Elementis 1: The Heir to the Stone (3 page)

Regardless of what went through Calyx's mind, Uly did not set out to upset his son with every word he said. He cared deeply for him, even if he did find difficulty in displaying his affections. The task ahead required a tough exterior, something Uly had spent the last fifteen years explaining to his boy.

Calyx glanced down at some children, laughing and chasing each other in the royal courtyard below. His face became soulless as he watched on. He needed a friend to talk to; he only had his father.

"I had a dream last night," he said, without moving anything but his lips and still not wanting to look at his father. "A friend that I have never even met was killed by a squadron of white and red uniformed soldiers. I watched helplessly as they shot him to the floor in the dark."

The king closed his eyes in disappointment, this was exactly the nonsense he wished to beat out of his son.

"You would do well to live in your own world, Calyx. Controlling the Elementis takes a strong enough mind, but you know we need more from you. If you are not capable of what is expected you must tell me."

"I am capable, Father!"

"When you can control the minds of the dydrid, then you will be capable."

"I need time. I'm trying, Father. It's just…" Calyx lowered his head, there was so much he wished to say but Uly would not want to hear it.

The king set his strong blue eyes firmly onto Calyx. "It is just what?" he asked, perhaps too sharply.

The boy looked up to his father. "It's just, I've never had any fun or any friends. Not really. And I've never had a mother… I wouldn't mind that!" he said, daring to be truthful. "Just for a day!"

"The Zohr grows stronger with every darkening moment—you must always learn and never play," Uly reminded him.

Calyx wrapped his hand around the energy-star on his wrist and stared at its golden clasps that fed deep beneath his skin. He turned, storming away with an angered look on his face that tightened his lips and tensed his eyes. The prince didn't want to be anywhere near his father. He didn't understand. He didn't want to understand.

"Calyx!" the king growled, with a fatherly tone.

Calyx halted on the spot, with a breath of defeatism for not carrying on to leave. He exhaled as calmly as possible, turned back to his father and looked him straight in the eye. "I am always learning and never playing," he said. "But it's never enough, Father, not for you!"

Calyx turned and ran.

Making haste through the long hallways of the palace, he snuck past doorways and security points, careful not to be seen. He'd decided enough was enough, he needed to escape this place, it had all become too much to bear. He hurried, boiling up inside. He leapt out into the palace gardens breathing heavily with a covering of water building in his eyes. He ran along side the base of a high metal and stone wall for some time until he came to the very furthest part of the garden. He stopped at a dead end and with a touch of his hand, a concealed door slid open leading out to the forests of Andawan. He fell through the door, giving his knees to the ground, clutching his head in his hands. The door slid closed behind him and now that there was no one to see his weakness he let the tears stream from his hurt-filled eyes, lifting back his head and straining his jaw wide open to scream into the sky. His breathing calmed but his anger remained deep inside of him. Taking a solid rock firmly in his hand, he got to his feet and threw it against the closed metal door behind him. The rock exploded on impact. Calyx looked at the domes and towers beyond the palace wall with a loathing in his eyes. His stare filled with doubt at thoughts of leaving the palace boundaries. But as his upset subsided with a few steadying breaths his mind became as clear as he had ever known. Calyx turned his back on his home and walked into the forbidden darkness of the forest.

*

Surrounded by piles of junk metal and unfinished gadgets springing with wires, a young boy lay flat on his back firing away with a welding tool at the seal of a hoverbike propped up with metal blocks. Sparks of loose flame fell down from the welding torch adding to the charcoaled dirtiness that painted his adorable face. Twain tried his best to hide his handsomeness beneath the black marks and a pair of goggles which covered almost his entire face and clung delicately to the end of his button nose. His goggle-straps were fully tightened around his head but did nothing except lend a tiny bit of control to his wild hair which he hadn't brushed since it was last cut. As young and small as he was, Twain handled the welding flame with the accuracy of a veteran ship-joiner, his hand holding its course as steadily as an artist stroking oils onto a canvas. Twain's homemade droid, Lynk stood beside a table across the room, picking up and fiddling with bits of metal.

"What is this one my serdar Twain?" Lynk queried, eyeing up a cubed object that he held awkwardly between his semi-dextrous digits.

Lynk had taken a liking to calling his master "serdar". Twain wasn't sure where the word had come from. He had programmed politeness into the droid but not self-thinking. The last thing Twain wanted was for his droid to be left to make his own decisions and go wandering off like a lost child every time he wasn't looking. No, Twain figured Lynk must have picked the term up from some ancient scroll installed in one of his language programs or somewhere similar. All that Lynk was able to relay from his circuitry was that it meant Twain was his master and Twain was more than fine with being a master at just ten years old.

Twain didn't look up to see which part Lynk was questioning in his hands, he was too busy with his welding. He supposed he'd give Lynk the most appropriate answer. "Put it down, Lynk before you vaporize your wiring again!" he said.

"I wish to learn as much as you, if that's possible my serdar?" Lynk said, with a slight squeak in his voice.

"Well, it's not. I haven't made your neural system complex enough. I only need an info-droid; my brain works more than fine for the both of us!" Twain told him.

As Twain stopped speaking a light powered up on the underneath of the hoverbike, and jumped a few inches into the air. The makeshift prop of metal blocks fell away to the floor and the bike buzzed, gently bobbing up and down unaided in mid-air.

"You might be on to something though," Twain realised as he got to his feet. "I would get a lot more done if there were two of me!"

A flash of light zapped from the metal object in Lynk's hands, striking his forehead. Twain removed his charred goggles and watched the smoke pouring out of a black burn mark on Lynk's fried metal head. His eyes had dropped along with his limbs, he began to slump and he fell to a heap on the floor. Twain looked over at the glorified mess of recycled spanners in despair, shaking his head at him.

"Maybe you could use just a few more neurons!" Twain conceded.

Twain's mother carried a tray of sugared drink, vegetables and sliced meats into the den as Twain hurried across to clear a space on the table for her to set the tray down. Lora was a born mother, always caring for Twain's best interests and with a heart so warm that she instantly cared for almost everyone she ever met. Somehow she always managed to see the good in people and hardly an ounce of negativity ever left her tender lips.

"Will you be working into the night again, dear?" she asked, catching a sight of Lynk collapsed on the floor.

"Looks like it, Ma."

Lora ruffled Twain's messy hair. He pushed his head up enjoying the scratching against his skull like an animal who could never reach that part of his head to relieve an itch. Most mothers would have told their sons to get a haircut, but she just smiled at how adorable he looked. She wasn't concerned with such trivial things, what did a haircut matter in the whole scheme of life. She just felt lucky to have Twain with her at home, she knew that he wouldn't be around for that much longer.

"Don't forget to come and give me a kiss good night, I hardly ever see you these days you're working so hard!" Lora said, with a proud smile as she watched her son lifting Lynk beneath his pits onto the work bench and beginning to unscrew the plating from the back of his head. She began to walk away, leaving him to work.

"Okay, Ma," Twain answered with a delayed response, not really paying attention to what his mother had said.

Lora turned back. "Oh, your father holoported, he sends his love."

Twain noshed away on a vegetable as he attended to Lynk's wiring. He stopped, looked up at his mother with a smile. "I know, he always does!" he mumbled with a mouthful. Lora smiled back and left him to work.

*

A whisper from the eyes of the forest travelled through the darkness, telling of a lost soul who wandered alone. The eyes of the forest saw many things and those eyes were not on the same side as Calyx.

The ancient forests of Andawan, in which Calyx freely roamed, were all that stood between good and evil; they were the separating barrier between the cytherean city of Enterra and the dydrid fortress of Mercron. The forests were not a place you would wish to find yourself alone and Calyx was well aware of the dangers that lurked within them, but with the mood that had struck the prince that morning, he just didn't care.

Beneath the shadows of the trees, a squadron of fantoms, the black-armoured soldiers of the dydrid army, marched towards the outer territories of Enterra. General Mutus Antani led the fantoms through the forest. Second in command of the entire race, Mutus was an imposing figure, muscular and strong. Silver veins flowed through his arms like some grand rivers tributaries. His eyes showed no emotion beneath a solid silver sheen, yet his face portrayed a bitter hostility to all who gazed upon it.

Mutus and his unit of fantoms left the shadowy foliage of the forest coming out to the running water of a grass-dressed riverbank. Mutus ordered a wordless halt, holding up a fist as the fantoms froze in silence. Up along the stream he saw what they had come to find. A boy, his boots off, resting his feet in the water, relaxing with his back laid against the soft moss of the ground, without a care in the world.

The squadron prowled up to him as silent as a blade of grass flaps in the wind. The boy slept in Valo's warm rays of light, a smile poised across his fleshy cheeks. Mutus drew his blaster and held it pointing down above his head. The birthmark on his jaw made Calyx instantly recognizable.

His eyes opened, sensing the shadow above him. With a blaster pointed in his face, Calyx leapt up, splashing into the water and swinging around with his blaster drawn. Thirty fantoms energized their guns. Seven retractable laser cannons unfolded from each forearm and aimed an army's worth of weaponry at the boy. Calyx lowered his blaster. Even he stood no chance against this many fantoms. Mutus stared, letting out a low-toned growl of revolt.

Far away, the high commander of the dydrid race watched the capture of Calyx through the eyes of General Mutus. Speaking with a deep, wispy voice into Mutus's mind, he said to the general, "Bring him to Mercron!"

"At once, my Zohr," Mutus returned by thought.

Mutus and Calyx held a hostile stare. The general placed his blaster back into his holster. "Come, my father waits," he snarled.

Two fantoms jumped in and grabbed the boy from the water. Calyx made no struggle.

A hovertank, as black as empty space flew towards Mercron. Onboard, Calyx sat under the watch of Mutus, silently cursing the stupidity and madness of running away that had led him to be taken to the fortress of darkness. He may soon be killed at the hands of the Zohr; death was all that Calyx expected. He filled with regret, wishing he could relive the morning just once more so that he could live for the next three years, tolerating the pain of loneliness and suffering with being told what to do every second of every day until he was the one who would rule the people. But above all of his wishes, he wished that his father was there.

The trail into the city was dark and surrounded by a mist of gloom. The hovertank flew closer and the gloom cleared away as Calyx watched their approach through the tint of a shaded window. And from nowhere they appeared; the beastly towers of Mercron in all of their rotten glory. Five smooth metal towers, shaped as if a beast the size of a moon had ploughed its sharpened claws up through the soil and petrified in shining silver.

The city of Mercron hid many wonders. The cythereans had no spies within those walls. What went on inside the claws was the business of the dydrid alone. The Guard could only police the outside world and the cytherean territories, getting anywhere near to Mercron would usually end in not returning to Enterra. Calyx was the first cytherean to enter the place alive in more than ten generations.

An entrance door broke away from its seal and slid open for the approaching tank. The ship hovered inside and the doors closed behind as the tankship settled to the ground. A ramp unfolded from the rear and with the glowing red of circular energy-chains that dug his arms uncomfortably into his sides, Calyx was dragged from the back of the transport. The sight of thousands of fantoms lining a pathway to an inner door of Mercron flared into Calyx's eyes. Uniformed soldiers, from the size of a man to thirty foot tall, stamped their feet and thumped metal spears hard into the ground, provoking the prince with a thirst for pain raging in their wordless chants. Though Calyx shared half of the blood of the race who intimidated him, he did not understand the anger in every set of eyes that he glanced into. Uly and Witakker had always taught the boy how to defend, not how to hate.

Calyx was forced inside and pulled along to a system of fast-rising platforms. His blood sank to his stomach at the speed with which they lifted, a feeling not helped by the silent death stare from Mutus. Calyx stared back with an expressionless face, hiding his fear as best as he could. Mutus tore away from the platform as it came to rest and Calyx's blood returned to his head. The fantoms pulled Calyx down a dimly lit hallway towards a black metal door that stretched from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. The door opened for Mutus, in a circular motion from the centre, disappearing into the walls.