The Obsidian Crown of the Lost Dominion

by Akira Knightley

  “Power is neither evil nor good. It just is. It’s how you use it that makes the difference. And I would argue that using it to save us a good thing!” Blaise said.

  I was about to protest when the familiar congealing of the air around the box spread around me. I also felt dizziness, the familiar precursor to my blackouts.

  I refuse to blackout. I won’t. I will fight it!

  No sooner than I stated my conviction the energy started to course from the box. This time it came fast and hard. I felt like the air was about to run out that I started to breathe in short gasps. It bound my hand to the box. I tried to pull my hands away but to no avail. My arms felt numb and my feet were rooted to where I stood. Currents of energy ran from the box to my hand and up and down my body. I was shocked at the intensity of the invisible grip. Then I sensed more than intensity, I felt a curious sense of urgency in the clutch. I tried to fight it. I refused to look at it. But it only took a moment before I realized it was futile to resist the bind.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Kerberian Box

  Beyond the warped airspace enveloping my body, I could hear the debate raging, as if the voices were all coming from a separate room even though I know they were all standing there just a few feet away from me. I heard and saw Blaise and Hailey fighting about the nature of power through the invisible wall.

  But I had more immediate worries than winning a philosophical discussion. It seemed the box had finally decided to grab my full attention. I tried to fight one more time, to release my hold of the box. But the more I struggled the more it strengthened its hold on my wrists. I decided to go the reverse and hold on to the box firmly. After a few moments, apparently when the box was convinced I was not going to release my hold, the box slackened its grip on my body. My knees wobbled a bit and I decided to sit down for support. From beyond the fiery debate over power, I could see the bloodshot eyes of the doctor scrutinizing me.

  I took a seat on a small stool by the firelight; I placed the box on my lap still pretending that nothing was happening. I was still trying to incline my head away from the box to avoid looking at it. But as soon as my eyes locked on it, I felt an invisible partion separate me from the rest of the room. I was in an air bubble of some sort. The air within the bubble got thicker. I couldn’t tell where I was, isolated from the rest because their voices sounded muffled, like they were underwater. The hair on the back of my neck, arms, and head stood on ends as I began to feel the thickened air charge with static electricity. I tried to close my eyes but the latent energy coursing all over my body had awoken my curiosity. The box was in control now. No matter what I did, I couldn’t take my eyes off the box. Knowing that I could no longer resist it, I told myself to relax and to let the energy flow through me. To let the box know me and let it trust me. I needed to know what it wanted to say.

  There was real power within the box. A sudden wash of lukewarm energy rushed over me from head to toe. It felt good and inviting. Then there was a change in the energy around the box on my lap. I focused my eyes on the box somehow knowing that it would spur the moving carvings to move faster. A shroud of mist was beginning to form around the box covering my hands, obscuring the writhing black wood. I remembered what the doctor said. The wood is alive. A worm-like thing started to wriggle and wrap its body around my wrists. It was cold but coarse and scally. Every time it moved, my every instinct repelled it and made my stomach turn. Then several smaller tentacles attached themselves to my hand, slithering and snaking about my fingers. I gasped.

  My heart was pumping so hard I could feel my heartbeat in my chest and the roaring of my blood rushing in my head. I shuddered and grasped the box tighter but the invisible grip it had around me tightened in response. So, I controlled my breathing and forced myself to slacken my hold.The box did the same, leaving me holding it in relative ease. I noticed that the mist started to glow a dark blue-grey hue. When it dissipated, the wooden carvings were gray. The carvings were still moving, slithering in and out of it like snakes in a pit. Soon, the writhing was so intense that I couldn’t make out the box at all. But then little by little, the movement slowed down and the carvings settled into shapes.

  I first noticed a huge paw pushing down on a round black gem. The gem was secured to the wood by a hinge that swung left to right, covering a metal frame. The writhing continued to slow down and finally revealed the rest of the animal whose paw was sitting on the gem. The paw was of a dog with three heads. The central dog’s head watching over the latch was looking at me menacingly while the other two were facing away from me.

  I froze. When I didn’t do anything, the head on one side let out a deafening growl.

  Somehow knowing that the wood was alive and in the form of a vicious dog guarding a valuable object, I decided that it might be waiting for me to do something. On intuition, I carefully swung the black gem to the right to uncover the metal frame underneath. In the middle of the frame was a sharp, four-sided tack. I took a closer look into the frame when all three heads turned to me and their eyes opened all at once. I pulled my hand away from the tack in surprise.

  “Dr. McGrath...the box...” But she didn’t hear me through the invisible partition.

  The dogs’ heads started growling again. I was getting too scared to hold on to the box and it was beginning to teeter on my lap. The dogs started snarling, baring their fangs and frothing from their gaping mouths. I was still, frozen. They pounced. I jerked in terror and the box slid from my lap. I reached out to catch it.

  “Ouch! I yelled as the sharp tack pierced my thumb. Immediately, the dogs’ heads retreated and slowly they went back into their solid wooden shapes. I instinctively pulled my hand back and stuck my thumb in my mouth to stop the bleeding.

  The box tumbled to the soft carpet. Everyone stared as it rolled to a stop. Dr. McGrath picked it up off the floor and put her arms around protectively.

  “What happened? What did you see?” the doctor asked me with the same bloodshot accusing eye. But her voice betrayed her. It was filled with rabid eagerness and anticipation.

  It annoyed me, knowing she left me by myself to face the vicious animal. “What makes you think I saw anything? I don’t know what I saw. I need to get a band-aid!” I said and ran to the bathroom.

  I rushed to a sink and splashed water over my face, forgetting for a moment about my bleeding finger. I needed to wake up from this dreadful nightmare. I put my head lower in the sink and splashed more water on my face. I pulled my water-soaked head out of the sink and left my hand under the tap and watched the blood trickle down to the sink. I ran through the whole event in my mind again. From the moment I felt the tack prick my finger and the time I pulled my hand away, I felt like I lived a thousand years. I saw something and it terrified me.

  A strong vision of a black crown filled my mind. It was the ugliest crown I had ever seen. Seven spikes of the jagged black stones set in dark metal. I found no beauty, no grace in its design. It was not meant to enhance but to debase the wearer. It was not black because of its color. It was black because it was sucking the light out of everything around it. Its power was unforgiving. But the crown wanted itself be known.

  I had a vision of a man dressed in a splendid robe, no doubt from a noble house. He was on his knees being held down by some kind of invisible restraints. He was pleading for his life. The more he struggled the more he was pushed lower to the ground. Then the crown was placed on his head. He fought so hard to get away but he was unsuccessful. I saw the unimaginable torment and pain he suffered before dying. I saw his eyes drying up within their sockets, leaving only phantom caves where the windows of his soul used to be. I saw his body petrify like wood and then implode into a shower of ash blown into nothingness by wind, leaving the crown tumbling to the ground.

  I felt the pounding of my heart once again and the beads of cold sweat forming anew around my temples. My whole mind railed against this murder but the crow
n was not done with me yet.

  I saw thousands of people cowering against the power of the black crown. I saw his kingdom, his people, and everything that he had sucked into the crown’s hungry power as if they never existed. It was mass murder to a scale I could not accept in my head.

  The rushing of the water brought me back to “reality”. I shook the water off and dried my hand, thinking how ironic it was that I used to know what that word meant.

  My senses were still raw from the recollection of the events. The feeling of being pulled into the darkness of the crown. It wasn’t just an emotional darkness. It was a physical one, too, like my body, my mind, my very essence would break into pieces and would be trapped alive in utter darkness, forever. Despite all that, it was the guilt and utter desolation that brought me to tears.

  I continued to press on the small cut on my thumb well after it had stopped bleeding. I don’t know if Blaise was right about power being just power. After what I saw and felt, I believed there was some power that cannot be ever be used for good.

  Beyond this discovery, two other truths occurred to me: the Knights of the Crown will keep coming until they get the box. They will not stop until they have the crown. The other, that the Trifama will also not stop until they can wield the power of the crown.

  More than ever, I wished my parents were here. I wished they had prepared me for this. Why did they have possession of the box? Did they know what was inside? Did they ever use it? Why is this witch of the mob working with my family to help me?

  I looked up and was surprised at the reflection of my bloody face on the bathroom mirror. I realized after the momentary shock that the blood was from finger but the symbolism didn’t escape me. I realized that if the Knights are after the Crown, they intend to use it on someone. That someone will suffer and die and his death will be on my head.

  I took my uninjured hand and washed my face again. But recognition didn’t come. I no longer know who that person was staring back at me.

  I pulled on a roll of toilet paper and wiped my face and vowed, it doesn’t matter who I am. I know what I am. And I will not be used to unleash the power of the crown in this reality nor in any other reality. The Knights be damned!

  By the Author, “Cerberos, Three Headed Hound of Hades”

  Artist rendering in pencil. 2019

  CHAPTER 10

  The Truth About Time Travel

  When I got back to the Sanctuary, the group was all huddled around a table. Everyone was talking over each other.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “We are trying to figure out how to rescue Kieran or Kieran’s body, at least,” Hailey answered.

  “Like I said, there are seams between the realms where we can cross using magic. Some of those seams or laylines are in areas of the world where gravity is stronger than other places. Some strong enough so that the time there is more compressed than the time in the real world,” Doctor McGrath said.

  “We get it. You’re saying that we go can back in time? How far back?” I asked.

  “Just a few minutes, few hours at the most. We can’t go back let’s say to before you were born. There are certain laws of magic that if broken have real consequences in Xana as well as the Terran world. That’s one of them.”

  “But if you can travel back in time, what happens when you meet yourself?” Hailey asked. Everyone looked at her as if they couldn’t believe she asked this question.

  “I’m just saying, what if we cancel each other out and end up dead.”

  The doctor said, “That’s all sci-fi crap from Hollywood. Another law of time travel that you must know, what happens when you meet yourself is that you converge on the dominant timeline. So if you go back to the real world and meet yourself there, you will converge on the most dominant timeline. That is if the incantation works.”

  “Well wait, incantation? How does that work?” Blaise asked.

  “If you meet yourself and you consciously chose to use the later timeline while the incantation is being said, then it negates the old. Yes, it will be as if the old timeline didn’t happen except for in your memory,” Doctor McGrath said.

  “But, Kieran won’t have a memory of his death. So his dominant timeline will be what, the one where he is dead? Besides, he can’t do the incantation,” I argued.

  “Correct, because death is a life-force-converging point. Meaning everything about you converges at the point and the story as we say, ends there.”

  “But then, if we get there and Kieran-from-the-past meets Kieran-the-dead, then he’s dead anyway, right?” Taylor said.

  “That’s right, so whatever you do, don’t let him get dead, got it? And he doesn’t have to be the one saying the incantation. Here, you need to memorize this. Make sure you choose the dominant timeline as you recite these words.” Doctor McGrath handed each of us a piece of paper with the words:

  “As life is ruled by time, let time be ruled by us. Negate the line we do not want, and make this time the real one.”

  Blaise finished reading and said, “Got it!” with absolute fake certainty. I could see that he looked just as confused as he was before.

  I finished reading the incantation. I committed it to memory and said, “So what’s the plan?”

  Hailey got up and pointed to the library door as she explained, “Basically, we go back in time, go to the library and save Kieran, hopefully the hooded men are not there. If they are, then we fight them to the death and we finish our detention as if nothing happened.”

  “Simple! No really, what if the hooded guys are there waiting for us?” I said.

  The doctor got up, waving her hand at both of us. “That’s why the three of you will go to another portal which will take you back in time. I will go to the library and wait with Kieran’s body. I think the doors were blasted open so I need to close off the library in case someone tries to come in. We need to keep Kieran’s body where it lays until you guys can converge the timeline.”

  “Where’s the other portal, again, the one that gets us four extra hours?” I asked.

  “It’s a ways off from the school but you should be able to get back in time. It’s called the Black Rose Antiquary in Jensen.”

  “Wait, that’s an hour from school with a car. We won’t have a car. How long do we have?”

  “We have been away for an hour. If you don’t get home soon, people will be suspicious. You should be getting to the Black Rose around four, right before you go to detention. This gives you two hours to get back to the library and save Kieran. Otherwise, you are stuck in this timeline with Kieran dead.”

  Hailey jumped to her feet. “We’ll figure out how to get back to the school as soon as we get topside or normal side or human side or Terran, you know what I mean. Let’s go.”

  “You can’t go now; we have to wait to align this portal with the target portal. Just be patient,” the doctor said as she walked over to the gilded table and lightly touched the top of the Kerberian Box. “Abigail, you need to think back. Your parents must have told you something. You must have seen something earlier. You need to remember. Lives are dependent on it.”

  “I told you. I don’t know anything.” That was not true at all, anymore. What I did know was that sharing what I just learned was just going to put me in a worse condition.

  To my surprise, Taylor got up walked towards me with her finger wagging and said, “You know, you need to grow up and think. I...we are not going to die for you! You have gotten your parents killed and Kieran is possibly dead! How many more bodies will there be before you get off your hash-tag-I’m-the-victim-high-horse and start using your brain. Yeah, yeah, we get it. Your parents are dead. I’m so done with this ‘I’m innocent and I don’t know anything act!’” she railed.

  “Hey. Taylor, maybe you need to take it down a notch,” Hailey said.

  “Well whose side are
you on?” Taylor fired back.

  “I’m on my side! As far as I’m concerned, between you threatening everyone with a lawsuit every five minutes, your severely clichéd bully jock boyfriend, and that quack-quack doctor over there, Monty there is probably the least dangerous. I’m just sayin’,” Hailey said. Taylor humphed and stomped back to her seat. She sat down with her arms crossed in front of her.

  “I don’t know anything about the box. But if it will help I can tell you what I remember,” I blurted out before thinking. That seemed to break the ice.

  They all looked at me in amazement. I guess because I had never wanted to share any information before now. I uncrossed my fingers, which I now realized had been painfully constricting the flow of blood through my hands. I didn’t really know where to start, so I started with the time I arrived from my Fourth of July party at Grayson’s. I stopped to take some air and continued to the time we got on this plane and how I vowed to myself that I would find out what happened to my parents.

  Taylor said, “I’m so sorry, Abi, I just couldn’t believe what you’ve been through. I apologize if I was harsh. I didn’t know.”

  The doctor cut in, “But there’s nothing new there, Abigail.”

  “Yes, that’s right, Doctor. There is nothing new to tell because I don’t remember anything new!” I threw back at her sharpish.

  I turned around and walked back closer to the fire, where I was hoping no one could see my face; hoping that it won’t betray my thoughts. “Yes but now I...remember falling asleep in the back seat. Then I was woken by a huge thunder and opened my eyes just in time to see a massive lightning bolt in the sky. The next thing I know, the plane has no power and it’s on a nosedive. Then there was an explosion. It went very quickly. The next thing I recall, I was already being led into an ambulance and they were trying to take the box from me.”

  I couldn’t tell them about the three hooded figures that entered the plane. I was just waking up and in the beam of the lightning, I saw them strangling my parents and putting hoods over their lolling heads. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them about how I was rescued by the same men who might have murdered my mother and father.