Chapter Twenty Nine–SACRED TABLET OF LIFE

 

 

Dazzling beauty twirled in Ari’s eyes. In spinning darkness, he bore witness to the birth of stars. A flaming desert twister whirled around him, a savage red storm of dancing dust. Ari was not aware of it blasting at his small mortal form. He was lost in the labyrinth of a mind claimed by painful memories.

Omen of fire.

It was the last thought Face and Yu gleaned from Ari’s mind before he plunged into a sphere of resistance so strong that it locked out the strongest of dream prowlers. Telepathic spies could not penetrate the protective sphere – nor could his friends.

Though injured, Yu seized every ounce of stamina she had remaining, lunged, and grabbed Ari’s hand and waist with fanatical fever. She would remain Ari’s staunch defender to her death. The Red Planets swirling winds and the exploding ship sent them blasting outside the unstable pyramid. Yu’s headgear and their anti-gravity suits would be put to the test.

Yu could not follow Ari’s kaleidoscopic thoughts, but she could at least cling to him. Her friend would not escape the binding grasp of his Protector. Instinctually, Yu used full anti-gravity lift, hoping to raise them both above the deranged storm. She knew they were caught in a crosswind from two encounters more violent than any force of nature. They’d had many a brush with Death. Now they were on his battleground, feeling death sparks searing their souls.

Yu did a frantic search of a series of 4-D readouts on her Enviro-Shield: electromagnetic fields maximum, gravitational waves maximum, red shift maximum. The suit could not withstand much more. She knew the ancient runes had been cast. She felt it in her heart. She could not outmaneuver this opponent. She could only hold on for the ride. They were avalanche riders, at the mercy of the beast. Trying to hold Ari while blasting upward through this onslaught was like holding on to the reins of chaos.

Yu struggled to activate Ari’s suit. Without engagement, Ari’s resistance was an anchor downing them both in the raging gauntlet of fuel and might. Yu knew she could never reach the manual switch. She wished she had mastered the art of levitation. She bowed her head with a touch of humility and linked more power to her headgear to Ari’s Enviro-shield. Yu converged and focused for a favorable destiny.

The suits’ gravitons were not a material that could be depleted. The lift of the suit could, however, be overpowered by extreme forces.

Yu strained a visual of a energy sphere surrounding the two of them. When she felt her heart lifted by flickering hope, the two friends flew into the black vacuum of space. They were in a mode of continuous acceleration. As the suits shed the last particles of red dust clinging to them, the two sailed into an aura of silence far beyond the bellowing brute horn of deafening disorder below.

“It worked!” Yu was exhilarated by their escape.

Yu immediately probed her defense matrix. An evil presence would find them an easy target. They could be dealt a fatal blow before they knew what hit them.

“It worked indeed!” Face echoed her words in his mind.

Those three words spoke volumes. Yu knew that Face had already locked on to their location and was already coming to the rescue.

Face spoke with the telepathic link. “I’ll have you safe in the ship’s magnetic web before you can say, ‘berserker bequeathal’”

Yu’s laugh of relief faded as he looked into Ari’s handsome blank face.

 

--

 

Yu was solemn. As she scanned and ministered to Ari, her thought vein was stilled by a meditative calm. “He has entered the arena of the ancients. His mind is lost in a maze of shadows.”

“Never abandon hope,” Face urged.

“I forbid it,” Yu assured him. “I know he is the heart of my Atlantis. I’d never leave him. That would break my Protector’s Pledge, the Oath of Scholars, and my own spirit. He’s undergoing a furious internal assault. I feel his kindred life matrix altering.”

“Only a somatic coma acts like that.”

“There’s no trace of a coma in his system. What else could cause a metamorphosis like this?”

“I suspect it’s something to do with the Sentinels. It’s changing and mutating his life cycle. The only other possibility is that it’s a divine transformation. Something abandoned thousands of years ago.”

Face absolved his friend of her survivor’s guilt. “Clearly that would be out of your hands.”

Yu rejected the only remaining alternative she could conjure up. “We shouldn’t merge with him. We’d be caught up in the same forces and be drained of power. We’d be unable to help him or ourselves.”

“I think you’re right. The same energy flash from the ship’s explosion hit both of you. You haven’t been affected. This must be something more than a biological response.”

Face explained. “We’re missing something. I’ve already reviewed the fatal lore of every known culture to find a cause for this. Impossible though it seems, I’ve even checked the venom of a deadly insect said to cause delayed hallucinations. But it causes fevered convulsions that he hasn’t experienced. I’ve looked at biological, chemical, and metaphysical agents. None are known or rumored to act like this.”

“You’ve chanted the Song of Serenity, given him your Elixir of Energy, and made one Atlantian cure after another. They should form a purging matrix and give his life force strength.”

Yu set off! “We can’t just hope and pray for a miraculous recovery. I can’t stand watching his mind squirm. We must search our memories as closely as the glade at Artan Park. I’ve been through my memory cache repeatedly.”

Face debated his view. “Let’s retrace your steps together. Maybe the synergistic effect of sharing it will give us new insight. I think we already have a clue, but we won’t be able to understand it without a paradigm shift.” Face materialized a SES display. “This is the refined translation of the pictograms.”

“It isn’t safe for us to merge with Ari, but the two of us could join. If we absorb the meaning of these symbols together, maybe we can make more sense of them. Ari seemed changed the minute we entered the chamber of the four suns. It is as though a part of him is buried in that forbidden crypt.”

“We must exhume it,” Face logically concluded.

“I think we’ll have a better chance if we include more of the clan in our merge to interpret the pictograms. They may be able to boost my mnemonic gift and help me enter a memory trance. Please ask some of your clan to join us.”

“We could do that. There is a risk of overloading our matrix as well as the SICs.”

“Yutan’s chameleon spirits are protected by a field of fortitude.”

“SICs are inherently programmed to seek knowledge. I can only hold back my urges to explore when we merge by limiting the length of our union and attenuating my power levels. Short practice sessions enabled me to do that. Inviting in additional SICs with no training in that discipline will increase the risks. They may lay waste the very archive of knowledge we need.”

Yu remained firm. “I know all that. The SICs innocent curiosity may overrun my defenses and penetrate not only my most private thoughts and feelings, but enter the collective unconscious of the Yutan Mind. If they breech the shimmering barrier at its edge, the first thing they will reach is the amulet of unmaking. My mind will warp.”

“You understand that I won’t be able to intervene and stop your self-destruction? I’ll be one with the hordes plundering your ancestral hall of knowledge.”

“I am fully aware of that. I won’t die, but my mind will bend and destroy its own storage matrix.” Yu smiled a serene offering. “You always said I was empty headed, my friend. You’ll finally be right.”

Face saw that Yu was resigned to her fate. “You are serving a noble purpose.”

“At worst, I’ll face the future with you.” Yu alluded to the remnants of her mind that would remain in Face if the other SICs went too far. What would once have been just a pun on Face’s name was now a stronger tribute to their friendship.

“There is an even worse risk,” Face warned.

Yu laughed, still intrepid. The wry smile of a gnome twisted her lips. “What could be worse than losing me?”

“During a merge like this, we will have forgotten time. We may awaken to find Atlantis already gone. We must return Ari to Atlantius within the next 26 hours if we are to keep his promise to Nor.”

Yu clung to reason. “Then let’s not waste any more time. Without a merge though our links, Ari may not awaken at all.”

“I placed an elite cadre of SICs on alert as soon as you mentioned inviting them. They accepted immediately. They understand that yielding to this implosion will mean they will become obsessive destroying the very store of knowledge they seek. I have told them you have a fertile spirit and they must not become lost in the bazaar of wonders within it. They are also aware of Ari’s circumstance”

Yu widened her thought vein, opening herself to invasion by the inquiring SICs. Face's crystal skull softened, a translucent mask becoming permeable. In silent consensus, they focused inward, stretching their arms out, touching finger tips.

The SICs maintained an image of the SES interpretation of the pictographs. As one, they all contemplated it. They realized it was a sacred tablet of life.

The dream cache opened, yielding a discourse.

Earth.

Air.

Fire.

Water.

The circle of life is inscribed in fours

on the tablet of ascension.

As you are now

We once were.

Know the Revelations of the Four Truths.

You will become honored,

Ancestor Spirit Crafter.

One for ascension comes

Liberate past, present, future.

Custodians of the universe,

Sentinels of the past,

Present, and future.

Awakening presence hear us.

You braved

BeastWalkers, DeathGazers, Nightwinds, Nether Void,

Ravenous Scourge, Eater of the Dead,

Flow Mauler, Null Chamber.

Brothers of fire,

Bear a burning shield,

Drive the Chariot of the Sun for the Defender of Law

Sings the Song of Blood.

Infinite time flows unshielded.

Ari appeared in their conjoined mind. Fear said this hypnotic specter was a wraith. Precognition of death took visible form, appearing as Ari’s distant double.

Yu resisted the urge to recognize this haunting apparition. She realized Ari’s spirit was no intruder. This nether shadow was present for a reason. This Ari would join the merge in phantom form. Although it was an omen of pending death, it was not a final decree. Yu melded deeper as more was revealed and interpreted by the SICs.

Gauntlets of chaos

Stop all

Save the Guardian of the future,

The Chosen One,

from treading hallowed ground.

 

--

 

Yu sensed the SICs ready to move deeper into their minds. Her mind was too open to defend itself. Ari’s was more of a challenge yet venerable. The curious SICs would easily break Yu’s vault of knowledge and ransack every remembrance in minutes. The SICs were so compelled by the mysteries of both their minds that they could not comprehend that their will to learn was now a destructive urge. As havoc bent her mind, Yu realized Face was at the forefront of an army of SICs. As they penetrated deeper, Yu felt Face seize hold of her. The skulled crystal was as grim as evil justice.

 

--

 

With naked singularity of purpose, Face broke the hold of the merge. Yu felt as if she had been pulled out of a gravity hole just as it imploded. As she woke to another reality, she saw Face’s reflection in the crystalline metal of the ship’s floor. She realized she was swinging her arms as if it were an ancient weapon.

Face tried to calm her. “Whoa there. Slow down, my friend. That merge was so different. A technological marvel with more power than a Magistrate's scepter.”