Ultimus Thesaurus: The last Treasure (Era of Change Book 1)

by Maximilian Warden

  Chapter 31: Ambassador of the Past

  Slowly he entered the room and behind him were hundreds of people with their lowered heads and heavy bodies. Lucia could not quite understand what was going on and it was only at this moment that she realized that this man had taken her father from her again. She grabbed the first item she saw and deemed usable as a weapon and rushed at the prince, but before she reached him, he just showed her the crystal and forced her down on her knees without a single word. Now she also lowered her head and put the item aside, while showing her submission to the prince, who forced the people to enter the temple. Tybalt and his high priests knelt before the prince now, who lowered his hand and stepped forward.

  “Finally we meet face to face, Jacob. Your friend was a stubborn companion, but in the end it was he himself, who led me to the treasure that I have been searching for so long now. This girl, Lucia, is a remarkable creature, but her spirit is weak. Nobody in this area, except you is capable of withstanding my control. It is you that I was looking for, the one who rises and who shares my pain,” he said with a dark voice and I saw in his eyes the pupils of a reptile.

  “How can you be a dragon? And why did you wait so long, to avenge your kind? I am not any different than all these people out there,” I replied, but the prince did nothing but laugh at me.

  “You weren’t born any differently, but you are now no longer a man. There are many creatures and most wear the blood of death. However, your blood mingled with my own and it inflamed not. You are a descendant of the dragons, a lower white dragon. Why I waited so long? You do not have any idea what long means, because your life for me is not more than a breath. I remember the dark world, wars, the storms and the dead. My father was a mighty dragon, the most powerful of all. His gifts were those of the gods, he came so close to their likeness that they themselves considered him as one of their own.

  But the outbreak of the second storms surprised us all. Scum like you was killed without a second glance, but many of you hid away deep under the warped surfaces. Your kind waited for its chance and together with the accursed forces you brought us to our knees. I still remember it, when my father sacrificed himself for me and how he left nothing more behind than a bare planet, a place where I did not belong. Alone I could not defeat humanity and the dwarves were still too many so I did what I had to do and disappeared for centuries.

  My mind allowed me to adapt and the form that you see in front of you now, is nothing other than the agony of my destiny, deeply intertwined with the old armour that now protects me like an everlasting shield. The time made me what I am and even if my strength waned over the years, there is still no other creature more powerful than I. I rallied the few chosen around me, whose skills and blood was noble and together we waited for our chance.”

  “What do you want with this stone? Jasper said that it would be worthless. Its power is consumed and its time is over,” I said and took a step back.

  “The power of the Sun King rests in the stone and your friend Thamyris has tasted it. He thinks he is a titan because his wishes and dreams created this story for him, but in truth he is an image of the king himself. This is the final stage of human evolution, the counterpart to me. The capabilities of the Sun King by far exceeded mine and even his intellect revealed things I was never able to see. But in the end I yet vanquished him and now he is nothing more than this stone. Jasper had hoped that your friend would bring the king back into this world and could bring with him his power, but his plan was faulty. Nothing other than this artefact prevented me from entering this island.

  Instead of charging the stone Thamyris deprived him of the rest of his energy and he weakened the protection that the king had set for this island. I will show you why he is still of value and you will see that my patience is finally rewarded.”

  “If you are so sure, than why don’t you simply kill us?” asked Isaac and stepped in front of me.

  “What a naive man. Of course I will kill you all, but why should I deny you a view into the future? I had to see the future before me and why should you suffer less than I did?”

  “You have no reason to kill us. Your father has sacrificed himself for you, so there must be something good in you. Not everything in the future is bad,” I said and tried to convince the prince, but without success.

  “My father did not voluntarily sacrifice himself for me. He died by my own hand. His betrayal of our people made me stronger and showed me how little he himself knew of the life of a dragon. Through him, I am the prince and his death has shaped my power.

  Tybalt and his cult will be the first to join my father in the next world and many will follow. But the knowledge of the old man and the powers of Thamyris are too dangerous to continue to exist.”

  He turned away from us and closed the door behind him, while Lucia and the others he controlled remained to guard us.

  “What do we do now? The ring, of which he spoke, is located at the bottom of a deep gorge and we are trapped on this island. It was hard enough to come here, so how would we even hope to escape again?” asked Isaac, but I also had no answer to his question.

  Much of what was happening here - everything rather - exceeded what I had ever deemed possible. I looked at my hands and asked myself whether I really was not human anymore. Jasper warned me that my humanity would be important, but I had never really felt as one of them.

  “There is only one way out of this. If he begins with his ritual and sacrifices the people of the island, we must go in the direction of the beach. It is unlikely that we will make it, but what choice remains to us now? Do you see the faces of these people?

  Lucia has completely lost her mind through a simple movement of his hand. This magic surpasses everything we can muster,” I replied and Aton began to grab his own head.

  The pain he felt had to be triggered by the use of the stone and probably was his life energy fading.

  “My time is running out, soon my father will take control and with him you will hardly have any other choice than to leave us here. The healing of my father may be important, but I think that it is more important that you survive. These people were unscrupulous, when they had a free will, but now that they have lost it, I am not sure whether we can do more than disband.”

  “Never. I can and will not leave you here. If he wants a fight, then he will get it. Aton and the stone are closely connected and if one of the two is destroyed the other loses its value. We should kill him and thus improve our position,” I suggested, but this time Aton understood my words.

  He grabbed my arm, and I saw an expression of pain and sorrow in his face, which made me understand that despite all the changes he experienced, all of the illusions that were cast on his mind, he still was human. We all were human and even the prince, in his own pride and his hatred, forgot that he was human too and no longer just a dragon. His body was weakened by the time and his humanity had undeniably shown itself, as he revelled in torturing the innocent.

  “I think that I know how we might yet escape from the island,” I said, this time full of certainty, and had a plan that could possibly even work.

  Chapter 32: Wrath of the Dragons

  My plan, as risky as it was, would be the only way to survive the next day. Isaac had agreed to support me and I also asked of him to prolong the administration of his elixir until the last possible moment. Lucia had stared at us together with Tybalt and his priests for hours now, but it seemed almost as if they had no emotions left in them.

  Her gaze was empty and there was nothing on her mind, none of the hate that once fought so valiantly against me. All her feelings for me were gone. He had taken her soul and he wanted that I see her suffering. He kept us waiting until dusk fell and then opened the gates of the temple again. We could already see the fire, as it was stirring higher than usual and heard again the drums and the chants of the people.

  “A white robe, white hair and a name from ancient times. You are a fitting nemesis indeed, I have to admit. Many have fo
ught against me over the millennia and a few I called opponents. Your time starts now and I hope that you are worthy.

  This ritual is very old, perhaps older than I, and the Sun King spent almost his entire life to complete it. This stone in my hand is the result of this work and even if he originally created it in order to destroy me, so I can also use it to my advantage.

  The blood of the dragons is like a poison to humanity and vice versa. But this stone allows me to do things against nature and thus create new dragons. We dragons cannot simply reproduce like humans and the ritual to give birth to a new generation was lost in the fires of war. The book with the knowledge of the history of the dragons, the wisdom of the gods and the legacy of my father are lost in time.

  Jasper will lead me to it and you all will be my tools,” he said and the warm wind rushing inside from the outside passed him and touched our skin.

  He laid his hand upon the head of Lucia and saw me in the eyes while he grabbed her hair and pulled her back up from the ground.

  “These people are weak and I have learned a lot in my life. The ability to manipulate others, the intelligence to understand everything and the power to destroy anyone who could stand in my way. All this I have inherited from my people and all of this is also found in humans. You only have to bring it out.

  The thoughts of your girlfriend are delightful, because her hate for you makes my control almost superfluous. She would join me if she knew that my research and my knowledge could save her father.”

  He let her go and she fell to the ground without any emotion. She was alive, but she couldn’t realize it no more.

  “She would never join you. None of us would go that far. These powers that you have are no gift from above; they are nothing more than an expression of weakness. Without this control all would stand against you and this is what you fear. To be alone in the dark for such a long time, it is a feeling which is not foreign to me. You are afraid to lose everything, if you are no longer feared yourself,” I said and made a step up to him, but I stumbled over my own feet.

  He just laughed and asked the men to bring us to the outside. Isaac knew what had to be done and so he did what I had asked him to. Not much of his elixir remained, but now that the pain and the risk became too grave, he gave as much as he could spare to Aton and drank the rest himself before the prince could even understand what happened.

  “What's going on here?” Marko asked surprised and turned back to us.

  “In this world you are powerful, you have talents that each of us fears, but in the world of Thamyris, you are nothing and he is a titan.”

  My plan was that the Sun King or even the titan in Thamyris would wake up, because I had the theory that a part of them existed in his mind. But nothing happened at first and the men came ever closer, while Marko was now also waiting for a response.

  It took a moment but then the room began to gradually disappear. Pillar after pillar sank down into the ground shrouded in a dim light, which soon swallowed up all of us.

  I was alone and starred into a bright nothing. Each second the place changed and from the white nothing a snow-covered ground was created and the sky was filled with a soft blue, only hidden by thin clouds.

  It was cold and windy and now I could see it. It was my hometown in a year not too long in the past. I remembered this day as it had been my birthday. The field, on which I wandered around, was the place where I had always felt safe. This was also the place where I first saw Lucia.

  Nothing that happened made any sense and yet I thought that Aton was behind it all. The power of the stone allowed him, to intensify wishes and dreams and to let them take real effect. Probably we were still in the temple, which is why I now had to try to contact Aton to help him control this dream. He had to help us to leave the island, while the prince was trapped in his own dreams.

  “Here you are. It is time to go home. Your father is already waiting. Hurry up! You should never let people wait,” said a voice that I knew from the distance.

  It was our retainer Edgar, but he did not appear to notice that I was much older than I could be at this point in time. And even if I thought that I was able to control the situation, I followed him, in the hope of faster reaching Aton or Isaac this way.

  Much of what happened around me was only shown in outlines and only if I concentrated more, I could see a clear picture. This day, my ninth birthday, was one of the less interesting.

  I could not explain why I had stranded here and the considerations became more and more obsolete the closer we came to my families estate.

  To see the city, undamaged, the people, happy and alive, it was a refreshing change to all the suffering that we saw on our journey. Many things I realized just now, such as the names of the people that I had killed. Nothing seemed to be important to me anymore, since our journey continued to drive us away from everything that once made our life, up to unknown new shores, which I knew nothing about and which never interested me.

  Now the past presented itself to me and so did my father with a gift in his hand.

  “Congratulations, my son. I hope that you have been well today. This is a small token of love; I bought it for you in the city. Open it,” he said and embraced me and handed me the small present.

  None of these things had ever really happened and I was sure that I have never received a gift from my father. Despite my doubts and the sentiments that confused me, I could not wait to unpack the gift. The curiosity to know what my father gave me, regardless if it was real, was too large to ignore.

  When I tore up the gift wrap, I saw a book inside it, blank, and a pen made of gold. I took the pen into my hand, let it slide through my fingers and enjoyed the feeling of the metal on my skin.

  “It is not much, but I know how much you wish to be a writer. I wish you all the best and I hope that you will find all the luck in the world and live the happiest of lives,” he said and ran with his fingers through my hair. “Now I must unfortunately go out and speak before the council, but I will be back in time for your celebrations. Your friends are already on the way here; maybe you should change before they arrive. Edgar has prepared your wardrobe in your room.”

  He put on his old coat and was even wearing the hat which he always hated so much, partly because it was hideous and on the other hand, because it was I who had given it to him.

  All of this was hard for me to bear, because it was exactly what I always wanted. Soon I lost sight of my actual goals and said to myself that I have enough time remaining to enjoy this dream a little longer. In my room not much had changed and yet I noticed the subtle differences. The crate with the gift that I would once give to Lucia was missing and many other things that comforted me in the past were no longer there.

  The clothes on my bed were properly arranged and I found pieces which I had never even possessed. Whether this was a different reality or really just a dream of mine was not distinguishable and with every minute it became more unimportant. What wondered me most was the fact that I supposedly had friends who would attend my birthday celebrations. There had never been a birthday for me, with gifts and a celebration, there had only been the days on which I talked with Lucia and dreamt about a world that could have been.

  These days were the most important to me and I wondered whether she would also come to my celebration. But rather than to simply wait, I looked further through the room and noticed a large mirror. Only now I noticed that I really was not older than 9 in this dream. Even though I had kept my mind, my body had shrunk as if it had formed back. So I decided to put on the clothes and headed to the house of Lucia's grandparents.

  When I arrived I found no house but only an untilled field. Nothing pointed at there ever having been a house, and to my surprise, not even the gift shop, in that Lucia used to work, existed. Even if it wouldn’t be open at this time, the whole building was missing as well.

  I decided therefore to ask the inhabitants of the town about Lucia, but nobody had ever heard of a girl by that name
and Jasper Lawrence was a just as unknown person. The world in which I existed in this moment seemed to have a price and I was not sure if I was willing to pay it just to continue to stay here. So I walked back to the field on which I had arrived, but even after hours there was no evidence for a way out of this dream.

  The house of Isaac and Magnus was too far away and in my current body, it was impossible for me to reach it. But it did not take long for Edgar to arrive on the field again and to call my name.

  “Here you are again. Do you want to disappoint your father? Your guests have been waiting for hours on you and your father will return from his speech any moment now.”

  Even if I was displeased with his request because I had not desired to stay in this dream even longer, I figured that it made no sense to wait on this field. In the end it was my only way to survive this day and I hoped to awake again in the temple on the next. My actual plan fell apart more and more and thus I put my trust into the talents of my friends. If they would be able to escape this dream faster than me, than they could be able to help me escape too.