The Thrones of Eden 3 (Eden) (19 page)

“Can you push it up or slide it to the side?”

He tried. Nothing happened.

“Then turn it like a dial,” she told him. “Twist it.”

He attempted to turn the cap in a clockwise motion. There was no movement, the point of the pyramid solid. “I think we’re barking up the wrong tree here. It was a nice thought, though.”

“Try moving it the other way, in a counter-clockwise motion.”

John got to his toes, gripped the cap, and attempted to twist the point. At first the cap was immoveable, the lens of the pyramid unyielding—until it gave, but just a little.

John gathered himself. “It moved,” he said, sounding incredulous.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive. It wasn’t much. But it moved.”

“Again,” she said.

John gripped the crystal lens of the pyramid—its cap—and twisted. The muscles in his arms stood out as his face turned crimson with the effort of his labor as the cap began to give, the lens turning easier until it would turn no more.

Everyone stood as idle as statues and waited.

But nothing happened.

Savage’s shoulders then lowered in defeat. “Well, it was a nice—”

Mintaka began to move.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The weights and balances behind the walls moved as they were designed to do. But after 14,000 years structures do weaken and fall prey to greater forces.

Running cracks coursing wide and deep gave way to tremors, the vibrations too much for the aging structure to handle. The walls, the floors, the ceilings, having grown fragile over the millenniums, buckled or collapsed.  

Cracks of running fissures spearheaded their way across the walls and floors. And aged gaps created centuries earlier expanded. Mintaka was beginning to show its age.

As the fires burned in the sub-levels, the smoke became increasingly thick and cloying. It had wended its way through openings and apertures from micro fissures to gaping wounds, the smoke then boiling upward into chambers and suffusing them with deadly toxins.

Beetles and scarabs remained ahead of its embrace, only to be losing the race; the smoke was moving that quickly. 

And as smoke does, it rises.

It always rises.

And it was making its way to the Chamber of the One.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Alyssa grabbed John’s hand and ushered him away from the crystal pyramid where they fell back beyond the model’s border and onto the silica flooring.

The domed ceiling began to give as lines raced across its surface, dividing it, the ceiling no longer correct as a celestial atlas. Pieces of crystal rained down on them. And the walls, at places, threatened to buckle and fold.

The scaled model began to rotate slowly in a clockwise motion, then picked up speed, the pyramids, the crystal landscaping of plush gardens and wealthy communities, began to rise with every turn of the screw.

The model rose, becoming the ceiling of a platform beneath it. The sound of stone grating against stone was loud and constant.

And something began to reveal itself.

The model rested on three columns of black silica, the columns rising from the floor to greater heights with the model now serving as the cap piece. When it stopped rotating Mintaka became still, the subsequent silence almost as terrifying as the tremors.

“Is everyone all right?” asked Demir. He got to his feet and brushed at his uniform as if it had attracted dust and filth, which it hadn’t.

Others got to their feet as well and looked around trying to get a fix of their surroundings, on whether or not the walls and ceiling would hold.

Alyssa slowly made her way to the three pillars that rose from underneath with an outstretched hand, her eyes focusing on the shared symbols adorning each pillar.

₱

It was the symbol for Anu, the Creator of Mankind.

A breath escaped her as she traced her fingers endearingly over the image. 

In the center of the platform was a staircase leading downward.

“This is it,” she said. “This is the gateway that leads to the Chamber of the One.”

“Are you positive about that?” asked Hillary.

She nodded. “This image is the symbol of Anu, the Creator of Mankind . . . It’s the Chamber of God.”

They all looked down into the stairway’s depths, into brewing darkness that seemed to swirl with a life of its own, a maelstrom of intertwining shadows.

“It doesn’t look too inviting,” John commented, leaning forward as far as he could.

“But it’s down there. And it’s very, very close. I can feel it.”

Demir took a quick head count. There were twelve people left out of twenty-two. They had lost nearly half their group in less than six hours. And then he considered something further:
If they find this chamber, then what?
They still had to get out of here, which would be no easy task.

Demir stood at the stairway’s threshold. “I’ll take point,” he said. Forcefully, he barked off orders to his troops in Turkish, something John and Alyssa didn’t understand but quickly got the gist of what he said when they checked and racked their weapons.

The commando then adjusted his shoulder lamp, the beam penetrating deeply as the crystal staircase reflected like diamonds with spangles of iridescent light. 

He took the first step cautiously as if testing it for its capability to hold his weight. When he deemed it passable, he began to descend slowly to the level below with the others following his lead. When they descended deep enough, when the opening was well behind them, they could hear the pillars descend downward into their original position, locking them in with a sound that was final.

There was no way back.

The stairs winded in a spiral formation with the steps and walls glittering like multi-faceted jewels, always sparkling with star-point glitters.

“It’s beautiful,” commented Alyssa.

But nobody made a remark or provided a statement. They simply remained quiet.

The steps were sturdy, the walls solid despite the recent tremors. And when they finally reached the bottom landing their breaths were stolen away by Mintaka’s sheer elegance.

They stood at the mouth of a long hallway with a grand arched doorway at its end. The hallway itself was long and flanked by walls that glittered like diamonds, the same as the walls in the staircase, with faceted sparkles of a high-quality gem. The sparkles simply going off like bursts of light, which in turn generated bursts of energy behind the clear crystal.

“It’s magnificent,” said Alyssa. The popping of the lights reflected off neighboring walls like lights cast from a disco ball, the iridescent hues reflecting as wondrous colors, some so beautiful that they were indescribable.

They were all caught up in the moment.

Above the archway at the opposite end of the hallway was the symbol
₱
,
for Anu. Below that, script.

грэцкай эліністычна
থেকে
й паэзіі і йооду п
থেকে
তালিকার
সমসাময়িক

Πθεύς

рырыцы.∑ыбар
তাসভ্যতার

йооду п
থেকে
эліністычна
থে
паэ
সাম

Here lies the Tomb of the God

Anu

The Creator of Mankind

Behold the Emperor of Eden

Alyssa took a step forward, her eyes lighting up.
To look upon the face of God
, she thought.

John grabbed her and held her back.

She turned to him. “What?”

He gestured to the surrounding area with his hand. “You said this place was built strictly for the high priests who knew every nuance of these pyramids.”

“That’s right.”

“And we’re the trespassers, yes?”

She nodded.

“So do you think for one minute that this place has been engineered for trespassers to walk right into the Chamber of the One?”

It suddenly clicked. Alyssa took second note of the walls, floor and ceiling, pushing aside its beauty to locate deadly triggers. The stretch of the hallway was inviting, perhaps too inviting and an obvious lure. Mintaka was designed to protect the secrets within.

“You’re right,” she said.

Hillary sounded nervous. “You’re right? What do you mean, you’re right?”

“He’s right,” she told him. “We’re at the final stretch and so far Mintaka has fought us all the way. Why would it surrender now? And the answer is: it wouldn’t.”

“So what do we do? We can’t go back.”

“If we can’t go back, then we have no choice but to move forward.”

“Are you insane?”

“If we’re ever to get out of here, then we have to go through Hell to get to Heaven, right? We get to the Chamber of the One, to the chamber of Anu.”

Hillary scanned the floor, the ceilings and walls, sighting nothing, which brought a measure of minimal confidence to his psyche. “Perhaps we broke all the barriers,” he told her. “Perhaps we conquered all the tests that Mintaka had to offer, which is now rewarding us by allowing us to look upon the face of God.”

Yeah. Sure. You keep believing that, Cowboy
.

But he was right, at least to a degree, she considered. She could see or spot nothing of harmful intent. But then again, Mintaka hid its secrets very well.

So what do we do?

Demir seemed to answer for her.

He stood along the edge where the mouth of the stairwell met with the entry of the hallway floor, the stretch seemingly longer than it should be, at least in his eyes, and ordered two of his men to the line. Maroon Berets or not, they hesitated. But Demir was about to lead by example. He, too, stood at the line.

“What are you doing?” asked Alyssa.

Demir pointed to the opposite end of the hallway. “I’m going to the chamber.”

“Just like that?”

“Do you prefer that we stand here for the rest of our lives wondering if there’re triggers or not. And in the meantime starve to death as we consider our options?”

No, I guess not.

Demir called out orders to his team. The men responded by forming a second line. Then he looked at Alyssa with a steady gaze.
This is, after all, why we came.

Lining his team up, Demir raised his hand then let it fall, the action galvanizing his unit to move forward down the corridor.

Behind the line, John reached for Alyssa’s hand and held it tight.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Coils of black smoke worked their way through cracks and crevices, breaching open spaces where there were none before. Laced with noxious fumes that were overwhelmingly lethal, the remaining scarabs lost their battles of flight, the smoke blanketing them, killing them, the beetles dying with their legs and antennae twitching as their systems shut down.

The smoke ventured on, attracted by the lure of oxygen filtering down from above, which fueled it and gave it breath, gave it life.

It was amorphous, its shape always changing, always shifting—giving it the ability to infringe on territories incapable of stopping it.

It had moved up the levels with ease, conquering them, and strove for more.

Then it neared the height of central prominence as it nearly reached the most significant level in all of Mintaka.

It was closing in on the Chamber of the One.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Demir was cautious as the hairs on the back of his neck rose.

All around them pinprick sparks continued to go off in a dazzling display behind the crystal walls that were becoming incredible canvases of living light.

Their steps were even and measured with Demir a few paces ahead, the soldiers a few steps behind. The points of their weapon were faced forward, their shoulder lamps drawing wide, circular beams against the far wall, spotlighting the archaic script.

They were a quarter of the way down the hallway when one of Demir’s teammates stepped on a crystal tile, the tile sinking about an inch, not too deeply, but enough to engage a response from Mintaka. The passageway leading to the staircase closed off as a partition of black silica slid into place. What used to be a passageway behind them was now completely sealed off, the wall becoming a solid mass that offered no chance of retreat.  

And then it began to move forward along the floor like the side of a vise closing in for the pinch. At first its momentum was slow, but it picked up speed by the inches and then by the feet. Eventually it would force everyone onto the hallway floor and into the dangers it offered.

Savage immediately bracketed his hands around his mouth. “Demir!”

“I know! I see it!”

Demir and his team picked up the pace, fully aware that triggers lay in wait. 

The commando to Demir’s right and a few paces behind stepped on another tile.

And the walls flanking them came alive.

A black silica javelin shot out of the wall through a hole no larger than a silver dollar. With the shaft of the lance being so straight and the point so keen, it went right through the soldier as if his flesh had the density of tissue paper. The pike then traveled to the opposite wall without slowing down until it impacted and smashed into minute chips of black silica.

The injured commando looked stunned; his hand coming away from his abdomen coated with blood as he looked at Demir wondering if his mortality had finally come to a quick and brutal end, asking himself if this is what death felt like, as a sweeping chill that eclipsed body and mind.

The soldier’s eyes rolled upward into his head, showing nothing but slivers of white, and then he fell to the floor as a boneless heap.