Ultimus Thesaurus: The last Treasure (Era of Change Book 1) (22 page)

“But how should it ever stop if none of you hears the other out? How should this madness end?”

“Only one of us can leave this dome.”

His answers were clear and so was his intention. But the death of Magnus was not something that was open for consideration in any way, which is why I had to find another way to leave this dream.

“What exactly created this dome?”

“In the heart of the forest there is a shrine and inside of it there is a key and this key was the beginning of the dome. The man poisoned this world and closed off my thoughts. Now he watches over the key and without it I can no longer escape.”

These were the true thoughts he had about his father and he revealed them openly in this dream, but the shrine and the key were only symbols for the gap that he had to overcome to be free of these thoughts. Nothing of what would follow was going to be simple, but now I at least knew exactly how I could liberate us all from this dream.

I opened the book which the king had given me and saw again many ideas that wrote themselves into it. Now I began to write my own and therefore altered the flow of thoughts in this dream. It was not easy rearranging it in a logical pattern and so I began with simple things such as a path which we could follow.

While we both followed this new path, I continued to write into the book and noticed that Magnus already followed us. His attempts to remain unnoticed were both childish as well as pointless, but his presence could nevertheless not be perceived by Isaac. The closer the two were in the dream, the harder it was for me to change it. 

The thoughts of Magnus were numerous and they angrily collided with those of Isaac.

Since my time grew short I decided to just get the shrine to us and when it appeared before us, the book disappeared from my hand and my control over the dream was lost. Immediately when he saw it Magnus ran at the key and took it for himself.

“Give it back! I want nothing more than to be free!” Isaac begged Magnus, who had already climbed to the top of a nearby tree.

“Never! Without it I will die. I know it! Without it I can no longer continue,” said Magnus and hid between the branches.

“Why don’t you give me the key? I can keep it until the time has come. You can trust me,” I said and interfered with their conversation.

Magnus was not a stupid man and even in his constitution, it was clear to him that he could trust me. But the key he wanted to keep nonetheless.

“You don’t know my thoughts. My life is important, but you two think that I am dispensable.”

"I am a powerful man, Magnus. My gifts allow me to take the key if you don’t give it to me now. I just wanted you to know that I am no danger to you,” I bluffed and hoped that Magnus was crazy enough to believe me.

But after this attempt failed miserably, Isaac joined in and he had no intention of settling the dispute in a peaceful manner. The confrontation of the two triggered such a strong contrast that the dream began to crumble apart. The sky turned to a discoloured reddish-black tone and the white clouds sank down to the ground and formed a grey haze covering the forest’s ground around us.

I no longer had any possible way to control the two and the power of their thoughts was too strong in this place. But I noticed that the golden pen was still in my possession. Magnus had not been able to banish it from the dream and I was sure that it was the key to controlling the flow of thoughts.

As the earth began to shake and the tree on which Magnus sat lost its leaves and branches one after the other, I took the pen into my hand and thrust it with all my strength into the bark. In an instant everything around us had turned back to normal and neither the dark sky nor the fog was to be seen. Magnus fell down from the tree, that now disappeared and I saw the key, lying next to him on the floor.

Isaac was on the brink of grabbing it, but I was faster and made him bide his time.

“Give me the key! This conflict is nothing to you.”

“I know you Isaac and also this man. He is not the one who wants to hurt you. Your thoughts are not in any danger, just as little as his. Let me take the key and we can all leave this place. There is still someone out there who we must rescue”.

“Why should we trust you? You say that you know us and that you want to help us, but why should you do this?” asked Isaac and looked down on his father, still unconscious on the floor.

“Because I am your friend and you are mine.”

When I had said the words, the book of the king appeared out of nowhere before my feet. I took it into my hands immediately and a further door was created, which I opened with the key. Behind it we found a place that I had already seen, because our journey led us back to the field of my hometown again.

Magnus was still unconscious and so we took him through the field, this time however in times of summer. The smell of freshly mown meadows was in the air and we followed it far beyond the city borders. 

First of all it was of the utmost importance to ensure that Magnus was safe, which is why I and Isaac brought him home to me. The world in which we were was just as I remembered it from back then. My father was not at home and Edgar he had taken with him, since he swore off his duties like every summer.

His feigned concern for the wellbeing of the town’s population was enough for him to keep his position in the office and it was also enough to exploit their trust as far as possible. This man had shown me what it means to be cruel and he would one day be surprised, what the result of his work would be.

As Isaac was still reluctant to stay with the unknown man, we just put Magnus in the bed and left the house again. I had of course hoped that this dream was Lucia’s and so we rushed to the house of her grandparents. However we again saw nothing but an empty field and no sign of Lucia’s existence.

Only the inhabitants of the village could provide us with information about the whereabouts of Lucia.

“Miss Lawrence? I think she would be with her father in the town hall. Mayor Lawrence adheres to a strict schedule,” a man told us and I realized that it was not our house in which we had left Magnus behind.

Obviously my father had no significant role in this world, which was probably due to Lucia banishing me from her dreams.

“At the moment we still have no other choice than to get Magnus and then Lucia. She can show us how we can leave this place again,” I said to Isaac, who was not interested in helping his father.

“You can go and help the old man; I will take a look around the village. I don’t care what exactly all of this is, but what I do know is that this man tormented me when we were still trapped in that dome, but now I am free and I don’t want to ever lose this feeling again,” he said and turned away without a look back.

Since Magnus was the bigger problem for me I had no other choice than to let Isaac go. Lucia would most probably not remember me and only the book of the king could help us to leave this place again.

I reached the house and fortunately I was the first. Nobody had noticed our entering and Magnus was still sleeping peacefully in the bed where we had left him behind.

“So it is really only a dream”, I heard Lucia say who was standing in the framework of the door and watched as I sat on the bed next to Magnus.

“Finally I find you. We must leave before he stops us again,” I said and got closer to Lucia, but her father put himself in front of me and focused me with a dark glance.

“Well, well, the little boy of that time. Did I not forbid you to play with my daughter,” he said and his eyes were glowing, showing me his true face.

“This man is not your father Lucia. Come with me and together we can escape from this island.”

She looked at me, but felt nothing. Her expression was empty, as well as her heart.

“This is all what I have wished for. He can give me what I need, even if it is only a dream. I was happy in the past. I now understand that I never really wanted more than simply to live. My lust for love and understanding killed my father, took my family and destroyed my homeland. If I had been content with what I had, all these people would still be alive.”

The prince fixed the book with his eyes and it was clear to me that he knew what I had.

“It is not your fault. It is mine. Too long have I held you back from doing what you wished for and I made too many of your dreams my own. 

I bothered you with ever more impossible objectives and at the end we both lost everything, even though I never truly had anything. Maybe that is why I dragged you down with me.

I am sorry Lucia. I know that no matter what I do I don’t deserve your love. Your father on the other hand earned it, as well as your family and your hometown. But all of these people are no more and so you must again confine yourself to what you got. Do not make the same mistake again, to want more than that, even if it is only dreams and wishes.”

The prince took a step forward and manifested his true form, while Magnus woke up and collapsed full of fright from the bed. The space around us transformed now ever faster back to the temple that we never had left and Isaac was drawn instantly to this place.

“This book, how did you get it?” the prince asked me not realizing that he himself gave it to me.

I opened the book and used its power to bring the stone from the temple into my possession. Every word that I wrote became the truth and every sentence formed a new reality. Soon the dream that the prince created broke apart and we all came back to what we really were.

Isaac found himself trembling on the floor and I could see how he was increasingly tortured by pain while Magnus assumed the control and immediately lost his consciousness. Lucia was petrified next to the prince who now almost powerless watched me, as I held both the book as well as the stone in my hand.

Aton was plagued by pain and with surges of rage he bashed against the pillars of the temple and the ceiling became ever weaker with each further beat.

“Give me the book, Albus,” screamed the prince, but I wrote another sentence and the temple disappeared.

This power in my hands was indescribable, because everything that I thought could become a reality for all the people around me. Perhaps it was exactly this arrogance to believe that I would be in control of this power that eventually brought me down.

I had made the temple disappear, saved my friends, but nevertheless I was alone again. I moved forward, ran and ran out of breath, until I could go no further. It was in this moment in which I was totally lost that the voice of the king brought me to reason.

“I gave you this book because it is yours. Since I have it, I know that its power is infinite. Each word in it speaks the truth, but each lie, that you invent yourself becomes just as true as each word before it. Use it with caution and understand that this power should not be led by you, but it should lead you.

The being that you are up against once called me a brother, just like you today. But know this covenant is nothing more than a destructive pact, whose end can be nothing but death. Do not forget that everything you need is right in front of you.”

And as the voice disappeared, the temple returned to its place. I had not succeeded in letting it disappear and now I was powerless against the prince who would take the stone back into his possession.

“What a truly wonderful power that you have. Now I will show you mine,” he said and his eyes began to glow.

His gaze alone forced all except me on their knees and as he began to speak, the earth shook under our feet and trembled before his voice. Only I alone was still conscious, but I was not surprised when I thought about all the things which had happened to me now.

“It is amazing how even the voice of a king cannot bring you to your knees. Only a few have so far resisted this sound, but you are probably the first man. 

It is my blood alone that grants you this power, because I smell how it rushes through your veins making your own squirm and writhe as it searches for safety and protection.

This stone is everything that I need and I think that you should now finally understand that none of you will survive. This fight that is still raging on inside you is incomparable, but it is also just as worthless,” he said and took the stone out of my hands.

I was not able to move, but I could still see what he was up to. He let his slaves carry us to the outside of the gates of the temple and his servants stirred up the fire to unprecedented heights. Only Aton was still tormented by pain even in his sleep and he tried to escape from this dream.

I could not imagine how it must have been to believe that you are someone else and to slowly rot away in a prison cell. It was a punishment that a man as he had once been perhaps had earned, but this man died many thousands of years ago on an island. Today he was nothing more than a husk for the dreams of the past.

“This fire will be the gate through which my forces march into the world. With the power that he created in order to destroy me, I will burn this whole world to the ground. See how the era of humanity ends,” he shouted with an even darker and more malicious sound than before and shattered the stone in the fire.

It shone brighter with every second and fountains of pure light shot out from it, until the beams pierced the dark clouds in the sky and pushed through for a clear view on the sun. Seen from the perspective of this island it seemed brighter and especially closer than normal. The heat of the radiation burned the space around the fire and all the slaves and priests united in the flames.

“This is just the beginning soon his holy sun will take with it all of humanity, just as it once did to my kind.”

The prince controlled the power of the fire and I saw that his entire focus was directed towards it. 

He did not notice what I did and less and less could he maintain his influence on us. With all his zeal he had forgotten to also take the book from my hands and that is why I opened it and did what the king had advised me to do.

Many weird characters and old writings gathered in the interior of the book while I tried to find a page, which could guide me. I found nothing but disjointed fragments, which described the doings of the prince. Without the ability to change the reality of the situation, I could not stop it. But just in that moment I began to understand what the king said. He told me that I should not create anything if it does not already exist and that each lie would join the words that would reveal the truth.