Sky Jewel Legacy- Heritage

by Gregory Heal

  Both Jen and Victor shook their heads before Hephalon, slightly tempted, agreed to leave the keg and invited them to tour his factory instead.

  The night had turned very dark as the group walked across the yard to the metallurgy; Jen was constantly surprised at that, given she had grown up around and attended New York University, which had noticeable light pollution at night. She felt like she had stepped into one of her old history books and was actually experiencing the Middle Ages.

  Skarmor called out in delight when he saw his friends come outside. Jen had never seen Skarmor this happy, lounging in front of the cottage with Pernissa. He jumped up and bounced over to her and Victor, making high-pitched noises as if he were trying to tell them everything he and Pernissa had talked about. Jen laughed while she petted him before Skarmor went to Victor.

  “Oh really?” Victor played along. “That’s so interesting, Skar.” He petted the griffin’s neck as he tried to calm him down. “We’re heading into the Heph’s factory now, so why don’t you go back to your conversation with Pernissa?”

  Skarmor chirped and trotted back to where his friend was sitting preening herself.

  By then, Hephalon had made it to the factory’s door and now held it open for Victor and Jen.

  After the trio had entered and the door was closed shut, Skarmor and Pernissa’s eagle ears picked up a noise near the perimeter as they caught the tail-end of a small creature scampering behind a bush near the tree line.

  Playfully, they both got up and stealthily began investigating.

  Inside, the metallurgy looked much bigger than what Jen had expected.

  Hephalon placed Jen’s orb on the nearest workbench and plucked a leather apron off a hanger near the door. Putting it on, he lumbered over to the central blast furnace to check on the fire. It was all but embers, so he slid on some welding gloves and picked up a large shovel, tossing in a heaping pile of coal, which turned the embers into a roaring fire almost instantly and sent heat outward in all directions. At first, the heat felt surprisingly good, but before Jen knew it she was sweating. Victor slid off his thick cloak and hung it on a free hanger.

  “Welcome to where the true magic happens!” Hephalon raised his hands high as he gestured to his domain. The fire grew larger behind him, silhouetting his form and making him look like a movie villain who’d just explained his fool-proof plan for world domination.

  “Toasty!” Jen had to yell to be heard over the fire and machinery, but she heard Victor snicker behind her.

  As Jen wiped her forehead with the end of her sleeve, she looked around. There was a workbench pushed up against each wall which held smelting and casting tools along with pieces of metal that Jen assumed were current projects.

  “Heph built this factory with his own hands—with the help of some terramancy—once he made Mystra,” Victor said.

  “This is my true home.” Hephalon inhaled the smoky, hot air. “That other place?” He jutted a thumb at the cottage. “That’s just where I sleep and entertain.”

  Hephalon led Jen and Victor around the blast furnace, showing off some casts he had made for new tools and weapons. Then, at the other end of the factory, he opened a door and invited them inside a darker and slightly cooler room.

  Thank you, Jen thought as she wiped more sweat from her forehead and neck. Her hair, once curly and voluminous, had lost some of its life from the intense heat and lay limp on her head and shoulders.

  Hephalon lit a lantern, casting light on the room’s contents. “This is where I keep all of my most cherished pieces.”

  He walked over to the wall, whereupon rested many different weapons and types of armor, each ornate and beautiful, glistening from the lantern’s light. He placed the lantern on a table in the center of the room and went to his trophy wall. Finding what he was looking for, he slid a band of brass knuckles off a rung. Putting them on his meaty fingers, he made a fist and lifted it to chin level. After playing with the grip a few times, he took the brass knuckles off and offered them to Jen.

  “Behold . . . my totem.”

  Jen took it, surprised at how heavy the totem truly was. She looked up at Hephalon and, at his reassuring nod, slid it onto her fingers. Unsurprisingly, her ring size was quite a bit smaller than his, so it felt very awkward as some of the edges dug into her skin as it slid around on her hand.

  Hephalon guffawed and motioned for it back. Gladly, Jen returned the knuckles to him as he said, “A totem should be an embodiment of the sorcerer—something so meaningful yet reliable that it feels like an extension of themselves.” He looked at his totem again. “I couldn’t think of anything other than brass knuckles for me! Quite the brawler, I am—always have been, always will be.” He replaced the brass knuckles on the wall and turned to Jen. “Enough about me! Now that we let the fire build up, let’s get started on your bracelet. Would you like to wait here or back in the cottage?”

  Beginning to feel the heat again, Jen was in desperate need of some water. She looked at Victor and noticed that his hair was starting to droop over his eyes.

  Simultaneously, they both said, “Cottage.”

  “Permit me an hour, then you’ll have your choice of bracelets!”

  Hephalon closed the door, cutting off the stifling heat from the factory.

  Jen gasped delightedly as coldness surrounded her, feeling relief as she breathed in the brisk night air. She plucked at her sweaty shirt, which was sticking to her back as she waited for Victor to catch up.

  “Hey, where’s Skarmor?” she asked.

  Victor stopped to look around as he put his cloak back on. Not seeing his griffin anywhere, he gave a short whistle and waited.

  There was a reassuring call from behind the cottage, and without warning a cat emerged from that area, limping as Skarmor and Pernissa cautiously followed it into view.

  “Looks like we have a surprise visitor,” Victor commented.

  The cat cautiously swayed up to him and Jen. The griffins still seemed a little unsure, for they cocked their heads to the left, then to the right, never taking their eyes off of the cat, which seemed to be nursing an injury to its right front leg.

  “It looks hurt!” Jen put her hands to her heart, looking at Victor.

  Victor exhaled, thinking. “Skar,” he called out to his griffin.

  Skarmor slowly came around to Victor.

  So as not to scare off the cat, Victor whispered a command in Skarmor’s ear and stepped back as his griffin lightly walked toward the injured feline.

  Sitting on its hind legs, the cat stopped licking its right front leg and purred questioningly as Skarmor traced the injured limb with one of his eagle claws.

  Dumfounded, Jen watched as the cat’s leg started to glow white, and before long the cat was walking up to her without the slightest limp or sign of discomfort.

  “How did . . . ?” Jen pointed at the miracle she had witnessed, speechless.

  Victor grinned, walking over to pat Skarmor. “Griffins’ claws have special healing abilities. Just one touch with their claws heals everything short of dying.”

  Smiling from ear to ear, Jen let the cat walk through and around her legs. “That is amazing.” Kneeling down, she petted the cat. “Hey, you. Where did you come from?” It arched its back as she stroked it a few times. Its fur felt a little prickly and rough in some places; Jen picked a twig out from behind one of its ears.

  “Looks like it’s been rolling around in the forest.” Victor took the twig and knelt down to get a better view of the cat, but it hissed and scampered into the cover of the forest.

  “Vic, what did you do that for?” Jen pleaded, immediately seeing if she could find the cat near the tree line.

  “It looked like a stray cat. Could’ve even been feral. You have to be careful with those, Jen. They have volatile tempers.” Victor dismissed the encounter and started toward the cottage. He looked back at Jen and said, “You coming?”

  Still scanning the tree line, Jen said distantly, “Yeah . . . righ
t behind you.” She slowly started walking toward the cottage and eventually gave up her search for the mysterious cat.

  “Keep an eye out for that cat, Skarmor,” Victor told the griffin.

  Skarmor clicked his beak in affirmation and flew to the roof of the cottage, landing there to survey the surroundings. His majestic form was silhouetted in front of the brilliant full moon, giving the griffin a larger-than-life persona. Pernissa trilled and sat down, letting Skarmor play the guard dog.

  Jen found it endearing how Skarmor took Victor’s commands so seriously. She followed Victor inside to wait for Hephalon to return with her totem bracelet and charm.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The food was horrible, but the aftertaste was worse; it could gag even a maggot.

  Richard and Beth Smith could feel themselves losing strength, as though their rations were engineered to barely keep their bodies functioning, teetering on the brink of starvation and death. After four days of eating the same filth, they began to wonder what was worse: the food or the constant darkness that filled every crack and crevice of the prison bay—if there even were cracks or crevices. They suspected that not even the cockroaches could escape this place.

  Both Richard and Beth had started keeping their eyes closed, for opening them was worthless; they couldn’t see anything anyways, and with their current lack of strength, it became difficult to even keep their eyelids open. So, with eyes shut, they relied on their hearing to figure out what was going on.

  They had overheard some guards call the prison the “Lair of Despair,” more in jest or annoyance for being stuck on guard duty. Richard didn’t care what they called it; to him, it was Hell on Earth—or wherever they were.

  They quickly came to dread the guards’ treatment of their friend. Every other day, they would drag him off to some unknown place and, roughly two hours later, drag him back and ask him the same question: “Will you be more cooperative next time?”

  Finally, Richard decided to talk to their neighbor, who had given them the only ounce of friendship since they’d woke up cold and confused in their cell. It often took a while for his friend to gain consciousness after he was brought back, so he waited for sounds of movement and unsteady breathing.

  As he waited, Richard’s mind began to wander. Whenever he fell asleep, he didn’t dream—or at least he didn’t remember any dreams. He had been a consistent dreamer back in his old life, which seemed like decades ago now. He couldn’t put a finger on it, but it was as if the Lair of Despair had begun to take everything from him, including his dreams. Every night—or every time he was tired enough to contemplate falling asleep—he prayed for Beth to remain safe and by his side.

  Even if he couldn’t dream, he still awaited the chance to drift off to sleep, after he’d tried to drown out the wailing, scuffling, and mad jabbering all around him. Richard leaned on the bars of his cell, putting a hand on his wife’s arm just so he knew she was by him, and waited . . . waited for his friend to awaken while he himself drifted off.

  Richard awoke, rubbing his forehead. He felt a slight depression on the front of his right temple; he must have propped his head on one of his cell’s bars and fallen asleep. Rolling his neck to stretch out the stiff muscles, he listened for any noise in the next cell.

  With his eyes still shut, he tried to drown out all his other senses and focus solely on his hearing. Finally, his ears perked up when he heard movement. Richard almost opened his eyes to look at the source of the noise, but quickly realized that he wouldn’t be able to see anything, so he kept his eyes closed.

  “Hey . . . friend,” Richard whispered.

  Nothing.

  He softly rubbed his wife’s arm, hoping to relax her while he waited for another sound.

  He waited a few heartbeats, then tried again.

  “Pssst. Friend.”

  This time there was the sound of moving fabric, but no reply.

  After clicking his jaw a few times—a nervous tick he had developed when he was a child—he waited a few more heartbeats.

  Finally, he broke the cold silence once more.

  “Are you okay?”

  Nothing.

  “I don’t know where they take you, but it seems to really affect you.”

  A few more heartbeats passed, and just as Richard was about to give up, he heard, “I’ve gotten used to it.”

  “Where do they take you?” Richard repeated.

  “I-I don’t know for sure. They blindfold me before they take me out of the cell bay.” Before Richard could ask another question, the man continued, “Every time, I’m brought before this . . . this man. His voice is scratchy and as hollow as a dead tree trunk, but for some reason I . . . I recognize it? He’s called Lord Draconex, but that name doesn’t ring a bell . . . it’s killing me.”

  “Why is this Draconex doing this to you?”

  “I-I . . . I can’t remember,” his friend stuttered. “Just that they tell me I have a secret and if I don’t tell them what it is, they’ll hurt me.”

  “Do you know what they’re talking about?”

  “No!” The voice echoed throughout the deep prison, bouncing off all the cell walls so it seemed as if a hundred prisoners were screaming, one after another, No! no! no!

  Richard wasn’t prepared for the loud volume of his friend’s response; he instinctively flinched, accidentally nudging Beth and waking her up.

  “Is everything okay, honey?” she asked groggily.

  “Yes, everything is fine, dear. Try to go back to sleep,” Richard said, stroking her hair.

  Richard turned his ear toward his friend’s cell and noticed his breathing was erratic, quick—what you’d hear from people who were freezing or terribly frightened.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.” His friend sounded as if he had moved closer to the cell bars, the only things separating him from Richard.

  “Well, maybe I can help you . . . but first I would appreciate it if you would talk with me.” Richard was thinking on his feet, but if he could get some of his questions answered, he could help this man feel better. As a psychiatrist, he had dealt with clients who had extreme cases of trauma. Sure, he didn’t know this person’s background or mental history, let alone even his name, but he was determined to give it his best.

  The next hour was spent trying to calm his friend down. It was very hard for Richard to know if it was working, talking in the dark like this, so he relied on hearing signs from his friend’s breathing and tone of voice. Richard remembered how volatile the man had become when he felt he was being interrogated, so he tried to alter his tactics. Instead of asking him direct question after direct question, Richard planned on letting it surface naturally through conversation.

  “This food sucks,” Richard commented.

  “Pure garbage, but you get used to it.”

  “Don’t tell me you like this stuff?”

  “Well, when you’ve been down here eating the same slog for countless years, your taste buds tend to get used to it, or just die off.”

  Richard forced a chuckle. “I can’t imagine being down here for years, my friend.”

  A quick inhale came through the cell bars. “We’re . . . friends?”

  “Course. We gotta stick together here in . . .” Richard purposefully trailed off, hoping his friend would finish the sentence.

  “The Lair of Despair? You know, that’s not the actual name for this place, but it sums it up nicely.”

  “Oh? I thought it was.” Richard tried to keep his eagerness at bay. This was the first time he was feeling like himself again, and even in the depths of despair, finding clues kept him from falling into severe depression.

  Richard heard his friend scuffle closer to the bars and whisper, “They may call it the Lair of Despair . . . but we’re in a prison on a nomadic city called the Feralot.”

  Progress!

  “Feralot,” Richard repeated. He tucked that name into his memory. “I’ve never heard of a nomadic city before.�
�

  “That’s because it’s the only one of its kind. Feralot roams around the planet by dark magic. It can even move between realms,” his friend said, slightly louder and with a hint of awe in his voice.

  Richard felt blindsided, as if he’d been hit by a bus.

  Dark magic? Between realms?

  Suddenly things started to make sense, and he began to piece together why he and his wife had been captured and dumped into this hellhole.

  Dark Watchers must have discovered Jen’s true identity.

  Richard needed time to process his realization that Jen had been discovered, so he tapered off the conversation with his friend, reassuring him that they would talk again soon. For a couple of long minutes, he didn’t move, just thought. He was consumed with grief at the safety of his children—Tyler was back home all alone and that he had no idea where Jen was. He began to get jittery and almost fall into a panic attack, but then he remembered how resourceful Tyler was—he prayed that he was safe either at one of his friends’ houses or with his aunt—and that Victor was watching over Jen. Those thoughts gave him some reassurance, but the worry inside him didn’t fade.

  A slight chill ran through him, making Richard slide over to be by his wife, who was fast asleep. Curling up beside her, he was simultaneously glad and envious that she had fallen back asleep so quickly; for as long as he had been imprisoned here—however long that had actually been, he did not know—Richard could not seem to be able to fall back asleep even if his life had depended on it. Maybe because he couldn’t turn his mind off, plagued by two questions: Why were he and his wife captured? And how could they escape?

  Thanks to his friend, he now had a pretty good grip on why he was here, stuck in a decrepit prison cell aboard the roaming citadel, Feralot: because he’d sworn to protect and raise Jennifer Lancaster. Now he began to focus on the other question: How could they escape? Was such an escape even possible?

  Whoever his friend was, he seemed to have once been a smart, able-bodied man, but his frequent visits to Lord Draconex for questioning had led him to become constantly weak and delirious. Questioning for what, Richard didn’t know, but he did know that the information his friend had must be extremely important to Draconex.