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

by Maximilian Warden

  Giant dragon statues adorned the castle walls and the complex itself was modelled after a dragon. I understood now that the dragons truly must have been masters of many crafts and also how the prince had survived all this time. A place like this was impregnable. The square in front of the huge fortress must have been once a well-decorated garden, as beautiful water installations and magnificent plants graced this place, but they had fallen victim to time. The poisonous depraved water flowed along our feet and slowly drove apart the floor tiles, only to eventually reach the dead plants that decorated the square like a spoiled and gaping wound and left them to die a gradual and gruesome death. This place was an open testimony to all the horrible deeds of past generations.

  Now we entered the building and I saw paintings of the finest art, statues and busts and collections of old writings, as they could otherwise only be found in a museum. This was not only the residence of the prince; it was the legacy of a whole species. Even if the atmosphere was depressing, as the light was weakened due to hardly breaking through the dusty large mosaic windows, casting a shadow over our heads, while we slowly walked like prisoners to our execution, we were still here willingly and so we appreciated it more as a memorial to our instincts, than being truly shaken by it. Mel had brought us to the place which we sought to reach and now we would only need to find the book to bring everything to a conclusion.

  But this proofed to be more difficult than I thought it would, because this fortress was as big as a whole village and there were too many rooms to search them all. Mel followed our every step and we never escaped his eyes. I discerned by his stance that it tormented him to be in this place and that his powers were being suppressed, as the pain he still suffered from, due to the after-effects of the ritual, felt even worse here than before.

  “What is the reward for a traitor to his people? You hold them like slaves in a world that is not their own, and why? Is it your own pride that keeps you in this world? Or is it just your envy that lets you forget what you really are?” I asked him and he coughed heavily, as he tried to meet me with laughter.

  “You don't understand how this world works. At that time I was the same and at that time I signed a pact that haunts me now. It challenges my existence, that of my people, even yours. We are all connected. The prince plans from here what happens in the world, yes, his word is command and his dreams and thoughts are reality. The madness that drove me into the hands of this tyrant follows me now in my sleep and my troubled soul will never find rest again.”

  “A true leader fights for his people; he does not sell himself out to survive. No matter how powerful this enemy is, you have abandoned your people and you know that,” I said, but Mel had no more interest in my words.

  We reached a large door crafted from the finest wood and on it we saw a carving of a battle. It showed the struggles of the gods against the first dragons and under it the words 'Superbia Draconum'. I knew that my life could end behind this door and so I thought of the time from which I once was born.

  I felt almost nostalgic until Mel touched my shoulder and said: “If he gives you a choice that you are unable to make then do not oppose him. Obey his orders, as I once did, because the pain that otherwise follows will break you.”

  “In your eyes I see no peace and no satisfaction. Leave me the same freedom of choice that you once had. I will decide what the right thing to do is,” I said and forced away the hand of Mel.

  He opened the door and showed us a beautiful room, in which at least five hundred chairs were placed in front of empty tables, obscured by the dust over them. At the end of the hall there was a throne facing us and a well-known face sat on top of it, overlooking it all. Lucia sat there in a snow-white dress and her arms and legs were bound to the throne with heavy chains. I saw the wounds inflicted on her body and it told me that the prince had broken his word already. But as soon as I entered the room the dark veil around us all disappeared and hundreds of candles ignited all by themselves, while a single strong gust of wind cleaned the tables and the room.

  Lucia was gone and I was sure that this was just the beginning of the games that the prince was playing.

  “You will wait here. Forgive me the shame that I am bearing,” said Mel and disappeared in the shadows.

  Only Magnus and I remained in the room and so we sat down on the empty chairs and waited for our host.

  “What will we do, when he just enters the room? Should we simply try to fight him? I have seen his powers and I doubt that we could win in an open battle,” I asked Magnus, but he had apparently better things to do.

  He looked at the ring on my finger and even though he did not tell me the truth about it, so I was sure that he knew it.

  “This book is more than you believe it to be. I have not told you everything, but I knew what had happened, even right after I woke up from my sleep. I remember the man who showed me the many artefacts that he had found on his travels. He was also the one who asked me to translate something for him. When I read the words, I knew that he would not survive and that I would follow him on this path.

  He had found a way to destroy the dragons, but he also had realized who the dragons were. Do you see the mosaics in the windows? All of them were high lords of the dragon order and in this place they gathered their force. This book is more than a safe full of knowledge; it is also the key for the re-emergence of the dragons. I was not able to translate everything and yet I know more than I would like,” said Magnus and walked through the large hall.

  I looked at the pictures and saw simple people on them. For me dragons had always been these great lizards, the fire-breathing monsters that soar through the air. Maybe I had to get used to the fact that they were only simple people behind all these shadows.

  “How have they survived for such a long time? How could the prince escape death, while all the others died?”

  “You are looking at the world from the wrong angle, my dear chap. The better question would be: how could the prince slay all the other dragons? Do you really think that he resisted his own death? I think that he has used his people, just like the spirit that brought us here. Sometimes we are ready to sink deep into the shadows to achieve what we are looking for. Even I would have given everything just for a result. But when I saw this result, I knew that it would have been wrong. Our decisions may be quick, but their consequences never are.”

  Magnus considered the throne, whose fine wooden case seemed to be from a recent time. But maybe it was just the magic of this place that made me doubt its origin.

  “Is all of this just magic? Can we really not explain against what we are fighting? Not so long ago I had believed in science and the control of progress in the field of research. But what are all of these things that we saw? It seems as if no one could control them,” I said with a sigh and sat down on one of the tables.

  “Magic has never existed. The greatest mages, the most talented alchemists and even the shamans and druids of forgotten tribes are nothing more than scholars of a specific field of science. Perhaps they do not understand everything that surrounds them and probably take too many things for granted, but in the end everything they do can be explained and nothing is a mystery.

  My research revealed so many secrets of humanity that I sometimes mourn the fact that I have destroyed them. Now I have saved the world from being destroyed by them, but I have also taken the opportunity from it to save itself through them.

  You said that you saw how the prince fights and that his power is unrivalled. But remember an important rule for the case that we have to fight him regardless. No enemy is invulnerable.

  Even if his life force does not seem to end, a sword can kill him, poison can weaken him and fire can burn him. This is the science that you have to believe in, no, you need to know that it exists. Not even he can resist these laws,” said Magnus and tried to awake my courage.

  But as the door behind the throne opened, not the prince entered the room, but Lucia. She was not hurt and there was no
fear in her eyes. In her hand she held a curved sword, a falx. She dragged the curved blade slowly over the stone floor and cracked a deep furrow through it.

  “There you are at last, Iago,” she said and began to laugh like crazy.

  Chapter 45: Caught between Love and Hate

  “What happened to you?” I asked and Lucia slowly approached me.

  “Are you afraid of me? Do you think that you no longer know me? Is it because I finally understood what to do? The prince has opened my eyes. Through his power I will see again my father. You can’t possibly imagine what he can do, but I have seen it. This place, this castle, it is only a tiny example. But now he has forced me to decide. Do I want to continue to live in your shadow? Suffer because of your decisions and wither away in despair?

  There was a time, even if it has not long passed, which I remember hardly, and in that time I had loved you, Iago. You were the boy who was not afraid of the world, but of the people in it. You had dreams that over the years winked at what you grieved and which have shown me that this world was not as alone, as I always knew it. Now I understand, however, that nothing of all this was real. Your fear is bigger than I had ever expected it to be and it is forcing you to betray all that in which you once believed.

  Without a mother without a father, not even any family, how should I still find what is important? At the beginning I have believed that you are what I need and all the others lost value. I wanted you to bring me to the place where all our dreams could be united, but this place is long gone. With every step I grew tired of your closeness, you felt like a dark shadow over me and I tried to go back but it was too late.

  The prince now gives me a way to not just go back, but even so much further. This world is under his control and if he wants, then it burns. I can stand by his side and prevent that from ever happening. My father will live again and maybe even the rest of my family. You have always hated your father, forced his death through your own hand and now you are here to end it all. The book is securely stored away and you will not get to see it. Prepare for your doom.”

  She wanted to fight me and her eyes were fixed without any fear. This was the will of the dragon, because I saw the same look in the eyes of all these so highly esteemed ancestors whose faces now observed me from the thick glass windows. Lucia swung her blade furiously about and I did not fail to notice that she had learned to handle it. The weapon was enormous and since it was over one meter long, it was difficult for me to escape its reach. More and more my clothes tore apart and with many small cuts the blade sliced through my flesh, until I had left a long track of blood drops on the floor of the hall and had to sink down to my knees.

  Lucia stopped her attack, but emotions were no longer known to her, while she ostentatiously sunk the tip of the blade into the ground.

  “Do you understand now that I am no longer the same person? I changed just as much as you,” she said and just wanted to draw the blade back from the ground when I grabbed her hand and looked into her eyes.

  “I'm sorry, sorry beyond all imagination. I always dreamed to once kneel down before you just so that you can see how much I love you, but those times are gone. I feel the wounds that both of us bear, I understand the agony that I have caused you and that I was too weak to possess morals and decency. If someone is like me and lives only in the books, then you think that you would find the truth about the world at some point, but I quickly understood that the truth is not a simple story.

  This blade at your feet is all that is needed to remove me from the narrative of life. A decision like this does not always come easy, but when it comes it is final. I have seen your father, his spirit, and he told me that I had to do everything in my power to stop the prince. Perhaps I am no longer the young Iago and you are no longer the small vulnerable Lucia, but we cannot supress this desire to return to this time. The end is always death and it was the same for my father, your father and our village.

  Help me to stop the prince and together we can have a future that is free of hatred,” I said, but she struck my hand aside and grabbed the hilt of the blade.

  It took a second, but this was all the time I needed to roll to the side and avoid the swing that would have beheaded me.

  “You speak of the future, as if you still had one, but you should be aware that you will never leave this place alive,” she shouted at me, but now Magnus stood behind her and overpowered her with a single strike.

  He let loose of the candle stand that he had abused as a weapon and took the blade of Lucia into his hand.

  “Why does no one ever notice the old man? We should hurry and find the book before she regains her consciousness, unless you want to end it here and now,” he said and handed me the weapon.

  I looked at this twisted sword and saw the drips of my blood, which ran along the serpentine blade and trickled onto the ground next to Lucia.

  Her body appeared very calm and without all this hatred that she bore within herself, she seemed so peaceful. I hated myself for even considering what Magnus had suggested and so I walked past him without a word and entered the inner complex. There were long dark corridors, but there was also something else that guided me, even if I was not able to describe what it was. Quickly and without even looking around, I ran from room to room, used each step and followed each corridor, until I finally arrived where my senses had led me. First I thought it was the blood loss, which I had suffered, but it was not even enough to stop me from running and for that reason it had to be something else whereby this place mesmerized me.

  It was a small room in which nothing was found but a table on which a simple candle stood. Magnus ran past me and sat down in the middle of the darkness of the room while I was like spellbound at the outlines of the candle and gazed aboulic into space not knowing what I should do. Magnus inflamed the candle and its weak glow was hardly enough for the shadow to be displaced and so it still prevailed in this room.

  “He has captured us. The path that we follow is not real. That what we see is not what we had to see. Consider this area closely and you will understand what I am talking about,” said Magnus and knocked the candle down.

  The flame did not burn up the table and the door behind me could not be closed anymore. And even though it should be possible I still could not pass through it and slowly I understood what Magnus meant.

  “It is the book. Its power is omnipresent. As long as it is in his possession, we cannot resist him,” said Magnus and the chair on which he sat became a little shabby stool.

  The table became rotten and old and the candle transformed to a simple cup made of wood, while the light was dancing untamed and moved to the flames of the torches that had now appeared outside of our room and revealed where we were. The walls turned to iron bars and the ground to cold stone. The prince had caught us in a cage and now there was no way back.

  “I told you to wait in that room. Now it will begin. He presents you with one last option to escape from all this,” said Mel who suddenly appeared from the shadows in front of the bars.

  “If you bow to him, then he will spare you. Translate the book and surrender your spirit to him, so that he can be convinced of your conviction. One day, only one, then I will return and all the days that follow will be marked by pain or hope. Consider closely what path you wish to follow.”

  He disappeared as quickly as he had appeared and now Magnus and I were forced to find a way to destroy the book that bound us.

  “There are many things that I need to tell you. I have seen this book before, but far more important is the man who showed it to me. Jasper Lawrence had a request and even though I cannot remember much since I awoke in this field, I still recognized you instantly,” said Magnus and turned the blade on the table.

  “Recognized me? Do you want to say that we have met before?”

  “I also met your father. The things that Jasper asked of me were numerous, and even if I am not sure that his plan has worked, so I knew already at that time that your life is very speci
al, no matter what Jasper believed.”

  “How much do you really know about all this? Why did you not simply tell me the truth?”

  “The truth ... it is a word that claimed the life of many and at the end it is still not more than an illusion. The Sun King was not the person who has written this book, but I think that you already know that. Jasper believed at that time that the Sun King had used it to write down the secret of his power, but what I found was much more than the mystery of a single man; it was the legacy of a different species.

  Even today I do not understand every word in this book and the connections are in no way understandable for a simple human being, but I understood that there once was a being of very great power. The history as we knew it was no more than a lie and before this world fragmented other beings with other ambitions existed.

  But what appalled me even more than to recognize that my belief was a lie, was the fact that there is still a being out there from this old time. The prince was the reason for the fall of the Sun King and he was the reason for the fall of many other kings over the centuries. Jasper told me that he would visit the prince and that his plan would comprise the forfeiture of his own life.