His parents had drilled into him the horror stories of children who had fallen in old wells in Ohio. The state was littered with hundreds of holes that had never been adequately covered and were dangerous. His parents made sure that he always checked first where he played outside and never played near any old trapdoor just lying in the ground.
During the day, the caves were beautiful, but right now they gave him the impression of being trapped inside an old well.
An involuntary shiver ran up his spine.
They followed Tasha through a maze until they reached a cave with a single, wide opening directly above. A thick electrical cable was strewn on the floor.
“The way to Ormagra,” Tasha announced as she approached a wall. A vein of dark material was imbedded in the wall’s surface and the cable seemed to run into the base of the wall.
Without any other explanation, Tasha stepped into the wall and the black vein engulfed her. Bolswaithe quickly followed. Tony touched the dark material. It reminded Thomas of dark molasses, thick and slimy; it began to run over his finger. Tony walked back with a shudder.
Thomas stepped forward. Tasha and Bolswaithe were already through the vein, so it seemed safe to walk into, but Tony grabbed his arm.
“Wait, kid,” he said. “It might be dangerous. Let’s scout first.” He then turned to Henri and nodded. The Grotesque stepped into the wall after rolling his eyes.
A couple of seconds later, Henri’s claw startled them as it came through the wall waving them to go through.
“Safe, go ahead.” Tony nodded at Thomas who also rolled his eyes. “Come on, Thomas! I’m the rearguard!”
Thomas took a deep breath. There was a cold tingling sensation as the black stuff enveloped him. When he was in transit through the wall, he heard dull noises, whispers and moans, calling from far away, but he resisted the urge to open his eyes. Then, as fast as the cold had enveloped him, it was over and he was in another cave carved out from a dark polished rock.
Dominating the entrance to the cave was a warrior statue made of pristine marble. The statue stood about twenty feet tall. The warrior’s helmet and the sword in his right hand were covered with bronze, and in the other hand he held the severed head of a monstrous creature. Instead of hair, the head had snakes and was locked in a terrible screaming visage.
“Perseus and Medusa,” Bolswaithe told them. “An ancient guardian statue.”
The statue was facing toward Ormagra. Thomas approached the inscription at the base, but before he could read it, Tasha pulled him by the hand to the archway that led into Ormagra.
The entrance spilled into a huge cavern. Strange black structures and buildings were carved on the walls as the city surrounded a chasm that seemed to have no bottom. They followed the electrical cable as it snaked into the ledges that formed the streets of the city. Tasha’s team had mounted scaffolds where the ledges abruptly ended or turned inward into the wall. The walls were cold to the touch, and the large polished bricks were made of obsidian. Yellow lichen grew out from the junctures of the bricks and over any surface it could.
It was like being on the inside of a tube wall. They couldn’t see the roof nor the bottom, and the city grew out from the inside walls. All they could hear was a muted silence broken only by their footsteps.
“Where are we?” Thomas said holding on to Bolswaithe’s arm. Looking at the city structures made him dizzy.
“Deep inside the Earth, I guess,” Tasha answered. She couldn’t suppress her happiness at the find. “Give it a moment. Your mind will adjust.”
Henri and Tony were also supporting themselves against the walls. Statues of tentacled creatures, similar to the one that attacked Thomas in his house, were scattered on the buildings, and a hollow hum reverberated through the ancient city. Some of the shadows and geometries of the buildings played tricks on their eyes. Staircases crisscrossed only to run into solid walls, doors opened directly into the void, handrails laid upside down, domes were intersected by square and pyramid-like structures and bridges and passageways twisted into themselves and ran vertical against the walls. Angles formed intersections that appeared concave from afar only to disappear as they approached, the lines of the structures mixing with each other in a sickening dance. A statue would seem to follow their movement and the tentacles reached out for them as they passed by it. More than once, they turned around, flash rifles at the ready, only to find the statue unchanged.
Only Tasha and Bolswaithe were unaffected by the unnerving architecture.
“Ormagra is lifeless,” Tasha said, “but an echo of the Wraith Magic that created it remains. Two of my techs had to be taken out of the city in stretchers and placed in mental treatment.”
“Will they recover?” Thomas tried to keep his eyes locked on Bolswaithe’s back, but the city seemed to dance on the corners of his vision.
“Hopefully.”
Tasha entered an alcove where two techs dressed in white and wearing thick glasses were working on a computer. Thomas could see the wall of writhing insects on one of the screens.
“That wall is in the room beyond this corridor.” Tasha pointed out a circular tunnel. “We have a remote inside and we are clearing the air and ground from the insects’ waste.”
“The quicker in and out the better,” Tony said. “Is it poisonous?”
Tasha pulled a vial filled with orange liquid from her pocket. She popped open the top and the pungent smell made Tony’s eyes water. “Your call,” he told Thomas.
“You’ll be able to go in without a mask in about three hours,” a tech offered. “If you want to go in right now you can use that.” He pointed at a freestanding rack with gas masks. “But some of the smell seeps through, and the liquid burns the skin like acid.”
Tasha placed a hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “We can wait,” she said. “Meanwhile, there’s something I would like you to help me with.” She turned to Tony and Henri. “You can inspect the surroundings if you want, just don’t go too far away from the lighted trail.”
“I’m okay,” Tony sat down on a chair by the computer and pulled his cap down over his face. He reclined back and put his feet up on a desk.
“I’ll be close by,” Henri offered as he walked out to explore the city.
Tasha led Thomas to the other side of the room where a table was set up with two plastic chairs and a laptop. Bolswaithe kept a respectful distance.
Photographs of wall inscriptions sat on top of the table. Thomas had grown used to seeing every written word in English, but these words seemed to dance in front of his eyes.
“Can you read this?” Tasha sat down beside him.
Words slowly formed in his head. He wasn’t reading them as much as perceiving their meaning. “I think so.”
She gently pushed the laptop toward him. “Can you translate it here?” she asked.
“Tasha,” he said gathering courage. “There’s something I want to talk with you about.”
Tasha placed a finger on his lips. “I know,” she cooed. “They don’t get it, Thomas. They don’t understand me. They think an Elven heart is like that of a human, but we’re different. Our hearts don’t grow cold with age.” She leaned in and kissed him.
It wasn’t the first time Thomas had been kissed, but her lips were so soft it was electric. So different from the girls he’d been with in Ohio.
It felt so much more meaningful than even the first time he’d been kissed – the memory of sitting by the park after class in middle school with Roxanne Sawyer while they waited for their parents to pick them up. Her telling him how she was moving away to another town. His hesitation, and then, the hasty moment when she took the initiative and kissed him, not more than a peck on the lips, before running to her mother, who gave him a sour look. The next day, Roxanne evaded him and he was unsure of how to approach her. That continued until she left a week after that first kiss.
He never saw Roxanne again.
He vowed that with Tasha it would be different and he would
have given anything for that kiss to go on forever, but Tasha pulled back slowly.
“We’ll make them understand, I promise,” Tasha whispered. “Together.” She picked up the photographs and placed them in front of him.
The words flowed into his mind. He tried to grasp the meaning of sentences at first, but it was easier if he just typed in word-by-word on the laptop. He had to backspace, and insert words, but the whole text seemed to be in disorder. Tasha remained by his side intently looking at the screen while Bolswaithe paced around the room.
About two hours later, Thomas leaned back on his chair. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. Translating the Wraith symbols had taxed him in a different way than other texts he’d read. They were a chant or hymn about an ancient God, and the names mentioned in the chants were difficult and almost unnatural to pronounce.
He read it one last time from beginning to end, making sure that it seemed correct before looking at Tasha. “Done” he said. Her eyes were red from reading the computer screen.
“Print it, please,” she said wiping her eyes and standing next to the little printer. She pulled greedily on the paper once the computer printout finished.
“It’s just an old chant,” he told her while she read the paper twice. She turned her back to him, then crumpled the papers in her hand. “What do you want this for?” Thomas asked. He was more interested in continuing their chat about their future than in old inscriptions, but she coughed twice and remained silent for a moment.
“It’s about power…” she finally said.
She turned around; her eyes were red and two streaks of black tears ran down her cheeks. Her beautiful face had contorted into a grimace, and Thomas felt a tingling sensation as she held up a hand. A ball of crackling black lightning formed on her palm. “Absolute power,” she said in a deep, distorted voice.
Bolswaithe lunged at her, but the ball in her hand exploded and she vanished.
The room went dark.
“Thomas! Thomas!” Tony’s light-rifle lit up the room. The only other sources of light were the burning photographs Thomas had been working on.
“I’m here!” Thomas stood up from behind the chair. The techs and Bolswaithe turned on their own light-rifles. Bolswaithe’s hair and face were singed by Tasha’s magic. Had he been human instead of machine, he’d probably be in a lot of pain.
The female tech used a fire extinguisher on the burning papers. The laptop and the printer that had been the target of Tasha’s attack were half melted over the table.
“You okay, Bolsy?” Tony checked on Bolswaithe after seeing Thomas safe and sound. He tried to comb the butler’s singed hair. He held up his hand in front of the butler’s face. “How many fingers, buddy?”
The situation might have been comical if Tony’s concern hadn’t been so real. Thomas remembered that he didn’t know that Bolswaithe was a robot.
Bolswaithe gently pushed Tony’s hand down; his own hand trembled a little. “I’m quite all right, sir,” he said laconically. “And please call me by my full name.”
“Sure, Bolswaithe,” Tony said. “You’re a tough cookie, you know?” Tony gave Thomas a worried stare. “Stay with him, Thomas.”
“The magic interfered with the electrical feed,” a male technician said. “The effect should dissipate in a short time.”
“What happened?” Henri entered the room scanning the corners.
“Tasha went mad,” Thomas said as he picked up a half-burnt photograph. “I translated these photos and she went mad by reading them.”
“And how do you feel?” Bolswaithe picked up another photograph. His movements seemed erratic.
“I’m fine,” Thomas told them. “They aren’t as easy to read as other things, but I wasn’t affected at all.”
“Where’d you take these pictures?” Tony showed the techs the half-burnt photos.
“On the altar by the largest central spire,” a girl answered. “On the other side of the chasm.”
“We should get out of here,” Tony said.
Suddenly, a scream was heard. “Wraith sign!” the male tech yelled pointing his light-rifle at a corner. A dark spot that wouldn’t fade with the light began to grow out from the middle of the angle.
The tech fumbled with the dial on his light-rifle, but before he could get the right frequency, half a dozen creatures emerged from the rift.
The creatures were dented spheres covered with suckled tentacles. Dark, greedy eye-slits opened along the slimy tentacles, and a mouth with row-upon-row of serrated teeth burst open from the middle of their bodies. They latched themselves over the doomed technician and there was just a muffled cry as they consumed him, grinding his bones in their jaws.
“I got these ones!” Tony yelled pointing his gun at the creatures. The gun cycled and then locked on a yellow light stream and ashes filled the room as the creatures vaporized.
Henri had a more direct approach – he closed in on another corner of the room were a rift was forming and waited for the creatures to emerge. They exploded under his claws as soon as they came out from the rift.
“The lights are coming back!” the female technician screamed. The reflectors and bulbs flickered to life. She moved a dial and the whole room was bathed in yellow light. Hisses of pain came from the creatures as the rifts began to close. The ones already inside the room turned to ash upon exposure to the light.
The computer turned on, and Thomas saw a figure standing inside the room of insects. He couldn’t see the face of the person, but only a Cypher could understand the sign, and the only other Cypher was his grandfather.
“More incoming!” Henri yelled from the door. He peeked outside and saw more creatures running through the streets. The creatures stopped short of the lights outside, testing them with their tentacles, and letting out grunts of pain when the light vaporized their skin. Soon, the entire trail was surrounded with creatures.
“Take the right side!” Tony screamed to the female tech as he stepped outside with the Gatling gun and began firing on the approaching creatures. Shrieks of pain echoed throughout the city.
Bolswaithe reclined against a chair. As Thomas held him, he could feel the butler’s arms trembling and heard the soft whirring of mechanisms when he helped him to sit down.
“I’m mostly shielded from Magic,” Bolswaithe whispered, “but some systems need rebooting, and I need to contact the Doctor.” His eyes glazed over as he became rigid.
With Bolswaithe out of commission and Tony and Henri covering the entrances, there was only one thing Thomas could do.
“Let’s go, Thomas,” Tony called but there was no answer. “Thomas!” he looked back into the room but he only saw Bolswaithe. The Butler was still frozen in place.
The Other Cypher
The tunnel walls were cold to the touch and completely smooth, and Thomas remembered that Tasha had drilled it out with a laser beam. The wall vibrated softly under his fingers as he walked through the tunnel.
The tunnel opened into a larger chamber; Tasha’s reflectors illuminated the room completely. Three of the walls were covered in strange depictions of creatures with short, stubby wings and tentacles where their eyes should be. The far side wall was completely covered by moving white insects.
The man Thomas had seen on the screen was standing right in front of the moving, insect wall.
As soon as Thomas entered the room, the insects abruptly stopped their movements and fell down from the wall. They scurried from the floor or over the walls, disappearing into tiny cracks and seams.
Thomas hesitated. “Gramps?” he called out. He was about to hug him when he realized that the man was too young to be his Grandfather.
The man finally turned around, and instantly, Thomas attacked with a high kick directly at his head. The man ducked and Thomas followed with a kick to the torso, which he connected with all his strength.
The moment his leg made contact, a flood of feelings and memories seemed to explode in his head.
; Tranquility, then movement, muffled voices, like those heard when swimming underwater. Then hunger and fear, followed by peace and happiness, all in utter darkness. They were sharp and clear, and felt like memories, but they weren’t his own.
They lasted just a fraction of a second but were seared on his brain.
The man fell backward holding his stomach. He was dressed in brown leather from head to toe in medieval style clothing. Thomas recognized the symbol of the Azure Legion in the blue and black medallion hanging from a chain around his neck.
“What the hell was that?” the man yelled rubbing his head. He was in his early thirties and didn’t look that much older than Tony.
Thomas stood over the man, ready to kick him again if he made a sudden move. “Where’s my Grandpa?” he yelled.
The man groaned. “Your teacher wasn’t kidding when he said that you kick like a mule.”
Thomas leaned over the man ready to punch him. His voice and face were eerily familiar.
“Where’s Morgan Byrne?” Thomas demanded. “What have you done with him?”
The man held both of his hands up. “It’s me,” he said. “Don’t you recognize me?”
Thomas stepped away, confused. He sounded like grandpa, but he couldn’t be. “Where is he?” he yelled again ready to punch. He tried to remember the pictures his grandpa had shown from his wedding and days in the army.
“It’s me, I tell you!” The man stared at him and Thomas recognized the eyes of his grandfather. The soft look in his gray eyes. It had to be his grandfather.
“It’s really me, Tom.” The way he said his name left no doubt that this man was really his grandpa, only forty years younger.
Morgan stood up supporting himself with a hand. “I could tell you a thousand stories from when you were a baby to convince you.”
The Cypher Page 15