The Thrones of Eden 3 (Eden) by Rick Jones
Authors: Rick Jones
Tags: thriller, Historical, Literature & Fiction, Thrillers, Action & Adventure, Mystery, Military, War & Military, Genre Fiction, Thriller & Suspense
Ads: Link
antennae had picked up the aroma of their prey, the scent jumpstarting their olfactory senses, telling them that whatever stood ahead was now staying their ground.
The masses pressed forward, closing the gap between them and their quarry at record pace.
#
The noise of mandibles opening and closing in pincer strikes was now a sound all too familiar and growing louder like the onrush of a train.
They had crested the landing and were moving closer, John knew this as he continued to rake his fingers nervously through his hair trying to figure out the riddle. They follow and lead, but only as you pass. Adorn yourself in darkest black, and still they are darker. Always they flee the light, though without the sun there would be none. Find me from the four below, and to the Chamber of the One shall you go .
He examined the dials, looked at the four possible answers. Then he studied the riddle, his concentration drifting as he became cognizant of the noise behind him, the sound of mandibles opening and closing in an orchestration of discordant melodies.
They follow and lead, but only . . . as you pass .
Suddenly a memory came to him, a fleeting moment when walking down a street at nighttime. He recalled an instant when walking beneath a series of street lamps, watching his shadow wax and wane as he moved out of the light from one lamp and into the light of another.
Shadows? Waxing and waning. They follow and lead as you go from one light to the next.
He looked at the second line: Adorn yourself in darkest black, and still they are darker.
Shadows are always blacker than black, aren’t they?
The last line: Always they flee the light, though without the sun there would be none.
Of course: ice can flee from the sun in an allegorical sense by melting in the sunlight. But it does not fit the criteria of the first two lines. Shadows, however, fits every criteria.
Behind him the noise was growing to a crescendo, the tide on its final leg of the journey.
“John,” Alyssa whispered. He could hear the slight tremor in her voice.
He simply reached out and grabbed the third dial, ∂. “This one,” he said. “It’s ‘shadows.’ The answer is ‘shadows.’”
“Then do something about it,” said Hillary.
The scarabs were so close that the sound of their exercising mandibles had become deafening.
But when Savage sensed the air of squeezing mandibles as close to him as a sighing breath next to his ear, he turned the dial.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Walls began to rise from the floor, creating barriers where there were none before, the scarabs suddenly finding themselves divided from their prey.
Areas of the floor began to rise and fall, becoming unstable as hidden weights and balances reconfigured the entire setting. The wall containing the ‘Riddle of Shadows’ slowly rose into the ceiling to unveil a hidden chamber. Plumes of dust sifted from shifting seams in the ceiling after millenniums of gathering sand and particles, the air becoming as thick and cloying as a gas canister igniting eddies of smoke.
Savage could hear the ticking of the scarabs’ mandibles against the wall that divided him from them, thanking God for the slight reprieve.
All around him people coughed and gagged against dust that was overwhelmingly dense, the air adrift with floating specks of desert sand so thick that the opposite wall appeared vague. People eventually fell to their knees coughing and hacking.
But as the air finally began to settle the room did not.
There was a circular emblem of an unknown symbol that was at the room's central point upon the floor, which began to rotate in clockwise motion and began to corkscrew downward, creating an opening in the ground, a hole.
The floor began to shift and reshape itself, rising and falling, the ground angling downward like the bell-shape of a funnel so that the slopes would lead to the opening of a hideous mouth of complete darkness, to another abyss.
John reached
The masses pressed forward, closing the gap between them and their quarry at record pace.
#
The noise of mandibles opening and closing in pincer strikes was now a sound all too familiar and growing louder like the onrush of a train.
They had crested the landing and were moving closer, John knew this as he continued to rake his fingers nervously through his hair trying to figure out the riddle. They follow and lead, but only as you pass. Adorn yourself in darkest black, and still they are darker. Always they flee the light, though without the sun there would be none. Find me from the four below, and to the Chamber of the One shall you go .
He examined the dials, looked at the four possible answers. Then he studied the riddle, his concentration drifting as he became cognizant of the noise behind him, the sound of mandibles opening and closing in an orchestration of discordant melodies.
They follow and lead, but only . . . as you pass .
Suddenly a memory came to him, a fleeting moment when walking down a street at nighttime. He recalled an instant when walking beneath a series of street lamps, watching his shadow wax and wane as he moved out of the light from one lamp and into the light of another.
Shadows? Waxing and waning. They follow and lead as you go from one light to the next.
He looked at the second line: Adorn yourself in darkest black, and still they are darker.
Shadows are always blacker than black, aren’t they?
The last line: Always they flee the light, though without the sun there would be none.
Of course: ice can flee from the sun in an allegorical sense by melting in the sunlight. But it does not fit the criteria of the first two lines. Shadows, however, fits every criteria.
Behind him the noise was growing to a crescendo, the tide on its final leg of the journey.
“John,” Alyssa whispered. He could hear the slight tremor in her voice.
He simply reached out and grabbed the third dial, ∂. “This one,” he said. “It’s ‘shadows.’ The answer is ‘shadows.’”
“Then do something about it,” said Hillary.
The scarabs were so close that the sound of their exercising mandibles had become deafening.
But when Savage sensed the air of squeezing mandibles as close to him as a sighing breath next to his ear, he turned the dial.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Walls began to rise from the floor, creating barriers where there were none before, the scarabs suddenly finding themselves divided from their prey.
Areas of the floor began to rise and fall, becoming unstable as hidden weights and balances reconfigured the entire setting. The wall containing the ‘Riddle of Shadows’ slowly rose into the ceiling to unveil a hidden chamber. Plumes of dust sifted from shifting seams in the ceiling after millenniums of gathering sand and particles, the air becoming as thick and cloying as a gas canister igniting eddies of smoke.
Savage could hear the ticking of the scarabs’ mandibles against the wall that divided him from them, thanking God for the slight reprieve.
All around him people coughed and gagged against dust that was overwhelmingly dense, the air adrift with floating specks of desert sand so thick that the opposite wall appeared vague. People eventually fell to their knees coughing and hacking.
But as the air finally began to settle the room did not.
There was a circular emblem of an unknown symbol that was at the room's central point upon the floor, which began to rotate in clockwise motion and began to corkscrew downward, creating an opening in the ground, a hole.
The floor began to shift and reshape itself, rising and falling, the ground angling downward like the bell-shape of a funnel so that the slopes would lead to the opening of a hideous mouth of complete darkness, to another abyss.
John reached
Similar Books
