Sky Lord by Rowan Erlking (popular e readers TXT) 📖

peered back down the path they had come from. “The Patriarch’s soldiers. I knew they weren’t far behind.”

“What do you plan to do now?” Tia asked, grabbing a hold of his arm.

The demons around them bristled, turning away from their prey. They caught a new scent on the air, and their black eyes sparkled with hunger. Not far off, the echoes of gunfire and sword against steel cut through the brush. Then the stomping of booted feet joined it. Men in blue suits charged down the path, wielding their weapons high. The island demons howled, leaping forward to meet them.

Jonis grabbed Tia’s hand again. “Run!”

“After them! Traitor!” a soldier shouted, swinging his rapier in the air.

But with the demons clustered there the soldiers could not get through without first meeting the hungry clawing hands of the near naked beasts.

Jonis and Tia scurried through the ruins again, feeling the chase behind them lose track as they ducked under trees, dived through brambles, and slid over ivy covered ground past carved stone and fallen monuments of the old Sky Child era. They heard the shouts of battle accompany the calls of demons bellowing after them, but they did not let anything stop them. Scrambling up the hill leading out of the ruined city to the volcano, Jonis and Tia continued on until their path ended at a rock wall of sheer cliff.

“Here it is,” Jonis breathlessly said, groping the vine-covered cliff side.

Tia nodded, feeling the cliff face for a way in also. Sandstone on the surface, they also saw layers of other rock. But what they were looking for was a hole. A cave. Vines hung over most of the stone, draping poisonous flowers that could kill if eaten but looked beautiful. Tia pushed them aside, looking for the door they knew was behind them. 

“I found it!” Tia shouted. She grabbed Jonis, pulling him over.

She pushed aside the vine cover to expose a door made of steel. It was much like one from that ancient memory Jonis carried. He felt the door then looked behind them to make sure they had not been found yet.

“I can’t open it,” Tia said, rapping it with her fingers. “But I think you can. The chief’s memory of the legend said only the Sky Lord could open it. He fixed it that way.”

Taking out his sword, Jonis hacked off the vine cover. Next to the door was a touch pad, technology the people their world would not be able to construct for several thousand years yet. They knew it was the key to enter. But would a ten-thousand-year-old machine still work now?

“Here it goes,” Jonis said, placing his hand on it.

“Stop!” a soldier shouted, breaking from the underbrush with a wave of his gun.

The door automatically slid open. Jonis stepped inside right away, pulling for Tia to hurry after him. She jumped in. The door slid shut behind them.

Bang! The man on the other side struck on the door. Jonis stepped back from it in the darkness with a loud exhale. “I don’t think he can open it.”

They turned and looked around in the darkness.

“It stinks in here,” Tia said.

Jonis nodded. “I only wish there were lights.”

But just as he had said that, the lights flickered on. These were not like the cheap electric ones they had all over Brein Amon. No dangling wires or flimsy glass bulbs. Looking at them, Jonis and Tia stared at the anciently advanced ones made of plasma that glowed and churned in their tubes of transparent polymer. Jonis walked forward, drawing in a breath of awe.

“Oh my,” Tia murmured, following him.

Before them was the famed treasure, lit up and sparkling like all the legends had said. And it was not a little.

Chapter Eighteen: The Treasure

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gold, diamonds, jewels, silver, jade. Mounds of it heaped like a dune of sand inside the enormous cavern. The cave was warm, and it smelled of sulfur. In between the heaps of treasure was a valley crevice where the original rock still showed through. A path.

Jonis shook his head, looking up at it in disbelief. Tia blinked as she stared, drawing in her breath. Wealth unimaginable. Both Tia and Jonis walked down it very slowly, gazing up at the glittering walls.

“No wonder the Patriarch wants it,” Tia murmured.

Jonis nodded. “The Sky Lord really had it set, monetarily wise anyway.”

“I wonder why the islanders didn’t just try to break down the door to get it,” Tia said, shaking her head.

Shrugging, Jonis sighed, peering at the silver platters next to gilded armor. He plucked at a dagger encrusted with rubies, examining the inscribed writing on it. “Not a clue. Maybe they were afraid the Sky Lord had the treasure rigged to self destruct.”

“Or maybe they were too afraid to pass the demons to get to it. It looks like they overrun that city,” Tia said, picking up a bracelet set with diamonds.

He smirked at her, nodding. “That is a viable reason.”

Jonis tossed down the dagger.

They walked through the heaps of wealth in silence, gazing at everything their eyes could absorb as they passed through. It wasn’t just gold and silver. There were things of antiquity. Statues, finely sewn silks, scrolls and even armor with oddly scrawled writing on them. Jonis seemed very interested in the armor, but he continued to walk on until they found a fork in the path. One path looked wider than the other, but it was covered in dust. They took the right hand side, which was narrower. And the further they went in the hotter it got.

The air smelled stronger here, and it was hard to breathe. Soon they knew why. A pool of lava churned at the end of the cavern, flowing like a river towards an opening that looked out over the sea. It poured into the sea, steam rising in clouds as the molten lava met water. Tia looked over the lava at the cave opening. The sky was still light. Glancing at the gold, she noticed the heat from the lava flow nearly melted the pieces of treasure near by, or perhaps it was just the moisture that made it look so.

“So, that part of the legend is true,” Tia murmured, staring at it. “The treasure is in a volcanic cavern.”

She looked up, watching the red from the lava’s heat reflect off obsidian deposits in the cave walls. Above was also sky. Somehow the cave wall must have given way and made that extra opening. Perhaps no one else knew of the secret door. From this view, the Sky Lord’s treasure was certainly unreachable.

“Let’s go back,” Jonis said, wiping the sweat off his forehead. “There wouldn’t be anything further here. If there was, it is gone now.”

Tia nodded, taking his hand. He led them back to the to the fork, taking the left path now.

The left side of the cavern was darker and cooler. The treasure on this end was less piles of gold coins and armor and more jewels and crystal. There were even rotted heaps of fine furniture, long since molded by moisture. At the end of the cavern where the wall met the floor they halted, staring at what was there.

There was a cot, a simple aluminum foldout bed, lying to one side. Nothing fancy about it at all. A camp stove, rusted and breaking, sat in the center of the clearing. A chair, small table, and a thing they recognized to be a refrigerator (more advanced than the iceboxes Tia knew) were arranged next to these. In the chair lay a collection of crumbled bones.

“That must be him,” Jonis said, sighing. Glancing around the camp, he waved over to some stacked machinery that looked familiar. “And I think that is what is left of his ship computer.”

The word computer was familiar to the memory she had taken from Jonis, but Tia felt awkward using it. Again, she was staring at advanced machinery so beyond that of her world. Like a dream, she felt like she was waking to something more real.

“Why did he dismantle his, uh, ship?” Tia asked, walking over to the old heap. “He obviously was not dying like Cordril was. He could have gotten out.”

Jonis crouched down, tapping the machine top. “I wonder if this still works.”

She joined his side, squatting on her haunches to peer at the apparatus also. “Do you know how to work it?”

“I can remember to. Our ancestors knew how.” Jonis turned a knob then pushed a button, flicking a switch on the back. The machine buzzed as if yawning from a very, very long sleep. Its insides whirred though pieces also groaned. He felt over the mechanism front and then touched another pad next to a keyboard covered in strange symbols. Jonis looked up at Tia. “How much do you want to bet that our Sky Lord here kept a record?”

Tia shrugged. “Can you get it to work?”

He smiled and placed his hand on the touch pad. She knew from the same memory he had that if the machine would work he could probably manipulate it. The gears inside the machinery buzzed frantically upon contact. Lights across the board lit up along with the expression on Jonis’s face.

“I see,” he murmured.

But then there was a loud screeching. Something skidded to a stop inside the machine parts. Whatever was working had jammed.

Tia clamped her hands on her ears, the pitch reeling loudly. Jonis grabbed her and leapt away from the machine, pulling them both to the ground near the refrigerator.

Shrapnel flung out in multiple directions as the machine boomed. A nasty rubber stink oozed into the air. They both looked back over their shoulders to see the machine’s top torn apart, burnt black.

“Well,” Jonis said rolling over and dusting himself off. “That’s that.”

Tia was still shaking. Despite remembering all this technology, her world was not one that had things blow up so often. She was wondering if it was such a good idea to tamper with such decayed technology. It could kill them both. She looked at Jonis. He was smiling.

 “You looked like you got some answers.” Tia peered over his face.

Placing his hand on her cheek, Jonis smiled more. “This is what I got.”

Immediately what he had retrieved entered into her mind. All the holes of the mystery filled, weaving into her thoughts like the threads of one of those woven tapestries that hung inside the Underlord’s underground city. The tiny details now made sense, making a picture that was complete.

Sitting back on the sand, Tia smiled. “So that’s it.”

“Apparently Cordril’s memory was colored, but not by much.” Jonis smiled at her. Then he leaned over and kissed her. The electrical touch made her face blush, or perhaps it was not even that.

Tia averted her eyes, going redder.

“So, now what are our options?” Jonis asked aloud. He did not really seem to be asking her, but she knew he would listen to what she might say. His touch let her know that much.

“There are still soldiers waiting for us outside, as well as demons and islanders,” Tia said. “Getting off the island might be more troublesome than getting on.”

“And after that, what then?” Jonis dropped to the cot. It was surprisingly sturdy after several thousand years. “Would the Patriarch of Brein Amon