The Geode King

by H A Tisdale

  “Yes, thank you, Kairou,” I made sure to express my appreciation to the extra sensitive pooch. “And thank you for saving me from Hive’s nasty punches. I’m so grateful you’re still alive.”

  “As am I,” Jedd said, joining the train of affection. “And I know Kokoma would have been devastated without the apple of her eye.” Jedd rubbed Kairou’s head, and her eyes closed as she cuddled on his leg, beyond happy to be reunited with her master.

  “Where did Kairou come from?” I asked now curious to know the origin of this remarkable creature.

  “Kairou was a gift from the Alchemist,” Jedd replied. “And she came to us right when we needed her. After we had endured the storm of our parental loss, Kokoma and I found ourselves in the saddest state of misery, and I desperately wished for something to ease the pain of our aching birthstones. And out of the blue, this mystical man who everyone calls the Mountain Mover showed up at Kokomanor one day.”

  “Oh yeah, Doug told me about the Mountain Mover,” I commented enthusiastically.

  “You met Doug from Love Never Falls?”

  “What’s Love Never Falls?”

  “It’s the name of the village where Doug and the Mountain Mover are from, inspired by the lofty waterfall that cascades off their mountain. And I’m not surprised he didn’t mention its name. Ever since Amphibolious, they’ve tried to keep their village a secret from the Pit.”

  “Yeah, Doug told me about him too,” I responded, thinking back on Doug’s praise for Jedd: through his great wisdom, the Master of Wind drove that vermin out of town for good.

  “That also doesn’t surprise me, for Amphibolious brought about a very dark chapter in Love Never Fall’s history. And that’s the chapter in which the Mountain Mover came to our home and told me of his struggles with that evil man, so I agreed to accompany him back to Love Never Falls where I discovered the truth of his plagued account. We thus foiled the tyranny of Amphibolious, and out of gratitude, the Mountain Mover offered me a little rock to take back to my wife.

  “‘Submerge it in water,’ he said to me, ‘and out of the little rock will come a little blessing whose eyes will appear as galaxies. And she will be a sign to you that the Alchemist not only sees every galaxy but also every single birthstone intricacy. For the Good Gale has seen you and your wife’s many sufferings. He knows well the bitterness in your birthstones, and he wants you to know that everything lost will one day be restored.’

  “So I took the little rock home to Kokoma, and there we watched a baby Kairou emerge from the Dream Stream. Kairou was so darn cute as a puppy. With the most affectionate personality, she zoomed and flopped around with so much eagerness to experience the world. She wanted to meet everybody and chewed on absolutely everything. She took naps often, sometimes on our pile of shoes, but most of the time, she cuddled right between me and Kokoma. Oh man, we loved our little rascal to death.

  “So the Mountain Mover had told the truth. Kairou was our little blessing, our gift from the Alchemist, his sign that our suffering would not go in vain. This meant so much to us, especially to Kokoma whose many woes and miseries extend beyond compare.”

  “Are you saying Kokoma has suffered more than you have?” I asked incredulously.

  “Oh most definitely,” Jedd replied without hesitation, “though you would never know it by the way she composes herself. And it all started when she was just a child. Kokoma grew up in the most beautiful village, filled with countless followers of the Domikos. But even in the good places, no one is safe from evil in the Pit, for one day, a wicked wind blew and brought with it a band of wind-following marauders known as the Mokuren. The Mokuren hate those who follow the Domikos, and without mercy, they burned Kokoma’s village to the ground.”

  “And Kokoma survived that?”

  “Indeed she did, for as the fire ravaged the land, Kokoma found a deep well and hid herself within it until the devastating destruction passed. She was only ten years old at the time, a mere child when everything she knew went up in flames all at once. She lost her siblings, her parents, her grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, friends, teachers, you name it. Besides her, not a single villager survived the raid.”

  “How could she possibly endure such a loss?”

  “She held onto the Domikos,” Jedd reported in awe, “the only thing the flames couldn’t take from her.”

  “Poor Kokoma,” I uttered with more heartache than I could bear.

  “That’s why Kairou meant so much to her,” Jedd explained. “And when Kokoma stared into her galaxy eyes for the first time, she broke down in tears, fully convinced she would see her family again under the stars of the Haven.”

  Kairou opened her eyes from her cuddly position and looked up at me with cosmic affection, triggering my heart to soar as I imagined the Haven and the galaxies that surrounded it. This mystical pooch had come from the Alchemist, the source of all life, and in her eyes, I saw a deep reflection of the universe he had created.

  “Oh, Kairou,” I gushed, “I’ll never look at you the same way again.”

  “I’ll never look at her the same way again either after that crap she took on Hive’s chest,” Jedd remarked, causing us both to laugh just as hard as when she had actually performed the defecation, and Kairou sort of smiled with her tongue sticking out of her mouth. The current conversation seemed to dwindle, so I decided to take our discussion in another direction.

  “Where did these ships come from?” I inquired, though I felt I already knew the answer.

  “These ships belonged to my father,” Jedd declared. “In fact, the Eschaton is the very ship he used in order to look at the sun.”

  “Jiminy Willers, did you ever think you’d end up sailing on the Eschaton in search of the Glorious King?” I questioned in amazement at the trajectory of this story.

  “I never dreamt of it,” Jedd laughed, “though at this point in my life, I should have guessed as much. Things have a way of coming full circle, my friend.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is—“

  Suddenly, a sound began echoing through the misty air. Incoherent chants rumbled from afar, and the rhythm of a foreign tongue quickened ever so steadily. Subsequent sparks of electricity surged through the air, seeming to cause the fog to split in half and retreat to either side of the lake. Visibility increased all around the Eschaton, so Jedd retrieved a golden telescope from his satchel to observe our surroundings. When he could not discover the source of the noise, he handed me the golden device to fulfill the same purpose. Looking through the telescope past the stern of the Eschaton, I saw Hive’s Castle emerge from the foggy shore, and on top of each side tower, two white-haired men stood howling in an unrecognizable language.

  “Oh no,” I breathed as I ascertained what Wick and Devon might be attempting.

  “WHAT THE SHALE IS ON THE WATER?” Gretta yelled boisterously from the middle of the ship. Immediately, everyone scanned the lake in response to her panicked inquiry, and my eyes locked on with the most dreadful of sights. On the far side of the lake where we were headed, a monstrous fire with an anthropomorphic shape emerged out of the trashy depths and began walking towards the Protos, which had almost reached the other end of the lake.

  “Gannacleft’s Flame,” I said under my breath, having witnessed the legendary myth manifest himself out of nowhere. His inner core burned fiercely with a baleful blue as his ember extremities extended out with intense shades of red, orange, and yellow. This king of darkness rose steadily out of the lake, his fiery head looking almost like a crown.

  An audible panic had erupted aboard the Protos, and many prisoners hastened to jump off the ship. Others remained, apparently under the impression they could outmaneuver the roaring inferno, but they could not have been more wrong. Gannacleft’s Flame would reach the twin ship in no time to engorge it with his unquenchable fire. Meanwhile, everyone on the Eschaton watched in anxious anticipation, hoping the Protos would somehow escape the wrath of the Chief Rua
kia.

  Before Gannacleft’s Flame arrived in full form on the ship, the ferocious fire hurled an ember at the Protos to light it up even sooner. Screams of agony pierced the gusty air, and those of us on board the Eschaton looked on in horror at what we imagined would soon be our fate. All of our efforts seemed to have been in vain, and within minutes, I figured we would surely end up as burned ash at the bottom of Lake Shale.

  “Jedd, what do we do?” I cried out hysterically, clinging to his brown garment more afraid than I thought possible.

  Jedd’s eyes were also wide with terror but still focused on the situation at hand. He looked at the burning barque ahead of us before turning to the petrified faces aboard his own ship. At that very moment, the Eschaton passed beneath the hole to the Haven, and a bright beam of moonlight suddenly shined down on our vessel. And as the ship sailed through the stunning light, Jedd slowly looked up through its brilliance to gaze at the moon as his father had gazed at the sun. Jedd then peered down at his feet and stared intently for a moment before closing his eyes in peaceful meditation.

  “Jedd?” I yelled after a few moments unable to appreciate the irregular arrival of the reflecting rock in the sky.

  Jedd’s moonstone eyes reopened, shining far brighter than any eyes I had ever seen in the Pit. “I am not the Glorious King,” he proclaimed in a whisper. He then faced the abominable blaze ahead of him. “BUT I AM THE MASTER OF WIND.” As his lips brought forth these words, he lifted his arms with his trusty staff in hand, and a mighty gale suddenly swooshed around him. “And tonight, the wind is on my side!” With the roar of his words, the swirling wind rushed out from the ship and swept across the lake towards the fiery destruction of the Rotten Ruakia.

  As the swirling wind moved closer to the blazing boat, it spun into an unstoppable whirlwind. The ever-quickening twister hoisted up water from the lake and transformed into a waterspout capable of dousing the mightiest of conflagrations. Jedd kept his hands in the moonlit air, his eyes shining even brighter now as the waterspout came into contact with the Protos just as Gannacleft’s Flame reached it.

  The power of the waterfilled wind proved too strong for the ferocious fire, and the Good Gale triumphed over Gannacleft’s Flame. Indeed, the source of life extinguished the source of death as if it were nothing, but escaping the wrath of the Chief Ruakia came at a terrible cost that night. As soon as the Eschaton moved out from the beam of the moon, Jedd suddenly let out an agonized grunt.

  “Huugghwwahh,” Jedd released from his lungs as he lowered his hands and dropped his staff. I looked away from the salvation of the Protos and saw that a staticky arrow had pierced Jedd’s back and gone straight through his chest where his birthstone dwelled. Unable to hold himself up, Jedd fell backwards, but I lurched forward and caught him just in time before he slammed into the wooden deck.

  Confused and afraid, I picked up Jedd’s golden telescope and peered through it to see who had shot the treacherous arrow, and in the middle and highest tower of Hive’s Castle, my eyes saw another person I had thought I would never see again. In a black gown, Kecelia stood atop the dirt castle with a bow in her hand, having just released the arrow that penetrated Jedd’s birthstone. Her countenance appeared riddled with rage, and her amber eyes possessed a dead glow about them.

  Horrified and shocked by the sight of my former paramour, I quickly turned back to Jedd whose own eyes were now slowly dimming. With tears flowing from my eyes, I wailed, “Stay with me, Jedd, stay with me! We’re going to get you out of here, okay?”

  Jedd struggled to keep his eyes open while Kairou whined wretchedly.

  “We’re more than halfway across Lake Shale, Jedd,” I tried to assure him. “We’re going to bring you home back to your family. We’re going to get you back to Kokoma.”

  At the mention of his beloved wife, Jedd perked up a bit and fixed his moonstone eyes on me. “Tell Kokoma,” he gasped, grimacing in pain as he tried not to cough up vitalixir. “Tell Kokoma…she was the love of my life.”

  “No, Jedd, you’re going to tell Kokoma yourself. We’re going to get you back to her alive and well so that she doesn’t have to lose anyone else in the Pit,” I struggled to utter as my hands spastically threw some sedimentary salve all over his wound.

  Jedd cringed as I rubbed the white cream on his chest and his back, though a little light seemed to return to his eyes. Tears were streaming down my cheeks, and the taste of salt was flooding my mouth. I couldn’t believe what was happening. One second, Jedd was saving us from mortal doom, and the next second, Jedd had a mortal wound.

  “It’s going to be okay, Jedd,” I exhaled pitifully when I looked up and confirmed Gannacleft’s Flame had been fully extinguished. “The Domikos is working everything out for our good.”

  While I continued to attend to Jedd, Reina took control of the ship and steered the vessel near the scorched Protos to retrieve those from the muddy water who had abandoned ship, including the scoffer Sylvester. Those who had stayed on the forsaken vessel received little mercy from Gannacleft’s Flame, though some of them made it away with their lives thanks to Jedd’s bottomless sedimentary salve. The Eschaton then finished its course across Lake Shale where the former prisoners breathed in the freedom that Jedd had delivered them.

  Chapter 19

  Moonlight Chimes

  On the other side of Lake Shale where the Eschaton reached its course, a large herd of Jedd’s Ready Rams had been waiting in the fog for the return of their shepherd. So we quickly mounted the gentle beasts and traveled back by the Dream Stream with Kairou faithfully leading the extensive pack up the windy path towards Kokomanor.

  Sharing the Ready Ram I recognized as Probaton, I rode with Jedd who lay closely in front of me, barely holding on with the shortest of breaths. Reminding him frequently though, I kept Jedd awake with the promise that he would soon see his wife’s beautiful face. And by the goodwill of the Domikos, I can report to you that my promise was kept on that desolate day.

  As we rode up to the cloud covered estate, a gentle rain showered down on the hillside where Kokoma was waiting as if she knew we would be returning any second. Searching for her beloved husband but not immediately seeing him, she frantically scanned the arriving bunch, and my eyes met hers just before she witnessed the arrow protruding out of Jedd’s back. Her zircon eyes filled with water as she rushed over to inspect the severity of her spouse’s fatal wound.

  “Jedd!” she cried, latching onto Jedd as her tears mixed with the rain. She turned to me for an answer. “What happened?”

  Though I wish I could have told her the whole story, I just shook my head, trying to hold back my tears. She could have known then and there how Jedd saved us all with the wind and how that same wind was what allowed Kecelia’s arrow to travel from the tower to his birthstone. But words could do nothing for me in that moment.

  “We have to get him to the hospital wing,” Kokoma clamored hysterically when no explanation came her way.

  “No,” Jedd refused just like the sapphire-eyed man in the amphitheater, “this is my time, Kokoma…this is my time.”

  “No, sweetie,” Kokoma pleaded hopelessly, “I can’t lose you too, not like this.”

  But Kokoma ended up reluctantly consenting to her husband’s final wish, and on the wide frame of Probaton, Jedd summoned the strength to turn almost to his back as Kokoma’s strong arms supported him from gravity’s oppression. Jedd then lifted his weary hand to his wife’s lovely cheek and wiped the bitter tears that flowed out of her like a fountain.

  “My birthstone didn’t know love…until you came into my life,” Jedd relayed with a weak smile. “You are beautiful beyond compare…my breath-giving bride…and I love you…more than the waves love the wind.”

  “I love you too, Jedd,” Kokoma’s voice cracked, sending my heart into pure misery, “more than the moon loves the sun.”

  Kokoma leaned forward and laid her lips upon her dying husband’s forehead, bathing his face with the glistening stream tha
t welled up from the deepest crevice of her birthstone. As her face pulled away, so did the clouds above them, and Jedd’s glassy eyes looked up towards the soft morning light of the cavernous ceiling. A rainbow gently danced around the dispersed clouds as it mixed with the polychromatic rays from the Pit’s natural gems.

  “I can see him, Kokoma,” Jedd attested in a frail but rejuvenated voice. His moonstone eyes lit up with the most indescribable joy, though I could not decide for sure to whom he was referring. Either Jedd was looking upon his one true son, or he was gazing upon his creator’s countenance of glory. Whether Redd or the Alchemist, I understood the joy of his birthstone, even after only knowing him for a relatively short period of time. “I can see him,” he managed to say one last time before breathing his last precious breath.

  And just as I had seen within the sapphire eyes of the man from the amphitheater, Kokoma and I saw the precious light leave Jedd’s moonstone eyes. This time, however, the experience turned out to be far, far worse. Jedd’s birthstone, the inner light that shined through his eyes, the inner lamp that illuminated the Pit for those who could not find their way, had been utterly extinguished by Kecelia’s arrow.

  Holding her fallen spouse’s lifeless body proved too much for Kokoma’s birthstone. The weight of his death seemed to crush her all at once, and she collapsed on his body, releasing the most sorrowful groans imaginable. I looked on with much bereavement as well, and we both wept bitterly over Jedd for what felt like a lifetime. We wanted nothing more than to seek our hidden companion, but death is a game of hide and seek not even the Master of Games could have won.

  At some point in the fog of that terrible occurrence, the rain returned, and Reina approached us gently, seeking to take care of the Pit’s latest widow. For Reina had experienced the death of her husband not too long ago and wanted to be there for Kokoma in the way she wished someone had been there for her.