Pantheon
Chapter One: Gaia
‘Keep alive,’ the orphan came with instructions. At five years old Richard was left on the porch as someone doorbell ditched the Las Vegas City fire department. Everyone who knew him since then, at some point, felt a desire to disobey the explicit command.
In ignorant defiance to the commotion all around him the young teenager stared out the high museum windows. Rainless, the tempest flickered in through and bounced off the marble floors, casting twisted split second shadows on the other delinquents as they were searched for contraband. From behind his black cheek-length hair Richard looked past the prison-like bars into the vacant sky, waiting for the stranger.
He smirked as the shaky hand of part-time justice dealt with the other delinquents. Richard had tricked the other boys into an excursion on the strip for game and glory. He had not met them as promised at the rendezvous point. Instead Richard, with a perfect diversion had made his way to the nearby campus to lift electronics off careless coeds and lazy bachelors.
‘Keep alive.’ All his life he wondered what kind of people would leave a note like that. ‘Weird old idiots,’ he concluded. Despite his unknown parentage the city declared Richard to be Caucasian. He never understood what that meant. No one ever offered a straight answer when he asked where Caucasia was. Adults either scolded his attitude or chuckled and ruffled his pitch hair. By now he had stopped asking questions, but there were always questions. Who was he? Where did he come from? Why was he just abandoned? Most importantly why couldn’t he remember? At fourteen or fifteen he knew he should still have memories of the fire station and before. The answers, like his parents, simply escaped him.
There were only the scattered mental images of constant migration between boy’s ranches and foster homes. Especially unhappy at his current middle-of-nowhere slave labor camp he considered running away. He hated the remoteness of the place. It was easier to cope alone in a crowd than feel like a sore thumb on guy with one hand. Thankful for the short field trip he was currently watching the windows of some smelly moth-ball museum in the heart of Las Vegas.
It was late and dark outside. The chaperones scurried about in a worried frenzy over a few missing delinquents and the impending storm. Richard couldn’t help but laugh. He, the alleged “Ring Leader” of the nonconformists, had just been praised for his current presence. Richard smirked. If it weren’t for his compelling the other boys to try their luck on the Vegas strip he wouldn’t have the brand new mp3 player in his pocket, and they were the ones to take the heat. What use were some vacationer’s credit cards anyway? A few chips were nothing to him in the middle of a go-nowhere boys ranch compared to eighty gigabytes of free music, courtesy of some unattended backpack at the nearby college lab.
Repressing disgust for the various exhibits and displays around him, Richard had made himself comfortable in a corner with a particularly nice stone wall on which to lean. Concealing perfectly, coupled with his new hooded sweatshirt, his tan face and the surprisingly snug headphones. He made sure his music was loud enough that he didn’t have to hear the adults arguing.
“Have you questioned Rich-“
“A million and a half times. He said they mentioned the strip.”
“There’s no way we can make it back in this weather.”
“Yes we can, it’s not even raining and the news reports-”
“But if it starts, the road will be too muddy for this bus and since when has the news ever been right?”
“What are you saying, that we spend the night here?”
“If it comes to it, with the boys and all I’d rather spend the night here than stuck on some dirt road halfway to the ranch.”
The adults’ argument was masked by screeching guitars, drums, and the latest electronic bleeps.
Richard, that was what they named him. Sometimes, the more annoying tried their luck with Richie, but anyone who knew better called him Black. The children often used made up names. It was his favorite color, his dress code and coincidentally his hair was as dark as a moonless midnight. He liked it so much that he went so far as to dye his already black hair just to make it look deliberate.
Black was both Richard’s title and surname as he saw it. He was the black sheep of the Lost Vegas boys. No foster family kept him. Valiant couples saw Black as a parenting challenge or as their divine project. Embracing rejection, he never let them tame him. Although he liked the foster homes best, he got sick of them quickly. Sooner or later he always bounced back to the state, and he preferred it that way, not that he liked the state itself, but Nevada nags a lot less than would-be-mothers on a mission. The better they got to know him the more they tried to “help” him. Above all he didn’t like the feeling that he belonged anywhere. He needed to keep moving.
Standing in the corner ignoring the world around him he was simply indifferent like nothing affected him. He thought of himself as a shadow, only frightening if you fear it. Patient and tactful he was only cutthroat if provoked.
The other boys’ return cued Black’s volume finger, as he watched the silent scene, music now blasting louder than before. Black did regret that he had not seen their faces when they fruitlessly searched for him on the strip. The mental movie played out in his mind, the boys found the strip and no Black. They would look for hours before getting caught by angry social workers and dragged back to the museum. Their play time utterly wasted they were now being tried and sentenced. They would later tell Black, who had a superb alibi for not meeting them where he promised, that he was lucky he wasn’t caught, and he’d just shrug. He kept the volume up, the mental movie was good enough, and providentially the mp3 player was absolutely loaded with everything he liked.
After the public reprimand the group was admonished to “go one last time.” Black continued leaning like a lazy sentinel as the rest of the crew filtered in and out of the bathroom, legs crossed and arms folded. Some other boys approached him, curious to know of his exploits. Black was revered for his ability to attain certain forbidden articles. Negotiating his way out of the ranch as often as possible, every trip to the city was a chance to practice his art as the remote desert kept the children in the ranch.
Unfearing retaliation, he shooed them all away. Last field trip proved that none were willing to rat him out when staff caught a boy with a portable video game device. Now, with a trip to the city, Black’s peer was anxious to have the confiscated device replaced with another newer gaming system.
“No deal,” he announced to the expectant fellow rancher. “You got nothing I want anymore.”
“But I-”
“You heard me, take a hike!”
With a particular waving motion of his hand Black ushered the other barterer away. In truth, for the first time, he wasn’t able to obtain the requested goods. Distracted during his collection run, a skinny long haired and scruffy man at the university had caught him rummaging through backpacks. Instead of capture the man had approached Black and offered change which he readily accepted. Life off the grid, and a chance to learn professional thievery, packaged with the promise of never getting caught, ultimate freedom was all the enticing he needed to agree.
Black turned back towards the window. Tonight was the night he was leaving. He wondered why he hadn’t done it sooner. Free food and scarcity of cash were just excuses. But now he had met someone, someone different from the regular runaway or criminal. This one was smarter. Richard felt somehow he wouldn’t get killed or caught with him. He continued to watch the window.
Black stayed in that corner even after everyone was asleep. Outside, the flash and bangs worsening it was still dry in the city. The intensified lightning helped Black keep alert, now sitting against a wall in the designated corner of the museum’s entrance hall.
The museum was quiet, closed under care of security guards. Richard didn’t know how the stranger would come, but if he could it would serve as the proof that the stranger was telling the truth. With reservation, Black envisioned the epic jailbreak it would require, but the man seemed to know exactly how he would do it. It was all the same to him, he wasn’t going to challenge. Questions got people like him into trouble, not authority trouble but trouble with trouble itself.
Black waited for what only seemed like a few minutes, but could have been hours. He was too indifferent for time to get to him.
The moment finally came, quietly, unnoticed. The wall behind him began to grow warmer steadily under the cover of the storm’s humidity. Black shot up to his feet, back sweating. Half expecting to see that he had been sitting against a broken radiator he stepped away annoyed. Looking back, unflinching and stifling disbelief as a section of wall appeared to melt before his eyes. No one seemed to notice as a stranger stood alone in the opening, hair blowing on the edges of a hood. A black coat ran to the strangers’ knees.
“Black, we’re going.” The stranger beckoned with a follow-me motion and turned towards the night. The air was filled with a cool storm breeze. Though lightning flashed the sky, still no rain fell in the city, there was only wind and shadow. As they strolled away from the outer walls of the museum Black saw the wall close up as if nothing had happened. To the rest of the world, that was the night Black disappeared.
Richard left all of his things in his backpack, even a few things he had stolen that looked valuable, he wanted to leave the impression that he simply vanished. He wanted them to wonder why he didn’t take anything with him. He thought about a suicide note but it seemed to him a mystery, the unknown, was more fitting. He just showed up one day and now he was simply gone.
Before returning to that museum that evening, just in case he was searched, he had stashed some of his other newly acquired goods in a hollow tree close by. Wanting to get them he asked the Stranger.
“Shut your mouth you. You can’t take it where we’re going anyway, and as much as I like practicing my English I’d rather you just shut up.” That seemed to be the end of the conversation.
It was all the same to Black. He was now envisioning walls melting all over the world. Glass display cases, vault doors and even prison bars in his mind disappeared effortlessly with each new imagined caper.
Descending into the deep shoulder of a freeway underpass the rushing of sixteen wheelers on a four lane highway fazed him back into reality. They stepped down into the ditch stopping at a metal grating guarding a drainage hole. The stranger touched it and it too melted. Black’s arm was grabbed and he was pulled to the hole.
“Get in!”
“You’re full of-“
“Get in yourself or it will hurt more when I stuff you down.”
Black nearly pulled out his knife but his better judgment took over and he cautiously climbed in. He was no match for a wall melter and whatever else the stranger was, nor did Black think it wise to find out presently. His feet hit a splashy ground that he didn’t know was coming so soon and he fell to one knee.
“Not bad kid. A natural faller. You might add up to something.”
“Thanks uh,” Black paused, “What’s your name anyway?”
“I guess you’re going to hear it sooner or later,” the slender man consented. “The name’s Yuki.” A meager offering he pressed onward.
After a little walk in pure darkness being pushed from behind by Yuki, Black saw a bright flash and instantly felt a sharp pain in his head. When he came to he was laying in some rancid water next to a set of short wide steps. It took no time at all for his eyes to adjust to the dim light emanating but his surroundings were still unrecognizable. He started to look around trying not to seem awake.
Soon the darkness past the steps became an archway and there appeared a light. As the light drew nearer it grew a pair of arms and then a body, someone was holding the light, ‘Yuki that backstabber!’
“Sorry kid, it was necessary, would have been mounds of trouble. We’re there now so get up.”
As Black got to his feet he opened his mouth but was cut off.
“Just shut up and listen. I need to know everything you have on you, down to every little hairpin and piece of string. Put it on the table or it’ll be your head.”
“What the-“
“Do it now and don’t make me ask again.”
Black started emptying his pockets and Yuki barked “Everything.” He didn’t have much, a small stiletto and a big hunting knife. There was a little utility piece that consisted of a miniature compass and a lock pick and a few other little pocket knife type tools. There was a little cash and a lighter. Black wasn’t about to hand over the new mp3 player he had just recently adopted.
“If that’s not everything you’ll be dead or in prison in less than an hour, and believe me you won’t like this sort of prison.”
Black subdued a few nerves that started to perk up, having kept his mp3 player from Yuki’s grasp. A few seconds pause, but minutes calmer, he pulled off his left shoe. He took out the insole and then withdrew a thin piece of metal with a nasty spike on the end. There were a few holes in the piece, a skinny pair of steel knuckles. A butterfly knife came from the hollow sole his right shoe.
“Do you have any necklaces or jewelry?”
“No.”
“Really? No piercings?”
A ring and a bar went from his lip and tongue to the table.
“Happy?”
“Don’t get smart, ant.” Yuki smirked as he pulled something out of a coat pocket. It was a small black and brown box with a square hole in one end. He held it so that the hole faced outwards and took few steps over to the table. Light in one hand, box in the other, he lowered them both to the table. Yuki touched the hole-side of the box to the first knife, the stiletto. It melted and disappeared, then the butterfly. Everything black had melted and disappeared until the large hunting knife was the only thing on the table. “This is ugly, besides it won’t be much good to you anymore.”
Black stood there with a protest deep in his throat. Not knowing what to say as Yuki seemed to materialize a white chalky disc from nowhere. Yuki picked up the knife and tapped it to the disc. The blade turned to dust and was sucked into the disc. Black stood in awe, that disk was solid no mistake, yet it sucked the dust into it.
“No more questions squirt?”
Black dared, opening his mouth-
“Good, stay shut up, you’ll live longer.”
“No,” Black complained, “I need some information. You choose what you’re going to tell me, it won’t matter what I ask, but you tell me something before you or I make another move.”
With a wide still hooded grin, Yuki retorted almost sinisterly, “Ok kid, you’ve earned it, but keep your shorts on. I work in a little different line of smuggling than you think. This is a border unlike any you’ve ever seen, and I always have plenty of tricks up my sleeve. This box is a smugglers hole. It can store huge amounts of just about anything, even someone unconscious. How’s your head by the way?”
“You put me…that’s-“
“That’s what, impossible? Or magic? Ha, kid, keep your eyes open.” With that Yuki touched the side of the box, stroked the corner, closed his eyes, and pulled a three foot long sword out of the box. “This, my friend, once belonged to a man named Gilgamesh,” his proud announcement was met with a blank stare. “Don’t know your history eh?” He traced the box, and closing his eyes Yuki then pulled out “something you might have heard of, the staff of Merlin. And this,” he boasted as he pulled a third time, “is the helm of Hades, worn and lost by Perseus.”
Something about the last item rang a bell but the name to which the staff belonged he knew. “So what?”
“So what?” Yuki repeated in disbelief. “These artifacts are hundreds of years old and worth a fortune, but the point is this box can hold just about anything you want. I put you in there. On our way down here in the tunnels I heard voices. There’s never any way to know who a voice in the dark belongs to so I stuffed you in here. It’s easier to defend myself alone, and smuggling extremely rare and expensive artifacts requires serious skill, especially where we’re going, so I don’t need you screwing it up!”
“So where are we going?”
“Nowhere that you would believe. Now, it’s easy to hide anything in the box. It’s the box itself that takes some effort in hiding. There’s a few ways to do it, you can make it appear to be something it’s not.” He illustrated, somehow turning the box into a scarf. “It doesn’t always last long and there are rarely any options since you can’t take anything with you to this place.” The scarf turned back to a box. “Clothing is a number one suspect for hiding things by the way, so it won’t work here. Or you can try to dilute it into the air,” he did not demonstrate, “an easy thing to do but very unreliable. The chances of finding it are slim, the chances of being able to get it back are slim, and the chances of it being detected are not so slim, but the feat is the easiest to perform.
A third option, my personal preference; reversing the magic of the box on itself, much the same as melting it into air but a little more specific. With a little magical skill and tolerance for pain you can melt it into yourself.” He stared at the box for a minute or two then jammed two of his fingers in the hole. While saying something under his breath the box began to melt. Yuki pulled his fingers apart and turned the box inside out. Then he clapped his hands together around the box. There was an absorbing silence that followed and he opened his hands to show nothing but air like a magic card trick when the card ended up in your sleeve.
“It’s painful, but they’ll never find it.” That moment Black saw a deep red smear on the palm of Yuki’s hand. Curious, he looked at the other and saw blood seeping out of a cut so deep he expected to see through to the back of the hand. Yuki dressed the wound like it was an involuntary response. Jaw gaping, Black agreed with Yuki’s previous assumption about his disbelief. ‘Ok this guy gets some credit. That was way cool,’ he applauded mentally, which only made him more curious about his destination.
“Great marring,” Yuki continued, “will stand out under the Aegis Oculi. And just so you know kid very few people know this method even exists and fewer can achieve it,” he paused, “we’ve wasted enough time already, we need to move. I’ll even tell you why. We are in one of many antechambers. This room is where you may purchase a locker,” he directed, pointing at some heavy metal doors on the sides of the walls. Black had not noticed those before. “Almost anything of this sphere cannot be taken to the other, vice versa. I take what I want where I want. With that Yuki went over to a chest next to some lockers opened it and started rummaging.
“You didn’t tell me why.”
“Eh, so I didn’t. Here put these on.” In Yuki’s arms was a bundle of interesting looking cloth.
“No way!”
“You’re going to wish you did.”
“Yeah I’m sure I will big guy.”
“Alright kid,” Yuki chuckled. “You know best. Come on, time to go.”
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