Amidst The Rising Shadows (Book 3) (7 page)

Just then, the display came back online, and Aaron heard the voices of himself and Verona as he told him about where he came from.

“Earth,” Halcylon smiled wolfishly. “Tell me human, where is this Earth?”

Aaron felt his strength ebbing away as he hung at Halcylon’s mercy. “Like Safanar, Earth is beyond your reach, Hythariam.”

Halcylon grabbed Aaron by his shirt and flung him across the room, “Safanar is not beyond my reach, human!”

Aaron crashed into the wall and lay sprawled upon the floor.

“Sir, what do you intend to do with him?” Ronan asked.

“He’ll stand trial for war crimes against the Hythariam. The Zekara will have justice,” answered Halcylon.

“Very good, sir.”

Aaron sat up against the wall. The Hythariam soldier leveled his pistol at him, but it didn’t matter. He doubted he could stand at the moment. Though the Nanites had ceased their assault, he could still feel them crawling inside him. He had to think of a way to turn them off. Aaron looked up at the holo display, and where there were foreign symbols before, now he could read them.
 

“The tribunal will meet within the next thirty minutes. I want the prisoner brought to central shortly after it starts,” Halcylon said.

The Hythariam soldier stood over Aaron and slapped two metallic shackles to his wrists. Halcylon and the soldier exited the room.
 

Ronan keyed in a sequence into the display, and Aaron could feel the Nanites go dormant. With his strength returning and his head clearing, Aaron rose to his feet.

“We don’t have much time,” Ronan said.

“For what?” Aaron asked.

“Tell me, are there any Hythariam left alive on Safanar?”

“You think I’m going to tell you anything?”

“I was part of a special force of infiltrators, tasked by Iranus to bring others from Hytharia back to Safanar.”

Aaron clenched his mouth shut and glared at the Hythariam.

“We came through a different portal from Shandara,” Ronan said.

Aaron let out a mirthless chuckle, “Now I know you’re lying. There was only one portal on Safanar. The one with the barrier put in place to keep the likes of you, and your psychotic leaders, from ruining our world as you’ve already done to yours,” Aaron said nodding toward the door.

“You’re wrong. We built another place capable opening a secret portal from within Shandara. Mine was part of the last mission to come here. We were part of a covert mission to bring back more of my people, but something must have happened because the portal never opened back up for us to return.”

Aaron pressed his lips together in thought, “When was this covert mission?”

“Twenty-five cycles of our dying star,” Ronan answered.

Could it be? Could this Hythariam be telling him the truth?
Iranus or the others had never said anything about another portal being used.

“Shandara has been destroyed,” Aaron said.

Ronan looked away with a pained expression, “Destroyed...but that would have been impossible.”

“I assure you, I’ve seen it for myself.”

“We knew the risks in coming here, but what happened to all of the other Hythariam that were living in Shandara?”

Aaron regarded the Hythariam. He couldn’t tell him about Hathenwood, despite the sincerity of the Hythariam before him.

“Please, I need to know.”

Aaron leaned back against the wall, staying silent, but part of him wanted to tell him something.

“I can help you. I have already helped you. Do you still feel the Nanites?”

He didn’t feel them anymore, but that wouldn’t stop someone else from turning them back on. “You could give me the Keystone Accelerator.”

“It won’t do you any good. The charge has been drained from it.”

“Can you remove the Nanites from my system?” Aaron asked.

Ronan slowly shook his head, “This is something I cannot do.”

“Then what exactly can you do?”

“You need allies here if you wish to survive,” Ronan said.

“I want to live, but I won’t betray my friends.”

“Halcylon will use you. You have no idea what he’s capable of. You don’t know what he has done to our people. Everything you see--,” Ronan said, but was cut off as the door hissed open and soldiers, armored head to toe, came in.

Aaron instinctively glanced at the wall, looking for a clock. Had thirty minutes passed already? The spartan gray walls had nothing even remotely close to a clock on them. Ronan returned the Keystone Accelerator to the panel in the wall and closed down the holo display.

Aaron had no illusions of a fair trial here, but he'd much rather walk than be dragged to wherever the Zekara wanted him to go.
 

The towering soldiers in their dark armor filed in around him, and each held some kind of rifle. The soldiers were easily seven feet tall, with their faces hidden behind a helmet. The door hissed open, and they left the room to the musky damp smell of a hallway carved from dark stone. The jagged edges of the hall had an unfinished look, and Aaron wondered how long the Zekara had been there. There was track lighting with cables running along the edges of the floor. They came to a large reinforced door where two more soldiers were posted. Small drones zoomed down the hallway, pausing briefly at small panels that opened, allowing them through.

The large door opened, and a small breeze came through. Aaron’s eyes widened at the enormous cavern before them. An intricate network of catwalks sprawled throughout the place. Dark stone walls extended beyond his field of vision, becoming shadows, leaving him to wonder whether they were underground or inside a mountain. A
 
Zekara soldier shoved the butt of his rifle into his back, moving Aaron along.

There was a buzz of activity throughout the place, and Aaron could see thousands of Hythariam going about their business. None of them appeared to look anything like the hordes he had seen when he had peered through the portal and got his first glimpse of Hytharia.

They stepped onto a floating platform. Railings rose up in front of them, and Aaron grabbed on. The floating platform whisked them away, flying overhead toward the central part of the vast cavern they were in. Aaron marveled that the Hythariam carved all of this out to escape the destruction upon the surface. He knew they were technologically advanced, but being able to dig all of this out was a monumental feat in and of itself. Over to the right was small field of green that looked to be a hydroponic garden. There were several throughout the cavern that he could see. Aaron wondered how they weren’t running out of air with so many Hythariam about.
 

“Are there more caverns like this?” Aaron asked.

“No talking!” the solder at his back said and slammed his rifle into Aaron’s back again.

Aaron winced and sagged on his feet. He turned back and glared at the soldier.

“Turn around, human,” the soldier barked. “Better yet, give me a reason. I want you to. Just one reason. BANG!” he said brandishing his gun. “No tribunal...nothing. Problem solved.”

Aaron turned back around, and his soldier escorts grumbled under their breath. Ronan’s face was a mask of impassiveness. He couldn’t trust him. He could feel it in his gut. As the platform began to descend, Aaron’s mind raced, searching for a way to survive this. Even if he could get away, where would he go? The dying planet was a death sentence.

The platform landed in the middle of a small stadium. Several drones zoomed in, and large displays flicked on around the stadium. Aaron’s head figured prominently on screen. The Hythariam gathered in the stadium grew quiet as the platform finished its descent. A soldier secured his shackles to a small pillar rising out of the ground and joined his other escorts to stand well off to the side. More soldiers filed into the stadium, circling around the edges.
 

Murmuring swept through the crowd. Aaron looked at the display of himself. His brown hair had grown past his shoulders. His clothing was almost in tatters, and he looked every inch the criminal that he assumed the Hythariam thought he was. Despite being chained to the small pillar that came up to his hip, Aaron stood taller, with his shoulders back, and faced toward the dais where five Hythariam sat. They must be the judges serving in this tribunal.

The Hythariam in the stadium began to cheer as one of their own stepped down from their ranks and walked midway between the tribunal and Aaron. Halcylon’s golden collar sparkled atop his pristine black uniform. He held up his hands, and the Hythariam in the stadium went silent in a hush.

Aaron was a bit surprised that someone of Halcylon’s position didn’t preside over the tribunal himself, but came to the realization that he didn’t need to.

“You know me as your leader, a general of the Zekara, and savior of the Hythariam. Normally, I would sit at the head of the tribunal, but not this time. This time, I want the decision from this tribunal to be yours, and yours alone. We have here before us a human. One from Safanar. One of the gatekeepers that have kept us from our salvation, along with the traitors of our own kind. The hour is late, but as I have always said, the way to Safanar will be open for us through the portal. We will not perish with our beloved Hytharia. You have put your faith in me. Even when others of our kind took their chances among the stars, leaving us to our fate, trusting their cryostasis tubes to keep them safe while they traveled to the nearest inhabitable planet. A journey that would take them the better part of fifty of our cycles with no guarantee of success once they get there. They could only take a fraction of us, and I was one they had wanted to lead them. Yet I stayed here with you. I did not do this because it was the easy choice; I stayed because it was the right choice, but this is not why I’ve called this tribunal. I’ve called this tribunal because of this man...this human that came through the portal, proving that the barrier that has been in place is no longer a factor.”

Murmurs spread through the crowd like waves, and Halcylon waited for it to die down before he continued.

“It saddens me to say this, but it was not peaceful intent that brought this human to our dying world. I’ve spoken with the human, and he cares nothing for you or for the struggles we’ve had to endure since the portal to Safanar became closed to us. The civil wars we’ve fought while our enemies have sewn discord among our very brothers and sisters. The Hythariam will endure as we always have. Look at the human.”

Almost as one, the shift of thousands of heads turned in his direction, and the glare of golden-eyed Hythariam bored into Aaron. A soldier approached him and cut Aaron’s shirt from his body, exposing his muscled chest. The Dragon tattoo of the Alenzar’seth, with its hints of gold and silver, glistened on the large screens throughout the stadium.

The Hythariam screamed their rage and denial, shaking their fists into the air. Aaron’s heart thundered in his chest, but he wouldn’t allow himself to cower, even in the face of this madness. Halcylon was making him the embodiment of all the wrongs endured by the Hythariam, and the crowd believed him. He wasn’t sure how the truth of matters would stand in the face of so much fear and desperation. He looked around the stadium at all the Hythariam. There were men and women, but there were also children. Not many, but enough for him to notice. Aaron couldn’t have imagined what it must have been like to have your whole world crumble around you.

“The mark on his chest,” Halcylon said, approaching Aaron, “is the mark of the Alenzar’seth, the rulers of Shandara. The very same people who turned their backs on us. I’ve spoken to the human before calling this tribunal. After speaking with him, I learned that there wasn’t a morsel of remorse for what they condemned upon our race. But don’t take my word for it. You can hear it from his own lips.”

The screens flickered to Aaron in the room from earlier that day,
“You took action to ensure the survival of your people, and mine have taken action to protect their people.”
 

Halcylon glared at him, “Protect your people! What gives your people the right to visit genocide on the Hythariam?”

The crowd erupted in fury, and Aaron’s head whipped around expecting them to charge out from their seats and tear him apart. He focused himself and began probing for a source of energy around him.

“Through the use of the Nanites we have gleaned information of another world entirely that is also thriving with life. Information that our guest would have kept to himself. Earth, another world, a place we could share with the humans and not only survive, but thrive. But no, the Alenzar’seth will never allow that. He would have the gates of Earth and Safanar be forever closed to the Hythariam. Condemn us all to death. What are we to do?” Halcylon asked, spreading his arms wide, inviting the crowd to respond. “Should we hear what the human has to say? I bet he will tell us of a tale of suffering and trials enough to endear himself into our own hearts. Do you want to hear from him? Hear him tell us why we have to die?”

The crowd was united in their screams, lusting for his blood, as if that would give them any semblance of justice. Hytharia was a place of death, and madness was its warden.
 

Halcylon waved for him to speak. “Speak to us, human. This is your chance to sway the tribunal before they render judgment. The Hythariam are not an uncivilized race.”