The Geode King

by H A Tisdale

  Holding back the tears, I turned away from the man who vehemently opposed my only hope for reality to make sense, and addressing the whole crowd, I lifted my voice. “Should this man have died? Is this what we were made for? Did the Alchemist intend for us to die without end? Did he intend for this torturous rock cycle to go on without ceasing? Aren’t we supposed to escape the Pit and live in the Haven with the Alchemist forever? I believe that is our destiny! So I say we fight, for together, we can stop those seeking our destruction. Together, we can overcome those who wish to wreak havoc on the Pit. And together, we can escape this cruel world and live under the sun forever once more!” I concluded victoriously.

  Everyone in the crowd stared back at me meekly, unsure how to respond to my zeal. They all then looked to Jedd for guidance, and Jedd just stood there, covering his eyes as he wrapped his mind around the situation. Hive had killed his only son after all, utterly squashing his hope to escape the Pit, and now I stood here insisting he face the past he most desperately wanted to forget. Seeming to sense everyone’s staring eyes, Jedd uncovered his own to observe the directionless bunch. I too looked back at Jedd with one last glimmer of hope.

  “I’m not who you need me to be, Benjamin,” Jedd breathed defeatedly as the wind began to blow.

  “I guess you’re right,” my bitter heart responded as I regarded his grieved moonstone gems.

  Thus, knowing I would have to make the journey to Lake Shale on my own, I turned my back to Jedd and the rest of Kokomanor. I then jumped off the stage and ran straight to the Dream Stream where I had received the Alchemist’s inner wind. And there by the willow tree, I hastily untied Jedd’s old ride.

  So alone in the dark, I mounted the dusty windcycle with neither plan nor provision, only a burning conviction in my heart that I was making the right choice, and I hoped that would be enough. But just before I pressed the button to open the contraption’s flaps, I heard a very loud noise from behind, lighting my heart up with joy.

  “Arrrr, arrrr, arrrr!” Kairou barked her little birthstone out as she came running with the wind to stop me before I departed. And when she arrived, she squatted in front of the windcycle and looked at me with her galaxy eyes, informing me of two options: either I would stay with her at Kokomanor, or she would accompany me to Lake Shale.

  “I’m going to Lake Shale, Kairou,” I stated firmly with tears in my eyes, “so I hope you don’t mind riding on my lap.”

  Chapter 14

  If You Dig It, You Doug It

  With Kairou cuddled on my lap, I steered the windcycle through the night by the Dream Stream, following its path to its natural end, and its current beside me grew choppier as I sped forward on Jedd’s chopper. And like these rough waters, a mixture of disappointment, anger, and sadness surged through my soul as I pulled farther and farther away from Kokomanor, the refuge I had come to think of as home.

  I knew not how long it would take to arrive at Lake Shale, but with the current wind rate on my flaps, I guessed I would be there in no time. My intuition failed me, however. For the road to death is often slower than we imagine, full of woes upon miseries as the invisible monster takes its time, eating away at us bit by bit.

  And as the winds whisk away the chaff, a violent gust suddenly thrusted the windcycle into the Dream Stream where I met the onslaught of its rushing rapids. Completely disoriented by the tumble, I struggled against the twists and turns of this river, which threw me around as if I weighed nothing. Indeed, my little strength could not overcome the mighty forces of these foaming waters, and as I was tossed through a series of wild cascades, the merciless current dashed my body against a dense bed of rocks.

  …

  My eyes opened to the sight of the cavernous ceiling’s gems gradually going by like clouds that drift across the sky. I put my hand to my forehead, which ached me more than my hangover from the windless valley. When I sat my sore body upright, I realized the cavernous ceiling had not been moving, for I had been moving, floating in fact, on a dingy dinghy where Kairou lay calmly between me and a stranger.

  The unknown man sat facing me in the opposite direction of the water while his arms guided the paddles, smoothly navigating the tiny vessel down the stream. He wore sandals, a swimsuit, a tank top, and a bandana on his head where his long hair fell to his shoulders. Thick scruff covered the bottom of his face, and his emerald eyes were looking at me with a relaxed jubilance.

  “Umm, hello there,” I uttered, rubbing my eyes to clear my blurry vision.

  “What’s up, brother,” the scruffy man expressed with a vibrance in his eyes. “Glad to see your alive and well. I was starting to worry the river had its way with you.”

  I looked over the side of the raftlike dinghy. A calm current had taken the place of the rushing waters which I had fallen into when the wind had decided to sweep me like a broom sweeping dust into a pan. “Did you pull us out of it?” I asked in astonishment.

  “Of course, my dude. I couldn’t let you and your little dudette drown,” the man elaborated as he stroked Kairou’s little head. Her eyes squinted with intimate delight.

  “Thanks, man,” I stated sincerely, convinced I had just barely escaped death once again.

  “No worries, my man. You can send your thanks to the Domikos though,” he deferred the credit. “I just do what he directs me to do.”

  “You know about the Domikos?” I inquired as the inner wind rushed within me.

  “I don’t just know about the Domikos, I know the Domikos,” the man emphatically explained. “In fact, my intimate connection to the Alchemist goes deeper than my relationship with my own children, with my own wife even.”

  As the emerald-eyed man spoke about the unseen bond he and I shared in common, he no longer appeared a stranger. Instead, his presence seemed fraternal, and I realized this special circle of wind followers did not need to ride together like a pack of animals in order to be connected. For the Alchemist’s inner wind bore this invisible brotherhood through every corner and crevice of the Pit, and he did so in a manner that could not be observed as it could with the external wind followers.

  “I’m Benjamin by the way,” I introduced myself, wanting to be known by a fellow brother, “and the little dudette is Kairou.”

  “If you dig it,” the man said pointing at me. “You Doug it.” He finished his introduction with his thumbs pointed at himself.

  “Dug what?” I asked very confused by his strange saying.

  “You dug Doug,” he answered with a childlike smile, pointing his thumbs at himself again.

  “Ohhh, I get it,” I laughed. “Your name is Doug!”

  “Sure is, and having been Doug, I keep the dirt loose in the Pit,” Doug dug further into his play on words before he shifted the conversation back to the inner wind. “So you know the Domikos too?”

  “Yes,” I answered with a paradoxical combination of joy and sadness, “a man named Jedd shared the inner wind with me.”

  “Jedd, as in the Master of Wind Jedd?” Doug questioned, his emerald eyes lighting up.

  “Yeah, you know him too?” I asked, marveling at how small this big Pit seemed.

  “Pretty much the whole Pit knows about the Master of Wind,” Doug’s voice sang with admiration. “Jedd’s one cool breeze, and that’s hard to come by in this world.”

  “How did you meet him?” I questioned, feeling a tinge of remorse with how I had left things at Kokomanor.

  “The Master of Wind blew into my life years ago. Let’s see,” Doug reflected back on his memory. “So I live on a big mountain in a village that used to be oppressed by an evil man named Amphibolious, who surreptitiously suppressed the Mountain Mover. But when Jedd arrived, he soon discerned the twisted intentions of Amphibolious’s birthstone, and through his great wisdom, the Master of Wind drove that vermin out of town for good.”

  Doug’s praise for Jedd reminded me of all his heroic deeds touched upon in the a cappella song from the amphitheater, and I briefly wondered if Doug’s vill
age resided on the same mountain mentioned in one of Pit Perfect’s solos.

  “Who’s the Mountain Mover?” I inquired, doubting anyone’s ability to push a mountain even an inch.

  “He’s only the man who rocked my world with the Domikos,” Doug recounted enthusiastically. “He’s the Good Gale guru of my village who taught me to stop lying, cheating, and stealing, which at first was way harder than I thought it would be. You don’t think those things rule your life until you try to pull away from them. But thanks be to the Alchemist and his inner wind! The Domikos gave me a new life, and now, I have a beautiful wife, two kids, and another on the way who will arrive any day now.”

  “Wow, congrats,” I instinctively responded, truly happy for my new friend, but at the same time, his words cut deep into my heart. Not only did I betray my love for Meina, but I also turned my back on my unborn baby. Kecelia had been pregnant with my child, and I watched Hive assuredly beat its birthstone to a pulp. Somehow, I hadn’t taken the time to process the fact that Hive took away from me what he had taken away from Jedd. This dismal revelation made me wonder what my offspring would have been like, though regardless of how my child may have turned out, I now knew my love for him or her would have shined far brighter than the sun, possibly with enough strength even to move a mountain.

  “What’s wrong, brother?” Doug asked compassionately, picking up on my heart’s bitterness.

  “I guess I’ve got death on my mind,” I replied nonchalantly.

  Doug gave me a strange look, and I quickly realized my response had been an odd thing to say after hearing about someone’s wife being pregnant.

  “Because I’m headed to Lake Shale,” I inserted speedily to cover my seemingly random morbidness.

  “You’re traveling all the way to that dirty lake?” Doug asked in disbelief.

  “That’s the plan,” I responded, trying to hide the fear in my voice.

  “And the Domikos is guiding you there?” Doug sought to clarify with concern in his eyes.

  Without saying a word, I closed my eyes and felt the inner wind bestow his perfect peace upon me for the desolate journey ahead, so with a deep breath, I nodded.

  “Any particular reason?” Doug interrogated rather stupefied at my conviction.

  I did not want to tell Doug the whole truth and risk him missing out on his baby’s new birth in case he felt compelled to take the journey with me after hearing about Hive’s alleged efforts to wreak havoc on the Pit. So I decided to give him just a piece of the puzzle.

  “I’m going to investigate the Flame in Lake Shale,” I finally answered his question, feeling conflicted about covering some of the truth.

  Doug’s eyes opened wide. “Whoa, man! That’s some heavy investigation you have on your plate.”

  “You’ve heard of the Flame?” I asked rather surprised.

  “Only stories here and there, all based around the legend of Gannacleft,” Doug unveiled the evil one’s name.

  “Who’s Gannacleft?” I breathed in suspense.

  “He’s the one who actually dug it,” Doug explained eerily.

  “Dug what?” I repeated the question once again, though this time Doug seemed far less jovial.

  “The Pit,” Doug stated grimly as I sensed another story blowing in with the wind. “Long before the Alchemist created the ancestors, he formed the stars above the Haven. And after composing them with light, he brought these cosmic creatures into conscious existence through the transference of his life-giving elixir. Thus infused with the power of the inner wind, each of them possessed the ability to traverse the cosmos, no longer constrained within the confines of their star bases. So the Alchemist appointed these celestial beings to keep the galaxies in balance and accordingly put them in charge of various tasks to help him turn the wheels of fate. And on days when the stars aligned perfectly, the Alchemist would invite them to gather in the Haven where they would enjoy blessed fellowship with their cosmic creator.

  “One star’s light turned dark, however, and for some inexplicable reason, he began to drift in the shadows of space. His original name has been forgotten, but the legends of his treachery have always bestowed him with one despicable designation: Gannacleft. Now, this rogue rebel kept his ways hidden from the Alchemist as he darkened droves of his fellow stars one by one. So Gannacleft and his band of blackholes secretly toiled with diligence to dig a hole upon that unholely hill in the Haven, slowly but surely carving out the Pit.

  “With his evil excavation underway, Gannacleft planned to ambush the Alchemist and cast him into the underground prison where he would be trapped for all of time. But as the Mountain Mover always told me, whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and that’s what happened to Gannacleft and his dark associates. For the Alchemist exposed their rebellious intentions just in time, casting them into the Pit instead where they would forever rot in the filth of Lake Shale.”

  As I heard Doug say these final words, I thought back to the rotten-lightning woman who had crawled up my body in the desert, and I remembered Reina’s response to her statement about storms being a bad sign in the Pit.

  “Wait,” I stated abruptly, putting the pieces together in my mind, “so Gannacleft and his band of blackholes are the Rotten Ruakia?”

  “That’s one name for those caustic controllers of the wind,” Doug answered dramatically. “And Gannacleft is the most sly and wicked of them all, for he’s the author of animosity, the beginning of bitterness, the creator of cruelty, the dawn of darkness, the earliest of evil, the founder of folly, the genesis of ghoulishness, the herald of heinousness, the incarnation of iniquity, the—”

  “Alright,” I interrupted him before I went mad, “you can cool it on the alphabet of alliteration.

  “Sorry, brother,” Doug relented. “I just wanted to get my point across. You see, Gannacleft started this whole mess. Those Rotten Ruakia dug out this dirty world we now know as the Pit, and to top it all off, under the guise of a whimsical wind, Gannacleft cleverly lured our ancestors to the forbidden hill where they tragically fell into the muck of Lake Shale.”

  My mouth dropped. “You mean it wasn’t just an accident?”

  “No, my friend,” Doug lamented, “our fate was no accident. Our destiny was twisted and turned in a direction it was never meant to go. If it weren’t for Gannacleft, our unsullied ancestors may never have gone near that perilous hill, and you and I could be chilling with the Alchemist right now without a care in the world.”

  “But we aren’t,” I relayed the obvious, my downcast eyes looking at Kairou who stared back at me with the sweetest love laid in her galaxy eyes.

  “No we aren’t,” Doug remarked, “but we will be one day, brother. The Domikos has made that much clear to us.”

  The inner wind thus tugged at my heart in an attempt to lift my spirit, but I did not feel like rejoicing in Doug’s spoken truth. For as I floated on the dingy dinghy in an erratic river that flowed to the destination of the ancestors’ death, I felt utterly defeated. This unseen knowledge Doug shared for the future did not give me nearly enough comfort. I wanted my circumstances to be good now, not at some undisclosed time far off from the present, and with Gannacleft seeking our destruction in the wind, I could not see how I would ever reach the Alchemist in the end.

  “So what does the Flame in Lake Shale have to do with Gannacleft?” I asked, trying to get my mind off its depression and back on track with the purpose of this conversation.

  “Apparently, Gannacleft is the Flame,” Doug declared, making things worse in my mind. “I’ve heard that he lives in Lake Shale, and every year when the sun shines down on that dirty, still lake, Gannacleft absorbs its energy, building himself up into a flame with the power of the sun.”

  My eyes widened with great fear as I thought back to the dead man’s words: they are building a vessel for the Flame…a beastly shell for it…to wreak havoc on the Pit…and when they finish…no one will be safe…the world as we know it is doomed…

  “Don�
�t be afraid, my dude,” Doug reassured me. “No fire can take what we have. And besides, the Flame is just a myth. I’ve never talked to anyone who’s actually seen it before, and I myself have been on Lake Shale a bunch of different times without seeing a sign of it. But if you intend to investigate the Flame in Lake Shale for yourself, what you should really be aware of are the Hippo Critters, Litter Gators, and Leeches.”

  “Oh my,” I gasped in a strangely familiar way. “What are those things?”

  “Well, Leeches are the most subtle of these beasts and will suck away your life without you even knowing it. In fact, some people have reported that when a Leech drinks your vitalixir, it transfers its own special elixir that supposedly gives your mind a euphoric bliss. And you’ll die an extra tragic death because you will be happy with what it’s given you. So beware of the Leeches.”

  “What about the Litter Gators?” I asked, moving away from the edge of the boat.

  “The Litter Gators actually serve a good purpose on Lake Shale. As their name indicates, they feed on the trash, the garbage, the waste, and whatever other pollution that finds its way into the filthy lake. In fact, their busy efforts keep the lake as clean as it can be. But the Litter Gators are fierce. Their mouths open wide, and their sword-sharp teeth will rip you to pieces if you get in their way. And if you try to resist, they’ll take you below the surface and spin you around until you drown. So beware of the Litter Gators.”

  Now cuddling with Kairou in the very middle of the boat, I asked Doug about the final beast. “And the Hippo Critters?”

  “The Hippo Critters are much deadlier than the Litter Gators, though you might not think that when you see them. When they’re young, they’re actually quite cute, appearing so happy and innocent, and you would think they would grow up into something harmless. But they grow up to be the most destructive beasts in Lake Shale who serve no good purpose at all. Their insatiable appetites devour whatever lies in their path, and their giant mouths open even wider than the Litter Gators. They will snap you in half if you’re not on guard, which you absolutely must be on guard, for when they’re sleeping on the surface of the water, they simply appear to be smooth rocks. But the Hippo Critters are not what they appear. So don’t be fooled by the Hippo Critters, Benjamin. Beware of them, for if you look closely, you will spot them before it’s too late.”