Avery was a little stunned by his quick reversal of fortune and looking around he saw that Rhun, Prometheus and Electra were frozen in time with everything else. ‘I need those people —’
‘Should have said so before,’ the Night Hunter dismissed the objection. ‘Talk.’
The clouds in the sky above Avery’s head were still moving, as was the sun, but their shadows were the only thing that moved in Chailidocean.
In the future I shall be capable of such a feat. Avery was suddenly overcome by his own potential.
The Night Hunter caught the lad’s thought. ‘What’s your story, anyway? How did you get chosen to succeed me?’
Avery shrugged nonchalantly, although in the midst of a revelation. ‘You knew I was coming before I was born. You never told me why I was chosen, but maybe it was because of this very instance.’
‘Well, you’ve not impressed me a great deal so far.’ Gwyn lied for he knew damn well the lad had nearly enchanted his elementals from beneath him. Had he not given them the order to aid Avery, they may well have joined his cause against Gwyn’s will. The elementals were well disposed towards this human. ‘I can withdraw my favour as easily as I bestowed it …’ He urged the human to get over his sense of wonderment and get on with his tutorial.
‘Sorry.’ Avery snapped to it. ‘Where do you want me to start?’
Gwyn served the lad a presumptuous look. ‘Tell me of my love.’
20
BE-AT-ONE
The days and nights rolled past as Avery talked himself hoarse about the future events that Gwyn ap Nudd would be involved in.
On the morning of the final day of the agreed time period, the Night Hunter seemed fairly satisfied with Avery’s effort and so assured him that Prometheus’s son had completed his mission for the Master Enki. Deukalion was now well prepared for the great deluge that would be forthcoming after this day.
‘So Atlantis will be destroyed no matter how my brother and I interfere with her history?’
‘What the Great Lodge has deemed necessary for humankind’s advancement, cannot and should not be changed.’ Gwyn advised. ‘Personally, I don’t care either way, as I am involved in elemental and devanic evolution, which humans facilitate no matter the lodge they are dedicated to, dark or light.’
‘You mean to say that you don’t care whether Gaia becomes a Logos filled with enlightened souls or a dead moon incapable of sustaining life?’ This was not the same Gwyn ap Nudd that Avery knew and respected. ‘You’ll just sit on the fence and watch the great plan go to hell?’
‘You wanted to know how I became Lord of the Otherworld.’ Gwyn raised the subject to clarify something. ‘It is because I have no real desire to be involved in this human evolutionary scheme, either materialistically or spiritually. That is why I am stationed here in the ethereal realm of non-movement. Whatever wraps this up and gets me home fastest, I’m all for it.’ The lord rose from his lounge to have a stretch.
Avery was irked by the lord’s attitude. ‘Then why did you bother coming to Gaia at all?’
‘I came because my kindred came. I am here to aid them with their passage back to Anu … human consciousness is none of my affair.’
‘After all I’ve told you about the future, how can you say that? It is humans of advanced consciousness who guide your stray brethren home.’ Avery was very disappointed, and frustrated.
‘It was a charming little tale,’ Gwyn admitted. ‘Perhaps things will unfold as you say and perhaps they won’t.’
The rumbling of the ground beneath his feet caused Avery to refrain from arguing. ‘What is that?’
‘This site marks a ley crossing and as my spell is wearing off, I think you’ll find that the rumbling is a build-up of the Shamballa energy that has formed beneath the plateau during the last two weeks,’ Gwyn informed him casually. ‘Probably something you should have considered before making your wish.’
Avery was thunderstruck; he was going to ask the Night Hunter why he hadn’t informed him of this when Avery had made his request to put the city to sleep, but the answer was obvious. Gwyn ap Nudd didn’t like human beings.
‘Only once before has Shamballa released a large pulse of inspiration to the planet, bypassing the hierarchy that stand as mediators between humanity and the Logos — an “Impact” as it is known in the Lodges. Yet, while we spoke —’
‘Oh no,’ Avery begged not to know what was coming.
Gwyn nodded. ‘Once my spell wears off completely this dammed energy is going to come bursting forth. If something doesn’t channel it out into this world in an orderly fashion, an etheric volcano will erupt out of this mountain and the Logos only knows what kind of repercussions that will have on the physical landscape of Atlantis.’ Gwyn teased the lad. ‘I’ve never dammed up Shamballa energy before, but I’m betting that the force will be enough to sink this shaky landmass, as per the wish of the White Lodge.’
‘What kind of channel do I need?’ Avery glanced at Electra, knowing that she’d channelled the energy in a parallel existence, but she had been Mahaud at that time and she’d had Otherworldly protection in the form of the elemental beings with whom she’d been joined.
‘I know what you’re thinking, my cocky young friend,’ Gwyn’s grin grew wider, ‘but that option is not open to you this time around. However, if your boast of being my apprentice is true, why don’t you act as a channel?’ He planted the challenge.
‘I could do that?’
‘To be a Lord of the Otherworld you would have to have very highly developed subtle bodies which would act as a magnet for Shamballa energy.’
‘Have you ever done anything like this?’ Avery queried, hoping to find out what he could expect from the experience.
‘Hell no.’ Gwyn suppressed a laugh. ‘This kind of enterprise is reserved for the Master Rays and the highly adept. The reason being that the channel — you — will tune the Shamballa energy to your own vibration, which means your heart had better be in the right place when you attempt the feat, to save landing your future in a worse predicament.’ The Night Hunter succumbed to his amusement and gave a mighty laugh, making out that he did not fancy Avery’s chances.
‘But surely my spiritual state of being will serve the future better than Mahaud’s did,’ he reasoned out loud, hoping that the Night Hunter would back him up on this.
‘Your perspective has been warped by your physical world association,’ Gwyn snapped. ‘Mahaud was serving both Lodges when she channelled the energy, completely non-biased as to who profited from the Impact. She willed the divine will. You shall never be a Lord of the Otherworld until you too cease to judge the great plan of the Allied Logoi.’
‘I don’t understand —’ Avery appealed as the Night Hunter began to fade.
‘Are you so full of yourself as to believe that you know better than the Logos?’
‘But by favouring the path of light and love, am I not serving the Logos?’
Gwyn ap Nudd vanished and Avery knew he wasn’t coming back. The rumbling had intensified, but as Rhun, Prometheus and Electra had yet to become conscious, the spell had obviously not completely worn off. Avery timidly floated into the centre of the site. ‘I will the divine will.’ Avery tried to prime his brain and spirit by taking deep breaths. He focused on switching off his emotions, which didn’t seem to be working. ‘Father!’ Avery cried out in panic, as the rumbling grew louder. Help me. He focused his prayer inward. Tell me what I must do to serve the great plan?
Send love to those you consider your enemies and wish them well.
Avery calmed down immediately, knowing his father was with him.
And to your dark side, most of all, wish all good things to come to pass, for only then shall he see the light.
Avery had never seen Viper’s true appearance and he found it difficult willing love to someone he couldn’t imagine. But as a feeling of great expectation filled his soul, and heightened quickly to a sense of complete liberation, a clear picture of his adver
sary took form in his mind. On seeing Viper for the first time, it was extremely difficult for Avery not to resent the villain. Then he saw that his adversary was in a podlike tube in stasis and Avery, feeling Viper’s fear and panic, wished him strength and hope. He is me, Avery reminded himself, only all battered and torn. I do feel compassion and gratitude for what he has been through for the benefit of my evolution … for what he still endures for my sake. I shall never judge him until again we two are one.
The powerful force reached the surface of his manifestation and shot directly upwards towards the sky. Then a steady flow of energy split into hundreds of streams of light that shot out across and through the landscape in every direction.
Rhun and company awoke in time to witness the event.
Avery was suspended in midair, seemingly unconscious and shaking like a leaf.
Closing his eyes, Rhun focused on his third eye area to employ his etheric sight.
His brother balanced on a great force of etheric light. The fountain of energy entered his back where his heart chakra was located, and then shot out into the world from his chest in all directions until the light burst suddenly ended and Avery dropped to the ground with a thud.
‘Christ almighty,’ Rhun muttered, already sprinting for the centre of the site, where he collapsed beside his violently quivering younger brother. ‘Avery?’ Rhun rolled him over and was surprised to find the lad coherent. ‘Holy mother. What have you done to yourself?’
‘No time,’ Avery stammered. ‘I released Abbadon.’
Rhun looked into the sky, knowing that the last time this happened a mysterious force had beset the laser weapon of an Orion craft, which detonated a force that would sink Atlantis. ‘Save Orestes, and then get them,’ Avery nodded towards Electra and Prometheus, ‘out of here.’
‘But —’ Rhun couldn’t just leave Avery in this frightful state.
‘Come back for us all,’ Electra suggested. ‘Do as he tells you.’ The oracle’s presence became very authoritative suddenly and it startled Rhun, as she was so like his mother.
‘And hurry,’ Electra added.
In Orestes’s room of court, Rhun found Shamash looking very impatient. Orestes was looking a little worried about losing the virgin on offer from the Dark Lodge.
‘I am sorry,’ Rhun announced as he manifested in their midst. ‘But Electra and Prometheus have been unavoidably detained and have sent me to negotiate on their behalf.’
Who the hell are you? Shamash was worried, as the intruder was obviously psychically adept and human.
Whomever you fear me to be, Rhun responded, using the same thought projection process that the Nefilim lord was using in an attempt to intimidate Rhun. He crossed the room and took hold of the vase that Pandora clutched in her hands, whereupon it vanished into thin air.
‘My dowry,’ Pandora objected.
‘You’ll be much happier without it,’ Rhun assured the past-life incarnation of Kila’s Governess, before looking back to find Shamash absent. ‘Oh no.’ Rhun couldn’t figure if the lord’s absence was fortuitous or not. I prefer him where I can see him. Rhun willed himself after the lord to no avail — either Shamash was using some primitive form of NERGUZ to protect him from detection, or he had returned to the protection of the Dark Lodge’s fortress.
‘Take my hands,’ he ordered both Orestes and his female companion. ‘Do you wish to live?’ he prompted them as they hesitated. The couple complied and took hold.
Rejoining his brother on the plateau, Rhun found Avery had recovered the use of his body and was staring out over the city with Electra and Prometheus.
‘What, in the name of the gods, did you just do to me?’ Orestes demanded to know as he recovered from the shock of being teleported.
‘He is trying to save your life,’ Electra informed him bluntly, none too amused that her brother had been willing to trade her, body and soul, to the Dark Lodge. ‘And if you would be silent now, that would be helpful.’
‘The shield protecting the Dark Lodge is crumbling,’ Avery informed his brother. As the shield gave way, Rhun’s eyes fixed on the now visible ominous-looking tower which dominated the fortress-like structure.
‘Did you do this?’ Rhun queried. This development also echoed the original story of this city’s demise.
‘No. Nor was I the one who put this city in stasis.’ Avery would have once found this hard to admit. ‘Gwyn ap Nudd,’ he answered to his brother’s unspoken question. ‘But I doubt he would do this, as he cares not for physical world events unless they threaten his kingdom. The elemental forces in this area overheard me speaking with the Night Hunter and could be aiding me of their own accord … but this would be against their lord’s wishes, so —’ Avery gasped as he had an awful thought. ‘What if …?’ Verging on having a panic attack, Avery looked at Electra. ‘Conjure in your mind an image of Aegisthus.’ He gripped hold of the oracle’s hand to perceive the sorcerer.
‘Avery!’ Rhun ran to tackle his brother and prevent him going anywhere. He slammed into Avery whereupon they were both set off balance.
They landed on a marble mosaic of occult design.
‘We don’t have time for this,’ Rhun hissed as they scampered to their feet to look around the opulent tower room.
‘Oh no.’ Avery floated over to view the occupant of a throne-like chair that was facing away from them, in the centre of the large mosaic. ‘It is as I feared.’ He backed away upon viewing the seal carved in blood on the sorcerer’s stomach and the heart ripped from his chest.
‘Oh! For pity’s sake.’ Rhun cringed at the carnage, and then gulped on his shock as he recognised the soul-mind behind the sorcerer. ‘Dear Goddess, it’s …’
‘En Noah,’ Avery confirmed, having realised Aegisthus’s true identity the second that he’d perceived Electra’s impression of the wizard. ‘There is one thing I really don’t get,’ Avery frowned.
‘Only one thing?’ Rhun joked to break his own mounting tension.
‘Electra mutilated herself to command the elements into her form in order to bring down the shield wall,’ Avery persisted with his thought. ‘But how did Shamash convince Aegisthus to cooperate?’
The husky sound of a demon seething and the creepy sensation that Rhun had always associated with Mahaud alerted him to more trouble. ‘This is very bad.’
The two brothers turned to find the newly formed elemental force that the spirit of the Dark Lord was now inhabiting.
‘A bad move coming here, boys,’ he hissed in a choir of sinister voices. ‘Now that I know what you two meddling brats look like, I shall not forget. How did Shamash talk me into it? I have become more powerful than the gods, more powerful than you.’
‘Is that what Shamash promised?’ Rhun sneered, while the screams of the Lords of the Dark Lodge being massacred in the complex below echoed up through the tower. ‘I think you would do better to save your pupils.’
‘I’ll have others —’ The creature moved in for the kill.
‘Not if I can help it.’ Avery stretched his arms and aimed all ten of his fingers at the sorcerer, quietly willing the force of the Pan Ray to channel through his person.
The Pan Ray was an earth elemental force and, being of the earth, it granted access to the densest parts of the ethereal world, where such lowly elementals as the one threatening them were best kept.
The reaction to Avery’s summons was instantaneous. A green mist filled with light beings came to encircle the abomination, although the force was not flowing forth from his fingertips. He looked aside to find Gwyn spinning his ethereal magic. ‘Night Hunter! This is a good sign for us,’ Avery whispered to his brother. By ‘us’ he meant all mankind.
The dark spirit wailed furiously as it was sucked into a funnel of whirling green vapour. ‘I know you, boy!’ the spirit yelled out. The vapour promptly consumed itself and vanished.
A mighty explosion cracked the sky above.
‘The asteroid!’ Rhun and Avery guessed at once, realising
a huge hunk of rock and metal was aimed right at them and would be upon them any moment now.
‘Sorry.’ Gwyn approached and clamped a hand down on each of their shoulders. ‘But you’re out of time, lads.’
Rhun tried to wriggle out of the Night Hunter’s grasp. ‘But Electra, Prometheus —’
‘Your friends are already in Greece,’ Gwyn informed them and then a bright blue-white light obscured the ancient world.
‘Nothing has changed,’ Tory said, bemused by what she read. ‘All that has happened is that Noah’s soul-mind has replaced my own and now he is in torment instead.’
‘You’re assuming a great deal,’ Astarleia warned.
‘No, I’m not assuming anything.’ Tory held out the book she was reading from. ‘It says so right here, first line of this section … Nothing has changed.’
Astarleia smiled as she read on a little. ‘But the object of the mission was to free Mahaud. This, for you, is a very important alteration indeed.’
Tory was feeling a little vague suddenly and wasn’t really taking in what Astarleia was trying to convey. Tory was more worried about Viper.
In all probability, Aegisthus had just replaced Mahaud in history and Viper had raised this demon instead. Only now, the sorcerer probably thought Viper was Avery, and may have willingly sold Viper out to MIB where the dark Falcon lord was being held prisoner.
‘I must warn Maelgwn,’ she mumbled, and a very clear image of her soul-mate came to mind.
‘Goodbye, Tory.’ Astarleia waved as she saw her fading. ‘I’ll finish up here, not to fear.’ The Oversoul held up the book they’d been channelling through to their charge. ‘Thanks for everything, be-at-one.’
Be-at-one! Tory’s heart chakra near leapt into her throat. Could it be that their time in the sub-planes had come to an end?
All Tory’s concerns for the state of the physical world in which she’d been embroiled dissipated rapidly when she realised she stood next to Maelgwn’s soul-mind. On a physical level they were located in the midst of a mostly oriental crowd, although many of Gaia’s races were represented among the minority. On an etheric level, Tory perceived many other life forms in attendance — Orions, Pleaideans, Siriens, and some beings Tory couldn’t pin a race name to. There were also spiritual beings present, representing the Inner Earth people, who were easily distinguished from surface-dwelling humans by their highly developed third eye chakra, through which they viewed everything while their other eyes remained permanently closed.
The Cosmic Logos Page 42
