Hail to the Queen (Sage Trilogy, Book 3) (36 page)

“The Kings and I are going to conference and devise a plan as soon as possible. Once we know what that is, we’ll tell it to you from the castle overseeing the meadow. Please start heading there now. We will have carriages waiting to escort you outside, or you may run there if you wish. Kyran and the Allayans will guide you. If you are hungry, you will be provided food and water in the village. Our home is your home.”

“You heard her,” Zain shouted. “Now head out!”

Catherine and Zain began heading for the Academy as the Langorans filed out past them. Zain sighed and looked down at the Princess at his side.

“You’ve faced this enemy twice now. What do you think are the odds of our survival?”

“Unless new information comes to light,” she said solemnly. “It’s not good.”

“That’s what I thought.”

*
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“The more I read it, the more I can’t believe my eyes,” James said as Arimus nodded, deep in thought.

“This does change everything. What I want to know is how the Sages acquired this knowledge. It must have taken years of research and speculation.”

“But it makes perfect sense!” James said. “Doesn’t it?”

“Can you read it out loud? I want to think about it while I listen.”

“The stones of power are our biggest strength and greatest weakness,” James began reading. “That is the conclusion that I’ve come to based on my research. Before my discovery, it has been thought and widely accepted that the stones of power are unique and diverse in their properties.  The instructions of use are basically the same and listed as follows: to tap into their full potential, there must be a carrier and an user. In order for a Kingdom’s people to participate in their stone’s power, they must have touched it or been blessed by the carrier at birth. This gives Allayans their eidolons, Langorans their mass, Quietus their higher life expectancies and transformations, and the Prattlians their intelligence. The sole mystery being left with Zen-echelon throughout our history. Nevertheless, these are the instructions and accepted procedures, and all of this information has been passed down throughout the five Kingdoms for centuries. I have deduced that this information is false.

“The stones of power are not unique at all, but rather, the same. All five stones have the exact same properties and potential. It is my hypothesis that we have been told they are unique in order to limit our power. Tradition is a concept that can be very gratifying to all those involved, but it can also limit one’s critical thi
nking and acceptance of alternative thought. This is what has happened to us. We believe that the stone of Allay can only produce Sages and eidolons and nothing else, because that is what we’ve been told for generations. That is what has been traditionally accepted, and so this is what we as the children of our ancestors, believed.

“I believe the great King of old who founded the five Kingdoms did this upon his ‘deathbed’ in order to limit the power of his sons. He gave a stone to each and told them what powers can be unlocked from each, knowing that this diversity would ultimately separate them and put the
m at odds against one another. Now why would he do this? I suspect it’s based on the knowledge my colleagues have gained through several trips to Zen-echelon. All have died on their journey, but because of our eidolon’s abilities to process information beyond what is seen, we were able to leave coded messages and information upon our deaths, myself being the one to catalog these messages and compile them for this report. We have deduced that Zen-echelon has only one member living there and he considers himself the King. This King, we believe, is the one of old. The original King, who found the five stones of power as a boy in the beginning.

“In order to work on his endgame, whatever that may be, he needed time to himself, without being watched by countless numbers of citizens and warriors. This is why we believe he somehow faked not only his old age, but his passing, allowing his sons to rule separately and never gain his level
of power, while he now had all the personal time he needed to further his goals.”

“Thorn must have grown tired of his rule in this world,” Arimus interrupted. “Wi
th the stones he could have extended his life over and over by absorbing others but it wasn’t enough. He wants more. To be a god, maybe create worlds of his own someday, but he’s limited in his power, even with the stones. He needed time to figure out a way to accomplish his goals.”

“And if all the stones are the same,” James said. “All he needed was one in his possession. With his extensive knowledge about them, he could just use that while his sons fought against each other and never studied the stones for themselves.”

“But he had five stones…how was he able to pass on the stone of Zen-echelon to himself?”

“You’ve seen Thorn’s manifestations,” James replie
d. “It’s not that far-fetched to think that he probably created his eldest son to receive the stone, or killed the real one right after. Either way, it freed him up to do what he wanted in Zen-echelon.”

“What else does the report say?”

“It says…” James found his place. “We have experimented with this theory before presenting it here. We’ve had Allayans display the growth of a Langoran, able to extend the scythes of a Quietus out of their forearms and so on. We believe that as long as a human being touched any of the stones, they have the ability to perform any of the races’ feats. They are limited only by their mind and self-imposed restrictions.”

“Having the ability to transform as a Quietus and wield the eidolon of a Sage i
s an ability we all really have…incredible,” Arimus said, shaking his head. “It’s just that you were able to do both because you thought of your heritage.”

“No, I don’t think so,” James said. “I think everything’s a lot more complicated than we think, and that our mind is k
eeping more at bay than we realize. Otherwise, why aren’t we all blowing up like Langorans? I believe that our soul, body, mind…it’s all connected and creating a balance. If in our minds, we are Langoran, and we have this massive amount of energy just boiling over, our bodies respond in kind, sort of like anger. Some people completely lose it when they’re enraged while others can somehow hold themselves back. When I turned into a Quietus…I think it was because of the torture. It was so painful that I just wanted to kill, and that desire to kill, awakened the monster within me. Most people don’t reach that point.”

“Kyran has been tortured. I have been wounded.”

“But you are strong of mind,” James said. “You’re able to deal with it. I was just a child that was lashing out. The transformations disappeared once I became a Sage and unleashed my eidolon because I was more mature. I could handle more. They only came again, either out of a need to kill, or because I already knew of the Quietus blood within me. My mind was aware of my ‘Quietus blood’ so my body was able to respond. Think about it. The Kingdoms don’t fight one another often, and when they do, people just die. No one’s tortured. No one suffers for extensive periods of time. Even the Langorans under the shrine in the forest are just held there.”

“True…” Arimus trailed off in thought. “Having this knowledge does open up a lot of possibilities.”

“This is why Chloe was the strongest of us. She wasn’t even close to this level of open-minded thinking, but she was getting there. She talked about taking our souls and forming it into more than just an eidolon or a tool to be used. If I can create a fake dorm room, why can’t I increase my mass like a Langoran or transform like a Quietus?”

“
Thorn found out about this report,” Arimus said. “Maybe there was too much noise being made over it. That’s why the siege happened.”

“I think the Quietus were getting close to this realization as well. You know how they like to test their might, and from
what I saw during my time there, I realized that they are a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for. I think he saw their progress long ago and altered their composition so they could be controlled. So he could instill their voice within them and guide them in another direction. He took both of our people out.”

“This evens out the battlefield,” Arimus smiled. “Once word gets to everyone, we can use the stones properly. In a sense, our collective power will be higher than Thorn’s since he only has one stone at his disposal.”

“Exactly. His fear and deception is what kept us down. That’s all. His manifestations won’t matter if we can create our own to combat his. He had us fooled though. By knowing when to act and leave certain things alone, he nearly destroyed us all.”

“Is there any more in the report?” Arimus asked.

“No…actually, a line just ends abruptly. I think the author was interrupted.”

“Or killed. It’s possible he may have told a few Sages, besides the ones involved in his mission, but it’s likely it was kept mostly to himself. For all we know, Thorn could have had the siege take place as he was in the middle of writing it.”

“Either way, we know now. This changes everything. This will mark the beginning of a new era.”

“Or it won’t,” a voice chuckled from behind them. Beyond the room, outside over the water
were Alexander and Dominic, standing on a suspended platform.

“How did you get here?” James demanded as Alexander smiled wide.

“We followed you, of course. But it seems we were late. We wanted to leave our posts in Languor and get here before anyone else.”

“I take it you two are the cleaning crew?” Arimus asked. Dominic nodded as he stared with wide eyes at James.

“We’re burning this entire place down,” Alexander said casually. “We just came down here to see if there was anything of value beforehand. And look what we found.”

“Where are the spikes?” James asked as Alexander tapped his forehead.

“Disabled,” Alexander said. “I use my head before I enter strange, heavily armed rooms. But all that doesn’t matter. We can’t let you leave here alive. It would be very troublesome for our master.”

“I take it he told you about all this,” Arimus asked Dominic who nodded.

“Most of it,” he said. “Though that just helped in how I approached matters. The power boost was the best thing.”

“Yeah, sorry,” James said. “I
just don’t believe you. That’s probably what Thorn told you to say if anyone found out the truth. You’re probably just channeling your strength like a Quietus while maintaining the speed and precision of a Sage. I’m sure he had you practice.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” Dominic spat as James looked at his hands.

“I am, aren’t I?” James laughed. “Well, that’s the beauty of this knowledge. It puts things in a new perspective. After learning how connected the body and mind really are, I’ve come to a sudden realization. Did you know that there are people that can literally be scared to death? Have a heart attack from too much internal pressure? It’s true, though it’s all psychological. Those people didn’t have to die. So I figure that when we’re told we’ll die immediately when our eidolons are broken, sure it may hurt a lot. I mean, that is a part of you being smashed into bits. I would even say it makes you go unconscious, but as far as death? I think that’s the mind’s doing.”

“You talk too much.”

“If’ I’m still alive, that means my soul is still intact, and if the stones of power are all the same, that means I didn’t lose my Quietus side. It just means I took an internal hit. But you see, Chloe taught me that the soul is a supply of limitless energy, being a spirit. So if I still have a soul, that means…”

James stretched
his arms out and two eidolons emerged at once, both white, both about to explode with raw energy. Crackling and on fire with white hot flames, he glared at his opponents.

“It means I still have all the energy I need.”

“Even more so,” Arimus said as he unsheathed his own eidolon.

“So come at u
s with your pathetic blades,” James smiled confidently. “We now know why Jester could call forth an eidolon and so can Alexander, but one thing I’ve learned long ago that you should remember: forming one doesn’t make you a Sage!”

Dominic began building energy, ready to unleas
h the same attack that leveled the forest earlier, but James saw it coming a mile away. His senses were crisp, his wounds healed now that he knew his Quietus abilities were not taken away from him, and he wasn’t about to let Dominic inflict anymore either. He leapt from the glass floor and stabbed his rival with both white eidolons, slamming them straight into his chest. Dominic let out a cry as they both flew off the platform and down into the water below. Alexander sheathed his eidolon from behind his back, a silver sword with no frills, and steadied his eyes at Arimus.