Meridias

  As they approached Tanis quietly said, “Looks like some something tore right through this place.” He pointed towards several long gashes in one of the walls.

  “Yeah...” Alicia said in agreement. For whatever reason they all felt subdued by this place. Elunduil wasn’t sure what it was but something in the air spooked him as if some terrible battle or event had taken place here long ago. He took a breath to calm himself and surveyed the rest of the structure. It was large. Probably about as big as a football field in size. Looking up Elunduil spotted remnants of upper floors and walkways. If there had been a roof on this building it had been ripped to shreds and fallen to the floors below a long time ago. As they got closer to the ruins he spotted the remains of a doorway. Much like the rest of the building the area around the door was torn to shreds. “Dahyen couldn’t have done this and the marks are to small and precise for a Behemoth to have done. I’m not sure if there’s any creature alive on Meridias today that could’ve done this,” Cerra said in a hushed voice.

  The group warily proceeded through the doorway and stopped dead when they passed through the threshold. Tanis saw that there were what looked to be terminals and loose circuitry from ripped panels in the walls. There were four corridors in various states of disarray branching off from this room. Cerra stepped forward and examined one of the terminals. After a time she said, “... it’s similar to what we have but this circuitry is beyond our capabilities! I’m not sure how it’s supposed to be powered.” Elunduil stepped forward and examined it. “Hey try using magic,” Tanis suggested. Cerra nodded and put her palm to the panel. Several moments passed but nothing happened. “It’s too damaged,” Cerra said with a sigh. “I suppose our first priority should be clearing out the Dahyen so that there’s something left to salvage.” Everyone agreed as they looked around the room.

  “Let’s go to the left!” Tanis said as he walked towards the right. Elunduil pointed out his mistake. “Shut up! I know what I meant!” He replied with red cheeks. Everyone chuckled and they proceeded down the corridor with Tanis in the lead. They kept their eyes open for any Dahyen in the area. While walking past one section of the wall that part of the corridor lit up. “Woah!” Tanis exclaimed. The group paused and stepped back from the section and the lights dimmed. Tim stepped into the section and again the area lit up. “Huh, must be triggered by motion. Neat!” he said. The group continued on and occasionally passed through a working segment. They also passed by many sealed doors that appeared to have no interface to open them. Eventually the group came to a circular room with a damaged apparatus hanging from the ceiling. “Wonder if this works?” Elunduil mused.

  “It could be dangerous!” Alicia warned as he approached the device. He reached up a hand and concentrated magical energy to it, then released it into the device. Nothing happened at first but then there was a flash of light and Elunduil looked about cautiously. A very real looking image of some sort of robot stood on the floor. “What is it?” Tim and Tanis asked. Elunduil shrugged. The robot appeared to be heavily armored and had wings on its back. He reached forward and touched the wings and suddenly the hologram began to move. “Agzos!” Garbled words of some kind emitted around them. The hologram began focusing on parts of the robot and a foreign language appeared next to the parts. There was a letter that looked like a triangle and the rest... was gibberish. “These are specifications or something,” Felras said from the back of the group. The image panned around to the wings. They were short and stubby at first but suddenly golden energy shot forth from them and Elunduil understood. “I bet you that all of that is magical energy,” he said.

  “That would make sense, but raw magical energy in such high concentrations is normally colorless, like waves of heat in the desert. Maybe this was a new kind of energy?” Cerra speculated. They watched for a while longer then Tanis said, “Can these things record data? If that projector fails then nobody else will get to see this.” Everyone turned to their devices and looked for a way to record or take a picture of what they were seeing. The hologram flickered and with a sense of urgency Elunduil went to the scan feature and pointed his device towards the hologram. His device scanned the hologram. The projector system beeped and suddenly something was happening to his APL Device. Symbols in that foreign language scrawled across his screen at an incredible rate. He looked up and saw that everyone else was experiencing the same thing.

  The symbols finally stopped moving across the screen and Elunduil looked up. The symbols on the hologram started changing! He nudged Felras and together they saw the foreign language change into words that they recognized: Project A.R.C.H.A.N.G.E.L. “An advanced form of tech-" A male voice started to say loudly. Suddenly the projector cracked and hissed and the image faded. “You guys saw that right?” Tanis said in disbelief.

  “Uh huh,” The group responded.

  “Archangel? Was that thing some sort of weapon?” Tim asked. Elunduil shrugged then turned about when he heard shuffling in the distance. Everyone else turned to look. “Dahyen!” Cerra said in a harsh whisper. “They must’ve heard that loud voice talking!” Elunduil heard Tanis draw his sword. He would’ve followed suit but the area they were in was too small for his sword considering the sword’s dangerous power: to send what it touched back to its weakest state. Instead he raised a hand and felt Cerra and Tim activate their conduits. A grotesque lizard-like creature with a flat face and two slits for a nose appeared. Its skin was rough and leathery in appearance and its large eyes sparked with a malevolent intelligence. It had long, spindly legs that moved in such a disturbing way that Elunduil was certain would’ve been a disjointed socket for a human. It screeched at them and tumbled back the way it came.

  “After it!” Tanis commanded. The group followed the Dahyen at a brisk pace through the broken hallways. The Dahyen led them through gaps in the wall and in confusing twists and turns that led Tanis to believe that the creature was luring them somewhere. Moments after that thought had crossed his mind the Dahyen darted down a broken hallway and through a doorway to a room. Everyone gave each other a glance then cautiously followed the creature. The room that they entered was vast. Peering up one could see the trees above and faint illumination from what little of the sun’s rays got through them. Looking at the floor Tanis could see large pieces of metal which he assumed had once made up the roof. They jutted across the landscape making it hard for him to see the entire room at once. This is where the Dahyen were sure to strike. Should they spring the trap?

  Tanis nudges Tim and Elunduil and points to potential hiding spots. They nod and he motions the group forward. They proceed at a wary pace towards the piece of metal. Occasionally there is a shuffling sound which causes them to look about warily. As they got close to the metal shard Tanis spots another crevice in the ground. Then another. He quietly points them out to the others and they continue to the shard. As they come close to the shard the creatures strike. At least half a dozen Dahyen leap up from the holes and crevices around them. Tanis fends them off with his sword and feels a gust of wind behind him. He looks in time to see several Dahyen fly into the air as Elunduil knocks them away with magic. One got unlucky and is cut open as it flies into the metal shard it had leapt from. Dark blood splatters across the metal.

  Tanis turns his attention back to his comrades and saw several dead Dahyen around them. The rest of the creatures fled back to the shadows. “You know I was expecting more,” Tanis said disappointedly. “There was barely even a dozen of them. Besides Dahyen are about as frail as their appearance suggests. They typically win with superior numbers,” Cerra said with a look of disdain. “Anyway, we should probably chase the rest down.” Everyone agreed and they pursued the Dahyen. The creatures fled across the large room and into a hallway on the other side. As Tanis and the others followed them down the hall he felt the floor give away. He heard the others cry out in alarm and they tumbled down to the floor below.

  Tanis quickly recovered from the tumble. In the gloom he saw Elunduil wincing as
he stood on his right leg. “Everyone okay?” he heard Tim ask from the shadows nearby. He heard everyone murmur that they were okay. “Uh... how are you going to get out?” Felras asked from above. They looked up and saw that Felras hadn’t fallen with them. He must’ve been far enough back that he’d managed to stop himself before he’d reached the crumbling floor. “Find the knight! I’m sure she can help us out!” Elunduil called up to his brother. Felras nodded and ran back down the way they had come. As his footsteps faded away in the distance Elunduil couldn’t help but be worried for his brother’s safety. Hopefully the few Dahyen that remained were too afraid of them to attack Felras.

  He turned his attention back to the others and conjured a light in his hand so that they could see. “Oh, that’s much better!” Alicia said with relief.

  “Are you afraid of the dark?” Elunduil teased. Alicia’s face turned red.

  “N-no! We just have no idea what’s down here that’s all!” Elunduil chuckled and looked around. It looked like they were in some sort of basement. There was a wall nearby and Elunduil noticed that there appeared to be stone carvings of mounted on them. Curious he went over to the wall, being careful to mind his tender knee. The first carving was heavily damaged and he couldn’t discern what had been depicted on it. On the next one he could discern tall humanoid figures looking up... at something. The rest of the carving was too damaged to tell anything more. The third carving was completely ruined. The fourth one showed... “That’s a Terminus!” he said in surprise. It looked exactly like the black Terminus they had seen on their arrival. “These people must’ve created the Terminus’ then...” Tanis said in awe.

  “Yes, but something awful happened to them,” Cerra said with sorrow in her voice. Everyone turned to look at her. “The only thing we know is that they were an ancient race, probably from another world. We don’t know why they are no longer here, but we’d always thought that they had left our world. Looking at the state of this building makes me wonder if something more sinister happened.”

  They moved on to the next carving. Elunduil recognized the figure on it. “Project A.R.C.H.A.N.G.E.L.” he whispered. This carving was different though. The style and the level of detail was completely different. It was as if someone else had made it and... “I sense a strong magic on this one,” he said. This one had been intentionally preserved by someone, but why? He gazed over the rest of the carving. It showed Archangel in the air with some sort of energy sword. What was it going to fight? For some reason he was compelled to touch the carving and reached towards it. When he touched the carving he felt a surge of energy from the carving pass into him and his mind went blank.

  The next thing he knew he was floating in the air. He heard something behind him and turned. A large figure of metal flew past him and he flinched for fear of being hit. When he looked back up he saw the figure had paused in the air... it was Archangel. The golden energy emanating from his wings was keeping him aloft. Elunduil gulped. The robot was huge! At least four stories tall if not more! It looked damaged though. Like it had been fighting something. It raised its sword arm and pointed it towards something in the distance. Elunduil couldn’t make out all the details from here but it was something black. He sensed a massive build-up of energy from Archangel and the sword disappeared. A few moments later a massive beam of this gold energy shot forth from Archangel and exploded on the black object in the distance. Elunduil was blinded and shut his eyes. When he opened them he found that he was on the ground in the ruins.

  “Are you alright?” Alicia asked with a concerned look. Elunduil nodded and got up. “I saw Archangel. It flew past me and shot a beam of the golden energy at some black thing in the distance,” he said.

  “Maybe it was a vision of the past that had been stored in this carving because when you touched it all traces of the magic on it vanished,” Tim said. Elunduil looked to the carving. Tim was right. The magic on the carving had disappeared. “Hey you guys alive down there!” A female voice called from above. The group rushed back to the hole in the ceiling. “Yeah! Can you get us out of here?” Tanis called up to the knight. Her response was to throw down a rope. One by one Elunduil and the others climbed out of the hole and then they relayed what had happened to the knight. “Are your APL devices still functioning,” she asked when they were done telling their story. Elunduil looked down and pressed on the screen. Nothing happened. “Mines locked up,” he said. The others confirmed that theirs was in the same state.

  “I see... there must be so much data that it’s taking up all the memory. Not to worry we’ll take your devices for analysis and give you new ones,” the knight said. After that they made their way out of the ruins and back to the Terminus. Alicia noticed that Elunduil was slightly hobbling. “Are you okay?” she asked with concern.

  “I hit it on the way down after the floor collapsed. It’ll be alright once we go to Earth,” he replied with a shrug. “Let me see what I can do,” Alicia said and she knelt down. She took a deep breath and put a hand on his knee. After a few moments Elunduil sensed her activating her conduits and he felt a warmth flowing into his knee. Before he knew it she was done and he shook his leg a few times. “Huh, Thanks!” he said. Alicia blushed.

  “You’re welcome.” The group gathered around the Terminus and the knight used her APL device to activate it. The world around them distorted and like before they suddenly changed locations. This time Elunduil was glad to see the lobby of Ragnarok. The female knight retrieved a bin and Elunduil and the others took off their APL devices and put them in. Another knight came and gave them new devices so that they could store their items. Elunduil was about to store his robe when he felt the Terminus activate behind him. He looked about and saw a distortion around the pillar. In the next moment Maria, Daniel, and Dave appeared. They seemed to be in good spirits. Elunduil guessed that their quest had been successful.

  “Woah! Look at that robe!” Daniel called out when he spotted Elunduil staring. Elunduil silently cursed and hit the button on the screen of the APL device. The robe dematerialized into the device. “Was that what you got from you quest?” Dave asked. Elunduil shook his head.

  “It was... a gift,” he replied. He didn’t dare say any more than that. Dave nodded.

  Maria was beside herself. A blue robe? Elunduil was practically mimicking The Firewall Flower. Heck from where she had been standing she saw that the robe had even had a four-petal flower on the back of it. It pissed her off. Not only was he better at magic but now he was just rubbing it in. She wasn’t going to stand for it anymore! “So, Elunduil I see you’re copying the legend again. Can’t think of anything original, can you?” she said in a mocking tone. Elunduil appeared unperturbed by her words. “You may be able to use a firewall flower but I bet you can’t use ice as well. I challenge you to a contest of magic. I will be here, tomorrow. There’s a river that this Terminus can take us to. Of course I understand if you’re too afraid of losing to show up.” Elunduil looked at her with calculating eyes.

  “Ok,” he said with a shrug and left without another word.

  Daniel looked at Maria with shocked eyes. “Wow you’ve got some guts!” he said with admiration. “I’m going to beat him at his own game. Bring him down a level,” Maria replied. There was a fire in her eyes that the brothers had never seen before. “Well I’m sure you can win! Ice element magic is your thing!” Daniel said with a smile. Dave nodded in agreement and Maria gave them a wane smile. She appreciated the vote of confidence and was reminded these two were her best friends. Now all she had to do was go home and wait.

  ***

  Ark had been watching Elunduil and his friends as they went into the ruins. He’d considered entering the derelict building but he wasn’t ready to face his creator just yet. He waited until Elunduil’s group left before jumping into the ruins with feline grace. From what he’d been told by the Knights of Ragnarok these ruins belonged to an ancient and advanced civilization. Perhaps he might find a way here to restore Elunduil. He glided t
hrough the ruins with nary a sound, occasionally pausing when he found some functional technology in the hopes of finding information. Nothing he found had any information that he could even decipher until he came what appeared to be a central computer room. There were large displays and key panels in the room. Some of them were damaged beyond repair but one console was still intact. Ark attempted to turn it on but nothing happened. He took off the metal casing and peered inside and found that there were missing parts. Ark ventured to the other machines and pried open the metal casing with ease. He scavenged the parts he needed and returned to the intact console.

  Ark had minor difficulties getting the parts in place and when he succeeded the console hummed to life. He went to the key panel and paused. How was he supposed to know what these buttons did? He hit a few buttons at random and several symbols appeared on the screen. Ark sighed. Suddenly the symbols started to change into words. Little did Ark know that the machine was integrating the data that the hologram projector had downloaded from Elunduil’s group earlier. The words on the screen read: Primary Database Online. Ark moved to navigate the console but suddenly the screen went blank.

  He hears something moving around below him. Ark raises his right arm and the upper-half becomes an arm cannon. He charges up his weapon and fires at the floor and blows a hole through it. He peers into the hole and determines that there is a 16-foot drop. He leaps down and as he is falling he spies a group of Dahyen gathered around a large metal sphere. When he hits the ground he sees that they are pulling out smaller spherical objects from the large sphere. Ark quickly surmises that the large sphere was the central core that held all the information and the small spheres were crucial processors of some sort, or possibly smaller data cores. Either way he needs them back.