How Teddy Roosevelt Slew the Last Mighty T-Rex
Page 31
And he remembered when they voted... when they debated for days, and cycles and years, whether to abandon the truth.
They did have their rationale, Dumas thought. They did present their case with great care, and many were swayed by their… reasoning.
Dumas brushed his graying brow and covered his ears, desperate to muffle the voices screaming in his head. He looked upward at a staircase, spiraling from the monument’s base to a platform twelve or thirteen meters above his head.
Dumas leaned on his cane, breathing easier. The voices quieted to a whisper.
He remembered there were scholars of conscience. There were those who pleaded that the truth must be preserved— those who preached that the truth would someday be revealed anyway.
And then, he recalled sadly, how they were silenced. A mockery.…
He felt proud of these men in later years, but inwardly, he felt painful guilt— for he, Dumas, was not one of them; he had voted with the majority to bury the truth with his generation.
And now, he was an old man— the last of the spineless. And he was sworn to uphold the oath of his predecessors. And he knew he would take his oath to his death; he could do little else. Could the elders have been right all along? Are we better off in darkness? Dumas shook his head.
Now, nearing the end of his life's journey, he realized his grave mistake. He would have voted differently, if only he had a second chance. But that was what all men say, who lack the necessary courage to follow their own convictions.
His frail legs carried him up the spiral staircase. He ambled forward then stopped. The voices disappeared, and an eerie calm settled over him. He thought of the young scribe Porrias and the new generation of scholars who occupied the academies of learning in Tyrie and Adair. He grinned— a pained expression mixed with remorse and joy. The young will lead us where the old have failed. Dumas could only hope.
He crept upward, emerging atop The Pinnacle of Time: a monument built by his ancestors to observe the skies above the lands of Tyrie. He ran his aged hands over the stone-etched symbols representing Ellini, Alberon, and the tiny winter moon Thermegan— an eternal testament glowing in radiant starlight.
His thoughts turned to the men that occupied the lands the criminal Darros had described. The scholars had always known other groups of men roamed this world, yet none knew if these men had access to the truth, or if they would share this knowledge with the people of the Great Confluence. Perhaps this young Porrias will find out.
He exhaled. But, as for me, I will never live to know.
Dumas buttoned his coat and lifted his head toward the expanding heavens. Ellini had now disappeared behind the western ridge, and the clear sky gleamed with a thousand thousand stars.
His gray eyes strained, searching all too familiar patterns. And he could not help but wonder....
### End of Part 1### (The Yaakmen of Tyrie)
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