by GX Knight
Another hypothesis Sway wanted to test was my ability to heal. The metal was biological in nature, and so in theory, it could possess the ability to mend itself in the same fashion as skin heals. I hoped so, because I did not look forward to the endless tongue lashing should Sway’s services be called upon.
Scion let the guy go, and he helped me up. “Are you okay?” He asked. Pain and blue blood-like fluid continued to roll from my shoulder with every movement I made.
I nodded. It was mostly a lie, but it hurt too much to actually speak of my great discomfort.
That was when I noticed him staring at my more unique elements. The fight had burned and smashed away my “disguise.” I really didn’t care if he was freaked out. I shuttered and wheezed for him to pull out the spike. With a single heave and another intense round of eye-popping pain, he did. Like a splinter, granted a million-volt splinter, once removed, I immediately started feeling better.
“Well, that sucked,” Was about as deep as I could continue in the conversation. I probably should have started with, “Thank You.”
“I heard the fight.” He said, “Looks like I got here just in time.”
Hello, understatement of the century.
After taking a few more deep breaths, I tore away my singed jacket. I had to call for help, but unfortunately, when I went digging through the pocket for the new cellphone Largo gave me, I found it partially melted. Why did I expect something to have actually gone right? I tossed it down and worked at freeing Maeve’s blade from all that remained of that guy Feringal’s hand. I felt bad he died, but if he had just left the blade in the woods, he would still have been alive. Okay, so it made sense in my head, and I was looking for any trickle of water that could help quell the fires of guilt.
Scion wanted to head back, and I was in agreement. However, I stopped to stare at the huge doors before me. “What’s in there?” I asked while tapping one with a finger. Like a kid I’ve always got to touch.
“Don’t know.” He said, “Those doors haven’t opened in more than a thousand years.”
It’s like they were listening to us. I swear I saw the tiger head on the doors twitch a smile just before the sounds of gravel being scraped with metal echoed over the thunderous sounds of the falls. Scion took a step back as the doors slowly swung open. I looked at him; he looked at me. “We have to tell someone.” He said.
“Let’s go in.” I insisted. Now, I admit, I’ve been through a lot lately. Having my body Cyborgized, finding the possible love of my life, losing a loved one, discovering that one of my Elvish roommates could very well be my nemesis for life … need I continue? I understand that my decision making abilities are impaired. Because I know that, I should instinctively do the opposite to whatever I’m feeling at the time. This is especially true when my gut instinct is to charge headfirst into a secret chamber that hasn’t been opened in over a millennium. Yet, like a moth to a flame, I persisted forward. Is anyone else surprised I’m still mostly alive? I know I am.
“Maybe we should wait.” Scion said. “I’m just the protector. I’m supposed to keep people out. I don’t know that I’m supposed to go in.”
“What are you afraid of?” I asked while taking another step closer to the opening. I had to see what was inside. It was a feeling much like I had back at the expo when I was compelled to sign up for the Street Vipers.
He grabbed me by my arm. Thankfully it’s wasn’t the one that had just been speared. “Wait.”
“You wait.” I cut him off, swatted away his hand, and marched through the doors.
I turned as the gems on my hands glowed bright with their green energy. The light moved up my arms with a hot tingle, and ended somewhere around my eyes where I felt as if I were building up to overload. I dropped Maeve’s blade and grabbed my head. Every millisecond felt as if a new fire started flaring to life inside my skull. I heard the doors start to close. They scraped closer together as Scion still protested. After they had lumbered shut, with an instinctive movement, I somehow pushed the built up energy out of my head, down into my body, and out of each arm.
From both of my hands streaked green streams of light that sparked, cracked, and burned through stale air, and at the end of their path, they struck two round rock carvings inlaid on the distant wall. The light filled the carvings like boiling liquid. This steaming luminescent liquid I created then fed through a spider web of connections that lit like fuses leading to, and lighting, smaller wall carvings throughout the chamber. Congratulations to my new found freakiness. We had light.
I guess Scion had a change of heart about joining, and had jumped through the closing doors at the last second. Judging by the terror strewn across his face, I guessed he was regretting his decision.
“We shouldn’t be here.” He said.
“Why not?”
“Because the point of these doors…” He pointed to the closed black gate that bounced green shadows over us. “…Isn’t only to keep people out. But to keep something in.”
I heard his warning, but I was too busy cutting what was left of my burnt shirt into strips with Maeve’s sword. He saw what I was doing and helped tie them together so that they would wrap around my shoulder. I didn’t know if that would stop the “bleeding,” but blue stuff was pooling around my feet, and I was feeling nauseous. I may not have been able to cry, but I had no problems yacking my guts out in impressive displays of velocity.
Once we were able to gather ourselves mentally and emotionally, we took a few steps into the chamber. The green light shone two rows of dusty columns that rose up into unseen darkness. I thought it odd that even my vision couldn’t penetrate the blackness above. At the far end of the main chamber, which must have been two football fields long, there was a vast assortment of very large doors. All had different designs and colors. Some were angled and hard surrounded by precious metals. Some were just plain wood, old and rotted. Another had a line of diamonds that hung from silver streams.
“Have any ideas?” I asked as I examined the many other strange and different doorways.
Scion shook his head. “I bet anything it has to do with those.” He pointed to the Dragonstones on my hands. “I thought you didn’t know what Dragonstones were?”
“I don’t know how to use them.” I admitted. “I was hoping you could teach me.”
Again Scion shook his head. “All I know is that there are three other gates like these.” He thumbed a point over his shoulder to the way we had come in. “And nobody is allowed in or out.
“My brothers and I used to talk about what was in them. Some legends said that it was an entire trove of Dragonstones. Others say it was the tombs of ancient Pure Bloods. Another story said it was the prison of terrible beasts meant to be unleashed during Armageddon. Those are the popular guesses. There’s about fifty.”
“I’m going with World of Warcraft dungeon.”
Scion ignored me and continued, “The general consensus concerning an element of truth among all the stories was that only someone with an intact Dragonstone could open a gate. And not just any gate. That person would have to be a member of whichever family was responsible for sealing that gate.”
I knew where this was going. “Let me guess. This was the Thantosa gate?”
“Yes. “
I thought for a moment. I thought about everything that was happening around us. I considered the coincidence of how the one guy, who had the one thing that could get my attention, happened to be in front of the one gate I could have possibly opened. Was this a small world, or a big plan?
“Oh my God!” Scion blurted out with realization, “You’re a Thantosa.”
“It seems more and more likely,” I huffed.
He dropped to a knee and bowed before me. It’s often one imagines being worshiped by loyal minions, and as a child I had a posse of teddy bears whom I ruled with an iron fist between cookies and nap time, but this was something different. I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt with my good arm and hauled up to his fe
et. “Don’t ever do that again.” I warned.
“But you’re a Thantosa. You come from one of the greatest Amalgam heritages to ever have lived beneath the moon.”
“I am kid from Alabama.” I assured him, “I may be related to this great family, but I am anything but great, so please don’t do that again.”
Scion all but shook with excitement, “You don’t understand. The things your family has done. My own family served yours back when the Infinites protected the world from the great Evil. Your forefathers built this cavern with the help of my forefathers. It was your destiny to find your way to it. If you understood the fear your family name once engendered in those who did wrong? Even the name, Scion, which I humbly carry –It’s said that in some places old magic still has to bend its will to that name, and those of darkness still flee from it. All because of what your bloodline did. Many protectors wore it in hopes that it would be true. But they were not of the Thantosa lineage, and so most never could understand its true power.”
“I don’t care.” I said curtly.
“You should be honored.” Scion said bluntly. “You have a legacy few could ever dream to claim.”
I took a step away, because this guy was laying it on too thick, and I was starting to feel guilt. I didn’t grow up to care about lineage and heritage. I was nothing special. I was just a kid who ungratefully waited tables, and a son who shamed his own dad. Now I’ve got a teenager, with more sense of honor and duty in his left pinky than I could ever hope to have in my entire metal-ravaged body, swearing allegiance to me. I had grown up into an ungrateful prick. I felt like I deserved to be the guy splattered at the bottom of the waterfall instead that Street Viper, Feringal. If not for Largo’s interference, it very well could have been me. My attitude has always been more Viper than that of Scion’s fabled Infinites.
“Let me come with you.” He said. “We could be the new Infinites of our day. We could make the world a safer place. I could help you discover who you are…”
He was cut off, when from above, rained the darkness that obscured the ceiling. It morphed into a floating shadow that swirled in a circle around us. It jumped up and then dropped between us, and with a punch from extended tentacles that took a solid shape, which hit like rocks, shoved us each in different directions. Scion landed against a pillar. I hit the doors.
The thing floated off toward the ceiling once more. I was barely up when Scion was on me, standing between me and it like a guard. It was collecting itself into a shapeless mass right in front of us as a billow of smoke. I tapped the door with my fist not sure how to open them. Thankfully, the rumble started and they began slowly creaking open.
“Get out!” Scion yelled. “I’ll hold it off. It can’t be let out.”
“What is it?” I screamed.
Scion turned to face me. Confidence and youthful enthusiasm pricked at his demeanor, “I’m not sure, but this is the most fun I’ve had all day. We’ll beat it back, just like our ancestors!”
Just then Scion turned to me. His eyes went wide after he jumped in front of me. I screamed and grabbed him as he slumped into my good arm. The creature had covered the distance between us, and formed the smoke-like tentacles into spears that pierced into Scion’s back and through his chest with a very real, and very sharp, cohesion. The thing pulled back and disappeared into a far corner. It had retreated from me, but the damage had already been done.
“It’s waiting for the right moment to escape.” Scion said through shallow breaths.
I pulled Scion through the narrow crack, and tapped the door edge again, hoping that it would close. It began its slow shutting grumble, but the creature was speeding toward us. It would be out long before those slow doors sealed.
I don’t know where he found the strength, but Scion shoved me out of the way, and with his orange Dragonstone grasped, he extended his hand, and produced a beam that lassoed itself around the shadowed figure.
For the first time the once silent shadow made a sound. It was something between a screech that would shatter glass, and a howl that would wake the dead.
I cheered as he held the thing in the orange energy grip. That was until I turned, and in horror, watched as pulses of the energy rolled across Scion and into the shard. Each wave took with it a year of his life. I stood helpless as Scion began to rapidly age in front of me. He hit his thirties within seconds, closer the doors moved, but he was graying at fifty. The power lessened, the creature inched closer to the opening. Scion fell to a knee and clutched the wound at his chest. He would lose it before the doors would close. I ran and tried to move the doors faster with my strength, but the searing pain in my own arm made it impossible when I exerted myself.
I looked again, and Scion was a balding old man. From somewhere deep inside he pulled more power, and his old aging face became resolute with determination not to lose. He got what I could only describe as second wind. The creature was mostly through the doors as they started to shut on it. Scion gave one last push that caused the lasso to yank it almost all the way back in before it was sealed and the energy line cut. He collapsed to the ground with a final wheeze, as a small “droplet” of the being fell lifelessly to the ground in front of the closed gate. The rest of it had been sealed back in its prison.
There was no getting to him fast enough. I knelt beside him, and raised the fragile old man, as gently as my metal arms would allow.
My voice whimpered, but the deserving tears could not be shed, “Why?” I asked.
The old man only had a few breaths in him. I understood now, what had happened to his brothers. Whoever wielded that shard had to sacrifice their own youth to tap into its power. They were a family of selfless protectors. He forced a withered smile, “Because, you and I are the only Infinites in the world.” He gave his best laugh, but it only came out as a wheeze, “It was our job.”
“You should have let me take the hit.” I said.
“It was my destiny to choose.” I could hear his body failing. He pulled in one last breath and then let it out, “It is my family’s honor to serve the Thantosa’s one last time. One day, I believe, you will understand why. Until then … Be Thankful.”
With that final declaration of service, he winked at me, and then the boy Scion died in my arms as an old man. That kid taught me more about being a man, than any adult would ever be able to for the rest of my life.
POWER
The following night I stood alone in front of what the village was now revering as THE THANTOSA GATE. I guess they had forgotten those ancient doors were important, but my coming, after a thousand-plus years of having their gate builders play no-show, had them excited. A new sign was made, new guards were assigned and posted, and a gate for the path that led to the gate was already being constructed.
That day Largo, Kata, and Sway arrived via some new Skip device Sway and Kata were tinkering with. I had stayed out of their way, and they out of mine when they showed up without Maeve. Apparently she had some super important family business to attend to. I was a little miffed. I shouldn’t have been, but since Scion’s death I had been on edge. Thankfully Sway patched me up without fuss. She actually was nice. She could be when she had to be. There wasn’t much for her to do though. It hadn’t taken long for my body to start healing itself, and at a pretty rapid pace. Most of her work on me was spent monitoring what was happening so she and Kata could review the collected data.
Off in the distance Scion’s memorial raged on with music and dancing. The people celebrated their own lives that were saved, and honored the Hades brothers that had fallen for their sakes. I understood, but I just felt like being alone.
By now the word was out that I was a Cyborg. Feringal, the first Cyborg who attacked them had given many an impression that we all would be that dangerous and unstable. There was already a prejudicial stigma in much of the Amalgam world when it came to those who augmented their abilities via machinery. In the past machined body parts were equated to those who were power hungry and lookin
g for new ways to become even more powerful. After I shared my story, I was soon accepted, trusted, and even made to feel welcome. So, I was able to walk among the people freely without my “disguise,” and without feeling awkward, or like I was being judged. It didn’t hurt my case that the elders and Largo were chummy.
I did love the water, and there, under the rage of the waterfall, I could feel peace. I tucked up under a rock outcrop beside one of the far monoliths that stood in front of the gate like four useless guards. I listened to the flowing water mix with the music from the village below as I nodded off to sleep under the weight of the past day’s exhaustion.
I couldn’t have been asleep long when I felt someone kicking at my foot.
“Wakey, wakey!” A familiar woman’s voice said.
