by Gene Stiles
The city cracked.
“I do not wish to return to Nil,” Terahtept muttered dejectedly, staring at the reddish sparks flying as he stirred their meager fire with a long piece of stick. A glowing ember landed on his bare, bronzed thigh, raising an instant blister which he ignored with the flick of a finger. Sitting on the warm ground at the edge of the foothills beneath a star-filled, black sky, his four companions nodded their agreement.
“We are all dead men,” Brodiput added, his high lilting voice quivering in horror, his young mind imagining all manner of tortures inflicted upon his flesh. “We have combed these mountains for three weeks with nary a trace of our quarry. Apophus will be very displeased.”
Each of the men shuddered, nightmarish images flooding their souls at such a thought. As the fourth squad to search this region, they all knew well the fates of those who came before them. Their failure would mark their quivering, screaming, bloody carcasses for days before they were allowed to die. Their ears burned with the shrieks and howls of their predecessors, their nostrils filled with the stench of bubbling body fat.
“It is impossible,” Eulikin cried softly, unmanly tears streaking his boyish pink cheeks. “They are ghosts. Long gone from here if they have a brain in their heads. No one in their right minds wishes to remain anywhere near cursed land.”
“It is a good thing then,” a deep, rumbling voice boomed from the boulders behind them, “that we are not in our right minds.”
Startled, the squad jumped to their feet, swords drawn and at the ready, backs to each other in a circle. Strange apparitions separated themselves from the shadows. Terahtept felt his heart pounding in his throat, his stomach churning and beads of terror dripping from his forehead. The sword in his hand quivered, almost dropping to the ground. What good would it do against the demons approaching from the dark?
Nightmarish, half-man monsters encircled the shivering men surrounding the camp fire. One giant stepped forward, standing before the squad, shining in golden glory. His body was that of a man. His skin had a reddish tint, smooth where it could be seen and bulging with corded muscle. He wore crimson boots that came to a peak in the front just above his knees. Around his narrow waist, a belt of blood-red edged in gold buckled a wrap of white linen to his broad hips. It spread downward in a wedged swath of tiles almost to the pointed top of his boots. On each arm, he wore a sheath of gold, trimmed in dark maroon, from his wide wrists to his thick forearms and a narrow band of the same style around his huge biceps. In one hand he held an ornate staff of gold and silver covered with strange runes, topped with a globe that pulsed with the yellow-red of an angry sun.
That was where his similarity to mankind ended. The entire head was that of a metallic, majestic hawk, deadly golden beak hooked and open. The eyebrows of onyx pointed downward below a furrowed forehead almost hidden beneath a hood of gold stripped with purple that fell down to his broad, flat shoulders. Around his head sat a crown of gold. In the center, above sparkling blue eyes, a rounded disk of gold sat in the embrace of outward curved horns. Plates of gold and black armor covered his shoulders and massive chest, strapped with black, flexible metal around his ribcage. A gigantic, upside down version of his golden crown shielded his monstrous chest, horns holding a pulsing, swirling sun in the palms of their hands. Terahtept covered his eyes with his fingers, finding the twisting current blinding and nauseating.
Next to the terrifying beast stood a woman of incredible beauty. A silver scaled gown melted against her shapely, enticing body from her slightly sloped shoulders, over the rise of her ample chest, down to a slender waist, wide hips and ending in the middle of her muscled thighs. A crown of gold, horns holding the sun, encircled her forehead, trapping her long mane of dark auburn hair and keeping it from her shimmering emerald eyes. Her skin was the color of burnished copper. Rose lips, full and sensual, sat perfect in her high-cheeked, oval face. She held in her had a wide-hafted object topped with an ornate, somewhat wedged square.
Her stunning beauty and seductive form is not what caused the squad to lower their swords and their chins. It was the pure white wings that hung from her raised arms. Each satin-sheened feather was trimmed with just a highlight of gold that glimmered in the glow of the staff in her companion’s hand. Her smile, slightly lopsided, radiated warmth and peace at odds with the demonic thing next to her.
“Fear not,” she told them. “We are here to help you not harm you.”
The horrifying Hawk tapped his staff upon the ground and banished the night from the encampment, holding the darkness at bay with the brilliance of a noonday sun. Behind the pair, a group of men and creatures of fearsome fantasy gathered waiting. A gargantuan black block of rippling muscle with the head of a jackal stood to one side. A woman with the head of a wild cat held a small sun-topped staff next to a cadre brawny, copper-skinned giants. The sight so overwhelmed the frantic, frightened Nillian squad they dropped their weapons and fell to their knees, bowing their heads in prayers to the God Sirius.
“Please forgive me for causing you such terror,” the hawk man said, his baritone voice rich and apologetic. “Rise to your feet, my friends. You are in no danger here. We mean you no harm. I am Ra of Atlantis and we mean to free the city and the People of Nil from the clutches of that evil corruption called Apophus. Please. Join us.”
He reached up, lifted his head from his shoulders and held it in the crook of his arm. It took long quaking moments before the Nillian guards could bring themselves to glance upward. When they finally did, they saw, to their astonishment, a familiar face on the shoulders of the creature, their anxious dread and trepidation slipping from their skin like water from a sheet of glass. It was nothing more than a helmet the man held at his side. Just a man, not a monster. Once their panic subsided, the Nillians realized these were the very people they sought to find and capture.
Frayed nerves calmed, replaced by curiosity and wonder. Terahtept listened in rapt astonishment to the stories of Ra and Wadjet. He knew a burning shame that he was one who stood at the pillars, watching with a sense of pride as Ramathus and his kin were whipped and tortured. He begged for forgiveness from the giant of a man sitting cross-legged on the other side of the fire.
“You only followed your orders,” Ra replied kindly. “All you knew was the lies and half-truths you heard. I harbor no ill will nor do the rest of my friends.”
“How can we be of service to you?” Eulikin asked, brushing sweat-dampened strands of straight, black hair from his anxious, excited face. “It is long past time that the Lord God is driven from our land.”
“In the time since you escaped, Apophus has gone mad,” Brodiput said, staring into the fire so he did not have to gaze upon the faces of the twelve arrivals. Traces of trepidation still sent shivers up his spine at the sight of the golden disk of Ra. “The city falls into blackness and despair. The People live under the threat of death or worse for the slightest transgression. Many of his guards were executed for not finding you. No one is safe from his wrath.”
“I wondered why Apophus would send such a group of youngsters after us,” Astraeus intruded, his ebony skin difficult to see in the dimness.
“Because his ranks have thinned that much,” Terahtept responded. “Most of his older commanders have fallen beneath his blade. So the question remains. How can we be of service?”
“There are other patrols out searching for us, are there not?” Hearing their replies, Ramathus continued. “I would like you to join a few of my men and take sleds to the other squads. Tell them what you have heard and seen and ask them if they will meet us ten miles from the southern outskirts of Nil tomorrow. We enter the city at the break of dawn the following day.” His chiseled face sharpened into hard lines and eyes darkened into chips of blue ice.
“Before day’s end, I swear to you Apophus shall be no more.”
Chapter XX
“I do not know which terrifies me more,” Rhea almost whispered, lying upon her big four-poster bed, propped up by t
he fluffy pillows at her back, her slender hand softly rubbing the swell of her belly. “The possibility that this child may not live to see the moment of its birth or that it will. This pregnancy is like no other and most are stillborn these days.”
“You are strong,” Ida tried to reassure her. She held Rhea’s other hand between her own, a small concerned smile barely touching her rose colored lips. “Your child shall also be strong.”
“I do not feel very strong at present,” Rhea said with a sigh. Her face was drawn and tired, pale and lined. Her long blond hair hung in a limp braid over her slumped shoulder and clung to the clammy skin of her forehead. “I have a difficult time even getting out of this prison of a bed at the moment. My head is filled with a constant ache and sparkles of pain surge unexpectedly through my stomach.”
“It is the strength of your spirit that will get you through this,” Ida responded kindly. “Your child will be the first to be born alive and healthy in Atlantis in over five years. It is a miracle granted by the Creator, Himself. I know this in my heart to be true.”
“If so and rumors are to be believed,” Rhea said, staring at the squirming little movements rolling across her stomach, a small smile gracing her features as she felt her child alive, “it may be the last child of Atlantis.”
“The Creator will not allow that to be,” Ida told her firmly. Her jade-chipped, blue eyes gazed upon Rhea, seeing the sadness and worry there. It was difficult for Ida to console her when lingering doubt touched her own soul. “I am sure He is just asking us to slow down for a while.”
“You may be right,” Rhea conceded, a tear seeping from the corner of her eye, “but what if this child is born strong and perfect? How can I keep Cronus from stealing it away and he did Poseidon? My heart could not endure another loss.”
She could not keep the rivers from flowing from her eyes any longer. A giant hand clamp down on her heart with force enough to catch the breath in her lungs. She hung her head and sobbed, frightened for her child and her sanity. Yet, somewhere deep inside of her burned a flame of furious hatred and the unbridled anger of a mother’s heart. It was that which put molten iron in her next words.
“I will kill him before I allow him to take my child again,” Rhea spit between parted lips. “This I swear before the Creator!”
Cronus fought the raging winds howling across the tortured, barren red landscape, the bite of a million needles peppering his naked flesh. His flaming red hair fanned out behind him like a burning cape in a hurricane. Each step sent quivers up his tree-trunk legs, the strain of fighting the gale evident in the bulging of muscles and tendons. His hammer-sized hands gripped the edges of the doorway of the twisted dome, streams of blood streaking his sinewy forearms from the jagged cuts on his palms. With a herculean effort, he pulled himself into the relative quiet inside.
The ancient ruins of the cityscape had changed in the time since he last visited this haunted place. The dome was cracked even more, open in places that allowed enough of the storm inside to sting his skin with churning sand. The blood-red sun above the city shone brighter as it passed the large potholes in the once perfect curvature. Monstrous skeletal trees that were not there before lined the Grand Boulevard, their branches bent and contorted like rotted corpses writhing in screaming agony. Cronus could hear their wretched, pitiful mewling whispering through the streets and alleyways, calling to him from the windows and doorways of the shattered buildings surrounding him. As he struggled past the carcasses of wood, the limbs of the dead trees reached out for him, wailing their pain and sorrow, knowing it was his fault they suffered so.
By the time his exhausted body touched the cracked and broken steps of the Great Pyramid, his mighty strength was gone. He dropped on the pitted granite, new blood seeped on the stone from the cuts in his shredded kneecaps. His arms and legs trembled as he crawled up the crusty blocks, threatening to leave him lying on the stone before he reached the gates. Somehow, eons later, he did crest the top, seeing a gigantic oaken door hanging limp on its last rusty hinge. Its companion lay dead and splintered upon the dusty steps, a mangled monument to a bygone race.
“It has been far too long,” She said, her sweet and soothing voice warm and welcoming. “We have missed you greatly.”
A white aura cocooned her tall, graceful form so bright it burned his eyes. Tears welled within his emerald eyes, his trembling hands lifting for the comfort of her touch.
“Mother,” Cronus wept. “I love you so. Please help me.”
“Of course,” Gaia smiled down upon him, blessing him with the touch of her hands upon his. “That is why we are here. Rise, my son,” she said, drawing him in to her embrace as easily as if he were still her babe. “Let me Heal the wounds on your flesh and in your heart.”
A serenity and peace enfolded Cronus as her light and strength enshrouded him. He continued to weep, lying his weary head upon her silky shoulder, but now they were tears of joy and wondrous release. Gaia stroked his reddish mane, whispering cooing sounds into his ears until his sobbing abated. When, at last, she stepped away, his heart ached for a few more moments in her arms. Still, Cronus felt the surge of new energy coursing through his veins and a great elevation in his soul. He stood proud and renewed when the golden figure glided forward.
“It is good to see you, my son,” Uranus said, placing his wide hands upon Cronus’ broad shoulders. Though his father would never utter the words, Cronus saw the pride and love burning in those pale blue eyes. “You have done well over the years.”
“Thank you, Lord Father,” he replied humbly, gazing at the man dressed in a robe of purest gold. “It is from you I learned how to rule.”
“You are the Lord Father now,” Uranus said, his rumbling baritone voice coming stern and sharp. “Now it is up to you to shape the destiny of the People and to once again save them from extinction. Are you up to the task?”
“Yes, Father,” Cronus stated firmly, nodding his head as he spoke. “But I of great need of your council. I do not know what to do.”
“Yes you do,” his father returned briskly, “but you face a choice as horrible as I once did. A choice that withers your soul and gnaws at your mind. So I ask again, do you have the strength to save the People even if they vehemently oppose you?”
“I do. I swear to you.” Cronus straightened his spine, standing tall and strong. “Yet, you are wrong. I do not know what to do. The People can no longer reproduce. How can I save them?”
“It is simple,” Gaia told him, her voice like the music of silver chimes in a warm summer breeze, but the words she spoke froze his heart into a solid block of ice. “The People might be losing the ability to bear children, but their Blood Kin have not. Share the strength of the Clan with that of the People and renew the bloodlines.”
“I cannot! I will not!” Cronus shouted, rage and hatred boiling his blood. His body shook, his muscled bunched and his fists knotted on his hips. His square jawline clenched, his lips spitting out his molten words. “I would rather see the People die than to turn into such creatures!”
“How do you know they will?” Gaia asked him tenderly, his admonishments and fury melting against the glow of her halo. “Have you forgotten Amelia? Find out what became of her and you will have your answer.”
“Even if I allowed such an atrocity to occur,” Cronus snapped back, “the People would never consent to breed with those savage, ugly beasts.”
“Then you must force them to,” his father replied.
“I will not!” Cronus repeated.
“I told you he did not have the strength.” Uranus turned his steely gaze away from his son and looked at his long dead wife. “He never will. The People will die.”
“Do you at least have the courage to save yourself?” his father said snidely.
“Meaning?” Cronus bit back.
“This child of yours,” Uranus intoned harshly. “He is the child of prophesy. Can you even do what is necessary to preserve your own life or will you wither like the
trees on the boulevard and slink away to your doom?”
Cronus stopped cold. His arms fell limp at his side and his wide shoulders slumped. The bonfire blazing in his soul turned to cold, damp ash. In the pit of his stomach he felt the venomous serpent arise, awakened from its long slumber, fangs dripping green, acidic poison.
“I know what I must do,” Cronus stated flatly.
“Yes,” Gaia replied tenderly, bringing him to her gentle arms. “You must kill him,” she whispered softly. “You must kill your son or you will surely perish.”
Cronus awoke on his bed of twisted, sweat-soaked sheets, his body curled around a crimson pillow crushed against his abdomen. His huge bedchambers were cold and empty, dim and dank. Outside his windows the blood-red orb of his nightmares bled through the tattered skin of the clouds drifting across the horizon. His muscles still ached from his dreams, his eyes still blurry from blowing sand, his eyes crusty with dirt. He was unsure of where he was, lost in the space between delusion and reality.
Ever so slowly the mist slid from his sight and welcomed him to the horror of the day. Cronus dragged himself up against his carved oak headboard still clutching his pillow tightly in his arms. His maimed and mutilated mind swirled like smoke above a burning candle flame, the visions of decisions searing his soul. He ran a thick-fingered hand across his dampened brow, not surprised in the least when they came back bloody from the welts of a million hornet stings covering his skin.
