by Noah Layton
I didn’t have time for keys – there could be lives at risk.
‘If anyone’s in there, step away from the door,’ I called out, taking out the agrarium sword.
I pushed the tip of the sword to the surface of the wood and began to put pressure on it.
The sword sank into the wood, and as it pushed through the other side a series of blue ripples coursed through the patterns of the surface like blood swirling in water.
The bright cracks were followed by a deep vibration within the wood that became harsher and harsher – right up until the wood crumbled to thousands of fractured shards, heaped upon the ground in the doorway.
‘That’s going to come in handy in the future,’ Alorion commented.
I nodded in agreement and examined the entrance for any traps. Nothing.
‘Woah…’ I exclaimed involuntarily, setting my eyes on the contents.
Chapter Twenty-One
Chests and heaving sacks crowded the walls and the floor beneath them in compressed heaps.
Gold pieces overflowed from every single one of them. So many had been physically crammed into the chamber that hundreds of individual coins had spilled out onto the ground.
‘By the gods…’ Alorion whispered. ‘Incredible.’
I stepped into the room and admired the fortune. I plunged my hand into an open chest and felt the compressed weight of the sheer amount of gold in the one chest alone.
Drawing my hand up with a fistful of gold enclosed within it, I gripped them tightly and smiled before letting them slip back into the chest.
‘Back when we made the deal with the sun-elves for the shipment of bluestone,’ I started, ‘They had crammed almost 20,000 pieces into bags that filled our carts. That was nothing compared to this. We are so freaking rich.’
Alorion chuckled and climbed atop a nearby pile of coins. I watched as hundreds fell from the top of the pile but did nothing to make the heaps of riches seem any smaller.
‘This is just the first room,’ Alorion added. ‘We still have seven more to investigate.’
It was music to my ears.
We left the first chamber and moved to the next. I called out a warning once more, then pushed the sword into the wood and watched it disintegrate just like the first.
Along the walls of this room were shelves lined with no less than a hundred different volumes, each embossed with gold words along their thick spines.
‘A different kind of wealth,’ I smiled. ‘Books are hard to come by in Agraria, right?’
‘They are indeed rare,’ Alorion answered. ‘This is an impressive collection.’
‘I’ll get Santana to come take a look. This is her field more than anybody’s.’
We left for the third room only to find it completely empty – a total dud.
The fourth was occupied by twelve chests, six stacked behind six on ranked rows.
I practically wanted to rub my hands together like an evil genius.
I moved to the first chest and tipped it open. Residing within was an array of trinkets and ornaments; necklaces, imperfect gems and gold cups to name a few. I moved to the other chests and checked their contents, finding myself confronted with the same swathe of precious items, as well as several schematics for potions and mechanisms.
‘Holy shit…’ I exclaimed, ‘this is unlike anything we’ve ever come across before. We really are rich, man.’
‘You’re rich, Master Jack,’ Alorion corrected. ‘You are the tribe master.’
‘You know what I mean,’ I laughed. ‘My wealth is the tribe’s wealth. We’ve just grown exponentially. We can grow even more rapidly from here. Before this we were practically hiding, keeping our heads low. Now we definitely don’t have to hide. We’re a force to be reckoned with among the tribes in this region. Now we can finally match their power.’
‘This will certainly rustle some feathers, Master Jack. When other tribes catch word of your successes, they will recognize us as a legitimate threat.’
‘They should,’ I remarked with a nod. ‘Being a threat doesn’t just mean that they notice us – it means they’ll be more careful about crossing paths or crossing swords with us.’
Clunk.
‘What was that?’ I asked openly, looking over my shoulder into the hallway.
I readied my sword and led the way out. No threats resided in the hallway.
It could only be coming from behind one of the doors.
There were still four left.
I tried the fifth door, end of the hall on the right, but after collapsing it found nothing lurking behind.
Moving to the sixth, Alorion patted at my leg to get my attention, then pressed his finger to his lips in a shushing motion.
‘Did you hear that?’ Alorion whispered, falling to his front and looking through the gap beneath the door. ‘There’s something moving inside of there.’
‘Hello?’ I called through the door. ‘Is anybody in there? Are you hurt?’
There was no response from the being or beings residing within. All we heard was stunted movement and a gruff, garbled sound.
Whatever was inside wasn’t responding with words – but that didn’t make it non-hostile.
If it was feral, it would pose an even greater threat.
‘Stand back,’ I said. ‘I’ll get us inside. If anything jumps us, I’ll cut it down.’
Alorion shrank away dutifully and watched with anticipation while I readied the sword, drew it over my head and smashed it into the door.
The wood fractured and exploded immediately, clearing the path.
From within the room a disgruntled, aggressive sound barked out at us.
I couldn’t place the source until the dust cleared and I caught sight of the being.
The room was occupied by only one.
At first I thought that I was looking at a horse, and in a pretty substantial way, I was. It was a beautiful creature; glimmering white, its skin and hair so shimmering that it seemed to be glowing, even though there was no light inside the room.
But then, as I moved into the room and the torchlight cast itself over the innards, I realized this wasn’t just a horse at all.
As it eyed us suspiciously thanks to the total racket we had caused upon entering, it bucked and neighed wildly.
As it did, its legs kicking out before it, the only thing preventing it from attacking being the shackle around its ankle.
Then, it presented its true self.
A huge pair of wings flexed out from its powerful back. Their span must have been able to stretch to at least six yards from end to end, yet in this room their angelic form was cramped and constricted, unable to truly breathe.
No wonder it was frustrated.
‘By the gods…’ Alorion gasped quietly, gazing up at the creature with unparalleled awe. ‘That’s… That’s a pegasus.’
I felt the hairs on my arms stand up.
‘So you have these in your world… Holy shit. How rare are these?’
‘In the wild? Rare at best. In captivity? Non-existent… They are thought to be impossible to capture. Beings in this world have few means to capture them without harming them. If we had one of those flying machines from your world it might be easy, but in Agraria? A fruitless endeavor…’
‘Even if I had a plane or a helicopter, I doubt I would be able to catch one of these. But that’s beside the point – does having one of these mean what I think it means?’
‘If what you think it means is being able to fly, then yes.’
‘Holy shit,’ I exclaimed, running my hands through my hair. ‘I can actually fly again… And do you realize what this means for our tactical advantages? We can survey the land from above, check on approaching threats… This is going to change everything.’
‘Assuming we can tame it,’ Alorion said, bringing me back to reality, ‘and assuming it doesn’t get shot down by a keen-eyed marksman.’
‘We’re going to have to take good care of him,’ I nodded, crossi
ng my arms. ‘At least I think he’s a him.’ I frowned and looked between the legs of the pegasus, getting my answer pretty quickly. ‘Uh huh, definitely a he…’
At that moment a whinnying sounded next door.
‘No…’ Alorion smiled. ‘Not possible.’
I returned to the hall and cut the penultimate door open.
I thought my eyes were deceiving me, but no.
There was another pegasus.
It didn’t take me long to carry out the same check on this creature.
It was female.
‘Oh my god,’ I whispered. ‘This is insane…’
‘Gods,’ Alorion gasped, ‘do you know what this means?’
‘We can breed them. We can create a whole troop.’
‘Imagine the gold that we could bring in…’
‘We would never sell a single one,’ I said. ‘We can’t risk them getting into the hands of our enemies. Garrison was a collector of rare things, but these creatures aren’t just rare because of how difficult it is to catch them; they’re rare because of the advantage they offer. With these creatures on our side, we’ll be almost unstoppable.’
‘A wise plan, Master Jack. Hopefully we can tame them and get them to mate.’
‘They look angry, no doubt because they’ve been down here out of the light for so long. Jeremiah and Lola are the animal experts. We’ll bring them in from the Homestead to see if these pegasusus can be tamed… Pegasusus?’
‘Pegasusus…’ Alorion repeated with a frown, thinking. ‘Pegasi?’
‘That’s the one.’
We left the pegasi, thinking it best to keep them secured within their rooms in the meantime instead of stampeding madly about the land and causing havoc – or alerting Mariana to their existence.
But there was still one more room to check before we left the hidden chambers.
It was as unassuming as the others, not fancy or luxurious, just tightly locked and secured by yet another heavy wooden door.
Yet what was behind it would change everything.
I pressed the sword’s tip to the door and slid it effortlessly through the wood.
The wood splintered and snapped into pieces, crumbling to the floor.
I kept the sword raised, its light guiding the way onto the contents – and the potential threats that awaited.
Inside the room was what appeared to be a small shrine. Tens of unlit candles of varying sizes were grouped either side of a large stone block set against the back wall.
Sitting on top of the block was a rectangular object set on its side, covered in a blanket.
I scanned the room for traps and, seeing none, moved towards the stone block and the object that it propped up.
With no threats seeming to be waiting for me, I pulled the sheet free from the block and readied my sword.
It was as its shape suggested; a stone slab, but covered in strange shapes.
It took around four seconds – way too many – to realize what I was looking at.
‘What is this?’ Alorion asked, looking past me to the slab.
I gulped, feeling an intense chill run up my spine.
‘This is the rest of the prophecy,’ I answered, so quietly that I hardly heard my own voice. ‘This is the missing piece from the prophecy that the sun-elves have, the one created by the Oracle.’
My mind had blurred the image before me, almost as if my eyes didn’t want to process the knowledge that it held.
But I was here, and I had to look.
The slab depicted the final events that the Oracle had seen.
The image depicted me. I was stood on the steps into the very treehouse that we were now beneath, wearing the very clothes that I was wearing right now, and holding the very sword that I had used to win this battle.
Surrounding me were my women – Ariadne, Lara, Santana, Elera and Talia. Alongside them were Mariana and Tobias, and Alorion too; my companions and my closest allies. The people who helped me become who I was.
Garrison’s bloodied body laid at the foot of the steps, and his soldiers corpses scattered the land. In the land surrounding the tree were hundreds of figures, all looking to me with expressions filled with hope.
Beneath it all were some words chiseled into the stone.
The Cage Breaker cometh.
Two notions immediately struck me.
The first was that the Oracle had correctly predicted everything that had happened until now. That was evident from the slab that stood before me.
The second was that this was all there was.
‘This is it?’ I exclaimed. ‘This is all that there is?’
‘It would appear so,’ Alorion replied. ‘This is the end of the prophecy.’
‘How? How can this be it?’ I searched behind the stone for something else, anything else, but this was it. ‘She predicts my future but now I already know what my future is, because I’ve already experienced it before I saw any of this…’
And then a third notion struck me.
‘Why did she choose to depict this?’ I asked aloud. ‘What was the point? The Oracle could have depicted any event that she wanted if she was capable of seeing the future. Why this one? What’s so important about it?’
‘We do not know that the Oracle was capable of seeing all of your future,’ Alorion replied with a shrug. ‘She lived more than a thousand years ago. Perhaps she could only see certain portions of your future. Of course, there is another possibility.’
‘Which is?’
‘She could see all of your future, but that’s the problem. She chose not to show you it. Don’t you see, Jack?’
I thought for a moment before the realization struck me.
It was exactly the same thing that I had discussed with Garrison.
‘If I saw my whole future maybe it would impact the way that I do things. If there was more to this that hadn’t happened yet, me seeing it would cause me to maybe do things differently… Or try to do things deliberately differently, which might also lead to a different series of events.’
‘Paradox,’ Alorion shrugged. ‘A man cannot win in the stead of forces beyond his comprehension.’
‘What the hell would I do without you, man?’
‘Make a few more brash decisions than you usually would,’ he smiled. ‘Not that that’s a bad thing. Although getting yourself blown up would be a bad thing, which could have happened on more than one occasion…’
‘For a land built on farms, livestock and tribes there sure are a lot of things that want to blow me up.’
‘The more power you acquire, the more ways there are to die.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘… The more power you acquire, the more-’
‘It’s an expression, man.’
‘Ah.’
With my head finally cleared, I began to process the meaning that surrounded this final part of the prophecy, not just what was illustrated on its surface.
‘This is why Garrison did what he did, why he said what he said,’ I continued. ‘He must have had this in his possession for a long time, long enough that he practically became obsessed with it. He said something about knowing who I was… And that he wasn’t going to let fate decide his future.
‘That’s why he fought back. That’s why he let that thing take over him. Eventually he realized that it was me who had come to get him… That’s why he tried to find the agrarium before me, because he knew what it really was. But in doing all of those things; in attacking the dwarves, hunting me down, doing everything that he did – all of those things led him to his death. If he hadn’t done any of them, there’s a chance we wouldn’t have crossed paths, if not for a long time… And even if we did, I wouldn’t be in possession of the sword, because I never would have gone to the land of the dwarves in the first place.’
‘Gods…’ Alorion whispered. ‘You’re right. This war would have gone much different without that weapon of yours. So it is true, then – whether or not a man sees the slab, h
e is caught in the grasp of its visions.’
‘But now there’s none left,’ I said. ‘This is the end of it. Uniting several tribes in this region, forming strong alliances, looting a huge hoard of treasures and resources, and laying the foundations for the future of our empire.’
‘Our empire, Master Jack?’
‘That’s right,’ I smiled. ‘This is the end of the line for the Oracle’s prophecies, but you know what? I’m glad. This is no weight hanging over my head, no path that I’m stuck on. This confirms what I didn’t realize I really wanted until now.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘That it’s time for me to forge my own path through this world, to lead our tribe to victory against the threats that lurk out there in the wider reaches of Agraria. Time to put the prophecy to bed.’
I raised my sword and pressed its tip to the stone. There was some resistance compared to the wood of the doors, but within seconds it relinquished, and the sword pushed into it.
After only a few inches of pushed pressure, it jolted and crumbled into hundreds of rocks, each indistinguishable from the last.
‘We don’t tell anybody about this,’ I said. ‘Not because I don’t want them to know, but because I don’t want it getting back to Mariana.’
‘Why not?’
‘She was raised to be a leader. We’re allies, and we’re both on board with that, but if she gets an opportunity to leverage power over me, she’ll do it, especially after seeing the power that I now possess with control over the sword.’ I raised the weapon, its blue light filling my eyes. ‘ She knows the first half of the prophecy. If she knew about the rest of it, my place as a threat to her power would be even more cemented in her mind than it already is.’
‘You think she is a threat to yours?’
‘Not necessarily, but she is a tribe master, which probably makes her as paranoid as I am.’
‘So what should we do about her?’
‘I love my wives with all of my heart. I used to value Mariana as something different before, like an ally… But now? Ever since the meeting I had with her in the caves about our plans, I’ve been thinking about her differently.’
‘She is a beautiful woman, admittedly, but please don’t tell me that she has seduced you, Master Jack. Love has betrayed more than one tribe master in Agraria over the millennia… You intend to marry her?’
