The Marenon Chronicles Collection

Chapter Twenty-Nine





Damon sat in the corner of the destroyed cavern, not even noticing that the sun shined onto him through the billowing smoke that rushed out of the gaping hole in the top.

It had taken all of his concentration to hold the magic that masked the three hanging victims at the top of the cavern. Hroth had been helping him focus and now he heard nothing. There was no more voice inside his head. He was no longer Damon the Sleeper, but someone else entirely. Memories of his former life rushed into his brain as though his possessed existence had been a terrible nightmare.

Damon? Where had that name come from? He wasn’t Damon. He tried to remember, but it seemed impossible. He knew where he was, and he knew he had a purpose or mission, but what was it? The bodies? He didn’t want to open his eyes, though he knew he was now awake.

But why had he been called Damon? He racked his brain for an answer until a vague memory passed by. Hroth. Hroth had given it to him. He remembered something about receiving a new name to erase who he once was.

He remembered being captured in battle. He remembered the ashes, the smoke. He remembered Hroth, Maroke, and others. He remembered on the day he was captured, seventeen years ago, all of the enemies kept calling him the seventh Sleeper, whatever that had meant. Now he knew.

He remembered being imprisoned for so long before he first heard the voice and accepted it. Two years of agony and loneliness made him wish for someone to talk to. Unwittingly, he had let Hroth in. He talked to him about everything. He didn’t care. He was glad to have someone to talk to. Before he ever knew what he had allowed Hroth to do, he had been possessed. For fifteen years he had been possessed and now all of a sudden his possessor was strangely absent from his mind. He couldn’t think of the last time he felt freedom.

He recalled that he was posing as someone’s father. No. Not someone. Silas. Silas Ainsley. He was posing as Silas’ father. But that couldn’t be it. That wasn’t all. He was Silas’ father. William Ainsley.

For so many years he had been forced to learn this power that would allow him to change the appearance of himself and others around him into people that were alive and well.

For so many years he had been forced to wear a mask. He had forgotten who he truly was. He had forgotten to fight for the right team. He had been forced to forget these things. He had been possessed. How many people had suffered because of him?

He opened his eyes.

The first place his eyes went was to the underside of his wrist. The dragon marking was fading, and he watched as it disappeared completely.

He looked up sharply. Anithistor stood over Silas, ready to kill him with a final word. Silas had all but given up, his strength completely obliterated.

“Stop!” Will screamed from the other side of the cavern.

Anithistor halted his movement, and turned slightly to Will.

“You can’t kill him!”

Anithistor squinted at him. “What are you doing?”

“He’s not just some threat you can vanquish. He is the prophesied Deliverer; the Keeper of the Gates. He is your Reckoning!”

“Damon, what is wrong with you?”

“I’m not Damon. I never truly was Damon. You and your desperate servants put me to sleep with your evil possession, but no longer. Hroth is dead. And so are you.”

*****

Silas couldn’t believe what he was hearing and neither could Anithistor, judging by the look on his face. The Stühoc king had called his father Damon. The same Damon that was a Sleeper. But that meant…

Silas was sick at the thought. His own father had been captured and possessed all those years before. This person was Damon and William Ainsley. Silas jerked his head upward to see his friends that had been hung. Only they weren’t there. In their place were three different Stühocs used by Anithistor and Damon to deceive Silas.

That’s why he curled up in the corner, Silas thought. He used his power to trick me. But Damon had said that he was now awake, and he was now opposing Anithistor. Julian must have done it. Hroth was dead. The Possessor no longer controlled Will or Marcus.

Silas closed his eyes, searching for the location of the purple and orange medallions. This time they weren’t in the pocket of Alric Thirsk. Instead, he saw them placed in their slots with Marcus lying on top of them.

Damon stepped forward.

“For fifteen years you had me murder and lie. You forced me to become someone I never was; someone I never wanted to be!”

Anithistor lifted his palm to Will. “And you will die as weak as you were when Hroth brought you here in the beginning.”

The burning heat of lightening bolts shot into Will’s chest and he was thrown back with an unrelenting force. Even then, Anithistor didn’t stop. Almost as if he had forgotten about Silas, he turned his full back to him and ripped into Will, ignoring the man’s painful cries.

There on the ground, the ancient words that had created the medallions formed in Silas’ mind as they had when he destroyed the Blue and Green Gates. Tears fell from his eyes as he saw his father for who he was, writhing in pain because he wanted to save his son.

His eyes closed and his mind went from the pained scene in front of him back to the medallions. First, the purple medallion of Farlaweer, and then the orange medallion of Voelif, both rested safely at the top of the Pyramid. Then the white medallion of Timugo appeared in his mind as it dangled from a chain in Anithistor’s grip. Words formed on Silas’ lips.

“Osh tü lorminan, Kül vorheesh-sellan,” came out barely above a whisper. Anithistor was too busy sucking the life out of Will to notice that the jewel on the medallion had lit up.

Silas pulled himself up to his knees.

“Osh tü lorminan, Kül vorheesh-sellan,” he said again, this time much more loudly.

The bolts of lightning ceased from Anithistor’s palm when he heard the words. He turned sharply and looked at Silas. Silas didn’t see him, his mind’s eye solely focused on the three medallions that had begun to burn with an intense heat.

Anithistor lifted his hands to try and stop Silas from saying the words of creation and destruction. A ball of fire blazed in Anithistor’s hand as he readied to throw it at Silas, but he was too late.

“Osh tü lorminan, Kül vorheesh-sellan!” Silas screamed.

In the last instant, Silas opened his eyes to see the white medallion explode into a bright, white light, engulfing Anithistor in its destructive detonation. Silas was thrown backward and saw nothing but black, and heard nothing but silence.

*****

Inga’s eyes shot open at the sound of the blast. The top of the Pyramid had exploded into a million pieces of rock and metal. The first thing she thought was that she had somehow died and that she was seeing the battle unfold from outside her body. The wafting smoke and debris above her seemed so surreal, but she knew that it meant only one thing.

Silas had destroyed the medallions. The plan had been for him to destroy them and then destroy the Red Gate, but what if he couldn’t make it that far? What if it was a last attempt to help them before Anithistor killed him? She had to go to him.

She tried to lift herself off the ground, but someone forced her to lie back down – a Reckoning soldier.

She looked to her right. Dink and Daewyn sat, staring up at the explosion above them. To her left she saw Emma giving water to Lorcan who accepted it graciously. Kaden also looked up at the devastation above them, knowing that it could have meant the end for Silas. If they heard another crash or detonation in the distance, they would know that the Red Gate had been destroyed. Silas had predicted this would be his end. That he would die.

She couldn’t imagine a life without him. A Marenon without Silas was meaningless.

Beyond Kaden she saw Alric and Coffman who were being patched up by more soldiers who had come to their aid. Even Nalani was awake. Someone had removed the arrow that had nearly killed her. She even smiled with relief to see that the Sphere had been destroyed.

Out in the city beyond her, she could see that all of those that had been hit by the Sphere’s bolts of light – all of those who had become Soldiers of the Dead – they were now lifeless. Hundreds, maybe thousands had dropped at once as their souls were released to the final resting place, never to be used by a corrupted force again.

Inga let her head fall to the ground, glad to know that her friends were alive for now. Their injuries would heal in time. Some would take longer than others, and some may never fully recover. But they were alive and the Sphere was destroyed.

But what about the Red Gate? What about Silas?

*****

Silas opened his eyes with a jolt, but his vision instantly blurred as he tried to focus. Somehow, he had not been knocked unconscious by the explosion. He squinted at the sky when he thought he saw a sarian flying down to him.

His vision went black for a moment, and when he opened his eyes again, a bloody and battered Julian stood over him.

“Don’t go to sleep!”

Silas got to his knees and held himself on the ground on all fours. “Julian?”

“I saw the smoke from the distance.”

“You killed Hroth?” Silas asked still looking at the ground.

“Yes,” Julian answered. “Is that Anithistor?”

Silas nodded, looking at the scorch marks on the ground, which was all that was left of Anithistor. Beyond that was a man struggling to stay alive for as long as possible.

“Father,” Silas said as he began to crawl on his hands and knees to Will. Burns ran up and down the man’s face and arms. His clothes were ash. Even through the blisters, Will’s eyes were still able to form tears that fell down the sides of his face.

“Silas, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry.”

Silas placed a warm hand in his dying father’s, a gesture he had felt before with his grandfather.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Silas assured him. “You didn’t ask to be part of them. And you saved my life just now. You saved everyone.”

Will shook his head. “No, Silas. You did. You killed the master of evil. Now you have to destroy the last gate.”

He gripped his father’s hand tighter. “I very well might be joining you in a few moments.”

Will smiled. “Maybe not. I wish I could have gotten to know you, son. I wish I had…”

Silas shushed him. “There’s no time for regrets.”

“If the Red Gate takes you with it, I’ll see you on the other side. Maybe…Maybe I can still get to know you. Maybe I’ll get to know the son I’ve longed to have in my life, but Hroth never let me.” Will took a deep breath. “Maybe…I can…Maybe I can…”

With one last breath, his father was gone; delivered to the true afterlife.

Silas wiped a stray tear from his cheek, feeling that same emptiness he felt when Garland had died on Earth, then died again in Marenon. He didn’t know his father. He had never been given the chance. But that didn’t take away from the fact that Silas would miss him. He would miss the thought of him. How would life be different if the Stühocs had never captured Will?

Silas turned away from his father’s body and scanned the ground. Among a pile of ashes he saw the red medallion and picked it up. As he expected, the blast had not harmed the artifact. Only the words that created the medallion could destroy it.

He nodded at Julian and stepped forward to the Red Gate. He placed the last medallion in the slot at the bottom and streams of light began to slither into a spiral across the face of the stone wall. Eventually the two of them were able to see through to the other side, revealing a world that looked so much like Mudavé, barren and wasted. Fumes spread across the landscape and fire spewed into the air.

Silas was ready.

Closing his eyes, he said, “Osh tü lorminan, Kül vorheesh-sellan.”

Julian straightened himself as he watched the Deliverer do what he was meant to from the beginning.

“Osh tü lorminan, Kül vorheesh-sellan,” Silas said again. He braced himself mentally, knowing that saying the words again could very well mean the end of his life. But this was the fulfillment of his destiny. This was the end of The Reckoning.

“Osh tü lorminan, Kül vorheesh-sellan!”

The Red Gate crumbled to the ground just as the Blue and Green Gate had done before. The rock exploded into dust and flames, declaring to all of Mudavé that Anithistor had been defeated; declaring that the gates and medallions no longer existed.

The explosion that rocked the entire cavern nearly knocked him backward, but it wasn’t the explosion that brought him to the ground. It was his wobbly knees and weak bones. He felt as though every bit of his energy was immediately sucked from his body.

He caught himself at his knees, and he could feel Julian grab his shoulders to steady him. Perhaps this was death. His life was leaving him, and he felt at peace about it. He felt no pain, just an overwhelming amount of exhaustion. All he wanted was sleep. And sleep came quickly.

*****

Silas had dreamed this before. He wore white robes and stood on a white surface with nothing but bright light all around him. He did not think he was dead yet, or maybe this was what death looked like when one was going to the true afterlife. But he knew that no more gates stood, and no medallions remained.

A voice called out behind him. “I never doubted that you would get to this point.”

Silas turned to see Silandrin walking toward him.

“How is it you are here?” Silas asked.

“I’m not really here, Silas. This is a dream.”

“You’re not here to tell me something?”

“In a way I am, I suppose.”

“But this isn’t a normal dream.”

“Of course it isn’t.”

Silas shook his head.

“I’m a thought, given to you with your recent transference of power, meant to manifest itself when the time is right.”

“My final thought,” Silas said, looking down. He wasn’t saddened, just a little disappointed.

But Silandrin told him differently. “These are not your last thoughts. You are not dead. Not yet. You still have a job to do.”

“But I’ve done my job. I’ve done what you said to do. I’ve done what I was prophesied to do.”

“As the Deliverer, yes. Don’t you remember who I was before the gates and medallions came about?”

“The Watchman,” Silas answered.

“That’s right. Now there is no more Gatekeeper. There is only you: the Watchman of Marenon.”

“My powers are gone. I have no ability to be a Watchman.”

“You will,” Silandrin assured him. “Time and training will make you the best person for the job.”

“But who will train me?”

“The others will find you, Silas. You will gain the power you need to continue on, though I would say it is best that you do not declare your new position to the people. It is best to remain in secret for now.”

Silas didn’t know what to think. Sure, he remembered that Silandrin had told him about this, but it had never been Silas’ focus. When he had been told that destroying the medallions would claim his life, he had stopped thinking about being the Watchman. All he ever wanted was to get rid of the medallions and destroy the gates. All he wanted was for this to be finished. And now it was.

Silas was too tired to train again. He had been through too much to take up another task. Who were these ‘others’ that Silandrin mentioned?

“Do not think about it too much,” Silandrin said. “Meditate. Be alone. People will need you again one day.” He took a deep breath and smiled. “It’s time for you to wake up.”

“When I wake up, will I be weak and drained of my power?”

“Not this time. Though your newest powers derived from the medallions, that doesn’t make you powerless on your own.”

“I thought that destroying the Red Gate was going to kill me.”

“Did that scare you?” Silandrin asked.

“Yes.”

Silandrin smiled. “It scared me too.”

“I don’t think I’m ready to go back.”

“You need to, Silas. Wake up.”

“Not yet.”

“Wake up.”

*****

“Silas, you have to wake up!” The voice was Julian’s.

Silas slowly opened his eyes to see a bloody Julian sitting over him. Behind him was a sight that Silas never thought he would witness in Mudavé.

Instead of the ominous red sky, with gray clouds and fumes, the sky was actually blue with white clouds floating by peacefully. It was as if the land of Marenon was ready for a new beginning too.