Dragon Aster Trilogy

17: MERSAEL



The sound of ticking invaded Kas’ psi and his body struggled to escape the darkness of being unconscious. What is that? His vision returned, and he looked to where Sybl slept on her bed on Earth. Kas picked up the clock on her nightstand as it continued in its steady rhythm and then set it back down. A few moments after it suddenly shot out an alarm that startled him.

Sybl only growled and reached out her hand to it, before picking it up and nearly striking him in the head when she tossed it across the room.

Kas looked at the clock and went to pick it up as it was silent now. “Why do you wish to break it?”

“You’re as relentless as that stupid clock. Too bad it’s the only thing I can throw across the room.”

Kas examined the metal clock and found that it was still in one piece despite it all. He set it back on her table and watched if she would pick it up again. He hated to see her sleep all day because she was depressed, but she was awake and looking at the clock now. “What is the matter?”

“It just occurred to me that you can pick up a clock, yet you can’t touch me…”

“I told you that while I Dreamwalk I am a spirit,” Kas explained. “An inanimate object can be moved by most elements, including strong spiritual ones. But it takes a great deal of emotion to touch you.”

“So if I were dead, you would be able to touch me then?”

Kas didn’t like how she phrased the question, and turned away. “You are not going to die. This place has no intention to kill you from what I have seen of it so far.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Sybl replied, as she sat up and hung her feet over the bed. “I’m supposed to slowly rot instead.”

“The Gate at the Sanctus will be fixed. I just need more time.”

“Time,” Sybl said as she picked up her clock and wound it up all the way. “Time is great to wait on when you have something to look forward to.”

Kas woke with a gasp, and quickly pulled his body that ached all over to a sit. The memory faded from his mind, and he looked around the white stone, cylinder-shaped cell that he was locked in. For whatever reason, he was submersed in water that reached his waist, while his arms and legs were tied to the floor in chains. He remembered something hitting him, and that was when he had blacked out.

The floor moved, and he tried to stand up, only to find that he couldn’t as the chains prevented him from doing so. Kas looked up as the floor moved upwards, and feared he would be crushed against the ceiling. But it cracked open as the water drained, and his red eyes were bombarded by rays of unnatural light. He remembered all the unnatural lighting Sybl had on Earth and feared he had been brought there. But it would be even worse as he looked around the giant assembly room he had ascended into. The Falls.

Kas peered over his shoulder as his senses were overtaken with everything griffin, confirmed by the several waterfalls that cascaded from the higher parts of the Falls over the window. How am I here…?

“How positively convenient that we stumbled on you at the same time we planned our extermination of Xirel’s Tribe. I thought it was only fitting that we let you die last, after we made the Efereal Mountains the Sanctus’ tomb.”

Extermination? Kas repeated in thought. To no surprise, the griffin somnus who walked across the polished white floor towards him was Mersael himself. “Your army is weak and could have never brought down my people, or the army of chimera that Nephena commands once again. You are lying.” He never would have thought that Sybl setting Nephena free might have saved them all. The Chimera Mother would have given the griffins the same death she gave anyone who had threatened her in the Last War. Quick and merciless.

“Accept the truth whichever way you want, it doesn’t matter to me. Welcome to the Falls, Lord Kas. Or do you still go by High Priest?”

“Why have you brought me here?” Kas asked, making sure to get the accents on the griffin’s language correct as he did. If this assembly of griffins was to serve as his jury for an execution, he would leave out no excuse to be heard by all of them.

Mersael smiled as if pleased that he would have a worthy challenge before him. “You are here, Fay, because my father seems to think that your immortal soul can save us all.”

“I am now High Lord of the Atrum, and I would like to speak to Exoir and not his wayward son.”

Mersael’s yellow eyes narrowed in a glare at him. “My father is not well and will not be joining us this evening. You see, while he thinks the Fay can save us, I would rather execute you to prove a point.”

“What point?”

“That your god is dead, and that in turn makes his servants less than irrelevant.”

The entire room went silent and looked to the doors as they slid open and an elderly griffin somnus was wheeled in on a chair. From his body, hung numerous wires and tubes that Kas couldn’t so much as begin to guess the purposes for.

Mersael walked over to his father, but Exoir’s guards quickly caught his arms and pulled him aside.

Kas tried to stand up, before remembering he was chained down, and a soak and wet mess to look at on top of it all. “Master Avian.” The wheelchair stopped before Kas, and he remained quite as the old griffin somnus, draped in long, dried-out strands of white hair pondered him.

“Fascinating… Both you and your soultwin look just as you did three hundred…years ago.” Exoir paused to cough. “So few remember my real name now. You would both be…immortality in its finest. I wish…I wish such a thing could be given to myself.”

“Immortality is not without its costs,” Kas said, fearing he might go from an execution to a test mouse in one of the Fall’s laboratories, instead.

“I wish to…apologize on behalf of the Falls, Erebus.”

Apologize? Kas gulped in worry.

“My son’s occupation of the Atrum was not with my consent. I was only well enough to pull back…our forces before the arrival of the dragons. I am sorry…that his disappointments are not limited to within this…crater.” Exoir slowly looked at one of his guards then, and the griffin somnus who was armored in white unlocked the shackles that held Kas.

Kas stood up and straightened out what he could of himself.

“Please, walk with me. I do not have much time left…to settle my peace with this world.”

Kas nodded, and then followed Exoir as he was wheeled out of the room by his attendant. He glanced back only momentarily to see the resentment on Mersael’s face.