They all got up and stood around the little fire. Wayne, Flynn, Skye and Timothy. Skye motioned to Lurch, “Come by the fire Lurch, you are our newest family member.”
Lurch stood and joined the circle around the fire with a smile on his face. Each one of them reached out a hand above the flames, not quite touching each other.
The fire crackled and swirled, the flames leapt up towards their hands as if to encircle or join them together. Somehow, they knew it wouldn’t hurt them, somehow, they all found the nerve to keep their hands exactly where they were. Flames swirled around their hands in a ring and suddenly formed together in a column of light going straight up. It no longer looked like flame, but a shaft of golden light.
Flynn looked around the circle at everyone’s eyes. They looked amazed, perhaps even a little frightened, but also determination was there, no-one was backing out of this. Somehow, they knew that David depended on them at this moment.
***
David suddenly stopped falling, but not in the violent, messy way that he was expecting. It was as if he had fallen into a soft cloud and was just suspended in it. He managed to get his breathing under control, that was when he noticed it, the smell, how embarrassing.
He looked around for his staff and saw it floating a few metres away from him, all he could see in the dark was the glowing lettering which was too far away to read. He reached out for it with his right hand and it came towards him, firmly slapping into his palm.
“If I Had Pants, They Would Smell Too.” It read.
David had now collected his thoughts and managed a little chuckle, “Then you would be really sticky.”
The Staff replied. “That’s The Spirit,” and then, “What Now?”
“I thought you were the one with all the answers,” exclaimed David.
“New Territory For Me,” the inscription read.
David got control of his spin and managed to get upright, he could feel something at his feet, like that feeling when you are just out of your depth in a swimming pool. Your toes can just touch the bottom as your mouth goes under the water. You are desperately trying to decide between being able to stand, or keep breathing.
With that, he lowered a little further and found a good footing. He looked down and nothing was there. He started to get vertigo again, but he realised that it was a brain trick, he was on solid ground and would be alright. He looked forward and could just make out the ragged cliff face in the gloom.
David took a tentative step forward and found that he could walk carefully toward the cliff. He came up against it, expecting to see a way in, but there was nothing but rock. At his feet, he still looked like he was walking on thin air, he tapped it with the staff, and it went straight through.
“Woah, this is freaking me out.” He said.
Then he remembered something, he felt his pocket, the candles were still there. Maybe, like before, the candle light can reveal an opening. He got one out, but realised that he didn’t have anything to light it with.
At that moment there was a massive flare from behind him, he turned. Across the gorge and slightly above him, he could see a shaft of Golden Light disappearing into the gloomy night sky. He didn’t know what was causing it, but subconsciously he knew, that it was his cousins, his family. He tried opening a connection to them, to let them know that he was alright, but he couldn’t do it. Maybe because he wasn’t really sure if he was ok.
David turned back to the wall that was now illuminated by the light of the golden beam. A small opening had been revealed down low in front of him.
He knelt down and looked in to a dark tunnel leading into the cliff. He shoved the candle back into his pocket and he started to crawl through the opening, into the dark tunnel beyond. Once he and the staff were a few metres in, the opening went dark behind him.
***
The fire returned to normal, the golden beam gone. They looked around at each other, and a little self consciously, pulled their hands back to their sides.
Skye was the first to speak. “I have no idea what we just did, but I think we helped David, a lot.”
Flynn opened his mouth to respond, but instead the only word that came out was “SHIT,” as he ducked from a tremendous clap of thunder overhead that reverberated around the Paro Valley, lightning crackled all around. The storm seemed to go on forever.
Skye checked that her shield dome was still intact, and perhaps added a little power to it, just to make sure.
There was a sudden whoosh very close overhead, like an aircraft had passed low, they thought that maybe it was Rajid and Priscilla, but then a voice entered their consciousness. It was a powerful voice, but kind and perhaps feminine, they could not see where it came from.
“I am Druk, you do not need to fear me, I am your friend. Your love for David released me, thank you. Know that he is safe for now. I will return soon.”
With a flash, and a second or two later, an enormous clap of thunder, it was gone.
The six young monks were sitting in a larger circle around the four cousins and Lurch, chanting keenly.
“Om Mane Padme Hum.”
Their vow of silence broken.
Chapter 27
“Is There Any Other Way”
Jack sat alone on a palace balcony that faced west towards Paro and the Takstang Monastery, “The Tiger’s Nest.”
He stared into the night, straining to see, trying to imagine what was going on fifty kilometres away in the dark.
He saw a golden light, like a laser, beaming into the night sky. Lightning started to crackle all around it. “Is this the activation of the device?” Jack said to himself. “Have they, has David been successful?”
A flash, followed by a crack of thunder appeared overhead, causing Jack to instinctively duck his head. A movement, like a large shadowy eagle flashed past in the dark. Jack couldn’t really see it, just dark movement against a very dark sky. It was hard to tell if it was real or just his over active imagination.
The dark shape started to form in Jack’s vision, and the slow beat of very large wings, drummed against his ears. Jack could see a massive eagle like bird descend into the courtyard below, filling that space. He could hear the scraping, screeching sound of sharp talons on the cobble stone pavement below.
The balcony that Jack stood on, was three floors above the courtyard. Jack hesitated slightly as he made to go inside and race down to the courtyard. The light went on in his room and Jack turned to see Sonam and Pema standing there, wide eyed, looking past him.
“My Queens,” said a voice behind him.
Jack turned slowly, afraid of what he was about to see. Electric blue scales glimmered in the soft light coming from the room behind him. As he looked into a bright eye, that seemed to be changing colour between different shades of blue and green, a sense of calm washed over him.
Slowly, Jack’s brain started to comprehend what his eyes were seeing before him. It was like a jigsaw puzzle coming together. The scales, the eye, nasty looking spikes all over what now was forming into the shape of a head, a reptile head, a massive head the size of a small car. A dragon’s head.
“You are Druk,” Jack said airily, to no-one in particular.
“I am Druk,” said the huge scaly head. “We have much to discuss, last brother of the Dragon King.”
Pema and Sonam came forward to stand either side of Jack.
“I am surprised that you appear to be female, Druk,” said Sonam. “I always imagined you to be male.”
“I am in fact neither my Queen,” said Druk. “As the leaders of this land are currently female,” he nodded towards Sonam and Pema, “I appear Feminine. If the King was still alive, I would appear as masculine. It is of no consequence, I am simply Druk.”
“Are the children safe?” asked Jack.
“As safe as they can be right now, David is yet to activate the device. He is in great danger right now, but I believe that he will succeed, we must all believe that he will.”
“I presumed
that you appeared as a result of David activating the device,” said Jack.
“I have been released from my prison by love, the love that your family has for each other. These are amazing young people you have raised Jack, but no, some challenges still lay ahead of David.”
“You say you were imprisoned,” continued Jack, “Who imprisoned you and where?”
Jack could see that Druk was thinking hard about what to say next.
“Jack, I cannot reveal the nature or location of my imprisonment, in case dark forces living today can find out how to do so again. Let me just say that the ones who imprisoned me many years ago, did not enjoy that my role was a balancing force between Love and Hatred, Good and Evil, Nature and Destruction.”
“You said we have much to discuss,” Pema said.
“Indeed, we do,” replied Druk. “But first I must feed, in order to get the energy to continue. I will re-join you along the way of your next expedition.”
The three of them, Pema, Jack and Sonam looked at Druk quizzically.
“Expedition?” they all said together, “What expedition?”
Druk looked slowly from side to side as if to make sure that no-one was listening. “You must visit the Princess.”
With that, Druk turned and leapt into the air, three massive beats of her giant wings and she disappeared with a streaky flash and a massive clap of thunder.
“I suppose that’s why they call her the ‘Thunder Dragon’,” exclaimed Jack as he purposefully strode back into his room, looking for something.
“What on earth are you looking for Jack?” asked Pema, “And who is the Princess?”
“I am looking for my backpack,” said Jack, opening cupboard doors, “And my boots.”
“The Princess is not a who. She’s a what.” Jack smiled that, ‘I now have an ‘adventure looming’ kind of smile. “The Princess of the Himalaya,” Jack continued, “Mount Jomolhari of course.”
“Surely you don’t intend for us to walk?” said Sonam and Pema together.
“Is there any other way?” Jack exclaimed excitedly, as he dragged his dusty old backpack from behind some boxes in the cupboard.
Chapter 28
“A Rare Gift”
A bright flash appeared low over the South China Sea, and a dark streak raised a plume of frothing salt water behind in its aerodynamic wake.
Druk searched ahead of it, more out of nostalgia, than actually expecting to find her source of energy.
Druk, the Thunder Dragon, had a symbiotic relationship with dolphins. All the different varieties of dolphins around the planet, had different forms of energy that they offered to Druk as a form of sacrifice. They did this by displaying their joy of freedom. The whole pod would direct energy to a single dolphin within the pod when they sensed that Druk was nearby. This would result in a spectacular leap in the air, often doing flips and barrel rolls, some species would tail walk across the water.
Druk would swoop down and accept this sacrifice, and in return, Druk would manage the balance of the ocean, ensuring that there would be fish for the dolphins, and food for the fish.
Balance that Druk had failed to maintain, failed to honour. Hundreds of years ago, when she had been imprisoned, her captors vowed to wipe the dolphin populations out, as they felt that if she managed to return one day, there would be no source of energy and joy left for her to feed upon.
Several nations misguidedly joined in the hunt, but they mostly killed the innocent giants of the deep, the whales.
By the end of the year 2024, the last two dolphin killing nations, Japan, and Denmark’s Faroe Islands, drove the last of the ocean’s remaining dolphin pods into ‘killing coves and butchery beaches’. They brutally slaughtered these peaceful beings with their sickening knives and their hate filled faces, staining the water red for the last time, believing that they had finally created the environmental imbalance that they craved, ensuring that Druk could never return. With this final dastardly act, came the total collapse of the marine ecosystem.
***
While lost in these thoughts, twelve light years away, a huge spacecraft descended gently through the lower atmosphere of Gamma Cygnus Three.
***
Druk knew that she only had enough energy for one last jump. What her enemies didn’t know, was that there is no limit to how far that jump could be. Fortunately, the Matson family also suspected this, and so the whole timing of the Gamma Cygnus three mission, was based around the suspicion that Druk would be awakened and would need to feed.
The last of the earth’s dolphins had been stolen from captivity by the Gamma Cygnus Three mission.
Another of humanity’s perversions in the late twentieth century, was to capture and force these amazing creatures to perform for the entertainment of the mind-controlled population. If the dolphins wanted to eat, they had to perform mindless tricks for their evil captors. Their captors tried to convince us that they were simply performing tricks that they loved to do in nature. But no, there was no joy in this for them, they were simply doing what they had to do to survive.
Therefore, the secret Gamma Cygnus Three Mission, removed them from their concrete tanks all around the world, and placed them in suspended animation aboard “The Conservator”, in order to re-populate them, away from the planet earth, away from those who wanted them dead.
The most popular dolphin for the dolphin shows, was the ‘Common Bottlenose’. This was because the shape of their snout looked like a smile to humans, therefore the dolphin handlers could say things like, “She must be happy, look at that smile.”
In Taiji, a remote coastal town on the Japanese main island, Honshu, one of the most bizarre things was the dolphinarium that was just around the point from the killing cove. You could go to five dolphin shows a day, while just around the corner, the terrorised dolphin pods would be having their pretty ones selected and captured for captivity, while the others were then brutally slaughtered. You could sit in the stands watching the ‘Happy Dolphins’ while eating a dolphin burger, with real dolphin meat in it. This was one sign of the sick and twisted society that humans have become.
The majority of the three hundred and seventy ‘stolen’ dolphins were common bottlenose, with a few White Sided, and Risso’s dolphins among them. This meant that the vast majority of Dolphin and Whale species and sub-species were now extinct.
The Conservator floated gently down towards the vast equatorial ocean of Gamma Cygnus Three, the blue rings of the giant ship’s gravity drive glowing brightly and crackling loudly as they interacted with the humidity in the lower atmosphere.
The three Matson brothers, Evan, Owen and Russell, were in charge of three different landing sites. Russell Matson was leading the oceanographic colony with three ships, The Conservator, The Jack Matson and The Attenborough.
The landing site was in a large protected bay on the North side of the Southern Continent. The bay had deep water, and also had a large fresh water river running into it, that would connect the three colony sites, without having to build roads on land.
Five years earlier, this had been one of the landing sites for one of the twelve unmanned Terraforming drones that had seeded the sterile world with bio-matter from Earth. The drones had left Earth at the same time as the colony ships, but because they were carrying life that could withstand much higher acceleration and deceleration, they had been able to make the journey five years quicker.
This of course, was also a strategic decision. Robots were placed aboard the drones so that they could actually plant entire ecosystems in the most ideal locations, which would have them well advanced by the time actual animals, including humans arrived.
They had been able to monitor throughout the journey, the success or otherwise of the land based terraforming sites. They had allowed for only a fifty percent success rate, but fortunately it appeared as though, seven of the nine sites were well under way.
As Russell Matson sat on the bridge of the Jack Matson in orbit, he anxiously monit
ored the incoming data from the Conservator as it landed in the bay. If the marine terraforming sites had been unsuccessful, then there would be no food for the larger fish and marine mammals that they had on board. They could not get any data from the marine sites while on route.
The three marine sites included an up stream fresh water site in the river above colony three. It included everything fresh-water marine. There were bacteria, nutrient pods, plants, algaes, freshwater molluscs, small crustaceans, and one of Russell’s own inventions. A water-soluble sphere filled with small fish of many varieties in stasis, but then placed within an acceleration gel, that would hopefully protect their fleshy bodies from high gee acceleration and deceleration. There were only fifteen of these spheres, as they couldn’t afford for them to be too successful until the algae and weed populations could take hold. But they were very important, as they would also provide much needed nutrients for the marine plants, even if they died.
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