The Elysian Prophecy (Keeper of Ael Book 1)

by Vivien Reis

  Jesse laughed. "You look disappointed."

  "I thought this was a library. Where are all the books?"

  "I didn't realize you were one of those people."

  She glared at him, but he had already turned to walk away. "What's that supposed to mean?" she called.

  Glimmers of light reflected off the ceiling, its sharp corners making Abi think of the inside of diamond as she walked—

  "Oof."

  Jesse had stopped, and she collided with his back. He helped steady her, and she stared down at her shoes, avoiding his gaze.

  "Easy there. You know, and I mean this in the best way possible," he said, moving toward a grouping of tables, "you might be the clumsiest girl I've ever met. Come on, we use these stations right here."

  "Well, I'm not normally this clumsy," she murmured, too quiet for him to hear.

  "Huh?" He picked a random tube off a shelf as he walked past.

  "Nothing!"

  The bookshelves were impossibly long, stretching what seemed like a football field behind her. Jesse stood at what he had called a station—a table, which only had a chair and a strange glass divider directly in front of it. There were dozens of these stations in the center of the library, and even more on the outer edges, near the windows.

  Now that she was closer, she could see the tube was see-through, holding some kind of crystal suspended in midair.

  "How is it doing that?"

  He handed it to her, and she flipped it over in her hands, watching as it moved slightly but stayed relatively centered. If she turned it with a jerk, the crystal would spin almost a full revolution before coming to a stop. A metal label at the bottom of the tube read A Brief History of Elysia.

  "We have technology that detects the energy we imbue into the crystals, much like a magnetic field. The ends of each tube contain a small, energetically engineered device that suspends the crystal inside, so it can't be damaged."

  "I guess they don't like books here." She gazed around at the hundreds of canisters on the shelves. What was a library without actual books? This felt more like a museum than anything else.

  "We can't use books here. This isn't a library you can check out a book from—when you access information in one of these crystals, you have to also use one of these stations, or portable ones given only to those requiring it for their duties. If not, it's just a useless crystal." Jesse sat in one of the stiff, white chairs and Abi placed the canister in his outstretched hand. He pressed a tiny circle at the far corner of the table, and a circular panel dropped and slid out of view, creating an indentation. Jesse carefully placed the bottom of the cylinder in this groove. It hissed and then dropped the canister out of sight. The top slid back in place to form a seamless tabletop.

  "A lot of our rituals and fables were lost during the Great War, when knowledge was passed down from person to person. Paper copies, like books, were frowned upon since the general population could also read them—this led to the deaths of many 'witches' who were really Oracles."

  A light flickered on the other side of the divider, and Abi went cross-eyed trying to focus on what it was, until she noticed it wasn't on the other side of the divider. It was on the divider. It was some kind of projection in blue lights, but it seemed broken. The image didn't make any sense to her.

  "This is where the tricky part comes in. Touch the desk." He had a few fingers resting on the edge of the desk himself, and Abi tentatively reached out to do the same. She had to roll her chair, closer to his to do this, so close she could feel the heat coming off him.

  The moment her fingers touched the table, her head erupted with a shock, and she jerked away. An after-image of the text burned behind her eyes.

  "That's the hard part. Your mind is hardly equipped for this. Yet," he added. "So you might not be able to do much research before you reach your limit. Don't look at me like that," he teased. "It's just temporary. Trust me, before you know it, you'll be hanging with the rest of us. You're just new to all this."

  She took a deep breath and laid her hand on the table again. The shock was expected, and just like what happened in the forest, it ebbed to a low buzz in her brain.

  The glass monitor blossomed into glowing blue text. She read a few sentences for practice before letting go. Jesse gaged her for a reaction and she shrugged her shoulders, as if it were easy. But it wasn't—there was already a dull ache at her temples she was trying to ignore. She needed to figure out what that crystal meant so she could go back home. Her heart sank picturing her dad in his hospital room, the seat she’d always sat in empty. Was there some small part of him that knew she hadn’t visited?

  "There are a few catalog crystals you can use at the front of the library,” he said, and then explained how to retrieve the crystal cannister again. “You don't have to worry about putting it back in its location, as the library aides do that every few hours. It gives them something to do. They're all younger students earning their volunteer credits, and I can imagine how boring this place would be."

  Abi couldn't. It wasn't the traditional library she was used to, but it was a library nonetheless.

  "The cool part about this system is you read it like a book, but can search the text like you can in a computer."

  There weren't any keyboards though and Abi feared what Jesse next confirmed.

  "You have to use your mind to do it."

  "Just think search and the phrase you're looking for. You'll figure it out," he said, waving a hand through the air. "It's intuitive and you seem like a smart cookie."

  If there was any doubt in her mind about being a nerd, her swelling of pride as he said smart cookie would have killed it.

  "I gotta run. Don't stay too long. Benning won't appreciate you wearing yourself out between trainings. I'll try to help with the research part tomorrow, if you're still searching."

  He pushed his chair back and stood, ready to walk away, when he froze. "Actually, hold on a second." He waited, his head cocked to the side. Abi was content to watch him, noticing for the first time that he had a small scar across one eyebrow. "I just got a comm. You're meeting with the Consul tomorrow at four. This bombing has everyone stretched to their last nanite of energy. I'm actually surprised they could see you so quickly. Anyway, best of luck." He turned to leave, calling over his shoulder, "and don't break any canisters. The librarians tend to frown on that here."

  She cracked her knuckles and dove in.

  # THIRTY-FOUR

  Shuffling sounds was all he could hear in the darkness but he couldn’t find it. Every time Ben turned around, he was met with more black, thick like tar.

  It grew harder and harder to breath, the air like floating pebbles in his lungs, rattling as he searched.

  But he didn’t know what he was looking for. Had he lost something? Was he trying to find someone?

  A tinkling sound. The delicate tunes of a lullaby.

  He turned, and this time, sitting in the darkness at his feet was a music box. Pieces of the spinning ballerina were missing, and the box was cracked and covered with soot.

  It slammed shut.

  This place wasn’t right. He didn’t know why or where he was supposed to be but this wasn’t it.

  He’d been promised something, but that promise was lost to him.

  A thunder in his ears. He looked down again. Blood dripped from his chest, splattering to the floor as it soaked his shirt.

  He fell to his knees, his chest cold, seized by something, a heaviness in his throat.

  There was someone with him in the darkness. Lingering in the corners, blending in with the black, and snaking through the air like smoke.

  Calm washed over him, the pain subsiding.

  “I will take care of you, boy. Your sacrifice will not go unnoticed.” The voice was familiar. He’d heard it so many times before but it sounded so different now. It wasn’t the thing in his head he was hearing.

  It was his own voice whispering to him.

  # THIRTY-FIVE

 
It had been nearly twenty-four hours since Jesse had left her, and she’d gotten nowhere.

  She’d taken short breaks, to eat, to train again with the Corporal, but she kept coming right back to the library.

  Each time she left was like starting over again, since the library aides kept putting her crystals up before she could make it back. She needed a better system.

  Making her way to the front of the library, she asked a library aide behind the counter if she could have a piece of paper and a pen to write down the canister numbers she was using, and to take notes on what she was finding. He looked at her in horror.

  "You can't write anything down," he nearly yelled. He seemed like the same age as she was, with a large nose and a pimpled face. "If you would like to set aside a crystal for later perusal, you may do so up here. Just bring the canisters and we'll hold them for you."

  After that, there was a fiasco as he tried to figure out what to do with her lack of mental mapping in their system. All she had was the fingerprint access for meals, and they had to awkwardly wait several minutes before a proper librarian was available to help. The woman made a note of Abi's name in their system and that was it. The boy lifted his chin at Abi while the librarian explained to him what he should have done.

  She left the building, her head pounding from the brightness of the sun and her stomach growling. If she kept eating like she was, she'd be twice her normal size by the time she saw her family again. The pain in her head grew. What if she never made it back to her family? What if, by the time she had become proficient in all of this, it was too late?

  Her legs carried her automatically to the path that led to her hut, and when she reached the fork in the path that led to Nocalu Caves, she paused. Birds whistled in the distance and the trees rustled in the wind.

  She turned down the path, toward the caves. The fresh air seemed to help clear her head, and she needed to stretch her legs after so much stationary mental exercise.

  Plus, Myra had said the natural crystals within the cave were rejuvenating. Why hadn’t Myra made a trip there herself? She clearly needed it, and Abi could have used a moment to recharge a bit herself.

  The hike was longer than she remembered, but she had been sitting the last time.

  After about twenty minutes, she worried she’d been mistaken, and that she wasn't on the right path at all. She trekked on, though, and soon the cave entrance came into view. The library glinted across the huge lake and Abi took a moment there to catch her breath.

  A breeze seemed to flow up the mountain from the lake, bringing with it a clear and woodsy smell. The serenity of it was in stark contrast to her hectic life.

  What would happen with Cora and the crystal, and what if she had put her friend in danger? What if the King's Army had been able to track the necklace down somehow?

  From her vantage point, she saw a group of people leave the hospital and wondered if Myra was one of them. Part of her was curious to know what happened inside, what this healing that Myra did really looked like, but a large part of her knew the chaos that must exist down there. People were mourning the losses of their loved ones, of their friends.

  Leaves crunched underfoot as she moved downhill and into the mouth of the cave. A thrill of adrenaline rushed through her. If she let herself, she could almost imagine exploring this cave hundreds of years ago, trekking into unmarked territory.

  The cave seemed darker than it had the other day, but she figured it was taking her eyes longer to adjust. She held her hand out to trail it along the wall and felt something bumpy. Swirling patterns like vines crept along the walls with clusters of symbols etched into the stone. Some symbols looked like letters from an alphabet, but it wasn't one she recognized. It was dark enough that she could only see a section just wider than her arms, but nothing beyond that.

  She was in a cave. Light didn't penetrate this deep, yet she wasn’t in total darkness. She assumed lights had been installed along the pathway, but when she glanced up, there were no bulbs visible.

  The ceiling of the cave was glowing. It was too high up for her to touch, but it almost looked like glow-in-the-dark paint. As she walked forward, the light behind her faded, and the light in front of her brightened. It's like a motion sensor. A smile spread across her face and she continued on, watching as a constant six-foot section stayed alight right above her head. She increased her speed slightly and then stopped. The light stopped with her.

  She bolted, wanting to see if the light would be fast enough to follow her.

  It wasn't.

  Terror gripped her as darkness enveloped her surroundings. She imagined demons lurking in front of her and was afraid to close her eyes but just as afraid to keep them open.

  The light only took a few seconds to catch up to her, and when it did, there was nothing in the cave with her. She was alone.

  She paid attention to the walls of the cave, expecting another path to branch off this main one and lead to the crystals, but it didn't. The cave walls widened into the lake room. The water was only a few feet below her, and she had the sudden urge the jump in, fully clothed. There were stairs on the other side that led into the water she could use to get back out.

  But trekking back to her hut with wet shoes or barefoot wasn't something she wanted to do right then. The only other path in and out of the lake room was the one leading to the amphitheater. She was pretty sure she hadn't seen any trail branching off that walkway, but checked to make certain. It led straight to the Consul's meeting room, no branch offs. The room was empty. No one seemed to be in the caves with her.

  Hmm.

  There was another doorway in the amphitheater, but she stopped at the threshold. Up until this moment she’d been in somewhat familiar territory, but what lay beyond this wasn’t. What would she find? Were Oracles not supposed to go snooping in the cave?

  Back into the lake room, she scanned the walls, checking that she hadn't missed anything. There were definitely no crystals anywhere, and no trails that led to other corridors or rooms.

  The lake drew her attention again, but from this angle, the lake floor looked different.

  Large outcroppings of crystals jutted from the bottom of the lake, near the entrance to the cave room. She had been directly on top of them not five minutes ago and hadn't known it. Did she have to touch the crystals to feel rejuvenated by them? Skirting farther around the lake, she stood at the top of the stairs that disappeared into the clear water.

  Something whispered so quiet she thought she had imagined it.

  Then it happened again. She turned her head, straining to catch the whispering. She spun around so she was facing the cave wall. Stepping closer and laid her ear against the cold stone. It was coming from inside the wall.

  The ledge she stood on was just wide enough for her to shimmy out farther, tracing the perimeter of the lake. As she moved, the hushed voice became clearer. Her arms outstretched, she grasped for anything to steady herself and keep her from falling into the water. She scooted underneath the vines that ran up the cave walls, a blanket of green hiding her from the rest of the cave.

  "...numbers aren't precise....locations can't be verified...yes, ma'am. I will..." The whispering faded in and out, but Abi could tell it was male, and no one she recognized. She inched forward just a little more and her fingertips curled around something. An edge. She ran her hand up and down it and moved forward, closer and closer until she could see inside. The path entrance was tiny, and she turned sideways to listen. It curved off to the left, so she couldn't see who was speaking.

  Another voice, this time female, spoke. “Tell me Vikar, what’s our little Abigail up to?”

  The mention of her name made her lean in, certain she couldn’t be hearing right. How many people were in there?

  "She's training." A long pause. "No one suspects her brother of being an Oracle."

  “Good. Let’s keep it that way.”

  “Ma’am, if I may—”

  “Your loyalty,” the woman inter
rupted, “will be reward soon enough. First, I need our next location.”

  The man’s voice quivered. “But so soon? You just hit the law office not two days ago.”

  Abi stiffened and her foot slipped. Every noise in the cave echoed around her and she stilled herself, pressing her face against the cave wall.

  Please, please, please.

  "I have to go."

  No. She shuffled as quickly as she could, her foot slipping several times. What if the man was headed her way? Would he microhop out? Her palms were coated with sweat and she was moving so slow, too slow.

  The ledge widened until she was able to turn, breaking into a run. Something hit her foot before clinking to the ground and splashing into the water but she couldn't stop. She wasn't supposed to be there, to hear that conversation.

  Why had she decided to come to the caves? She was forced to slow her pace when she reached the dark tunnel again, checking constantly over her shoulder for whoever had been inside. The long path stretched on and on, the overhead lights that had fascinated her before now frustrating her. She wished she could link to Jesse again. If he microhopped there, she wouldn't be alone.

  Her shuffling footsteps scraped across unseen dirt and pebbles, making it sound like there was another pair of footsteps in the cave with her. The man had known someone was there, he had to have. If he had known, was he following her? Had he hopped to the mouth of the cave to wait for her?

  At last, there was sunlight up ahead and she sprinted, positive she could feel breath on her neck, a hand outstretched and ready to grab her. The trees passed by in a blur, and her feet pounded on the ground. Flames burned at her shins but she pressed on.

  She reached her hut and stopped. Where was she supposed to go? Her hut could hardly be considered a building, and what was to stop someone from hopping inside, past her locked door?

  But Myra wasn't in her hut, and she had no way of contacting Jesse.

  A populated area. That was where she needed to be.