Elementis 1: The Heir to the Stone (33 page)

*

The Zohr captured images from the minds of the struggling cythereans and sent them into Jonas's eyes. "Your friends will now die or be mine!" he crowed, as the images flashed through Jonas's mind, tormenting his inner sight. He looked across at Oreaus with an emptiness at the cruelty he imposed. Jonas remembered the photograph of a sweet boy which Witakker had shown him back on Skylark. This thing standing in front of him, sending terrible images into his head had used to be a boy that looked as happy and playful as any other child. How did he come to this? Jonas couldn't comprehend how he could destroy a man that had no soul. How could he defeat his mind and his power? Jonas's own strength of mind was reaching its full potential, he could feel the connection of the minds around him, but he didn't know if he could protect himself against another attack from the Elementis without Witakker's formula.

The Zohr held out the Elementis, pointing it at the king and Jonas. "And this time, for you, I will make it quick." he said, with spite weeping from his tongue.

A matter wave floated out from the Elementis, and Jonas knew he was about to die.  He wouldn't have the time to save himself from whatever spell the Zohr had spewed into the air. Jonas grabbed the skulled handle of Willow's sword and threw it spinning into the sky. Uly swished his cloak around and stood in front of Jonas protecting him from the invisible evil that thundered towards them through the air. His back cracked. He stiffened. Cold, grey stone worked itself through every vein and cell in Uly's body. He struggled to speak his last words. He looked at Jonas. "I love you son," he muttered deep into Jonas's heart.

It was the first time anyone had told Jonas they loved him. It was all he'd ever wanted to feel, the love of another but that love was gone as quickly as it was spoken.

"Father!" Jonas screamed. "Willow, help me, you have to choose!" Jonas begged, sheltered beneath the shadow of his father's rock.

With every twist and turn, Skull whispered through the air with a song of sweetness that lifted Willow's spirit and awakened her mind. She watched the handle spin and spiral coming straight towards her. Listening to Jonas's words, she leapt upwards, plucking her sword from the sky, and in one falling pirouette she tore the blade through the outstretched arm of the Zohr. His arm dropped, silver blood poured from his severed arteries. His power was lost, and the shock of the strike stunned his silver eyes into disbelief. Willow dropped her sword, taking the Elementis from the clasp of the gauntlet and throwing the gem across to Jonas, where it skimmed and rolled to land a few strides from the stone back of King Uly.

"Take the stone Jonas. There has only ever been one choice," Willow spoke into his mind.

Jonas ran out, under the fire of the fantoms. He was hit in the arm and stomach. The heat of the blasts stung his skin and maimed his half-metal flesh, but he managed to take the stone and slide back behind the cover of his father. He lay against the statue, screwing his face in agony and doing his best to push the pain aside.

The Zohr grabbed Willow around the throat, crushing her windpipe with his grip. He pierced her eyes with anger. "Die traitor! Die!" he rumbled, squeezing harder as Willow scratched away at his hand, gasping for breath. Mutus watched on as his father killed his daughter in front of him.

Jonas's hands shook from the loss of blood as he pushed the orange pebble into his energy-star. The power completed his body and mind. He saw everything that existed at once rushing through his being. The lights from the stone shone up to the sky and the injuries on his arm and stomach healed over at his first thoughts of curing his pain. Jonas peered around the side of his father. The fantoms fired on, retreating to the woods with the sight of the Elementis lights fading in the sky. The Zohr had a firm grip around Willow's neck, lifting her from the ground. Jonas closed his eyes to send destructive thoughts into Oreaus, but he pulled back, knowing that the Zohr might well take control of his mind with the connection. And Jonas was new to this power, he might destroy things he didn't want to, he might have killed Willow at the same time. She was dying. He had to do something.

During the time that Jonas had these fleeting thoughts, Mutus's anger grew at the sight of his daughter's struggle under the hand of his father. The balance in his mind between his own thoughts and the control of his father's brought him to a place he scarcely knew. His thoughts became his own. He struck a powerful knee into his father's back, pulling at his shoulders, dragging him away from the princess. "No! It is you who will die, Father!" he promised, reaching for his blaster.

The Zohr moved quicker than Mutus. Almost unseen he swung his hand towards his son, wedging his fingers beneath his metal head-plate, and in one decisive movement he tore the metal from his son's brow, bringing Mutus to his knees falling dead to the floor.

The sound of breaking glass brought the Zohr's face to freeze with shock. He looked down, his mind rejected the vision of Willow's sword sticking out from his broken heart chamber.

The Zohr fell to his knees, wrapping his hand around the blade. "This is not my destiny," he whispered, wallowing in his own pity.

The princess pulled her sword out from his body, his head dropped lower to the ground feeling a pain in his heart for the first time since it had turned from blood to carbon. And with one swift slice through the back of his neck, Oreaus's head fell to the ground.

"Sorry, Grandpa!" Willow falsely remorsed, looking into his dead eyes as his head came to a rolling stop at her feet.

Jonas stood, his wounds healed beneath his blast burned uniform. He held his arm into the air, sending a thought wave from the Elementis across the land.

*

Two solid walls of steel closed in on Twain and Lora and thousands of others waiting to die. The conveyor belt dropped countless people over the edge to their doom. To Twain's amazement some of them had even scrambled forward from the back choosing to live as a dydrid, rather than be crushed as a cytherean. Twain put his arms around his mother's waist, and she held his head tight into her side. The light got brighter as they neared the end. Lora shared some quiet tears with the other mothers and fathers who held crying babies and young boys and girls in their own arms.

It was their turn to fall, the way back was full. The walls were closing. Lora looked into the scared eyes of her little boy. "Good-bye, Twain. I love you, son," she told him, squeezing him tight.

Twain smiled up at his mother with trembling lips and eyes that glistened with all the innocence of an angel. Letting go of his mother's waist, they took hold of each other's hands, closed their eyes and stepped out into the air. Falling alongside the people that Twain couldn't save, he felt proud in his final moments as a cytherean that he had done what he could and that he had given everything to save their people. He didn't have much time for any further thought before reaching the surface of the river.

Twain took a quick breath and plunged deep into the liquid, kicking out with his legs to swim away from the people tumbling down above him. As he kicked out through the confusion of hundreds of people in the river, he waited for a pack of exopedes to begin feeding on his body cutting through his chest to tear out his heart and replace it with a metal replica and end his life by filling his veins with silver blood. Twain's face burst up above the surface, gasping for breath. He tasted water on his lips, nothing like the iron complexion of the silver blood that he had expected. Wiping his eyes clear, he spun around, still expecting the exopedes to attack. Beyond the struggling arms of panicked cythereans, Twain watched as the silver liquid upstream turned to fresh water right before his eyes. Lora splashed about, waiting for her body to be ravaged by the exopedes. But there were no exopedes, only soft, scaly fish, flapping about to avoid the mass influx of people into the water.

"We’re okay, Ma! We're okay!" Twain screamed to his mother.

Lora slapped her arms against the water until realising what Twain was shouting. She struggled on, looking around, but the water was as clear as the air. "I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!" She began to laugh.

They swam to each other embracing in the coolness of the water, laughing with happiness. Their laughs were short-lived when Twain noticed that on the side of the river bank some cythereans were no longer a part of their race and that not everyone had made it out alive. Bodies were being dragged out and left to lie beside the river. The people above stopped falling from the edge shortly after Twain and his mother had plunged into the river. The death of Oreaus had freed the minds of every type of dydrid, and as soon as they had come to realise where they were and what they were doing, the fantoms who had moments earlier sent the cythereans to their deaths snapped out of their imprisoned minds. They became themselves again, stopping the machinery in its tracks and sparing the thousands of lives that remained inside, scrambling towards the back of the units.

*

Jonas put a hand on the stone-clad surface of his father's shoulder. He looked into his eyes, which although they were nothing but cold stone looked as kind as Jonas had ever seen them. "Thank you, Father," he whispered, with a loving smile and a broken heart.

Willow stood alone in the middle of the battlefield. She felt alive, like she was breathing for the first time, seeing the world through her own eyes. A blush of colour filled her cheeks as if her metal blood had turned red and a warmth filled her body the like of which she had never felt. She looked around at the battered claws of Mercron, and at her father, taking the cape from around her back and laying it across his body to cover his gruesome end. Her grandfather's body decomposed before her eyes where it lay, sinking to the ground with the age of the subhuman cells that had held the man together for over a thousand years. The dust of his skin and body blew away from his skeleton with the winds that swept across the plain. Willow looked all around her, taking in the sights of the melted souls of men scattered in mounds across the soiled field and she looked at the stone statue of a spread caped king who had died protecting his son to the last. The end was here, Jonas had won the war. She stood still, surrounded by death as the first tear in her life trickled down her cheek.

Jonas appeared from behind his father and he and Willow walked towards each other, stopping face to face. They stood so close that their breath entwined in the air. Willow's green eyes looked somehow gentle, a lighter shade of meadow grass than when she had revealed the beauty she was hiding beneath her hooded cape in the forest the first day Jonas had met her. They stared into each other's eyes. "Do you trust me now?" Willow said.

Jonas wiped a tear away from her cheek. Willow let Skull fall from her hand by her side and their lips touched, feeling a moment of complete freedom that neither had ever felt before. It was a closeness and warmth that they never wanted to leave their hearts. The kiss was surrounded by all of the reminders of an ugly war, and at last the dydrid and the cythereans were one. Peace had returned.

The Tylis pushed its warm air down onto their closed, loving eyelids as it came in above them. Jonas broke from the kiss to see how many pilots and koble fighters had returned from the battle. The fighters were few and the Tylis looked a little less magnificent without the hundred thousand fighters protruding from its hull. The ship set down, lowering its ramps. Menace's free-flowing hair streamed behind her as she ran to Jonas, jumping into him with a hard embrace, laughing, with no words that could do her feelings any justice. Spectrum and Goldheart walked out after her. Lynk, Qotu, Mak and the surviving soldiers of the airq and the Guard all made their way down the ramps to see the end of the war for themselves.

"You did it, Spider!" said Spectrum, grabbing hold of Jonas by his shoulders.

"We all did it, Spectrum!" Jonas said modestly.

Goldheart said nothing. He just looked at Jonas, bowing his head in admiration for everything that the boy had stopped from happening. Goldheart's expression turned serious at a gathering of soldiers that wandered out from the cover of the forest. "Jonas, look out!" he said, stepping in front of him, lifting his nebula-blaster to the fantoms.

"It's okay, Goldheart," Jonas assured him, pushing the big man's weapon down.

Thousands of them kept coming, walking out of the trees, placid and quiet. Moving with purpose and direction, their eyes locked on only Jonas. Every step closer, Jonas could see that not one of the fantoms wore their laser-sleeves that had killed so many of his people. More striking was that all of them had removed their red-faced helmets which had hidden the true beasts inside their uniforms. And for the first time, Jonas was looking into the eyes of the faceless soldiers, the slaves of Oreaus Antani, the slaves that he had saved. Seeing those eyes walk towards him brought nothing less than the deepest sense of purpose to his young heart. Only at that moment did he realise how much he meant to every being of every world. History had been rewritten by the mind of a boy. Life was reborn and hope was fulfilled.

A pair of eyes amongst the refugees that were familiar to Jonas came closest to him. Sorc fell to his knees at Jonas's feet, lowering his head as if Jonas was the highest spirit of the Obe. Every beast, reptilian, humanoid and sub-human fell to the ground with Sorc. Jonas looked behind him to his protectors, almost embarrassed by the gesture. Even more so, now that he was the only man standing. A field of soldiers surrounded him, bowing down in his honor. Jonas looked over to Willow, who smiled up at him from a kneeling curtsy.

"On behalf of every spared life, we thank you, King Jonas," Sorc gruffed, keeping his head bent down.

"Sorc, stand, please," said Jonas.

Sorc rose to his feet. Seeing his silver and black-rimmed eyes this close warmed Jonas inside. He extended his hand, "We owe you our thanks. Anything you need shall be yours," he promised.