Izikiel (28 page)

He opened his eyes slowly. It was still dark. Turning over, he looked at the alarm clock next to his bed. It read
5:30AM. Yawning, he closed his eyes and attempted to fall back asleep. Opening his eyes a moment later he checked the clock again. 5:31AM.

Realising that he wasn’t going to get anymore sleep, he pulled the blanket off and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Standing up
, he winced as his bare feet came into contact with the cold floor. Tiptoeing across the room, he reached the rug in the corner.

Looking in the mirror
, he tousled his dishevelled brown hair and rubbed his eyes. Yawning again, he found his slippers. Putting them on, he stepped out into the hall. Walking past the bathroom, he paused.

He hadn’t been inside his sisters’ room since the day
that she had disappeared. At first, he had simply assumed that she’d stayed at a friend’s house or at the University. But after three days, he knew that she wasn’t coming back. That had happened over a year ago.

Pushing the door open
, he looked around. Everything was exactly as it had been the last time that he had been in her room. Her chair was still turned halfway around the way that she had left it on her way out. Several books lay on the bed and a glass of water stood on the nightstand.

Walking over to the window, he opened it. A gust of cold air blew inside making him shiver. Wrapping his sister’s blanket around his shoulders, he leaned out
of the window.

The trees and houses outside cast long shadows as dawn slowly broke over the
street. A fresh scent of flowers and cut grass was carried on the crisp morning breeze. The world came to life outside as he realised something with increasing certainty. First, his mother had disappeared. Now, his sister was gone too.

‘
I’m alone in the world,’ he said.

PART V – ASCENSION

Izikiel was drowning.
The weight of the water pressing in around him was exhausting him as he desperately struggled to break the surface. He could feel the water filling up his lungs. His vision began to darken. A strange calm settled over him as he realised with certainty that he was going to die. He stopped struggling and allowed the water to enter his body unhindered. Closing his eyes, he drifted off. There was nothing more that he could do.

‘Izikiel’

The voice was faint, like someone whispering down a long corridor. Izikiel barely heard it as his thoughts dissolved in the water around him.

‘Izikiel, wake up!’

This time the voice was more insistent as it carried with it a note of urgency. He became vaguely aware of a pair of hands shaking him, bringing him slowly back to consciousness. Coughing, he spat mouthfuls of water out as he rolled onto his side. He realised that he was back on solid land, probably the river bank which he’d fallen off. Opening his eyes, he saw his mother looking down at him. Looking into her large blue eyes, he felt instantly safe despite how close he’d come to drowning.

(
‘Izikiel’)

He recognised the voice. It was the same one
that he had heard on
Vesta
then on
Aurora
and finally in the future
Tellus
. It was the voice within the Eternal Flame, the hollow, distant tone that he associated with the interstellar deity.

(
‘Izikiel, you must fight the darkness. Do not allow it to swallow you. Fight!’)
Izikiel breathed
in deeply. Then he expelled the darkness around him with a single word as he rose to his feet.

‘
Aduro
’

T
he Void Lord fell backwards, the dark veil disintegrating around him. Blue sheets of flame enveloped the creature of the Void. Izikiel became aware of Cassandra’s presence next to him. She was battling with half a dozen void spawn. Her entire body was wreathed in flames as she lashed out at the oily black creatures.

‘Cassandra, are you alright?’ he called out.

The human-form Elemental unleashed a wave of flame outwards from her body, forcing the void spawn back. Turning towards him, she said, ‘Izikiel, thank the Flame that you’re alive. I thought I’d lost you when Caligo Dominus unleashed the dark veil around you.’

‘How do we stop them?’

‘We need to break the temporal flux holding the citadel here,’ Cassandra said. ‘You’ll have to reach into the very fabric of space and time which surrounds the Interstellar Library and sever the temporal flux.’

‘How am I supposed to do
that
?’

‘I don’t know. You’re the disciple, figure it out!’

‘Alright, I’ll try.’

‘Hurry
!’

The note of urgency in the human-form Elemental’s
voice was not lost on him. Opening his mind fully to the Eternal Flame, Izikiel felt the heat escalating within his body. Within moments it felt as if he were walking across burning coals. Still he held on. He knew that to achieve the kind of awareness that he needed, he had to draw upon more of the Eternal Flame’s power than he ever had before. As the heat within him continued to rise, his perception of the world around him began to change.

At first it was subtle as he became aware of the light of the Elemental next to him and the darkness of
the Void creatures surrounding them. He could also sense the people around him, walking, standing and talking throughout the Interstellar Library and the city beyond. Then, as the heat within him reached a higher temperature, all of that melted away. Izikiel found himself staring at an incredible sight.

Streams of glowing energy flowed all around him. They swirled, twisted and entwined to form shapes of all size
s and colours. Surrounding the energy trails were patches of sheer darkness. Izikiel’s mind raced as he perceived the Universe at its most basic level.

Then he saw it
; a thin strand of darkness stretching into the swirling mass of energy that was the planet
Tellus
. Realising this had to be the temporal flux the female true believer had spoken of, Izikiel moved closer. He saw what appeared to be two interconnected strands of dark-matter. Focusing on them, Izikiel suddenly felt something pushing him backwards. A patch of darkness materialised before him. He tried to move forward but again the darkness blocked him and forced him back. Realising that the Void Lord must have recovered and was trying to prevent him from severing the temporal flux, Izikiel focused his concentration. Then he unleashed it with a single word.

‘
Repulso
’

The darkness parted and Izikiel saw the twin strands of dark-matter clearly. Holding up his hands, he channelled the power of the Eternal Flame once more.

‘
Aduro
’

Instead of the blue flame that Izikiel was used to seeing, his altered p
erception showed him waves of glowing energy cascading out from his outstretched hands. They ripped into the twin strands of dark-matter, shredding them to pieces. As they fell away into the depths of space, the energy surrounding the darkness within the planet glowed brighter. Then it swallowed the darkness and Izikiel returned to normal.

Cassandra
stood with her hands poised as if she were about to lash out at something. The Interstellar Library’s inner vault looked the same as it had when they had first entered. Of the Void Lord and his minions there was no trace. Izikiel couldn’t even detect the faintest hint of their presence.

Cassandra slowly bowed.

‘Disciple’

He smiled at her. Then he
remembered the female Guardian. Running over towards the two support columns, he knelt next to her prone body. Turning her over, he pulled back in surprise.

‘What in the name of the Flame?’

Gone was the old woman with the silver hair. In her place was a young woman with flowing black hair and flawlessly youthful skin.

‘That’s new,’ Cassandra said.

‘What happened to her?’ Izikiel asked.

‘When you severed the temporal flux created by the Void Lords you must have restored her to her own time period.’

‘That’s incredible. Wait, she’s not breathing.’

Moving his hands across her
neck, he could feel no pulse. He placed his hand on her forehead. With a blinding flash of light, he channelled the healing vapour into her body. Sitting back, he watched as she stirred. Slowly, she sat up and looked around the inner vault. Finally, her green eyes came to rest on him. Then she frowned.

‘What took you so long?’
she asked.

It took
Jenevieve, the female Guardian, a few moments to bring their companions into the present. Izikiel marvelled at her ability to control time. If he weren’t able to perceive the effects of the Eternal Flame’s power then it would have seemed as if Te’Anne, Xavier, Jonas, Vorn and the little girl simply materialised out of thin air. But he was beginning to understand the energy manipulations required to affect time travel. He also knew the words now. There was only one that he was still unsure of.

‘
Numquam
’

‘Excuse me?’
Izikiel asked, startled.

The female
Guardian smiled at him.

‘You were wondering what the word for the present was. It’s
numquam
. It translates roughly as
no time
, which makes sense if you think about it for a moment.’

‘Thanks, I...’ Izikiel began but stopped when he realised what she had just said. Staring at her
, he asked, ‘You can read people’s thoughts?’

Jenevieve
shook her head.

‘
No, of course not.’

‘Well that’s a relief, for a moment there I thought
-’

‘Only yours
.’

‘
What
?’

‘I’m just messing with you now. It didn’t take a mind reader to figure out what you were thinking. You’re a
disciple; it’s in your nature to be curious about the Eternal Flame and the ancient language.’

Izikiel nodded. He deliberately tried not to think about anything specific given
that he still didn’t fully believe that she was telling him the truth.

‘So
, what did we miss?’ Jonas asked.

‘Oh, not much,’ Cassandra replied in a sweet voice.

‘Really?’

‘Well, apart from a fight to the death with a temporally displaced Void Lord citadel which had landed in the middle of the Interstellar Library,’ Cassandra said. ‘But that’s about it.’

A stunned Jonas turned to Izikiel.

‘Is this true?’

‘Yes’

‘A
re you alright?’ Te’Anne asked.

Putting h
is arms around her, Izikiel nodded.

‘Yes.
You?’

‘
We’re fine. The time shift took us to the future again but only for an instant before we appeared here.’

‘
Glad to hear it,’ Izikiel said. He was about to say something else when he saw a strange expression on Jenevieve’s face. Following her gaze, he saw that the little girl’s features mirrored the female Guardian’s. For a split second, it seemed that the little girl would say something. Then her eyes regained their vapid expression and her head slumped forward.

‘I’ve got a question,’ Vorn asked, looking
around strangely.

‘What is it?’
Izikiel asked.

‘If we’re here and you’re there
, then where’s the ship?’

As one they all turned to look at the female true believer. Her
green eyes sparkled as she looked at them.

‘Ship? Oh, you mean that smouldering pile of junk that you were travelling in?’

‘Yes,’ Vorn replied. ‘Do you know where it is?’

She nodded.

‘Yes. But you’re probably not going to like the answer.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, you remember how the ship was positioned on a landing pad in the past? For some reason the
Tellusian
government decided that particular part of the city would benefit from riverside properties.’

‘What? You mean to tell me
that the ship is on the river?’

The female true believer shook her head.

‘Not unless it can float.’

Vorn’s eyes opened wide for a moment as he realised what she w
as saying.

‘Oh
, that’s just great. So the
Valiant Crusader
is not only heavily damaged but is now at the bottom of the river?’

Jenevieve smiled at him.

‘See? I told you that you wouldn’t like it.’