City of Mages (STAR-DUST 9) E-Book

Jens F. Simon

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 93

Beschreibung

For centuries, legends have told of the "White City", the "City of the Monkey God". And for decades, archaeologists and adventurers have repeatedly set out in search of the mystical place. In a forgotten and impenetrable part of the world, in the middle of the dense Honduran rainforest in the region of La Mosquitia, Alethea and Sigurd come across the legendary city. Through the "Ring of Srem," he and Alethea, the formerly material hologram, are transported to the energetic demimonde of the Zetschn'cha. There, the hemisphere is the refuge of the mage Sol'altoo, the sole ruling tyrant. Sigurd's original quest to find a way to rid his native solar system of magic and sorcery recedes into the background. He is suddenly confronted with the possibility of returning to his own time. To do this, however, he must give up his current state, because it is only through 'multiplicity' that he acquires the abilities that make a time transfer possible in the first place.

Leseprobe

STAR-DUST

Under the spell of nanites

Volume 9

City of Mages

© 2024 Jens F. Simon

Illustration: S. Verlag JG

Publisher: S. Verlag JG, 35767 Breitscheid,

All rights reserved

Distributed by: epubli a service of neopubli GmbH, Berlin

ISBN: 978-3-818740-05-4

The work, including its parts, is protected by copyright. Any exploitation without the consent of the publisher and the author is prohibited and will be prosecuted under criminal and civil law. This applies to electronic or other reproduction, translation, distribution and making available to the public.

Table of content

Pure magic

On the trail of the Zetschn'cha

The hemisphere

The power of magic

The world behind the worlds

Multiplicity

Magic vs. Parapsychology

The magic way of time

Time is your greatest enemy. You are on a narrow path in between. What exactly this means, you can only guess, but never know. Should you ever arrive at your destination, your mind will no longer understand where you are and what you wanted. The certainty that your life so far has not been meaningless will be displaced by the satisfaction of doing it all over again, should you get the chance. 

Pure magic

It was as it had to come. The city of the monkey god had swallowed them. The appropriate energy signature had a familiar shape.

It strongly resembled the emissions that had been appropriate in the artifact city on Super Earth.

Calgulla looked over at Doctor Isaiah Ravel, who still could not tear himself away from the tracking device.

They were in a large tent at the edge of the entrance to an underground labyrinth of incredible proportions.

The tent stood amidst the ruins of the legendary "White City." It was from here that Alethea and Sigurd had set out to solve the mystery of sorcery and magic that still haunted the Solar System. As the massive machinery in the Artifact City shut down, an almost identical form of radiation was simultaneously located here in the Honduran rainforest.

Isaiah Ravel, scientist, and physicist, together with Calgulla, the head of the new MBF and ten other specialists, had flown directly from the artifact city to the Honduran rain forest.

Here, more than 30 years ago, research work had had to be stopped for lack of financial support. Now, however, the support came from the earth government.

The costs had suddenly become insignificant.

Several hundred teams of the military, especially of the Solar Fleet, were already in action. Most of them were on level 15, which was at a depth of 130 meters.

Sigurd and Alethea also had to be down there. They had the status of advisors to the MBF organization and were thus subsequently legitimized.

The area, the size of a medium-sized town, had been completely sealed off when it was determined that the measured radiation bore a striking resemblance to the radiation in the artifact city.

Calgulla had arrived with Doctor Isaiah Ravel and the rest of the scientists exactly two hours ago.

MFG headquarters on Venus had received the very brief information that Sigurd had already made his way to the La Mosquitia region. She had immediately relayed this to Calgulla.

Now Calgulla stood among the hastily erected research tents, looking down at the hole in the ground where an old wooden staircase had led down not long ago.

Dozens of soldiers had lowered themselves down with a makeshift winch and began to comb the tunnel. However, there was no trace of Sigurd and Alethea.

"The legend of the "White City" says that it was a place of no return. It is said to have been a magical place."

Sigurd stood directly in front of the statue of the monkey god. It towered about five meters in the air and stood right next to the passage to the underworld.

"Kind of looks like a Sremsen, don't you think?"

"I can't answer that question for you, since I don't know that race!"

Alethea had only recently awakened from a mystical sleep in which she had lain for nearly 250 years.

Of course she knew only very vaguely the present political and economic situation within the Sol-system, as the solar system of the earth was called now within the planet union.

They had arrived at the lowest level when their way back had been cut off.

A very large portal-like passageway was directly in front of them.

"We will not be able to return the way we came. In fact, I fear the entire gallery above us has collapsed."

Sigurd had by now adjusted to the infrared vision. Where his altered eyes took the residual light from, he didn't know.

"Mid-infrared picks up the range of thermal radiation, and it's not exactly cold down here!"

His subconscious had once again not been able to let it go and had taught him.

Alethea glanced at a small bracelet she had taken from the ship.

"The GPS signals are dead. However, I can retrieve the data previously located by PAURUSHEYA and compare it to our current location. The original appropriate source of radiation is at a depth of about 150 meters. At this moment, we should be at a depth of about 140 meters. That means it had to go even further down."

"Let's see where that passage over there leads."

Sigurd led the way. They came to a relatively large rock vault, the end of which they could not see.

In some places, stalactites hung down from the ceiling, which was about ten meters high. The temperature had dropped several degrees Celsius. Carefully, Alethea and Sigurd moved between the stalactites, some of which reached the floor.

The floor was slowly falling away, suggesting that they were on the right path.

Suddenly, Sigurd stopped. He had heard a loud noise.

It sounded at first like a groan and then changed to a muffled rattle.

"Is there anyone there? Hello!"

At first it seemed as if the sounds were coming from the front. Then they sounded from the passage from which they had just come themselves. Sigurd turned in a circle several times until Alethea held him. Immediately the sounds also stopped.

It had become quiet as a mouse, but only for a short moment.

A rumbling and roaring started abruptly. Dust and fine grains of sand trickled down from the ceiling.

It was pure coincidence that Sigurd looked up because the noises were now coming from behind.

Half the ceiling seemed to have come loose and was coming toward them both. Sigurd didn't have time to think much. He reached out telekinetically and used his paranormal power against it, at the same time grabbing Alethea's arm and pulling her towards him.

With a veritable roar, large boulders crashed to the ground to their left and right, and a huge cloud of dust reached for them from all sides but could not reach them.

Sigurd's telekinetic defense field not only held back the one boulder directly above them, but also prevented them from suffocating in the cloud.

They were trapped. There was nowhere to go, and he couldn't just let go of the boulder that had been dislodged from the ceiling while trying to use his strength to create a passage between the rocks now lying on the ground.

Alethea looked at him faithfully with her large, blue-black iridescent eyes.

She had pressed herself very close to Sigurd and embraced him with her arms.

He was still fixated on the boulder above their heads when, after a few minutes, the swirling dust had slowly dissipated.

Alethea remained silent and thoughts raced in Sigurd's head.

He tried to find a way out but realized rather quickly that his thoughts had gotten caught in an endless loop.

"I see it in your eyes, Paurusa, we are trapped! There is only one option left, we must try to decentralize our bodies or better yet, we dive right into the ground!"

Sigurd listened to her wordlessly. He knew that the new Alethea, like Queen Yiilyix before her, could simply dissolve her physical solidity and thus seep into the ground. But what about him?

His body nanites had triggered a similar process once before, namely when he had gone in search of PAURUSHEYA. At that time, however, it had happened due to an attack with magic and, what's more, without his conscious intervention.

The question was, could he even bring about a conscious decentralization of his body.

Alethea guessed his concerns.

"You've done it before, so it works. You just have to really want it!"

They both looked into each other's eyes, and Sigurd realized there was no other option left.

He imagined the feeling of falling, just as he had done when he was searching for the ship, and in addition gave the appropriate mental command to his body.

Alethea had joined his thoughts before and reacted immediately. The Xxiin of her body changed her energetic structure and she began to sink faster and faster into the rocky ground.

Sigurd followed her, while his mind still telekinetically held the falling ceiling.

Their two bodies, standing close together, sank further and further into the ground.

It must have looked spooky bizarre to an outsider, the way the bodies literally melted into the ground. Sigurd held his breath when only his head was visible, and as his eyes approached the surface of the floor, he telekinetically released the blanket and closed his eyes. He already did not hear the tremendous impact of the remaining ceiling.

The small, medieval city was half bordered by a river. There was also the defensive wall, built entirely of hewn basalt stone blocks, over twenty meters high and almost three meters wide.

The other half of the town was bordered by a massive rock wall. Its center was the marketplace.

This was surrounded by the residential buildings of the merchants' guild, as well as warehouses and the stately stone buildings, which were reserved for the wealthy patricians.

Near the marketplace were residential and workplaces, such as bakers and butchers, and a monumental square building that almost reached the height of the defensive wall.

Several farms had settled outside the city walls. Typical for the town was the dense development with winding and narrow streets and the fountain in the center on the market square.

The town hall, granaries, salt warehouses, department stores, taverns and bathhouses were spread over an area of about 8.55 square kilometers.

Sorcerer's apprentice Sähren Morgester was just leaving the town and marched with an upright posture through the wooden, two-winged town gate.

He wore his official third-year magisterial apprentice hat. As he approached the tenth and thus the final year of his education, the hat would also become larger, taller, and more pointed.

It was still relatively small and flat, but Sähren still wore it with a certain pride, alongside the caftan-like robe held together by a very wide leather belt decorated with flashing stones.

After all, there were only two other sorcerer's apprentices here in Moorlagenau, besides him. Magister Wohlhorendoff, their teacher, was one of the most respected wizards of all five cities of the Monkey God.

The sorcerer's apprentice, Sähren Morgester, gazed pensively up at the sun that had just risen, or rather at the device of a sun. It seemed to him to shine especially brightly today.

Of course, all the inhabitants of the so-called White City, as the huge catacombs and hollows were called in which the five Samadhi cities were located, knew that their habitat was below the surface of the earth.

The artificial lighting suggested to every inhabitant of this subterranean vault complex, which stretched over 1000 square kilometers, that it was on the planet's surface, so vast were its dimensions.

The two halves of the gate were each flanked by a statue of a monkey god over ten meters high.

The two guards in their metallic armor lay lazily leaning against the basalt wall, casually holding a halberd covered with rust from flying.

Sähren looked at them only briefly. They seemed to be drunk already in the early morning, at least the two broken wine amphorae lying on the ground in front of them spoke a clear language.

Sähren Morgester looked over to the small hill. There stood the grove in which he had already frolicked as a child.

To the left, the farms of Hörmsdorf and Kamerlands could be seen.

Between their homesteads lay tilled land, and its dark color stood out clearly from the meadows and trees of the rest of the surroundings.