The farmer approached the painting, feeling the history rush through him. The rich yellows, deep blues, and bright-green inks mapped the historical timeline of Man—events that Burton had been exposing to him since he was a boy; events that were different than the official stories documented in the sacred scriptures of mankind.
Burton continued, “Some of my first students, founders of the Resistance, passed this information on to their children. Others were afraid, retreating to life on the waters far from the mainland, or digging down deep into the underground to escape the eye of the Nekrums. But no one is truly beyond their reach. The Nekrums have invaded other worlds before.”
“The emigrants,” Montague said, still staring at the painting. “That’s how the islands of Grale and Mern were colonized.”
“Exactly,” Burton said.
Montague knew all of this. Burton had told him many times before. But it was obvious that Burton, not having many friends nowadays, felt better talking about it. Montague’s mentor had known that the murderous Nekrums would find this planet one day. And that day had come sooner than he’d anticipated. The aliens had been lurking in the sky within an incandescent biosphere, posing as a second moon for over four hundred years, waiting for the perfect time to strike—when the angel was caught off guard.
As Montague stood, still waiting to tell his teacher about what happened at the kingdom, he felt a trembling fear. Perhaps the terrifying ‘future events’ that Burton had told him would come to pass were finally happening. Montague dreaded the day. Suddenly, his problems with the kingdom seemed small. He tried to keep himself as balanced as his mentor had taught him, but he sensed that Burton was picking up on his discomfort.
“The king cut me off,” Montague said loudly. His voice echoed within the dark, wet cavern.
Burton turned to him, lifting one brow.
“There were men at the gates I’ve never seen before. The boy, Sam, wouldn’t even look at me. They turned me away. They know, Sensei…they know that you’ve been teaching me. They’ll—”
Burton interjected, “Do you not remember what happened to me?”
“Of course I remember,” said Montague.
When the Nekrums infiltrated The Temple five hundred years ago, they set fire to the institution’s library, destroying every copy of the sacred document known as Gabriel’s Diary. It contained the true histories and origin stories of mankind before its arrival on Planet Naan.
Although Burton secured the original, he had faced a problem that was harder to solve than he had ever expected or prepared for. The newer generations of the world were accepting a changing belief system about their race’s origins that eventually became not only false, but misleading, promoting a narrow-minded way of thinking. The Nekrums were successful in deceiving the human masses into believing a false story of creation. That false story was promoted by The Temple from a new sacred document titled, The Book of Volpi. Over time, many verses were written and re-written by corrupt priests who were manipulated by the Nekrums. As many copies had come to pass throughout the ages, truth was deleted and lies were inserted. The Temple declared The Book of Volpi as the official history of Naan. It was assumed to be written by a god named Gabriel Volpi, explaining the story of Man’s creation. Descendants of that creator became the royal family destined to rule over mankind.
But Burton told a different story. He claimed that Gabriel was no god, but a human being who came from another planet.
Some of the very people who Burton taught long ago had joined the exiles and used his knowledge to form a cult against the three kingdoms. The technology he was trying to share had been turned into deadly weapons. Some exiles were known to use illusions to manipulate people and powders to kill or control people. They were called ‘mages’. Dangerous to anyone who wasn’t a part of their cult, they even participated in human and animal sacrifices to appease their gods, the Nekrums, to gain, what the mages called, spiritual power.
The event that made The Temple present their case against Burton happened on a cold, snowy night at Illyrium’s four hundred and fiftieth anniversary festival. It was tradition to collapse and burn the remains of an old, dilapidated structure to make way for the new; usually a house or stable that had been built during the first rising of civilization. When Burton had lit the bonfire, it exploded into a fireball that shot straight into the sky, scorching it. There had been three days of darkness to follow, creating an end-of-the-world trepidation among many. Because of the incident, the Illyrium council blamed the phenomenon on Burton and ruled that such mystical acts or anything unknown to scientists would from that moment on be considered ‘witchcraft’. If the accused was convicted, he or she would be banished from the land. The people of the world had turned on Burton, who’d once led the construction of civilization. But Montague’s sensei had sworn to him that he was set up. He claimed that the wood had been soaked in rosstic acid, an explosive compound derived from a desert rose. Burton tasted it on the charred residue after the event that night.
Aside from his lasting contribution to the three kingdoms of Naan, Burton had been cast out and dubbed an evil sorcerer among men who perverted the ways of the civilized world. Although he still had friends inside the Kingdom of Illyrium, his visits were now short, and secret.
“With the best spies coins can buy The Temple is the first to know everything and if they knew that you were affiliated with me, you wouldn’t have been allowed to leave. They would have arrested you and locked you away to await a trial that would guarantee banishment, or death. I don’t know who those men
