by Hanna Peach
* * *
The Elder took Vix and Alyx to a small cave on the dark side of the mountain. It was colder here and the air seemed more still.
“We should not be disturbed here,” the Elder’s voice began to echo as he moved in through the dark entrance. “I come here to meditate and as a safe place from which to make my journeys.”
Alyx gave Vix an apprehensive look. But Vix didn’t seem perturbed at entering this cave in the middle of nowhere with this mysterious seraph. Alyx followed them with one hand on her sword handle. The tunnel flowed into a small cavern with a flat floor. When Alyx stepped into the cavern, the Elder was already lighting candles that stood stubby and overflowing with wax all around the edges. In the center was a thick, woven rug.
“What are we doing here?” Alyx asked, her eyes flitting back and forth between Vix and the Elder.
“I am a DreamWalker,” said the Elder. “Please lie down on either side of me.”
“Do you mean to lure us into a DreamScape and then kill us while we sleep?”
The Elder smiled. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead already.”
The Elder and Vix lay across the rug. They both looked expectantly at Alyx. This was the moment when she had to decide…did she trust him?
Alyx weighed the balance of probabilities and decided that she was better off trusting the Elder. “Okay,” she said as she positioned herself on the rug. “But if you double-cross me and I end up dead I’m going to come back and haunt your sorry ass.”
She heard Vix tsk at her as the Elder chuckled. She felt a pulse of power traveling out from the Elder, which consumed her body in a blinding light.
* * *
Alyx was standing on the grassy outcrop of a huge cliff with Vix and the Elder. The mirrored surface of the ocean stretched all the way into the distance. Below her, clusters of pastel-colored homes clung to the land. A section of the cliff jutted out to a tip, and on that tip stood a lonely turret that stretched up towards the pale blue sky.
She felt the Elder’s presence beside her. “This is Urielos, as I remember it,” he said quietly. “It has been a long time since I have been here.”
“Do you miss it?” Alyx asked.
The Elder nodded. “Some of it.”
“What is that structure?” Alyx pointed to the turret.
“That was our warning tower. A small fire could be lit within and shading moved back and forth across it to communicate messages to the other warning towers in a series of light signals, similar to the mortals’ Morse code. If completely lit up, it served as an evacuation warning. There is a tower on the other side of the city, in the edges of the village of Lavina.”
In her head, Alyx went through what she knew about Urielos from her lectures. The city of Urielos was spread out over four smaller villages, each village clinging to a separate part of this cliff. Each village had its function. Along the ocean line far below, Alyx could make out the golden strip of beach dotted with clusters of thatched buildings making up the fishing village of Josef. Alyx turned, only noticing now the buildings behind them in the village of Savinion, the agricultural hub. Around the Savinion buildings, the land looked lush and ripe and was nursed into neat rows of gold and green. Even farther beyond Savinion would be Lavina, where the warriors lived and trained. She couldn’t see Lavina from here, only the tip of the other warning tower could be seen in the distance, poking up from the roofline.
Finally, Alyx swept her eyes across the village directly below them. Uria wasn’t the largest village, but it was the grandest. The buildings shimmered and ebbed with brightness from the extravagance of crushed pearls, corals and shells that were mixed into the paints. Hanging off the roofs of the buildings were ornate metals made into arms draped with glowing seaweed, off which hung large glow pearls, no doubt to light up the paths at night.
Vix was gazing around as well, but her face was hard and solemn. “I haven’t set eyes upon this godforsaken place in a long time.”
Vix came from Urielos, Alyx remembered.
“Come. We must travel through Uria to get where we need to go.” The Elder started to float down to the village. Alyx and Vix followed him.
As she floated down the slight slope, patchy grass and rocks gave way to paths under her, and open air reduced to the spaces between buildings. It was unnerving to walk through a village with no Seraphim around.
Alyx brushed her hands against the walls of the buildings as she passed. Her fingers came away with what looked like grains of salt on them.
“There's so much detail here,” she said. “I could almost believe that I am actually here.”
“Say what you want about these physical bodies, but they really were made amazingly well. The subconscious part of the brain captures every single little detail about the world around us even if our conscious part doesn't remember all of it. When we DreamWalk we access the subconscious, hence you can see everything here in great detail. If we tried to walk into a building that I had never been to, I would have to make it up. That’s why you would notice a difference in detail or inconsistencies, or you may notice that the edges of things aren’t clear.”
They passed through a large, dusty square edged with buildings. Small colorful stalls lined the marketplace. The Elder stopped them on the roof of a building near the center of Uria so that Alyx could see how the village stretched out around them.
“Uria is the main village and the center house of the city. This is where we all meet, where the Elders live, where we trade our wares in the Uria markets.”
“Except,” said Vix, “things have changed since you were last here, Elder.”
“I’ll bet they have.” The Elder grinned, and a youthfulness lit his face. “Care to show us how?”
Vix nodded and closed her eyes. For a moment nothing happened.
Then a myriad of colors began to bleed from her body like paint in running water. The rivers of color spread out over the area around them like a playful sea. The buildings began to change. They grew taller and more ornate. Door frames and window frames grew curls and engravings. Some of the surfaces changed from wood to silver or gold. Alyx’s mouth dropped open.
From the low roofline grew a large oval structure, an open air theater. Poles, wrapped in white material, reached out from around the edge of the structure to form a single point. These “sails” must have unraveled and formed a roof to keep out the rain.
Finally the last of the colors rolled into place and the new Uria stood silent.
“It does look different,” said the Elder softly.
“What is that building?” Alyx said, pointing to the theater.
Vix’s lips pressed together. “Uriel’s latest addition to his city. Installed before I left. A gladiator ring, where Uriel would pit warriors against each other in a fight to the death.” Vix’s face grew dark. “It started as a novel and public way to punish the warriors who broke protocol. Uriel’s justification for blood sport. In the end, it became…something more.”
Alyx felt a chill come over her as if the clouds had suddenly covered up the sun. She saw a small movement in the corner of her eye, made more startling by the fact that everything here was as still as death. Alyx snapped her head around. She squinted. There seemed to be a lone figure in the top stands of the theater, just close enough for Alyx to make out that it was a woman. When Alyx turned back to Vix, she was staring at the figure. What else had leaked out of her subconscious?
Alyx opened her mouth to ask, but the Elder stepped between Alyx and Vix, grabbing Alyx’s arm.
“Come,” the Elder said with a sternness hardening his features, “we have spent enough time looking around. Let me show you where the chamber is.”
Alyx stared back at him for a moment, fighting the urge to ask about the woman. Deciding that she should let it go, Alyx nodded. She understood wanting to keep your past a secret.
The Elder led them to a pale yellow cylindrical building just off the center of Uria. From the outside there appeared to
be no windows. Above the doors positioned just under the roofline was a pair of engraved scrolls.
“Is this the Archives?” Alyx asked.
“Indeed,” said the Elder. And with a swipe of his hand the doors moved aside for him. “The doors are shielded. You will have to by-pass them first.”
Inside, the building appeared to have a series of levels that branched out like spokes of a wheel around the center, each level criss-crossing in a staggered pattern from the high ceiling to the lower levels below. Hanging from each level were ornate metal Threadcases with patterns of waves and fish and waterflowers weaved into the design. Within the Threadcases were Threads, hundreds of them. The windowless building was illuminated only by large pearls glowing with a light from inside them, held in metal claws around the wall.
“The entrance is below,” said the Elder, and he led them down through the spiraling levels. As they descended Alyx noticed that the center pole was carved with what looked like battle scenes. Near the bottom was a seraph carved so that he was larger than life. Alyx recognized Uriel’s face within the gray stone.
“It says something about his character, don’t you think, when he builds his own figure into the entrance of his secret chambers.” The Elder’s voice was tinged with disgust.
Alyx stared at the carving of Uriel. This was the entrance?
The Elder pointed at Uriel’s neck. Alyx noticed the hollow charm lying against his chest. Across the breastplate and carrying up over the shoulders was a curling vine design grooved into the stone and covered in a glass.
“Uriel is an Alchemist, so he designed this entrance only to be activated by an Alchemist. Because this is only a DreamScape I can tell you how it’s meant to work, but I can’t show you. I don’t know how to open it. You will have to find an Alchemist willing to assist you when you come to do this for real. Or if you had some Alchemist bloodink.”
“How is it meant to open?”
The Elder pointed to three chambers covered with glass, one at the statue’s throat, one at his stomach and another at his right shoulder. Two of the chambers were filled with grainy metal.
“You have to get the contents of each of these three chambers into the charm.”
Alyx stared at each of the three chambers. She could see now that the curling vine pattern joined each chamber to the charm, which was segmented into three sections. But...how in the blazes was she meant to move the contents?
The Elder continued, “If you succeed in opening the entrance, the final barrier will await you inside the tunnels. A test.”
“A test?”
“Or tests. Uriel fancies himself a bit of an intellectual savant. He believes that he is smarter than anyone else. Hence, his chamber isn’t locked by just a mere magical shield.”
“And if I don’t pass these tests?”
The look in the Elder’s eyes was enough to tell her that she wouldn’t like the answer. “I never said that getting the Threads of Dark would be easy.”
“Okay…” She was almost afraid to ask. “What are they?”
The Elder shook his head. “I’m not sure, exactly. Uriel has a habit of upgrading them when he thinks of new ones. If you pass the tests you’ll be let into the chamber containing the Threads of Dark.”
Alyx chewed at her lip. She didn’t like the sound of “tests”, especially “upgraded tests”. Surely there was another way in?
A thought struck her. “Why can’t I just tunnel my way through with EarthWeaver magic?”
The Elder smiled. “That would be too easy, wouldn’t it? Uriel has secured the tunnels with bands of a powerful EarthWeaver magic combined with MirageWeaver. They stop any EarthWeaver from sensing this tunnel as well as preventing anyone from tunneling into the chamber from the outside.”
Uriel, an intelligent foe. Just great. Give me an army of Darkened any day.
Another thought came to Alyx that made her peer curiously at the Elder. “How do you know all this?”
The Elder’s face darkened and a kind of sadness dulled his eyes. “When I was still a part of the society, I was a city designer. My DreamWalker ability helped me to create my designs in third-dimension before they were built. I helped him design the tunnels.”
“You were friends?”
“Once. The closest.” The Elder turned away and the DreamScape faded.
Alyx awoke in the cave. She wanted to ask about the Elder’s history with Uriel and the society, she wanted to ask why he left, but she didn’t. She knew she wouldn’t get any more out of the Elder.
At the mouth of the cave, Alyx and Vix thanked the Elder. As they turned to leave, the Elder put his hand on Alyx’s shoulder.
“You must save him, Alyx. He is very important.”
Alyx nodded. “I know.”
The Elder shook his head. “No. I don’t think you do. What is coming will either be the end of everything or it could free us all. He plays a great role in this. As do you.”
“No pressure or anything,” she muttered.
That damned prophecy. Alyx grimaced as she felt the weight of her tasks press onto her shoulders again. She didn’t need reminding of her responsibilities.
Chapter 10
Jordan hurried into the compartment where Tobias had called an urgent meeting. He felt his body relax when he saw that Alyx was already sitting in their makeshift meeting room. It felt like he had been holding his breath while she had been gone. He didn’t like not being by her side. How would he protect her if she needed him?
Get a hold of yourself, he scolded himself. She made her choice about who she wanted and it wasn’t you.
He made his way over to her, making sure his movements were slow and controlled even though his heart was racing. As he got closer he had to quash his desire to touch her to sate himself that she was real. Instead he nodded a curt hello as he sat down in the chair next to her. Only then did he look around the room, noting that Tobias, Vix and Dianne were already seated around the table.
“I have news about our Saudi community,” Tobias said.
Jordan heard a small exhale of breath from Alyx. Instinctively, he slipped a hand over one of hers, which was gripped on her thigh. It may have been his imagination, but her cheeks seemed to color a little. Probably just his imagination. Then he felt her fist relax. To his surprise, her little fingers slipped through his.
Jordan remembered he had been at Alyx’s side when she had been told about the death of her friend, Elysia. He had rubbed her arm to try and soothe her but it had only caused her to tense up even further. It had only been when Israel touched her that she had relaxed like this.
Alyx had always been so guarded with herself around him; her heart’s loyalty to Israel was so complete. Why was she reacting so differently to him now? Could she…could she possibly be letting him in? Or was he making something out of nothing, a fancy born out of unfulfilled desires.
Jordan’s attention was jolted back to the table when he heard Tobias’s words.
“The Saudi Arabia community was also attacked by Samyara’s Darkened army. Luckily, they found the Tracer on Omniya with just enough time to evacuate everyone. They were able to get out through one of the secret underground tunnels and to the desert before the Darkened breached their community.”
Jordan found himself breathing a sigh of relief. He wasn’t the only one. No more deaths to grieve. For the moment. It may have been too much if they had lost anyone else from the FreeThinker community. It barely felt like he had even had time to grieve the ones who had gone…Zia, Ky, Fernando and Rosa…
No. There was no time to indulge in grief. Not now. Not while their situation was still so precarious. And while Samyara’s army was still such a threat. And Michael…whatever that bastard was up to…
Tobias continued, “I held an emergency DreamWalker meeting with Belle and Aaban, the chief of the Saudi community. We have agreed that it is a safer and more strategic move to consolidate.”
“But it also makes us a bigger target, Tobias,” prote
sted Vix.
“We considered that, but it also means we have more resources and we are stronger if we stick together.”
“What about leadership?” Dianne piped up. “Who will be Chief?”
“Once we consolidate, Belle, Aaban and I shall act as a committee.”
“I don’t like it, Tobias,” Vix muttered. “I don’t like it. We have always been a small community. Easier to defend, easier to manage…”
“Like it or not, Vix. These are very different times we are heading into. And they call for different measures. We must be adaptive if we are to survive.”
Vix leaned back in her seat with her arms crossed, but she kept quiet.
“For the moment Marin and Israel simply can’t be moved,” said Tobias. “On top of that, neither Adere nor Ana are in the best position to be relocated. I will send on some of the uninjured Aradale Seraphim to our various safehouses. I don’t like separating us, but we have no choice at the moment until we can find a location for our new community. We have imposed on Mason’s hospitality long enough.”
Tobias was met with various nods around the room.
“Vix, can I count on you to lead a team to start scouting for a new community? One that will take our increased size. Take some of the other warriors of Aradale. Those from Florence who want to help are already on their way here.”
Vix uncrossed her arms and sat up straighter in her chair. She nodded. “Of course, Tobias. I will do all I can.”
Warmth radiated off Tobias’s smile. “I knew I could count on you.”
Vix appeared to have been placated through being assigned this important task. Jordan hid a smile. Tobias was always a smart one. That’s why he had been Aradale Chief, unchallenged, for so long.
Tobias turned to Alyx. “What did you find out about the Threads of Dark?”
“It exists,” Alyx said. “And it contains the knowledge of demon-poisons. Unfortunately it is located within a chamber underneath Urielos. I need the help of an Animale and a familia or two to do some reconnaissance work.”
