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

by Maximilian Warden

  “You really ought to take the old man more seriously,” he said and held the book in his hand.

  Magnus winked at me, and as much as I wanted to believe that we had finally won, so it did not change reality. The prince directed his fist in one swift motion in the direction of Magnus and dismissed from it all the power he had accumulated. A large explosion tore the entire wall behind Magnus to pieces, and only when the dust had settled, I could see him again. He stood there, almost unharmed, and still firmly clasped the book. Behind him nothing more than a deep way down through the tunnel of the dwarves remained.

  “I thank you, Jacob. My mistake ends here and now. I remember more and more of everything that you and Isaac have experienced. These memories should not belong to me. Back then, when I lost my wife, everything that I wanted was to find the solution to the puzzle. But as I came closer to this solution, I realized that it was outside of my power to bring my wife back. Isaac has a dream that is much nobler than mine could ever be. Protect him and help him to achieve what he dreams of.

  I know that Jasper told you that I am the solution to everything, but at that time I said to him that he is mistaken. You are a special boy and I regret not what I have done, because I know that you will protect this world. Follow your path, and trust only the words in your heart.

  This will be my last work, and I will finish it with what remains of my wife. You will see that this world no longer belongs to the dragons, prince Marko,” he called out into the world and touched the book with his ring.

  First it was as if time stood still and none of us could do something. The prince stood there full of anger against Magnus, who had now destroyed his dream.

  The ring on my hand began to rotate faster and faster while Magnus hold his against the book, and only when he said his words the piece of jewellery calmed down again.

  “E Pluribus Unum!” said Magnus quietly, and his body separated from Isaac and the book of the gods took his former place while the ring now rushed back to Isaacs’s finger.

  When his son fell to the ground, Magnus smiled, and with a last wink he jumped back, down into the abyss. He knew that his son would not be able to understand the contents of the book on his own and so it was safe where it was hidden. He had sacrificed his own life, but he probably already knew that it would happen when I saw him for the first time.

  Chapter 53: Lucia’s Spirit

  The prince ran towards the abyss, to stop Magnus from falling, but Mel stood in his way.

  “No longer will I just witness while you destroy this world,” he said and used his power to throw the prince to the ground.

  Unable to act quickly enough, wrath began to kindle within the prince, and it knew no limits. He tried to sit up, but Mel’s force did not allow it. I reached out for the blade, while the cries of the prince filled the room and everything began to burst into flames and destroyed what remained of the castle.

  Without a way to approach the prince, I decided to carry Lucia out of the castle. It was not long until the prince overwhelmed Mel, and dashed with him through the roof of the collapsing castle at great pace, until he eventually landed before our feet on the outside.

  I fell to the ground and could not hold Lucia anymore. In a fast reflex I grabbed the sword and held it in front of me.

  “Even without the book, I can still create new dragons, you have prevented nothing. Mel is just one of many spirits of the other world, and it is easy to replace him. But the betrayal, I experienced from the only being I had truly seen as a brother, is too much for me to bear,” he said, and knocked the blade out of my hand.

  The sky darkened and deep black clouds covered it, only disturbed by the blue lightning that struck around us, like I had never seen it before.

  “I was not called the dark flash for nothing. I am the master of fire, wind, earth and water. No one in this world is safe from my wrath, and today you will learn, what monster you have awakened,” he called out into the storm, while blue flames slowly concealed his body, untouched by the heavy rain that fell down on us.

  “This is what it always was, Marko. We are all to blame for the things that happen, just as you told me. Why can it not end here? Why can we not give up what our soul longs for so much?” I asked him through the thunder and the destruction that surrounded us.

  He knelt down and I looked into his glowing red eyes.

  “Because this is our fate. I will not stop before the world has become what it once was, a world of dragons, in which only the strong govern. All these centuries I tolerated humanity in the hope that they could solve the mystery which my father had imposed on me, but now I understand that humanity was too weak. They could not bear what they saw and they could not do what had to be done. Never will dragons and humans co-exist, because in the end we will always be triumphant,” the prince said, and with a strong jolt he broke my leg. He rose, while I fell on my back and tried to control the pain.

  Lucia had now already come to for a long time and forced herself back on her legs. She had trusted the prince all this time, and believed his promises. She slowly walked over the square and picked up the blade which the prince had knocked from my hand. He laughed at her while she slowly approached him, but I was impressed by her strength. Even after all that had happened to her, she was still so much more determined than I, to bring it to an end.

  “Her courage is without equal, but courage alone will be of no use,” the prince said to me, and drew closer to Lucia.

  I tried to help, but I was no longer able to do anything. The blade in the palm of her hand was worthless against the prince, and yet she did not doubt.

  With all my remaining energy, I forced myself up, and noticed the small silver coin had fallen from my broken slacks out onto the wet floor. I also immediately fell down and hit the cold stone floor with my face. My gaze fixed the coin, and behind it I saw Lucia and the prince, who drew ever closer to each other.

  I recalled the words of the Sun King, and now I knew what had to be done. I stretched out my arm and grabbed the coin, and when I finally felt in my hand, I fell on my back and looked up into the sky.

  My ring shone as strong as it had done only once before, in the realm of the spirits, and I knew that this was the strength that I would need. The strong rain drenched the square, and huge waterfalls rushed down into the tunnels of the dwarves. I in- and exhaled until I knew that it was the right moment and then I turned around, and threw the coin in the direction of the prince. The white light now no longer surrounded my hand but was completely transferred to the small coin. When it hit the back of the prince’s head, he turned to me and Lucia stabbed him, piercing him right through his heart.

  “How?” was everything the prince quietly said to himself, when he looked at me, while I was still lying on the ground.

  The blood from his wound ran down, mingled with the rain, and a red track now enclosed the small silver coin on the floor in front of him. As Lucia let go of the handle of the blade, and the prince turned around, he realized that Mel had helped her. Isaac was lying next to him on the ground and even Mel went now down to his knees, since all his power had been lost in the fight. Lucia smiled at me through the rain, and it was the moment that we all had waited for. The prince fell to the ground, and a chamber in his medallion broke.

  “We should disappear before he recovers” said Mel totally out of breath, but the prince was already trying to stand up again.

  With a movement of his hand he virtually let the body of Mel explode and revealed the shining ball that was hidden within him. He took it on the palm of his hand and when he closed it the ball disappeared.

  “All this time, and now I almost die by the hand of a human and a half-dead spirit,” he said, and I saw that he also no longer had the energy to continue the battle.

  Lucia went past him and lifted the coin from the ground. She looked at it for a few seconds and then came to me. After helping me up, we both stood opposite to the prince, and he smiled up into the sky.

  “
This place was once the centre of the world and now it is nothing more than a barren wasteland. You have defeated me, but you have not killed me. I keep my word, as I always have. Fifteen years from today, and we will see us again. When the day comes, you will feel it, and I will end with a shock, what I have been waiting for so long.”

  “Is there no other way, brother? Now where you are without a home, and need to walk a path with no meaning?” I asked him while I tried to remain conscious.

  He went out farther into the rain and looked down into the abyss where Magnus had found his death. With a strong jolt he yanked the long sword from his body and threw it into the tunnel.

  “I wish there was another way, brother. The mistake of my kind was not our compassion, but our acceptance of weaker beings. You have shown me today that I was mistaken. Humanity is strong, and its strength is not based on their number or unity, but in their art to inspire others. You have kindled a fire deep within my heart, powerful enough to ignite this world. Meet me at the end of the world, Albus. I shall be ready,” he called out to me, and flew up through the dark clouds.

  When he was gone, the storms and the rain stopped. Lucia and I sat on the ground next to Isaac and none of us said a word. It took minutes until we saw each other into the eyes and even then none of us knew what had happened.

  “Silence is a virtue, but too much of it, and the world grows tired of it,” said Isaac and leaned on the wall behind him.

  “I am delighted that you are well, old friend,” I replied, and saw that he thought of his father.

  “We now have all lost, what was most important to us, have we not? The prince has taken from us what we loved,” Lucia uttered while pounding the cold wet stone with her fist.

  I was still not able to stand, and so I supported myself by keeping close to the wall behind me, and shifted my weight onto my left leg, while pointing up into the sky.

  “Do you see that? The sun! Everything we need, everything that we ever really wanted, is already here. The prince has taken nothing from us, and he also has no power to ever do so. We lost everything, because we could not stop watching, while the world destroyed itself. Now the time has come in which we must unite and understand how important it is to listen to each other. The evil that is threatening this world, was created by us, with each second in which we were idle, but now it is time to change,” said I, and Isaac smiled up to the sun, but Lucia seemed not convinced by my speech.

  She stood up and gave me the coin, which had brought down the prince.

  “I think that you're right, but our paths separate here. Even if I do believe that we have done the right thing, I believe also that I am not to blame for the death of my father. I am merely to blame for the fact that he will remain dead. The influence of the prince was like a rush, and with every second that I was in his proximity, I felt like I once felt with you. I am glad that you have freed me and I look back on our journey. It was a long journey, and another is now before us. It is a vast world, but maybe we meet again, and perhaps I forgive you at some point, Iago,” she said and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

  While she slowly disappeared on the horizon, Isaac stood up, and we both looked down into the tunnel, which was now the tomb of Magnus.

  Now we both wore the rings on our fingers that had saved the world from destruction, but we did not know what connection they shared. I told Isaac nothing of what the prince had shown me in his memories, because I knew that it would not be of any help.

  “He was a great man. I can see that now,” said Isaac, and I saw the tears on his face.

  At the end none of us were more powerful than the bond that we shared and that made us who we were. Isaac and I had vanquished the hatred toward our fathers, and converted it, and we now finally understood who we really were. But Lucia, who had always tried to do what was correct, failed in the attempt to accept what happened to her life.

  “I will heal the world. Fifteen years are not a long time, but I will make the best of it. My talents and those of my father, there are many researches that await me. And what will you do, Jacob?”

  He did not know what this world would face, and as much as I felt the urge to tell him, so I did not know whether it would really ever come to pass. I was afraid of the world, which I saw in a clouded future, and yet I withheld my knowledge of it, in the hope that Magnus was wrong.

  I looked at the coin of Lucia, the sun above in the sky, which reminded me of the king, and also through the clouds, behind which the prince was already waiting for me.

  “An order. I will found an order that will change the world.”

  Chapter 54: Sons and Daughters

  This is the end of my story, and even if it has no end like one would expect, so it still tells of everything that I carried in my heart. All the people I met on my trip, the decisions that shook my soul and the enemies who confused my mind, were important for me to realize who I really was. The biggest mystery of our being is at the end always our own existence. We can never better understand something, desire it more or despair of something more, than the way we act, the way in which we live and the fear of our inevitable death.

  The gods had left my world a book full of secrets, stories, truth and lies. It was a book that changed the world, even though no one could understand it. Simple words on a simple piece of paper have the power to create nations, move kingdoms and bring upon the fall of people’s lives, without anyone ever truly reading them. The faith of the prince, that the solution to everything that he despaired of could be found within a book, was perhaps naive, but it was also a sign of hope. A hope that went so far that he was ready to release it into the world just to reunite with it on the day on which he would need it most.

  But his father saw this book as a threat. For him the prophecy within it was not more than simple words that only found value in the world by real events. His hope was humanity, a kind that still stood at the beginning and that knew no resentment against life itself. The nature of the dragons, their almost endless life and their hunger for power made it often difficult for them to change. Humans, however, due to their weakness, their limited life and their curiosity were born for this world, as it presented itself again and again like a new beginning. Nothing ever really ended, and yet it began anew with every new life. The last treasure, which the father of the prince kept safe, was his own son, of which he had read in the book of the gods. His hopes were pinned on me and he was freely willing to sacrifice his life for them.

  The prince was blind, and did not show comprehension, and yet he was also my own brother. Now it was up to the two of us to change the world and without a prophecy from a book, none of us would know what could happen...

  Chapter 55: No Story ever ends...

  “What happened to you, Marko? Have you taken care of the problem?” asked the dark voice from the shadows.

  “There is nothing wrong. I did it. Soon this world will experience the pain that I feel since thousands of years. They were in possession of the book, but now we are safe - it is destroyed,” replied the prince and sank on his knees.

  The shadow pulsated full of power, and a dark fog surrounded the prince. He inhaled it deeply and wetted his lungs with its pale aura.

  “Rest now. Everything we have planned over the years will soon change that world. Without the book they will not be able to stop it,” whispered the dark voice.

  “But what if they have already learned of it? They know more than you believe,” the prince asked, and immediately the shadows formed a noose around his neck.

  The woman, who stepped out of the shadows, stood before the prince, and put her hand on his cheek.

  “They know nothing! And now sleep, my son,” she said gently, and loosened the grip of the shadows.

  “As you command, mother,” whispered the prince and closed his eyes.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  My name is Maximilian Warden and I was born on the 25th of October 1989 in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. My interest in philosophy and the writing and
telling of stories lead me to read many books. Especially the works of Oscar Wilde and Friedrich Nietzsche inspired me to write my own. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  For more information on me or my books visit www.gangarra.com