Hidden Files #1

Short Story #1 of the Lanteaverse Hidden Files is set 295 years before the start of Atlantis Ashes. Check back regularly, or follow me on Social Media, to always be notified when new posts are uploaded.

Bright honey eyes inhaled a strangled silence as the carriage’s power cells hummed to life, metallic wings fluttering in preparation to bare their cargo to Atlantis. Never had Hope felt more like a prisoner of war than that moment as she absorbed the sight of the palatial Winchester Castle for the last time.

Any time she’d stared up at the grand place her thoughts diverted to her birth parents, to how horrifically they’d died. She couldn’t forget the sight of the lesions as they rapidly liquefied her birth father’s neck when he’d gripped Hope’s arms and ordered her to flee.

Other survivors of the targeted attack had been more and more grotesque in their mutations. All that was different about her was that her blood had turned black. And, of course, her eyes. Many commented on the unusual vibrancy to their color. She couldn’t recall them looking any different, albeit she had only been five at the time.

Francis had been the one who found her and delivered her to Winchester Castle. A place she would be safe, or so he had claimed.

No one spoke of the tragedy that befell the city of Helfast – nor the lives it had taken. They were only humans after all. It was the Atlanteans who had invited humans to their world, not the other way around. If humans wished to remain, they had to follow one particularly important rule: This is how we stay.

That rule passed like barbs across Hope’s tongue as her gaze returned to the present and to the castle. Its bones were as exposed as the memories that swam in her eyes.

The stone was cold against Hope’s bare feet as she walked the halls of that castle one last time, her father’s ancestral home for nearly three hundred years. Despite the constant change over what the colony it resided in was called, Winchester Castle had remained. It had been given as a gift to the Primroses for their unflinching loyalty. Unlike new arrivals from Earth, offworlders as they were called, Hope and her family had been born on Lantea. Yet they could never dare call themselves Atlanteans. They were still human. That was why, despite the small sense of security it had provided, the place sent a surge of bitterness speeding through her veins.

“This is how we stay,” her father had said with confidence the first time when he still had that unbreakable look she thought he always possessed. Then went the silverware his great-grandmother, Eirene, had brought to the castle on her marriage to Patrick Primrose, the eleventh Baron Primrose. Theirs hadn’t been a happy union but those exquisite forks, knives, and spoons had allowed Hope’s family to remain in their home a few more years.

There was a stillness in the air, a precipice that she was teetering upon as she brushed a finger across the empty island in the kitchen. Her hand waved through the air just above the wooden table. A soft hum preceded a great holographic screen that lit up at her motion. Many times, she observed the Head Cook organize the menus. Many times, she witnessed the servants retrieve their orders from all corners of the castle. The contrast of wood, stone, and technology was a happy marriage of the old and the new inside the once active kitchen.

Entering the library, memories assailed Hope like a breeze onto her skin, wafting through her dark chocolate hair and across her empire waist dress. Wilhelm, the first Baron Primrose, had started the collection, and she still smelled the musty papers and glued bindings those built-in bookshelves no longer held. That chamber had been her refuge. Assured that if those old leather-bound books remained, so would her family.

Then came, “This is how we stay,” from her mother’s lips one night, while Hope had sat by the fire reading. She had watched her father sorrowfully look to the books of various sizes and lengths that completed the walls. That memory forever bound to how the hard edges of the book cover had creased into her palms as she gripped it tight in silent fury. Days later she had screamed and hollered, refusing to give them up, but each one was already lost. That was the first time she had started to hate that phrase.

Hope’s hand effortlessly slid over the smooth polished railing, as she ascended the grand staircase, as if the wood had secretly conformed to her hands alone. A deep red rug once adorned those steps where now only bare stone remained.

Childhood laughter echoed down the stairwell as a memory flooded her view. She had been six and her new brother, Orleans, was still young enough that he’d play with her. Quickly they had run down the steps, joined moments later by their flustered young governess running after them. A fleeting smile whispered to Hope’s lips as the memory faded.

With every slow step, she gazed through the narrow glass windows that lined the stairwell. Raym and Mari Primrose, her father’s great-great-grandparents, had had them installed to replace stone slits. Meant to breathe new life into the place, they offered a view of the rich green field that sprawled out towards the peaceful pond. Hope had stood on its banks two years before, the sun like a halo overhead, when she shot her first prey.

She recalled the exhilaration of that galloping horse beneath her when her tracker alarm vibrated against her arm. In one swift motion, she placed her hand near the gadget and grabbed as if at a tangible object, bringing the holographic screen around her arm and the rifle. She raised the gun as if it were an extension of her arm and took aim. Unlike others who took precious seconds to verify the tracking, she gave way to its accuracy and squeezed the trigger, watching the bullet through her holographic scope as it sailed along its trajectory. It had given her joy to ride in those large shooting parties, yet the rush of excitement that filled her the day she shot that plump pheasant was unequaled.

“Ace!” she had heard behind her, finding Holland Getty with one of his infectious smiles, back when she found him handsome and kind. Even then she had realized a part of his appeal was that he was the Prince of the Belt. He and his father governed the very colony she had been forced to flee.

As it turned out that was the last time her family hunted on their land. Three days later, she had heard the dreaded phrase, “This is how we stay.”

Hope grasped the doorknob that still clicked as it turned, a noise she had hated until then, and continued into her bedchamber. Across the room once stood the four-poster bed she had called her own, handed down by a great aunt Anne. She was still able to perfectly picture the deep mahogany wood. Her fingertips could still feel the indented lines and curves of those tiny ivy and lily engravings that spiraled around the posts.

Vividly, she recalled the first time Francis had walked her through those seemingly monolithic entry doors in the foyer. A scent of jasmine had clung in the air that had wrinkled her nostrils. The aristocratic interior was a stark difference from what she had known and loved. In its place were vestiges of avarice, objects that held no warmth for her.

Hope could still feel how tightly she had held to Francis’ strong hand as they walked closer to their new parents. People that were very clean, proper, and had carried themselves with a haughty air.

“Daz ez com sinn lune.” This is how we stay, Francis had said in the Atlantean language that first night when he had tucked her into that four-poster bed that was no longer there.

She hadn’t desired to be claimed by Edward and Lily Primrose. She’d even said as much, but she never heard Francis translate that to the couple who wanted two more children. Francis had been someone she thought she could trust. Without him, she would have died, so she put up no more of a fight on the subject.

Hope understood little that the Primroses had said back then. Her new parents quickly and harshly rectified that. They took her language, her name, everything about her, and changed it to fit the child they desired.

Memories swirled together as her hand traced the wood planks until she found the one she was looking for. Prying it loose she discovered that though caked in dust those strung beads were still intact. She brushed the layers away, sending particles into the air that stung her eyes. A sensation of warm liquid coursed through her veins from her fingertips as they held those alternating black and cream beads.

“This is how we stay.” Hope remembered telling herself after her father had wrested the prayer beads from her hands when he’d discovered she’d still had them. The Primroses had demanded all symbols of her old life removed. It was her young governess who had taken pity and retrieved them for her. Two of the top right beads had been horizontally broken but the bottom halves were still attached by small fasteners to the chain, the missing halves gone for good.

She soaked in the deaf air. Even the wide field and forest that surrounded the castle held still. A perfect stillness that numbed her skin, her nerves, and her mind until a weightless transcendence swept over her. She was drifting away.

“Hopian!” her mother’s distant voice called.

Instantly, Hope recalled how she had been looking at the exterior of the castle when the sound of their voices had reached her ears.

“The Hheade of the Andarine’s son, tell me you’re joking?” her father had said. “Hope is adamantly against it.”

“Whatever the incident was, she’s being a child.” Her mother replied while sliding her light brown hands into the cream satin gloves. “I was able to persuade his mother to hold to the engagement. And you’ve met Holland.”

“He’s a young genius, I’ll grant him that, but that doesn’t mean marrying off my eighteen-year-old daughter. And, Mikhaelianos said that the engagement was off.”

“Well, Tobia said otherwise just last week.”

“Clearly, they’re having communication issues. We should leave them to sort it out.”

“We wait to settle a match on her, we may not be able to tempt anyone suitable,” her mother urgently pressed, until her father acquiesced.

Hope breathed in deeply as she focused on the feeling of the wood floor beneath her. She wanted to stop from having to get up. Stop from leaving. Stop time itself. Succumbing to the warm stillness, she swore she could make out a smooth sweet voice that faded even as the woman was speaking.

“Ratzen, mya donna.” Remember, my daughter.

Upon opening her honey eyes, Hope stared up at the vaulted ceiling, awake to the cold and empty chamber. Only it was no longer empty. Thousands of microscopic objects were unnaturally magnified into perfect detail to her eyes. Beautifully glowing objects. Nanites!

“Hopian!” Her mother called again, and the moment was lost. With a blink of her eyes, the objects were gone. As if they had never been there.

What were they attempting to tell her, she wondered as her head turned, her eyes resting back on those black and cream beads held in the palm of her hand. They whispered of a vastly alien life that had haunted her dreams.

A life that may have gone differently if nanites hadn’t been released all over Lantea. Such a seemingly insignificant, yet powerful word…if.

If only nanites hadn’t bonded with minerals like emperia quartz, that crystal wouldn’t have become the power source of all Atlantean technology. If only artificial intelligence – Atlantean Avatars as they’re called – hadn’t been created, perhaps advances in science would have been stalled. If only radiation hadn’t enveloped her city, and her city alone, perhaps her childhood would never have known horror.

She could imagine someone having said, “This is how we stay.”

When she placed the scattered pieces of facts together, only one conclusion presented itself. That her, and all humans whether born on Lantea or not, were expendable in pursuit of the Atlanteans’ grander schemes. Which meant her family’s ancestral home was never truly theirs to begin with. Its ownership resided with the Atlanteans, they had merely leased it.

Hope slipped her hand through a slit on the side of her muslin dress and placed the beads safely into her pocket. Then she slid her short button boots back onto her feet and stepped to the door.

Her hand once more grasped the smooth doorknob. The click of the knob echoed in her ears as the door opened against her wishes. That place, that home, was solidly engrained in her memory. At least that she could keep. That couldn’t be taken away.

She granted herself one last long look before she turned and closed the door…resolved to never again put up with, “This is how we stay.”