Ultimus Thesaurus: The last Treasure (Era of Change Book 1) (24 page)

But many things were against us at first because I did not remember where I had originally entered the city from. I was nearly blind that night and for me only a vague drawing of that day remained. So we searched the forest and tried to find the beach on which the wreck was located. Isaac was relatively well again after a few days, but his elixir was now completely depleted. It was the moment at which he did not know what would happen if he did not take it.

The passage back home with a probably not fully functional ship would take too long to survive. Therefore he tried to make a new elixir that this time was perhaps a little easier to manufacture. Because of this I spend most of the time alone in the dark forest, in which the pirates had once tried to kill me. In many nights I had the feeling that the spirit of the old captain haunted me, but every time I reminded myself, that ghosts do not exist.

The experience we had on this trip, the appearance of Jasper, the Sun King and the fact that even after all this time Thamyris still had been alive, made it however very difficult to be convinced by this fact any longer.

But even in the moments in which we all seemed to have lost faith, there were still things that could make us wonder. When I finally found the ship, it was far from a wreck; much more someone had completely repaired it. I was sure that only the captain alone could have done it because I myself had ensured that the two men who had accompanied me lost their lives. But for a man alone to restore an entire ship seemed unlikely even in a place like this. This is why there was only one explanation for me; Lucia had used the book to restore it.

No matter what or who had repaired the ship, he saved us a lot of time with the reconstruction. For Isaac now the question remained as to whether he wanted to try finding a new recipe for his elixir or not. It was not an easy decision that I demanded of him, but in the end he chose the immediate departure, since he himself did not believe to have made real progress. As in most cases, he saw himself not as a scientist, but only as a vessel for his father.

We permitted as many people as possible to travel with us, but there were very many who wanted to stay on the island. They weren’t eager to see the world, after what they had experienced here. I could understand the fear that they felt, but we could not wait and convince them that a life on this island would probably see no improvement, even if they were now free from the reign of terror.

Now they would have new laws and new perspectives, but also unforeseen risks.

We had now finally found the treasure, even if not as devised, and have lost it to an unknown enemy. Nobody knew what to do and our only goal was the gorge of Jik'Zur. The place in which we would find the corpse of Jasper and the key that it held. We needed it to access the knowledge of Magnus, and with every step toward this objective, Isaac lost more hope of ever really being free.

“How could you give him the book? It could have ended here. But now that we can heal my father and I might lose my mind, I don’t see any more hope,” said Isaac and fell down on the cold ground.

None of us had a real idea how to control a ship and even less how to keep it operational, which is why both Isaac as well as I tried to remember what we had seen on our arrival. It was not easy at the beginning and so we often lost our course, or lost a lot of time because we were too slow when we had to adjust the sail.

Under harder conditions we would have probably had no chance of ever returning home, but in the end we succeeded with more luck than judgement. We had been traveling for many weeks and Isaac was convinced at all times that even just one further day without his elixir would mean his death and still he lived. He showed no change or afflictions and so we were glad about what even he was unable to explain.

“What now? Should we simply continue our travel? It will not be easy from here on out,” he made me understand, while he slowly left the ship and walked into the ghost town I once called my home.

“We have enough time. Without the help of your father the prince is not able to decrypt the book and Lucia is still on our side. Why else would she have helped us?”

“I hope that you are right, but what if she had nothing to do with it? What if they use this book to bring the dragons back? I am not a scholar of history and I have seen that probably no one really knows everything, but I am certain that if we should fail, there is no more hope.”

“The Sun King trusted me, in part because he had no other choice but also because he saw that I am the one who can stop the prince. This book is the end of the dragons and not their resurrection. We will leave in two weeks. 

Make the necessary preparations and we meet at the mountain Ignis. From there we are looking for a way into the gorge”.

Isaac was not convinced of it at all, but I trusted that he understood the necessity. Should he decide to be against me, I would have no way to stop the prince. Magnus was our last hope and I was ready to sacrifice the life of Isaac for that of many others. He knew that and he saw it in my eyes. This was the reason that he feared me, but it was also what united us. Lucia had said that we are now all alone and even if she was right about that in a certain way, so I would at the end ensure that it would not stay that way.

When I was younger I read many stories about the brave adventurers who had explored this world and some of them also told of the Gate of Hell. It was a canyon, which was struck deep into the flesh of the earth in ancient times and now it housed the darkest creatures of this planet. It is said that on the other side of the gorge there is an entirely different world waiting for all of us, but that it was still not discovered and so we began another journey to change the ways of this world.

The king of Jimosien was not a just ruler, as well as all his predecessors, but in times like these, in which a ruler was no longer needed, or even still recognized as such, there were no rules or laws anymore. The bodies of the dead which were thrown down into this ravine had polluted the soil and so Isaac and I expected illness and decay at the bottom.

We were well prepared, but as it is with all things that are expected they are never quite what you envisioned them to be. Only a handful of people had dared a trip like this and therefore no easy way down existed. Everyone avoided the proximity of the gorge and so Isaac decided to fly down.

He used every day of these two weeks to build a hot-air balloon that could transport us safely, but as always he started to underestimate himself and talked crazy, as I exited from the carriage and saw him in the front garden working on his project.

“Incomprehensible. I have always wanted to just once fly in a balloon like this,” I said, but the annoyance of Isaac grew and reduced my joy.

“If only it would fly! I simply can't do it, Jacob. This journey, my last trip, how can it be this? All of this is pure madness. Maybe there is another way to heal my father,” he replied, but he knew my opinion on this topic already.

“Jasper sought his whole life for a solution and you think that we can find something better? I think that you just need a little more time. As long as we are ready in a week, it should be enough. There are other ways down this ravine, but I trust you, to find the best one. This balloon will fly!”

Sadly my confidence did however not inflame the necessary sparks, which is why we remained many more days at the same location. It was the most important part of the plan that we could safely land in the gorge, where the corpse of Jasper was waiting for us. A walk down there in the dark desert would be too dangerous and unpredictable. However, it no longer made a difference, since all the calculations I made had already been against us since the beginning of this journey and still we triumphed, at least in my opinion.

“Why do I keep failing again and again in the face of challenge? Is this just showing me that the end of my life is fair? Maybe I don’t want this balloon to fly,” said Isaac full of despair and grief in expectation of his death.

“Do not have so many concerns. No one would believe to safely survive a journey like this. Even I do not believe so. But what use is it to us if we repeatedly assume the worst? Do you not also think that it makes more sense to believe that we are successful? We both are weak, but together we can make a difference. 

Let us heal your father and also save you. No one has to die on this trip,” I said and tried to encourage him, but the success did not become apparent.

Only when it got dark and the work on the balloon became more and more of an ordeal would Isaac put down his tools and sit down next to me on one of the old rotten chairs in front of the estate of his family. 

The weakness of the candle’s flame was everything that bestowed us with light, as the moon was completely blocked by the high volcano behind us.

“This is all the legacy of my family. If I fail it ends. My survival without the elixir, perhaps it was the death of my father. I think that I do not want to know, whether it was I who killed him. In the end I could always justify my deeds on the basis that nobody except me ever really had been harmed, but my father suffers the same way under this connection as I do. He may not be able to tell us, but if he is still alive, then every fibre of his existence screams for liberation. 

But this wish is also mine. So what is now fair? Should I die just because my mistake burdens me? Or should I use my own father as a sacrifice? This is a decision that no man can take. It is an unfair world, Jacob. We both have lost a lot and we can gain nothing more.”

I leaned back and looked at the light that slowly but surely disappeared when the candle went out. Isaac set another one onto the table and as the hiss of the matchstick drove the shadows away, there soon burned a new candle and illuminated the night for us.

“This candle, which just went out, shares our fate. It knows only one way, only one purpose and only one benefit. But what happens if it is no more? There will be a new one in its place. I believe that there is no end, at least not for a very long time yet. If we reach this gorge we will find what we are looking for and at the end of this path we will find where we belong. Should you die, to save your father? No, I think not. But I do not believe your father should die. This journey will remove the decision that we are too weak to make. And just as this candle it will end, only to begin anew.”

Even if I knew that it was a false hope that I offered Isaac, so he also knew that it was the only thing that remained to us and so he took it and joined me, as I observed the new candle, until it too would lose its light.

The next morning I woke up late and it was no wonder that Isaac had already continued his work on the balloon. Crazily he ran around the basket and threw around with every tool, while he roared and stomped with his feet on the ground.

“What did happen now?” I asked him still half-asleep and slowly went near the balloon.

“It flies at last. But unfortunately not long enough,” answered Isaac and threw himself exhausted on the floor.

While he was lying there, I looked at the finished balloon and noticed that the engine was only cobbled together from all kinds of scrap that Isaac had found. Since we had little time and even less money at our disposal, it was reasonable to expect that the results would only be met limited to an extent that corresponded to what we expected and what we could pay for.

“And what if we start from the top of the mountain? Could we then reach the gorge?” I suggested and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.

Still not fully awake I fell almost to the ground, as Isaac suddenly jumped up and hugged me like a lunatic and began to dance. It was strange to see him so energetic, but he reminded me now much more of his father than ever before. This was one of the first moments in which I felt that he too was looking for liberation at the bottom of his heart.

After all these years in which I had hidden behind books, politics and dreams, all the decades in which Isaac walked away from his family, mistakes and the truth, we were now finally both ready to muster the courage to stand against it all. We would be free and finally become the people we always wanted to be.

Humanity has its limits just like the world has the heavens and the earth. And once there were neither heaven nor earth, not even the people. Are the limitations of the human being therefore not real? Just as it once was impossible to run so it was impossible to fly. But today nothing seemed that implausible anymore that anyone would say that impossibility existed. Lucia wanted to break the limits of life and death and Isaac and his father wanted to bend the limits of the human body and its spirit.

But even if the boundaries of the people did not actually exist, so the heavens and the earth still remained real. They were there to help us, to put us in our place and to overcome them was the goal of the prince. Beyond the borders of the human kingdoms was a dangerous world in which rules no longer existed. We had to enter this world to preserve the limits of our own. Only within these natural limits there existed a balance that could save us all.

Maybe it was foolhardiness, or perhaps even courage that drove us to jump from the top of a mountain in a poorly assembled balloon, only to land in a gorge, from which we could perhaps never escape. We had not even discussed what would happen if we found the corpse of Jasper and probably it was because we didn’t even believe that it would happen.

It was a natural reaction because we were aware of the limits that surrounded us, but just as we tried to overcome them, we also had to learn and face new expectations of the inconceivable. Only this way we could achieve what we were looking for and find what we needed.

“I think we should promise each other something. No matter what happens, together we will return. None of us will die and we will do all we can to stop those who threaten our world,” I said and reached out to Isaac with my hand.

He looked at it and hesitated, as he doubted that the truth could be bound by a solemn promise, it would always just stay the truth itself. And yet he accepted.