by J. M. Rojas
CHAPTER 8: SILVERSONG
Mathias knew all too well who and what Gha'haram was. The creature who appeared as a man—and who once was a Nysaean like Cloak—was known as a Revenant: an undead being who drew its power from a device called a Doom Stone shard, which was buried deep inside its head. This pyramid-shaped, obsidian stone restored the corpse's memories and the mobility of its body; and also gave it an insatiable desire for the life-force of living things—rejuvenating its own damaged flesh with the drained energy of its victims. Unfortunately for it, the Revenant had to continue this healing process on a regular basis so as to retain its fast-decaying flesh. Should it go without draining a living thing for a long period of time, it would finally die.
Gha'haram was no exception.
His remains were found in an ancient, sunken temple by Kaelan, and was restored through a blood sacrifice. During the early years, Gha'haram ruthlessly fought his way to the top of the Dark Tide ranks, finally garnering a high position of authority next to his rival Xharan Ar'Taarg. He was cunning, strong, and resourceful; using whatever means to destroy any who stood in his way.
Many feared Gha'haram; but Mathias was not one of them. Their last confrontation had ended with Mathias sparing the Revenant's life.
“I see Kaelan's favourite servant is never too far,” Mathias mocked his opponent, holding his glaive before him in a guarded stance. “I suppose I will have to kill you this time.”
“You should have when you had the chance,” the Revenant said with a dark grin. Visible cracks were suddenly beginning to form in the centre of his forehead and the skin began peeling away to reveal the glint of the black prism beneath. Until now it had been concealed by his rejuvenated flesh so he could exist undetected in human society. Out in the wilds however he had no use or fear for such disguises. “That opportunity won't come again, I can assure you.”
“You cannot stop us,” Mathias said, with stubborn defiance. “You cannot stop me.”
The Revenant's grin grew even wider. “We shall see about that. I know the boy is with you, I heard his thoughts earlier, heard his voice. His memory will be ours, and the crown will be reclaimed. Death to any and all who stand in our way.”
Mathias' storm-grey eyes flitted from Gha'haram to the nearby trees, searching for more Revenant. He knew they were out there somewhere just waiting for the command to attack. “Not whilst I am still breathing.”
“We can remedy that.” The reply was a promise.
The others soon caught up with Mathias, and were standing back from him, gazing up at the rebel general who crouched on an outward thrusting branch.
Gha'haram then stood up, balancing, and walked off the branch. The Revenant descended like a stone, his arms outstretched wide and his hair a writhing, white serpentine trail above him. The obsidian pyramid in his forehead left its own trail of red light like a shooting star's tail. When he landed before Mathias only a slight bend of his knees showed any evidence of the impact.
“I have gained new abilities since last we fought,” Gha'haram said, curling the top of his lip into a snarl, “Which I can't wait to show you!” Then suddenly his pale skin began dry up and crack apart like mud. The red light from the stone on his brow and from his eyes filled the cracks all over his body, gradually becoming brighter as they widened. Then the skin began to peel off him and burn up into wisps of ash, blanketing the forest floor about him.
Standing before Mathias was a creature most humans could only imagine in their worst nightmares: a Revenant in its true form. It's decaying flesh—which looked putrid and discoloured with welts and ulcers—thinly veiled twisted cords of muscle that stretched grotesquely over its black-boned skeleton. It's face was mostly skull and it grinned hideously back at Mathias, displaying sharp, broken teeth.
Gha'haram then reached out and touched the tree he had jumped out of. A red glow gathered at his finger tips and a bright light from within the tree appeared to siphon into his hand.
Jack watched in horror as the life-force of the tree was drained from it; the bark darkening, and the leaves of the lower branches, shrivelling up and exploding into grey dust. The bright light poured into Gha'haram, and his rotten flesh began to heal, and transform, covering itself in a thick layer of bark-like skin. The Revenant now looked very much like a tree himself: his fingers curled into gnarled, twig-like claws—much like his toes, which ripped through his leather boots—and his hair a tangle of vines and leaves. His eyes still burned a baleful red.
“Kill them all, and find the boy!” Gha'haram growled into air, unsheathing two glaives that were strapped to his back. The Revenant leader then lunged forward at Mathias in a whirl of flashing steel and brute strength.
Then the attack came.
Six shadowy figures erupted from the tree-line in an explosion of leaves that whooshed upwards, flying through the air towards the companions. First their cloaks and then their skin burned away, revealing the flesh-decaying horrors that they really were.
One landed several feet from Jack in a catlike crouch. It reached out and touched one of the large moss-covered boulder, and suddenly began to absorb its essence much like the same way that Gha'haram did with the tree. Seconds later, the undead shape-shifter had turned into a towering, stone behemoth; crushing the source of its power—a now frail, empty rock—into smithereens with a single fist. The Revenant lurched forward at him; but rushed by, charging at Cloak who was facing off another Revenant.
Jack froze in fear as the giant passed him. Then in a blink of an eye survivalism kicked in, and he ran for another moss-covered boulder to hide behind...
Mathias and Gha'haram locked weapons with teeth bared. They were old sparing partners, and a familiarity of each others' fighting styles became evident as soon as their glaives clashed fiercely together, beginning their offensive and defensive back-and-forth. Mathias favored Atlantean strong-arm sword fighting, and Gha'haram used the swift, sword-dancing style of his native country of Nysa. Both were almost equal in swordsmanship and dexterity; yet Gha'haram's transformation and rage fueled determination to reclaim his honour from his past defeat made him that little more dangerous.
Their swords reacted to their minds, taking on various—often extravagant and abstract—shapes as they deflected each others' blows. The swords also allowed the wielder to be creative and tricky with their attacks: like expanding to impossible lengths, or taking on another weapon's shape, like a battle-ax. At one point in the fight, Gha'haram's two swords merged into a single blade, then split again into four points, all flying towards Mathias in an attempt to skewer him from head to toe. Luckily, the bald Atlantean managed to block this with an upwards swipe of his sword; his blade morphing into four, wave-shape swirls, and each swirl locking around the four on-coming points. In one fluid movement, Mathias flung the attack away, and Gha'haram's blades retracted back into two...
Will and Layla stood against four Revenant.
“Two each,” the fiery girl laughed, her heart beating faster for the fight.
“Let us finish this quickly,” Will said with a confident smirk.
The blonde-haired man ripped his shirt off, revealing his glaive, which was snaked around his muscular chest in a silver coil. Layla's own sword was wrapped around her waist, just below her cloaking-belt, which she flung off like a whip. Both Lemurians paired off their adversaries, and ran eagerly into the fray.
Will quickly slew one Revenant before it could change—its dying hand clasping a nearby boulder, which it crumpled against. The young man grabbed its head and smashed it against the boulder, shattering the black stone in its forehead. The only sure way to kill a Revenant.
Layla had also felled one of her opponents, and was gouging out its stone with her sword, when its partner rushed her. The young woman barely dodged a black, skeletal claw that racked at her face, before throwing the dead Revenant at her new attacker, then stabbing her blade through both bodies.
Picking up a small rock, she smashed it into the freshly wounded Revenant's head, and the
n hit the other Doom Stone shard she'd cut out of the first.
A strangled cry caught her attention, and Layla's head snapped up to see Will's last Revenant holding the Hy-Bresailan around the neck with two massive, rock-encrusted hands. It had managed to absorbed the aspect of the boulder; its bulky form shimmering moss-green under the starry sky. Her companion's glaive lay on the ground, out of reach.
Layla leaped to her feet and ran to his aid; but slowed her pace when she noticed Will's wrist band glow an intense, white light.
Will smiled, and winked at Layla, then reached up and grabbed his assailant's rocky wrists. The white light expanded out from his bracelet, and surrounded both man and Revenant in a sphere of ethereal energy. Suddenly, the undead shape-shifter's movements slowed, and Will snapped its hands off at the wrists as if they were dry branches. He dropped to the ground and grabbed his sword, then swung an upwards blow that hewed the Revenant's head clear off its shoulders. Ignoring its dead body dropping into the grass beside him, Will ran over to its head and smashed its stone with the butt of his sword. A moment of convulsing followed, then the Revenant's headless, rock-skinned body finally crumbled apart, revealing a blackened skeleton beneath.
Layla finally locked eyes with Will, and he nodded, letting her know he was fine...
Cloak stood unflinching before the charging, stone-skinned Revenant. There was a dark smile playing on his lips, and a glint in his eye. He was staring lustfully at the stone in its forehead.
When the creature was within reach of him, its huge fists swinging at his lithe body, Cloak moved faster than thought, side-stepping its lumbering rampage.
The Revenant crashed into the boulder Jack hid behind, and reeled backwards from the collision.
Taking advantage of its disorientation, Cloak leaped onto its back, unsheathing a concealed glaive from his left shin, and stabbed it into its forehead. The Revenant screamed in pain and rage, its red-glowing eyes in its skull-face faded to black, and it toppled over.
Cloak jumped from the falling Revenant, and landed effortlessly onto the soft grass. He held the Doom Stone shard in his hand, grinning triumphantly.
Jack watched in amazement, and horror, as the Nysaean appeared to absorb the red light into his body. Gradually, he began to expand in size, rising up to about ten feet; and the darkness seemed to gather around him like a shroud of black mist.
“Fools,” he laughed darkly, looking down with fire-filled eyes at the piles of black bones that were the remains of the Revenant attack force. “Only the Samatar know the true strength of the Doom Stone shard.”
Spurred by fear, Jack crouched lower behind the boulder—ironic, since he was wearing an invisible belt, but had somehow forgotten. What is Cloak doing? he thought, frantically. Is he a traitor?
The shadow-thing that had once been the pale-skinned man, moved towards Mathias and Gha'haram in a roiling black mist, swirling across the grass...
Gha'haram pounded at Mathias' defences with his whirling swords like he was a smithy hammering hot iron, or a hailstorm pelting a tin roof. His bark-covered muscles groaned as he exerted all of his strength against his most hated adversary; and the giant Atlantean took each punishing blow in stride, giving back just as much as his aggressor. The singing from their swords echoed into the night; and their blades' abstract transformations a spectacle to behold.
Due to the skills of both combatants, the battle seemed to never end. Then the stalemate finally broke when the Revenant captain suddenly flung a tangle of vines from out of his wrists, into Mathias face. The green, spiky, tendrils wrapped around his head, choking him; and Gha'haram pulled him forward towards his ready blade.
Stamping his right foot in front of him, and leaning back with every last muscle in his lean body, Mathias broke his possible impalement upon his opponent's sword. He then slashed his glaive upwards, severing the vines on his face, which caused Gha'haram to stumble backwards, then fall. Mathias used his gathered momentum, and leaped forward, stabbing his sword down at Gha'haram's forehead, attempting to destroy the Doom Stone shard.
The Revenant rolled away, and the blow thudded into the soft ground.
Gha'haram spun on his back and swiped Mathias' legs out from under him, dropping him to the ground as well. The Revenant's sweeping leg morphed into a thick vine in the motion, quickly wrapping around both Mathias' ankles, burrowing deep into the ground, and keeping him held down. Mathias thrashed wildly against the numerous vines that continued to sprout from Gha'haram's now unrecognizable form, wrapping and entombing the Atlantean...
Layla and Will ran to help Mathias.
Will's spherical field of energy still swirling around him; Layla's glaive melding into various savage shapes in reaction to her rage at Gha'haram.
A bark-covered arm sprung out from the Revenant's bulk, and elongated to the size of a battering-ram; piercing Will's shield, and knocking him and Layla to the ground...
The black mist was a few feet away from the tangle of Gha'haram and Mathias. A partially corporeal hand held a burning stone that glowed a furious red.
Then it suddenly withdrew and the Nysaean's form shrunk back to its normal height. The shadow-thing had merely been a projection of the stone, which now began to shake violently in Cloak's hand as it absorbed the mist and its illusion. Then his frail visage snapped back into reality.
Jack stepped out from behind the boulder; his eyes anticipating the Nysaean's next move.
Cloak held the glowing stone above his head, watching the fight. Mathias had suddenly torn away enough vines to gain leverage over the Revenant; and was now holding the undead creature's black, grinning skull in both hands, crushing it with his brute strength. Another few minutes and the giant Atlantean would have probably pulverised the creature's head into dust, along with its Doom Stone shard.
Not hesitating, Cloak hurled the stone at Gha'haram's mass of vines. Like a grenade, the Doom Stone shard exploded upon impact; its red flames seared through Gha'haram's bark and vines and burned them to cinder, freeing Mathias from his tomb of foliage. The giant Atlantean rolled away from his enemy, climbed to his feet, and cleared the fire that was now burning the grass about him.
Gha'haram's scream of pain thundered above their heads as the fire began eating him. From the wreckage of the blast, a black-boned skeleton desperately clawed its way out of burning molasses of vegetation. Part of the bark-skin still clung to Gha'haram; charred and smoking in spots, and making him look a horrid sight.
“Thisss isss not overrr!” The Revenant hissed like steam escaping from a fissure. It then turned and looked hatefully at Cloak, knowing he had destroyed its flesh. “Disssident foool!”
Jack saw recognition in the skeleton's red-burning eyes. It knows Cloak! He thought.
The pale-faced Nyasean stood beside Mathias with his glaive in hand, and said nothing. His face was cold and emotionless.
Gha'haram turned and began shambling awkwardly away—due to the damage of his body—towards the Southlake House. Then suddenly he caught a second wind, and the Revenant started running at an incredible speed. Jack noticed a red glow from Gha'haram's legs as he ran, which left burning-footprints in the ground behind him. The Revenant's body began absorbing again, and the last of his bark-skin dissipated in a flicker of ash: replaced by a layer of dark soil, which was speckled with grass. He looked like a man who had been rolling in the mud.
Soon the darkness swallowed up the undead shape-shifter, except for the trail of red light from its Doom Stone shard.
“We must be rid of this place,” Mathias said wearily, his ash and blood covered body leaning against one of the moss-covered boulders. “Gha'haram will be back with reinforcements. You saw that movement in Thomas' house. There are more of them.”
“What are they?” Jack asked Mathias. He was still invisible; but as he approached the group, they could see the grass flattening under his footsteps.
“Revenant,” the giant Atlantean replied after a moment of catching back his breath. “Undead serv
ants of Kaelan, who use the Doom Stone shard to remain alive. It is also what gives them their shape-shifting powers. They made the vampires and werebeasts, they poisoned the lakes of Avalon during the early days of the rebellion. There is more to their sad tale, but that will have to wait until we are clear of the woods.”
“Or not at all,” Cloak said—a silent anger brewing behind his cold, piercing, blue eyes.
Jack caught Mathias' now troubled look cast over the heads of the others towards the south, and turned to see the lights of the Southlake House all lit up in the distance.
“He has alerted them to where we are,” Mathias said, turning to the trees, “Run!”
The companions forgot their battle-fatigue and ran as fast as their legs could carry them.
Will's shield shimmered briefly and died as they left the field and entered the protection of the trees once more.
Mathias led the Lemurians and Jack along the path he had intended; but eventually diverted through a heavily shadowed part of the forest, where the trees—that looked alien to Jack with their thickly ridged bark and bloated trunks—grew closer together and more numerous. At times, they had to squeeze themselves between the tree trunks it was that dense, and wade cautiously through thick bushes, which slowed down their progress immensely. However once they had managed to make it through the knot of trees, they found themselves in another, much smaller, clearing. This one had no paths leading to it, and its concealment suggested it had been made by someone for secret purposes.
“This is it,” Mathias said to his companions who waited at the edge of the clearing. “The entrance to the underground hangar.”
“Hangar?” Jack asked, his voice popping out of the darkness behind the giant Atlantean. “What kind of hangar?”
“For sky-ships,” Will answered from Jack's right.
“Sky-ships?”
“Ancient, Lemurian aircraft,” Layla added, grinning in the direction of the voice. “Similar to your airplanes, I suppose.” She couldn't see him, but imagined him staring at her in disbelief.
“When we arrived here two days ago,” Mathias said, “We came another way; but that entrance is closer to the house, and more than likely surrounded by rebels. This is the only other way down.” He then drew all of their attention to a large, squat tree next to where he stood. He reached out and grabbed a small branch that looked slightly lighter in color than the others, and pulled it down. The branch was a lever, which activated a secret door—a bark-covered panel—in the base of the tree. In reaction to the door opening: a hidden light source somewhere inside the hollow trunk came on, illuminating a spiraling, wooden stairwell that descended deep into the ground.
“Quickly, inside,” Mathias instructed.
The companions entered the tree one-by-one, descending the stairwell some twenty feet down into an underground chamber, which stretched infinitely into a wall of darkness in all directions. The ground beneath them was polished, gray stone; and only the patch of floor where they stood was visible under the shaft of light from the stairwell above.
Mathias closed the door of the tree behind Cloak, and was the last down the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he knelt onto the stone floor and began sweeping his hands over a particularly large slab of stone. Removing the dust that had settled there, his fingers found what he was searching for: a small hole.
The giant Atlantean placed his finger that wore the Gate-ring into the hole, and twisted it.
Click!
A low hum suddenly rose from beneath their feet—much like the sound from the Gate in Jack's backyard. Like a chain reaction, a series of orbs that appeared to be suspended by tree roots emerging from chamber's soil-exposed ceiling lit up, consuming the darkness about them and revealing its secrets to the companions.
They stood in the hangar Mathias had spoke of.
As far as they could see, the massive chamber was filled with a hundred or more dusty, sheet covered bulks of many shapes and sizes. Occasionally, a metallic appendage stuck out from one of the draped sheets, exposing a part of what was hidden beneath. Jack thought he spied a wing here, and tail-fin there; and his excitement started to grow.
There were barrels—probably containing fuel made of some unknown liquid—in large clusters, piles of scrap metal, and open chests and crates of tools and spare-parts scattered about the chamber's floor. There were also small step ladders resting against each sheet-cloaked object, which suggested they were used for someone to climb into the unseen things.
“This is amazing,” Jack finally said in an awed whisper, taking off his invisible belt and becoming corporeal once again.
“Your father's hobby,” Mathias said, turning to face Jack who was now visible, “was collecting old wrecked sky-ships from the ocean. There are Lemurian, Osirian and Ramaean ships of all types here; from battle-ships to farming and transport ships. He hoped to one day rebuild all these derelicts for The Library.”
Jack marvelled at the sight, speculating what these mysterious ships looked like. Then he finally saw in the center of the hangar one sky-ship that wasn't concealed, which sat upon what looked to be a runway that disappeared into the distance. Its silver, eagle-shaped body shimmered softly under the ceiling of glowing orbs.
He had seen this ship before. Seen it in his dreams of Atlantis.
“The Silversong,” Mathias said.
