Battle for Atlantis

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Dane’s essence floated in the swirling red mist that represented the atmosphere in Timeline 1. Whatever they’d done to their planet, Dane thought, it had been extreme. Even the light was wrong, he realized after a few moments. The large black portal that he’d come out of was directly behind him, floating above a sluggish, gray ocean.

Dane froze.

Evil all around.

The human essence corrupted. Warped and twisted.

The Immediate source was obvious. There were hundreds of Valkyries, spears in hand, floating in the air all around the portal. Also several large platforms hung in the air, with no visible means of support. There were large devices on board each, manned by a half dozen Valkyries, which Dane had no doubt were very powerful weapons of some sort. Oriented at the portal.

This was not the way to come, Dane thought.

And they didn’t see him or sense his essence in any way, he realized. But he was powerless. So he did not matter. He was no threat.

Where was he?

The Ocean was completely flat, no waves, no swell. The water looked — the word that came to Dane was heavy. Not normal. And it went as far as he could see in all directions.

Dane looked down. There had to be a reason the portal was here.

Dane descended. He paused just above the turgid water. One more terrible thing to endure among all the other things he’d had to so far.

Dane got angry. Who were these people who made up the Shadow to do these things they had done? To destroy entire timelines to keep this worthless existence alive? Living in a world that has bereft of beauty? Of purpose other than to exist?

Dane plunged down into the oily, thick water.

What light there had been quickly disappeared but Dane continued downward. He had no sensation of swimming now, just movement. He had no idea how long he descended, but soon a light appeared ahead, growing brighter as be got closer.

Dane came to a halt.

There was a city below, enclosed in a huge clear shield. A magnificent city with a golden palace in the very center, with a main tower that had to reach almost a mile upward, ending just short of the very center top of the shield. From Dane’s perspective above, he could see that there were numerous other golden buildings surrounding the palace, then a ring of water — fresh water he assumed. Then a ring of land on which there were white, smaller buildings, apparently homes. Another ring of water enclosing that. To the right was something that appeared out of place, an add on — a large black building, like a warehouse, and a tube that extended out of the clear shield to a gigantic latticework of black, in which nested at least a dozen of the large black spheres that the Shadow used to traverse the portals.

Dane continued down, passing through the clear shield, which was not clear when seen from the other direction. He paused, slowly taking in the panoramic view of bright · blue sky with a few lofty clouds visible and the sun shining. On the edge, where the shield met the ground, there was a surrounding ocean. Not the dirty diseased one that surrounded the city completely, but a clean one with waves running across its surface.

This was how Atlantis must have looked in its heyday Dane realized. It might have been swallowed by the ocean because of their mistakes, but the Atlanteans of Timeline I had used their technology to at least visually re-create what they had once known.

But where were they?

There was no movement in the city that he could discern.

Dane headed toward the center tower. Despite the horrid atmosphere of corruption and evil that he was picking up, he had to admit that it was spectacular. He estimated it was almost a mile high and the surface glittered in the false sun that was projected onto the inner surface of the shield.

Dane passed inside near the very top, speculating that if it was occupied, someone would be near the top. After all, why build such a thing if not to be above it all?

He was in a spiral corridor that was wrapped against the outer wall of the tower and went up a slight incline. The corridor was about fifteen feet wide and Dane could only assume it went all the way to the base below and to the tip just above. On the outer wall. The view was clear — obviously the Shadow had perfected a means to make a material that was opaque on one side and clear on the other.

Dane halted, looking out over the city. It was most impressive and it was false. He thought it summarized what the Shadow had developed into quite well.

Dane followed the spiral corridor upward. As the tower narrowed, so did the corridor, and the turn tightened. The corridor ended abruptly and he floated into the base of the top of the needle. It was an open space, a hundred meters wide at the floor, narrowing to a point more than four hundred meters above his head.

Filling the chamber was a latticework of gold spheres, each about three feet in diameter, attached to each other by thin tendrils of gold. It was mesmerizing and Dane stared at it for quite a while. He estimated that there were several thousand gold spheres, all linked together.

His first guess was that perhaps this was some elaborate work of art or some sort of religious symbolism to the Shadow. Who knows how they had developed from the other timelines since the time of Atlantis?

Dane had been guarding himself against the bad feelings given off by his environment ever since coming into the Shadow portal. But now he lowered this mental barrier a little to get a feel for this strange place. It was a barrier he had perfected as a child to keep the emotions of others at arm’s distance from him. He’d learned early in his life that he was different from others, able to sense things normal humans weren’t.

He snapped the protection back in place immediately as he realized, with a power that knocked his projected essence backward, what exactly he was looking at: those golden spheres were the Shadow. Each one contained an original Atlantean, his or her mind, in a timeless existence.

And now they knew he was here.