Elementis 1: The Heir to the Stone (4 page)

The prince stepped inside, looking around, admiring the throne room he had been brought into. A view of the forest stretched out beneath a panoramic window, and the buildings of Enterra dominated the distant horizon. The view was stunning but it was the throne which caught most of the boys attention. Black, in-keeping with the rest of the decor of Mercron, the throne was a majestically carved piece of metal, covered in claws and with what appeared to be a red pair of beasts eyes embossed into the back of the seat. Calyx had seen the sigil of the dydrid many times before, but it never looked as hideous as it did on the back of this throne. A grey hand rested upon the arm of the throne, Calyx did not wish to see the rest of the man responsible for the hand. He had only ever read and heard about the leader of the dydrid. It was no use being timid now. He would stand tall, without fear as he had always been taught.

Calyx had almost not noticed the slender figure hidden in a black cape standing beside the throne, resting a hand on one of the thrones claws. The figure turned its head with the arrival of the prince, revealing the profile of a young woman. As she turned fully to Calyx he saw that even in this lacklustre light, her emerald eyes were likely to be the brightest objects in the city of Mercron. Her long dark hair was tied with braids up behind silver ears. Her black leathers were tight to her skin and her skull-handled sword rested coolly above her thigh. Witakker had told Calyx about Princess Willow Antani, the daughter of General Mutus and perhaps the last evidence amongst the dydrid that love had once existed within their race.

Calyx's chains were de-energized. The feeling of his arms no longer digging into his own sides was not even noticed as his blue eyes were naturally drawn to stare into the dark green of Willow's. The Zohr tapped his long finger nails against the arm of his throne, gazing out to the distant city of Enterra. He needed not to turn to see who had entered; Calyx had heard that he could see through every set of eyes that lived under his reign. He could even see through the eyes of those he did not control if he had either formed an unseen bond or if the mind he reached out to was weak enough to let him look inside. The Zohr's mind was a labyrinth of untold powers.

"Let me tell you something, Prince Calyx," he rumbled, with a rugged, slippery voice. "I will have the Elementis back on my arm sooner than your father can imagine."

Calyx broke his stare with the princess and raised his chin higher, looking at a few wisps of the leaders long white hair that flowed down by the side of the throne, "I will see to it that you never have that power!" Calyx pledged.

The Zohr spun his throne around. An awesome sized man with dead-coloured skin looked icily at Calyx with pure silver eyes. His white hair was vast, feeding from the bottom of a silver head-plate which covered his skull from the top of his forehead to the back of his crown. His black and red-trimmed outfit matched his throne perfectly. Calyx realised what a monster he was dealing with when he saw a silver heart beating beneath a see-through chamber in his chest. Only in a world of madness would a man have the desire to change his heart by choice. The Zohr stood and walked closer, towering above the prince.

"No-one can stop me young prince. Not you, not even your father!" the Zohr promised, abandoned of any doubt.

"My father holds the power of the universe in his hands. He is the balance of the evil inside of you and we will stop you!" Calyx assured him.

The Zohr gripped a hand around Calyx's throat, lifting him into the air. The boy scraped at the dead skin holding tight around his neck, managing to dislodge a finger.

"You are stronger than any cytherean I have ever had the displeasure of meeting, but what of your intelligence?" the Zohr wondered, squeezing tighter and peering deep into his eyes.

"Put me down," said Calyx squirming, feeling the pressure caving in on his windpipe.

The Zohr dropped Calyx, looking at the boy with intrigue as he landed with a low crouch and soothed his throat.

"Yes, your mind has been well trained. I cannot see it clearly enough," he mused. "Fortunately, there are other, more inhumane methods of having what I must."

The Zohr nodded towards the fantoms behind Calyx and returned to sitting on his throne. The soldiers re-energized the red glow of the chains, clamping them around the princes body and pulling him away, back towards the swirling doors. Calyx fought the strength of the fantoms, stopping himself from being pulled through the doors. "My father will come for me. You'll regret this!" he shouted, as the fantoms regained control of the boy to drag him away.

The Zohr leant across to Mutus, ignoring the threats of the prince. The general bent down to receive his whispers. "If he does not yield, there is only one thing we can do with the young prince."

Mutus nodded. "Yes, my Zohr."

*

The kings protectors; Hawk, Wingrise, Spirit and Tempo—paced down a narrow corridor. The boot steps of their armour tapped against the cold marble flooring of the palace hallway like a herd of running horses. They burst through heavy wooden doors into the kings state room where Witakker and Uly waited patiently, sitting at the end of a long table which was decorated with a golden-trimmed, burgundy cloth, the traditional colours of the Cytherean Guard.

Hawk spoke as soon as he entered. "It's not good news, Uly," he announced, throwing Calyx's boots onto the table. "Fantom tracks were everywhere!"

Wingrise couldn't hold his tongue. "Those dydrid need a lesson in respect!"

The king stood. "We are at war Wingrise, the capture of the prince will only seek to enrage us, do not let it."

"We can rescue the boy, but it won't be easy," Hawk said, reassuring the father of the kidnapped child as much as he dare without giving false hope.

Witakker remained seated addressing the room with his wisdom. "The dydrid are merciless and their power is unknown. They would kill Calyx long before we got to him."

Hawk leant with both hands onto the table. "I won't let the prince sit and rot in Mercron," he said, fired up with the thought of it.

"No! But I will!" said the king. "Attacking Mercron to rescue Calyx could cause a war far greater than any we have seen."

"You would leave Calyx in the hands of that machine?" blasted Hawk, bringing the reality of that option to be reconsidered.

The king paused. "I am trying to prevent all-out war, Hawk. What I would do is save the life of my son and of as many of my people as possible. We must be patient!"

Witakker looked intensely at Uly. "The prince has a highly trained mind. He is on the cusp of reaching its full capabilities, we would need him if the dydrid came for you, Uly."

Uly spoke as calmly as he could, only the whites of his gaping eyes told of his frustration. "The heir is in the custody of the enemy. Getting him back would mean ruin across our world. What would you have me do?"

"If you wish not to rescue Calyx, only two options remain," Witakker advised. "You use the Elementis and destroy the dydrid."

Uly was disappointed with the suggestion. Witakker of all people knew he could not do that. The king took his seat, a look of defeat steadied across his face. "I swore never to abuse the power as Oreaus did. We are the just protectors of the stone, we are not murderers. Its power will not be yielded this way under my control."

"Then there is only one last option," Witakker riddled.

The king sat in silence, looking across the table to Witakker, waiting for the old man to enlighten him.

"The next in-line must do what we expected of Calyx and he must protect the Elementis."

The king broke his gaze from Witakker's eyes and looked down into nothingness for all of a moment, thinking, hoping that he would never have had to face up to his past. The thought of it wrenched in his stomach, the dreams that plagued his nights flashed through his mind. "Find him," Uly finally said, keeping his head lowered with the depth of his thoughts.

Witakker nodded. "I know exactly where Jonas is," he confirmed.

"Jonas?" Uly said, looking back up towards Witakker. "That's what they call him?"

*

Bubbling acidic liquid hissed down the walls of Jonas's cell. The whole place was dank and infested with scum from the bacteria that crawled on the bed sheets to the fully grown scoundrels that ran riot in the hallways of the most hellish place Jonas had ever seen. Kroyto, the prison planet, was no playground for the weak-hearted. Most of the inmates were imprisoned for the same reasons as Jonas. They had killed either in revenge or murdered in cold blood; it didn't matter which. If you were an easy enough catch for the Red-Badge officers of the starlaw, you would end up somewhere underneath the metal shell of this planet and living under the harsh rules of the bhurka wardens. The bhurka had run Kroyto under private contract since the starlaw's inception, 250 years previously. Hardly a single cell had been renovated since then and Jonas could only wonder at what sort of beasts and how many of them had slept on his bed in all of that time. It didn't make for comfortable thinking on his first night in his new home.

Jonas had been sentenced to life imprisonment by the judges of Indrue. The judges didn't look kindly upon killing men of law, whether or not that lawman was half droid; it didn't matter to them. Killing one lawman was enough to secure your place amongst the most corrupt beings in the local galaxies and Jonas had killed twelve on the night of Hok's death. He would likely never leave this place—not alive anyway.

Jonas slept on his back on a rock-sprung mattress, his body flinched and his head coiled from side to side, pressing his flushing cheeks onto a discoloured pillow as his jaw opened and closed as if he was talking without a sound leaving his mouth. His body stiffened with his hands down by his sides, his head straightened back. His eyes shot open, glistening with silver. He felt awake but his mind knew without doubt that he was still in the deepest of sleeps in his cell on Kroyto. It wasn't the first time he had felt like this, feeling as if his dreams had taken him far away and into the eyes of another life.

Gazing down, Jonas looked upon his bare naked chest. The pendant which he never removed was no longer hanging around his neck. For some reason, he had always wondered why he'd never seen his pendant in his dreams, something that always stuck in his mind once he woke. Each of his limbs were spread across a table and held down by energy-chains locked into a stone floor. A disgusting little creature ravaged his body with a laser-whip, cutting into the skin with each lashing and burning his nerves with every strike. Another creature chuckled, burning his arm with the end of a red-hot poker that melted through his skin as Jonas screamed. The boys blood sizzled on the end of the stick, and the creature laughed harder.

A dead-looking man with eyes as silver as mercury walked into the dream waving the creatures away and stood above him, looking down. The dead-skinned man held his hand over a glass box containing a swishing silver liquid. He plunged his hand into the liquid pulling out a squirming exopede whose hundreds of metal legs dangled from the insects body, running through the air, feeling for something beneath its feet. Two sharp pincers snapped together, anxious to cut into whatever their design had been intended for and a silver throbbing heart with flapping veins and arteries was wrapped in the minibeasts tail.

With this thing in his hand, the grey man tensed his eyes, piercing deep into Jonas's mind. "Join us, Prince Calyx, become one of us!" he urged, with a haunting request.

Jonas's head twisted frantically from side to side. Feeling the warm energy of the chains around his wrists, his body throbbed from the lashings and burns, and he heard this mans voice as if he was awake and being tortured right there in his prison bed.

"No… I won't," Calyx resisted, with Jonas calling out the same in his sleep.

"Yes… You will!" the Zohr assured the boy, as his old grey hands released the leggy beast onto the boys stomach.

Its cold tipped legs slithered up to his chest, its pincers opened and closed with menace, crawling closer and closer to his chest. The exopede raised its pincers into the air, lifting itself with a hind set of legs as it delved hard into the skin, slicing into his breast with a hole the width of a heart. The oversized insect dragged itself inside as a dark glug of burgundy blood flowed from the incision followed by a healthy pulsing heart being pushed up through the surface of the skin, beating and bleeding, spreading out across the boys chest under its own structure less form. The pulses of the heart slowed. The heart stopped, it was lifeless, the boys body drained of all feeling except for the feeling that he was dead. Jonas felt the sadness of death fall upon him. The cruelty of his dream let him lie there without life yet he could still see the visions of the heart and the silver-eyed man through his own mind. His hands curled up into fists. A strength exploded back into his body, a strength he had never felt. Calyx and Jonas roared with the power of the metal blood inside.

Jonas's eyes returned to blue, he shot up in his bed, breathing heavily, sweating and confused. He looked down to his stone pendant, touching his chest beneath it, pressing his hand on top of his heart to make sure. As real as it had felt, it had been a dream. He caught his breath and lay back down to rest, left to wonder how something could feel so real when he knew such nightmarish things were not of any world he had ever heard of.

Chapter IV

Orders

Skylark flew towards a dull-red planet. Out of the windshield of the cytherean ten-berth space carrier the planet grew larger and the passengers grew more curious.

 Spectrum pressed buttons, reading the data graphs and weapon charts that flashed up on the data-screen. "The weapon scans are off the charts," he told the crew. "Any contact, Goldheart?" he said to the big man piloting the ship to his side.

Goldheart fingered a keypad to check for contact once more, "Still no answer, Spec," he confirmed.