Eden, Dawn

by Archer Swift

  Chapter 37

  My time was up. Gone.

  Walk on then in the wind

  Walk on then in the rain

  Even if your dreams are tossed and torn

  Walk on then, keep hope in your heart

  For you’ll ne’er be alone

  No, you will ne’er walk alone

  Stupid song!

  I was alone. On my knees. My last glimmer of hope snuffed out in the hate-filled chants of a mob charmed by a charlatan. Accused of treachery by the very man who sold us out. Ironic tragedy. Wicked drama. I took no delight in the knowledge that at some point in the future, Dylain would be exposed for his betrayal. Thinking he would be the ruler of our people, he would be the first to die at Xakanic’s hand.

  A deal with the Devil always ends that way. And it always costs you more than you bargained for.

  I could find no pleasure in his demise—it would only signal the end of everyone I cared about.

  With the maniacal grin of a warlock about to disembowel a small animal, Dylain drew his steel, a long-bladed hunting knife, and held it aloft to the crowd and an instant, explosive roar of approval. I hadn’t even noticed the blade, even though no one was supposed to carry a weapon into our gatherings. Clearly, he was above the law now.

  “Today, I usher in a new rule, sealed by a traitor’s blood!” The rhetoric was trite and dangerous at the same time. The spilling of blood to herald a new day, a ruse to silence me and any information I had acquired from my encounter with Shumbalic.

  I swallowed hard and blinked my eyes. The bright rays of sunlight glistened off the razor-sharp blade.

  Amid the commotion, a strange hissing noise slowly caught my ears, not quite the sibilation of a snake; more like the wheezing gasp of a geyser. Sharp and loud. Everywhere. Inside me, and all around me. My headache had only deteriorated during the kangaroo-court justice I’d endured; it was now pounding like a drum clobbered by a thousand drumsticks. Perhaps, the racket was something ringing in my ears.

  Maybe I’ve burst an eardrum. Or I’m losing my mind.

  I whisked my head from side to side, trying to shake the agitating sound. Still, the hissing grew louder. What is that? I dug my fingers into my ears to alleviate the discomfort, trying to silence the relentless drone. Only when the rabble demanding my life grew quieter, a restless quiet, did I realise it wasn’t a sound for my ears only.

  “What’s that? Do you hear that?” The timbre of Ruzzell’s voice was wound tight.

  For a fleeting few seconds, the vast gathering area was filled with nothing but our collective breathing.

  “It’s coming from the trees behind the Mzees.” A voice I couldn’t identify broke the edgy silence.

  “Nah, it’s from the opposite end.” Cainn’s voice.

  “Gag! It’s coming from every side,” said a distraught tone I recognised as Shawz’s.

  “Dylain, what’s going on?” I heard Sarah ask.

  “What is it?”said several voices as panic began to grip a tense crowd.

  I caught a look of uncertainty on Dylain’s face, just for a second, as he tried to hunt down the source of the noise. His bluster and bravado had vanished like a conjurer’s magic coin.

  The unpleasant smell came next, a pungent, gaseous odour that burnt the nose at first whiff.

  “Ouch! Smell that?”

  “Ow, gag! That’s nasty!”

  “Dank dude! Did you fart?”

  A few nervous chuckles were quickly throttled by the growing trepidation.

  “What the hell is going on?!” Dylain squirmed under his breath, betraying his own confusion, but no one seemed to notice.

  “Look!” I heard someone scream, followed by gasps and shrieks and yelps.

  I looked up and rubbed my eyes; lifting my view above the trees encircling us. Smoke was rising from two, four, six … no, eight points around the field. It was certainly the source of the odour; the hissing continued but I couldn’t see the contraptions, hidden from view, creating the noise and coughing the smoke into the air.

  It was threateningly peculiar, oddly fascinating. As the smoke ascended into the air, all around the open field, it became darker and thicker instead of lighter and thinner. Aside from the nasty smell, which no longer stung the nose, for a few minutes, the spectacle held the entire crowd spellbound. The special effects assuaged the initial jumpy tension and gave way to a less perturbed atmosphere of oohs and aahs.

  “Wow! Look at that!”

  “It’s smelly but impressive!”

  “Hey, Dylain; you planned this?” I heard Ruzzell ask. “It’s awesome, man! How?”

  Cainn looked more perplexed, and I watched as he cut Dylain a hard look. “Is this from … from the old geyser? When did you go see him without—?”

  “What old geyser?” asked Ruzzell, his face skewed by surprise and annoyance. “Who’s he talking about, Dylain?”

  Whoops! Not everyone’s in the loop.

  “Yeah, um … um…” Dylain said rubbing his left hand on his upper thigh; a slight tremble took hold of his right hand in which he clutched his knife. With his jaw slack, the colour slowly drained from his face. While I didn’t know who the ‘old geyser’ in question was, I was pretty confident Dylain, like me, knew who was responsible for this ominous display of smoke. I wasn’t exactly sure what they were up to, but it was certainly their handiwork.

  Your dance with the Devil always ends quicker than you think.

  “Dyl, what the heck’s going on?” asked Cainn, his underbite jutting out in a bulldog growl.

  Dylain was as white as a sheet. His mouth flapped open and closed; for the first time, he was rendered speechless.

  Ruzzell’s eyes flicked agitatedly between Dylain and Cainn; it was clear that he was not included within the innermost circle of trust and treachery. I was tempted to poke fun at his exclusion, to point out that he was merely a flunky, not a king; however, this was not the time for small-minded games.

  Once the wall of smoke, encircling the field, reached about two hundred strides high, forming a dark, dense smoke tube around us; at the top, it changed direction, pulling inwards from every side, as if coerced by a centripetal force. The penny dropped for me; in reluctant awe, I now knew precisely what was happening. And I wasn’t the only one.

  “Wow! It’s closing like a roof over us,” I heard someone say.

  “Yeah, like … like we’re under a giant cup…” said another.

  Someone else finished off the sentence, “…about to be trapped.”

  “Trapped?!” squealed any number of voices at once.

  “Oh, gag!” A terrified, tortured tenor tore through the air. “It’s ... it’s going to block out the sun!”

  “What?!” gasped several in petrified unison.

  “NOOOO!!!!”

  Abruptly, we were plunged into pitch darkness, like the closing of a coffin lid. We could see it happening before our eyes, but when it did, it seemed so sudden, so shocking … one moment we were gleaming in the bright, midday sunlight, the next we were swallowed up in the darkest night in the middle of the day. It was like someone walked over in full view and turned out the lights.

  Blackness. Total.

  The panic-stricken screams were enough to make a brave man tremble, and I was sure that most, if not all, now had an inkling of who was behind this.

  Our mortal enemies.

  Them.

  I heard an almighty commotion behind me, as shrieking people tripped over each other; in a riotous frenzy: colliding, pushing, bashing—driven by frantic fear, blinded by smothering darkness. Chaotic panic. Someone squealed close by … and the sounds of shoving, striking, stomping buffeted my ears. I couldn’t see anything in the pitch-black, and remained fixed to my spot on my knees. Fists clenched in a boxer’s brace, shielding myself from being run over, determined not to be trampled upon.

  The blackout persisted for what seemed an eternity and the only noise besides the panic-stricken clamour of the crowd was the relentless,
droning wheeze of the machines belching smoke into the air. Then merciful relief from the enforced blindness came as eight small purple balls streaked into the space well above our heads. Like inverted flashes of lightning, they scorched my dilated pupils at first. I wasn’t sure where they were launched from, but they seemed to get stuck, suspended magically, a hundred strides in the air. And once in position, they began to grow.

  What the…? Geez! They’re growing!

  The shade of purple was unmistakable, the same colour as the light from Miltredic’s chest crystal, only a hundred times more powerful. The orbs immediately illuminated our Gathering Place in an eerie, electric-purple lustre. I cast my sore eyes around the area. Several bodies lay unmoving on the ground, trodden over by frenzied friends in the pitch-dark bedlam.

  A few of us had simply held our position; all the Mzees had, and so had Judd. Dylain had crawled under the table he had pranced upon just minutes ago. The rest of the crowd was huddled in the centre of the field, one giant mass of terrified arms, and legs, and heads, and torsos. I ran over to the mangled body closest to me, flattened by frightened friends, to see if I could resuscitate him or her … him!

  Jordi! No! Oh, God, no!

  He wasn’t breathing, and I couldn’t feel a pulse. “No!” I slammed my fist into the ground.

  I’m so sorry, Victor.

  Kneeling beside his body, I checked his vitals again. And a third time. The tormented look of agony that stretched his face into a frozen, terrified rictus told me that he died as he had lived. In absolute dread. I closed his eyes and chewed on my lip.

  As the hovering purple lights overhead grew brighter—they now appeared to be at full-size, roughly four times as big as a soccer ball—those jumbled in the centre fanned out slightly, as the mad hysteria eased into a curious, fearful apprehension. I saw at least eight … no; nine other mangled bodies scattered around the field. Two of them looked to be moving, showing signs of life.

  “Hey, check on them and—!” I yelled, but I didn’t get to finish my sentence.

  The deafening sound of applause crashed over us, ricocheting around the field. At first, the sound seemed to come from a hundred pairs of clapping hands. In seconds, however, it was clear that the reverberation emanated from the pair of just one set of hands. Powerful, enormous hands. Through the wall of smoke directly behind Dylain’s cowering hunk under the table entered the ugliest creature I had ever seen. He clapped in mock applause, and his whole body shook in delirious laughter.

  Xakanic!

  A fevered chill ran down my spine.

  He bestrode a square platform with elaborate gold railings adorned with purple, green, blue and red jewels, carried on the shoulders of four large, straining male Zikalic warriors. Dressed in a blazing purple robe with striking red and green stripes, a massive scimitar hung from a richly ornamented baldric across his trunk. Open at the chest; his torso was covered in bristling, black hair as was his bare arms, legs and neck.

  He was shocking on the eyes. Utterly.

  While his body itself was slender, his arms, hands, legs, feet and head were gigantic, yet still his ears, eyes and nose were drastically bloated out of all proportions, defying imagination. His mouth was so wide; he appeared to have no cheeks, and his large, protruding eyes made him look deranged, interchanging between red and purple and various hues in between.

  I hate him!

  Ten years of hate finally found a mark.