The Temple, Montague thought. He cringed at the sound of the word. In the summer months when priests amass for the annual pilgrimage across the mainland and pass by his farm on their way south, he felt paranoid. Although Montague had never been accused of any crime against the kingdoms of Naan, he had a secret—a secret that would cause the rest of the world, including the king of Men, to turn on him and cast him out of civilization forever if it was exposed. And The Temple had eyes and ears everywhere.
Montague was anxious to read the letter that Sam, the gate tender, had placed in his palm. It was still in the fold of his sleeve. When he opened the parchment it read: We need to speak.
Everything suddenly made sense. There was no name attached to the writing, but Montague knew that the letter was from his mentor, Burton Lang, and he knew exactly where to meet him. Burton had been banished from the three kingdoms of Men almost forty years ago for speaking against the word of The Temple. Illyrium must know his secret, Montague thought. That was why the guards acted so harshly to him and why Sam couldn’t look at him. The farmer believed that The Temple knew he was consulting an exile.
Montague La-Rose stepped into the darkness. A cold wind screamed from the belly of the mountain, carrying black sediment that thickened the air. Rain from the surface dripped down through the cavern’s stone ceilings. With the dwindling light of his torch, he listened to the black space around him and followed the running water, knowing that with each step he was descending closer to the core of Planet Naan, where an underground network of tunnels reached across the lands. This network was connected to the heart of the planet where a message station, created long ago by entities of the higher dimensions, enabled communication with the heavens and the other four known worlds. Each planet had been equipped with these intricate machines, as delicate and powerful as the human mind.
Just beyond the cave’s entrance were a series of possible tunnels. Fire-light twinkled from the one. Montague followed it and found his teacher, Burton Lang, kneeling in front of a wall covered with ancient paintings. The fall air was much too cold for the skinny old man, bundled in layers. He had short, curly, snow-white hair with white and gray scruff. But he was no mere man. Montague’s teacher had come from the sky. Burton was an incarnated angel, a wizard.
At first, Montague didn’t speak. He listened and watched his mentor ramble on about arbitrary what-ifs and what-nots while tracing his fingers across the pictures. Recently the old man had been telling him the same old stories over and over again. Montague was getting worried about him, especially since he’d summoned him far west to the Kejin Mountains, a rocky range of steep cliffs and deep caverns. They hadn’t met here for decades. But he had to tell Burton about what happened at the capital gates today.
Without any physical indication that Burton was aware of Montague’s presence, he spoke. “It feels like yesterday I sat just here explaining the great deception of Man to those who were willing to accept the truth, yet it was centuries ago,” Burton said. He stopped his finger on a small circle that represented Naan’s second moon.
Montague was well aware of what it represented. It was a rogue sphere unnatural to their sky.
A dotted web was drawn out from the foreign moon and across the circular world map, encapsulating the whole picture. Burton had called it the mouth of the beast; a symbol for the artificial quarantine placed around the planet by an invasive alien species called the Nekrums. The second moon was the home of the Nekrums, a craft capable of supporting millions of beings. And the quarantine was meant to keep any divine being from intruding on the Nekrums’ arcane affairs. With this veil of darkness in place, spiritual beings of light, or angels as they were called, could not penetrate the barrier and descend into the physical realm. But because Burton had descended to the planet before the Nekrums had arrived, they couldn’t attempt an all-out invasion while an awakened angel was there guarding it.
The farmer approached the painting, feeling the history rush through him. The rich yellows, deep blues, and bright-green inks mapped the historical timeline of Man—events that Burton had been exposing to him since he was a boy; events that were different than the official stories documented in the sacred scriptures of mankind.
Burton continued, “Some of my first students, founders of the Resistance, passed this information on to their children. Others were afraid, retreating to life on the waters far from the mainland, or digging down deep into the underground to escape the eye of the Nekrums. But no one is truly beyond their reach. The Nekrums have invaded other worlds before.”
“The emigrants,” Montague said, still staring at the painting. “That’s how the islands of Grale and Mern were colonized.”
“Exactly,” Burton said.
Montague knew all of this. Burton had told him many times before. But it was obvious that Burton, not having many friends nowadays, felt better talking about it. Montague’s mentor had known that the murderous Nekrums would find this planet one day. And that day had come sooner than he’d anticipated. The aliens had been lurking in the sky within an incandescent biosphere, posing as a second moon for over four hundred years, waiting for the perfect time to strike—when the angel was caught off guard.
As Montague stood, still waiting to tell his teacher about what happened at the kingdom, he felt a trembling fear. Perhaps the terrifying ‘future events’ that Burton had told him would come to pass were finally happening. Montague dreaded the day. Suddenly, his problems with the kingdom seemed small. He tried to keep himself as balanced as his mentor had taught him, but he sensed that Burton was picking up on his discomfort.
“The king cut me off,” Montague said loudly. His voice echoed within the dark, wet cavern.
Burton turned to him, lifting one brow.
“There were men at the gates I’ve never seen before. The boy, Sam, wouldn’t even look at me. They turned me away. They know, Sensei…they know that you’ve been teaching me. They’ll—”
Burton interjected, “Do you not remember what happened to me?”
“Of course I remember,” said Montague.
When the Nekrums infiltrated The Temple five hundred years ago, they set fire to the institution’s library, destroying every copy of the sacred document known as Gabriel’s Diary. It contained the true histories and origin stories of mankind before its arrival on Planet Naan.
Although Burton secured the original, he had faced a problem that was harder to solve than he had ever expected or prepared for. The newer generations of the world were accepting a changing belief system about their race’s origins that eventually became not only false, but misleading, promoting a narrow-minded way of thinking. The Nekrums were successful in deceiving the human masses into believing a false story of creation. That false story was promoted by The Temple from a new sacred document titled, The Book of Volpi. Over time, many verses were written and re-written by corrupt priests who were manipulated by the Nekrums. As many copies had come to pass throughout the ages, truth was deleted and lies were inserted. The Temple declared The Book of Volpi as the official history of Naan. It was assumed to be written by a god named Gabriel Volpi, explaining the story of Man’s creation. Descendants of that creator became the royal family destined to rule over mankind.
But Burton told a different story. He claimed that Gabriel was no god, but a human being who came from another planet.
Some of the very people who Burton taught long ago had joined the exiles and used his knowledge to form a cult against the three kingdoms. The technology he was trying to share had been turned into deadly weapons. Some exiles were known to use illusions to manipulate people and powders to kill or control people. They were called ‘mages’. Dangerous to anyone who wasn’t a part of their cult, they even participated in human and animal sacrifices to appease their gods, the Nekrums, to gain, what the mages called, spiritual power.
The event that made The Temple present their case against Burton happened on a cold, snowy night at Illyrium’s four hundred and fiftieth a
nniversary festival. It was tradition to collapse and burn the remains of an old, dilapidated structure to make way for the new; usually a house or stable that had been built during the first rising of civilization. When Burton had lit the bonfire, it exploded into a fireball that shot straight into the sky, scorching it. There had been three days of darkness to follow, creating an end-of-the-world trepidation among many. Because of the incident, the Illyrium council blamed the phenomenon on Burton and ruled that such mystical acts or anything unknown to scientists would from that moment on be considered ‘witchcraft’. If the accused was convicted, he or she would be banished from the land. The people of the world had turned on Burton, who’d once led the construction of civilization. But Montague’s sensei had sworn to him that he was set up. He claimed that the wood had been soaked in rosstic acid, an explosive compound derived from a desert rose. Burton tasted it on the charred residue after the event that night.
Aside from his lasting contribution to the three kingdoms of Naan, Burton had been cast out and dubbed an evil sorcerer among men who perverted the ways of the civilized world. Although he still had friends inside the Kingdom of Illyrium, his visits were now short, and secret.
“With the best spies coins can buy The Temple is the first to know everything and if they knew that you were affiliated with me, you wouldn’t have been allowed to leave. They would have arrested you and locked you away to await a trial that would guarantee banishment, or death. I don’t know who those men were, but the king most certainly did not cut you off. The kingdom is compromised. In fear for your life, I tried to stop you from going to the castle. The enemy is making a move.”
“What do you mean, you tried to stop me?” Montague was confused. He hadn’t seen Burton in over a month.
“I did what was necessary to try and prevent you from reaching Illyrium.”
Montague pressed. “You did what, exactly?” He didn’t like Burton’s vague explanations, considering the trouble he’d been through.
“First I relaxed you to make sure you would sleep in, past the rendezvous.”
“Relaxed me? You mean drugged me? When? Last night?” Montague asked. He almost wasn’t surprised.
“In your tea, yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “Then I cracked the wheel on your wagon so that it would break. I’m sorry, but I was only trying to protect you.”
“But the princess,” Montague said. “She needs medicine. And I have none left.”
“I already gave Gretchen some pigroot and ginger algae. Olivia will be fine for now.”
Gretchen was Princess Olivia’s handmaid, also guilty of consorting with Burton, an exile.
“Why couldn’t you have just told me not to go?” Montague wondered.
“At the time, I wasn’t confident enough of what was happening to alert you, so I simply set up obstacles, hoping that you would have just delayed your travels for the day until I returned from visiting some of the farms.”
“Another test?”
“Every choice we face in life is a test, Montague. And we make countless decisions every day.”
Perturbed by his teacher’s confession, Montague had to ask. “And the pigs, did you round them up as well?”
“Pigs?” Burton laughed. “No. I’m not that mean. But with all of the obstacles I put in place, you still reached Illyrium, didn’t you? When you arrived, I sensed it. You have a hard head. A ‘testa dura’ you are. I should have known that even I couldn’t stop you.”
“Then if no one suspects me then why did we have to meet here for you to tell me this?”
“Because I need you to help me send an important message,” Burton said.
“Since when do we travel almost a hundred miles to send a message when you can contact anyone or anything with your mind?” Montague had once witnessed Burton summoning a family of foxes from miles away to deliver messages to different people in different towns. One of many miracles he had seen his teacher perform.
Burton took his eyes from the cave drawings and looked Montague in the eyes. “I’m growing old, Montague. My mind has become withered, making it hard for me to function in this body.”
Montague had suspected that Burton’s ability to tap into infinite knowledge was diminishing. In recent years he’d become forgetful. The old man would have to physically search for answers now, and he was not fond of constant travel.
A gust of wind followed Burton’s hand as he waved it across the small pyre. It went out. He led Montague further into the depths to another cave system.
Here, there were more paintings. Burton pointed to the ceiling above them. Drawings of dead bodies, stacked, with corn husks coming out from the tops of the pile, represented the first portent of the Fall of Mankind. “The Nekrum invasion will begin with a great sickness.”
“I’ll wager you can guess who, or should I say, what, drew this,” Burton said.
“The one that the Nekrums control, the host,” Montague replied. “This shows the plague from the prophecies, written in The Book of Volpi.”
When the Nekrums would take control of a human body, that host was manipulated by a technology based on microorganic intelligence that could operate the human body. The aliens were much more advanced than the primitive humans of Naan.
“Yes. The Nekrums ordered their host to insert prophecies into all the copies of The Book of Volpi being reproduced, drawing out the Nekrums’ plan for invasion, knowing that there was nothing the people could do about it. The Nekrums find it entertaining to see people in fear of what is yet to pass. But the Nekrums left out certain details to mislead me. These scenarios are only possible futures. If the majority of mankind believes in those possibilities, those beliefs could generate enough mental energy to feed the destructive force of the events prophesized. The Nekrums are trying to get mankind to help create its own demise by believing these prophecies. The human collective consciousness is more powerful than an incarnated angel. That’s the Nekrums’ greatest weapon. When people are afraid, or sick, it makes them easier to control. And recently, our people have been feeling ill after every meal. The last produce and spice shipment was tainted by a substance created by something other than nature.” Burton gave Montague a hard stare. “If one of the farmers is compromised, then our enemies have already made their move.”
Because of his teacher, Montague knew what the Nekrums were going to do, but Burton didn’t know when they would do it. Following the laws of chaos to keep their enemies guessing, the Nekrums remained completely random in their time of attack. They believed that an enemy who based his war strategy on ceremonial dates was weak.
Burton coughed, holding his chest.
“You told me that the Nekrums wouldn’t invade while you were here. I was born into my life with you in it, and I’ve studied beside you since I could read. And I never saw you ill. What are you not telling me?”
Burton looked to his feet. He seemed hesitant about what he was going to say. But then his mentor spoke the words that Montague never thought he would hear.
“I’m dying,” said Burton. “Just days ago, for the first time, I bled from a wound that I couldn’t heal.”
Montague took a deep breath. “But you can’t die. If you are right about the Nekrums…we’ll need you.”
“I can’t live much longer. Don’t you see? That is why the Nekrums are starting the invasion now. They know that after half a millennium I can’t stabilize this body for much longer. I might linger on for a few more years as a withering old man, but with my power being anything less than at full potential, I am useless. In this condition I cannot protect the Volpi bloodline. If I’m gone before we stop the Nekrums’ puppet, you must carry out the plan, Montague. Since no one will believe me about what is happening, we need to call for help,” Burton said.
“Help? From Grale and Mern? What will three iron-age armies do against an enemy who has the potential to annihilate an entire species overnight and can travel the skies?” Montague asked.
“We have something they ne
ed to acquire first—Volpi blood. But this will only delay their plans. If we had three kingdoms united together to fight for the same belief, the mind can transcend any kind of magic in all the worlds of Men. Awareness is a powerful tool, more than any human realizes. However, I’m not talking about help from anyone on this planet. Only an ascended master can help defend a misguided civilization, and since the Nekrums’ quarantine acts to prevent my kind from traveling in or out of the planet, we need help from a being powerful enough to break through. I was lucky to incarnate before the quarantine was placed.”
Montague had heard this many times before. Burton wanted to conjure a spiritual being, one who had experienced both the depths of darkness and the ascensions of love, into the world. He had told Montague that neutral beings were considered to be the most powerful in the higher dimensions. They were also known as the calmest, most patient, and largely, peaceful beings in the universe. Burton was once part of a spiritual collective with the entity he was trying to contact. Together they’d freed enslaved races from predatory attacks before. And on this day and at this hour, the Kejin Mountain was perfectly aligned with the star cluster in which the message needed to be sent.
“We have one chance. We must do this right. There are both angels and demons eager to enter the physical world. If we succeed, it is up to you to enlighten the angel to truth. If we fail, you must face the demon in my absence.”
Montague started pacing around, rubbing his head. “Now you are talking about dangerous magic. Well, for me. Burton, you are asking me to face a demon, alone. I have never done anything like this before. What if I fail?” he choked up.
Under a Veil of Gods Page 2
