The desert was blistering hot. I couldn't believe that Mister Nesmith, no Nesbeth, had managed to convince Silas to take me all the way out here. It was dangerous. Automatons still roamed the desert looking for anyone left to kill, without Pandora to guide them. Not to mention the heat.
"It's oddly quiet don't you think?" I asked, not really expecting an answer from the others. We scrambled out of the battle bus, as Silas called it, except for Abryi, who jumped from the roof, unfettered the sand dragon, which scurried away, afraid of Abryi no doubt. Immediately, I was taken aback by the sight before me.
There it stood, just like the day I left it. The sandstone walls, cracked from the heat and the last attack it withstood, rose from the sand like those of a castle, about twenty feet at its shortest with four-story towers where the archers used to defend. No longer. Some of the towers had holes in them, punched through by the automatons, while others lay on the ground before the wall, shattered in pieces. Skeletons and broken automata lay everywhere. Not all the automata stood stories tall. Some of them were the same size as an average human. But, with the gears and bones lying about it was obvious. This town had seen better days.
The gate swung, barely on its hinges, left open when the great exodus occurred. Now, only jackals and we few dared to enter. Not that those gates could hold back anything now. Not since that day.
Slowly, we made our way to the entrance of the town, careful to step around the bones of those not lucky enough to escape with their lives. It had been such a panic to leave that no one had time to bury the dead. The patches of sand where they lay were tinged rust. When we were finished here, I wanted to suggest that they were given proper burials. I doubted Silas would disagree. After all, he seemed the reasonable sort. Kind of. If you counted walking around like Elton John reasonable.
It was only after we made it to the town itself did we see what time had done. The ground was cracked and there was no grass, even though that grass had been transplanted; there was none left. Only dried-up weeds. Even the trees were dead. The well in the center of town fell to pieces and when I say pieces, if you didn't know it was once a well, you wouldn't have been able to tell it once had been. The lively place I remembered growing up, the place where I buried my mother and uncle, was dead. The plate glass used in the windows of all the shops were shattered. They didn't even survive the sandstorms after the automatons got to them, albeit looking for humans to kill. There were holes in the stones used in the roads. It wasn't like the black roads of the twenty-first century, transportation architecture seemingly regressed towards the Roman days. But, then again, crafts were rare and unless they were off, they didn't touch the roads. So, the need to accommodate them was also.
"This mazbruth pazmar is Haddock-Upon-the-Desert?"
"It was." I answered. "Time was not good to it." Then, I added, "Time was not good to anyplace." That was partially true. The only places that flourished were towns and cities the automatons missed. Even that was far and few in between. Of those places, even fewer were missed by natural disasters, like the entire west coast. More places than not were graveyards. And, even more were built upon them.
"It's not nice to poke fun at Mara's hometown." Hina reprimanded, all six of her hands at the base of her shell, which I guessed would be her hips. There she went again, playing Abryi's mother.
"I thought Atlanta's Rest was her hometown." Silas and Abryi shot back. Silas defended Abryi, even though he wasn't the one on trial.
"Did you two miss the part where I said I was born in this town?" I chided, a bit harsher than I intended, but at this point, I didn't care. Abryi seemed about as thick in the skull as Benny. There would be no saving him. Or, rather, no, nevermind. "Silas, what did you come to find here?" I tried my best to ignore Abryi. While it was true he saved our lives, he was more a nuisance than I wanted to have around. But, that was before I knew how invaluable these three would become.
"A war bunker built in this town in about Third Coming 2969, so about thirty-one years ago." Silas had done his homework. The bunker he spoke of was built, as I was told, to guard against the impending Fifth War. My mother was the first to give birth in it and the last. "I think you probably would know where it is, which would save us from having to overturn more skeletons than we want, hrm."
"You say that knowing full well I know where it is." I protested. "That's really what you brought me here for, isn't it?" That said, even I wasn't sure its exact location, only that it was built somewhere in the vicinity of Uncle Thaddeus' house. I knew also that an entrance was through his house.
"I told you," Silas started with that patronizing scholastic tone, "we're here to train you." He carefully walked ahead of me, gesturing, as he spoke, to the entire town, "The Minor Ones have chosen you, Mara. You, who came from such humble beginnings in a republic doomed from the very start. Or so, it had been foretold. It is your destiny to carry out their will. The will that determines the course of this planet, as a temporary province of the Great Amalyan Empire. Nay, it will decide the path which the entire multiverse shall take, and your name, like the names of your predecessors, shall be renowned." There was a smile of great mirth, the kind that scared me, etched on his face. "Even the gods will bow to you."
"I doubt that." I commented. I walked past Silas and began surveying the town, using the well as my focal point. I remembered that the bunker was actually beneath the house I lived in and that from the house I could see the well. And, while I could hear everything from the well, Haddock was not as small as Atlanta's Rest.
The buildings close to the well itself were mainly businesses, now out of business. Leandra's Salon, which went under before the automatons got to our town, mainly because its owner died in the fight against Gyalt. Nesmith's Café, before he relocated to Atlanta's Rest, and where I followed him to. Others that I remembered as a child, going to pick up supplies for dinner. And, others still that I wasn't allowed to go in. Beyond the closest buildings, a few stood out above them, taller than all the rest. "Come on." I beckoned the others. I finally recognized what I came to see. A cockerel weather vane.
My uncle's house looked in worse repair than I remembered. But, then again everything did. Not that this place ever looked as though someone should live in it. The windows were still boarded, like they had been when I was a child. The shingles were still cracked and falling off. But, that's what you get for putting terracotta on the roof. The walls still screamed, wash me! And, while I say still, everything seemed dingier and dirtier. If that was at all possible.
I tried the door. It opened very slowly. I was waiting for the walls to start bleeding and hands to come out reaching to take us to hell. But, nothing. Much to my relief. Except, there was still that eerie feeling. I was waiting for the hell-hounds.
Silas produced two lanterns from beneath his cloak. He handed one to Abryi, who opened it and lit it ablaze with black flames. They switched and Abryi repeated the process, handing the other to Hina. The lanterns glowed an eerie incandescent yellow-green light that was not bright but yet illuminated everything as though it was the sun.
I crept inside, not wanting to be here. I wanted to be here even less than the day I left this place. The wallpaper had started to peel. And, just beyond the door, I could see the rood that hung above the mantle in the living room down the hall. There being a cross over the mantle wasn't all that unusual, as not only had Uncle Thaddeus been a diehard Evangelical Christian but, he also was ordained as a minister. Which was why he never married, not that there were any rules against that. But, he felt that even though he married others, being married would only be a distraction. I believed it was because no woman would put up with his weirdness. I didn't know how my grandmother and mother did.
The maple floors were splintering and with each step, I reminded myself that I had to be careful of shards. I glanced behind me to see if the others were following me. I tried to remember how to get into the bunker. This place was more convoluted than Wayne Manor or Arkham Asylum. The floor plan was about as splintered as the floor itself. I headed straight for the living room.
"What is a statue of Ban'iel the Gardener, the Lord of the Flora, one of the two deceased gods, doing in your house?" Hina asked, grazing the statue with her webbed fingers. The look on her face was something very close to a somber melancholy. I had no idea what she was talking about. I never paid any mind to Uncle Thaddeus' decorations. It had always been something I expected to see in a house whose owner was either Roman Polanski or a Roman Caesar. Better yet, I was surprised to see this town was not looted like so many others had been in all the chaos.
"To hell if I know." I responded, examining the mantle and everything around it. Nothing jumped out at me. I never accessed the bunker as a child; but, I remember Uncle Thaddeus going in through the door that he used to call the silverware closet. If only I had some sort of hint.
I decided to look at this statue that Hina talked about. I dragged my feet as I made my way over. This statue was something I remembered as a child. A man with curly hair and sunken eyes, a big nose, and thin lips, cut from alabaster marble. Uncle Thaddeus used to say that the man was my father's half-brother. How would I have known that it was actually some god named Ban'iel? That said, if Nesbeth looked like some creature from the Black Lagoon, then why doesn't Ban'iel? And, then Silas mentioned a god with no face?
It was then I noticed something underneath the statue. Or rather, the statue stood on a secondary pedestal, which was quite unnecessary. I took the head in both hands and carefully leaned it back. There, beneath the head, was a red button. Why hadn't I noticed that before?
"What's that?" Abyri asked. His eyes were as big as a puppy watching a slab of cooked bacon.
I didn't bother answering him. What I did do, however, was press the button. Immediately a door clicked open. I walked over to the door next to an armoire that held painted plates. A useless bunch of baubles if you asked me, mainly because you couldn't eat off them and no one was rich enough to buy something from the early eighteen forties, before Yeshu'a's second coming, as it had been said. I didn't know what to believe or if to believe that those plates were really that old and still intact. But, I reached for the door knob and carefully opened the door. Who knew what might be behind it? Not I.
Before me stood shelves of silver teapots, trays, and utensils. It really was a silver closet. I checked the shelves with great scrutiny. There had to be something behind it. Somewhere.
"What's taking so long?" Abyri asked, stretching over me. I think he really wanted to just cop a feel or rub up on me.
"Abyri, would you stop trying to stretch over me?!" I protested. "You're rubbing me the wrong way."
"Am I?" He really was enjoying this. That lech. He continued to reach around me. I was afraid he would try to grab me. "Am I really?"
I turned around to sock him one. But, the tight quarters made it difficult and the next thing I knew, I hit my back into the shelves, which rotated around, throwing down some of the silver, and tumbling through, Abryi and I went down the stairs over and over one another like a wicked game of leap frog, landing with Abyri on top of me, two inches from my face. I could feel his body pressed against me. I could feel something hard between my legs, which made me blush. Amali were built like humans after all.
Abryi tried to lean in more and I said, "Would you get off me already?"
"You don't really mean that do you?"
I could hear feet coming down the stairs, along with the sound of kicked silver. "Bloody hell!" Silas muttered. I guess it was him who kicked the tea pot that now landed near my left foot. And, Abyri still didn't get off me. His lump was getting bigger.
"Do you mind?!" Except that wasn't me. It was exactly what I wanted to say to him, but Hina beat to it. "Abyri of the House of Rayne, get off Mara this instant. She doesn't want what you have for her." I could tell Hina was being polite. Her hands went to her shell again. Then, she added, "If you don't remove yourself from atop her, so help me, I will make you move. Are we clear?"
Abyri scrambled faster than I'd ever seen him move before. What came out of his mouth did not shock me as much as how he said it. "Y-yes, Hina, dear." He sounded like, as he would put it, a whipped gezmar. It did however, answer my feelings about their questionable relationship. That alone made me shudder.
Silas put out his hand to help me to my feet. I rejected it and got up on my own. I was more concerned about what was so special in this bunker that Silas would want me to come back to this forsaken hole in the ground. But, from what I could tell, it was your typical bomb shelter. Pantries lined with cans and bottled water. Alcohol. Tools were in open cabinets. Everything was in a place for what possible contingency could ever happen. But, it didn't save this town from the horrors of the Sixth War, or its aftermath.
"What are you looking for here, Silas?" I asked when I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.
"Nothing in particular." Was his response. "But, Thaddeus had to have a special room in the bunker with the intent to educate the townsfolk about what might happen. According to Nesbeth, it was bound to happen, this seal wasn't meant to last." His face became more somber. "Even the gods didn't have enough power to seal them indefinitely. After all, the Great Ones were astronomically more powerful." Then, he noticed a door hidden behind a couple of boxes. "Something like that."
Abyri helped him remove the boxes. I watched as Silas checked the door. Unfortunately, it was locked.
"How do you suppose you'll get in?" I asked. "I have no idea where Uncle Thaddeus kept his keys for the bunker."
Silas reached into his shirt and pulled out something shiny on the end of a golden chain. A key. I wondered where he could have gotten a key for a room in a bunker that he had no idea where it was. Despite the distance between us, I could tell the key was a little particular.
Had he known my Uncle Thaddeus? Or, did he get one some other way? So many questions plagued my mind. Why would someone from this cult, I think he called themselves The Hidden Followers of the Faceless Gods, would have a key to a place that they should not? Uncle Thaddeus didn't believe in these nameless gods, excuse me, faceless gods. Nothing made sense, or less of it, rather, than they did before. But, I guessed asking myself these queries wasn't going to garnish any answers. "Where'd you get that key?"
Silas turned to me and smiled. "Before I moved to Atlanta's Rest, your Uncle Thaddeus was my mentor. He founded our cult when he founded this town." His words alone blew my mind.
"That…"
"Can't be true?" He finished. "Oh yes. Very much so. For the masses, he pretended to be a regular Christian." His smile got wider. "That was many years ago. About the time you were born."
"What are you getting at, Silas?" I shot. He was saying a lot of things I didn't like. I didn't want to envision my uncle as anything other than what I remember.
"You'll understand once we find what we're looking for." Abyri answered. Silas and Hina nodded in unison and agreement. "If we find it."
Silas bent over the door. His fingers fumbled with the lock. Then, I heard a soft click. He was in. "Here goes everything." As he slowly opened the door, I wanted to say that that wasn't how the saying went; but, it didn't matter. And, after I thought about it, everything really did ride on his finding this place. If he didn't, he couldn't help me. I couldn't help myself. Even if I wasn't the person that he mentioned before.
One by one, we filed into the room. Hina was the last. She shut the door behind herself. If something was going to get us, we had to make sure that there was no way that they could enter. Unless, it was a god. Then, we were fucked. So to speak.
In the middle of the room was a giant onyx obelisk. Everything else in the room was dwarfed in comparison. In both size and importance. There were no windows, no other doors, and a drain in the middle of the floor, just in front of the obelisk. I guess humidity would be bad for it. Along the left wall was a table, an altar to be precise, that had the same kind of doll on it that I saw at the police department. This time there were three of them. Incense had been burning at one time or another. Beyond the altar, there was nothing. I couldn't see around the obelisk, so I had no idea what was on the wall beyond it. Yet.
Abyri and Silas began glaring at the obelisk. Hina followed over. It was only after I got closer that I realized there was writing on the giant slab of onyx. I could see their faces scrunched up, as though they struggled to read it.
"Something wrong, Silas?" I wondered.
He laughed a very uneasy chuckle, almost as though he didn't want to admit that something was the matter. "No, nothing." Then, I heard him mutter under his breath, "If only I could remember how to read these glyphs, then I would be able to find what I'm bloody well looking for."
"Well, I can't read them, Silas." Abyri commented. "They're some human language, not Amali dialect, nor Borda."
"It sure isn't Sung." Hina mentioned. "I have no idea what it could be."
"It reads: 'In the year of our Lord, Yeshu'a ben Yosef al Dawid, the son of Marthukas called Ioan and Miriam bin Dawid, 2973 since the Third Coming, a child was borne to the house of Galadyn, as the daughter of the Ram, brother of Ban'iel, and San'jare Windmire. This child shall be the grace of the Minor Ones and Lesser Ones as well as the mortals. For the time of the Great Ones are at hand.'"
They all looked at me. "Since when could you read that?" They asked in unison. It was almost like they were one person. Or rather, so impressed they didn't know what to do with themselves.
"Since I was about nine, my uncle made sure I learned this dead language. He said something like, after the Jewish Retribution of 2209, there were no full blooded Israelites left. No Jews to speak of." Then, I commented, "I was expecting that Silas would have been able to read it, having been a protégé of my uncle." Then, I added, "Not that I anticipated Abyri or Hina to know it."
Silas just shook his head. I felt that he not only didn't want to answer for himself; but, he didn't want to be held accountable for Uncle Thaddeus. Only Thaddeus could be held for his own actions. Not his protégé, not his niece, and surely not the gods, apparently. Apparently, they can't be held for anything they put into motion. Thanks to free will.
I watched as Silas walked over to the altar. He lit the candles. I had a feeling as to what he intended to do without ever having to hear him say it. But, "Lord of the Shallows, King of the Wonders, hear our prayer." Abyri and Hina walked up behind Silas and extended their hands over him as he spread the incense. "Our Lord, who cares for us and watches over us, hear our prayer." Silas chanted this prayer and yet, I knew that if Nesbeth came once before, then he would come again. I just awaited the dancing.
Nesbeth. I thought, wondering why Silas would want to call him here.
Suddenly, without much warning, the flames leapt up and there before me stood the great and well, just great, Nesbeth. Like before, he decided his form as Jeremiah Nesmith was a better form for us. "You called me, child." He turned to me.
"I guess." Again, he heard my thoughts. I wanted to say that it was Silas that wanted to summon him. I had no idea what it was that ran through Silas' head. None. I had no idea what I was supposed to do next. Or, what he really wanted of me.
"Master," Silas started.
"Yes, she is the child of prophecy." Nesbeth finished. "She is the one to right the balance. But first, she cannot do so without power, or rather control of her inner power."
"Power?" I questioned.
"Yes, child. Like your father, you have the ability to deflect harm. Which is why Ban'iel and Grammel died. But, you also have Ban'iel's power to create life from the void." He paused. No amount of a break in information was going to make me believe him. "The first thing is to hone your ability to mediate damage and to learn a way to defend yourself."
Then, does Abyri's family have some similar power? I thought to myself.
"No, child." Nesbeth commented, making the others look at him sideways. "Abyri descends from the Great One, Hered the White." Then, he said, "You, child, are the product of a Holy One and Fallen One, a third generation Lesser One. Your powers are greater than his."