Elementis 1: The Heir to the Stone (17 page)

"Thanks Cortex," said Goldheart.

Cortex pulled alongside and looked over, "You owe me one!" he said.

"I'll knock it off the fifty you owe me," Goldheart returned.

They flew back into formation with Spectrum and Menace, while Jonas was rolling sideways and being taken for a ride by a fighter that he couldn't get close to.

"Spider, we’re stronger as a unit, fall back in. That’s an order!" said Spectrum.

"I’ve almost got him!"

Spectrum gritted his teeth and cut Jonas from the comms link, "I’m going after him."

Spectrum broke away from the group as two hidden fighters dived down through cloud cover and flew in behind him. The look in his eyes said he should never have left the pack. He waved up and down, screwballing through the sky. He couldn't shake them.

"I need help out here!" Spectrum radioed to the others.

Two enemy fighters flew circles around Cortex, Goldheart and Menace.

"No can do Spec. We’re all over the place, these drones are good." said Cortex, as he looked left and right behind him trying to catch a glimpse of the fighters.

Jonas responded to the call. "On my way."

Jonas left the fighter that he couldn't manage to break and nose-dived down from his high position at speed. The two fighters on Spectrum's tail flashed red into Jonas's target sights. He pulled the trigger for his cannons. The lasers flew close but right past the wings of the enemy craft. A shadow-walker struck Spectrum's fighter with a hit to his boosters. His ship smoked and fell, spinning from the sky. Spectrum popped his hatch and ejected out of the game. A buzzer sounded in their cockpits for the end of the exercise and the fighters pulled up, retiring home to the academy.

A row of red-hot boosters cooled down in the landing bay. Jonas removed his Spider helmet, waiting for the hydraulic pistons to release the pilot's hatch, and he climbed down a side ladder wheeled across by one of the junior Guard.

Spectrum stormed over to Jonas straight out of the recovery carrier that had just landed, "Are you crazy? Why can't you follow orders?" he scolded.

"Hey, let's not forget who you're here to protect!" Jonas argued, having had enough of his protectors not being on his side.

"I don't care who you think you are. When my men's lives are at stake you follow orders!"

Jonas moved closer to Spectrum. "I shot down seven fighters out there. I did my best."

Dog-Star appeared behind Jonas and Spectrum. "Stand down, Spectrum," he rumbled, stopping him from saying anything further.

Spectrum moved back from Jonas and stood to attention. Dog-Star shot a look at both of them, his eyes sending them a sense of disappointment at the immaturity of their falling out.

"The game was supposed to demonstrate teamwork, Jonas, not individual performance. Line-up!" he ordered, jolting his head towards Menace, Cortex and Goldheart, who stood ready to hear the results. Jonas and Spectrum rushed across to join the line.

Dog-Star turned and walked in front of Cortex. "Well done, Lucas, five points."

He moved in front of Menace. "Excellent team skills Menace, three points."

Then on to Goldheart. "One point, Goldheart, not too far behind Menace on this occasion."

Dog-Star took a couple of paces back. "The final result—Lucas, eight points, Goldheart, six points, Menace and Spectrum on five, with Jonas last on three points," he said, prolonging his eye contact with Jonas.

"We’ll need to work on a few things, and maybe one day you'll actually be ready to fight the dydrid air force. Dismissed!" said Dog-Star, yielding a salute from the protectors.

Jonas rushed off. The feeling of loneliness that he knew all too well crept back into the depths of his throat.

Twain walked onto the landing deck. Jonas rushed straight past him. "Where are you off to?" Twain said. Jonas didn't stop to talk; he kept on pacing past.

Scurrying along, Twain chased after Jonas. "Jonas, so what! You lost!?" he said, thinking Jonas was taking losing a little worse than he'd expected.

Jonas stopped. "It’s not the losing, Twain," he said.

He turned back to face him, "I thought I was doing the right thing, being here, doing this! But I don’t care about being a prince, or being the best at following and giving orders. I don’t care for any of it!"

Twain looked at Jonas with a seriousness on his face that Jonas had never seen from the small boy before. "Well that’s just it! They do care! They’ve spent their entire lives listening to the stories of war, living with the deaths of their families and learning discipline and following every order they get without question."

It didn't matter what Twain told him, Jonas was boiling up inside. "Why doesn’t everyone just do what they want then, if everyone’s got such a problem with it. Don’t take it out on me just because I’m different."

"It scares them, Jonas. You will be their leader. You will protect them from every danger that we face. They need you to take it seriously. They need to trust you," said Twain.

Jonas dropped his head. A look of sadness fell across his face. He slid off his silver crown, holding it in front of him. "How did this happen, Twain? Life was so much easier when I had nothing."

"You’ve never had nothing, Jonas," Twain said. "I know little of what your life was like before this, but I’ll bet that you’ve always felt like you were special… as if there was something more inside of you to give. Well you’d better find whatever that is and quick. Otherwise you may one day be responsible for letting every living being in existence suffer and die."

"I do feel it." Jonas said, lifting his head.

"So stop fighting it and let it breathe," Twain pleaded. "Let me tell you something, Jonas. Sometimes we have to do extraordinary things to find what we are looking for. And if those things should seem impossible to find, it does not mean that we should stop looking. More often than not, what you want is right in front of you—you just have to work for it."

"I need some time," Jonas sighed, turning and walking away.

"Let me talk to them," Twain shouted after Jonas, expecting him to turn back and finish the conversation. "Jonas, I’ll talk to them! It’ll all work out!" he shouted again. "It has to work out," he said quietly to himself.

Jonas hung his head as he walked into the long grass at the end of the firing range. Through the back of the towering reeds Jonas squelched across a swampy forest floor. He took no notice of the things around him. He walked straight past the humming wings of hovering birds that suckled water from flowered cups on the surface of a slime-filled pond. He walked on without noticing the trees covered in glowing mosses that sparkled brightly in the murky light. He didn't even look up to the shrieking sounds of families of spikey-skinned creatures swinging on the creaking branches above, blinking with bug eyes as they watched the boy mope his way through the woods. Thoughts of irony seemed to be on his mind a lot lately. It was strange that now he had finally found his purpose in life, Jonas felt more lost than ever. He sought solace for his own mind. He was the only one who could reach inside and become the man that everyone expected. He couldn't imagine how Calyx must have felt the day he ran away from their father. Just like Jonas felt now, he supposed. He had opted to be alone when things had become too much for his heart and mind to deal with. He wished he could speak with him.

After a while of walking aimlessly through the trees with a burdened mind that didn't care where he was going, Jonas came out of the forest and into a grass dancing meadow. He raised his head up, and up further, and more still, until he was leaning backwards peering vertically up to the top of a giant tree in the middle of the meadow. Vines as thick as the width of ten men wrapped around the trees trunk. Jonas put a foot onto the highest hold that he could reach and pulled himself up onto the trunk. He climbed past branch after branch for what seemed like forever until he finally felt like he was far enough away from all of his troubles. He took a seat on a flat, curved branch that supported his back perfectly against the tree. Through the swaying gaps of the leaves Jonas saw the early evening sky closing in across all of Obitrum. He saw the circular academy building perched on the cliffside. Far beyond he saw the Hydar canyon, the waterfall of Arasti and the desert where he had failed to win the respect today that he assumed he would. Jonas realised there and then in his calming thoughts that respect wasn't what he wanted. He wanted peace. That was all that was important and that was all that would put a stop to the madness in this world. He wanted those who made others suffer, just to please their own sick minds, to be gone and to never be seen again. He wanted to face and defeat the Zohr; that was why he had been brought home.

Jonas dipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out Witakker's vial. He didn't have a single feeling on where to start looking within himself to find these Maven powers that he was supposed to have. Pulling out the cork, he thought he may as well start with this. He swallowed a mouthful of the purple juice. It hit his taste buds with something kindred to the taste of a clammy milk. The bitterness vanished as the liquid seeped into the depths of Jonas's body. He breathed in a deep and calming breath, his eyes flashed to silver in a blink. Voices and visions rushed into his mind. Jonas raised his fingers to his temples, capturing a single vision from the thousands that flitted through his thoughts. A darkened room appeared, and he saw the black uniform of a fantom soldier lying down, a viewpoint which he had seen before in the dreams through Calyx's eyes.

The rough and crackled voice of someone's thoughts resonated in Jonas's ear. "Death. This is all I have become. Will it ever stop?" the voice begged.

"Fantom, I see through your eyes. I am Jonas, Prince of Aquilla. What is your name?" Jonas said into the fantom's mind.

The fantom body sat up and walked a few paces to stand in front of a dusty mirror. He wiped away the dust, and a beastly man with furry brown skin and large black-rimmed and solid silver eyes stared through the mirror back into Jonas's mind.

"We cannot speak, the Zohr will listen," the beast said, concerned for his life.

"No one else can hear you my friend," Jonas told him.

"Friend? You will not think so for long. Your kind will soon all be dead," he proclaimed, sending a chill into Jonas's heart.

"My father has sworn that will not happen."

"And my father has sworn that it will. You must all leave, quickly. Save many lives."

Jonas was finally hearing the unobstructed truth. All of the thoughts that flooded Jonas's mind were calls from the trapped souls of captured men who wanted to be free, to be themselves again.

"There are others who feel like you. I hear them too!" Jonas told him.

The beast looked down in sadness, then back into Jonas's eyes. "Our minds are not our own. We grow stronger, not strong enough to resist our father's powers," he said.

"What is your name, fantom?"

The beast's insensitive eyes revealed the pain of the converted dydrid. "We have no names," he said, with all hope lost. "I was once an amepe named Sorc. Help us Jonas, help us."

The vision cut out. "Sorc? Sorc?" Jonas cried out in his mind.

Sorc was gone. Jonas's thoughts turned to the only one who could possibly do anything to help—Calyx. He focused his mind. A vision appeared of the Zohr, his eyes staring back at Jonas as if he knew he was searching his children's minds for answers.

"Calyx!? Brother, do you hear me?" Jonas called out into the void of minds.

His vision blanked to nothing and Jonas's eyes returned to blue. He lost the connection either by the dying effects of Witakker's formula or the control of the Zohr himself, Jonas didn't know which. His thoughts stayed with poor Sorc and the millions of others who had been taken and dydrified. Then his thoughts lead to thinking that every second of the Zohr's life was spent wishing to capture the minds of every last living being until he controlled everything. He wouldn't stop until he had done so; he wouldn't stop until the cythereans were gone. Jonas's mind was exhausted. His eyes closed. He curled up, resting his head on his hands, lying down on the curved branch of the tree and he fell asleep with one final thought—that he would never let the Zohr fulfil his desires.

Chapter XIII

Fear

Not far from the outer walls of Mercron, in a part of the forest where all life had been removed, Valo's light pushed its first rays into the morning sky. The Zohr stood high upon a cylindrical tower of metal that rose up as tall as the trees. A tower constructed in an unnatural clearing where the forest had once flourished with birds and beasts that slept and ate from the wild trees of Andawan. Now all that existed below was a dark field of woodchip, dirt and mud. The Zohr peered down from his vantage point, his eyes glimmered with satisfaction as his fantoms collected on the soils below, moving in a mass exodus from the caves of their dingy dorms hidden in the underground barracks beneath Mercron.

Uncountable numbers of soldiers lined up, row after row. An odd array of forms and sizes, from tall and wide, to the multiple limbed beasts of some that bore no resemblance to the movements of a walking man. But of all of the differences in race and creed hidden beneath the armour of the fantoms' red-fronted helmets and the plated metal uniforms as dark as their souls, all of them shared one thought—to kill the cythereans.

Mutus and Calyx appeared behind a door as it spiralled open. They walked across to stand beside the Zohr at the edge of the platform. Calyx looked down beneath his feet. His eyes trembled at the sight. He felt the coldness of his bones chilling the fleshy remnants in his skin. He gazed up at the Zohr. The Maven stared down at him, his sagging face giving a satanic smile at the hidden terror beneath Calyx's silver eyes. The Zohr looked back out over his army, they stood as stiff as a field of black orchids on a windless day. They waited for words of war.

"Today our enemy will suffer as we have suffered for a thousand years," the Zohr projected, as his voice reached out to every corner of the gathering.