Chapter Nine
Into the Forest
These trees were truly massive. I craned my head back to look up the length of one. I couldn’t see the end of it.
It was quiet in the darkened forest. The forest floor was devoid of plant growth save for a smattering of ferns growing here and there.
It was too dark of a forest for my tastes as I preferred more diversity in terms of habitat. The trees were of a kind I had never seen before and they appeared to be devoid of any use other than as something to feed a fire or build a ship out of.
It seemed a rather lifeless forest. Impressive, but cold was how this forest registered to me.
Matt was having a field day combing over the remnants of the long bygone past that were upthrust here and there along the forest floor. The resilient architecture was made out of the same iron compound as the Pillar of Delphi.
Atlantis the city had not survived the cataclysmic event of the great flood and its fall through the earth’s crust. Thankfully that meant none of its supposed giant offspring had either.
Our guides had been with us for several hours now and they looked hesitant to go any further into the forest with us. They were shifting from foot to foot and becoming startled by every little noise that sounded out in the forest around us. Finally they refused to go no further and actually left us their guideless in the forest.
I watched them go and with them our cover for being here. We needed witnesses to verify our interest in the ruins in order to allay suspicions of our presence here.
I was debating about what to do when a feeling I didn’t care for crept over me like someone walking across my grave and I turned around to see a man standing there not ten feet away. His smile of welcome did nothing to relax my tensed up muscles. Where had he come from?
I glanced at Jim to see him as tensed up as I was by the sudden appearance of the man. This man by his dress must be of the Salria people that the Governor had warned me about. He wore nothing like those in the colony did.
The members of the Salria people seemed to have gone back to their tribal traditions entirely. Was human sacrifice one of those reawakened traditions?
Looking at the man I could believe it of him. There was something innately cruel behind the smiling eyes that gazed upon us knowingly.
He spoke, “Don’t worry, none of you are children so you are safe from the evil clutches of the Salria.” He tipped his head back and laughed uproariously at his own words, as if in great jest at a joke that the rest of us had missed the punch line for.
I glanced around at the others. Christina looked about to run for it. Matt looked beyond tensed and I saw Jim’s finger tense on the trigger of the sawed off shotgun he still held in one hand.
I mouthed out, “Play it cool!” And surprisingly masks of calmness fell over all three of their faces, even Christina’s. She certainly was a tough girl.
I turned back to the stranger just as he finished from his hearty mirth that chilled rather than warmed me.
I forced a genial looking smile, “It would seem that we’ve lost our guides to superstition. I don’t suppose that you would mind taking over for them would you?” I asked.
The smile never diminished on the other man’s face. He was almost as big as Jim. “Nothing would please me more! Come I will show you the wonders of the past.”
He turned and started off through the forest and I followed after him. The others hesitated for a moment, but then followed along reluctantly.
The man I followed was unquestionably under the influence of evil as just being near him disquieted my soul. I was confident though that if need be by faith in Jesus I was more than a match to bring him down if it had to be done.
I wanted to see what this forest may still hold of Atlantis and to see if it was going to be a threat to my plans.
Our mysterious guide led us for more than an hour through the forest. Here and there a bit of architecture would poke up through the forest floor, but nothing major. All of a sudden the canopy of the forest opened up and there were a lot of moss covered ruins to be seen.
Matt walked past the whole group as if irresistibly drawn to the antiquity of the past. The rest of us followed him.
There were sections of the ruins that still stood several stories tall. It was easy to see from just this one part of the ruins that the city had to of been vast and quite built up in elevation.
A half hour passed during which Matt hadn’t ceased to stop babbling about this or that in terms of archaeological significance. Truly I could care less, but the sight of something so ancient was fascinating.
I walked into an alcove of sorts and was immediately drawn up short by the sight of the stone altar in the middle of the place. I approached it slowly as did Jim and Christina.
“What’s the attraction guys? I……” Matt’s voice trailed off; as he caught up with us and saw the altar made of stones.
The stones of the altar were stained red as was the ground around it. Jim stooped down and picked up a small bone out of the dust and glanced at me in quiet horror for the bone was that of a child’s.
I’d seen enough, it was time to leave!
I turned to go when something stung my neck. I reached up to my neck and my hand came away with a wooden dart no bigger than a toothpick. I stumbled against the altar as the world seemed to slide away from me.
Christina had already fallen to the ground and Matt was on his knees about to join her. Big Jim reeled back and forth on his feet as he tried to bring the shotgun up. All I could hear was laughing.
Blinking my eyes I saw through my blurry vision members of the Salria all around us laughing uproariously.
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! I lambasted myself with deep self-reproach-meant.
I’d really blown it this time!
My desperate grip on the altar let loose and I was falling toward the bloodstained ground with the sound of laughter ringing in my ears.
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Flynn continued to sit against the bulkhead shotgun at the ready to repel boarders if need be. His audience had shrunken considerably, but there remained a few in attendance on the dock for him to continue staring down.
If they thought they were going to make a slave out of him then they had another thing coming. It was called buckshot and he’d see that they got plenty of it in ample supply.
He glanced off to the headland of the island beyond the dock worriedly. It had been a long time. Too long.
Something had gone wrong ashore. The Captain would never have let so much time go by without checking in.
It was hard to judge time as the sky covered in fluorescent clouds never changed. He hated to admit it, but he was growing tired.
Nothing, but a helpless old man anymore, Flynn groused to himself disgustedly.
He hadn’t heard any shots or sounds of commotion on shore, but all the same something was wrong.
Something bumped against the bowel of the boat and Flynn leaped up to his feet surprising the onlookers who’d almost all drifted off to sleep. Keeping a wary eye on them Flynn moved up the boat towards the sound ready to blast away at anything that stuck its head up.
Reaching the side of the boat that the sound had come from he looked over, but saw nothing. He glanced back at the awakened crowd of onlookers and made his way up to the wheelhouse never turning his back on the crowd on the dock.
Something was going on and he wanted no part of it. The Captain had charged him to look out for the ship and that was just what he would do.
Flynn backed up to the wheelhouse wall and out of the side of his mouth he whispered, “Ortega?”
“Si?”
“Speak English for pity’s sake! This ain’t Mexico or wherever it is that you come from!”
“It’s not America either Senor!” Came Ortega’s smart response through the broken window of the wheelhouse.
Flint gritted his teeth hard for a moment before he had to ruefully acknowledge that the Salvadorian had a point.
“Give it a good ten count and then give the Celestia’s Prize all the throttle she’s got!”
“I will do it Senor!” Ortega responded with.
Flynn stepped away from the shattered out windows of the wheelhouse and made his way along the side of the boat moored to the dock nonchalantly slicing through the mooring ropes with a sharp knife he pulled from his belt.
The front end of the Celestia’s Prize fell away from the dock and it became obvious what Flynn was up to. He raced for the last rope and sliced through it as the on looking crowd came unglued and started for the boat in mass intent to stop it from its unplanned exodus from port.
The Celestia’s Prize roared to life and jolted forward like a runner off the starting block. The shotgun blasts were a rhythmic percussion of sound as hot lead spewed forth scything through the onrushing crowd in an unexpected display of firepower.
Free of the dock the Celestia’s Prize kicked up a foamy wake as it surged out for the open sea beyond the harbor. Two of the whaling ships attempted to break free of anchor and unfurl their sails to give pursuit, but the task was made bulky and untimely given the limitations of a maritime ship of a bygone era in comparison with a modern design not reliant on wind power for propulsion.
The Celestia’s Prize was a dot on the horizon, with any hope of catching her gone as she began to be cloaked by the permanent fog bank that lay offshore. The two whalers heaved to and re-anchored in defeat.
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The water of the shoreline broke and then sheeted off the form of a man who slogged the rest of the way through the tide pool to reach dry land. Once on the beach the man looked back at the harbor in disarray and laughed throwing his head back to the clouds to let his laughter echo out of his empty soul as he held up the central crystal of the Orlanis Star triumphantly.
He began to chant out in an old language best left forgotten and the runes carved into the metal surrounding the crystal began to glow.