Ultimus Thesaurus: The last Treasure (Era of Change Book 1) (31 page)

“Magic has never existed. The greatest mages, the most talented alchemists and even the shamans and druids of forgotten tribes are nothing more than scholars of a specific field of science. Perhaps they do not understand everything that surrounds them and probably take too many things for granted, but in the end everything they do can be explained and nothing is a mystery.

My research revealed so many secrets of humanity that I sometimes mourn the fact that I have destroyed them. Now I have saved the world from being destroyed by them, but I have also taken the opportunity from it to save itself through them.

You said that you saw how the prince fights and that his power is unrivalled. But remember an important rule for the case that we have to fight him regardless. No enemy is invulnerable. 

Even if his life force does not seem to end, a sword can kill him, poison can weaken him and fire can burn him. This is the science that you have to believe in, no, you need to know that it exists. Not even he can resist these laws,” said Magnus and tried to awake my courage.

But as the door behind the throne opened, not the prince entered the room, but Lucia. She was not hurt and there was no fear in her eyes. In her hand she held a curved sword, a falx. She dragged the curved blade slowly over the stone floor and cracked a deep furrow through it.

“There you are at last, Iago,” she said and began to laugh like crazy.

“What happened to you?” I asked and Lucia slowly approached me.

“Are you afraid of me? Do you think that you no longer know me? Is it because I finally understood what to do? The prince has opened my eyes. Through his power I will see again my father. You can’t possibly imagine what he can do, but I have seen it. This place, this castle, it is only a tiny example. But now he has forced me to decide. Do I want to continue to live in your shadow? Suffer because of your decisions and wither away in despair?

There was a time, even if it has not long passed, which I remember hardly, and in that time I had loved you, Iago. You were the boy who was not afraid of the world, but of the people in it. You had dreams that over the years winked at what you grieved and which have shown me that this world was not as alone, as I always knew it. Now I understand, however, that nothing of all this was real. Your fear is bigger than I had ever expected it to be and it is forcing you to betray all that in which you once believed.

Without a mother without a father, not even any family, how should I still find what is important? At the beginning I have believed that you are what I need and all the others lost value. I wanted you to bring me to the place where all our dreams could be united, but this place is long gone. With every step I grew tired of your closeness, you felt like a dark shadow over me and I tried to go back but it was too late.

The prince now gives me a way to not just go back, but even so much further. This world is under his control and if he wants, then it burns. I can stand by his side and prevent that from ever happening. My father will live again and maybe even the rest of my family. You have always hated your father, forced his death through your own hand and now you are here to end it all. The book is securely stored away and you will not get to see it. Prepare for your doom.”

She wanted to fight me and her eyes were fixed without any fear. This was the will of the dragon, because I saw the same look in the eyes of all these so highly esteemed ancestors whose faces now observed me from the thick glass windows. Lucia swung her blade furiously about and I did not fail to notice that she had learned to handle it. The weapon was enormous and since it was over one meter long, it was difficult for me to escape its reach. More and more my clothes tore apart and with many small cuts the blade sliced through my flesh, until I had left a long track of blood drops on the floor of the hall and had to sink down to my knees.

Lucia stopped her attack, but emotions were no longer known to her, while she ostentatiously sunk the tip of the blade into the ground.

“Do you understand now that I am no longer the same person? I changed just as much as you,” she said and just wanted to draw the blade back from the ground when I grabbed her hand and looked into her eyes.

“I'm sorry, sorry beyond all imagination. I always dreamed to once kneel down before you just so that you can see how much I love you, but those times are gone. I feel the wounds that both of us bear, I understand the agony that I have caused you and that I was too weak to possess morals and decency. If someone is like me and lives only in the books, then you think that you would find the truth about the world at some point, but I quickly understood that the truth is not a simple story.

This blade at your feet is all that is needed to remove me from the narrative of life. A decision like this does not always come easy, but when it comes it is final. I have seen your father, his spirit, and he told me that I had to do everything in my power to stop the prince. Perhaps I am no longer the young Iago and you are no longer the small vulnerable Lucia, but we cannot supress this desire to return to this time. The end is always death and it was the same for my father, your father and our village.

Help me to stop the prince and together we can have a future that is free of hatred,” I said, but she struck my hand aside and grabbed the hilt of the blade.

It took a second, but this was all the time I needed to roll to the side and avoid the swing that would have beheaded me.

“You speak of the future, as if you still had one, but you should be aware that you will never leave this place alive,” she shouted at me, but now Magnus stood behind her and overpowered her with a single strike.

He let loose of the candle stand that he had abused as a weapon and took the blade of Lucia into his hand.

“Why does no one ever notice the old man? We should hurry and find the book before she regains her consciousness, unless you want to end it here and now,” he said and handed me the weapon.

I looked at this twisted sword and saw the drips of my blood, which ran along the serpentine blade and trickled onto the ground next to Lucia. 

Her body appeared very calm and without all this hatred that she bore within herself, she seemed so peaceful. I hated myself for even considering what Magnus had suggested and so I walked past him without a word and entered the inner complex. There were long dark corridors, but there was also something else that guided me, even if I was not able to describe what it was. Quickly and without even looking around, I ran from room to room, used each step and followed each corridor, until I finally arrived where my senses had led me. First I thought it was the blood loss, which I had suffered, but it was not even enough to stop me from running and for that reason it had to be something else whereby this place mesmerized me.

It was a small room in which nothing was found but a table on which a simple candle stood. Magnus ran past me and sat down in the middle of the darkness of the room while I was like spellbound at the outlines of the candle and gazed aboulic into space not knowing what I should do. Magnus inflamed the candle and its weak glow was hardly enough for the shadow to be displaced and so it still prevailed in this room.

“He has captured us. The path that we follow is not real. That what we see is not what we had to see. Consider this area closely and you will understand what I am talking about,” said Magnus and knocked the candle down.

The flame did not burn up the table and the door behind me could not be closed anymore. And even though it should be possible I still could not pass through it and slowly I understood what Magnus meant.

“It is the book. Its power is omnipresent. As long as it is in his possession, we cannot resist him,” said Magnus and the chair on which he sat became a little shabby stool.

The table became rotten and old and the candle transformed to a simple cup made of wood, while the light was dancing untamed and moved to the flames of the torches that had now appeared outside of our room and revealed where we were. The walls turned to iron bars and the ground to cold stone. The prince had caught us in a cage and now there was no way back.

“I told you to wait in that room. Now it will begin. He presents you with one last option to escape from all this,” said Mel who suddenly appeared from the shadows in front of the bars.

“If you bow to him, then he will spare you. Translate the book and surrender your spirit to him, so that he can be convinced of your conviction. One day, only one, then I will return and all the days that follow will be marked by pain or hope. Consider closely what path you wish to follow.”

He disappeared as quickly as he had appeared and now Magnus and I were forced to find a way to destroy the book that bound us.

“There are many things that I need to tell you. I have seen this book before, but far more important is the man who showed it to me. Jasper Lawrence had a request and even though I cannot remember much since I awoke in this field, I still recognized you instantly,” said Magnus and turned the blade on the table.

“Recognized me? Do you want to say that we have met before?”

“I also met your father. The things that Jasper asked of me were numerous, and even if I am not sure that his plan has worked, so I knew already at that time that your life is very special, no matter what Jasper believed.”

“How much do you really know about all this? Why did you not simply tell me the truth?”

“The truth ... it is a word that claimed the life of many and at the end it is still not more than an illusion. The Sun King was not the person who has written this book, but I think that you already know that. Jasper believed at that time that the Sun King had used it to write down the secret of his power, but what I found was much more than the mystery of a single man; it was the legacy of a different species.

Even today I do not understand every word in this book and the connections are in no way understandable for a simple human being, but I understood that there once was a being of very great power. The history as we knew it was no more than a lie and before this world fragmented other beings with other ambitions existed.

But what appalled me even more than to recognize that my belief was a lie, was the fact that there is still a being out there from this old time. The prince was the reason for the fall of the Sun King and he was the reason for the fall of many other kings over the centuries. Jasper told me that he would visit the prince and that his plan would comprise the forfeiture of his own life.

I have promised him to not tell you everything and I will be true to my word. But know one thing, no matter where this path that he will lay out before you may lead, you are not alone.”

“What does it all mean? What exactly is hidden in this book? When we arrived on the island, the prince was searching for something, but it was not this book. He recognized it, he took it, but there was another reason that he was there.”

“It is a disease, the same illness that nearly claimed the life of my son. It is very old, as old as time itself I suppose. The rays of the sun triggered a change in us and with time we passed this change on to our children. Where many centuries ago a handful of people have died, it will soon be hundreds of thousands. There is no cure, no possibility to escape. What the prince wanted was the stone of power; the tool to control the sun itself. You may notice no difference, but in a few years many people will fall ill and most of them will die.”

This must have been the disease, from which Lucia also seemed to suffer. But no matter what Magnus had told me, Lucia was healthy. How could it be that a simple stone would be the downfall of us all?

“But what can we do? Why did Jasper lead me to this place? He must have expected the prince to be superior. And what is it with this ring that he entrusted to me? What is it that you can’t tell me? ,” I replied and it was clear to me that I merely tried to prepare for all that was headed my way.

“Help my son. Promise me that you will do what is necessary to protect him. My task is to endure what lies ahead of me and I was prepared to do it since the day I saw this book for the first time. Promise me.”

“I swear it.”

Whatever it was that he couldn’t tell me, he was ready to sacrifice his life in order to keep it a secret.

The day that had been granted to us went away faster than we could waste any thoughts on it. We knew what we wanted and Magnus was ready to do his part. We never saw the prince in the following days and soon it was clear to us that his injury had to be more serious than we had first thought possible.

It was a slight glimmer of new hope and yet this newfound flame was caught soon in the wind of despair, because Magnus was now already missing from our cell for too long. The servants of the prince were little creatures, that strongly reminded me of the goblins from the fairy tales, but they had no real name.

They all repeated the same words and all their actions seemed confused and uncoordinated and they were everywhere at the same time and made it therefore impossible for me to even think of escaping this place. The torture, which Magnus had undergone, was terrible, because his painful cries echoed through the entire castle, but they were also a sign of his indomitable will.

They would probably not immediately give him access to the real book, to test him and I knew the prince at least well enough to know that he was not one who would trust us even for a second. I saw neither Lucia nor Mel in the many days that I was held prisoner down here and only on the day on which the sorrowful screams ended, a goblin came and opened up my cell.

“Makamaka!” he cried, as they all did and asked me to follow him.

His tiny stature made him look weak, but he was smart enough and fast enough to still pose a threat to me. First I would have to overpower him and flee directionless into the giant castle, but I was instead hoping that he would bring me to the prince. I alone was hardly enough leverage to force Magnus to action and therefore I was not really afraid of what the prince had planned.