Deke Brolin Rhol (29 page)

“Do not listen to his treacherous lies, Deke. He tries to blame you for som
ething you could not have known,” Deo said.

Deke looked
dejected. “But should have known.”

Deke knew what Solharn was doing and it was working. His words got to him. He was responsible for not noticing Mary was an imposter and that did make him weak. Solharn was trying to break him, weaken his mind, to make him more vulnerable and thereby more accessible to him. But it would not work. He had listened to the Kilto elder who had told him to believe in himself, to define himself. He would not allow Solharn to define who he was.

“Perhaps I should have been more suspicious of Mary, Solharn, but even if that is true, they were mistakes and nothing more. You are wrong if you think it was anything else. I think that answers your question, doesn’t it?”

A sarcastic grin appeared on Solharn
. “Let me put it this way then. Hand the amulet to me or I will snap the neck of your friend whom you so valiantly saved from the Tetagorous.”

Solharn knew this was Deke’s weakness. He would never let any harm come to Mary. Deke reached for the amulet.

“Deke, don’t give the amulet to this...this thing. It will not save Mary’s life,” Deo begged.

“And if it doesn’t, at least I won’t have to live with the burden that I could
have done something to save her,” Deke retorted.

But Deke was not ready to hand
the amulet over yet. While talking to Solharn, he had recalled the Kilto elder telling him that he possessed more power than he knew. He remembered the creature he had defeated earlier in the swamps, and what Kiran had done to save his life. It all revolved around the power of the amulet. Every time the amulet had helped him in his cause it had done so at his bidding, when he held it. He grasped the amulet and held out his other hand in one motion, pointing it directly at Mary’s captor. He thought of the power within the amulet, the power of the light and imagined it flowing through his body and exiting his hand.

Deo watched in amazement as a stream of light shot from Deke’s hand
, and struck the imposter, whose body Solharn had consumed. It caused her to fall backwards, leaving Mary to fall to the ground. Deo quickly grabbed her and pulled her away.

“Do
n’t kill her, Deke! She is Delca, my paladin. It is Solharn that controls her. She doesn’t know what she’s doing!” Mary yelled.

Deo doubted that Deke could hear her. He seemed to be transfixed. He stared blankly ahead as the light continued to flow from his hand into Delca’s body. He began to moan as the core of the light he transmitted turned black. Delca gradually started to change from Mary’s form
, to what Deo knew to be her own.  Finally, the light detached itself from Delca, and shot back into Deke’s hand. Deke fell to his knees. His body felt different. He bent over and began to vomit.

“Are you alright Deke?” Deo asked.

Deke rapidly turned his head toward Deo in anger and looked at him. For a moment Deo thought his eyes looked black. “Of course I am alright!” Deke screamed angrily causing Deo to back away.

“Deke, your eyes,
” Deo said.

“What’s wrong with them?” Deke calmly asked as if nothing had happened.

Deo looked, but they were normal again. “Ah, nothing, nothing.” Deo answered wondering if he had just seen what he thought he had.

Deke looked over Deo’s shoulder in disbelief
. “Mary? Is that you, Mary?”

Mary smiled. She was what she had been before she came to this world. She was standing beside a stranger whom Deke had never seen before.

“Deke, I would like to introduce you to Delca, my paladin.”

Part Three

The Final Battle

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The time had come. All light eventually succumbs to darkness. He controlled the darkness and therefore, he could extinguish the light. With no more light there could only be darkness, and with only darkness he would command the Balance of Five. Without light there would be no growth. This would allow for a new species, a species that would feed off the dark. A species he would create. With him in command, he could give life or take life away, as he saw fit. He in essence would be the almighty, the Creator himself, as he should have been all along.

Through the life energy of the thousands he had slain
, Solharn had finally reached the level of power he needed to bring Rhol to its untimely end, should he have to use it. Solharn had convinced himself that this was his destiny, and it was time to fulfill that destiny. In his mind, the Creator was a fool. He had created the five worlds to evolve together, to balance each other out, thereby creating the Balance of Five. Each planet needed the other in order to thrive, in order to sustain the balance. When one was destroyed, it would weaken the others making them more susceptible to him. In time, he would easily destroy them all. There would be no more balance. The Creator had designed the Balance of Five so that eventually, over time, everyone would live together as equals. Only then would his creation succeed in the way it was meant, and Solharn would not let that happen.

Solharn would create worlds where only the strong survived. A supreme race where there was no room for the feeble minded or the kind of heart.
The inhabitants of Solharn’s worlds would not make their own decisions in order to survive, in order to evolve. He would make those decisions for them. It was the way it should be. It was he who allowed them to live so he would control how they led their lives. This was what Solharn intended, and it was time to start the chain of events that would lead to his supremacy.

It was true that things had not gone quite as he had planned. First, he lost his eyes within the Lea
lian army when the Nightstalkers had been discovered. He had regained the advantage however when his soldiers captured Jayden. Jayden had been harder to convert than he would have believed. Only after he had forced Jayden to swallow the dark liquid on two occasions, did he finally become his pawn. That was short lived however; he was discovered quickly by Palto.

Solharn had been surprised when he looked through Phanthus’s eyes
, and saw Palto outside the secret Realm of Solace. He had reacted too quickly when he sent Phanthus and Jayden to destroy him. It had been his plan to have Jayden lead his own armies into oblivion by having Phanthus drop him at the tunnel to Solace. There he would have returned to the Sacred Realm to reunite with Palto. With Jayden in this position, he would have been privy to every move the Lealians and the Pegapires made. He would have defeated them easily. It was an unfortunate event that Jayden was discovered before Solharn had the chance to use him to his advantage.

Perhaps his biggest disappointment had led to an unanticipated advantage he could never have expected. He had discovered Mary and Delca near Mount Sibileo when they attempted to return the amulet to Elissa
, and he had defeated them with ease. He had been furious when he found Mary had somehow sent the Amulet of Rhol back to Earth but it had given him another idea.

He had forced
the girl’s paladin Delca, to swallow his essence and thereby controlled everything she did. Because she was a paladin, he could easily manipulate her body into an exact replica of Mary. When Lorca returned to find her, she had unwittingly returned his pawn to the Realm of Solace. Mary was left deep in the swamps and would soon suffer the fate of a Pintante. This had allowed him the time to gain invaluable information from Kiran. Solharn gained an unexpected further advantage when he learned that Mary was the friend of the boy who would eventually bring the amulet back to Rhol.

Everything was going as planned as his
pawn led both the boy and his paladin to their deaths in the Swamps of Tiqor. When the real Mary eventually found them, Solharn had cursed himself for not destroying her when he had the chance, but he had so loved the idea of her suffering the agony of becoming a Pintante.

Despite this setback he had been able to
manipulate her through her own paladin and to turn Deke and Deo against her. However, she was far more persistent than he had realized. She was able to regain their trust by using the very beast that was meant to kill them. Solharn was beyond contempt when Deke was able to return Mary and her paladin back to their former selves.

Despite these setbacks
, he still had one thing working in his favor. Whenever the boy used the amulet’s power, Solharn could feel him. He was not in control of the boy, but rather he was joined to him in some unusual way. At first, Solharn did not understand the implications of his connection with the boy, but then it came to him. When the boy used the amulet to save Delca, he had absorbed Solharn’s essence from her. Solharn was excited at this revelation. If Deke continued to use his powers without fully understanding them, he would become consumed with darkness. Then Solharn and the boy would be one. Solharn would prefer to see the boy destroyed along with the cursed Amulet of Rhol, but if the boy lived then their union could be a formidable one. Solharn thought it was unlikely that the boy would survive his next plan of attack, but if he did Solharn would savor the power of their union.

Solharn’s
ruse with Delca had failed to destroy Mary, Deke and Deo but at least he knew where they were. He had already summoned Phanthus and an army of Phits to seek them out and destroy them. The remainder of his army would be advancing on Solace.

He could wait no longer. It was time for him to prepare what would be the end of Rhol. It would take days to perfect
his plan, and he would have to focus all of his energy. He doubted it would come to this, but if his armies failed, and if the boy succeeded in finding Elissa, then he would have no choice. When Solharn was finished, this world would be forever night, forever black. The sun, the moon and the stars would forever be gone from sight. The light they shone to sustain life would be unable to penetrate the darkness. Rhol would be barren and cold. Eventually it would be lifeless. Only then would he let it grow again the way it should be, the way he wanted it to be.

Solharn walked slowly back to the camps. He had left its confines to gather his thoughts in the woods west of where they were positioned
. “Get Abednego, now!” Solharn yelled at the first soldier he saw. The soldier had jumped back in fear at the sudden appearance of Solharn, but he quickly gathered himself and ran away as fast as he could in search of Abednego.

Abednego arrived just as Solharn strolled into the camps. “You summoned me Solharn?”

Solharn looked down upon Abednego with contempt. “Yes. The time has come for Rhol to feel our wrath. I have matters to attend to which will inevitably assist your armies in the defeat of anyone who dares to fight against me…us. You will take the armies to Solace, and there you will engage the Lealians and the Pegapires, and you will defeat them, Abednego. I have wasted too much energy already relying on your word only to be disappointed in the results. Do not fail me this time.”

“I will not fail you
, Solharn. Our army more than triples theirs. They will not stand a chance…of course any help you might give us would be greatly appreciated.” Abednego groveled looking to the ground.

Solharn would
give them the help they needed; whether they died as a result of it did not matter to him. He had wished to destroy this world without having to use his most powerful weapon. It would weaken him and it would require almost all of his energy, energy he wished to conserve for the other worlds. He had hoped he could take Rhol without it, by using minimal dark magic. The boy had been right, by utilizing the promise of power and riches to those who would be easily swayed, Solharn had hoped victory would be his against those who had fought alongside Elissa for the freedom of Rhol.

But the unexpected arrival of the boy from Earth who possessed the Amulet of Rhol led to unfortunate predicaments for
Solharn. The boy’s presence filled the surviving warriors of Rhol with renewed hope, it gave them spirit. Moreover, the boy was much more intelligent than Solharn had expected. Already he had learned in some respects how to manage the amulet, and that was dangerous for Solharn.

The boy was too close to finding Elissa. Of course
, he had many obstacles still standing in his way, one of which was Phanthus, but he had outmaneuvered the dragon once before. The second obstacle to the boy’s success would be the Phits; they were seeking him out at this very moment. Still, this did not completely put Solharn’s mind at ease. There was something about this boy that was different. Solharn did not know what it was that separated him from others and for that reason he could not take any more chances on the boy’s resilience. He would not be able to go after the boy himself because it would leave him no time to prepare for what would become of Rhol should his armies fail. But if the worst came to fruition he would have to be prepared.

His other armies had already succeeded in taking over Beltic. It was nearly at its end. Perhaps he would not need all of his energy to defeat the other worlds. In any event that power would come back in time. No, he had made his decision. He would leave now and prepare for the Darkness, something that would destroy every living thing on the planet.