Disappear: Into Shadow

- CHAPTER SIXTY ONE -

"The Talisman is here." A giant voice reverberated from the moving faces of the winged totem poles. They stood at the heart of the fog wreathed clearing, encircled by green bands of shimmering northern lights. Below a round moon, looming large in the night sky with menace, came the long, peaceful descent of a lone white bird. Past the tops of the ancient pine forests. Bright against the night sky, it dove and swept into the clearing.

When it hopped to a landing on the foggy floor of the clearing, Dagan saw that it was a raven. He had never seen a white raven before. It looked at him with jet black eyes and cawed, " I have felt it."

Growing out of the raven was an ancient aboriginal Chief wrapped in white skings that matched his brilliant long hair. A pair of twin braids, tightly woven, hung down over each of his shoulders. With a pair of black raven's feathers tucked into the back of his left braid, he appeared to dagan as a veritable Hiawatha incarnate.

Holding up his hand in greeting, the golden sarcophagus burst into a golden plume of fire, burning hot as a sun. The medicine man cast his kind eyes on Dagan and his entourage, asking, "Who bears this Talisman here?"

"I do," Dagan replied with confidence.

"What is your choice?" Hiawatha asked him.

"Close the portal. Return this Talisman to its creator and dismiss yourself from further service."

"Very well," The Gatekeeper replied. He inclined his head towards Decimus, Simon and Tom's Ghost and bowed his head. Hiawatha then returned his gaze to Dagan and bowed once more. "So be it."

"That's it?" Simon asked.

Tom's Ghost threw a phantom elbow against Simon's ribs. The impact, for Tom, was like striking concrete after a two storey fall. Total and immediate. He dropped to the fog bound clearing's floor, howling in agony.

Decimus has been a soldier for too long to react to the complete farce that this moment of Dagan's had become. He chose not to hang his head in disbelief. Or, smack his forehead and laugh at this travesty he knew would drive Dagan berserk.

Dagan turned about with slow, cold, fury.

Around his shoulder Hiawatha leant outwards and replied to Simon, "Yes. That's it. I bid you all farewell."

The Gatekeeper's replied forced Dagan to delay venting on the two fools for another moment. He called after the medicine man, " It's a shambles at this point, so I'll go ahead and ask. You don't have any questions? No reason required for the severing?"

The ancient man replied, "No. This is my purpose. I do not need to know why my purpose is required. I answer its call, without question."

With a white, shivering spark the man once again became the bird. The wite raven took to the air, and floated high above the clearing, and circled the burning sarcophagus. When its wings burst into flame, it soared into the night sky, leaving a burning trail behind it.

The Totems about the clearing howled towards the moon at the Gatekeeper's departure. Their black and red fires burned with a new intensity. The trunks of the great totem poles glowed with hot white fire. The auras of the northern light's green curtains flowed and pulsed with an ever increasing tempo. The sarcophagus compacted, melting into itself until it became a floating ball of golden fire.

The phoenix trail left by the departing raven fell from the sky back to the earth. Its impact drove the buring golden orb deep into the ground. The shockwave shattered the burning totems into firey shrapnel that flew outwards into the lush forests carpeting the surrounding valleys.

Intense fires immediately caught across the landscape. A silence covered the clearing . The northern lights had vanished. The moon had been stained with a blood red hue.

"Damn," offered Tom's Ghost, having recovered its composure and keen observational awareness.

"Now, that's it?" Simon asked.

Dagan turned towards the pair, after casting a glare at the still impassive Decimus. "You absolute pair of-" He was interrupted by the loud rumbling that was follwed by a trembling of the ground that grew into a violent spasm.

Thrown to the ground, after a monet of rolling about on the shifting earth, Dagan sprang into the air. Decimus, Simon and Tom's Ghost needed another few moements to regain their equilibrium before they stood again.

"Time to go," Dagan said. The ruby set into the heavy ring on his finger pulsed with an insistence. He floated down towards decimus and reched out. "Everyone join hands," He ordered.

As they did, the ring pulsed and after a flash, they were gone. Moments later, a plume of lava spewed high into the air. The expanding geyser of fire it became was swift to claim and consume the forests. While it continued to belch out Earth's molten innards, the ground crumbled about the hole that the sarcophagus had bored deep into the core of the planet.

Rumbling, thundering a vast new mountain tore itself into being from where the clearing had sat. It grew to tower above the other mountains. Vast lava flows sepped outwards as they covered the valley floor and drained outwards through the surrounding passes down into other valleys.

Belching out ash, the volcanoes smoke plume floated into the upper atmosphere, until it blotted out the blood red moon.