The Black Rose Part 18

She paused, then nodded and tucked it into one of the dressing gown pockets.

Vince smiled and climbed down into the control position of the ship. He adjusted a few controls, and it flashed into life. "Good luck!"

The paneled wings of the ship began to judder and became blurred, lifting it into the air. The last sight she saw was Vince turning a dial, and then with an echoing sonic boom, the entire structure vanished into thin air.

She waited for a moment. Everything was still. Then she dropped the furs and began to strip off layers. The pantaloons had to go, and the hat, and the ridiculous high-topped boots she'd forced her legs into. Her bare feet sunk into the dewy gra.s.s. It was cold, but it was necessary. She still knew very little about what her parents had been told about her absence, so she had to be prepared for any reaction they might have to her walking semiclothed through the front door as if nothing had happened.

She had turned down Vince's offer to come and explain things. Before her disappearance, her dad would probably have called the police if she had come home with a boy. Combine that with her lengthy absence, and he might have had a seizure. There was also the matter of Vince himself. He was several years older and, to put it lightly, not the kind of person her parents would be happy with her being around. It had taken her a long time to convince them that Jack, living in a state-funded orphanage, wasn't a waste of taxpayer's money. Amongst the Apollonians Vince was a freedom fighter, but she knew her family would immediately caricature him as a rowdy, drug-addicted benefit scrounger.

She paused, wondering whether she'd forgotten anything. She felt the egg in her pocket and pulled it out. The burnished metal caught the light, reflecting a distorted version of her face. She considered it, then let it drop onto the pile of disused clothes on the gra.s.s.

Wrapping the dressing gown closer to her, she began trudging down the hill.

Alex returned to consciousness. The ground beneath him was wet. His body ached all over, and he was sure he was bleeding from somewhere: he still wore his tunic, but it was in tatters and heavy with brine. Mustering his energy, he cracked open his eyelids and pulled himself to his feet.

He seemed to be on a beach. Behind him, some kind of immense lake or ocean opened out-entirely silent, save for the lapping against his heels. In front, a gorge of pitiless ashen rock led uphill. The sky was like nothing he'd ever seen. It was splintered between light and darkness: behind him, white fog; in front, a bank of obsidian brewing on the horizon.

He was not alone. A tall, grey figure stood a few feet before him, facing away.

"Where are we?" Alex spluttered, his lungs ejecting a layer of sour water.

"At the end of the universe. Chthonia, where the Light meets the Darkness."

Alex tried to remember. He had seen the indigo light from his room and done as he was instructed. He had concentrated, and Darkness had bloomed before him, a portal into nothingness. He had stepped inside and felt himself slip away in black smoke. He had hurtled through oblivion, his individuality almost consumed, and lost consciousness. The last thing he could remember was a grey presence speeding alongside, carrying him away from some cataclysm behind.

"You're not the Emperor, are you?"

The grey figure turned. "No. The Emperor was a tool: a mortal vessel, consumed by fanaticism. He is gone, along with Nexus and the Cult of Dionysus."

"So what are you?" Alex demanded. Despite his mental and physical exhaustion, he could feel the rage rising up again. He could feel the power he had become so used to surging through him, alighting on every particle of blood in his veins. He was a conduit-something had ripped open inside him, and unfettered energy swooped out. He could feel more than see now. His outstretched arms shook with the force of obsidian fire blasting outwards. He had been imprisoned for months by the grey thing, but no more. No more.

The grey figure remained motionless, the flames brushing him ineffectually. His expression was unreadable, but those golden orbs burnt through the inferno, brighter and more terrible than the rolling flames.

Alex's rage subsided, and the energy ebbed. He was gasping heavily, beads of burning sweat seeping from his scalp.

The figure appraised him with those twin jewels, set in a statue of wilting rock. "I am not the one you should be venting your anger at. It was your so-called friends who left you for dead. They came to Nexus the night it was destroyed. They liberated others-humans, elves, even the natives-but not you."

"Liar," Alex shouted, flecks of spittle wetting the pebbles. "They weren't there. They'd never leave me."

For the first time, the figure smirked. "Perhaps you value them too highly."

And with a deadening thud, the object dropped to the ground before Alex. He felt the heat drain from him entirely. There was no mistaking the object before him: a dull metal egg held in curved clasps, taken from the heart of The Golden Turtle. So the Apollonians had been to Nexus and had not come to find him. There was no question as to whether they'd known he was there. They'd all seen him vanishing into the Darkness with Icarus.

He dropped to his knees, his eyes searing with tears. The void that had opened within him sparked once more: rage, not at this grey figure or his predicament, but at his friends' betrayal. He had stayed strong, he had stayed loyal, and it had all been for nothing.

He screwed up his eyes and roared into the silent day-night, feeling the flames burst anew around him. He was an anti-sun, Dark energy shooting outwards in convulsions of anger and hatred.

When the flames finally quelled, his chest was heaving again. He opened his eyes. The rocks and cliffs were scorched black, indigo embers kindling in the cracks. The grey figure was gone, leaving the ashen path curling upwards before him.

And, though he could not see it, his eyes were no longer emerald green but bright, burning gold.

end.