by Gabi Moore
“You’d better be right,” Kiley grumbled.
“I think I’m going back up to the guard’s level,” Dion announced as he stood up from the table. “They might need some help up there.”
“Are you sure that is as good idea?” his mother asked him.
“I’m not doing anything useful down here,” he explained. “Might as well go up there and see what I can accomplish.”
“It’s a long walk,” his uncle told him from the other side of the table. “Stick to the stairwells. Don’t linger around the floors. And come back down if anything happens I need to know about.”
“I’ll be sure to keep you informed,” Dion said to him in a dry manner. His uncle was the source of all these problems, yet acted as if he was still in control.
“Elevator’s fixed,” Susan Mahen announced as she strolled back into the great hall. “Mechanics say it should work just fine. I took it down here and didn’t have the least bit of trouble.”
“Appears you won’t have to walk all those stairs after all,” Dion’s uncle said to his nephew. He turned to Susan as she sat back down next to her sisters. “Anything happening where you were at?”
“Just a lot of men shouting and making noise,” she told him. “Nothing to concern me. I decided to come back here if there was going to be more tension up there.” Her older sister Kiley glared at her.
After using the speaking tube to let the lift operator know where he wanted to go, Dion was whisked toward the top of the tower. This time it let him out on a scene of exhausted men who were watching a table nailed over a stairwell entrance. Most of them didn’t even turn to look at him. Whatever they were fighting took every bit of energy to contain.
The level he was on was eloquent, but appeared to be a mess. Fine cabinets and benches were busted up to make wood for the barricades. Saws and hammers lay on the floor and splinters were everywhere. It was a scene of an utter mess. The only good thing was there were no noises coming from the other side of the barricade. Whatever forced their retreat had to be just as exhausted as the defenders.
“Weren’t you the kid we were supposed to keep out of the mall?” one of the exhausted guards looked up and said to him. “What are you doing in this place? And what happened to your friends?”
“My friends couldn’t come with me,” Dion said. “This is good because I don’t think they would have cared very much for this place. How long have you worked here?”
“I can’t remember,” the man said to him. “Seems like a few months. The pay is good and things weren’t too bad until a few hours ago when those things on the other side started pushing their way through. It’s our job to contain them. Right now, I’d give anything for a cheap grenade. It would solve all our problems in a hurry.”
Dion talked with the guards for a few minutes just to make sure they were okay. There were a few scuffling sounds on the other side of the barricade, which caused the guards to jump, but not enough to rouse them into action. They were curious what happened to their former post lieutenant, Karanzen. Dion was able to tell them he’d left the mall and didn’t know where he went. He didn’t tell them the last thing he saw the man do was turn into a swarm of flies.
“Did you get a look at what is on the other side?” Dion asked them, pointing at the barricade.
“All I saw was a whole lot of furry things with claws and sharp teeth,” the same guard said to him. “It’s all I ever want to see.”
“There was some woman in there with them,” one of the other guards added.
“A woman?” one of the guards asked, “In there with those things? Are you serious?
“I’m not kidding,” he said. “Swear that I saw her back there.”
This had to be the “Queen Lilith” figure they were talking about down at table. How she figured into all of it was something Dion didn’t understand, but he needed to ask his uncle when he returned to the great hall. His parents seemed clueless when it came to this world, but they’d been snatched into it without any preparation. He still thought of them as his parents and always would, but Dion needed to find out more about his real origins. This fiasco at the tower created more issues than anyone could have anticipated.
Chapter 9
Dion thanked the men for their time and returned to the lift. The operator took him back down to the hall. Dion initially couldn’t understand how the operator knew when it reached the right level until he noticed a small switch that was attached to a cord that the lift touched as it made its way past each floor. Every floor where the lift stopped had these and he guessed they were attached to different bells at the lift operator’s station. The people in this place didn’t like to use electricity if they could avoid it for some reason. Since his uncle’s reason for opening a way to the abyss was for the generation of electrical power, Dion guessed electricity was very expensive in this world.
“They’ve got it under control up there,” Dion spoke to his uncle as he sat down across from him. “Doesn’t appear to be much activity for now on the other side of the latest barricade. It could all change very soon.”
“It will all change very soon,” his uncle told him. “The minions are tired. Once they’ve rested, she’ll send them back against my guys again. They don’t want to be trapped at the top of the tower and I can’t say I blame them.”
Dion turned to his parents. “We were talking about my origin,” he said to them, “when I first arrived. You just confirmed everything he told me outside the mall yesterday back in Ohio.” Dion glared at his uncle who smiled just enough to almost make his blood rage. Almost.
His parents tried to look away, but they couldn’t. “You know, this really isn’t the best time to bring it up,” his mother said as her eyes swept across the women at the table. Many of them were exploring the great hall, but the others were still at the table enjoying the stew brought out to them by the servants. The Mahen sisters were preoccupied with their own conversation in low voices.
“Then let’s go up to the next level,” he said to his parents. Dion turned to his uncle, “What is over us?”
“Just the kitchen and laundry room,” he told Dion. “Both need a lot of water close to the ground. You can’t imagine the pressure needed to pump water to the top of this tower.”
Dion turned back to his parents. “Then we might as well go upstairs and have a conversation. I don’t expect much else will happen unless the invaders break through the barricade up at the top. In which case we’ll hear about it before the great hall learns.”
His mother shrugged and his father left the table with her. They followed their son up the stairwell into the kitchen without saying a word. In the kitchen area, several cooks were working on dinner for the next day. It was a huge facility with plenty of room.
Dion noticed a table near the stairwell and took his parents to it. This part of the kitchen was quiet and the sound didn’t echo off the walls the way it did in the hall beneath them. They sat down at the table and watched the kitchen help go about their business for a few minutes. It was Dion who spoke first.
“So are we going to talk about this?” he said to them. “It’s not every day you get to learn the very fact of your existence is a lie.”
“The lady who talked with your water nymphs nursemaids,” his father brought up an old story Dion remembered from when he was very young. “She was not your real mother. She was the wife of your real father. Your real father is Jupiter Olympus.”
“So I am one of the immortals?” Dion asked.
“No,” the man whom he always assumed to be his father spoke. “You real mother was human. Jupiter Olympus decided to stray one evening and his real wife found out later. She was furious about his actions. The fact that he had a son by someone other than her drove her to the point of insanity. So she went looking for you.”
“How do the two of you figure into all this?” Dion asked. Right now, he was ready to believe just about anything.
“We found your real mother on the side of the
road,” his mother told him, tears on her face. “We’d always wanted a child. She didn’t live very long after you were born. I don’t know much about her, I think she was a farm girl somewhere. We decided to keep you and hired a lawyer to make everything appear legitimate. We even invented a relative who didn’t exist as your mother.”
“Where is my real mother buried?” Dion snapped at her. They could see the anger in his face.
“I’ll show you if we get out of this,” she said to him. “We took care of that too and planned to show you her grave when you were old enough to understand.” She dropped her face in the sleeve of her dress to prevent Dion from seeing her tears.
“When you were six months old,” the man he assumed for so long was his father said to him, “we had a visitor. It was a man in a truck. He introduced himself as Hermie Vektor. He claimed Jupiter Olympus was your real father and that everyone on Mt. Olympus knew about his little affair with the farm girl. He gave us some money to help out with your education and told us he would always be close by if we needed anything. He warned us that the wife of you real father vowed to make her husband pay for what he did. Your life would always be in danger. I used to see him drive by every now and then just to make sure you were okay. He would stop in and check on you, but we never had much interaction with him.”
“We thought using the water nymphs as nursemaids would be easy and they never gave us any trouble. You liked them and they were perfect to have around the house, in spite of all the men who slowed down whenever they saw them on the street.”
“But Jupiter Olympus’s wife found out where you were. She was the older woman you saw talking to the water nymph elementals before they attacked you. The man in the truck who rescued you was Hermie. He got in touch with your real father and us right away. He later told us Jupiter Olympus vowed to destroy the entire mountain if his wife ever tried that again. She must have listened as we never had any trouble afterwards.”
The two people who raised him were silent and looked at the table. Dion didn’t know what to say. He decided to confront his real father later, but, as far as he was concerned, the only people he ever knew as his parents were right in front of him.
He placed his hands on theirs. “I know you wanted to protect me,” he told them. “But it is better I know. I’ll pay Jupiter Olympus a visit when this is finished. I need to talk to him about the way he treated the woman who gave birth to me. But I want you both to know you are the only people in the world I consider my true parents.”
They were quiet for a few minutes until Dion heard his name called from the other end of the kitchen. He looked up to see one of the women who’d come in with the writers’ group standing across from them.
“I’m going up to where the action is,” she told Dion. “Did you want to come with me?”
Dion turned to his parents. “Why don’t you go back down to the hall?” he said. “I’ll go up with her and find out if there is anything I can do to help. I’m getting a little tired of all these trips up and down, so I may be awhile.”
“Take care of yourself,” his mother said to him as she gave Dion a hug. His father also hugged his son and then vanished down the stairwell with his wife.
“I don’t know about you,” the woman said to Dion, “but I intend on taking the lift to the top of this thing.” Dion joined her in the lift after she’d given the operator instructions through the speaking tube.
“I seem to have trouble recalling your name,” Dion said to her. She was a black woman who appeared to be in her twenties. She wore a conservative dress and a big pair of spectacles.
“Kris,” she said to him. “Kris Brown. I’m dying to see what’s happening up at the top. I’ve spent most of my life reading about adventure. Now I want to find it for myself.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Dion told her. “Do you know what we’re up against?”
“The sisters downstairs told us,” she explained to him. “Pretty crazy. A whole group of screaming demons trying to chew their way down the tower led by an insane queen.”
“I wouldn’t go so far to call them demons,” Dion commented. “They do have an element of free will in their actions. Why else would Queen Lilith bring them through with her? You don’t fight with automatons. The big question is how to send them back.”
“Do you think you can do it?” she asked him as they passed another level. “The sisters said it all depends on you.”
“Only when the fifth elemental grandmaster appears and authorizes my power,” he told her.
“Don’t you have the other four?”
“Yes.”
“Should be easy. Can’t you work something out with that uncle of yours? Doesn’t he have the fifth power?”
“Not the same thing. He bought it.”
“Oh.” She was quiet and watched the next level slide by while they could hear the storm rage outside.
“I hope this tower has a good foundation,” she said to him. “That storm is wicked. Too much rain could undermine the supports on this old structure.”
“The tower has seen worse storms, I am sure of that.”
After the next level slid past, Dion decided to make a little conversation with her. “So how did you get involved with the writers’ group? What kind of work do you do?”
“I’m a botanist,” she told him. “I study plants. Help things grow, find out why they don’t. It’s rewarding, but doesn’t pay very much. I started reading novels on my spare time and decided I could write just as well as the ones I took off the shelf.”
“Anything ready to publish?” Dion asked her.
“Not yet,” she responded. “Still have to finish the one I’m working on right now. I keep changing the plot. Eventually, I’ll decide what it’s supposed to be about this week. So how did you end up here?”
“My uncle. He rigged somethings to ensure I would acquire the powers of the first four elements. Then he made sure I would have to come here to pick up the final one. He claims it was all to stop those things from coming down the tower and affecting my world, but I think there is more to this than what he’s telling me.”
“So you’re not from here?” she asked him. “Another kingdom?”
Dion didn’t quite know what to say. Even where he came from the existence of separate time circles was debated. He didn’t know what the local beliefs were and didn’t need to cause any problems by telling her information that might run counter to her belief system. So he went for the easy way to explain it.
“Oh yes,” he told her. “A whole different one. I’m sure you never heard about it.”
She opened her mouth to say something when the lift stopped at the highest floor. Dion stepped out before she could say a thing and into the formal eloquent chambers of the masters of the tower.
The level was still quiet. No further sounds came from the stairwell that was secured against the invaders. Most of the guards were relaxing on the floor or propped up against the wall, waiting for the next round. The nodded upon seeing Dion’s face, whom they knew from the mall.
“No further activity from up there?” Dion asked them.
“They’re being quiet,” one of the guards, said to him. “If I was a betting man, I’d put money on them planning something up there. They are determined to get to the bottom of the tower and I don’t know how much longer we can hold them.”
“Has anyone been hurt?” Kris asked him. She starred at the men who were exhausted on this level.
“A few bruises and cuts,” he told her. “Nothing too severe. We were able to secure the top level when it all happened months ago. For the longest time we didn’t think they would come any lower and the sisters spent most of their time trying to find a way to send them back. A few hours ago, those things became very active and fought their way down to this level. We’ve managed to stop them for now.
“Is there any way to see one of those them? Kris asked the guard. “Or is that too risky?”
“We’ve never had a g
ood look at one,” he told her. “When they came through the gate with their leader it was dark and the storm had begun. It’s been dark outside since then and the weather never improved.
“Storm began when?” she asked him.
The guard had a look on his face, which Dion interpreted to mean he was trying to remember something. “About two months ago. The rain lets up every now and then, but the clouds haven’t broken in that time. I don’t know how they manage around here. From what I understand this is not the first time the weather has been so bad.”
“Two months is a long time,” She commented. “I’m surprised the place has any soil left outside. Must have something to do with the way the mud flows from time to time.”
“Let me get this straight,” Dion asked the both of them. “Storms lasting two or more months are common around here.”
“I wouldn’t say common,” she told him. “But you do hear about them. As the man said, the rain stops, but the clouds never break. Happens in the rainy season all the time in some places. We decided the bus had driven too far south when we ran into this place. I will admit this is one of the longer ones.”
“And we are sick of it,” the guard told him. “We get the lighting once or twice a week. Almost lost a man too close to the window during one thunderstorm last month. I don’t know how anyone lasts very long around here.”
“I’m told the farmers plan their seasons around the rains,” She explained. “I guess a person can get used to anything. On the other hand, most of them have moved north.”
Dion understood, at last, something about a place where he’d been dropped. The weather was vastly different from the world he’d left. The constant rains accounted for the stony ground he’d ran across to reach the tower. How difficult it must have been to construct this massive tower with the threat of constant storms. He had another thought and turned to Kris.
