After they reached the mountains, they left the coastal highway for a narrow magneto-road leading to the crest. As they climbed above the purple barrier, they saw the platforms of the three big pyramids in Alixxor rising above the evening fog like three distant islands in a stormy sea.
The road followed a huge glacial trough carved deep into the stone wall. The recreation dome was in a secondary valley on the left side of the trough, surrounded by eight-thousand-feet-tall walls.
Gondarra’s landmass was once a continent in its own right, but several dozen million years ago, it had slammed violently into the much larger Antyran continent. It was this collision that gave birth to the Roch-Alixxors, the highest mountain range of the stellar system, its peaks reaching over sixty-five thousand feet in height. And even after all these years, the crunching was still going strong.
Viewed from Gondarra’s swampy plains, the mountains resembled two huge stairs made of fifteen-thousand-foot vertical rock walls and scarred by several deep glacial calderas. Massive granite blocks dotted the plateaus, abandoned there by ancient glaciations. On the edges, countless foamy streams were flowing into the abyss in a madness of waterfalls. On the lower plateau, a large river fed by the glaciers, called “Oleia’s tears,” was falling off the cliff in a twelve-thousand-feet-high waterfall. During the summer days, when the vardannes were the strongest, nothing reached the ground—the river turned directly into clouds.
The recreation domes were scattered up to thirteen thousand feet, along the valleys close to the roads. But on the highest plateau, at over thirty thousand feet, there was a whole village of space domes available only to the Shindam’s elite in search of new thrills—like trekking the high-altitude glaciers dressed in spacesuits. Of course, the domes had an artificial atmosphere just like a spaceship, and reaching them was possible only in specially designed air-jets.
They were still climbing the coils of the narrow valley when Gill heard a strange, thunderous noise in the distance—a low rumble broken by violent hissings. Before they had a chance to understand what was about to happen, a column of huge armored chameleons belonging to the Shindam’s order, floating on magnetic cushions, was upon them. With their cloaks fully activated, they were almost invisible. The war machines had folded the plastic wheels and extended their wings to jump24 over the road’s many bends.
Finally realizing the danger, he braked violently and stopped the magneto-jet by the wayside while the endless column of armored chameleons passed a tail’s tip away from their vehicle. After the soldiers went on their way, he waited a bit more to make sure the peril was over, and then he cautiously approached the last crossroads before their valley.
“What’s that?” asked Alala, pointing at a cloud of black smoke rising above the regarth shrubs.
As they drove closer, they saw the remains of at least three magneto-jets scattered on the road. The eye with a vertical iris painted on them meant they belonged to the temples. It seemed the chameleons had blasted them on the fly, without bothering to clean up the mess.
They passed the macabre scene without slowing down. At the crossroads, he turned right on a narrow magneto-trail leading to a secluded valley. The place seemed truly isolated, and Gill hoped to finally find some peace, at least until the end of the madness.
CHAPTER 5.
Left alone in the comfy nest of a chamber offered by Alala, Gill gazed at the bracelet with the enthusiasm of someone having to grab a poisoned guval by the tail. The ancient aromaries told countless stories about arrogant mortals meddling with the gods.25 Sometimes they rubbed their tails together, like the foolish Voran falling in love with the goddess Dedris, while other times they stole the gods’ possessions. Predictably, it never ended well for the Antyrans.
Just like the ancient heroes, he was playing with their lives, and yet he knew all too well he couldn’t back off now. He was never a hero, but no matter the risks, he had to find the truth about the end of their ancient world, to search the answers hidden inside the bracelet’s dreams. After all, that’s why he became an archivist: to discover the past. And he was about to succeed beyond his wildest dreams, even though there was a “small” chance of getting killed by the artifact.
He took a deep breath and typed the symbols on the console, deciding to ignore the consequences.
Much to his relief, it worked this time, too, and the scan started right after he pressed the last button. It began with a couple of rhomboid lights and explosive flashes in shades of yellow.
Very soon, things spun out of control. The patterns in his head became more and more elaborate until they reached a bewildering complexity, the bright textures turning into fractals of an indescribable beauty.
After a while, the colors faded, and the maddening rush finally came to a halt. The peace didn’t last long, though, as the rhomboids were replaced by the metallic taste he loathed so much. This time, he was determined to resist to the end, no matter how hard it might get.
He was trying to relax when, without warning, a huge fountain of darkness opened in his path and sucked him into the black abyss.
The dizzying fall lasted only for a moment. As soon as the rattle was gone, thousands and thousands of lights started to shine into the darkness. The stars appeared again!
Some of the lights were barely visible in the night while others glimmered like the guiding pyres of the ancient fleets. In several places, hundreds—or maybe thousands—crowded in a dense knot. But most of them lay in a long, narrow diagonal strip—there had to be millions in the ethereal foam. He gulped in disbelief, overwhelmed by the sheer size of the structure.
He was looking at the sky through the eyes of the bracelet bearer, on a huge display wall in the ship’s bridge. It was the same spaceship visited earlier in the morning.
The patch of sky was devoid of stars, except for a particularly shiny one. Although the ship was still far from it, they had already entered the system because a small, brownish planet flipped on the screen. It was a frozen world, where life had no chance to flourish. The gods’ vessel quickly turned toward the star and accelerated.
As soon as they passed the planet, the commander made a sign. A tiny area expanded on the whole wall, and they spotted two planets right in the middle of it, seemingly revolving around each other. The bigger one, about 50 percent larger than its companion, had a reddish-orange hue resembling the deserts of Antyra II. The smaller one looked similar to the first world seen on the display—same color and consistency. They weren’t close enough to the star to escape the spell of eternal ice.
The image magnified, and the gods became very nervous. Gill could sense their fear without getting the reason, but something bad was happening on the planets. Suddenly, he felt afraid for his life. Even though he realized he wasn’t truly there, he couldn’t think rationally. It was the gods’ fear—no, their certainty—that soon, they’d die in battle.
The images expanded again. Gill couldn’t understand how they did it; the lens had to be larger than the whole ship to get such resolution!
From up close, the smaller planet didn’t look anything like he imagined. Far from frozen and without atmosphere, it was draped in a thick, brown smog. Through the mist, he glimpsed lakes and rivers made of a black substance. Could they be hydrocarbons? he asked himself, skipping a couple of heartbeats at the very thought that something like that could ever exist. He even noticed a huge volcano spitting the same black fluid at great heights. The eruption climbed vertically in a thick, continuous stream, then curved gracefully under the high-altitude winds, and finally rained on the ground. Deep channels drained the substance into a large lake, pooled in a crater.