that he knew with him. Still more troubling, I have sensed disturbances in the ether. One of the crystal globes entrusted to the Sisterhood of Twilight, has been destroyed. We are faced with matters most grave, a challenge to our authority.”
“We shall vanquish them,” proclaimed one of the senators, full of confidence. “We shall crush them as we have all others who have dared oppose us.”
“Beautiful rhetoric, but rhetoric is not the solution to our problem,” said Dre Kon. “I sense that we have other problems as well. I did not want this situation to get out of hand. I did not wish for this Debbie Langmuir, who had briefly returned to the world of men, to stir up insurrection against us. I had sought to dispose of her quietly, discretely. I had determined to send her and all of those who she had direct contact with on a mission to the crystal cavern to gather crystals for the project. I even sent Lukor of the Wulvers to accompany her. I had arranged for them to meet with an unfortunate accident along the way.”
“But Lukor has served us well for many years,” objected one of the consuls. “I feel that it would be a waste of resources to dispose of him at this time.”
“Honorable Consul Mar Lon, he above all needed to be eliminated,” replied Dre Kon. “He had become weak. He had been won over by this human girl. In time I fear that he would have turned against us. Indeed, I fear that this thing might already have happened. He has no love for us, neither does his mate Kadra. Already I fear that they plot against us.”
“Delays and disruptions,” grumbled one of the senators. “We are so close to a solution to our problem and now this.”
“My dear Senator Lon Dal, it is but a bump in the road, as the humans might say,” said Dre Kon.
“And what of this plan to rid us of these disruptors,” said yet another senator. “I take it that there has been a problem.”
“There has, Senator Mar Duk,” said Dre Kon. “I had willed that three predatory cave beasts, ciudaches, intercept and devour the hunting party. However, they were slain with the help of a third party.”
“Who is this third party?�
� asked Lar Lon. “Might they be agents of the Fellowship?”
“Fellowship,” scoffed Dre Kon. “They are no true threat to us. The Fellowship know little of our dealings. No these beings are from elsewhere. I do not know who they are as yet but I will.”
“So what shall we do,” asked Mar Duk.
“First we shall deal with these earthly soul thieves,” said Dre Kon. “I shall send four avengers in the footsteps of Lex Ton, to complete the task he began. I will destroy this magical device that sweeps away souls and all those with knowledge of it.” The drell lord’s lipless mouth drew into a hideous smile. “Once this matter is behind us, we shall turn our attention to the human slaves, and the wulvers who have so poorly managed them. It has been too long since we last demonstrated our authority to the mortals. I think it is time that we had a little amusement with them.”
Chapter 18
Work stopped and the human slaves and their wulver taskmasters looked on in wide eyed wonder as the small group of adventurers strode by, apparently none the worse for wear. In fact, they looked invigorated. The humans were free of their chains and instead brandished swords. It was an unbelievable sight. No one had expected to see them alive again, and now here they were, all of them plus two. Those additional two drew the most attention. No one had ever seen such beings as these. Winged humans? How could such a thing be possible?
At first there was silence. Then a growing applause from the slaves. About a dozen shouted, and cheered using their newly healed vocal cords and newfound strength. The taskmasters quickly followed.
At first Debbie was surprised that more slaves than just David had rediscovered the precious gift of loud shouting and praise. Then she began to put it all together. These were the children who had been enslaved by the same crystal ball that had enslaved David, the ball at the infamous Bargo Carnival. With it destroyed their souls had briefly returned to their earthly bodies. It was only the power of the drells that had drawn those souls back into oblivion, but not before the process had restored them to full health. Had the loss of that crystal weakened the drells? She could always hope.
The Realm of the Drells Page 25