Ultimus Thesaurus: The last Treasure (Era of Change Book 1) (36 page)

“Where is your father? Where are the generals? Take the book and follow me!” he cried confused by the sound of the fight and the shouting, which was booming up from the bottom of the stairs.

“It is too late. Take the book and flee! You need to find your father; he must be at the temple of the High Council. Go!” he ordered his grandson, and gave him the book.

The curiosity, which the young prince felt at the sight of all this, was enormous, yet the troops that were already behind him and that he heard battle behind the doors, made it impossible for him to think further about it. His grandfather burst a part of the ceiling with nothing but his gaze and showed his grandson one last time the power of a dragon. He fought proudly against the dwarves that stormed the room, while the prince took to the air, and escaped through the hole in the ceiling. A last look back showed him the cruel image, as he saw how the dwarves used an apparatus to constrain his grandfather, bring him to his knees and decapitate him afterwards. They shouted full of pride and lifted the severed head in the air, but the prince could not return.

Determined to find his father, he dashed ever higher into the air, and he couldn’t fail to notice the gigantic tunnels that were created by the vehicles of the dwarves when they emerged from the deep underground. There were hundreds of them now and they disfigured the once beautiful landscape. A flood of dwarves broke from the inside of the planet and overran the surface of the world. So many dragons were gathered in the sky and fought resolutely against the endless armies of the dwarves that it appeared as if coloured clouds obscured the sun. As the strips on the horizon disappeared, the prince saw the clear sea, and he breathed heavily at the thought of the death of his people.

After only a few hours he finally landed on the island and found his father, sitting in front of the entrance of the temple.

“Father, the dwarves, they have killed grandfather. So many died in the castle, it is a massacre. The book, I have it with me,” slipped it out of the mouth of the prince, who was still quite out of breath from the long and tiring flight.

The prince presented his father the book, and his father then opened it, slowly browsing through it. 

“You were right, my son. A great tactician, not like your father,” he joked, much to the displeasure of his son, who angrily grabbed the shoulders of his father.

“Do you take this all for a joke? You are the last of us who can read this book. Do something, stop them!” he asked his father, but he just closed the book and put it to the side.

“A few words in a book do not change the world. We must do it; you and me. There will come a time when we must negotiate with the dwarves and the white dragons. Not all of us must die.”

“The world in which you live does not exist. The first law of the ancestors tells us: who is strong governs and who governs lives forever. Our place is here and our time is now.”

“My son, our time is over. We have done what we desired, as long as we could. Now begins the time of the dwarves and the white dragons, just as the gods once prophesied.”

“Prophesied? Is that what is in this book? This is all what the gods have left behind? A threat?”

“Not a threat, a warning. They gave us their knowledge, the possibility to develop, but we didn't use it. Our way allowed us to subject everything and to devour, but there can be no stronger force without a weaker. 

Now the tables have turned and the strong became weak and the anger of those who were once weaker makes them stronger than we ever were. This is not the end; it is the beginning of a new era.”

The prince took the book back and rose again to the air.

“Do not abuse the power of this book! It can destroy you,” his father warned him, but he did not listen.

His flight was fast and straight and he wanted nothing more than to return to the castle. He blamed himself for ever fleeing and he hated his father because he believed him to be weak. When he returned to the castle he saw that most of the dwarves had been killed and many of them had fled into the tunnels. Lord Darius stood high up on the highest tower, and he waved immediately when he saw that the prince approached him.

“Finally, I have looked everywhere for you. We have fended off most of them, but I think that they merely regroup. There are countless more of them. Is this the Code of Souls? Where is your father? Can he not help us?”

The prince landed, and opened the book. He saw the chaotic characters and flowing words on the inside and was overwhelmed by its content.

“My father has left us. He prefers to wait on an island. In his opinion we deserve this,” the prince said and heard the sound of the drums from the underground.

All the dwarves now left the surface hastily and went back into the tunnel.

“They surrender. This is an unusual move,” said Darius and cheered.

“I don’t think they are giving up. We should prepare, I am sure that something is about to happen,” said the prince and closed the book.

Only a few minutes later, after the majority of the dragons had gathered in the ancestral hall, the ground under them began to shake. Unrest broke out and many of the dragons ran to the outside, only to discern what the prince had already anticipated. The sun began to move and it came ever closer with each second that passed.

“The machine,” the prince said to himself and he understood now that the stories that he had heard and read had actually been true.

He ordered all dragons back to the castle and decided to do the only thing left to him. The rays of the sun began to burn the surface of the world, and so he opened the book, and transported the castle directly to the centre of the dwarven cities - the planet’s core. At first no one understood what had happened, but as soon as they did, they rushed out and burned the houses of the dwarves from the air. The dwarves could not withstand the sudden onslaught by the dragons, and so they hid away in their cities. First the attacks were successful, but soon it took years before the attacks showed any effect and only after decades could the dragons claim the core for themselves.

Weakened and in the minority most of the dragons remained in the castle and waited for their brothers, but the surface of some regions of the world had been almost completely destroyed. 

The dwarves had designed their machine in such a way that the main impact of the attack was focussed on the dragonhoard to make sure that no dragon survived. 

And actually very few made it and escaped these attacks. A thousand years passed and the dragons conquered the underground for themselves, as the dwarves before them. A new leader had been found and the new king of the dragons, Lowan, knew only one purpose. He wanted to free the remaining dragons of the upper world, which were now kept as slaves by the dwarves, and he wanted to destroy the dwarves once and for all.

It was a sick cycle of history, which would find its end at this point in time. Lowan planned to use the power of the book to obliterate the dwarves with a single strike, but the book had been lost over the last thousand years. The king of the dwarves was now in the possession of the artefact, and thus forced Lowan to start a last war.

The prince entered the Ancestral Hall again after such a long time, and approached the throne on which Lowan sat.

“My king, I bring knowledge of the frontiersmen of the northern tunnels. We have learned that only forty-five battalions are stationed in the capital. A direct attack would certainly be their death. In addition, we were able to locate the book. Our spies have told the frontiersmen that the king is keeping the book in the museum of the southern dwarven castle under lock and key. It is one of five strategically positioned castles in the city, but with this knowledge it is possible to selectively plan our strike.

The technology of the dwarves is controlled by means of a ball in the interior of a massive apparatus on the main square of the city. I was told that the energy it radiates is so immense that it would be impossible to remove the ball by pure violence. Only an engineer of the dwarves would be in a position to do this,” said the prince and sunk down to his knees.

“Arise; after all you are the consultant of the king. You are now a prince of the dragons, Marko. Behave as such,” said the king, and the prince rose.

“More than a thousand years and all we have is the exact position of the book. Its loss has always been the greatest blow against us, and we seem not to recover. Send for the generals, the attack takes place tonight,” called the king through the hall and the faces of those present were shocked.

“Tonight? Is that not a little too early? We need a plan,” said the prince and watched as many hundreds of dragons made ready for the fight.

“Our spies, their spies, I trust no one. I will give you a task and I know you will meet it to my satisfaction. Bring me the book. We take care of the king and his machines, but this book is the most important of all,” he said and the prince was about to leave, when the king continued. “And bring your father to me.”

“My father? How could he be still alive? The storm raged for hundreds of years, I am sure that he died.”

“Trust me, he lives. Bring him to me, and now go!” ordered the king, and the prince made ready for the attack.

Many of his memories were vague and I was not sure whether it was due to the fact that he wanted to fool me, or whether he himself no longer remembered. I only saw a few glimpses of the attack, and the city of the dwarves burned. The beautiful monuments and machines had been the victims of the fire, while the prince left the chaos and disappeared in one of the buildings. Only from here on out my view was clear again, and I saw the father of the prince, sitting on the floor, in company of a human baby.

“So you really are alive. What is this? One of the experiments of the dwarfs?” the prince asked amazed and searched the room with every gaze for the book.

“They are a new type, created from our mistakes, the evidence that we have not completely failed.”

“It seems weak and small. In a fight it would not survive a single day. How do you see such a creature as a success? Tell me how you could survive.”

“The temple is more than the council made you believe. Below it is one of the oldest tombs of the dragon culture. All of our ancestors are buried there. Only a few know about this place.”

“Buried? Do dragons not incinerate in death? Enough of the lies give me the book and come with me,” the prince asked and looked threatening at the now screaming baby.

“You fill his heart with fear, Marko. There will be a time when his kind populates the world, and we will be gone. Our superior power was our destruction, as it was the vast knowledge of the dwarves that sealed their fate. We had too much, but this new species is at the very beginning. Time will tell if they can learn from our mistakes. The world is destroyed, my son. No building of the dragons, no memory of our species is left. Take the book, but I can no longer help you.”

“What are you talking about? What have you done?” roared the prince and his father gave him the book.

“I am not a dragon anymore. This is what I have learned; this is what my proof of loyalty had to be. This book contains the gift of bringing glorious things into this world, but at the same time it will always remain an instrument of destruction. It is the last treasure of the gods, and I want you to take and hide it. Do not allow the hatred of your people to torment you, and get rid of your prejudices. Only a few white dragons lived after the storm and today they are all dead. Only this new type has remained. I call it the born-again.”

The prince was speechless with the deeds of his father, and so he turned away from him.

“Go and hide, as you have always done. If they find that you are still alive, they will seek you,” said the son and the father rose from the ground.

“I am not running away, but you are. What has happened to your music? What happened to your talents? You are hiding who you really are, because you want to be one of them. Can’t you see that all they want is to destroy the world?”

“Father, I wanted to be like you, a legend among the dragons. But you are not the legend that people saw in you. Your weakness in the presence of an enemy, your weak breath, wasted for creatures that are doomed to extinction and yet you possess the iniquity of denying my gift to you. Your life could go on; it could exist beyond this time. These weak creatures are not born for battle, and not even to rule. Therefore they will lose against us, and all of them will fall such as the dwarves did on this very day. Lowan will create new dragons, more powerful than all before him, even more powerful than I am.”

“You have become more powerful than I ever was, and still you know nothing but destruction, it is all that I can see in your heart. They may not be fighters, no rulers, and they may not be as powerful as you, and yet you will one day find your defeat at their hand if you can’t get rid of the hatred in your heart. Without your music, without your spirit, you are just as empty as the book in your hand.”

“Do you think that we need you to use this book? You will never understand what a dragon desires. Survival is all that matters and your born-again will sooner or later understand that. Maybe the time to show them has come now. Both of you could finally learn what it means to stand against a dragon prince,” said the son, and slowly moved towards his father.

His father put the baby back into the crib and looked at it with a smile that he immediately pointed towards his own son, who without hesitation ripped the heart of his father from his chest with his bare hand. The lifeless body of his father was now lying before him and the baby cried franticly as the prince dropped the heart on the floor. He did not look back, because he felt guilty for what he had done, even if he believed that it was fair and that it was correct. The baby he let live, because he did not believe that it once would pose a threat.

Unable to face the remaining dwarves, the dragons returned to the depths while the hard-hit civilization of the dwarfs would hardly survive a further blow. It was a situation of fear on both sides, since only a few hundred dragons and a few thousand dwarfs had survived the fight.