If circumstances were different, she’d be happy Jessie had finally gained some confidence. But this was artificial, and she especially didn’t care for the disturbing look of detachment in her friend’s face.
“Killer uniform. It totally suits you,” Fate said. Unlike the others, who were wearing deep red military jackets made of canvas, Jessie had chosen a fitted, high-collared leather trench lined with two rows of silver buttons down the front. “How’s the head piece feel? Are you all like…I know Kung Fu?”
Jessie thrust her sword forward, slicing the sharp tip within inches of Fate’s nose in a figure-eight pattern. The blade whipped enough of a breeze to move the hair around her face. Before Fate could react, Jessie retracted the sword, bringing it down by her side in one swift movement. “I don’t know, you tell me.” Jessie’s expression was indifferent as she brushed past Fate.
Fate stared in stunned silence as Jessie clomped down the ramp in her new combat boots. Heartache filled her chest and she turned away quickly to hide the tears welling in her eyes. She hurried to the exit, and by the time she pushed through the sanctuary door, she was sobbing.
She slid to the floor and hugged her knees. Why was this happening? If there was one thing she could always count on it was the constancy of Jessie’s friendship. They’d known each other since kindergarten and had been inseparable ever since. Losing her best friend was every bit as excruciating as losing Finn.
The door to the sanctuary opened. Farouk clambered across the room and stopped in front of a glass cabinet. Hastily wiping her eyes dry, Fate gulped back the last of her tears and stood. Relieved that Farouk hadn’t seen her crying, she walked over to stand beside his cage as he thumbed through a set of keys.
“What’s the fancy helmet for?” Fate sighed, grateful for the distraction. She liked the look of the gleaming bronze helmet with its fawn-colored wings fanning out from polished disks of gold on each side.
Farouk unlocked the cabinet and stepped aside. “This is the helmet of Hermes.”
“The Olympian god, Hermes? Aka, Mercury?”
“The very one.” Farouk’s tone was flat, almost bored. “Every guardian must pass the helmet’s test as the final rite of passage.”
“Hold on. Nobody said anything about passing a test. What about the oath I took? You know, the one where I signed my entire life away?”
“There are three rites. The first was agreeing to separate from your previous life by taking the oath. Passing through the Keep threshold was the second. The third is assuming your position as guardian through the absorbalation of Keep knowledge. Given that you survive the download,” he added rather hurriedly.
“What the…?” Fate’s breath stalled in her lungs. “I don’t get it. You weren’t willing to risk me getting suped up on Dragon Eye powers, but you want me to wear this death helmet?”
Farouk’s ears stood less straight as he nodded. “This is how it’s been done for thousands of years. But it should come as a comfortment that everyone in your bloodline has survived the initiation.”
Fate swallowed the wave of fear rising beneath her skin as she removed the helmet from the cabinet. “Thanks, I feel so much better now.” The metal was colder than it should be and sent a rash of goose bumps over both arms. “Can you at least tell me about the helmet and what I’m in for?”
Farouk glanced over his shoulder at the breaching door as if he worried someone might catch him telling secrets. “Hermes used this helmet to receive messages the gods wanted passed onto mortals. When the helmet came to the Keep it was retroquipped with discs encoded with all that is known about the Keep because the metal happens to be a splendillent conductor of information. We have used the helmet as a means of transhifting information to the guardians ever since.”
“Okay, that doesn’t sound so bad. What makes this thing so dangerous?”
“Hermes was a god and the helmet was never made for mortals to wear. Adjustifications have been made, but the download remains extremely invasive. While this can be painful, it is not lethal. The real danger lies in the abstract nature of the Keep knowledge. It has been known a time or two to push the human mind beyond what it can accept and it was rejected.”
“And by rejected, you mean they died?”
Farouk nodded gravely.
Fate gulped. “Skipping past the possibility of my dying, how about we fast forward to the fringe benefits. And they better be pretty stellar, because I’ve got to be honest here, I’m thinking of stepping down and letting Brune have her position back.”
Farouk’s whiskers twitched with agitation and looked as though he might argue with her on that last point. But then he surprised her with a calm explanation. “The information is transhifted to the subconscious mind in the form of symbols and universal archetypes. Each time you have a question about the Keep, an archetype or symbol unfolds and is then filterated through the memory centers of your brain. Your answer will come to mind as if it has always been part of you.”
Fate glanced out over the slowly rotating landscape of the Keep and the revolving hoops creating the artificial stratosphere. She could live a thousand years here, study every book in its massive library and still not know everything about this mysterious structure. Burning curiosity mingled with the ever-increasing sense of duty she felt toward the Keep. She wanted to know more and doing this would at least make her the guardian the Keep needed.
“Alright, let’s do this.”
Farouk’s snout curled with the faintest smile as he gestured for her to have a seat. Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, Fate sat down, raised the helmet over her head and held it there. “Farouk, if the worst happens, I want you to let my dad take all the others home.”
“That will not be obligessary.”
She frowned at him. “That’s not an answer, especially when I’m not even sure what that means.”
Farouk gave her a playful but dismissive wave. “I have no doubt you will return a fully initiated guardian.”
Fate wasn’t so sure and considered making a threat in case she didn’t survive, but decided it would be an empty one at best, since she wouldn’t be around to to enforce it if the worst happened. Squirming in the seat with nervous energy, she slowly lowered the helmet, surprised when the visor slid over her eyes and darkness swarmed in.
17
We’re Doomed
THE DOWNLOAD HIT HARD, like a spike to the brain. Blinding light filled Fate’s vision. Noise like the squeal of a boiling kettle and blaring horns pierced her ears. Fiery pain drilled down her spine, shooting scalding waves through her arms and legs.
Terror, like nothing Fate had ever felt, exploded in her heart. She reached to remove the helmet, but her body wouldn’t respond. She was paralyzed, forced to endure the pain that had turned to a billion pins and needles pricking the surface of her skin, driving deep into her bones and organs.
The high-pitched sounds reached a crescendo, edging out every thought. All that existed was the stabbing pain and endless screech. She tried desperately to remember what had come before the torturous existence she now found herself in, but even her brain was beyond reach. Flashes of memory came and went, until all at once, her entire sense of self fell away.
Then merciful silence descended.
A kaleidoscope of vibrant colors, symbols and geometric patterns bloomed into view, becoming what looked like the mandalas of Eastern cultures. Hues of red turned to shades of violet. Turquoise mixed together with emerald lights shifted into brilliant tones of gold. This went on and on, each mandala exploding anew from the center, unfolding into an unending array of uniquely different shapes and colors.
The speed in which the mandalas shifted in color and design increased, each encoded with ancient knowledge held in secret for untold eons. They rang out musical notes one at a time, building into a celestial symphony.
An eternity flowed away in the span of seconds as mysteries unraveled. Systems of magic and universal truths unlocked. Veils drew back from time itsel
f, until all that remained was the essence of forever.
The mandalas divided. First into two then four, eight, sixteen, until hundreds of them formed a grid of countless radiant dots. The grid reordered into crisscrossing, rotating ovals. The pixilated image solidified into a crystal clear scene of the Keep, viewed from a vantage point somewhere on the outside. Six giant rings whipped in opposite directions, creating the force field protecting the round metal structure that was the Keep. The cycles of each day played out. Powered by an ancient, magically infused technology, the massive gears on the surface turned, moving miles and miles of elaborate vaults with clockwork precision.
Time suddenly stopped and played backwards.
Fate’s detached vantage point shifted to the Keep interior, where she observed the changing of the guard from the moment she herself entered the Keep, to Brune and her disastrous mistakes, to her great grandmother’s time and down through hundreds of other guardians, all the way to the very first Keep Guardian.
Her journey backward showed how every girl lived solely to fulfill her duty to the Keep. Each was a lonely existence filled with careful routines, studies in magic, weaponry and relentless training. Very few had the opportunity to use their well-honed skills, but on the occasion when a creature escaped, or if scavengers grew out of control, the battles were bloody and often lethal. A grievous injury such as Brune’s ended her time of duty and the next guardian was promptly summoned. This went on through thousands of years with Farouk in attendance, a constant presence and the only companion to each lone guardian.
But then the timeline shifted abruptly to one without Farouk and his human charges. Mechanical spiders crawled beneath the subsurface of underground cogs and wheels, repairing and maintaining the complex system. Gigantic robots with forklifts for arms were stationed near major portals, where a myriad of exotic looking vaults arrived from unknown locations on a regular basis.
Each was an architectural wonder made of rare and unusual materials. Most vaults were as large as temples, though some were as massive as pyramids, others as small as mausoleums. Regardless of size, each vault was unloaded by the robots and bolted to the main conveyer belts by worker robots to begin its century long journey through the Keep’s orderly rotation along the surface, before sinking down into the underground and back to the surface again. This went on for an indefinite period of time without any sign of who or what had created the Keep.
Time suddenly reversed, thrusting Fate swiftly to the present. Her own self-awareness rushed back as she approached her own timeline. The further she moved from the distant past, the more she resisted. She hadn’t learned everything there was to know about the Keep. There were still too many unanswered questions. How old was the Keep? When had it been built? Who were its builders?
Most importantly. Why had such a thing been built?
Fate watched the perpetual motion of the Keep increase as the years ticked by. She was literally running out of time. Somehow, she had to figure out how to put the brakes on. She already knew that whatever she focused on was what she’d been able to zoom in on. As images sped past in a blur, she searched for one constant to put her attention on.
Against the blue cast of the Keep’s iron surface, she finally saw what she was looking for. Burning deep beneath the gargantuan gears slowly turning the grouping of vaults was the red glow of the furnace fires. Time began to slow as she focused on the radiant hot spot and her consciousness dropped into the bowels of the Keep.
The subsurface was dark and grimy. Steam belched from rows of pipes snaking endlessly over oily panels filled with complicated machinery. Cranes lowered robots down into the shadowy depths. Others were being hauled in large waste bins, their mechanical arms filled with slimy debris.
The roar of the furnace filled the cavernous expanse, its hellish fire casting a blood-red light over soot-stained surfaces. Beneath the incessant noise of the furnace were the constant thrum of countless moving parts and the grinding of giant gears.
She came upon a place where the machines were assembling the robots she’d been seeing. After running along a conveyor belt, each finished robot was dunked inside a vat of glowing aquamarine liquid–an infusion of magic that brought them to life. Every once-in-a-while the infusion failed and the dysfunctional robot was disassembled and sent to a scrap yard, which was filled with damaged, worn out robots and magical runoff.
Blue sparks came from these disparate parts. A few pieces came together, rebuilding into something new, though crude and unrefined. The sight was unsettling, but since any further information was not forthcoming, she lost interest altogether.
Feeling momentarily directionless, Fate felt herself lifting away from the scene. Her awareness was returning to her body. But she wasn’t quite ready to give up. Once again, she searched for something to anchor her.
Glints of blue light sparking in the red murk caught her attention. Streaming in a single line, were thousands of spider robots. They were carrying what looked like glowing sapphires and disappearing with the gemstones through a hole the size of a bowling ball. Allowing her consciousness to follow them, Fate traveled the long winding tunnel into the very core of the Keep. At last, the spiders spilled out into a round chamber. It was a laboratory of some sort. Complex systems of glass beakers and vials, connected by reams of copper tubing bubbled with a luminous sea green colored liquid.
A robot Fate hadn’t seen before until this point, was manning the laboratory. It was spindly in design like the many-armed librarian robots, but this one’s head appeared to be made of flesh and bone, though not of a human. Faintly blue, wrinkled skin covered a large, bulbous skull. Flat facial features narrowed into a pointed chin.
Its round, bulgy eyes radiated light, which it used to zap the vials it was holding. The robot turned its electric gaze to the buckets of gemstones the spider robots were delivering. Scooping the stones out with a metal cup, the robot poured them into a blender, crushing them into a fine powder, which it added to the first of a long line of boiling beakers. The robot hurried over to the end of the line, where the liquid had become condensed, glowing neon blue, as it filled a tiny vial drop by precious drop.
Putting a cap on the vial, the robot rushed across the laboratory, pushed through a round hatch and juddered down a passageway lined with nothing but rusted pipes dripping with condensation. The robot stopped in front of the next hatch, pressed a code to open it and entered what appeared to be a utilitarian chamber with walls as tall as a hundred-story building. Slotted through massive notches in the walls were gears that stood still. Oily water lay in shallow pools over the eroded floor.
Fate’s interest began to wane. As far as she could tell, all she’d managed to do was follow robots attending to routine maintenance of the Keep. They did not appear to hold the mysteries she’d hoped to unlock about the Keep’s builders. She started drifting higher, giving the robot one last cursory glance, where it was fiddling with something in a shadowy corner.
Lights suddenly illuminated an elaborate shrine built into the dark corner. What Fate had assumed was merely another vacuous room that was somehow integral to the functions of the Keep was actually a temple to something or someone very important. Could this be a shrine to the original builder?
She pushed her awareness closer. The shrine was sculpted from metal, though now tarnished to a dull black. A master metal worker had crafted the piece to perfection. Sharp flourishes in the shape of wings radiated from a throne flanked by scaled tigers frozen in a vicious growl. Fierce, hawk-faced men wielding spears and shields stood guard next to the back of the throne. Women with the bodies of snakes entwined themselves at their feet.
But the central focus of the masterpiece was the most astonishing part. Sitting with a straight spine on a rigid throne was a woman dressed in intricate layers of armor and a helmet of lotus-style petals climbing into a decorative peak. Like the librarian and the robot she’d followed there, this regal woman also had six arms.
Something about this
seemed familiar, but Fate couldn’t pinpoint why at the moment. She was too drawn to the woman’s face. She was sculpted from a pale blue stone. Perhaps Angelite, like the gemstone necklace Fate had at home. The woman’s expression was peaceful and her eyes were closed. The artist had dabbed faint pinks on her lips and painted a light feathering of lashes on her lids. The soft, realistic touch gave the impression she was alive, while her body was encased in the sculpted armor that was part of the iron sculpture.
Or was this a tomb?
The thought saddened Fate. Especially when she noticed two small sculptures worked into the design of the throne. Just above her left shoulder was a man and woman embraced in a kiss. Over the right shoulder was the same couple, but the woman looked ill and he was holding her in his arms. How terrible. The woman must’ve died, leaving her grieving lover to build this lasting monument in her memory.
The tragedy of the two lovers triggered thoughts of Finn. Fate couldn’t help wondering if she too was destined to be forever apart from him. Just thinking this brought about the most unbearable grief.
No. She refused to give up. They would find each other again.
The robot leaned in toward the woman with a vial in hand. The glowing liquid illuminated her blue face as the robot pressed the glass against her lips. Much to Fate’s surprise, her mouth parted and the robot emptied the vial without losing a single drop.
She was alive!
More curious than ever, Fate pushed closer as the woman’s six upturned hands began glowing with the same aquamarine color the robot had fed her. The energy turned to liquid, filling her palms to overflowing. The luminous liquid spilled and traveled along pathways sculpted into the sides of the throne, running to the floor, where it split off into several troughs. Within minutes, lines of aquamarine lit the expanse, becoming a complex geometric design, which touched the edges of the room. The massive gears notched within the walls began to turn, each rotating in opposite directions.
Fate's Keep (Fate's Journey Book 2) Page 12
