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

by Maximilian Warden

  “What are you looking for, traveller? Is it the voice of the dead? I hear them and their desire for retaliation and for your death. You brought many of them to me. Tell me the reason for your arrival!” he said to me and opened the hatch in the roof, letting out the fog and dampening its impact.

  “My friend, he is in danger. I was told to give you this, and then you would know what to do,” I said and presented him with the cloth.

  He grabbed it hastily and smiled while I watched him. His clothes, not unlike those that the dragon priests of Tybalt donned, was easy and dotted with feathers and branches which hung down from his shoulders.

  The robe was long and made of cheap material sewn together here and there with a patch of leather trying to hide the missing skill of the creator. The man’s actions were precise, often as if he knew what would happen. His steps went far and yet exact and his turns were subtle and still natural, his presence was pure and yet so depressing. He had no weapon on his body, except a small curved sickle, which I believed to be used for the gathering of his ingredients. The wolf head, which he wore as a head ornament, served as the eponym of his name, as much was certain, but the pastes and herbs that almost made the area disappear, were so numerous that I asked myself whether he really collected them alone.

  However as he whipped out the sickle and pierced through the cloth with it, I was amazed that he had been able to throw it with such a precision that the fabric poised in the wall behind me with his weapon inside.

  It was quiet and he did nothing more than to look at the piece of cloth which was now shivering and twisting on the wooden wall, while the gaze of the man became cold and rigid.

  “Well. What happened to your friend, traveller?” he asked and sat down in the middle of the tent.

  A small carpet, embroidered with the large heads of hummingbirds, was all he had to sit on, whereas his general demands hardly existed in the first place. He turned around and his back was free between all the fabric and it revealed deep scars and wounds from ancient times. The old man grabbed some bones and pulverized them with a slow but powerful motion. On and on he processed the powder and poured liquid after liquid onto it, until everything was mixed to a thick paste, which he finally smeared over his entire face. As he turned back to me again, I saw his white face and it shone, almost like the fog that had previously filled the small hut. He lifted up his hand and the sickle that firmly rested in the wall behind me, detached from the wall as by magic and flew to him.

  As soon as he had caught his sickle, the piece of cloth began to move wildly in the wind that now quickly covered the tent. The walls and ground trembled and the buzzing of the old man resounded again. Now it was louder, increasingly so that I hardly perceived what happened around me. Nothing made sense anymore and only when the piece of cloth was ignited and the fire began to devour it whole, it exploded in a white fog and swallowed both me and the old man.

  It took me a few seconds but then I recovered from the shock that found me in a condition of such confusion that I was hardly able to remember who I was or what I wanted. The humming of the man stopped and now I could see him more clearly than ever before. He was no longer a man, he had become an apparition. The white paste on his face had become his skin, and his robe was lying on top of it like a scaly carapace. The head of the wolf was no longer a trophy, because it was alive and talked to me in a continuous resounding wave.

  “My name is Nkechinyere and I am the mistress of the spirits of the night. What brings you to my world, traveller? I see the deeds of your past, the dark future over your head and I smell the damnation that hunts those you love. Speak and bring honour back to the house of your ancestors.”

  “I have tried to save it all. Now I do not know if I just tried to save myself. Why do you call me traveller? Where does this journey lead of that you speak?”

  “You are a fool if you expect answers from me and just as mad, if you think that you know who you are. Your destiny is surrounded by darkness and hope. Two pages which attract and repel. You have chosen, you have murdered and you have enjoyed what was wrong and is. Now you are looking for redemption, now you are looking for answers, but I, I know nothing of your world and I never want to. My Jikali, the man whom you have asked for help, he is the reason for my coming. Take this opportunity and ask the question to which I cannot give an answer,” said the spirit, while the fog began to disappear.

  “Can you save my friend? He is my last hope.”

  “The fate of your friend is already fixed. The ritual, which you are looking for to perform, knows only one ending. It is dangerous to change it. In the end there can only be one spirit, not more. Take my blessing and follow the path of the spirits. On it you will find what you are looking for. Jikali caste!” replied the spirit and breathed a last breath through the dense fog which gathered the mist and pushed it onwards into my lungs.

  As the ritual was finished, I saw how the man opened the hatch in the roof and without another word I knew what had to be done.

  Chapter 42: Magnus’ Healing

  Everything we see has a meaning and importance and even if we are rarely able to deduce it, so we have every possibility to do so. Our mind, our perception and our ability to change things, all unite within the urge to create something new. I was not just the son of my father I was much more a project of his. Faster, smarter, more beautiful, just better should I be, but for my father, I was in the end nothing of it all. Expectations are not a bad thing, but it’s sometimes difficult to meet your own. The bitter taste of defeat is never different, whether you had a choice or not. I was an outsider and therefore a part of the world, which had no interest in the world at all. But now I was able to change something.

  As much as I had persuaded myself that I never wanted to save this world, the more I sacrificed myself for it. My own family, my friends and my dreams, up to the point at which I understood that the world I tried to save had already disappeared in the flames. No one should fight a battle beyond his own control and yet we force people to do just that more than we would ever admit. For me this fight ended on the day that I left the ritual of the grey wolf. Again something changed within me and this time it was fundamental. Just like the piece of cloth that Mel had given to me my skin was now glowing with a light white gloss when the pale light of the shadows touched it.

  Isaac had done a lot of work to meet the requirements of what I wanted to see in him, but I still forced myself to never understand who he really was. It was probably out of fear that we were much more alike as I would love to admit and everyone knows that we learn from other people who we really are. But now it was time to settle my old scores and so I wanted to be the one who saves his friend and his father.

  The world, humanity, everything had now become irrelevant, as long as those survived who meant something to me. It was an attitude that was healthy, but of which I quickly learned that it could also lead to wrong results.

  Isaac still seemed tormented, deeply lost in the secrets of the past. The writings he tried to decipher were the memories of the dead that he wanted to bring back. But in his eyes I saw the truth, that same truth that he’d preferably hide himself in similar letters and even more confidential books. Fear, confidence, trust and death were standing around him and his hand shook indiscriminately between them. Now it would begin and now we would see how strong Magnus Doyle really was and how much his son could bear of this strength.

  Mel stepped into the tent, asked us to follow him and we followed him up to the largest square in the village. There on the Drorumte the ritual would begin. Many people had gathered in order to observe the spectacle that presumably was unique in its execution. Isaac took his place in the middle of the field and his fear was now no longer hidden behind a mask, but it broke free with every thought he carried deep within him. He clasped his hands in prayer, as a last call for forgiveness and humility to all the gods that he despised over his life, or even never noticed. Now his time had come, his judgement, and I as his sole friend co
uld no longer help him.

  The dark coat Mel was wearing had become increasingly heavy and so he threw it down onto the ground and revealed the rotting flesh under all the bandages on his body. He was just a spirit disappearing in the shadows and the body in which he lived, was no more than a means of transport. I knew the ritual, the signs that Mel formed with his hands and felt how the air was compressed as he unleashed his power on Isaac. The wolf mother told me that I should follow the path of the spirits and so I waited for it to be shaped in my wake. Only in the moment when Isaac would lose his fight, I could try to help him.

  He fell down on the ground, numbed I watched his lifeless body and for a few seconds I believed that he had already died. Perhaps this status, this ritual, was a gateway between life and death. Perhaps it was the reason for this place to be called the gateway to hell. All these thoughts were running through my head and they were too fast for me to keep up. Nothing remained; nothing was of importance, with the exception of my gaze that focused more and more on Isaac.

  We heard the humming of Mel, the singing of the people of the shadows and the quiet whisper of the spirits behind the deep darkness of the gulf. And as this darkness began to open I saw a man wrapped in deep white and he pointed his hand towards me, almost as if he would welcome me. I believed that this man could be my father but it was probably just a wish because I knew that it wasn’t possible.

  For me there was no world beyond our own, since science and life were everything I knew. But the more I observed the ritual, the clearer the image became and at the end of this gorge I saw a palace, a fitting castle for a king, but the people in front of it were happy and they called this palace their home. This was the heaven that humanity was looking for? Or was the importance of reality lost in this place? Faith in the things that we see is something important. Some can only accept things as real if they can see, taste, or feel them. But what if the deception became so real that no sense remains untouched? How can I recognize fiction? How do I experience my reality?

  Isaac had told me that I could make my own decisions, which should define my own reality. Now I could see what I wanted to see, but it proved to be a difficult task. The air circulated ever so slowly until it was completely calm. At this point Mel lowered his hand and took an almost meditative pose in which he then remained. The people all sang together, as if this ritual was nothing unusual. Some things resembled the procedures that I had undergone, but much proved to be new. It was probably the perspective from which I now considered the whole process.

  The window that was opened and granted us a view into the gorge compressed more and more on its edges until the black was so dark that it looked as if the light was destroyed by it. My skin was shimmering strongly and the moment of which the she-wolf had spoken, approached. The man I had seen was gone, but in his place a light was created, so immense that it dazzled me and was even able to resist the pure darkness around it. Where it touched the ground, it opened up a path that without any doubt was where I needed to go.

  Mel did not even recognize that I stood up, but some of the people around me were really shocked at the thought that someone would voluntarily touch the floor behind the shadows, as long as the window was open.

  Between the field, the window and the place behind it, it seemed almost as if the air itself would be torn apart. My view on the place, which was hidden deep behind this gorge, became clearer with each step that I made through the window, but the stress that I felt grew even faster.

  I felt the ring on my finger as he responded to the air and the slight tingling that he triggered from my hand was everything that connected me with the other side. This ring was apparently very old and its magic anchored me to my world.

  The field was now far away and the sound of the song had now completely disappeared. The path under my feet kept me in this place and I felt it on my skin that everything I was, was looking to escape from here. My goal was the palace at the end of the path, but reaching it would take a long time and my energy was waning.

  Now that I had dared to risk my own life for a friend, there was no doubt that this way knew only one direction. The steps got so difficult that I yearned to turn around, but I still kept struggling forward, until I finally reached the end of the path and found myself in front of a staircase leading up to the palace.

  Nobody was to be seen, there was nothing to be heard and everything was like a shadow on the window through which I had passed. The steps disappeared after I had taken them and I was very grateful about that as they would have otherwise scattered my thoughts and rendered my hope void.

  At the top I saw a great square on which many people had gathered, but they could neither hear nor see me. Their dark blue robes, reminded me of the one that Jasper had worn when I freed him from his body.

  Each of my experiments to get in contact with someone failed and so I left the square behind me and approached the grand palace.

  It was not made of stone or wood or even metal. I did not know whether it even existed, but I could be sure that I at least thought that it was real. My legs weighed heavily in this place and it was not easy to traverse the huge hall inside at whose end a throne was shining in a bright light.

  On the ceiling of the hall there were crystals resembling the one that I had seen in the hands of Mel, but these shone in a vibrant purple and it was as if they were resonating to the light of the throne. On the throne sat not the man I had seen, but a woman. Her gaze was not equal to that of the people on the square and so I assumed that she could truly recognize me.

  “What is this place?” I asked her, but she did not reply to my question, which again and again echoed through the hall.

  “Can you see me? Help me, please,” I begged of her and soon realized that with every word that I said in this place my strength was dwindling.

  I sat down on the stages before the throne and looked at the crystals whose gloss captivated me, as if it pursued me. The radiation of the throne that was reflected on them lit up the entire hall in such a strong way that even a glance on the clear floor caused headaches.

  I did not belong here and yet the she-wolf had sent me. And now I could not return without an answer. She had told me that I should ask the question to which she cannot give an answer, but what a question should this be? Do things exist whose actual meaning is nonsense? To formulate a question that no one would need to answer seemed not very helpful to me, and yet it was the only thing that these people could understand.

  Since they could neither see, nor hear me, my only option was to help myself. This was the only way I could find the answer that no one was able to give me.

  My gaze wandered about and even if many people walked through the hall, the woman on the throne never looked at them.

  She stared obsessed at the entrance to the palace and it was as if she was waiting for something that never happened. If this was the path of the spirits then these were probably the spirits of the people who were trapped in the gorge. Now they waited for their salvation or at least the understanding of what happened to them.

  This was the only conclusion at which I arrived and yet it could not help me. I therefore stood up and examined the throne because it was also made from unknown materials. My skin shone forth in its splendour, as I only slightly touched it, and so I was sure that it was the key.

  The ring on my hand began to devour the light which almost completely encapsulated it. The previously somewhat dull outer casing was now full of life, and the ring itself slowly turned around my finger. Only little time remained for me to focus on it, because my own strength decreased with every second.

  It was probably the fate of a man like me, being forced to make a decision I couldn’t understand, after being forced to enter this place by fear and compulsion. Mel had told me that I had to be ready to risk my own spirit to save Isaac and when I looked at the entrance to the palace, I finally understood why I was here.

  The woman on the throne did not wait for her salvation and also not t
o understand her condition, she waited for the spirit of Isaac, who now slowly wandered through the halls of the palace. All my calls and all my gestures just used the rest of my energy because he could not see me. Now it was up to me to understand how I could help him, but time was against me in this place.

  If this woman was the origin of the curse then the crystals on the ceiling had to preserve her. I began to understand what price I had to pay to save Isaac and I was sure that I had to take the place on the throne.

  It was quite unlike me to act without thinking, but each step the spirit of Isaac took was a further second I lost and so I now grabbed the throne with both hands and its glow began to cease.

  My right hand vibrated evermore, while the ring absorbed the light of the throne and turned quicker than before. Its power began to increase, but mine was now completely consumed.

  The light of the throne was weaker and more and more the woman who was sitting on it disappeared. Until finally nothing was left over and the crystals on the ceiling lost their lustre and turned mat, just like the one I had seen in the hands of Mel.

  As my gaze fell to Isaac, I was glad, because he did not walk towards me anymore, but now that he stopped and I did not know whether I could release the throne, I decided to just sit down on it. At this moment I froze in place and a huge shock seized the palace and slowly made it collapse. The debris fell down from the ceiling, striking down in close proximity to Isaac who still did not move.