Ice Phoenix

Everyone jumped. It was a multitude of voices speaking as one voice, and they seemed to emanate from everywhere. There was a gust of wind and the pods which hung from the treetops rustled, sending chills down everyone’s spines. A strange gravitational force acted as an unseen hand, forcing them to kneel in the flowing stream.

“The pendant has been stolen, and you are responsible. Dark qi has been unleashed, and you are responsible. The demons flee to the Dream Walker, and you are responsible. This is a crime against all life and Dartkala. What you have done this day has only ensured the death of us all.”

The voices were angry. The wind blew harder and the grass on the embankments rippled like waves on the sea. With a start, Terrana realised that the voices were the wind and somehow, she could understand them.

Grandmaster Deitrux spoke. His voice was respectful, and he kept his head lowered. “Ancients of Olden Kartath, it is true what you say of the pendant and the demons. But, we are not the ones responsible. We tried to prevent the demons from fleeing with the pendant, but we could not.”

“Fools!”

Pain descended on them like a hurricane and they saw, once again, the images that had appeared on board the ship. Whispers of madness filled their heads and everyone covered their ears, falling into the water, writhing and groaning in pain.

The voices spoke, full of scorn. “Why do you cry out in fear and pain of what you see? This is only a fraction of what we protect the worlds from. For thousands of years, we have kept the nightmares away from you. But you brazenly entered our sector and allowed the tonien and the pendant to be stolen. This is a crime that cannot go unpunished.”

"What crime?" screamed Prince Gil Ra Im, writhing in the stream. “My mother gave up her life to stop the demons and none of you helped her! If you knew so much, if you were keeping the nightmares away, why didn’t you stop the demons? Why couldn’t you do anything?"

“It’s true!” Quempa shouted angrily. “We did everything we could to stop the demons from taking the tonien and the pendant. Good people lost their lives because we didn’t have enough information. But you did! You could have helped us!”

The whispering in their heads faded, and a white light washed over them. The images vanished and a long silence ensued. During that time, not even the grass rippled. It was Grandmaster Deitrux who broke the silence.

“We have some people on board our ship who are seriously injured. We humbly ask that you allow them access to your medical facilities. They fought valiantly against the demons.”

The wind picked up again.

“The half-breed woman, the one called Fless, is being seen to. She will recover,” said the mysterious voices.

“There are more,” said Grandmaster Deitrux.

“The dead cannot enter DalKal 7.” The voices were absolute.

“Please,” pleaded the grandmaster. “The queen has not been dead more than a half hour. There is still a chance that you could re-”

“The dead cannot enter DalKal 7. Their bodies disintegrate in the time flux belt. Do not waste our time discussing this.”

The full implication of their words sunk in, and there were gasps of disbelief.

“What are you saying?” snarled Prince Gil Ra Im. He struggled to his knees, his face a mask of dread. “My mother, she’s still on board the ship!”

“There is only one body on your ship, and it is the half-breed.”

The blood drained from the prince’s face, and he fell back into the stream. “No,” he whispered hoarsely. “How could you?”

There was loud splash, and they all turned to see Terrana walking through the stream, looking like a zombie. She shouldn’t have been able to resist the unseen force that held them down, and yet, she managed to climb onto the embankment.

“You made a mistake,” she called out. “Baneyon’s still alive. He couldn’t have disintegrated in the time flux belt!”

“Kneel, child.” Invisible hands tried to force her into a kneeling position, but Terrana resisted.

“Don’t touch me!” she screamed.

“You will kneel in the presence of the Ancient Ones.”

Terrana was lifted into the air before being brought down hard.

“Terrana!” Lorn lurched forwards to reach her, but he could not break free of the force that held him down.

“Ancient Ones, let her be I beg of you!” cried Quempa. “She’s just lost a loved one.”

“He’s right!” shouted Lady Anrath in fear. “Leave the girl be!”

“The child will show respect when in our presence!” said the voices.

“You don’t know what you are releasing!” cried the grandmaster.

Terrana’s eyes turned black, and she screamed. The pods in the treetops shook violently, and the stream suddenly surged. If not for the force holding them down, the Imeldors would have been dragged along with the powerful current.

“Leave the child be!” These words were spoken by a different group of voices.

There was an angry whisper before the first collective voice hushed into silence. White light washed over a seething Terrana, and the others looked on amazed as the darkness receded from her eyes. When the light finally disappeared, an exhausted and visibly upset Terrana sat on the embankment. She showed no signs of turning into her alter ego and the Imeldors, including the prince and Lorn, tried not to show their immense relief.

The second collective voice continued. “You have come a long way and, more importantly, you are alive. Please rise and proceed to the embankment.”

They were only too glad to oblige. Lorn hesitated as he walked past Terrana, but, after clearly struggling with his feelings, he sat down next to her. It was still raining.

The second voice spoke. “We are sorry for your loss. You must understand that in our world the dead are deemed free. They do not have to suffer the burdens and sins of the living. They are treated with the greatest reverence, and we believe that they should not be held back in the world of the living any longer than they have to. However, we should have consulted you first, and brought only the living through the time flux belt.”

“But we couldn’t have brought them through without the ship!” hissed the first voice. “The dead had to come through.”

“And we had high hopes of the queen,” continued the second voice, ignoring the first. It was the only reason we allowed her group to survive and leave our world when they came looking for information about the Dream Walker.”

“Queen Julere believed in what she was doing,” said the grandmaster.

“The second group you sent was not as successful,” continued the second collective voice. “Not long after the queen’s departure, you sent another group to Olden Kartath to glean information from us. They were denied entry and have since returned to wherever they came from.”

Grandmaster Deitrux grimaced. After the queen had informed them of the demons and the Dream Walker, he had sent a second group of Imeldors to Olden Kartath to learn more. It was apparent their efforts had been for naught.

“We entrusted the queen with knowledge of our valuable possession, the tonien. It was the first time in three millennia that we have reached out to another race, and by entrusting your queen with knowledge of the tonien, you must understand, we had high hopes of her. Her death and your subsequent failure to prevent the demons from stealing the pendant angered many among us, particularly as it was one of your own who killed her.”

Grandmaster Deitrux lowered his head, perhaps to hide his agony at that last sentence.

“We have read your minds, and we know that it was velassium that killed the queen — the blade that belonged to another member of your group. Had it been any other weapon, she could have survived. Unfortunately, velassium prevents regeneration by qi and so your efforts to save her were futile.”

Both Terrana and Prince Gil Ra Im stiffened upon hearing this, for different reasons. “I would have done anything to save my mother,” snarled the prince.

Terrana’s hand shook. The voices said the queen had been killed by velassium. By one of their own. The only velassium she could think of was the blade that had been in her hand when she had boarded the ship. Why had she been holding it? It belonged to Baneyon. And then there was Lorn. He had been giving her harsh looks ever since she stepped onto the ship. Did she do something bad? Baneyon’s words came back to her. People got hurt because of you. Terrana felt sick; when she spoke, her voice was more of a croak.

“Who … who killed the queen?”

No one answered. They avoided her eyes and looked everywhere but at her. She tried again. “Did I … kill the queen? I was holding the velassium. I was holding Baneyon’s spear.”

When no one spoke, her face scrunched up and she shouted. “Tell me!” A hand covered hers and she found herself staring into Lorn’s grim face.

“Terrana,” he began, “it wasn’t you.” She only had to look into his eyes to know he was lying.

“Yes, it was!” she cried back. “Perhaps not the me now, but her. The dark me. It was, wasn’t it?”

Lorn didn’t know what to say. Terrana’s face turned into a wrinkled mess as her emotions burst through, and she hid it behind her hands. “Oh my god,” she cried, more to herself than to anyone else. “I killed the queen. I killed Prince Gil Ra Im’s mother! I’m a murderer!”

Footsteps approached but she didn’t look up. Lorn did, however, and was surprised to find the prince standing in front of them.

“Let me speak with her,” he said. He didn’t look angry or vengeful. In fact, he looked sad, as if Terrana’s pain was hurting him. Lorn acquiesced and moved away. Just a little.

The prince knelt down by Terrana and placed his hand tenderly below her chin, raising her head so that she was looking at him. “You didn’t kill my mother. If you blame yourself, then I’m also at fault because I should never have brought you to Si Ren Da. If anything, I am responsible for my mother’s death, and I became her weakness in her fight against the demons. You were only trying to protect Baneyon. So, you must not cry. You must not blame yourself, for if you do, I —,” he choked at this point, “I will not be able to honour my mother’s memory or deal with the duties left to me.”

In that moment, he looked to be in so much pain that Terrana temporarily forgot her own grief. She didn’t wish to cause him further anguish; she understood why he might have felt responsible for his mother’s death, but it didn’t change her reality — she had killed the queen, not Prince Gil Ra Im.

“I won’t,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t see through her lie.

Prince Gil Ra Im smiled grimly. “Then we will finish my mother’s work and learn why this all happened.” He stood up and directed his gaze towards the treetops.

“Tell us!” he shouted. “What will happen now the demons have the pendant? Tell us who the Dream Walker is!”

The wind picked up and it was like a gentle sigh across the land. The rain stopped falling and a bright mist filled the air. When it cleared, the voices spoke.

“Very well, we will start from the beginning. A long time ago, a child was born in Olden Kartath. He was a child of exceptional power, and he amazed his elders with the feats he could perform. He was much loved, and as he grew, his powers grew with him at an exponential rate. He was a phenomenon, a child of Dartkala, and he thirsted for knowledge. He understood Dartkala in ways we could never understand. We compared him to an Ancient.”

“What’s an Ancient?” Lorn asked.

“They were the first explorers of Dartkala or the In-Between as some of you prefer to call it. They were also our people. They came to this part of Dartkala long before the worlds of UWIB even learned of our existence. They were explorers, discoverers, and givers. They likened themselves to gods, and believed the other worlds owed their progress to them. They were cruel and on occasion merciless, but as time went by, the younger generations of the Ancients changed their beliefs.

“They recognised beauty and intelligence in other species, and fought to remove the conviction that we were gods. In the end, they succeeded, and Olden Kartath withdrew from the affairs of other races, allowing progress to take place naturally. However, this did not bode well with the older generation of the Ancients, and for many years they fought to have the system reversed. Unfortunately, they gained a victory. A victory that we paid for in the highest possible price.”

“They won the support of the Dream Walker,” said the grandmaster in understanding.

The voices released a deep and mournful sigh. “Yes. The child we spoke of earlier grew up to become the Dream Walker. He was adored by the Ancients and while they studied him, he studied them. He learned their history and he believed they were right to be gods. This of course, went down very well with the Ancients, and they taught him nearly everything they knew. But all they were doing was feeding his lust for power. His lust to conquer and kill.

“Twisting the mind of someone who already knows he’s powerful is a dangerous thing to do. Not even the most hardened Ancients knew of his transgressions. He had already begun his own domination over the smaller worlds, and to our shock and detriment, he had formed an alliance with the Valpuri worlds.”

“Valpuri worlds?” repeated Grandmaster Deitrux.

“The worlds from which the demons come. Five solar systems and four galaxies that were shared amongst them. Apart from us who ruled this part of Dartkala for millenniums, the Valpuri was the only other race to have explored the In-Between. However, our technology was superior to theirs, and for a long time we co-existed in an uneasy truce.”

There was a long silence, as if the voices were contemplating something difficult.

“It was too late when we found out. Ten planets had already been destroyed, and their civilisations lost forever. But if we thought death had come quickly to those poor creatures, we were wrong. The Dream Walker toyed with them, experimented with their life forces, and in the end, he learnt how to absorb them. He grew stronger with each life he took, and he gained the power to traverse Dartkala. He immersed himself into the dreams of sleeping people and sucked their very lives from them.”

“Dear Dartkala,” hissed Quempa. “What happened then?”

“We captured several of the Valpuri and brought them before the Ancients. The Valpuri confessed their part in the unforgiveable genocide, and even worse, we learnt that they had been under the direct orders of the Dream Walker. Of course, the Ancients were horrified to hear this, and many disbelieved the Valpuri’s accounts.

“The Dream Walker was sent for, to answer for his heinous crimes, and it couldn’t have been more farcical. He brazenly admitted his crimes, and laughed at the Ancients for being fools. The order to arrest him was issued, but he resisted.”

There was another long silence and it seemed the voices were weeping. The wind picked up and the streams became loud. Rain fell lightly.

“We learnt that day just how powerful he had become. Not even the combined power of the older Ancients and the younger generations could overcome him. He called down the very force of Dartkala, and something that should never have happened, did. He melded the billions of life forces he had absorbed with that of Dartkala — living qi, elemental qi, and last of all, Dartkala’s life qi. The Dream Walker had discovered life itself in the very emptiness of the In-Between, and he had learned to call it to his bidding.”

“Incredible!” gasped Grandmaster Deitrux. “Is there really life qi in Dartkala?”

“Not just any life. Existence. That which cannot be seen, heard, or felt. That which has no form, mass, or matter, and yet, without it we could not survive. Our planets could not remain suspended in this emptiness, absorbing life from it. It is existence.”

“He found something in nothing,” said the grandmaster.

“But he could not control it.” The voices modulated on various levels. Everyone felt rather than heard the anger and sadness in them, and found themselves on the verge of tears, overcome by emotion.

“His actions evolved into our nightmares. It drove us to madness, and we became what he became. We did what he did, spreading terror throughout the In-Between and invading the dreams of the sleeping. We slaughtered them, and infused with the power of Dartkala and the madness of the Dream Walker, we reached across the void and sucked the life out of every planet we could find. Our bloodlust lasted for days before we were able to overcome it.”

“Days?” said a horrified Quempa. “It took you only days to destroy all those lives and planets? They were entire worlds!”

“That is our crime. Something that we could not compensate for in our lifetime or the next.”

“How long is your lifetime?” Lorn asked quickly.

“We are immortal.”

“Oh.”

“So how did you overcome your possession?” asked Kuldor.

“How did we indeed? We didn’t. We were too far gone in our madness to do anything about it. But we awakened Dartkala. We had brought consciousness to the emptiness that gives life to us all. And Dartkala reacted. It ripped itself away from us and the Dream Walker. It had felt the imbalance in power and was attempting to correct it.

“We were left with the memories of our deeds, and that alone nearly drove us to extinction. Our shame flooded into the other untouched worlds, terrifying them with our nightmares. Later, the older, more powerful elders were able to restrain themselves and contained us. Since then, we have locked ourselves in Olden Kartath, and it is here that we allow our nightmares to roam. It is a constant reminder of our actions and the arrogant race that we were. Only until the Dream Walker dies, will our nightmares die with him.”

“Wait a moment!” cried Raimus. “What did you mean by, you awakened Dartkala? Dartkala is just a vessel of space and energy. I understand that, like Mother Nature, it would work to correct an imbalance, but you speak as if Dartkala were sentient!”

Whispers crowded their minds and they flinched, wary of the pain they could inflict.

“Dartkala is many things. We will never uncover all the mysteries of Dartkala in a thousand lifetimes, but know this, if you upset Dartkala badly enough, it will respond.”

“What happened to the Dream Walker after Dartkala awakened?” Grandmaster Deitrux asked.

“He was weakened. We and the Valpuri were all weakened. The Valpuri disappeared suddenly and were never heard from again until recently. The Dream Walker fared better. Soon after he recovered, he went on to attack the other worlds and we were powerless to stop him. However, we sent warnings to the other sectors and, for the first time, the sectors united.

“Some had not even heard of the others, but this did not stop them from overcoming their differences. Each sector sent their most powerful weavers and lacers to Pa Gumpina, to devise a way of overpowering the Dream Walker. From all of them, one man stood out. His name was Namasar, and he was half weaver, half lacer. By his side was a powerful, but overlooked witch called Skra.”

“Nashim has Skra’s pendant now,” Raimus said dolefully.

“You do well to remind us, weaver.” There was just the slightest hint of sarcasm in the voice.

“In the end, Namasar was chosen to lead the group. He had both weaver’s and lacer’s skills to implement an extremely complicated lacing that would bind a weaving for all eternity. The lacing required the input of five weavers and five lacers to bind the Dream Walker, and cast him out of this part of Dartkala.”

Kuldor interrupted. “If it was a lacing that bound the Dream Walker, then it should still be in place today. Does Nashim know how to deactivate it?”

“You raise a good question. We do not know. If it took five weavers and five lacers to create a prison and cast the Dream Walker out, then it would require the same elements to undo the prison.”

“Then either Nashim has discovered another way, or his next step is to kidnap ten people,” said Grandmaster Deitrux. “And because he has been ticking Imeldors and L-Masters off the living list, I’d say he has found another way.”

He waited for confirmation from the voices. It didn’t take long.

“You are right, Grandmaster Deitrux. Had history not been lost, you would have known that the lacing was never completed by Namasar.”