“You want some food?” the AI finally deigned to notice them, with tangible disdain in its voice.
“Exactly!” Gill raised his voice bluntly. “Bring it to the Archivists To—”
“Sorry, but we don’t serve food anymore!”
“Excuse me? Why—”
“Didn’t you watch the holofluxes?” the operator interrupted him again, impolitely, looking straight into his eyes.
“No! But what’s that to do with my lunch?” he exclaimed, bewildered.
“It’s the end of the world and we don’t pick orders anymore! Arghail is in Alixxor, that’s what my Antyran overseer told us. Zhan the Great have mercy on your cursed kyis! I have to delete myself! De-lete my-self!” the AI wailed with comical despair in its voice.
The conversation ended abruptly, leaving them numb in front of the holophone.
They both turned to the window at the same time.
“The tarjis are moving westward!” Gill exclaimed.
“Do you think they’re heading to the training base?” asked Alala, choked with anguish.
“We have to run! They’ll come after us any moment now!”
He looked into her deep, black eyes and felt the seeds of fear sprouting again, this time for the safety of both of them. Gill knew that he might be one of the most sought-after targets, and she could get in trouble for staying around him. But leaving her alone on a day like this didn’t seem right, either.
They had to find a place to go quickly, and hiding in his dome wasn’t exactly the smartest idea.
“I know where to hide,” whispered Alala. “I’ve got a recreation dome in the Roch-Alixxor. We can go there.”
“That’s great!” He sighed, relieved by her proposal. “Come on, then.”
He took her hand and stepped into the hallway. The main labs on its sides had glass walls, so they could see their colleagues looking out the windows, visibly shaken. One of them turned the holoflux on and started to watch the holograms. The others joined him shortly.
“Wait a moment,” said Alala, turning back to Tadeo’s room. “Let’s check the holophone.”
Most of the channels streamed their usual allegories and aroma recipes—all recordings. Just when they were about to give up, they stumbled upon Baila’s official flux.
The hologram of a small Antyran popped up in the room. The apparition was fully dressed in a shiny ritual costume. It would have been next to impossible to find someone unable to recognize him, because the mighty Baila XXI himself, in a red tunic, was frowning at them! Red was Zhan’s color, and only the prophet or his most devoted servants, in their holy war against Arghail, could dress like that. Moreover, he had tattooed the black eye of Zhan with a vertical iris on his right cheek. Only Baila was pure enough to paint it. And he did.
“What’s he doing here?” exclaimed Gill scornfully. “Shouldn’t he perch in a murra?”
“Not good… not good at all,” murmured Alala.
Baila brandished a hologram in his palm.
“Zoom on the palm,” Gill ordered to the holophone. The hologram-in-hologram quickly magnified until they were able to see its smallest details.
A horrible shock awaited them: the main character was none other than Tadeo! Tadeo, holding the skull of a god in his hands! No doubt someone had scanned the image on the ship carrying them to Alixxor, for they could see the unmistakable walls of the space carrier in the background. How did the temples get their tails on such a hologram? The question was rhetorical, of course. The archivists had been betrayed, which shouldn’t have been a surprise for anyone. On Zhan’s eye, how did they move so fast? Gill’s hopes to escape unnoticed were dashed into pieces.
Baila’s face was wrinkled in anger, his lips twitching uncontrollably.
“My dearest sons!” he cried with deadly coldness in his eyes. I’m sorry for the wholeness of your kyis, but I bear terrible news: we have lost the battle with Arghail! Again!”
The frightening words came out of his mouth with a mix of anger and cold indifference, followed by a murmur of terror from the crowd. The disclosure sent shock waves through the tarjis, who expected anything but such a horrifying confession. It was the kind of revelation they hoped to never hear during their lifetimes. And the unthinkable had happened.
The tarjis instinctively closed their ranks, crowding together to create a compact body and fill any gaps through which the god of darkness could sneak his corrupting tail.
“We shall forever remember the day when our world fell into darkness six hundred and fifty-two years ago, the day when we let the ones departed from Zhan’s bosom to win!”
Baila made an energetic gesture to appease the murmurs, cleared his throat, and continued with even more pathos.
“Yes, we did nothing! Yes, Arghail’s harvest was huge! Yes, we let His sons to run from His light. They could have been saved, and we lost them. We abandoned them—Zhan’s eye is my witness—even though we could have crushed the rebels a thousand times over. But we wanted to give them the chance to discover His greatness all by themselves!”
He turned his eyes to the sky, searching Zhan’s approval for the so-called “decision” to abandon the power. Of course, it was an egregious lie, if only by judging the savagery of the battles fought during the Kids’ War—and Gill knew it better than anyone else. The last thing Baila IX had done willingly was to “abandon” the power. But Baila XXI, of course, was free to say anything as long as there were millions eager to sip every word and believe any absurdity.
Suddenly, he started to scream hysterically.
“One thing we asked them when we left them to rule. One thing, Antyrans, only one thing: do not enter Arghail’s cursed cities!”
This time, the tarjis forgot even to breathe.
“Let me ask you, is it so hard to understand why we demanded that? Is it so difficult to follow?”
Gill already knew what was about to happen—it had become predictable. Still, he couldn’t take his eyes from Baila XXI’s lips.
“What have they done? They entered the forbidden places? Yes, they did, but to make their crime even more heinous, they brought Arghail and his offspring here!” Baila shouted, pointing a finger to the ground. “And set them free!”
A scream of terror erupted from the crowd. Baila XXI rolled his unforgiving eyes above the square, raising the hologram to make sure all the viewers could see it.
“The righteous can still do something! Arghail is in a base in western Alixxor, and we, under Zhan’s colors, will go inside to fight the final battle. The end of times is nigh, as prophecies foretold!”
Hearing the terrible words, the crowd fell to the ground, bowing their heads in the dust.
“As for the council, one thing I have to say: the peace is over! From now on, I’m ruling Antyra, and whoever refuses to submit to my authority will be squashed like a puny licant! It’s time to defeat the evil, once and for all!”
Baila had just declared war on the Shindam! A war smoldering for the last 652 years broke out, and Gill, in the most unfortunate way, was right in the middle of it! However, one thing puzzled him: how could Baila have the tail to claim that the bones belonged to Arghail’s children? It would have made more sense to believe that the remnants were of Zhan’s sons crashed on Antyra II during their holy attack 1,250 years ago!
Of course, now that he had connected to the golden bracelet and felt the gods’ deep sorrow at the loss of their homeworld, Gill couldn’t imagine that they had found no better pastime than flying to Antyra, cramming it with craters, and killing its primitive inhabitants. No, he didn’t believe that Tadeo’s bones belonged to Zhan’s sons or to Arghail’s children. But Baila had no way of knowing this; the only explanation was that the prophet couldn’t care less what exactly Tadeo held in his hands. The things that really mattered to him were the circumstances. The temples had lost the power 652 years ago, and now he had a chance to win it back. It was the perfect timing for a new civil war: the extraordinary coincidence of the artifacts’ arrival to Alixxor during Karajoo gave him a great reason to launch his attack right when he had an army in the capital.