“Wait!” Gill shouted.
“You changed your mind already?” The Antyran grinned at the thought that he had managed to scare him so easily.
Gill pointed his finger at the wasted Antyran nearby.
“Who’s he?”
The grin immediately disappeared from the Antyran’s face, being replaced by a disgraceful grimace.
“Another traitor,” he muttered through his teeth.
“When he wakes up?”
“You can talk with him for only one hour a day. But don’t get closer than six feet. And don’t cross the stream in the meadow!”
“The stream in the meadow?” he asked, dumbfounded. What exactly did he miss? Maybe Ugo was mad… Perhaps they were all mad here in the underground. Where could he find a stream in the bowels of the scorched planet?
“Stay away from the trees, and don’t cross the small river in the valley. That’s your perimeter!”
Seeing Gill’s puzzled face, he showed him the suction cups near the nest on the left.
“You’ll find it in the box. The yellow ket seed.”
“Seed?”
“Bixan.”
“And how—”
Without hiding his disgust, as if he could smell Gill’s repulsiveness directly through the flux, the Antyran closed the connection.
Gill was left alone and angry at the way his first meeting in Ropolis went along. He had relied so much on the thought that he could convince the rebels to become his allies that now he felt deeply upset. After only a few hours in Ropolis, I already made an enemy… and not just any Antyran, but apparently, an architect.
How would Ugo put his threats into practice? The truth was that locked in the dark room, he was vulnerable, very vulnerable. They could use a proximity inductor to paralyze him or poison the air with hallucinogenic aromas. There were so many ways to subdue him and take his bracelet. On the other tail, he could escape at any time by jumping through the skylight… but surely Ugo wouldn’t let him get away that easily. All the madness from Alixxor would move to Ropolis.
The shred of hope he had when he entered the catacombs crumbled away as if blown by Belamia’s winds when he understood what tiny chances he had to protect his secrets. Even if he managed to meet the other architects, they would force him to speak and become exposed to the temptation of the power hidden in the bracelet. Would they fight to resurrect Sigia from its own ashes, to succeed where Kirk’an had failed? He wasn’t sure at all. The Ropolitans certainly wove their own webs, in which he and the artifact risked being sacrificed for some more or less bellicose purposes. And he wouldn’t allow this to happen.
CHAPTER 11.
Antyra and Colhan were the most important gods of the ancient world, before Zhan’s coming. The fertile womb of Antyra—the mother of all creatures—was the planet Antyra I itself. Her only son, Alixxor, was spawned from an egg she hatched for a hundred cycles of the universe.
One day, Alixxor fell in love with Oleia, an Antyran female whose beauty was famous throughout the ancient world. He didn’t want to listen to anybody; he didn’t hear the order of the supreme god to never see her again because she was a mortal of humble condition.
His father, the star god Colhan, took offense at Alixxor’s disobedience. Blinded by rage, he grabbed his son by the tail and tossed him from the heavens with a power greater than anyone could imagine. It is said that where they hit the ground, the god’s bones gave birth to the largest mountain range in the world—the Roch-Alixxor massif. Torn by grief, the mother goddess cried for 160,000 days and 160,000 nights;63 her salty tears formed the huge ocean around the only continent of the world.
Frightened by the result of his anger, like any husband who exaggerated “a bit,” Colhan wanted to appease Antyra. But he had no idea how, and being the star god, he obviously had his pride: he couldn’t simply admit he did something wrong. Therefore, he gathered the other gods, and together they devised a secret plan. One day, out of the blue, yellow flakes started to fall across the planet. Soon, millions of tall, green plants called acajaa sprouted from the strange seeds. At first, Antyra didn’t pay any attention, being too busy mourning her son, Alixxor. But after a while, she couldn’t ignore them. There were too many of them—the whole planet was covered. One day, as she walked in one of the acajaa fields, she was pricked by the thorns at the base of the plant. A droplet of orange-colored juice was promptly injected into the goddess.
Due to this deception of the star god, Antyra was impregnated again. She immediately understood her mistake because she was a goddess—and not any goddess, but the mother of earth and fertility. However, it was too late; she was carrying another of Colhan’s puppies in her belly. Because of her hatred for the consort god, she didn’t love the new life inside her. She gave birth to a new egg in the form of a sphere of translucent ice. The ice refused to melt, even when its father took it into the core of the star.
Eventually, Colhan got angry again—and in the worst way possible. He had a “slight” tendency to get enraged rather quickly— he wasn’t exactly renowned for his patience. He grabbed his gorg64 and hit the sphere with all his godly might. With a terrible noise, the ice broke in millions of shards, each splinter becoming a seed from which nightmares arose. The goddess Pixihe was born!
Her first concern was to lock the whole planet in her icy grip; Pixihe’s heavy breathing was colder than the seed of night, and she used it to cover the whole world with eternal glaciers.
The goddess’s whims suffocated the warmth of the star, robbing the inhabitants of their rich harvests. The despairing wails of the ancients climbed up to the heavens; Colhan, fed up with hearing them, went to sleep, deciding to nap till the next cycle of the universe. Many creatures became trapped in the unforgiving ice, forever captive of the mad goddess.
Pixihe then began to hatch her own eggs, and soon she gave rise to a whole army of creatures and ice monstrosities. Even Dedris, the mistress of the legendary glacier Ricopa, was—according to the legends—one of Pixihe’s daughters, born from a statue.
Nothing tamed the goddess; nothing melted her hearts of ice. Nothing—until the arrival of Zhan, who replaced all the old gods. But the latter’s victory proved to be ephemeral. Because Pixihe had returned. With a vengeance.
***
Baila gazed at the hologram, trying to imagine the hole in which Abrian disappeared four days ago, right under their spikes. He was looking for the thousandth time at the plains in western Alixxor when his eyes were suddenly drawn to the nearby spaceport, which buzzed with activity. The shock of the revelation hit him right in the middle of his head spikes: Of course, it’s so simple! he thought, stunned by his slowness. Why did it take so long to figure it out? “The flood of details should never overshadow the target’s steadiness,” he had written in the seekers’ manual. And that’s exactly what I did during the last days, like a beginner seduced by frivolous flavors…
But even as he grudgingly reproached his lack of focus, he knew it would be a huge mistake to share it with the others. The prophet could only be perfect; therefore, he shouldn’t stain the aura of invincibility he worked so hard to build.
“Well? What’s the conclusion?” He turned menacingly toward the group of initiates in the room. He mainly addressed a short, fatty Antyran who was trying hard to look busy. Harut, the newly assigned ratrap of the agents, had abandoned his white robe for a black uniform, which placed him among the ranks of the temple soldiers.
“Oh… we searched Alixxor for the fourth time. We… couldn’t find him,” he uttered in a barely whispered voice, strangled by fear.