The King Trials 2: Beyond.

Aurora.

My eyes snap open.

The material of my top is drenched in sweat, clinging to my skin.

“I must be losing my mind,” I whisper, almost in fear of being overheard.

I rise, a paroxysm of pain singes through my left-side, ensued by aches stitching along my spine caused by sleeping on sheer rock. The cave I’m in is narrow and quadrilateral with a thin draping at the entrance as a door. My saddlebag and belongings are shoved in the corner.

You hear but you do not listen.

I freeze. I look around as if I expect someone to magically appear. But no-one does, not even the eidolon.

Hesitant, I part my lips. “Who…who are you?”

Who are you?

Oddly. I find it challenging to answer my own question delivered back to me. “Why is that only I can hear you? Why are you in my head?”

I am everywhere.

“Alright then.” Tolerating the vagueness. “What do you want with me?”

For you to arise, and to come into the destiny for which I have called you for.

My vision narrows into slits. “And what is that?”

It is for Me to conceal a matter. And for a king to search it out.

I resist a shrug. “I am not a king.”

No. You are far greater.

My gaze sinks. My mind torments me with a procession of harrowing memories, unsettling reminders of all the malevolence that I am capable of. I feel the guilt like a poison inside of me, festering. I think myself absurd practically talking to myself. But the all-knowing voice sounds consoling and warm like the voice of a father, akin to a certain comfort like confiding in a friend.

“Perhaps the old Aurora,” I confess to the unknown. “But what I am now—what I have done. Whatever malignancy dwells in me that led me to do such horrors. I should have resisted; I should have fought against it. I could have. But I did not. I am not worthy, that I knew even before the King Trials.”

You are not worthy because of who you are. You are worthy because I have chosen you.

“Chosen me for what?” Pain bursts in my left side, I clutch onto my arm. “Who are you?”

Silence follows my words.

I wait and I wait but nothing.

I scramble out of my bedroll. I peel off my night garment, my breasts wrapped in cloth. I shuffle to my baggage to retrieve my corsage, essentially a leather vest with a built-in corset but with far less potential of damaging my organs.

After dressing in my black, skin-fitting pants and boots. I fasten my corsage from the bottom, making my way to my neck. But I am halted halfway when something in my periphery demands my attention. I look at the entrance and a figure pushes the flap of the drapings, bending his neck to enter.

Zoar. The Are leader with his staff attached to his hand.

My hands drop to my sides.

I give him a dignified nod. “I know you cannot understand me. But I wanted to offer my gratitude for saving our lives.”

His glowing blue eyes pierce the gloom. He rigidly walks forward to stand before me.

He lifts an arm fully bandaged in heavy layers. He points at my wound.

I glance it and dismiss him with my other hand. “Do not concern yourself. I have survived worst, I will live.”

Unexpectedly, he takes my wrist, gently elongating my arm—I obscure a wince. He upturns my arm, my palm facing up. He releases his staff but instead of falling. It stands beside him on its own. Whilst still holding my wrist with the one hand, he lifts the other and allows it to hover inches above my flesh, his bound hand scans my arm from my elbow to wrist.

“What are you—”

A ball of blue light grows in his palm, spreading. In my forearm inky black veins stream into visibility, jet black and insoluble. The light snuffs out and the veins instantly vanish.

The frosty grip of despair has me in its siege.

I gawk back at him, my mouth agape. “What is that? What is inside of me?”

He releases my arm. It numbly falls back to my side. His one arm extends so he can grip his staff, immediately blue fire erupts in the head. With one hand, he scoops up a electric flame, allowing it to flicker in his palm. In a heartbeat, he is a hair’s breadth from me, and he seizes the back of my neck—a startled gasp escapes me.

The flame still in his grasp, he draws his hand near me and brings the blue blaze to my chest. Pain explodes in the area, I try to scream but it comes out strangled, dying in my mouth. Zoar’s hand sways to and fro briefly like he is lathering balm on my chest, rubbing pure fire into my skin.

The flame douses, waning, its last wisps seeps into my flesh. Zoar frees me from his hold and I stumble backwards. For the first time in many moons, I feel like I can breathe. My airways that have been clogged with residues of dread; chest burdened by emotional heft. All of it feels cleansed.

I pull open the lapels further to see nothing on my chest, no burn marks. I press a hand on it, patting myself in numerous places. I glance at my arm and observe as the claw marks delicately begin to knit close like they were never there to begin with.

My gaze darts to several places all at once. “I—I suppose I should thank you.”

Zoar stares at me blankly. Blue eyes smouldering.

I look down and I lift both arms before me, I assess them, turning them up and down. “What…what is inside me?”

Zoar abruptly turns his back on me and takes hold of his staff, walking to exit the cave.

“Wait. No—”

Zoar flags me over with a nod forward. Immediately I follow him out and we emerge on the unprotected ledge, wide enough to fit two people walking alongside each other. I pursue him on the waist of the gorge, with just one mistake it can lead to a fatal fall down a colossal, bottomless chasm.

The darkness of former night ebbs away to a soft blue sky, the rising sun throbs in the distance. Chilly air stings my nose, scented with earth and hints of amber. I suppose I should cherish the cool moments of morning while they last before the Night Desert fully awakens. Zoar navigates me deeper into the rock formations. For a long time, we trek on foot and I do so quietly with a certain level of expectation.

When first light blooms, we enter a huge canyon of massive, scalloped walls with natural black swirls and a flourish of gleaming grey. Zoar silently leads me through the giant passageways that render us travelling specks.

Zoar turns to the left and it leads to a gigantic temple-like chamber. It brims with hooded figures packed on both sides, separated by a widespread pathway that begins from where we are until the end where a grand monolithic structure stands. The only part in the natural edifice that has an open vault which allows beams of light to bathe the structure in gentle sunlight.

Zoar peers over at me and starts the march down the pathway. Tentatively, I follow. Curiously my eyes bounce from left to right at the entire congregation of tall beings cloaked in sapphire hoods, teeming on either side with an ocean of them facing the monolith with their heads bowed like they are praying to it.

And now I wonder. Have I just blindly followed this being to my death? To be sacrificed to whatever divination they serve.

The more we tread forward, the more the pathway seems to yawn ahead. The monolith rises and rises with every step we advance towards it. He and I slow our pace as we make an approach. The monolith is pedestalled, elevated on three round tiers.

The stone monolith itself plated in metallic edges defined with silver accents is halved. The top part of the rectangular shaped stone is vertically positioned above the bottom half, levitating above it. Interspaced in the centre is nothing but a glowing, golden essence moving inside, spiralling, contracting and expanding like living, breathing force. The air around it shifts and warps with a low hum.

My eyes analyse the force, the swirl of pure energy, it emanates dormant power, its presence both unearthly and prehistoric.

My eyes widen as I watch myself step up the three-tiered platform, irrevocably drawn by what it is like it is calling out to me. I pause at the top and I observe the twirling energy that churns with undiscovered power.

Suddenly the essence stills, rounding itself into a sphere. Then it blasts out towards me in inescapable speed. I stagger back—nearly falling back, I hurriedly descend—frantically watching the radiating energy roil around me. Hysterically I try to brush it off, swat it away but to no avail.

I stare back at Zoar wide-eyed as he watches me calmly.

“Zoar. What—is happening? Do something—”

My words dissolve into a mindless scream. The energy splits in half and amasses around both of my forearms, they twine around it, thinning into ribbons, searing into my skin. I hunch over. My yells augment with the pain that ruptures in my gut, burning, heating my blood. It is like the scald of the Night Desert flares up inside of me. The heat mounts mercilessly, feeling like it is charring my insides.

The walls of the chamber begin to tremble, spilling dust.

The heat reaches a climax. A scorch of ten thousand suns!

Flaming, golden light explodes. My eyes set afire.

I snap upright and release a roar. It rises, rebounding off the distant walls until my screams sounds like a chorus of hundreds. A great rumble is wrung from the earth, a tremor that causes everything in radius to quake violently, my voice ricocheting endlessly. An outpour of wisps cascade from above.

“The Sagetai has risen.”

The heat thaws steadily and my roar fades to heavy breathing. The fiery radiance in my eyes ebb, my gaze levels and I turn. The entire congregation begin to lower themselves; the hooded multitudes flow down to their knees like a mass wave. On all fours, they bow their heads deeply, faces almost kissing the grimy ground.

I glance at Zoar and he has kneeled before me with his one hand still on the staff.

I lift my forearms and my eyes nearly fall out of the sockets. A slim band of golden tattoos ornate my forearms, tangling in a neat spiral until my wrist, then it narrows like a neck of a river to my hands. An ornamental sphere dominates the centre of my palms. A circular symbol packed with runic markings I have never seen before within each ring of the symbol. Including the band itself that twists around my skin and it teems with convoluted patterns, each granular detail some kind of mark.

My gaze raises and I watch the hooded throngs that are still bowed to me.

I look at a bowed Zoar. And suddenly it’s like a new part of my mind has opened up, synapses fire in my brain at an exceptional rate like I have unlocked something unfathomable.

Without moving my lips, I communicate, “Rise, Zoar.”

Zoar stands immediately and the entire assembly ascends with him.

“Sagetai. We have waited for your arrival for untimed eras.”

I turn around to face the monolith that now stands empty. “This structure…it is not of this world.”

“No. The Sarsen.” He lifts his other hand to gesture at it. “The standing stone. It was bestowed from the heavens at the age of First Light with the prophecy that it will only awaken by the hand of the Sagetai.”

I glance back at him, my lips bolted shut. “But that was a millennia ago?”

He nods reverently.

I look back at it then I lift my forearms to inspect my fresh tattoos seared into my flesh. “So the Sarsen holds some kind of power?”

“No. It is attracted to power. The Sarsen is a cosmic force that sought to make a celestial binding with a superior host, one powerful enough to bear its capabilities.”

I tear my gaze away and drop my arms. I clench my jaw. “I have been chosen,” I repeat for myself. Resuming the telepathic discussion, I transmit, “What is a Sagetai and what does this prophesy say about its purpose?”

Zoar grips his staff ready, like he is prepared for another trek. “I can tell you or I can show you. Let me take you to the sanctuary of the Sagetai. It has not been disturbed in thousands of cycles since its erection, it can only be breached by you. There you will find the answers you seek.”

I inhale a deep breath. “Take me to it.”

Zoar walks back down and I follow, soon I am at his side. As we travel down the pathway, the shrouded beings all bow towards me, section by section in flawless unison.

“Zoar. The thing inside of me, when you used your staff. Is it gone?”

Zoar doesn’t look back at me, refusing my gaze.

He stiffly shakes his bandaged head that is adorned with his blue turban. “For now. Forgive me for failing you, great Sagetai. What I did, did not heal you. It merely suppressed it, I do not know for how long. Whatever darkness plagues you, a power I have never witnessed in my innumerable days. It surpasses my strength. But if you come to master your power, surely you will be able to heal on your own.”