“Why?” Marks squeezed the orb between his fingers within its apparatus in his seat within his tower. Ever since it had gone blank prior to the Tornetum, he could barely get the thing to function. After about thirty minutes of fighting it, Marks gave up and paced his quarters.

A frustrating and growing truth was bothering him. Was he really going to have to get Thayer to retrieve the other two Remel Orbs from their hiding places? Was it even possible while the one he had was in its current state?

It had been almost eight hundred years since the orbs had been together, during one of Marks’s many resets. Every now and then relations between himself and the rest of the planet would go sour. That’s why he refused kingship, because being in public view made him memorable. That’s why he chose jobs such as chancellor, in line for leadership but not in charge.

Marcus would make the perfect king—if he didn’t screw things up as he was apt to do at times. The boy, even in his thirties, was little more than an overgrown child. Of course, Marks felt that way toward everyone of adult age. One didn’t become wise until they were beyond their hundredth year, which most Aallandrons will never see.

But Damius liked Marcus. It was rare for him to care at all about any of his offspring. Marcus, however, had proven himself to be more than just the good looks his mother had given to him. He was resourceful and clever like his father. He had mastered the art of allowing his subordinates to believe he was ignorant when he guided them subtly through his actions.

This girl, Susi, was a concern. She would need to be put in her place, and that was either dead or back to the trees from whence she came. As though the orb behind him had been listening to his thoughts, it suddenly lit the room with orange light.

Marks stopped in mid-stride to turn around and watch it illuminate the whole of the tower quarters. Surely, everyone in the city could see the rook at the top of Narcuss Castle light up like a lighthouse beacon.

Marks approached the orb and, remembering what had happened last time he touched it, warily placed an index finger upon its surface. An electric warmth ran through Marks’s whole body. His wrist actually hurt on the inside throughout his bones, but he kept hold upon the orb’s warm glass.

Marks closed his eyes as he placed the rest of his hand upon the globe. His mouth dropped. He had to squeeze his eyes shut as the orb became as bright as the sun. He received a flash of the illuminated grape blossom on the platform in Appey’s Garden.

For a moment, Marks was certain that the orb was in the process of self-destructing. He had never witnessed it do this before. He didn’t usually use both hands to grip the orb—something about it gave the orb full control of him—but he had no choice this time.

He needed the Sykihr orb to survive and couldn’t allow it to destroy itself for whatever reason it was choosing. Except…the orb wasn’t ending its own being. For the first time in eons, it was being activated by true power.

“The Ancients…” Marks breathed as he adjusted to the intensity of the light. “How can the Ancients be here?” And suddenly, as Marks’s eyes widened, he realized everything that was happening.

He saw Marcus and Susi standing next to each other on a balcony behind the dilapidated cathedral on the edge of the island, Marcus taking hold of her hand. The vision was so close, Marks could practically feel the warmth of their hands touching.

This wasn’t a vision of the future or the past, this was happening right now. The girl was already working her way toward his bed. My, how aggressive destiny can be at times. Marks thought to himself, and yet he was also somewhat proud to know his son had halfway gotten himself into the girl’s underpants—despite everything he knew of her.

The two broke apart.

“No!” There was desperation in his voice as the illumination of the orb dropped to ten percent of what it had been. The vision of the two dissipated.

What Marks was left with was a vision of the future this time. His attention to detail kicked into overdrive. When the orb told him the future, Marks listened.

He saw a field of men in Narcuss colors on horseback at the bottleneck to what could be none other than the threshold valley leading to the Kopf Desert.

The memory of everything that place held came rushing back to him. It was one of his resets: a beautiful jungle paradise that was at a mutual peace between three kingdoms. That was the first time Damius Marks, known as Malus at the time, had taken over the world with the help of the three orbs.

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What was once a thriving valley of abundance was now thousands of miles of empty wasteland, buried by the sands of time that the absence of Aallandron cultivation had brought. What on Aallandranon could possibly bring them there?

And then Marks received his answer.

“Seladia.” Marks growled. He saw the rogue with the long red hair use the orb as he had done. She had obtained it from wherever Thayer had stashed it, and now she was using it to find the others. Marks could almost reach out and touch her as she searched through the Nissentis Remel Orb—for what? Marks couldn’t help but wonder.

There was nothing left in Tonen…except the boy. Marks stroked his lips for a moment. Shault. Was it possible that the boy not only survived 2,200 years ago, but was now awake? He was an Ancient like Marks, which meant he could utilize the full power of the orbs. He alone could threaten everything Marks had built over the last several thousand years. These new players were a serious concern.

Marks stood up from his chair, took a deep breath, and released the orb. He shook his hand that had turned a shade of dead gray. Cracks had formed in his skin all the way up to his elbow as even the moisture had been sucked from his flesh. His tongue felt like sandpaper. He strode across the room and withdrew a long glove from a drawer against the wall that he slipped over the decrepit visage of his arm beneath his robe.

Normally, Marks would go down to the general of the army who was probably spending his salary at the brothel as he liked to do, and load up a fleet to advance on Chartan. But with everything that happened involving Susi today, he couldn’t be sure if following the orb’s advice was the correct course of action.

So far, the orb had shown him precisely what would happen and it did not matter what preventative actions he took. Quite the contrary: his preventative actions had furthered many of the possibilities the orb had offered. Every move he made felt like he was playing into the hand of an opponent. So what if he just didn’t send the general to Chartan? He could at the very least say he had control of his destiny.

Marks needed time to consider his options. Sometimes he wondered about the visions the orb provided him. Were they real visions of a reality that would indefinitely occur, or were they images of a universe long past—or a universe that may never be? The only thing Marks could be sure of was that by going to Chartan, he would be giving this universe a chance to betray him once more.

He left the viewing sanctum and descended the stairs to the lower floors of the castle. He encountered no one but the castle cook staff on his way through.

Marks entered the royal armory and passed a hand over a wall of sharpened short swords that decreased in size until he reached the daggers and knives. Marks took a small, but very sharp knife from the last row, rolled it into his hand and stuck it into his pocket.

Walking through the castle, Marks strode through the side entrance to the castle, descending the steps into Appey’s Gardens. Once King Narcuss had died, Chancellor Marks was in charge of Narcuss Castle. He remembered how Appey and Marissa had escaped their fate, but Vela and their mother, Shiva Narcuss, weren’t so fortunate.

Shiva was weak, but Vela had put up a fight. In the end, she did not have the mental fortitude to contend with his will. She broke and fell as all had fallen before Damius Marks. Nothing brought him back to his youth like absorbing the life force from a powerful young woman.

Perhaps his son, Marcus, had seen something within the girl, Susi, but Damius saw what seemed like an infinite wellspring of energy within that young woman’s mind. Visions and destiny be damned, he was the ruler of this world whether he wanted the crown this century or not.

He would not be intimidated by a pacifist child with a stick. Once Marcus was out of the way, he would string her up in his sanctum as he had done with Vela and Shiva and use her power until there was nothing left.

Marks descended to the platform with the grape blossom tree. It was night and all the stars covered the heavens in a magnificent sheet. The orange moon, Fara, was a rotund grapefruit that consumed a small portion of the sky.

Looking up and down the stairs, Marks made sure no one was coming, then got onto his hands and knees at the base of the tree. He withdrew the knife from his pocket with shaking hands.

What in Omne was wrong with him? Marks grabbed his own wrist with his opposite hand to steady himself, then lowered the knife blade to the mass of roots gripping the earth at the base of the tree that was waving and wafting gently in the wind.

He pressed the blade to a bulbous knot in the cleft of the tree’s net of roots, causing a purple liquid to immediately bleed from the knot like a cut. Marks licked his lips, catching a little of the purple stuff with his finger. He tasted it, tasting the sweet and sour taste that gave his tongue an electrical pulsing sensation.

Dropping the knife, Marks bent over and put his lips upon the cut upon the knot and began to drink. He became an animal in that moment, useless to do anything except gorge himself upon a delicious resource that was both plentiful in the moment, but also fleeting.

His eyes rolled as he sucked and swallowed the purple liquid oozing from the wound upon the tree. His tongue lapped the wood around it until it withered and gave everything an oaky sour taste. Marks kept pulling until his tongue received no further sensation, and then the fury set in.

Damius Marks pounded his fist upon the tree, but when he looked up, the leaves of the tree were now brown, crackled, and dead. Where the constitution of the tree had been youthful, it was now withered like the flesh of an old man.

Marks wiped his mouth and got to his feet. He looked up and down the stairs once more to make sure no one had witnessed him, then turned to make his way back inside the castle.