Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller Brandon Ellis (ebook reader for comics txt) 📖

clump of dirt exploded behind the mech as the cannon hit the ground, plumes of dust shooting into the air.

The mech pounded forward. The top of its forearm opened and a blaster popped out.

“Run,” yelled the lioness, grabbing Jaxx by the back of the shirt and pulling him along. She heaved him under her arm like a school book, his head jostling back and forth as she pumped her arms. She headed toward a white hut.

Halfway there, she went into a baseball slide and positioned her body low, barely ducking under a hot, sizzling electric bolt.

“Let me down,” screamed Jaxx.

Ignoring him, she stood and dashed toward the hut’s opening. She took a giant leap. “Activate!”

The entrance’s floor opened up, exposing a dark hole.

Still grasping Jaxx, the lioness went feet first into the hole. A flash of light and an explosion hammered above them, erasing the top of the hut from existence, and setting its sides ablaze.

Jaxx and the lioness continued to fall. The wind rushed up against them, as if they’d jumped out of a SF-13 Air Wing at five-thousand meters.

The lioness discarded her bamboo rifle and unclipped something from the chains around her torso. She pulled Jaxx up to her shoulder like a toy. “Hold on to me tightly.”

She lowered him and Jaxx wrapped his arms around her waist, squeezing with all he had, grasping the rope around her hips. She let go and Jaxx slipped, feeling his weight take over, then curled his fingers more around the braided lanyard.

With her arms pointed downward, the lioness held what looked like two blasters. Fingers against the triggers, white flames spewed out the muzzles. She and Jaxx slowed quickly, then started to hover. Were those mini-thrusters?

More flames lit up the room around them. Lions surrounded them, all descending, lighting up the immense, cavernous area.

Jaxx’s feet touched the ground.

Light poured through dozens of holes in the ceiling, no doubt openings where huts once were. A roar echoed against the walls and the holes in the ceiling closed. Blackness took over.

A pop sounded and a dazzling display of colors spun in a circle near the ceiling. A burst of light shot outward from the middle of the color array. The colors enlarged and became an orb, giving the area ample light.

Tink. Tink. Tink.

Jaxx spun around as glass-like tables lit up, glowing ambers, pinks, and yellows.

Tink. Tink. Tink.

More tables, chairs, and lights flickered on, displaying row upon row of immense ships in the shape of stars with long sleds for landing gear. Behind the crafts stood combat-mechs with lion-shaped heads, all eight to ten stories tall.

He stood inside a superstructure that went on for kilometers.

The lioness nudged Jaxx. “Thanks to you, blue-eyes, we have to use those mechanical beasts again.” She pushed him toward a table. “Put your hands on it.”

Jaxx gave her a confused look. If this was some type of torture, then come hell or high water, he wasn’t going to touch the thing.

“We need your DNA to activate this, you bumbling peach-skin. Unlike other races,” she glanced up as if looking through the ceiling at to the Agadon’s beyond, “we aren’t warlike so we have a failsafe when it comes to war; rules about when we are allowed to partake in battle. The only way the Divine Force allows us to use these weapons of destruction is by the one who brought us war. Touch it, Jaxx.”

There was truth in her eyes. She believed what she said with every ounce of her being.

Jaxx moved his hand over the table. “What do they want, these Agadon?”

The lioness growled and shoved his hand on the table. “What do they ever want?”

Jaxx jumped back. The table vibrated and an electric charge shot from the base of the table. An electric circle swirled in its middle. Sparks shot upward like a fountain and poured over the sides of the table.

In minutes, the sparks built up and each one joined another, building something ethereal, constructing layer upon layer of sparks, forming a giant rectangular cuboid, until it ceased.

The fountain vanished and the rectangle hardened and materialized.

A book.

And it sat next to Jaxx’s foot.

Symbols were etched on the cover, looking distinctly Kabbalistic—the wisdom of truth, the essential teachings of Jewish cosmology—represented by the eternity symbol along with a staff with a serpent intertwining, and an ankh, and the lotus flower.

“Open it, Jaxx.”

He took a deep breath. “This is etched in some of earth’s oldest writings? How do you know our symbols? Our oldest languages?”

It would have been a strange question to ask, were it not for the fact that he was an archaeologist. He held in his hand a key of some sort; one that might tell him the origins of these people, of his people—of Earth’s many languages.

He longed to bury himself in a corner and read until his eyes forged more knowledge into his head. But that was the old Jaxx. The new Jaxx had a call of duty. He couldn’t retreat. He had to do his part.

“The many sphinxes on your planet didn’t build themselves.”

“Many? There’s only one.”

“There are many. Two always sit next to each other, but the female next to your only exposed sphinx—a male—has yet to be revealed. That’s how all sphinxes are created. One male, one female, closely bonded to each other. Once your ice age begins, the oceans will fall, and many more will be revealed to you and your people. Now, open the book. We don’t have much time.”

“That didn’t answer my question. Also written on the book is the English language? My language.”

“We left your language as a seed for your people, knowing that someday it would bring your race closer together as the universal language. Now, put your hand on the book.”

He inspected the cover. It was bound in leather.

“We are all waiting!”

Jaxx eyed the lioness and for the first time noticed a gang of lions standing around him, watching.

Her nostrils flared. “Do it, now.”

He thrust his hand on the book. Static electricity shocked his palm.