AHATPOLS: Penultimate Episode : Golublog: An Anthropology Blog

We staggered down the corridor, a sad group – Rex in Kathy’s arms, Ghyslain in Lessig’s, Trevor in Cumin’s, and I in Andrew’s. Cinnamon walked in front of us, bloody but unbowed.

The ground shook beneath us again and a spray of fine silt drifted downward from the ceilings and into my hair.

“What’s going on?” Asked Cinnamon, looking up at the ceiling and squinting as the dust fell into her eyes.

I felt something electrical shoot through me – and I felt Ghyslain and Rex feel it too.

“The pool,” I said, “it’s here. It’s coming.”

“She is right,” said Ghyslain, shaking his head, “it’s filling my mind.”

“I thought,” said Rex, panting uneasily in Kathy’s arms, “I thought we were going to go with the ‘Pool of Lost Souls is Us’ option.”

The ground shook again, so hard that we were thrown to the floor. We tried to get up, but the tremor continued unabated, until finally the walls around us cracked and the ceiling buckled precariously.

“That option seems increasingly unlikely,” said Lessig, walking to one wall, “look!”

Between the cracks in the stone corridor where he pointed, a small but visible smudge of ultra-bright blue appeared. It welled slowly out of the stone and then began dripping thickly towards the floor.

“My god,” said Andrew, walking towards it, “look at that.”

It wasn’t the first time that I had seen that color but it was the first time I’d seen water from the Pool of Lost Souls. It was like an optical allusion, the visual equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard. The more you tried to look at it, the more you had to look away.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Andrew, slowly extending one finger towards the wall to scoop up a smidgeon. The instant his finger made contact he yowled and pulled back, the water eating away at his flesh with an audible hiss. He shook his hand quickly, but already the heat-welt was starting to rise on his finger, as if he has stuck it into a fire.

“keep moving,” I said weakly, “just keep going down. We’ll find it in the depths of the palace.”

* * *

Eventually the hallway widened out into a largish room with a sand floor. Above us the ceiling faded away into infinity, the pale beams of illumination that shone down from the skylight overhead gave only the hint that somewhere up above us was daylight. A narrow grooved channel like a bowling gutter ran along the edges of the room, and enormous spikes of some unidentifiable metal burst from the floor in irregular intervals. Across from us was a massive stone wall with an elaborate abstract series of grooves carved into it. They glittered with a swarm of small blue sapphires that shone at the vertices. Standing in front of the wall were Klaas Epps and Syvestro D’Alogna along with several monks. Epps was chanting, half-entranced, rocking slowly back and forth with the Codex of Lost Souls in one hand as his other hand darted across the carving, touching first this gem and then another. As he touched each, they began glowing with a soft, interior light that was, quite simply, otherworldly.

“Oh my!” exclaimed Syvestro, “Look what we have here! Party poopers! Intrepid party poopers, don’t get me wrong, but still…” he glanced up at us, “doomed, I think.”

“Shut it, D’Alogna,” I said, “You tried to stop us once and failed. The games up. Give up now before its too late.”

The room shook like a bad Star Trek special effect and I struggled to remain standing. With an enormous crack, the walls of the cavern shattered. From the gaping wounds in their stone, a hundred thin spouts of ever-blue water burst and flowed into the gutters along the edge of the room, where they dripped downwards, through the gate. Epps’ chanting increased, and the jewels began to glow a brighter blue.

” ‘before it’s too late?’ ” he asked, laughing, “Oh really? My dear girl, do you have any idea what’s going on, or what we’re about to do? The Pool of Lost Souls is filling even as we speak – it is coming and we are to meet it! Beyond the Gate of Lost Souls lies my final triumph and immortality itself! But don’t worry – you don’t have to wait for me to kill you. I’ll have them do it for me.”

He gestured to the monks, who grinned broadly and drew their swords.

“If you think…” I began.

“Think?” said D’Alogna, “Think what? You barely escaped death the last time you faced my Buddhist allies. And now look at you – two wounded Jedi, one stripling Padwan and a few minor characters? Without that damnable Tibetan Monk you’re no match for us! It would take a dozen more Jedi too…”

D’Alogna was about to continue when the room exploded in light and sound. I turned away and instinctively shielded my eyes with my forearm. Two hooded, robed figures appeared in front of us. They walked towards me and then dropped to one knee.

“Reporting for duty, Ms. Kawharu,” they said in unison.

“Duty?” I asked.

They paused and then glanced at one another. One was a young man, barely a teen-ager, with unruly blond hair and devilishly handsome features. The other was an equally young redheaded girl with a wide, pale face full of freckles. I realized with a shock that they were both wearing Jedi robes.

“Wow,” whispered the girl out of the side of her mouth, “she really is our age.”

“We’ve still got to do whatever she tells us to…” began the boy, casting his eyes up at me. Then they hit on something behind me and fixed in fascination.

“Dad?” asked the young man, amazed.

“Willem?” asked Lessig, moving forward, “good god – but you’re only one!”

“Well I…” he began.

In a well-practiced gesture that I had never actually done before, I reached out with both hands and grabbed their ears and twisted, raising them slowly up my eye level.

“What is going on here?” I asked them imperiously, glancing fiercly at one and then the other.

“It’s definitely her, Sarah.” winced Willem Lessig.

“Well Ms. Kawharu you weren’t very clear on the details,” began Sarah, the girl, “you said something about how you needed a ‘deus ex machina’…”

“What?!” I roared, twisting even further.

“You told us you needed help…” said Willem, squirming.

“… made us promise not to tell the council…” confessed Sarah.

“… I thought you were kidding when you said you had a key to the clean room where they stored the portal…”

“That should be interesting to see,” said Epps, “three exhausted Jedi, an injured Padwan, and two of her friends versus a dozen Shaolin warriors? I hardly think this is the deus ex machina you were looking for, Kawharu.”

“We’ll see about that!” I said defiantly, trying to ignore the migraine-pain in my head, “I’m not injured.”

Epps raised an eyebrow.

“What?” I asked, nonplussed.

“Anne – you’re bleeding.” said Kathy quietly.

I stopped, confused, and then felt my eyes watering. I lifted my fingers up to them, and when I pulled them away they were coated in blood.

“Kill them.” said Epps simply, turning again to the door.

* * *

The monks came on with a fury that was beyond what I had experienced at our first meeting. Sarah, Willem, and I tried to form a perimeter to defend the others. Kathy and Ghyslain helped ward off the occasional close call – the others were too hurt or tired to defend themselves. Meanwhile, Epps began chanting again. As our combat continued his chanting grew to a fever pitch. Suddenly there was a tremendous crack as the walls within the chamber split, fracturing again into thousands of hairline cracks which, wound like, poured steady thin streams of bright blue water down their side and into the rapidly-filling gutter around the corner of the room.

The monk I was tussling with took advantage of my distraction and nailed me in the calf, paralyzing my leg and sending me sprawling to the ground. I tried to stand up, but the blood-magic coursing through my veins had already weakened me. The monk grabbed the back of my neck and shoved my face just centimeters above the gutter that was rapidly filling with the water of the pools of lost souls.

I felt as if I were somewhere else – a million miles away. As he ranted about my death, all I could do was watch with abstract fascination as the blood from my eyes dripped down into the gutter beneath me, a sizzling muddying crimson polluting the pure blue-on-blue of the water of lost souls.

“And now that the pool has come, you will die – and we shall become immortal!” he crowed triumphantly, sadistically pushing my face even closer to the water of pool.

“The Pool. Of Lost Souls. Is…. us!” I managed to grunt. I got one hand free and scooped it into the waters, splashing them onto the leg and torso of the monk behind me.

I remember him screaming and I even remember him dying, although I can’t tell you exactly how it happened. The pain from my own hand was too intense – the water from the pool burned me all the way through to my soul. I felt as if my hand was one giant cavity-ridden tooth stabbed with an ice pick. I stared at it in horror as it hissed and smoked. The skin stretched and retracted as my hand grew wrinkled and liver-spotted and then as smooth as a newborn’s.

“Is that so?” said a voice behind me. I turned to see another Monk. I reached for my light saber, but it was gone – he held it in his hands and tapped it lightly as he lectured me.

“Yes,” I said, “It makes sense. It has to. Everything I’ve seen so far has proved it – meeting Andrew, going back in time, everything. We are the Pool of Lost Souls.”

“I’m going to enjoy killing you,” he said, walking towards me, “so stupid. So stubborn. Look all around you – the Pool of Lost Souls has arrived!”

Then something snapped in my brain. My one remaining good arm reached into my robes and pulled out the empty perfume bottle that my older self had given me earlier. It was slipper in my hand, I realized, because they were covered with my own blood. I vaguely realized it was from the blood running from my ears and down into my robes.

I woozily reached over and dipped the bottle into the pool, filling it with the water of lost souls.

“Don’t make me hurt you,” I said thickly to him, tasting blood flowing into my mouth now.

The monk laughed as he looked down at me.

“I can’t decide which I will enjoy more – killing you myself or watching all of the blood flow out of your body on its own accord.”

“This entire time,” I said, feeling myself nodding and struggling to regain consciousness before continuing, “We’ve only ever heard two different sto… stories.”

I swallowed heavily, tasting iron and salt as I did so.

“Is the pool of lost souls the people who wa… watch over the Codex, or is the waters from which I… we… from which it gets its powers. No one knows which one it is…”

A haze of red covered my eyes now.

“But I think,” I said, lifting the perfume bottle to my lips and swallowing, “I think it’s both.”

At first I felt nothing. Then I felt as if someone had poured molten lead into my skeleton. My vision faded away into a blue first cobalt and then cerulean, and then white, whiter, and white again. My ears roared with the sound of my own blood and then, ever stranger, the sound of nothing at all. Then I was gone altogether.

* * *

I awoke to find the Monk staring into my face curiously as he held me up in the air by my throat. He rotated my head around as if examining a broken doll.

“That’s odd…” he began, fixating on my eyes.

“No,” I said, feeling a surge of strength through my body, “this is odd.”

I reached forward with one hand – now unburned – and reached for a pressure point beneath his jaw. He yowled and dropped me to the ground. I punched him hard in the windpipe and still had enough time to retrieve my light saber from his grasp before he crumpled to the ground, dead.

The scene had changed. Epps and D’Alogna had disappeared, and things had gotten much worse. Kathy was struggling bodily with a monk while Willem and Sarah, panic written on their faces, tried to keep the two monks that remained away from the rest of the group. I made my light saber live. The monks felt me coming and turned to face me, dodging, but it was too late. The world jumped and I saw where they would move to. I sliced through one, followed through on the withdrawal, pulling my light saber through the air where the other would – and did – land. I grabbed the wrist of the monk struggling with Kathy, twisted the wrong way, and sent him flying to the ground, clutching his sprained hand. A few more tried to come at me, and I watched in slow motion as they dove, sidestepping leisurely and slashing through them. The ones who could, fled. The remained laid on the ground, moaning in pain.

“Anne!” said Andrew, staring wildly at my face, “What’s… what’s happened to you?”

I put my hand to my mouth and looked at it. I was still bleeding, but now the blood was a pure blue-on-blue.

“Well,” said Willem Lessig, dusting himself off jauntily as if he were solely responsible for our victory, “now all we’ve got to do is follow them.

He walked up to the wall full of glittering blue stones, “now all we have to do is get this door open. I saw them do it. It’s all a matter of getting the right combination…”

He turned to me and winked, cock-sure, “I can’t remember the combination they pressed. But I’ll just use my Jedi powers, like you taught me… er… will teach me.”

He reached forward and touched a series of jewels. Each glowed as his fingers made contact. When he touched the last one, a bolt of blue light shot forth from them and burned him to a crisp. The flesh dripped from his skin as his lifeless corpse fell to the floor.

“NO!” I cried in horror.

The world jumped around me.

He turned to me and winked, cock-sure, “I can’t remember the combination they pressed. But I’ll just use my Jedi powers, like you taught me… er… will teach me.”

“No Willem, don’t!” cried his father, rushing towards him.

“NO!” I cried in horror.

The world jumped around me.

“I’ll just use my…”

I grabbed his hand and pulled it away.

“Don’t touch that.” I hissed at him.

“Yes Ms. Kawharu…” he said, instantly deferential.

I pushed him roughly away and limped towards the portal. I spat out a thick wad of blood that fell sizzling to the ground where it burrowed, acidic and blue, into the sand to find the pool that was its source.

I stared at the portal and pressed the first stone, and then the second and then third and then the fourth. I felt the bolt of blue light hitting me and eating away at my skin and then the world jumped around me.

I pressed the second and then the… I pressed the fifth, then the third, then the second… I pressed the third and then the fourth… I felt futures and pasts jump jitteringly beneath my hand. I watched myself press the second… I felt myself die… I pressed the first, the world slipped away below me and snapped up again. I pressed the fourth, then the second, then the fifth, then the third, then the first. With a rumbling wave of movement, the gate of lost souls ground open for me.

“Well that was easy,” said Willem as he and the rest of the group walked past me.

* * *

The roar within the cavern was deafening. Wind from nowhere whipped our hair. Our feet slipped coltish on the smooth black-glass floor. Razor sharp stalagmites thrust up from the floor while above us stiletto-like stalactites dripped lethal blue drops. They slid off the smooth floor and ran down to the ground and up and over the razor-sharp jags that thrust up, forming a wide lip. Beyond them a massive sea of turbulent, blinding blue roiled angrily and lit the cavern with an eerie blue glow.

“Willem, Sara,” I said, turning to them. But the minute they entered the cavern they dissolved in an ghostly light, first real, then images, then nothing at all, as the pool, furious that they had ventured out of their own time, sent them back to it.

A fair distance away from us, I saw Klaas Epps kneeling and facing the shore, chanting. The Codex lay at his knees and beyond him, a beam of light shone down into a whorling vortex of water in the Pool of Lost Souls. Carefully, Epps took a long-handled silver pan and dipped it carefully into the Pool, retrieving a hissing, boiling sample of its waters for his own personal use.

“There he is!” said Cinnamon, pulling a pair of embroidery scissors from her knitted holster and walking determinedly towards him.

“Cinnamon – wait!” cried Andrew following after her. I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach. I felt sure, somehow, that I had been here before.

“Andrew!” I yelled, running after him and abandoning the others.

“Andrew don’t!” I yelled, slipping on the smooth glass floor as I struggled to catch up with him, “don’t!”

I grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to a stop.

“She’s badly injured – she could die if we don’t get her to a hospital. I’m not letting her face them on her own.” he said impatiently, tearing his arm out of my grasp.

“No Andrew don’t you see that something terrible is going to happen!?”