Said In Stone: Chest of Soul Prequel, #3

Prologue

In the inky canopy of night, the Mother star exploded.

Eydin, the son of King Hylan, watched, absorbed by the catastrophic beauty.

Four pieces of the star broke away.  One piece fell, streaking downward with a purple tail trailing her descent. The other three hung in the sky as if undecided.

The largest piece, white and throbbing with energy, wobbled a bit in the northern sky.  With a burst of blinding light, she stood her ground.  She’d taken the place of the Mother star in the household of the heavens!  Eydin gasped at her brilliance, astonished she’d been able to remain in place while recovering from her violent separation from the others.

The third piece flashed southeast.  Her after-burn dazzled him as she took her place in the canopy of night.  Once there, she trembled for a moment and her solid-white heart softened.  As if she’d taken a blue shroud and covered her face, she became cool and mysterious; emitting a soft radiance whose rays stabbed the night. He’d never seen such a beautiful star!  She entranced him to the point he almost lost track of the final sister.

The smallest piece seemed undecided and spun in place, burning red.  Then with a startled burst of energy, she flamed across the sky as if to make up for lost time.  She came to rest in the third corner of a long thin triangle.  There she sparkled as if satisfied and flashed a saucy wink.

The Three Sisters, he whispered in awe, recognizing the sign as described in the most ancient of books.

Yet, what of the first piece created from the mother star?  She had cast herself to the ground.

There was only one place for such a holy object to rest and he used his clear stone to travel to the ruins of All’s Temple, hundreds of miles away.

His mind was calm, but his spirit was a conglomeration of emotions he wasn’t aware he’d been feeling; wonder, awe, excitement, dread, more awe, and, above all, an overwhelming sense of gratitude and humility.

To witness the Three Sisters be called and set apart in the heavens was more than he had a right to expect. For him, it was a sign from Father of All that he and his wife were forgiven for not seeing his brother Balt’s insanity or evil intent when they should have.  As he made his way to the Temple, Eydin’s steps never faltered, his mind never wandered.

For the first time since Father of All’s wrath had been spent upon the gleaming walls, Eydin didn’t wince with remembered pain.  Little remained standing, just one wall of the holy of holies and the altar.

Glowing with inner light, the fallen sister lay on the flat surface of the Mac-hewn altar.  There was no evidence a star had crash-landed.  She had not affected the altar in any way.

During her flight, most of her had burned away.  She was the size and weight of a small apple, but there, the similarity ended.  She was black as coal and when he picked her up, he found she was cool to the touch. Yet, when she sat on his palm, he could tell great heat was stored at her core.

A vast more-than-Sharian voice came to him, driving him to his knees.

Give to Utahna this gift.  It is Heart Stone and she is its caretaker.

The voice was gone, but he knew who it belonged to.  Only one being had a voice like that. He would never forget the words All put into his heart and mind.

Shaking from his head to his toes, he placed his hand on the altar.  His surroundings blurred and he found himself on the ground outside of his home, half full of wonder and so weak he could barely walk.

In the kitchen of what was left of Hyperion, Utahna was working with several gems, the glow coming from them caressing her pale features and casting their colors onto her wealth of gold-as-wheat hair.

Wordlessly, he held out the first sister and kept it on his open palm until it was within her sight.  She gasped and her eyes widened.  She was Macshara – an Earth-Mac, and knew all minerals by sight and feel.  The Heart Stone, he was sure, would consume significant amounts of her time.

The Three Sisters are now watching, he whispered reverently.

Without touching the first sister, she pushed back her chair and ran to the outer steps as if her life depended on it.

He followed, his large hand still holding the magnificent gift All had sent.  He dare not leave the first sister behind.  She was sacred.

His wife’s eyes filled with tears at the sight of the triangle Father of All had made from the Mother Star.  Her eyes traveled from the white, to the blue, and then the red.

The Three Sisters, she whispered, a tear sliding from the corner of one eye, her hands clasped in front of her lips as if she would fall on her knees to pray.

Before she could do so, he took her right hand and gently placed the fallen sister on her open palm.  This is the fallen sister.  I found her on the altar of the Temple.  There, Father of All said she is Heart Stone and you are her caretaker.

The next words that came to his lips were not his: She separated from her sisters that you might learn.

Chills ran over his body.

He watched his wife reverently cover the first sister with her left hand and close her eyes as she usually did when working with new stone.

He knew that she felt something and his curiosity nibbled at him, but he refrained from speaking.  The moment was too profound for words.  The first sister was no longer a star, nor a gem or stone.  She was the embodiment of hope!

He was not gifted with stone.  How much more ‘Heart Stone’ meant in terms of power, or knowledge, he could not tell.  He was again humbled by the thought that it had fallen from the heavens specifically for Utahna!

His wife’s features took on the appearance of someone listening very intently.  Her affinity with stone was legendary and if the first sister gave instructions, she would hear them and obey.

His wife remained on the steps as a statue would, unmoving and solid as the rocks she had worked with her entire life.

For three days, she did not look upon the world in which they lived.  Nor did she eat, drink, or sleep.

Eydin dared not touch her, but stayed by her side, wondering about the heart stone and what his wife was experiencing, but never doubting that what was happening was the will of All.

On the third day, her eyes opened.  When she uncovered the sister, on the palm of her hand rested a now heart-shaped stone.

It appeared to be an enormous diamond, but to label its magnificence as a diamond was inaccurate – words had not been invented to describe the first sister.

When his wife spoke, her voice was like the whisper of dry husks.  There is one purpose for the fall of this star.

What is it?

I am to leave it behind for a man not yet born.

Who?

The Pillar, an Earth-Mac named Jaydren.

Chapter 1:  Heart Stone

Inside Phoenix House, wrapped in the dead of night, Jaydren writhed with anticipated pain, battling sleep, willing himself awake before the worst happened.

If you really love her, you’ll want her to be happy, no matter the price. It was something he’d said to himself a million times, but he’d never really meant it.  His head understood it, but his heart was more stubborn and tripped over common sense, never seeing it because it didn’t want to see it.

He had fallen in love with Soline.  It had taken time, but over millennia in the Fortress, more time on the Island, and now, here in the free land, he knew she was meant to be his.  Someday.

It was why he fought the dream – battling its presence a hundred thousand times since they arrived in the free land.  He recognized its promised pain and implications so well, he knew he was dreaming.  Yet, he couldn’t extricate himself from sleep no matter how hard he fought – as if All in the heavens above insisted on pounding the dream into Jaydren’s stubborn-as-rock head.

Tangled in the web of sleep, he watched himself sitting in the Hall of Justice, inwardly willing himself to leave and avoid the burn of rejection when Ammon, wearing a full suit of armor, entered and told Jaydren that Soline was getting married in Ogdones.

Heedless of collateral damage, his dream-self morphed into a golem of gargantuan proportion, exploding through the stone roof of the Hall of Justice.  He ran for Ogdones, thick stone legs ripping through stone and mortar, houses, and small villages along the way.

He wasn’t hampered by the fact he was even more enormous than the golems Utahna made. He even slammed through Ammon’s home-grown Spiran-wood house as he boiled with the need to get to her – to stop her from marrying the wrong man.

When he reached Revaya’s palace in Ogdones, he shrank to his normal size and coloring.  With his heart in his throat, he bowled over servants and whoever else stood in his way as he ran to the quiet atrium that Revaya loved the most.

There Soline stood, magnificently gowned and coldly beautiful.  Only he knew she was warm under the ice.  The groom was no more than a faceless effigy of all he despised.  A human that, despite how much Jaydren craved to do battle, never interfered in the dream.

Soline was, as usual, unreasonable – even when he pointed out that her groom, being human, would die in mere decades.

She laughed in a way she never had in life.  In a fit of jealous rage, he turned her faceless groom into brick, slammed the brick to the floor, and then spitefully ground it beneath his foot.

In doing so, he earned her eternal hatred.  Her green eyes stopped bobbing and within moments, Utak, so far away, was hit by a tsunami of monumental proportions.

Despite the mountains that surrounded his entire country, everyone and everything he had worked for, and everything Utahna had envisioned, was destroyed.  It was his fault for being a stone-fisted wonder that couldn’t bear for Soline to love another man.

Once he told himself this, he’d be allowed to wake.  The unfortunate side-effect of the dream was that, once conscious, he’d be angry, heartsore, and frustrated.  His body would be covered in sweat and his heart would be pounding so loud he felt deaf.

He had no doubt, that in real life, Soline would wreak vengeance upon his people for his poor judgment if he ever did such a foolish thing.

It wasn’t fair, but neither was Soline.

He knew her background better than anyone because he’d been forced to experience it.  On Pock’s Island, she’d coerced him into removing the embedded stone from her forehead, a flawless sapphire placed there when she was a terrified three-year-old.

As he did, every memory and thought she’d ever had to that point was laid bare; including her attraction to him.  Her memories of their incarceration inside the Fortress of Brissa were the reason he still cherished a spark of hope.

He understood her in ways no other person ever could.  Not that anyone else would dare try.  At her core, he grasped the astonishing truth that Soline was so afraid it paralyzed her.  She was frozen into the act of striking out because she’d been taught that love hurt.  It made you vulnerable.

He believed that one day, Soline would reach the point she’d realize the right kind of love made you stronger.  He planned on being there when it happened.

He’d been patient over the centuries, quietly courting her, slowly and carefully building up a foundation of trust so he could do more than kiss her hand.  One wrong move and he had to begin again.

There were inherent problems when courting Soline.

She wasn’t on land very often.  When she came inland and, if he happened to be at Veya’s, she’d bestow a smile or two on him.

He counted on her glorious hair, black under water, blue on land, to be an accurate barometer of her moods.  Always, those to-the-hip tendrils reached for him, though he knew her hands wouldn’t.

Embarrassed, she’d grab the ends in a fist, tuck her hair-filled fist behind her back, and avoid eye contact.  Now and then, he would catch her looking at him with something he wanted to think of as love in her eyes.  If he looked at her, she’d look away.  He considered it a proving point.  She did love him, but didn’t know what to do about it...yet.  He was willing to teach her, if she’d let him.

At the end of the visit, he always walked her to the beach.  As an unwilling prisoner to his own desire, he helplessly watched as she returned to the sea.

Mentally, he understood it was foolish to mourn what he’d never had and that it was time to stop fighting the inevitable.  With that thought swirling in his head, his heart withered in his chest, choosing to be unreasonable.  Forgive her?  Always.  Forget her?  Impossible.

His mind forcefully pushed aside the rubble of the dream and he turned over in bed.  His inner-clock told him it was still the deep of night and he had hours before dawn.  Restlessly, he closed his eyes and felt himself fall back into sleep.

In his new dream, a wave of happiness and curiosity rose as he saw Utahna, a powerful Earth-Mac that had been dead for many millennia, pointing at the ground.  He became aware they were in his basement and she was pointing to the spot where she’d died; the place where she had buried her husband, Eydin.  Per her instructions, he’d built his house over the grave she and her husband had once shared.

In the dream, she placed a strange flag over the grave.  On it, a highly-stylized silver-and-white bird flew upward on a royal-blue background.  The bird, he realized from her memory-stones, was a Phoenix; a legendary bird.  He wasn’t sure if her memories of the bird were real or if they were memories of stories she’d heard.

Utahna took the Phoenix flag outside and, while standing in his courtyard, shook it as if it were a dirty rug.

In the process, the flag became larger and larger until she spread it over his house.  She stared into his eyes, as if willing him to understand.

He didn’t.

He wanted to please his mentor, but was unsure how to do it.  His mansion was already known as Phoenix House.  Did she want him to make a flag to officially identify it?

You’ll figure it out – eventually.  She smiled to let him know she was aware of his inward struggle.

Utahna reached under the Phoenix flag that covered his home and pulled out another flag.  This one he recognized because it wore his family’s emblem:  a silver fist on a navy-blue background.  Back at Stones Fist, everything important wore the emblem; from flags to solid-gold goblets they used for fancy celebrations.

Utahna turned the family flag over and on the other side was a brilliant white and exquisitely beautiful peacock that shimmered with power.  Its impossibly long tail feathers reached outside the boundaries of the flag, sparkling with energy.  Entranced, he reached out his hand to touch the iridescent ‘eyes’ in the tail feathers.

The peacock in the flag turned its well-formed head to look at him.  He wasn’t sure how he knew the peacock was female, but her gaze was not that of an animal.  She loved him.  He shared an appreciative smile with Utahna as the peacock flew out of the flag.

The peacock beckoned him to follow her and flew to the Hall of Justice, where she perched on Utahna’s outstretched arm.  He wasn’t sure how Utahna got there; it just seemed natural that she was.  It also felt natural to look down.

Resting on the simple wood chair he sat on to dispense law, was a fourth flag.  His heart lurched in fear.  The fourth flag held three triangles inside of one another.  The triangles were outlined in silver and the one in the middle was solid.  It was the symbol for Earth-Macs.

Prepare. I am coming.

These words came to his mind, but they were not from his mentor. Utahna had disappeared.  They were from the peacock.  He stared at the bird and his mind opened to a vision of how Utak should look from the northern mountains to Mount Benamii – a name he’d never heard before, but one which was attached in the peacock’s mind to the most massive and tallest of the mountains in his country.

Make it so.

After giving him a long soul-piercing look, the peacock faded.

Jaydren opened his eyes to pre-dawn, his mind awed and, when he remembered the flag with the symbol for Earth-Macs, his chest grew tight with apprehension.  Why a flag for Earth-Macs?

He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.  By now, back in the land of his birth, they would have had time to incarcerate any Macshara they found outside those who had made it to Rozan-Steading.  They’d also had time to breed those that had been left in captivity.

Grateful he had something to occupy him other than thoughts of unrequited love (and the doom and gloom of the past) he rose from his bed and pulled on a shirt.  He slept in his pants; a habit formed during his time as a millennia’s-long prisoner in the Fortress in Brissa.

For the same reason, he left the upper windows of his mansion open, preferring the cool night air to the confining space of one room, no matter how large.

Stretching, he walked out onto the balcony to watch the sun rise.  It was his favorite time of day.  He took a deep breath of the clean quiet air, thanking All for his freedoms, he watched the rising sun turn the still waters of the lake into molten gold.

His people told him that prior to his arrival, the lake had been fresh water, but over time, it became as salty as the sea and undrinkable.

Soline had informed him there were millions of tunnels beneath the free lands.  All of them had water in them – salty or fresh.  She could follow any one of the tunnels anywhere that had open water whether it was a river, stream, pond, or lake.

In his heart, he wanted to believe she’d changed the fresh water lake to salt water out of a desire to see him, not out of spite.  To strike up a conversation with her, he planned to ask her how she did it the next time he saw her – if she were still single.

His heart winced as if it had been stabbed.  He firmly reminded it he could not make Soline love him.  He then turned his mind to something he had the power to control.

He dug deeper to find more possible meaning to the dream.

The Earth-Mac symbol was also Utahna’s. She’d been the most powerful Earth-Mac in her time, or any time, until Jaydren.  It made him uncomfortable to think he was more powerful than his mentor, but knew he was.  She had known it, had seen it, and graciously left her knowledge with him so he would be wise in using it to rule Utak.

The dream had given him a course he could follow that would take effort.  He needed to draw the flags and then take the designs to Ammon, who kept his ten-legged seamstresses busy providing quality material for every fellow-Sharian except Vael, the Fire-Mac.

Ammon’s hatred toward Vael was unrelenting.  He claimed the ‘flicker’ would one day kill them all except Revaya, for whom Vael had formed an attachment.  Jaydren, who thought of Revaya as a sister, knew she did not return Vael’s affection, or Ammon’s.

He smiled.  If Veya only knew where the material she wore came from, her eyes would become feral and she’d hiss like the harpy she was.  He would never tell her that Ammon had modified cow-sized sea spiders to weave the cloth that lasted for centuries.

The modified arachnids could literally weave any design, any color, and in any size.  He admired them – from a distance.  The cloth they wove breathed and always looked fresh, no matter how long a person had worn it.

Except pants.

Thankfully, even Ammon admitted he needed something thicker and more masculine than silk pants. Using his talent with plants, Ammon developed one in Shugahauze, next to Granite Lake.  The Kiten plant, when it bloomed, looked like a miniature cat’s face, complete with whiskers.  When processed by the locals, it produced a leathery material Ammon took to Revaya, who made the first pair of ‘Kiten britches.’  They were so well received, she made them both several pair.

Jaydren wasn’t sure how long Ammon’s lasted.  He was harder on clothing than Jaydren.  The pair he was wearing had lasted two decades and still looked new.

Annoyed at the distraction, he turned away from the sunrise and headed for the basement.  Once he arrived, he stood on the stone that marked where the graves of Utahna and her husband had been.

He had crushed sapphires and amethysts and mixed the gems into the stone in their honor.  On the underside of the stone, he had written their names.  He would never allow the spot to be desecrated by tomb-raiders.

He knelt on the stone, closed his eyes, and bowed his head, seeking more direction.

He heard a voice:  Jaydren, my son.

He remembered the voice.  He had heard it once before – in the first Temple he’d been commanded to restore.

Thou art to recover the Heart Stone which my beloved daughter, Utahna, used to form the tools for the time in which thee and thy friends now live.

Jaydren didn’t remember Utahna working with anything called Heart Stone.

I command thee to restore that which was hidden, in this sacred ground, to the Chest of Souls.

When this was said, Jaydren felt the presence of that which had been hidden. He gasped at the immeasurable power.  The stone – the Heart Stone Father of All referred to, literally took his breath away.

Thou hast prepared thyself well to receive this knowledge.

He knew from this sentence, the time he’d spent on the free land were, in part, mere training for this moment.

From this stone shalt thou gather knowledge I commanded Utahna give unto thee.  This I have done for mine own purposes.  Doubt not, fear not.

For some odd reason, Soline’s face came to his mind.

The time is short when thou shalt take a wife.  I will speak peace to thine heart when she who is to be thy bride comes unto thee.  I will direct thy footsteps that mine purposes shall be fulfilled every whit.

Jaydren had the nagging feeling that he would be waiting for Soline a very long time.

Let not thy heart be troubled, nor thy step heavy. Thy obedience shall bring thee great reward. Thou hast been highly favored, Jaydren of Stones Fist.  Remember, my son, unto whom much is given, much is expected.

It sounded like a warning.

Before being taken prisoner, he asked his mortal father if he’d ever get what he wanted, and his father answered, in the same tone used by Father of All, Oh, yes.

What followed was always work and at the end of the work, he found he’d received what he wanted and had worked for.

Evidently, the same principle was to be applied here, in Utak.

He knew the moment Father of All withdrew because he found himself face-down on the stone floor.  Shaking with fatigue and bleary-eyed with exhaustion, Jaydren concentrated on just breathing for what felt like hours.

When he had the strength to open his eyes, his breath caught once more.  In his hand was a stone so pure, so powerful, that he felt the touch of Deity in its making.

He humbly whispered, Thy will be done.

Chapter 2:  Chest of Souls

Before the sun had even peeked in on the new day, Jaydren had gone to the stables, saddled his horse, and headed for the Hall of Justice.  Jym, his steward, would be there, writing his schedule so Jaydren would have an idea of who was coming into court and why.

A sense of excitement thrummed through him.  For the first time in his life, he had a mission he looked forward to.  This was not escaping from prison, passing judgment on misguided humans, or trying to organize a country.  This was something that he knew he would not fail at.  He knew it in his heart, or, as Ammon claimed, his gut.

He held onto that knowledge as he allowed his horse to head down the familiar street.  He pulled on his specially-made gloves.  On the snug leather that covered the back of his right hand was the beautiful ruby he had possessed from his time in the Fortress.  It was flawless, about four inches square now, and the setting was gold.  However, the gold did not cover the back.  The ruby was always in contact with his flesh.

The people that came to his court thought it was ornamentation.  He did not correct them.  They did not know it magnified his ability to manipulate any kind of mineral.

When he rode into view, his steward was waiting.  Jym was a no-nonsense middle-aged man with a fringe of fuzzy blonde hair and dark brown eyes.  Those brown orbs scanned Jaydren and his horse and his thin-lipped mouth stretched thinner.

I’m leaving, Jym.

Surprise, dismay, and then questions danced through the brown eyes and Jaydren could tell the steward longed to ask a thousand questions.  The good man settled on the most important, Forever?

Jaydren was tempted to tease Jym and say yes, but shook his head.

Tenseness bled out of the steward.  Where are you going?

Acha.  Until he had been asked, he didn’t realize he already knew the Chest of Souls was in a cave near a city called Dyman.

Jym’s expression was carefully neutral.  How long will you be gone?

However long it takes.  He said this in a way that could not be misinterpreted by his over-anxious helper.

Looking as if he’d just been given vinegar to drink, Jym squinted in the sunlight.  What do you want me to do with all your appointments?

It seemed dramatic, but all Jym did was solemnly allow the scroll containing Jaydren’s appointments for the day unroll.  It reached to the ground and then some.  The writing was small.

Jaydren suppressed a smile, enjoying the feeling that he didn’t have to struggle against the odds of making an unwise judgment today.  He liked Jym.  He understood the aging man’s dedication to him and his subsequent nervousness about being left with hundreds of outraged citizens.

He handed his confused steward the parchment he’d written.  Leave this note on the door of the Hall of Justice.

Jaydren looked around and motioned the man closer to tell his devoted steward, I will return when I’ve finished what Father of All wants me to do.

As he knew it would, this statement shut down Jym’s questions, whose look became thoughtful now rather than vexed.  Do you need help?

Always, but not with this mission.

The man was disappointed.

However, before I return, I’d like to have the Phoenix House cleaned from top to bottom and, if you know of any responsible people, I need a cook, a gardener, a few maids, and a stable hand.

Jym’s jaw dropped open.  Me and the missus were just talking this morning!  My oldest son married last year and he’s been looking to build himself a place.

Jaydren, who knew all this, pretended to consider.  I thought you told me the boy liked farming.

Beggars can’t be choosers.

"I have a better idea.  Why don’t you move your family into the mansion and leave the farm to your boy?"

Jym’s brown eyes sparkled.  For certain and for sure, my family can do all of those things.

Then I’ll leave the details to you. Jaydren handed the grateful man a small pouch of gold.

The man’s eyes bulged when he opened it.  It’s too much!

I only hire the best.  You’ve seen the Phoenix.  It’s empty.  Just tell your brood (there were eight more) to leave the top floor alone when you all move in and we’ll have peace.

The man he counted on to keep his schedule in order pocketed the gold.  His eyes blinked away sudden moisture and he gruffly told Jaydren, Come back safe, my Lord. While you’re gone, I’ll plan the Harvest Festival.

Jaydren nodded and gave the reins a snap.  His horse trotted away from the Hall of Justice, leaving his faithful steward in a puddle of worries, but looking forward to telling his family the good news.

Once he reached the edge of Lake City, Jaydren let his horse have its head and felt the thrill of flying over the ground, his cares left in the custody of a man that would always deliver quality.

No one knew that the most important thing in the entire world nestled in Jaydren’s specially-made glove, resting against his palm.

*

Jaydren left his horse in Swen, a small village near the border of Acha.  As usual, the local stable master agreed to keep Jaydren’s huge horse.  From the edge of the village, he could see the forest.  Once inside the shadows made by the giant trees, he turned himself into a massive stone golem and began to run.

The Rahazi had not thinned over time.  The trees seemed to be in a great race to see who could reach the highest, fastest.  It was packed with wildlife, including some creatures that looked as if they’d been made by Ammon.

Mile after mile, he went over his plan:  Go to the cave he’d seen in vision and raise the Chest of Souls.

He had no idea how to do it.  He simply had faith that he wouldn’t be commanded to do something that couldn’t be done.  Somehow, he’d be allowed to put the heart stone back in place.  At least, that’s what it felt like.

He made his stone-self larger as he approached the Shelinki River, leaped across it as if it were nothing more than a stream, and kept running, his footfalls startling herds of sheep.  He waved apologies at the blonde shepherdess in the distance, who fell to the ground.  He wasn’t sure if the fall was from shock or if she just stumbled.

On his way back, he could apologize if he saw her.  He hoped she wasn’t hurt.

The Wellspring Mountains consisted of two solitary peaks thrusting above open pasture land that outlined the natural curve of the forest.  Between them was a large river.

Jaydren ran around the smaller of the peaks and changed back into his human form in the foothills.

He paused for breath and wiped the sweat from his brow.  He felt his heart pound and loved the sheer joy of being free of restraint.  He had to hand it to Ammon, the scenery was beautiful; much more so than when they had arrived on the free land.

Continuing his ascent, he saw more evidence of Ammon’s work.  There was a strange black creature with spikes all over its body that eyed him malevolently when he surprised it, curling into a ball and giving chase.

Its persistence surprised him and he was grateful he wasn’t a human.  The spikes were more than decoration; they ripped chunks out of whatever the creature hit.  When it finally gave up, he made a mental note to tell Ammon that if he made the creature, and it seemed more than likely he did, it was one that could not co-exist with humans (or anyone for that matter).  It was much faster than it looked.

A herd of enormous stags – all pure white – bounded across his path, no doubt trying to escape danger.  One paused, its ears swiveling as it eyed him and then bounded away.

The opposite of the nasty little ball of spikes, the stags were exciting to watch.  He wasn’t sure if Ammon made them, but he would ask when he saw him.

Below him, green pastures full of wild flowers waved in the breeze.  Above him, the mysterious cave beckoned.  When he closed his eyes, he could feel the cave, something he’d never paid attention to before.

He hadn’t created these mountains, but he could feel their age, their patience.  They had been created for a specific purpose:  to house the Chest of Souls.  A more perfect spot could not be had.  There were only two isolated peaks.  They stood like giant twin sentinels in a field of verdant green.

The cave was not apparent to the eye at first. It was hidden behind other slabs of rock.  It made for a tight squeeze even in his shorter, thinner modified-for-human’s form, but he was able to get through.

Once he was inside, it smelled musty but cool.  It was also pitch black.

With hands on either side of the cool stone walls, he stepped forward.  When his foot touched the top of a stone stairway, sconces attached to the wall filled with white flames that did not burn.  Before him, the uneven stone stairs led down and to the left for a hundred feet, then sharply right and continued down.

So it wasn’t just a cave, it was a cavern.  As he traveled, the white flames behind him went out and those in front of him lit up.

At the bottom of the stairwell, it opened up into a large room with more torches surrounding something he’d never seen before, an oddity:  a pool of sand.

Roughly oval, it was fourteen by sixteen feet.  His jaw dropped as the sand shifted, as if restless.

He looked around.  In the center of the cave, there was a large stump that had once been a tree, but had petrified into stone.  Someone, or something, had sawn it off so the surface was flat.  The cave was just a large open cavern with the sandpool and the large petrified stump.  No stalactites hung from the ceiling, no stalagmites grew up from the floor.

He knelt next to the pool.  Curiosity impelled him to touch the surface of the shifting sand.

It stiffened like dried mud and he took away his hand.  The surface sand relaxed, becoming restless once more.  He touched it again and it solidified again, cracked like parched ground, and in the center of the sandpool, chunks of sand shattered to dust.

Blinding white light leaked through the opening and filled the entire cavern, leaving no shadows and causing Jaydren to squint.

From the center of the sand rose a flat-topped chest of perfect workmanship.  He knew that he would never be able to duplicate it.  It came to his mind that Father of All had made it with a single thought.

Made of impossibly-white marble, cirrus clouds moved within its surface, like living fog.  These mesmerizing white-on-white swirls raced around the flat, thick, hinge-less lid and poured over the sides, never spilling into the air, and never forming the same pattern.

On the front panel, there were three recessed sections with ancient writing that wasn’t Sharian or human.  Each section had ancient symbols inlaid with Wahka gold surrounding their astrological centerpieces.  One looked like the constellation, the Three Sisters.

Diamonds, Rubies, Emeralds, and Sapphires bordered the recessed sections and the edges of the lid.  He wanted to laugh at himself for thinking the gems he had ‘purified’ were perfect.  These were something more; they had awareness – more so than any of the stones that he had worked with.

In the center of the lid was a large hasp. He pulled off his glove, unable to stop staring at the perfection and symmetry of the Chest of Souls.

The moment he touched the Heart Stone to the chest where the hasp met the front, the gem changed colors.  Red to green to blue, and then back to clear.

All of the gems on