Ultimus Thesaurus: The last Treasure (Era of Change Book 1) (34 page)

I have changed my mind; I think that I will tell you what really happened at that time. Every person with a request that exceeds all human capabilities, sooner or later comes to me. Just like Jasper Lawrence, the great adventurer. He knelt before my throne, begged me and wanted to give me everything, even his mind and his soul. What he wanted? He wanted to save his wife from a disease, which will soon destroy all of humanity. 

The sun that once had been your greatest treasure had now turned against you. It’s corroding your cells, mocking your minds and destroying your technology until nothing of you remains.

I told him that my blood and my blood alone could save them, but that I wouldn’t simply give it to him. He tried to fight me, threatened me and cried, until he finally went away, as did all the people who visited me. But something in him was different. In secret he took a sample of my own substance, my genetic formula. He met a man, Magnus Doyle, who helped him create a new being from the same formula. They hoped for the knowledge of this world, the power over life and death, but the child had proved to be useless, since it was human, and not special in the slightest.

His wife died, the doctor lost his mind and Jasper tried to get what he had asked of me before. He did what I requested, no matter what it was, and his atrocities spoiled his soul to the extent to which I liked this game no longer. I handed him a vial of my blood, but he drank it not, he did not even give it to his child, for whose existence he had sacrificed so much. Everything he had fought for had lost its meaning on that day, knowing that he had failed against me.

But it was found that his daughter suffered from the same disease and so he sent her out to find, what he had hidden. You should now understand that your own life is worthless, because for this world and all those you know, it is nothing more than a gold coin. They hand you out and they heal themselves with your blood until you are empty and consumed. This is your destiny, this is your life. Do you still want to know the truth? What do you think of the people for whom you fought?” he asked and laughed louder and louder.

The sound that he emitted was so terrible for my ears, that I tried to defend myself against it, but I could not do it. I felt the pain deep in my heart and I finally understood who I was. The connection that I felt to the prince, the knowledge that I had sensed for so long and everything that had changed within me, finally began to make sense. I was Jacob Ayrs, but I was also the prince himself.

“Take our guests back to the ancestral hall, we will soon join you,” the prince said to Mel, who immediately disappeared with Isaac in a black fog.

“Now I will show you my true power, the power that once frightened and scared the whole planet. Do not forget that we are equal, but in the end you are still just a man. You will never be truly the same and you will never be able to defeat me,” he said and his hands and feet transformed to huge claws, which he plunged into the ground, while he collapsed and began to change.

The time that I had left, I used to fully and completely concentrate on my wrath. As long as I focused enough, I should at least have a small chance against the prince himself. He may have been a true king of the dragons and I was just a man, not even any special, but there was still something that I had that he would never understand. I had the conviction that I was able to achieve something greater.

Large wings broke from the back of the prince and his eyes glowed in a bright red. He got up from the ground and his gaze alone caused me pain. His words were no longer those of my language, but they sounded like screeching screams shaking my whole body, like a wave that slowly overpowered me. The window to our sides burst asunder by the sound and the floors and walls collapsed piecemeal.

“I will not stop, I will fight for my friends, my family, and my home, for everything that you have taken from me,” I called out to him and he just laughed in an even darker tone than before.

The heat rose up within me and my body became a single flame that burned everything around me. There was no fear in the eyes of the prince; rather it was curiosity and tension. He lashed out with his wings and the flames that surrounded me lost its power, only to then blaze up even more. But still the prince did not stop and he lashed out with increasing power until his body was completely hovering above the ground. 

The seconds that the he waited and goaded me, were just a demonstration of his power and I knew that I should be afraid. He stormed through the air towards me and grabbed me at full pace. We tore with a breath-taking speed through the walls of the castle, until we finally flew up through the ceiling into the open sky.

Now I saw it for the first time, the dragonhoard. The castle stood at the precipice of the huge tunnels that reached down into the deep soil, as far down as to the core of the planet itself. It was an incredible sight and it was only disrupted by the relentless blows that I absorbed by the claws of the prince. My body relented more and more to the pain and I felt how the flames disappeared. He stopped and kept me up in front of him with just one of his hands. His power was beyond this world and still he did not resemble the dragons of the legends.

“Do you now see the difference between us? Do you understand what it means to be a dragon? I could crush you like an insect, but I will not do so, because I know that we could be one and the same. You are the proof that it is possible to create new creatures like me. The gift that you possess is that of a red dragon. You are not as I, called to be a king, but perhaps you only need more time to bring out your true potential. Your human side makes you weak, but with my help you could renounce it and prevail upon this world, as I do.”

He made me an offer of which he just couldn’t have believed that I would ever accept it. I was inferior to him and he kept things firmly in his hand, yet I did not believe that I had lost. I broke free from his grasp and concentrated only on one thought - to fly. Wings made of pure fire formed on my back and quickly I stabilized my fall, I flew back into the sky and floated before the prince. Now he finally accepted me as his opponent and no longer saw me as a victim.

“Impressive! I see that my blood is not totally wasted. I don’t even want to think about the fact that we are one and the same person. I will show you that we are not,” he said and his body transformed even further.

After a few seconds he was already twice as large as before and his face became ever more disfigured until it resembled that of an ancient dragon. Now I understood the capabilities of these creatures and their gift to adapt and to act as if they were human. He started to spit fire in my direction and I quickly stopped my initial attempts to repel it with my body, when I noticed that my skin was burned even through the flames that protected it. I flew with rapid speed and took advantage of each tower of the castle to ward off the fiery balls that he threw in my direction, but he was faster and smarter than I. He could anticipate what I would do next and I realized soon that he simply had been the same person for such a long time.

I headed away from the castle and there I saw the tunnels leading back into the dark abyss. At first I was not sure, but then the time for considerations had ran out and I had to decide. I plummeted down and built up as much speed as possible, but his weight gave him the advantage and he quickly caught up to me again. The tunnel led us down in an almost straight way and I asked myself what had once created it. Again and again I saw ores that broke out from the pure rock and the cries of the prince left the cave to tremble under the pressure of his power. 

When he eventually reached me, the prince grabbed me with his claws. I tried my best to break free from his grasp but a thick darkness surrounded me. When it was gone, I found myself back at the core of the planet. In only a few seconds we had moved thousands of kilometres. The prince hurled me to the ground and landed opposite to me, at the place, where once the castle had stood and he waited for me to get up.

“It is a suitable tomb, here under the massive crystals. Do you know how they come to be? It is said that these are the tears of the dead, the ghosts in this world. Your friend Mel has sold me the souls of so many people, so many generations, that I barely know what kind of power is resting within them. The old archmages of this world used artefacts like these in bygone times, to communicate with the spirits of the other side. 

They called them the Astal. It was their power that formed this world until the Sun King stood against me. It was at that time that I first believed to be ready. Everything was accounted for and the crystals were charged up to their highest potential.

But he freed the spirits and disappeared in time. After his death, I am now finally ready again. We dragons are not so simple creatures such as your people. We need something more than simple mergers of flesh to reproduce. Our kind is not allowed to develop, for we are the kings of all beings. The book, which controls the change in this world, is also known as the Code of Souls. My ancestors believed that within it the spirit of a god rests and that he infused it with his power. Others believed that the book had eaten the souls of the gods, and thus led to their demise.

But I do believe that this book is no more than a toy of very powerful beings. They left it for him who would be born in order to control everything. This being is I. The words in it are written in a language that is like nothing known to the humans. Unfortunately, the archives of the dwarves were lost or destroyed thousands of years ago. Even today many of my servants explore the interior of this planet in search of them - unsuccessful. That is why it is all the more important that I now finally learn how I can create a new kind,” the prince said and his laughter shook the entire planet’s core.

“Why do you want them to return? Was it not you who killed them? You said that you have murdered your own father.”

“Just like you. You cannot understand that some things are necessary? We need things, want things, but there are also those that simply must be. I may be a king of my kind, a ruler of this world, but without a being that is my equal, can I even be really powerful? With a simple word that I write into a book, I can destroy this world, but when there is a real war for survival, I can truly prove my value.”

“All of this, only to prove how strong you are? Your madness knows seemingly no limits. I will not allow this world to become a playground for your war.”

“And yet you cannot prevent it. My power is nothing compared to the power of the gods. Don't you understand that we do not yet have reached our full potential? Even us dragons can further develop, and I will be the one, who stands above all others; the king of gods.”

“And at what price? Resurrecting your people, only to slaughter them again? Do you even hear the sick ideas in your head? What is the reason for such deeds?”

“A weak spirit, such as yours, cannot understand what it means to live. Life is a process of selection. If you can find your death only in battle, as I, then there is no more value in life without a true enemy. Many thousands of years have I searched for such a being, and only a few could even stand up against me. You and the Sun King are quite similar, but so will be the cause of your defeat.

If my kind returns, then they will learn to fight, learn to live, and those who are unable to learn, will die. At the end I will rule over a world that is much more powerful than this, and the only border between life and death will be a battle. Had you led my life, shared my fate, then you would see this world through the same eyes.”

“No. Every human being has own decisions, and so does every dragon. The moments in which we lose this decision, define who we really are. I would never be able to act in the way you have. We are the same, we act in a similar fashion, but in the end I am not more like you than the Sun King was. We all want to protect what is important to us, we are all looking for a higher value in life, and none of us could truly vanish in simplicity.

But what makes us different is our origin, our friends, our dreams and our feelings. Never could I understand how you lived, never more could I see it or experience it. The time takes this opportunity from us and all left to us is the present”.

He laughed, and turned slowly back into his original form.

“Can you see me, in this form? I have not always been so weak and struck. There was a time when I was seen as the most powerful dragon of my generation. They gave me the name Summanus, the dark flash. Because I was the bright light in the dark clouds of this world and my thunder that followed, rent even the naked skin of this planet. You want to see how it was? You want to understand who I was? My power knows no limits, I have told you that already. The time is not a simple construct that is described by the movement of a pointer on a dial. Your people need to learn that there are things between the past and the present.

If you open your eyes again, you will see what has destroyed my world. You will find the truth behind my words, and you will see that you would have decided just as I did,” he said and he lifted up his hand toward the ceiling.

The huge crystals began to shine and their splendour was not from this world. Whatever the prince was doing to me, it took my power and extinguished the flames that had protected me.

When I opened my eyes, I lost all control over my body. I was lying on a bed in the room I had seen before. It was the chamber of the prince, and I realized quickly that I now saw the world through his eyes. These were his memories that he showed me. Everything looked just like in our time, only much more bright and cheerful. 

The sun was shining through the open window and the prince rose from the bed. He went about the room and stopped in front of the large mirror in the room. I saw his face and was amazed at how much he had once resembled me. It was clear to me that we were the same person, and yet it was as if I saw him for the first time. His hair was darker than mine, but his smile, as he looked at himself in the mirror, was so clean and peaceful that it was difficult for me to recognize him.