by Devan Skyles
“Which is impossible to determine, of course,” said Desmond, “and probably completely inaccurate.”
“How old is the wall?”
“Nobody really knows,” Auram said. “It’s the oldest known structure in the world, but it didn’t always surround the entire territories. Not until a few hundred years ago.”
“But, if the Ilimíri stay off the ground and the ground-dwellers can’t fly, what’s the purpose of keeping them out? A border seems arbitrary.”
“The northern colonies are especially fertile with threshold energy,” Taya explained, “meaning that the land supports threshold stability better than any other part of the world. And thresholds have to make contact with the ground in order to work.”
“So, the wall is there to defend the thresholds from the ground-dwellers,” Ellie ascertained.
“That’s right,” Taya said.
“But, aren’t the ground-dwellers the ones who just helped us?” she pointed out.
“Yeah, don’t worry,” Desmond said, “you’re not the only one confused by that.”
As they crossed over the wall, the first rays of sunlight were just starting to peek over the distant mountains far to the east. The landscape was clearly still desert, though it wasn’t nearly as barren as it had been further south. Instead, sparse shrubbery and even a few clumps of trees grew here and there and they passed over several fields of green grass.
Ahead of them, jutting from the flat plains like towers, stood a vast array of natural, red stone formations of differing heights and widths. These, Ellie thought, must certainly be the Sandstone Spires. Gauging their actual size from that distance was impossible, but within the hour, they were close enough to see that they were among the most enormous structures they had ever seen, some of them even rivaling the Monolith City.
By mid-morning, they flew over the spires and got their first look at the city. Atop each spire, seemingly rising out of the stone itself, were immense castles and turrets topped with battlements. From tower to tower and spire to spire flew thousands of Ilimíri men and women.
“Be careful how you act here,” Desmond warned them all. “The culture is a bit different than you’re probably used to. They still have a very strong national identity, and the people are easily offended.”
“I thought Ilimíra was all one unified nation now,” Ellie said.
“Well, most of it, yes,” explained Rhydian. “The northern colonies fall under the unified government, but a lot of people still aren’t happy about it. They still have their own flag, their own penal code, that sort of thing.”
“Why were they conquered anyway?” Ellie inquired.
“Well, because they have so many thresholds available to them here, they’re far wealthier than the rest of Ilimíra,” said Taya. “They were taken over mostly for their ilimbalm resources.”
“We should land and check the map,” Rhydian pointed out.
“Why?” said Auram. “You don’t think there will be signs saying, ‘secret government prison this way’?”
They landed on top of a tower on the nearest spire and spread the map Nicodemus had given them on the stone floor.
“So, it looks like we’re on the east side of this formation,” Rhydian said, pointing at a spot on the map. “So we can’t be that far. I’m guessing it’s not going to be easy to find. It’s a secret prison, after all, so everyone keep your eyes open.”
They flew to the spot indicated on the map and found themselves landing on the roof of a building with multiple vent pipes sticking out of the roof. There were sweet fumes and vapors coming up from the pipes.
“What’s that smell?” Taya asked.
Auram inhaled deeply through his nose and smiled. “Smells like my childhood home. Guys, we’re standing on top of an ilïmbalm refinery. A big one, too, from what I can tell.”
“So, the prison is in a refinery?” Ellie replied.
“Either that or Nicodemus tricked us to make sure we stayed far out of the way so we couldn’t interfere,” Rhydian said.
“Why would he do that?” asked Taya. “We were already out of the way trapped on the other side.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Desmond said. “It’s Ellie.”
Everyone looked at Desmond.
“What about her?” asked Taya.
“Remember what Nicodemus said? He told her it was about to get much more dangerous on the other side. His only goal was getting his granddaughter out of harm’s way. That’s all. We’ve been duped!”
“No,” Ellie said, refusing to believe it. “This has to be it. I have to get my dad back.”
“Ellie,” Rhydian said gently, “I think we have to consider that Desmond is probably right.”
“No!” she repeated. “No, he has to be here! We need to find him!”
“El, look, I know you’re—”
“I’m not leaving without him,” she interrupted, “so you can either help me or go home, but I’m going to find my dad.”
She flapped hard into the air, swaying this way and that as she struggled with the unfamiliar practice. Then she flew down the side of the tower until she found an open door and went inside.
The others followed her, not knowing what else to do. Inside, there were machines everywhere, with glass tubing siphoning various concentrations of ilïmbalm. People were hard at work, many carrying vials of ilïmbalm to different work stations. The room was bustling with noise and activity.
Ellie walked up to a woman who appeared to be in charge. “Where are you holding the prisoners?” she demanded.
“Excuse me?” replied the woman indignantly. “This is a refinery! There are no prisoners here!”
“I know they’re here!” Ellie persisted, a little hysterical.
Rhydian and Taya tried to pull her away from the woman, but she wouldn’t be moved.
“Ellie, come one,” Rhydian said. “It’s not here. Nicodemus lied to us.”
“I’m only asking one more time,” said Ellie sternly. “Where’s my father?”
“Look, I’m a foreman, not a prison warden!” the lady insisted. “Now I’m going to have to ask you and your friends to leave. This is a highly volatile work environment and we don’t allow anyone in here who doesn’t work for us.”
Auram, taking a look around, was smirking a bit, shaking his head. “Hey, guys, she’s right! This place is just a front!”
“What?” Desmond said.
“Yeah, I grew up in a refinery. This is all wrong.” Auram said, turning to the foreman. “So tell me, why is the flow calibrator set to zero while you’re condensing more than a hundred units of enriched medical balm?” He pointed to a dial on a nearby machine. “See, if this is correct, we’ve all been inhaling volatile toxic fumes. So either we’re all about to slip into a coma in the next few seconds, or this machine isn’t actually doing anything at all.” He bit his lip and paused, as if waiting to see if they were all going to collapse. When nothing happened, he shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I’m relieved, aren’t you?”
“I’m calling the guards,” said the foreman.
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Auram, lifting a vial of green fluid and holding it over a bubbling vat of steaming ilïmbalm.
The woman froze, eyes wide. “W-what are you doing?”
“Well, I’m about to pour this refining fluid into a pot of hot ilïmbalm,” he explained. “I’d have thought that was fairly obvious.”
“Are you crazy? That would kill everyone in here!”
“Well, assuming that this part of the factory is real, yes. I’m guessing from your reaction that it is, so why don’t you be a dear and have some of your workers move this phony piece of machinery for us?”
Every one of the workers had stopped what they were doing to look at Auram now with tense expressions.
“Okay,” the foreman said. “Okay, just put the bottle down and we’ll show you that there’s nothing under this machine.”
“Forgive me if I don’t tr
ust you. See, I’ve had a few people try to kill me over the last few days, so I’m going to go ahead and hold onto this while you do as I say.”
The foreman nodded slowly, then signaled for two of the workers to comply. Two strong men stepped forward and dragged the machine to one side, revealing an opening in the floor with a set of stairs leading down into the darkness.”
“Auram, you’re brilliant!” Rhydian said.
“Yeah, I know,” he replied with a shrug. He pretended to lose his grip on the vial and laughed as everyone nearly jumped out of their skins.
Desmond wasted no time at all. He ran down the stairs quickly, yelling, “Kora! Kora!”
The others looked at Auram, not sure what to do.
“Go!” Auram said. “Somebody’s got to keep these guys from chasing you with pointy objects. I’ll be right here when you come back up.”
Rhydian nodded, drew his sword, and raced down the stairs, Ellie’s hand in his. At the bottom of the stairwell lay an unconscious guard, his weapon missing.
“I guess that mean’s Desmond got through okay,” Taya said from behind them.
Before them was a series of dark, narrow hallways, the walls lined with jail cells. Ellie pushed to the front and ran down one of the halls. Rhydian and Taya followed.
“Dad!” Ellie yelled, her voice echoing through the chamber. “Daddy, are you here? Where are you?”
They ran through the halls, peering into every cell (most of which were empty). Ellie became more frantic the further they went. They’d been searching for nearly ten minutes and her father was nowhere to be found.
Then at last, they heard a faint voice echo back through the dark tunnel. “Elliot?”
Ellie smiled and ran to where she’d heard the voice. Coming to a cell at the very end of the hall, she grasped the steel bars and peered in.
“Daddy! Is that you?”
The others caught up and looked into the cell. Inside sat a middle-aged man with graying hair. Rhydian instantly recognized him from Ellie’s vacation photos.
“Elliot, how did you find me?” said the man, coming to the bars and embracing her through them. “I never thought I’d see you again!”
Ellie’s eyes flooded with tears as she wrapped her arms around her father through the bars. “I thought you were dead! The cruise, they said your boat went down. Daddy, I— I’m so sorry I didn’t go with you!”
“I’m so glad you didn’t, my little angel, or you’d have been captured with us. Look at you! Your wings are like your mother’s. She would be so happy to finally see you in Ilimíra. She never stopped trying to get us back here, even when I had accepted our new lives. She wasn’t going to let you go on living without knowing your heritage.”
“I know,” she replied. “I found her research. That’s half the reason I’m here. The other half is thanks to Rhydian and his friends.”
“I’d know young Rhydian anywhere,” he said. “He’s the spitting image of his father. Thank you for helping my daughter, Gideonson. My name is Leroy Bower— er, Nicodemuson, I suppose. I’m still so use to introducing myself with my human surname. It kind of becomes habit after nineteen years on the other side.”
“Daddy, we need to get you out of here!” Ellie said urgently, fiddling with the lock on the bars. “How do we get this open?”
“Try the keys,” came Desmond’s voice from down the hall.
They looked and saw him holding the guard’s sword in one hand and a ring of keys in the other. His left arm was wrapped around the shoulders of a girl, no older than fourteen, who looked remarkably like him.
He tossed the keys to Ellie, who frantically tested key after key in the lock. The fifth one worked and she swung the bars open with a loud, metallic creek that echoed through the halls.
Leroy stepped out of the cell, and as soon as he did, everyone noticed the same horrifying thing at once. There were no wings on his back. Where they had once been, there were now only scarred stumps. It was the most heinous violation you could inflict on any creature that was meant to fly. The highest of punishments in Ilimíra was to be rendered flightless, but to remove a person’s wings entirely was to strip him of his dignity and pride forever; to take away what made him Ilimíri.
Ellie’s demeanor turned to sadness. “Did Corvus do this to you?”
Leroy nodded solemnly.
“This is inexcusable,” Rhydian said, trembling with anger. “How could he do such a thing?”
“This presents a real problem,” Desmond pointed out. “How are we going to get him back to the Monolith City in his condition? Not to seem insensitive, but he’s obviously not flying there.”
Ellie’s expression turned dire, looking to Rhydian with a pleading expression. “We have to get him out of here. We have to! What are we going to do?”
“We will,” Rhydian promised.
“Uh, no we won’t,” said Desmond. “How do you think you’re going to do that exactly?”
“Rhydian can carry him,” she said desperately, “like he carried me.”
Rhydian shook his head. “No, I can’t. Like you said yourself, I wouldn’t have been able to carry you the entire way here, and your father is twice your size.”
“Well, we can’t leave him here!”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to,” Leroy said, a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “I’m overjoyed to see you, darling, but I would never forgive myself if something happened to you because you had me as a burden.”
She shook her head. “No way. Either you come with me or I’m staying here with you.”
“I won’t let you do that, sweetheart,” he told her gently. “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid you have to go.”
“No!” she replied, her voice cracking. “We’re getting you out of here!”
“Do whatever you want,” said Desmond, “but I’m getting my sister out of here.” He tried to steer the girl away, but she resisted.
“We’re not leaving without helping them,” she said. “They helped you rescue me. We owe them that much at least.”
Desmond grabbed the girl by both her shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. “Kora, you are my number one priority, not these people. I promised our parents I’d take care of you. Now I’m getting you out of here.”
“Forget it!” Kora replied. “We have a responsibility to the less fortunate. That’s what mother always said. If you won’t stay and help, I will.”
“That’s very sweet, young lady,” said Leroy, “but I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do for me.”
“Look,” Ellie said, “even if we can’t get him back to Nicodemus, we can still get him somewhere safe, right?”
“Like where?” Desmond asked. “As soon as word reaches Corvus that his hostage has escaped, troops will be looking all over this city for him. And he’s not exactly inconspicuous, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“What about the ground?” Rhydian suggested. “There are no Grimalkin in the Colonies, right? So he should be safe there.”
“It would only be a matter of time,” Taya said. “They’d catch him eventually.”
“That’s it!” said Leroy.
“What, you mean the ground?” Desmond said. “Weren’t you listening? That’s not going to work.”
“Not just the ground,” Leroy said. “Get me to a threshold! I can pass for human easily enough. It took them nineteen years to find me the last time.”
Everyone seemed to think this was the best idea so far, so they decided it was their only option.
“How do we find a threshold then?” Ellie asked.
“That’s the easy part,” Taya said. “They’re all over the place out here. The hard part will be getting him past the security, and then keeping anyone from going in after him.”
Leroy shrugged. “Collapse the gateway.”
Everyone looked at him, puzzled.
“How do we do that?” Rhydian inquired.
“That’s easy,” he said. “Take as many primed timekeepers as w
e can get our hands on through all at once. It will let me through just fine if I run, but the wake of the timekeeper energy will overwhelm the field and the threshold will break down.”
“Wow,” Taya responded. “How do you know all that?”
“Spend twenty six years married to a Gatemaker and you’ll know a few things, too.”
“Okay,” Rhydian said. “Let’s do it.”
The five of them made their way back up to the factory, where Auram had all the workers lined up against the back wall, far away from the door. He still held the green vial over the vat of boiling ilïmbalm.
“There you are!” he said. “I was beginning to wonder if you were coming back. My arm’s getting tired. I almost dropped this thing like, five times.” He smiled facetiously, looking over at the factory workers sweating nervously.
Ellie helped her father up out of the opening in the floor. He squinted in the bright light, having not seen it in so long. As they made their way out the door, Auram caught Rhydian by his arm.
“What happened to his wings?”
“I’ll explain later. We need to go.”
“So, what’s the plan for getting him back to Nicodemus then?”
“We’re not.”
“Oh, great,” he replied. “Foolproof plan.”
Desmond went up to Auram. “Here, get my sister outside. I’ll take that so you can get away.”
Auram looked surprised. “Um, okay,” he said, handing over the vial of green liquid. “Thanks.”
“Get her far away, do you understand?”
“Desmond, what are you doing?” Kora asked, clearly concerned.
Auram hurried Kora out the door, where the others were standing on the ledge, getting ready to fly.
“Where’s Desmond?” Rhydian asked.
“He offered to give us a head start,” replied Auram. Everyone seemed taken aback by this news.
“That doesn’t sound like him,” Ellie said.
“Regardless, we need to go,” said Taya.
Rhydian held Leroy tight and lunged from the tower, drooping heavily in the air from the man’s weight. The others followed, making their way toward the ground. Rhydian tried to navigate through the air, but he was falling more than flying. He felt as though he was wearing a parachute, slowly maneuvering their descent toward the earth, but unable to rise at all.
