King of Spades

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

An inviting eighteen-color rainbow arched over a green field. It looked like an invitation to him, but maybe it was in appearance only. Zach Flynn was an Australian musician, recruited to be a successor of Sciphil Two, Ayana Dee, only a short time ago. He went through the Daimon Gate at the same time as Ciaran, Madeline, and Tadgh. As far as that experience went, the trip and the Sciphil tests were enough to scar him for life. He had all the reasons in the multiverse to dislike the Daimon Gate.

Nothing here appeared as it should be. Nothing was real.

Ciaran had to recruit Dan from Earth to replace Sciphil Five. Dan was Sciphil Nine, Pete Chandler’s, nephew and Zach’s best friend. Ciaran thought Zach was in the best position to quickly convince Dan to join this elusive world of the multiverse. Regardless of the spins Ayana had put into the training at Sciphil Two residence, Zach was bored with it. He missed his music, his friends, and his family on Earth. So he had jumped at the chance to come back.

Ayana headed in the direction of the rainbow. “When you travel from Eudaiz to Earth via the Daimon Gate, the rainbows usually mark the exit zones at both ends,” she said.

“Well, when we exited to Eudaiz for the first time, it looked like a gothic dome!” Zach frowned in confusion.

“When you see a gothic dome, that means either you or your companion is doing something wrong to cheat the system in the Daimon Gate, and the gate was about to kill the sinner.” Ayana looked off to the distance. A flash of sorrow crossed her magnificent blue eyes.

Ayana appeared to be in her fifties. To Zach, she looked like an angel. Her hair was as white as cloud, cascading down her body like pieces of silk. Her angelic face always smiled at him. Her striking blue eyes were seas of mysteries. Zach didn’t know her true Eudaizian age. Hell, he didn’t even know his own Eudaizian age. He was thirty-one on Earth. But he must be a kid in Eudaiz. Or teenager. Ayana was going out of her way to try to spice up his training so he wasn’t bored. But he was. He was bored out of his skull! s**t. He had to stop behaving like a teen here.

The piece of land in front of them suddenly moved aside, stood up, and cracked open like the mouth of a cave. Zach pulled Ayana toward his back. They both staggered backward a few steps.

“I’m your Sciphil, Zach. I’ll protect you, not the other way around,” Ayana said.

Zach smiled. “That’s an ingrained habit from Earth. I’m still a man, you see. And because of that, my human standards apply. I won’t let a woman face danger to protect me.”

“That’s gender discrimination, isn’t it? Plus, that moving cave is just a dimensional shift. It happens all the time in the Daimon Gate. It’s not dangerous by any means.”

“Well, Ayana, these same activities almost swallowed us alive when we went through last time.”

“You were in the middle of your Sciphil tests, Zach. Now that you’ve qualified as a Sciphil successor, there won’t be a problem with dimensional shift unless you attempt to do something wrong—”

A small crack suddenly appeared on the cave wall, looking similar to a firing hole in a tower. Zach pushed Ayana back and wielded a blade of sound in his mind. He sent it straight toward the hole in the wall.

Zach had the ability to think of sound as tangible object, bend it into any shape he wanted, and then send it into people’s minds. He had done that on Earth since he was a kid, mostly to annoy people. Apparently, in Eudaiz, they called it sound-bending, and that annoying little skill was considered a talent here. That was why Ayana had recruited him.

“Get back!” Zach shouted and pulled at Ayana, who had unsheathed her sword to fight. Zach sent another wave of sharp sound at the wall, making it crack further. It slid open, turning into an eye and a mouth.

A voice emanated from the mouth. “Ayana is a rightful Sciphil. You say one more word that smears her reputation, and I will pierce this sword through your heart. That is what I will do at all costs.”

“That was Bran’s voice,” Ayana whispered and approached the wall. A large area of it had shaped itself into something like the wizened face of an old man. “You’re the stone observer . . .” she said and reached her hand out to touch the face emerging in the wall.

“Hey, don’t touch him!” Zach pulled her back.

“He’s the stone observer, Zach. He’s harmless.”

Zach rolled his eyes.

“Eye rolling shows disrespect to the elderly,” said the stone observer.

“No s**t,” Zach muttered.

“No s**t,” the stone observer mocked Zach’s Australian accent.

“You saw Bran? What did he say about me? Who did he talk to?” Ayana asked.

“I couldn’t see him. Ice covered my eyes. He woke me at the cliff with his loud fight, and then he hung onto what used to be my nose on the way down into the oblivion hole. I captured the conversation he had with the person who pushed him into that hole.”

Tears welled in Ayana’s eyes. “Do you mind replaying it for me?”

The stone observer sighed. The conversation between Bran and Kyle before Kyle kicked Bran down the canyon was played back in their voices via the stone observer’s mouth.

“Thirty-three years ago, he still sounded the same. It felt just like yesterday. Silver Blood. Bran believed in the Silver Blood!” Ayana whispered as tears rolled down her face.

“He said it’s a myth, Ayana,” Zach said.

She shook her head. “If he thought it was a myth, he would have told me. He didn’t say anything to me because he believes it exists—”

“And he didn’t want you to do it.” Zach asked, his voice still a bit shaky. He had a gut feeling that Ayana was soon going to try to do something unthinkable. He didn’t need Madeline’s psychic ability or Ciaran’s laser sharp brain to know Ayana loved Bran—the mountain-moving, ocean-crossing kind of love.

Whatever the story between her and Bran was, whatever the Silver Blood was, this information was no good to her. Zach made a mental note to discuss it with Ciaran at length when he came back. It was obvious that Bran had disappeared thirty-three years before Ciaran found him in the oblivion hole when he went through the Daimon Gate for the first time. Zach shuddered as he recalled the incident.

Bran was a prominent figure. In his thirty-three years in the hole, he had still been in charge of Eudaiz and had still plotted and planned many things in Eudaiz and on Earth. The moment he came back, he had been killed. Zach shook his head, thinking about how uncertain life could be. “All right. I’ll go back to Earth to get Dan. We’ll fix the Sciphil Five problem and then move on to Silver Blood.”

“It’s not your problem, Zach.”

“But it’s yours, so it’s now mine. I’m your successor. Can you promise me you won’t do anything drastic before I come back?”

“All right.” Ayana pointed in the direction of the rainbow. “Let’s go,” she said and led the way. Zach turned toward the stone observer. “Old man, I don’t think you mean any harm, but why did you tell her what you did? Bran and Kyle are both dead now. That information only devastates her.”

“It’s not my call.”

“It’s your memory and your mouth, both of which you have total control of by the way!”

“I’m a stone observer. I listen, and I tell stories. She was a topic of interest in that conversation. She asked, and I had to tell her.”

“What’s Silver Blood?”

The stone observer sighed. “That’s not my story to tell.”

Zach shook his head and turned around to follow Ayana.

“Young man.”

“What?” Zach snarled.

“Come back later. I’ll tell you a story in which you are the topic of interest.”

“My problem might be of interest to someone or something in the multiverse, but let me tell you this—I am not interested in your story. I made a promise to Ayana, and I intend fulfill it. I have a duty to Eudaiz, which I will live up to. Whatever happens in this Daimon Gate, I couldn’t care less. So keep the story to yourself.”

The stone observer sighed again. Zach mumbled some profanity and turned to leave. Then he heard the stone observer mutter, “You’re a good Sciphil Two. But Ayana is good, too. What a shame!”

“What are you saying? What will happen to Ayana? And what does that have to do with me?” Zach turned around and snarled through his teeth. But the stone observer had fallen back into his deep sleep and no longer responded.

“Zach? We’re running late.” Ayana called from a distance. Zach glared at the sleeping stone man one more time and turned on his heel.