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

by Maximilian Warden

  Part III: The last Treasure

  Chapter 37: Flying High

  When I was younger I read many stories about the brave adventurers who had explored this world and some of them also told of the Gate of Hell. It was a canyon, which was struck deep into the flesh of the earth in ancient times and now it housed the darkest creatures of this planet. It is said that on the other side of the gorge there is an entirely different world waiting for all of us, but that it was still not discovered and so we began another journey to change the ways of this world.

  The king of Jimosien was not a just ruler, as well as all his predecessors, but in times like these, in which a ruler was no longer needed, or even still recognized as such, there were no rules or laws anymore. The bodies of the dead which were thrown down into this ravine had polluted the soil and so Isaac and I expected illness and decay at the bottom.

  We were well prepared, but as it is with all things that are expected they are never quite what you envisioned them to be. Only a handful of people had dared a trip like this and therefore no easy way down existed. Everyone avoided the proximity of the gorge and so Isaac decided to fly down.

  He used every day of these two weeks to build a hot-air balloon that could transport us safely, but as always he started to underestimate himself and talked crazy, as I exited from the carriage and saw him in the front garden working on his project.

  “Incomprehensible. I have always wanted to just once fly in a balloon like this,” I said, but the annoyance of Isaac grew and reduced my joy.

  “If only it would fly! I simply can't do it, Jacob. This journey, my last trip, how can it be this? All of this is pure madness. Maybe there is another way to heal my father,” he replied, but he knew my opinion on this topic already.

  “Jasper sought his whole life for a solution and you think that we can find something better? I think that you just need a little more time. As long as we are ready in a week, it should be enough. There are other ways down this ravine, but I trust you, to find the best one. This balloon will fly!”

  Sadly my confidence did however not inflame the necessary sparks, which is why we remained many more days at the same location. It was the most important part of the plan that we could safely land in the gorge, where the corpse of Jasper was waiting for us. A walk down there in the dark desert would be too dangerous and unpredictable. However, it no longer made a difference, since all the calculations I made had already been against us since the beginning of this journey and still we triumphed, at least in my opinion.

  “Why do I keep failing again and again in the face of challenge? Is this just showing me that the end of my life is fair? Maybe I don’t want this balloon to fly,” said Isaac full of despair and grief in expectation of his death.

  “Do not have so many concerns. No one would believe to safely survive a journey like this. Even I do not believe so. But what use is it to us if we repeatedly assume the worst? Do you not also think that it makes more sense to believe that we are successful? We both are weak, but together we can make a difference.

  Let us heal your father and also save you. No one has to die on this trip,” I said and tried to encourage him, but the success did not become apparent.

  Only when it got dark and the work on the balloon became more and more of an ordeal would Isaac put down his tools and sit down next to me on one of the old rotten chairs in front of the estate of his family.

  The weakness of the candle’s flame was everything that bestowed us with light, as the moon was completely blocked by the high volcano behind us.

  “This is all the legacy of my family. If I fail it ends. My survival without the elixir, perhaps it was the death of my father. I think that I do not want to know, whether it was I who killed him. In the end I could always justify my deeds on the basis that nobody except me ever really had been harmed, but my father suffers the same way under this connection as I do. He may not be able to tell us, but if he is still alive, then every fibre of his existence screams for liberation.

  But this wish is also mine. So what is now fair? Should I die just because my mistake burdens me? Or should I use my own father as a sacrifice? This is a decision that no man can take. It is an unfair world, Jacob. We both have lost a lot and we can gain nothing more.”

  I leaned back and looked at the light that slowly but surely disappeared when the candle went out. Isaac set another one onto the table and as the hiss of the matchstick drove the shadows away, there soon burned a new candle and illuminated the night for us.

  “This candle, which just went out, shares our fate. It knows only one way, only one purpose and only one benefit. But what happens if it is no more? There will be a new one in its place. I believe that there is no end, at least not for a very long time yet. If we reach this gorge we will find what we are looking for and at the end of this path we will find where we belong. Should you die, to save your father? No, I think not. But I do not believe your father should die. This journey will remove the decision that we are too weak to make. And just as this candle it will end, only to begin anew.”

  Even if I knew that it was a false hope that I offered Isaac, so he also knew that it was the only thing that remained to us and so he took it and joined me, as I observed the new candle, until it too would lose its light.

  The next morning I woke up late and it was no wonder that Isaac had already continued his work on the balloon. Crazily he ran around the basket and threw around with every tool, while he roared and stomped with his feet on the ground.

  “What did happen now?” I asked him still half-asleep and slowly went near the balloon.

  “It flies at last. But unfortunately not long enough,” answered Isaac and threw himself exhausted on the floor.

  While he was lying there, I looked at the finished balloon and noticed that the engine was only cobbled together from all kinds of scrap that Isaac had found. Since we had little time and even less money at our disposal, it was reasonable to expect that the results would only be met limited to an extent that corresponded to what we expected and what we could pay for.

  “And what if we start from the top of the mountain? Could we then reach the gorge?” I suggested and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.

  Still not fully awake I fell almost to the ground, as Isaac suddenly jumped up and hugged me like a lunatic and began to dance. It was strange to see him so energetic, but he reminded me now much more of his father than ever before. This was one of the first moments in which I felt that he too was looking for liberation at the bottom of his heart.

  After all these years in which I had hidden behind books, politics and dreams, all the decades in which Isaac walked away from his family, mistakes and the truth, we were now finally both ready to muster the courage to stand against it all. We would be free and finally become the people we always wanted to be.

  Chapter 38: The Gateway to Hell

  Humanity has its limits just like the world has the heavens and the earth. And once there were neither heaven nor earth, not even the people. Are the limitations of the human being therefore not real? Just as it once was impossible to run so it was impossible to fly. But today nothing seemed that implausible anymore that anyone would say that impossibility existed. Lucia wanted to break the limits of life and death and Isaac and his father wanted to bend the limits of the human body and its spirit.

  But even if the boundaries of the people did not actually exist, so the heavens and the earth still remained real. They were there to help us, to put us in our place and to overcome them was the goal of the prince. Beyond the borders of the human kingdoms was a dangerous world in which rules no longer existed. We had to enter this world to preserve the limits of our own. Only within these natural limits there existed a balance that could save us all.

  Maybe it was foolhardiness, or perhaps even courage that drove us to jump from the top of a mountain in a poorly assembled balloon, only to land in a gorge, from which we could perhaps never escape. We had not even discussed what would happen
if we found the corpse of Jasper and probably it was because we didn’t even believe that it would happen.

  It was a natural reaction because we were aware of the limits that surrounded us, but just as we tried to overcome them, we also had to learn and face new expectations of the inconceivable. Only this way we could achieve what we were looking for and find what we needed.

  “I think we should promise each other something. No matter what happens, together we will return. None of us will die and we will do all we can to stop those who threaten our world,” I said and reached out to Isaac with my hand.

  He looked at it and hesitated, as he doubted that the truth could be bound by a solemn promise, it would always just stay the truth itself. And yet he accepted.

  “I promise. I will heal my father and clear my past. Not with my life, but with my talent.”

  The conviction to do something sometimes was enough to succeed, but the conviction to create something was usually not enough to actually do it. And so we began another trip to stand against the impossible. The balloon drove slowly through the air, but the engine that should actually keep us at a constant height repeatedly malfunctioned and while the air rapidly left the balloon, we lost more and more time. Isaac tried desperately to fix the engine, but no matter what he did, he was controlled by panic.

  And so I looked at the engine with all the composure that I could muster and tried to not too often look down on the steep mountain, which would certainly be our death. With some smaller chops and shaking on the apparatus I brought the fire back and therefore also the air that we needed. Unfortunately it had taken too long and we were therefore forced to land in the gorge earlier than planned.

  “We should immediately land and go back to the peak of the mountain. It is not safe to proceed like this,” said Isaac, but I was not convinced that we could spare the time.

  “The balloon has already failed and we do not have the time to land and the many more days to bring it back to the mountain. This is our only chance, so we must use it now.”

  Even if he was right that the danger was greater, so we could now only hope that none of the stories about this gorge were real. We had little food and looking at the balloon it became more and more apparent that it could hardly help us escape from the gorge. Our planned flight had soon become a confused crash into the unknown.

  It took many hours until we reached the city and saw the prison in which our journey began.

  Seen from the air, the environment was almost picturesque, would it not be for the destroyed city around it, whose ruins now were a heavy burden on our shoulders. But behind all these images of the past was now the uncertain future that sooner than intended became the centre of attention when the engine decided to malfunction again and stopped working altogether.

  Rapidly we sank down and passed some of the buildings of the city only by a few metres at the edge of the cliffs. As Isaac was able to control the balloon only with great difficulty, I succumbed to fear, even if only for a moment, while we came ever closer to the cliffs. The balloon turned around wildly in the wind and where our orientation was at first gradually lost, our faith had finally been shattered.

  The outer shell of the balloon scratched with a shrill noise on the stone wall and as long as the metal tried to conserve our fall, so there it finally was. It did not take long until the balloon itself was severely damaged by a gaping hole and we quickly lost all of the air. Our descend, now almost a free fall, pulled us more and more up from the bottom of the tray and only the fast and courageous grasp after one of the ropes rescued us from certain death.

  I could not really understand what happened around me and even though I was still aware of our fall I could only actually remember the last seconds before we collided with the bottom of the dark depths below us. My vision had become blurry and I could hardly see what happened around us, but the engine had started back up only moments before our fall and its strong flame now ignited the thin skin of the balloon and pulled a dense wave of smoke over the crash site in which it was not only difficult to navigate, but even harder to breathe.

  “Isaac? Can you hear me?,” I shouted with all of my left over energy and noticed late that he was right in front of me lying unconscious on the floor.

  With all the strength that I could muster I drew him out of the basket and looked around.

  Nothing was clearly recognizable and only a few patches of the wall had been uncovered by the fire of the balloon. I decided to find a place where we could wait until the fire was gone, but before I realized I stumbled and crashed with my head on a stone, firmly smashing my face against the floor.

  The wound on my head was bleeding heavily and I imagined seeing someone who walked inside the flames carrying Isaac on his shoulders. Like in a vision I saw a tent, a chair and the man from the fire and when I stretched out my hand to him he grabbed it and everything was real. In just one second he had rescued us from the crash site, but I could not understand what was happening.

  “You must rest. Drink a little of the water and lay down. The dreams bring betterment,” he said and without being able to answer I drank the water that he gave me and fell asleep.

  My body was numb from the fall and the wound on my head caused a loud noise to vibrate through me that covered my whole being like a veil. As the man had indicated, the dreams that I saw were not normal. Everything in them appeared strange, almost as if they were not my own dreams at all. I heard voices of many people and their shouts were full of fear and sorrow. No one was there to help them and even I was not able to do so.

  Only when my despair drove me out of my mind, I woke up from this nightmare and saw the man in front of me, who had saved us. He was no ordinary person, because his appearance was so different from mine, so much even that I could not fail to stare at him, what he, understandably, disliked a lot.

  “It seems to me, you both are no erudite Webuti. Of course I have seen only a few of your kind and even fewer have survived this meeting. What brings you to Jik'Zur? Is it death you seek?” he asked and took a sip from the cup that he held in his hand.

  His clothing was very thin and it seemed as if it was only slightly covering his skin.

  His hairstyle was exceptional, since his long hair almost formed a sculpture on his head of the likes I never had seen before. In his eyes the room reflected as they were as clear and blue as the ocean. And his voice had a gentle sound that almost seemed as if the words he spoke wafted over to me on a calming wave.

  “We are looking for a good friend. His corpse has been brought here. Perhaps you can help us? As you noticed, we are strangers in this place,” I answered and tried to sound as diplomatically as possible, because the insinuations of this stranger were not of the friendliest of kinds.

  He looked at me and analysed me exactly, while his eyes again and again wandered over to Isaac. His hand now eased the grasp around his cup and he took some herbs that he immediately crushed in a mortar.

  “A friend you say. Why should someone send his friend here? The truth is an expensive good, stranger. We are the people of the shadows, the Skaduwee and we do not like to be lied to; especially not from a Webuti like you.”

  The herbs that now had become a fine pulp, he administered to Isaac, who immediately woke up from his sleep. With heavy breath Isaac reached for his neck and it was as if he wanted to show us that he was no longer able to breathe.

  “What kinds of demon are hidden under your skin?” the stranger asked and delivered Isaac with a powerful blow from his suffering.

  Still he found it difficult to breathe, but with time his condition normalized and he began to understand where we were.

  “The balloon? Where are we? This is the gorge?” he asked full of pain and lay down again on his back.

  The stranger handed him a glass of water and rose from his chair. He opened the entrance to the tent and revealed to us a view over a big village in the middle of this dark gorge.

  “This is Krag, the home of my people and the las
t refuge from the shadows. You have come a long way to search for the friend that you have lost. But the truth can never hide at this place. I will see what you carry in your heart and I will judge, if my people should welcome you. My name is Melisizwe and I am the eye of the shadow.”

  To the two of us it was clear that this man would not be pleased if he knew what our true intentions were and so we decided with just a glance that we were not going to tell him. Even if he really could see what we wanted to do, so we could still not risk to be stopped. Jasper was our friend and we had lost him. For me that could be considered the truth.

  He showed us the village, led us slowly around, while I supported Isaac to stay conscious. Mel, as I now called the stranger was no talkative man; he was an observer and judge. The glances of the many people in this village were full of fear and prejudice, as they saw us, but as soon as they looked at Mel it negated all negativity and peace returned. His power and his reputation, reminded me of the prince and his unfathomable gifts, but this time it seemed as if this man did not abuse his powers.