Ultimus Thesaurus: The last Treasure (Era of Change Book 1) (20 page)

My plan, as risky as it was, would be the only way to survive the next day. Isaac had agreed to support me and I also asked of him to prolong the administration of his elixir until the last possible moment. Lucia had stared at us together with Tybalt and his priests for hours now, but it seemed almost as if they had no emotions left in them.

Her gaze was empty and there was nothing on her mind, none of the hate that once fought so valiantly against me. All her feelings for me were gone. He had taken her soul and he wanted that I see her suffering. He kept us waiting until dusk fell and then opened the gates of the temple again. We could already see the fire, as it was stirring higher than usual and heard again the drums and the chants of the people.

“A white robe, white hair and a name from ancient times. You are a fitting nemesis indeed, I have to admit. Many have fought against me over the millennia and a few I called opponents. Your time starts now and I hope that you are worthy.

This ritual is very old, perhaps older than I, and the Sun King spent almost his entire life to complete it. This stone in my hand is the result of this work and even if he originally created it in order to destroy me, so I can also use it to my advantage.

The blood of the dragons is like a poison to humanity and vice versa. But this stone allows me to do things against nature and thus create new dragons. We dragons cannot simply reproduce like humans and the ritual to give birth to a new generation was lost in the fires of war. The book with the knowledge of the history of the dragons, the wisdom of the gods and the legacy of my father are lost in time.

Jasper will lead me to it and you all will be my tools,” he said and the warm wind rushing inside from the outside passed him and touched our skin.

He laid his hand upon the head of Lucia and saw me in the eyes while he grabbed her hair and pulled her back up from the ground.

“These people are weak and I have learned a lot in my life. The ability to manipulate others, the intelligence to understand everything and the power to destroy anyone who could stand in my way. All this I have inherited from my people and all of this is also found in humans. You only have to bring it out.

The thoughts of your girlfriend are delightful, because her hate for you makes my control almost superfluous. She would join me if she knew that my research and my knowledge could save her father.”

He let her go and she fell to the ground without any emotion. She was alive, but she couldn’t realize it no more.

“She would never join you. None of us would go that far. These powers that you have are no gift from above; they are nothing more than an expression of weakness. Without this control all would stand against you and this is what you fear. To be alone in the dark for such a long time, it is a feeling which is not foreign to me. You are afraid to lose everything, if you are no longer feared yourself,” I said and made a step up to him, but I stumbled over my own feet.

He just laughed and asked the men to bring us to the outside. Isaac knew what had to be done and so he did what I had asked him to. Not much of his elixir remained, but now that the pain and the risk became too grave, he gave as much as he could spare to Aton and drank the rest himself before the prince could even understand what happened.

“What's going on here?” Marko asked surprised and turned back to us.

“In this world you are powerful, you have talents that each of us fears, but in the world of Thamyris, you are nothing and he is a titan.”

My plan was that the Sun King or even the titan in Thamyris would wake up, because I had the theory that a part of them existed in his mind. But nothing happened at first and the men came ever closer, while Marko was now also waiting for a response.

It took a moment but then the room began to gradually disappear. Pillar after pillar sank down into the ground shrouded in a dim light, which soon swallowed up all of us.

I was alone and starred into a bright nothing. Each second the place changed and from the white nothing a snow-covered ground was created and the sky was filled with a soft blue, only hidden by thin clouds.

It was cold and windy and now I could see it. It was my hometown in a year not too long in the past. I remembered this day as it had been my birthday. The field, on which I wandered around, was the place where I had always felt safe. This was also the place where I first saw Lucia.

Nothing that happened made any sense and yet I thought that Aton was behind it all. The power of the stone allowed him, to intensify wishes and dreams and to let them take real effect. Probably we were still in the temple, which is why I now had to try to contact Aton to help him control this dream. He had to help us to leave the island, while the prince was trapped in his own dreams.

“Here you are. It is time to go home. Your father is already waiting. Hurry up! You should never let people wait,” said a voice that I knew from the distance.

It was our retainer Edgar, but he did not appear to notice that I was much older than I could be at this point in time. And even if I thought that I was able to control the situation, I followed him, in the hope of faster reaching Aton or Isaac this way.

Much of what happened around me was only shown in outlines and only if I concentrated more, I could see a clear picture. This day, my ninth birthday, was one of the less interesting. 

I could not explain why I had stranded here and the considerations became more and more obsolete the closer we came to my families estate.

To see the city, undamaged, the people, happy and alive, it was a refreshing change to all the suffering that we saw on our journey. Many things I realized just now, such as the names of the people that I had killed. Nothing seemed to be important to me anymore, since our journey continued to drive us away from everything that once made our life, up to unknown new shores, which I knew nothing about and which never interested me.

Now the past presented itself to me and so did my father with a gift in his hand.

“Congratulations, my son. I hope that you have been well today. This is a small token of love; I bought it for you in the city. Open it,” he said and embraced me and handed me the small present.

None of these things had ever really happened and I was sure that I have never received a gift from my father. Despite my doubts and the sentiments that confused me, I could not wait to unpack the gift. The curiosity to know what my father gave me, regardless if it was real, was too large to ignore.

When I tore up the gift wrap, I saw a book inside it, blank, and a pen made of gold. I took the pen into my hand, let it slide through my fingers and enjoyed the feeling of the metal on my skin.

“It is not much, but I know how much you wish to be a writer. I wish you all the best and I hope that you will find all the luck in the world and live the happiest of lives,” he said and ran with his fingers through my hair. “Now I must unfortunately go out and speak before the council, but I will be back in time for your celebrations. Your friends are already on the way here; maybe you should change before they arrive. Edgar has prepared your wardrobe in your room.”

He put on his old coat and was even wearing the hat which he always hated so much, partly because it was hideous and on the other hand, because it was I who had given it to him.

All of this was hard for me to bear, because it was exactly what I always wanted. Soon I lost sight of my actual goals and said to myself that I have enough time remaining to enjoy this dream a little longer. In my room not much had changed and yet I noticed the subtle differences. The crate with the gift that I would once give to Lucia was missing and many other things that comforted me in the past were no longer there.

The clothes on my bed were properly arranged and I found pieces which I had never even possessed. Whether this was a different reality or really just a dream of mine was not distinguishable and with every minute it became more unimportant. What wondered me most was the fact that I supposedly had friends who would attend my birthday celebrations. There had never been a birthday for me, with gifts and a celebration, there had only been the days on which I talked with Lucia and dreamt about a world that could have been.

These days were the most important to me and I wondered whether she would also come to my celebration. But rather than to simply wait, I looked further through the room and noticed a large mirror. Only now I noticed that I really was not older than 9 in this dream. Even though I had kept my mind, my body had shrunk as if it had formed back. So I decided to put on the clothes and headed to the house of Lucia's grandparents.

When I arrived I found no house but only an untilled field. Nothing pointed at there ever having been a house, and to my surprise, not even the gift shop, in that Lucia used to work, existed. Even if it wouldn’t be open at this time, the whole building was missing as well.

I decided therefore to ask the inhabitants of the town about Lucia, but nobody had ever heard of a girl by that name and Jasper Lawrence was a just as unknown person. The world in which I existed in this moment seemed to have a price and I was not sure if I was willing to pay it just to continue to stay here. So I walked back to the field on which I had arrived, but even after hours there was no evidence for a way out of this dream.

The house of Isaac and Magnus was too far away and in my current body, it was impossible for me to reach it. But it did not take long for Edgar to arrive on the field again and to call my name.

“Here you are again. Do you want to disappoint your father? Your guests have been waiting for hours on you and your father will return from his speech any moment now.”

Even if I was displeased with his request because I had not desired to stay in this dream even longer, I figured that it made no sense to wait on this field. In the end it was my only way to survive this day and I hoped to awake again in the temple on the next. My actual plan fell apart more and more and thus I put my trust into the talents of my friends. If they would be able to escape this dream faster than me, than they could be able to help me escape too.

Many guests had arrived and most of them were known to me, although I did not know their names. They were glad to see me and over a period of hours the celebration went on without my father. For me it was not a surprising fact, but Edgar was greatly worried because he assured me that my father would always put me first.

As the last guests left the celebration my father finally returned back home and annoyed took off his clothes. Without a word he drank glass after glass of his best bottles and stood in front of the fireplace, into which he now looked for over an hour while I watched him. It was a strange feeling to see this man and yet to expect someone else. For me his death hadn’t been a moment in which I felt loss, not even pain, but now in his presence I felt sadness and regret.

“Can I help you?” I asked him albeit not being exactly sure why I even cared.

He put the glass aside and sat down in the armchair beside the fireplace. When he offered me a place to sit I joined him, whereupon he began to tell me about his day. This man tried to improve the world and he was worried that it was not enough what he did. To make things worse he even thought that he failed me because he had missed my celebration. 

It was clear to me that this could not be real and also that my real father was dead, but to see him here, or what he could have been, made me happy, even if only for a moment.

“I know that this is not real. And even if I wish that it would be real, so I must go back into my world,” I said and hoped that it would relieve me.

But my father did not hear what I said and went to close the door of the room. In his eyes I saw that glimmer as was already the case with the prince and my worst fears had been turned to truth.

“My son, do you want to leave me already? Haven’t I done everything for you? Is this not your biggest wish? Everything works and everything is real, believe me. If you wish to remain, it only needs a single word from you,” he said with evermore darker voice and approached me slowly, while his body changed.

“How can you control this dream? Aton had to be more powerful than you.”

“He cannot understand how this works. He is nothing more than a transmitter whose signals I can change arbitrarily. I admit that your plan was of almost masterful nature, but none of you will leave this island. I will give you a little more time to think about what you did today and tomorrow we are going to see if this is a happy dream or a nightmare,” he went on and turned back to my father again, who just sat down next to me and smiled as if nothing had happened.

The powers of the prince were appalling and now that I knew their true scale, I could only doubt our chances. All my thoughts, my fears, desires and dreams were like an open book for him and by releasing Atons powers I had only magnified those of the prince. It was inconceivable what he would be capable of if all the energy of the stone would be unleashed and thus it was now up to me to stop him before that could happen.

Even if he was in control of the dream, Aton was still involved to a large extent, which is why I thought that he could maybe hear me. However, since he had already lost most of his human capabilities before we even arrived on the island, I couldn’t begin to imagine what else he had lost when he drank the elixir.

That is why I first tried to get in contact with Isaac, which initially was difficult. Simply thinking about him or talking in monologue as if he was present, were not enough to disrupt the signal that Aton was sending out. But then I looked at the small golden pen that my father had given me and the book that came with it. I opened it and started to write.

As nothing further happened I first regarded it as pointless, revised my opinion however when words began to appear without me writing anything. Since this book never really existed, it had to be a part of the dream that the prince changed. Therefore I was sure that the book itself was nothing more than a signal that was changed by my words and thus could perhaps affect the dreams of my friends as well. It was difficult to assess whether or not I was wrong, because the words that I found in the book did not follow logical rules. It was mostly a meaningless accumulation, partly the same words again and again, but one of them aroused my interest.