Isle of Wysteria: The Monolith Crumbles (64 page)

The walls of the bunkers dissolved into dust, and the soldiers pressed their way inside. Manning the siege cannons inside, were crews of terrified boys wearing uniforms made for adults twice their size. They found old men with no teeth, their grey hairs poking out from beneath their helmets. The Alliance soldiers fired their crossbows, the blunt tips hitting the Stonemasters and knocking them unconscious with their sorcerous charges.

King Orens’shaw stepped to the side, barely avoiding a bayonet thrust aimed at his chest. He grabbed the weapon and leveraged it up, cracking the defender across the face and knocking him to the ground. A rifle shot caught him in the leg, but he rolled away just in time to avoid a mortar round shredding the ground where he had lay. The ground opened up like a great maw and swallowed him whole before snapping shut again and crushing his body.

All across the valley, rocket emplacements were overpowered by skill, force, and sheer grit, the countless acts of individual heroism and steely courage merging together into a great wave sweeping the defenders from one side to the other. Everywhere, the defenders were pushed back, terrified Stonemasters abandoning their gun emplacements and running for the protection of the monolith. Dozens of crossbow bolts hit them in the back, knocking them to the ground.

Seer Alifan fired his crossbow, hitting a pair of fleeing Stonemasters, then stepped over them, only for a blade of earth to rise up beneath him, stabbing him through the leg.

Crying out in pain, he gripped his ruined leg as a defender ran up and swung an axe at his neck. Dropping his weapon, Alifan caught the axe and wrenched it aside, thumping his attacker over the head with the butt of his own weapon. As Alifan reached down to retrieve his bow, a second and third blade of rock rose up, skewering him through the chest.

The rocket fire weakened, and Athel brought the fleet up out of hiding from behind the cliffs. Now the retreat became a route. The Eriia’s cannons fired before the advancing soldiers. Everywhere, green lightning arced over the thick defenses. The trenches filled with unconscious defenders. The Stonemasters, not realizing the Alliance was using non-lethal weapons, fell to their knees and begged for their lives as their stout, short forms were overrun by the advancing warriors.

Duke Relivan flashed his rapier, turning aside a spear thrust, then swept back, knocking the weapon out of the boy’s hand. A mine exploded to one side, shredding his hat to pieces and throwing him against a rocky outcropping. A heartbeat later, a rocket hit the outcropping where he lay, and he was gone.

As the attackers reached the edge of the monolith, they were forced to stop as the ground before them opened up, revealing a deep trench of boiling seawater, the walls of the moat lined with layers of truestone to contain it.

The tip of the monolith opened like a flower, revealing four enormous clusters of rockets that launched up into the black skies. There were so many that they seemed beyond count, the sky filled with their sparks like starlight.

Their crackling trails streaked upwards, then fanned out like an umbrella, hundreds of enormous missiles streaking back down to blanket the valley in death and fire.

Athel jumped forward. “King Buni, drop them right now, or everyone in the valley will be killed!”

The Stonemasters looked up, betrayal on their faces as they realized the Stone Council meant to kill them along with the attackers.

King Buni and his Hazarians howled as one, then released hundreds of bolts of lighting up into the sky. The bright energies arced out like the branches of a tree, striking each of the missiles and vaporizing them before they could detonate.

As the goddess Semas appeared offshore and tore their magic from them, the ashes of the rockets rained down into the valley.

Splattered with his own blood, Proconsul Neriise held his shield close, raising his axe at the Stonemaster before him. The squat little man threw down his weapon, refusing to fight anymore.

Another defender threw down his arms, then another, then another. Neriise lowered his axe in satisfaction, and then fell to the ground, succumbing to his wounds.

Everywhere the Stonemasters tossed their weapons aside and came out, hands raised, their faces twisted in pure disgust at their betrayal.

The attackers bowed their heads in relief. Many covered their faces and wept openly.

The valley grew quiet. The guns stopped firing. The cannon barrels were lowered, sizzling and hissing from the heat. Men and women began binding the surrendered defenders and searching for the wounded that could be saved. The sounds of the injured, suppressed by the carnage, now rang clear. Moans for water, for relief, for aid. Men and women at the edge of death, reached skyward, calling upon loved ones as if they were present, their last words breathless pleas, declarations of love, and parting words too weak to be heard by any but the spirits who bore witness.

Blood was everywhere in all its colors. The ground was thick with it, like mud. The dry and ashen air began to fall. First one drop, then another, then more. The skies wept above them, a gentle rain falling down on the dead and dying.

The command platform landed, and Athel walked through the scene of bitter suffering, her own tears lost in the rain. She limped with the weight of so much death. She clutched her breaking heart, looking at the stony young faces, their lifeless eyes looking up, wondering even after death how things had come to this.

A group of soldiers cheered as they saw her pass. Another group joined in, then another. Soon, the whole valley was cheering her name, taking off their hats and waving them up in the air, striking their banners energetically from side to side, praising her from the depths of their souls. But she felt no joy from it. There was no glory here--no victory in her heart.

The world is a vast frontier,
she thought, quoting her favorite passage from
The Gypsy Path.
It is full of endless beauty and wonder. There is so much room, room for everyone. So, why is it not possible for all people to simply get along, to stay out of each other’s way? Why is peace so elusive, when it should be effortless? Why do we only achieve with death that which should have been earned with understanding?

She stopped before the unblemished black pyramid of the monolith and looked up at it.

Because there are people who cannot be stopped with words. Their ambitions and hatred cannot be turned, cannot be reasoned with, cannot be placated or ignored. They are like a sickness, a plague whose seed lies in the hearts and minds of every living soul. We all have the potential for this evil, when the soil is right for it. Those who are not afflicted with it must either oppose it, excise and cut it out from among us, or be consumed by it.

Athel stumbled, her stitches burning in her chest. The suffering around her was unbearable to behold. She felt saturated by it, as if darkness had been poured into her very soul. Talliun came up alongside her and propped her up. The rain pattering on them was black from the ash.

The fleet of Eriia fanned out, hovering above the entire valley, sending down doctors and supplies to aid the wounded, encircling the monolith from every side.

Andolf Kummeritas came alongside Athel, and she placed her hand on his shoulder once more. As she spoke, the spirits carried her voice.

Her voice.

It was everywhere, as if all living things spoke as one before the giant black stone edifice.

“Stone Council. My name is Athel Forsythia, and I speak for all free peoples of this world, the people you would sacrifice to slake your foul ambitions. You have seen what the shadow mines we have brought can do. At this very moment, every single one of my attack Eriia are equipped with one, ready to drop.”

She paused to let the point sink in.

Talliun leaned in towards Andolf. “I thought we only had the two?”

“Yes, but they don’t know that, do they?” he replied with a wink.

Athel grabbed her aching heart, barely able to stand. “I swear, by the very foundations of Aetria, if you do not stand down and open the gates to the monolith to us in the next sixty seconds, I will cast you and your entire island into the sea!”

* * *

On her throne inside the monolith, Queen Sotol leaned forward in fascination.

“This is an unexpected move for her,” she marveled. “It’s so aggressive. She’s leveraging us with a threat to our very lives. There’s no pretense, no attempt to appear benevolent, just sheer, desperate hostility.”

The other Kabalists looked on in horror. “What are we going to do? Not even the threats and punishments of the gods could stop them.”

Queen Sotol reached out and caressed the black orb that displayed Athel’s exhausted and pale face, her cloudy hazel eyes blinking in the black rain.

“Look at that face,” the Queen cooed. “Do you see that?”

Tigera looked up from the chessboard. “See what?”

“That is the face of a woman who has lost everything. Who has been betrayed by or lost everyone she ever cared about, who has had torn away all that ever had any real meaning to her. That is the face of a woman, who at this very moment, is summoning up every bit of strength she has just to try one last time. Listen to the desperation in her voice. Can you hear it? That is the sound of a truly mighty heart that is so close to shattering completely it is all she can do just to keep breathing.”

Blair looked on, tears forming in his eyes. “You’re right. It is beautiful. We threw everything we had at her, harmed her in every way we could, deeply, intimately, we shredded her soul over and over again, and yet still she stands. I can think of only one thing that would be more beautiful.”

Queen Sotol nodded deliciously. “To watch her heart crumble completely.”

Blair wiped his needle-like eyes and looked at her. “This is more than a mission to you, or a grab for power. It’s personal, isn’t it?”

Queen Sotol leaned back. “Of course it is,” she said darkly. “She’s the one who took Alder away from us.”

Tigera raised an eyebrow at hearing this.

Dev’in watched nervously as the howdahs on the sky whales opened their bomb doors, showing that they meant to do exactly what she had just threatened. “So, what do we do?”

The Queen smiled devilishly.

“Number four? What do we do?!”

She reached out to the chessboard, and touched her king with one finger.

* * *

Athel jumped as loud clacks came from within the monolith. Deep metallic slidings and pings.

The front blossomed open like a flower, and a drawbridge came down, spanning the moat of mewling ocean water below.

All looked on desperately into the darkness within, but could make out no shapes or forms.

Cautiously, Athel and the soldiers crossed the drawbridge towards the darkness beyond. King Dolan of Madaringa lit a torch in anticipation.

As they drew near, the darkness did not part. It remained impervious, like sackcloth.

“Wait,” Athel cautioned. Picking up a pebble, she threw it forward, and it disintegrated into vapor.

“I thought so.”

“What is that?” Talliun asked warily.

“It’s a special kind of void barrier,” Athel warned, rolling up her sleeve. “Only those with a seal can pierce it.”

She reached out her hand, the spiral-shaped brand on her wrist beginning to glow with dark light.

“What are you doing?” Talliun cautioned.

“It’s all right.”

As her hand reached the barrier, it parted like a curtain, and the dark, dripping corridor beyond became visible.

“How did you get that?” Dolan asked suspiciously.

“Long story,” Athel related. “I’ll tell it to you later.”

Carefully, they all stepped inside.

The first thing that hit them was the smell. A rancid gust that hit the front of the nose, followed by a metallic aftertaste in the back of the throat. Even the torchlight fought to breathe here, its flames growing dim. It was musty, like a tomb, yet there was nothing dry about this place. Putrid water dripped along the walls, gathering on the floor in pools of brown and yellow. Everywhere, the stone looked scooped away, as if a giant melon baller had been taken to the place, carving out whatever cabinet or shelf had existed there before.

They turned the corner into a giant empty room, the walls so distant that not even the torchlights could find them. Only the echoed of droplets of water gave an impression of its massive scale.

The only existence came from several tiers of seats like an auditorium. Though large enough, they felt miniscule in this vast place.

Athel and the others approached the seats cautiously, examining the decayed remnants that sat there, their skeletal faces looking down to the center, as if holding court.

“What is this place?” Talliun asked aloud.

“This is the Stone Council,” a voice answered.

A hundred crossbows trained on the source, and a sickly, squat man stepped out from behind a corpse.

“Who are you?”

The man wiped the tears from his face. “My name is Koriar, and I am King to the people of Boeth…or all that is left of them.”

“Where is Queen Sotol? Where is the source of the Rubric on the seas? We must end the spell immediately. That is the whole reason we came here.”

Caring not for the weapons pointed at him, he sat down sadly. “They’re gone.”

“Gone? How can they be gone? We have the entire monolith surrounded; no airship can fly to or from Boeth. They were trapped here.”

Koriar chuckled darkly. “Yes, they were. When you tricked them into powering down the Augilus web, they became desperate, and began liquidating all the navy personnel stationed here. Day and night, they processed their own people. Then, when not even the gods could turn you aside, they panicked, and began liquidating the local population…”

He looked up, grief on his face. “…my people.”

Athel looked around, beginning to panic. “So, where are they now?”

Koriar wiped his face on his sleeve. “We had served them loyally for generations because Ishi told us to, but they just used us like we were nothing. They used us to create enough black shakes to create a portal away from here. They’ve moved their entire operation off this island.”