With the sun now set behind the mountains, the ruins submerged in a host of oddly formed, misshaped shadows. A sliver of crescent moon hung behind them. The air became still and silent. The individual city lights glowed a single orange as thousands merged, yet each light, when looked upon closely, had a uniqueness of its own.
Maximillian got up and stood suddenly. “We have work to do. We have to train the halflings, as well as the children inside the castle to battle for their future. It’s our only hope against the Shroud.” He laughed madly into the night air. “Ha-ha!” Then he quieted. “I suppose it was all destined to end anyway. It was a failed endeavor. We might as well do with what we have.”
Acuumyn hung his head toward the ground. He moved his toes up and down inside his sandals. “It was not a failed endeavor. I failed. I failed all of you.”
“What!?” Revekka spun her neck in Acuumyn’s direction.
“I failed,” Acuumyn repeated. “I failed all of you. I failed this world. I failed all immortals. I failed my son. I…”
Maximillian reached down and grabbed his shoulder from his standing position. “Stop!” His heavy tone anchored a delayed pause into his question. “What are you saying?”
The air remained cool and calm as the leftover warmth vanished completely from the ground. Acuumyn stood up high, bending the top half of his body while bowing to his friends. “I must leave now. You have your new mission, so see that you get these scrolls to the castle,” he said, pointing to each of their chests. “And remember. Keep yourselves far apart when you travel, for the Shroud must not gain possession of the Sphere Atlas.”
“Aren’t you going to answer me?” Maximillian tightened his jawbone.
Revekka remained quiet.
Acuumyn spoke, almost detached from his own words. “It is wrong to have secrets. It is wrong to keep secrets for any reason.”
“But we must protect our way of life from the Shroud,” Maximillian answered swiftly.
“The Shroud used our own fears against us.” Acuumyn sighed. “Fears we denied having. That is why I will answer to the people. I will not justify our covert missions any longer. In fact, I will even tell them what I have done here tonight when I get back.”
“What? Why?” Maximillian shouted. His countenance fell into confusion and anger.
“Because the truth demands not just part of the account, but the whole transgression as well.” Acuumyn straightened his back muscles while standing tall.
Maximillian was speechless. “But, um, uh.” He attempted several times to say something, but each time his thoughts, his logic, his understanding was inept and futile even to him.
Revekka appeared to accept, approving of what Acuumyn had said.
With one last sad glance, as a final homage to the pair, Acuumyn turned his back and summoned an opening between distant places. A colorful, swirling vortex appeared. The vortex was hidden from the world in among the Grecian ruins. It spilled out thick vapors and bolts of lightning, yet remained quiet as nightfall, save for a swoosh of rushing air.
Acuumyn readied himself a return to where all immortals originate.
“Wait!” Revekka grabbed his shoulder. “Before you go through the aperture, I just want to say…” Her eyes briefly shifted downward, then back up at him, as his anguish became hers. “You shouldn’t think of yourself as a failure.” She gently held, then slid her hand off his arm.
Acuumyn silently smiled, and turned back toward the vortex. Yet he looked once more at them from over his shoulder with a distraught glance. “I did fail. It is true, we are physically perfect, but I made a mistake. I thought we could fix this realm without the council’s permission. A secret, no matter how much we are convinced it is right to keep, is wrong.” His head plunged. “Many will needlessly pay for my pride. Both the people of this world and those in the eternal realm are paying for my arrogance. Please forgive me.” He stared through blurred eyes glazed over with saline regret. “I was supposed to be the Acuumyn that brought true peace and security to Earth. The purpose of free will is an autonomous, self-governing existence, where all live independently in harmonious prosperity…but…” He abruptly stopped and closed his eyes, pressing out drops from them.
More words felt wrong.
Revekka again reached for his hand and cradled their hands together close to her chest. Her neck and head were downcast. Her long, flowing locks tumbled slowly forward from off her back shoulders, covering her face from the dispirit scrolled across her beautiful soul.
Maximilian, still flustered, felt renewed motivation by Revekka’s faith, and advanced toward Acuumyn. “You must not lose hope now.” He aggressively vibrated his belligerent fist.
The aperture swirled in the backdrop, commanding Acuumyn toward its unworldly gate. Revekka lifted her head, and let go of his hand with a cautious glimpse.
Acuumyn turned, facing both of them one last time. His eyes loosened doubt. His thoughts seemed decidedly shaped into something more tangible nearly uttered from out his half-open mouth.
“Yes,” Revekka exclaimed joyously, waiting on encouragement. However, silence continued, so she exclaimed, “There is always hope. I feel it with all that I am inside…isn’t there?”
Following her lead, Maximilian gripped his hand into a fist and a mighty weapon fashioned like a radiant, surging sword of pure energy appeared. It was bright green. Rizzz. The weapon droned, cycling upward from base to pointed tip, discharging electrical currents.
Like a lamp, the sword lit the surrounding ruins, tinting the dark gray, stone slabs with an eerie greenish, dull hue. “I will deliver this scroll with power and speed, and my striker,” Maximilian beheld his droning, green sword, “will cut down any who get in my way.” He held his portion of the Sphere Atlas over his head, and high into the air. “I will send archers to guard the halflings. And I swear to train and guard the chosen mortal children inside the castle from the Shroud, and from all other wickedness on Earth.” His chest expanded. He clinched his teeth, and focused his eyes, tapering them with uncommon resolve. After, Maximillian kneeled on one knee and bent his head low to the ground before Acuumyn.
“You make me proud,” Acuumyn rejoiced. “Benoit is not yet a powerful knight. He needs direction to assume mastery over the castle. If Benoit is to lead the few remaining immortals, like my son Appollos…” He opened his palm, extending his arm to the kneeling Maximillian. “You must challenge Benoit to become better, to become more. The knighthood will not fall, and the earth will be redeemed if you both can do this.” Acuumyn perked up. “As the appointed spiritual leader of the knights, I could not be more pleased.” His face swelled with happiness as he looked approvingly upon Maximilian before turning his attention toward Revekka. “And what of you?” he asked. “What gift can you offer the earth?”
“I have been gifted a vision by the Celestial Pyre,” she meekly said.
Maximilian gasped. His pinpoint eyes widened. He then stood from off one knee and kneeled on both knees, bowing his neck forward, with his face bent near the ground.
Acuumyn rubbed his strong chin, tapering his eyes, darting them to the side, and then back again. He enfolded his hands behind his back, and remained standing, but humbly bowed at the waist to her as well. “The Celestial Pyre speaks to no one, or at least it has not in hundreds and hundreds of years.”
“But it spoke to me,” Revekka said with a sincere inflection.
Maximilian slowly lifted himself from off his knees, but kept quiet, withdrawing his powerful sword. He inquisitively eyed up and down between Revekka and Acuumyn.
A silent, tense moment passed, and then Acuumyn tapped the tip of his nose with his finger. “You have empathic abilities, so it stands to reason you are more sensitive to the Celestial Pyre. For the flame that burns day and night underneath the castle is the spiritual source of all life, and the reservoir of the Artifex—the active power that enables
knights to summon strikers, move objects, bend wills, and hide from mortals in plain view.” He inhaled a large breath, with thoughtful pause, deflating rapidly afterward. “And it has chosen you from everyone else. That alone is a sign, which gives meaning greater than what we can possibly know at this point. We may have a chance now.” Acuumyn again rubbed his chin, while looking at her. He tilted his head from left to right. His eyes were staring, but absent with other considerations.
“It told me to…”
Acuumyn abruptly blocked his ears. She stopped talking, and he released his hands, relaxing them to his side. “Revekka…what the Celestial Pyre showed you, is for you and you alone.”
Revekka’s flowing, carefree manner turned blunt. “Then I must deliver two messages, one before I reach the castle, and the second while inside its walls.”
“Agreed,” Acuumyn simply said. “Which way does the Celestial Pyre send you?”
“To the southern hemisphere.”
“Then, Maximilian, you need to travel the northernmost route until you reach the castle, so as I said before, the two of you never journey close to the other.”
After that, Acuumyn had finished speaking to him, and the two had nothing left to say. The hush revealed an inaudible sound from bunches of unanswered questions, which were thought by each present, yet never voiced to satisfaction.
Acuumyn dismissed Maximilian with a simple flick of his wrist, and Maximillian ran toward the north, swift and sure, his feet propelling him through and out of the ruins.
Dust plumed and evaporated into wisps of falling specks where his feet flashed a new path. Within a matter of seconds, Maximillian disappeared among the distant lined, jagged mountainous region.
The dark mountains loomed like an apparition of tranquility around the bright city valley. They served as an unwise route for a mere mortal to travel during the night, but Maximillian was no mere mortal, and did not fear what recessed in the unknown crevasses of the steep, mountainous bluffs. Once he left the company of Revekka and Acuumyn, he did not look back. However, Acuumyn and Revekka remained standing in front of the swirling aperture, not knowing if either would see the other again.
A spirit of melancholy overcame Revekka, and even Acuumyn’s stoic nature crumbled like the stone slabs in the ancient ruins, which once guarded a vibrant city, their mighty walls of protection, now smashed fragments of rock along the hilltop ground.
“I implore you, stay here, and help us in the coming immortal war,” Revekka pleaded. “It will be the last war ever fought in the history of wars.”
“I cannot.”
“Why?” A befuddled hurt, crowded a portion of hope from off her face.
Acuumyn stood eye to eye with Revekka, holding his hands under hers, touching his fingertips to her palms. “I, even I am not above justice, no matter how I may personally feel toward my accusers’ dubious accusations. The people back home would judge me evil, in league with the Shroud no less, if I did not return. That is why I must give myself over to them.” He then rested his hands on her shoulders, took one last moment, and said, “I…am…guilty, just not of what I am being accused.”
Revekka’s mood drifted with misery. “Will we ever see you again?”
“I know not.”
“What will they do to you?”
Acuumyn sealed his lips together, refusing to answer at first. “This…is dangerous information I give you now.”
“Yes?”
“We share a single origin with humanity…with the mortals.”
“What? No! No…that can’t be possible.” Revekka clutched the scroll, creased her lips, and wrinkled her nose.
“I cannot give specifics, but if I am correct, there will be a unification rather than destruction. But, if the Shroud…” Acuumyn cut his words short. He placed his hand over the scroll in her hand, pushing it toward her side until he finished. “Complete your first mission, then you must get this to the castle before the Shroud finds you.” He again, with a turning of his head, this way and that, surveyed the ruins for movement. “I fear the Shroud is becoming stronger by the minute. They are looming in every part of this system, and the Shroud is fully capable of destroying us all.”
Revekka looked briefly down at his hand, and then back up into his truth laden eyes. “There’s more. What aren’t you telling me?”
He reclaimed his hand from her shoulder, closed his eyes, and then slowly opened them. Acuumyn innately scanned the ruins to his side, with aloofness he peered off into the descending twilight. “The council, by which I mean Corbrak, has banned all travel by locking the temple shut, thus closing off the only aperture from our home realm to here.” A resigned droplet sputtered down the outer side cheek of his stagnant, unaffected face. “Whatever happens to me, the price of true freedom is worth that sacrifice.” With several short breaths, and a subtle grinding of teeth, Acuumyn crossed his arms with firm resolve. “Corrupt dictators, monarchs, and elected officials who rule their fellow humans with secret, malice intent, will no more be tolerated, for the time of the governments is over. The time of terror, the time of criminals, the time of oppression and fear, it will all end soon, and it will end with a knight’s blade.” He slammed his fist down on one of the stone slabs, cracking his knuckles against the hard, cold rock. He winced, shaking out his wrist a couple of times. He examined his hand, moving his fingers rapidly one at a time, forward and backward before placing it at his side again.
Revekka reached for him. “Are you okay?”
Acuumyn pulled his hand back behind his body, away from her sight. “It did not hurt. We are immortals after all.” He glanced at the stone, arching the bottom middle of his lip upward, with his eyebrows curled down, and his nostrils flared between the two. “We are stronger than meager rocks.”
Revekka glowered sidelong with a concerned frustration. “The Celestial Pyre’s message, I must tell you…
Acuumyn closed his eyes and refused to hear. “No, Revekka. I do not want to know. But please, if you must tell something, tell my son…” his voice strained and cracked. “Tell Appollos…I will always love him.”
“But, Acuumyn…this is a specific message for you.”
“When you get to the castle, whatever that message is, give them that message for me.”
“What if…?”
With her mouth still open, and forming the words, Acuumyn reached into a hidden pocket along the side of his tunic.
“Give them this.” Acuumyn handed Revekka a round, bronze amulet. “And they must then listen to you as they would me.”
Revekka gingerly reached her hand over top the amulet, and with a quick scan of Acuumyn’s eyes, she took the round, coin-like object from him, peering at both sides, flipping it back and forth over again.
“What’s this?” Revekka ran her fingertips along the amulet’s ridged surface. “And what do these markings mean?”
Acuumyn stared at her beautiful face for a moment.
Revekka gazed at the amulet. Her eyes asquint, she was vexed by his silence.
Acuumyn looked over his shoulder at the swirling aperture. He then faced Revekka. “It means that you now speak for me in all things.”
Revekka’s eyes widened. “I can’t…I won’t…I’m not…” she stammered.
Acuumyn put his hand at mouth level, and forming it into a single index finger, he closed his lips, and pressed his index finger to them, afterward, removing his hand back to its place. “Yes,” he modestly exclaimed. He sealed his mouth with a closed lip smile for a second. “May this amulet protect you from evil. And in my place, you will speak with words of gravity.” He then abruptly turned from her. He walked into the colorful, swirling vortex, and disappeared into the aperture, after which, it boomed shut behind him, and the ruins became a dark, gloomy, and desolate group of relics once more.
Revekka stood motionless under the orange, crescent moon. Con
cealed by the night, in among the ancient Grecian ruins, she felt many conflicting emotions, but in the end, she dismissed them all. She chose to feel nothing except the scroll she had clutched in one hand, and the amulet in the other. She was too sad to cry, too angry to scream, yet the weight of responsibility tugged at her, pushing away the loneliness. Unlike Maximilian, she briefly scanned the bleak area one last time, before gradually trekking from the skeletal fragments and lifeless stone slabs of a former, mighty world power.
Revekka sensed that the Shroud was well aware of her mission by this point.
The stakes were high.
She had given Acuumyn’s words and meanings abundant thought. There were going to be immense losses. If human history had showed her one thing, it was that lives were shattered during times of revolution, and this would be an epic revolution for the hearts and minds of everyone on Earth. The Shroud’s pervasive rule saturated the world. And like the air she breathed, the Shroud’s poison enveloped every idea in human society. Nothing remained untouched by the Shroud’s corruption, for they clouded motive and perception, especially that which seemed most noble.
She felt something close in on her.
To an immortal, the Shroud was like a cold wind from the north. Its agents were warriors of a lethal and supreme kind, having already dispatched to prevent her and Maximilian from reaching their destinations alive.
Yet still, she walked with a rhythmic grace that only unwavering faith granted. Revekka honestly discerned her own heart’s intent, for she knew that reaching the castle was only an optimistic start. Nevertheless, an immortal war was nearly upon them, and based on the mood of civilization, a positive conclusion was very much in doubt.
To the east, far from the ancient ruins in Greece, a warm gust of midsummer air sifted through boundless crops, dipping golden heads of wheat in fluid waves of gentle wind.
The near empty fields had a solemn majesty about them.
Out of seemingly nowhere, a handsome, strong young man with a gaunt beauty emerged from over one of the hills.