Hunter Brown and the Eye of Ends

by Chris Miller

  Alone at last, I dropped to my knees and desperately fingered through the bits and pieces of what remained of the glass vial Desi had crushed into the ground.

  “Please be here, please, please be here,” I whispered to myself as I searched for the lost seed. I brushed my fingers gingerly across the trampled dirt, but no matter how hard I looked, the seed could not be found. I had failed. The precious seed Aviad had entrusted to me was gone.

  Already the trees began to sway back and forth with the powerful windstream that was pulling everything closer to the pillar of fire. The Titan’s monstrous silhouette was visible against the fiery red blaze, his flashing eyes set in the middle of his featureless face like a pair of crescent moons at midnight. The color of the flame bathed the landscape in a stark red light and harsh black shadows.

  There was nothing left for me to do now but sit and wait for the inevitable end that would come to this shard and everything that lived on it. In one powerful blast, the Titan would certainly crush the land mass as he had the other shards, fracturing it into a thousand smaller pieces better suited in size for the column of fire to consume. The Lifestream that had once fed the Author’s code into this world through the Living Tree now served a new master, erasing everything that existed in this world.

  I bowed my head and closed my eyes in a silent prayer to the Author. As I prayed, I listened. I listened to the wind in the trees, the roar of the flame and the stirring of my own soul.

  “Do you have nothing left for me here? Is this the way you meant things to end…at the hands of those who would rob your very signature from this great world? Please, pick up your pen and write again. Use me to bring your truth to the very heart of darkness. I am willing…I am yours.”

  It was subtle at first, so subtle in fact that I dismissed it as a mere trick of the wind. But soon a particular sound rose out of the noise and the chaos—the sound of a song. A soft and beautiful song rose from the very ground beneath me.

  When I opened my eyes I noticed something that hadn’t been there before. A tiny, green stem curled out of the ground where the seed had been crushed. It was glowing green, like a spark of strangely colored flame about to grow, the first signs of life the seed had ever shown.

  It was strange to think of something new being born in a moment when everything around it was about to be destroyed. But as the seedling began to grow, so too did the song. It became louder and more refined, encircling me with its entrancing melody. The music erased any doubts or fears that remained in my mind. There was no room for anything like that now…only the song mattered. I felt new again.

  The trees surrounding me began to sprout with new life. Flowers budded and blossomed on their branches in a matter of moments, as if a second spring had fallen on the land and everything in it. Then the best thing of all happened—Faith began to move. The song that brought life to the world around us was restoring Faith to life as well. Her eyes flickered open and my heart nearly burst with the joy of seeing her alive.

  “Faith! You’re alive!” I shouted excitedly.

  “Creeee,” the Thunderbird replied.

  In a moment she was standing again, her broken wing completely healed by the presence of the song and the simple seedling growing from the ground. Clearly, it was no ordinary seedling…. There was something magical about it, something so incredibly precious that I regretted how casually I had treated it before.

  “Creee, creee!” Faith said in warning. The Titan was on the move, nearing the shard and threatening to bring an end to our joyful reunion. With courage and purpose reborn in me, I set my mind and my heart on the task I was called to do.

  “I know, I know, hang on…. There’s something we have to do.” I dug the seedling up from the rocky soil and cradled it in my palm as if my very life depended on its survival. In some ways, perhaps it did…maybe all of our lives did. I mounted Faith, who was eager to be airborne again.

  “Okay, girl,” I shouted. “Let’s fly!”

  With a powerful leap Faith took to the skies, but unlike Desi and her dragon we didn’t fight the winds that pulled us toward the all-consuming flame…we rode them. We flew toward the fire with purpose and determination. We had to get the seedling to the center of the flame…it was our only hope. There was no turning back.

  The Titan brought his mighty fist down on the shard below us, breaking it in two. The shockwave from the impact pushed us forward like a mighty wave on the sea might push a surfer. The wave pushed us past the Titan and for the briefest of moments he caught a glimpse of me. Perhaps it was the song still resonating from the seedling that caught his attention. Whatever it was, he wasn’t pleased and he covered his ears in pain.

  “You!” the Titan groaned. “What are you doing here? I am master of this world…. Take that thing away. Stop…now!”

  But I couldn’t stop, and I didn’t look back. My eyes were fixed on the flame before me, which now seemed more like a giant wall of fire because it was so close. Never before had we flown so quickly. The winds were with us and nothing could stop us now. Without the slightest fear, we passed into the column of fire and were swallowed in its light, like a moth to the flame.

  In my mind I had imagined the Lifestream to be a raging inferno of consuming fire all the way to its core. Surprisingly, it wasn’t…at least that wasn’t what I was seeing. The fire was actually a cylindrical wall meant to protect what lay inside, a single shard of land, floating under a radiant beam of white light that seemed to reach to infinity. There were no other shard fragments in sight; no Desi or dragon either. We were alone.

  With nowhere else to go, Faith instinctively carried me up toward the well-lit shard of soft meadowland. There were no trees or landmarks on its surface whatsoever. Upon landing, Faith tucked her wings and I dismounted to explore the small island. It appeared to be about three-football-fields-wide. I carried the seedling across the meadow to the place where the shaft of light was most concentrated and the seed’s song seemed to be the loudest. We were near the center of the shard.

  A stone marker lay in the soft soil, engraved with the Author’s mark. I had the feeling this was the place I was supposed to plant the seedling. Bending down, I carved a small trench out of the golden soil with my hands and placed the seedling in its new home. Almost instantly, it began to grow. In a matter of seconds it grew from a few inches to several feet and showed no signs of stopping.

  I backed away from the sapling and watched as the wall of the Lifestream began closing in and feeding into the ground of the shard, causing the seed to grow even more rapidly. Fed by the fire of the Lifestream itself, the tree became as tall as any skyscraper I had ever seen, and its branches spread out as wide as the shard itself. I suddenly recognized what was happening—this was a brand new Living Tree.

  As the whole force of the wall of fire was poured into the tree, the fire thinned and finally disappeared. The world of Solandria was no longer hidden behind the firewall. Then the tree’s roots began to stretch out. They broke out of the sides of the shard and reached across the sky toward the neighboring shards of Solandria that the Titan had not yet destroyed. The roots connected several shards together and new shards started to form on the roots where there was ample room to grow. The Author had done it; Solandria was being restored.

  I wasn’t the only one watching the tree take root. The sight of the tree angered the Titan, who suddenly realized he was losing control of the world. He was standing in a spot that offered a clear view of the once-hidden shard and the massive tree that was now growing on it. With a sinister glare, the Titan headed toward where I stood on the shard. Before he could make his way over to destroy the tree, another root shot out from the underside of the shard and wrapped itself around the Titan’s waist. Undeterred, he raised a fist in angry protest and prepared to smash the small shard to pieces. Before his havoc could be unleashed on the tree, two more roots shot out from the shard and bound his wrists, pull
ing both of them behind his back. The tree roots strengthened their grip and began to choke the life from the Titan’s body.

  As I watched, the Titan’s frustration grew as his vision of the future unraveled before his eyes, and it struck me. Somewhere inside of that giant mass of a beast, my father might still be alive. Maybe I could communicate with him and save him yet. After all, Aviad had asked me how far I’d be willing to go to save my father. Perhaps he meant for my father to be saved from the Shadow’s clutches even now.

  It was only a hunch, a hairbrained idea but it was worth a shot. Racing back to Faith, I mounted the bird and took to the skies once more. This time, I was heading straight for the Titan, hoping beyond reason that my father might be able to hear my plea and do something.

  When we were within ear-shot, I shouted for my father’s attention while Faith circled in place.

  “Dad, are you still there? Can you hear me?”

  The Titan just growled his ugly, bestial roar in response. He was so busy struggling against the tree roots he hardly had time to notice a boy on a Thunderbird. To him we were little more than a stray gnat in the air, if he even saw us at all.

  Just then one of the roots from the tree shot straight through the Titan’s chest, ending his struggle and pulling him down into the Void. But just before he fell, his arm swung across the sky and the gust of wind from it knocked me clear off the Thunderbird’s back. Before I knew what was happening, I was falling, tumbling down into the blackness of the Void. I thought perhaps Faith would catch me, but she didn’t even notice I had gone. I was falling fast. The last thing I remember before blacking out was the sudden realization that I might never see daylight again.

  Chapter 31

  The Void

  The first thing I sensed when I awoke was the fog. It was a black fog…full of evil and a life force of its own. I knew it was there even though I could not see it—I felt it all around me.

  Instinctively, I reached for my sword, but it wasn’t there. Neither was my backpack. Without them, I felt almost naked.

  My memory was intact, all the way up to the point where I fell from the sky. The visions had all come true, but despite the horrors of what my father had seen in the Eye of Ends, the Author was victorious. Solandria had been saved. The Titan had been defeated and with him Sceleris’ plans to bring an end to the Author’s story had been foiled.

  But if that were true, then what had happened to me?

  As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I realized there was a light in the distance, a soft reddish glow pulsing in the dark. I stood with arms outstretched and felt my way through the mist toward the pulsing light. To my shock, the light was coming from the chest of my father’s limp body. He was lying on his back, looking up at the emptiness through the mist swirling in the red light. The source of the crimson light was the Bloodstone, which was pulsing like a heartbeat in his chest.

  Moving closer, I saw that Dad’s legs were twisted in unnatural ways. An open wound bled profusely, adding to the pool of black, inky blood beneath him. He was a broken man, barely holding on to life.

  Sensing my presence, Dad struggled to focus his eyes on me. With a deep raspy breath, he gasped, “Hunter, why did you follow me? After all I did…all the mistakes….”

  “Because I couldn’t let you die alone,” I told him.

  Though he could hardly bear the pain, he raised his hand to take mine in his own. His breathing quickened and the Bloodstone flickered erratically. I stroked his hand and tried to calm him as he lay there. He was dying. I knew it would not be long.

  When his breathing eased, he spoke again. “What about Solandria? Did he…is it…?”

  “It’s safe, Dad. A new tree is growing in Solandria, and it’s uniting the shards. Solandria is going to be whole again, a new world.”

  Dad’s expression darkened at the sudden realization that the Author had come through after all, and he had been on the wrong side of the battle.

  “I’m sorry, Hunter. Everything I thought I knew…everything I did…was wrong. The visions I saw, they weren’t the Author’s fault…they were mine. I became the very thing I was trying to stop…a murderer. I would have made a pretty awful author.”

  “Yeah, you would. But it’s not over yet; maybe the Author can still…help.”

  Dad smiled at the thought. “No, my story is over. People like me don’t get a second chance. I’m not the hero, Hunter. I’m a lost life that will hopefully serve as a reminder to the hero of what not to become.”

  “I’m no hero either, Dad,” I said.

  “You are to me,” Dad replied with tears in his eyes.

  My chest swelled with the knowledge that despite our differences, my father was proud of me. Even though it felt good to hear the words, I knew they weren’t true. I knew myself all too well.

  “But a real hero has things all figured out. He has a plan; he’s strong. I…I still doubt the Author at times. No matter how many times he’s saved me, I still have a hard time seeing his purpose.”

  “Son, if there is one thing I’ve learned from all of this, it’s that we’re not supposed to have things all figured out. Life isn’t about what we control…it’s about having faith.”

  He gasped for another breath before continuing.

  “I lived my life in fear of something I had no control over, and I let that fear steal my life from me. I destroyed the very thing I loved, and became the enemy I thought I could defeat. If I could have it to do over again, I’d choose to put my hope in the Author…not myself.”

  He looked deep into my eyes and squeezed my hand tightly.

  “You don’t have to have it all figured out. You have hope…and that’s the sign of a true hero. You have something worth fighting for. Knowing the future, having it all worked out, will only steal that from you.”

  Dad’s words rang true in my heart. This was a real father and son moment, the kind I had longed for while he was gone.

  A sinister chuckle echoed in the black fog, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. The voice of someone I had come to know all too well was taunting us—Sceleris, the serpent.

  “Bravo, bravo! How touching. Father and sssson, reunited again for the lasssst time. A fitting end to your pathetic existencccce.”

  The fog pulled back from where my father lay, retreating through a tunnel behind me like a vacuum. With the fog gone, we discovered we were in some kind of underground cavern, trapped on a small island of stone and surrounded on all sides by a lake of iridescent green water. How we had come to be here was beyond me.

  The pool of black blood beneath my father streamed away from his body and wound across the stone floor to the base of a throne. As I watched, it began to rise into the shape of the serpent. The black snake coiled himself around the throne and stared back at me. If ever a snake could smile, Sceleris was.

  “What do you want, Sceleris?” I challenged, standing to my feet.

  “It’s not what I want—it’s what I have that amuses me.”

  “Oh yeah, what is that?”

  “I have YOU!”

  His red eyes flashed brighter as he said it, and he laughed again at the look of confusion that crossed my face.

  “Sorry to burst your bubble, but I belong to the Author. I’m here to get my father and bring him home.”

  “Oh, foolissssh boy,” Sceleris chuckled to himself, “there issss no going home. Not from thissss placccce.”

  A dreadful moan rose from the green waters, sounding like a chorus of voices…ghostly voices.

  “You are beyond the door of death, a placccce of no return. Only the dead can enter here, and here you are. My prize.”

  Sceleris’ voice always gave me the shivers, but this time it froze me stiff. What he was saying made no sense at all. Surely, the Author hadn’t sent me on a suicide mission, had he?

  “The door of d
eath…but that can’t be. I’m not dead. There must be some mistake.”

  “That’ssss what they all ssssay when they firsssst arrive. But the Author himssself has promisssed to send the dead to me. They all belong to me. You…belong to me.”

  That couldn’t be true. How could it? Sceleris was lying! I had given my heart to the Author, and he had rewritten me. I didn’t belong here.

  “I mussst admit,” Sceleris said, “it took much longer to claim you than I thought. You put up a good fight, but the time for fighting issss over. I have a propossssition for you.”

  “I’m not interested,” I said, searching for an escape. The tunnel across from the lake was my only hope, but there was no way to get to it unless I swam, and I swam like a rock. There had to be another way.

  “How far you are willing to go to ssssave your father, hmmmmm?”

  His words were an echo of what Aviad himself had said to me before I took the plunge. But how could Sceleris know them? Had he heard what was said between us a while ago?

  “What do you have in mind?” I asked, weighing each word as he said it.

  “I’m willing to make you a deal that will buy both you and your father a little more time in the land of the living, a deal that ensures your family will be together.”

  It sounded too good to be true. I knew there would be a catch.

  “Go on,” I said. “What do you get out of it?”

  “Nothing really, a mere token of….”

  “What…is…it, Sceleris?” I asked harshly.

  “Sssssilence,” he said slowly and clearly.