A thin layer of dust had settled upon every item in the scene.
The door to the small, side chamber opened with a slight click and Lord Phaeton emerged from the darkness to the light, covering his eyes with the back of his bare arm.Permanent shadows were cast on his face, despite the fact that he stood directly in the way of the sun.Half-blinded, he struggled to cross the office space, mindful to not bump into things along the way.Reaching the windows, he fretted with the curtains and manually drew the covers shut.
Normally Marsala would have been there to do it for him, but that day his Master of Activities was somewhere below, addressing a conference of merchant guilds.That day was different from all the others that had come before it -- he knew it, he felt it.In a matter of time, coming and approaching soon, the whole of the world would know, too, just how rare that day would turn out to be.
“Kara,” he lamented, allowing himself for a moment the luxury to feel a sense of fatherly emotion he had never had or thought he would have.If only the eye would open, if only the sword was not limp, useless -- oh, how easy life would be, how simple.
The phone rang.Its blinking lights signaled its location on the curved tabletop.He ran to answer it.The call had not been routed by his secretary, it was a private line that ran directly to him.
“Yes?” he asked, speaking into the receiver.
A female voice answered:“Lord Phaeton --“
“Julia?” he grabbed a chair and sat himself, suddenly exhausted.“Julia, did you find that unusual lion-cub?Remember, no harm, no harm is to come to him --“
“I understand -- one of my men located him at that hospital --“
“The one that traitor Caesar ran?”
“Yes, but we lost him.He entered the underworld through a service tunnel.”
The old lion sighed and almost let the phone fall to the floor.
“But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, sir.We have another problem.”
His eyes opened and he sat back very casually.“What sort of, problem?”
“We’ve received --“
The muffled sound of an explosion ravaged the world at the other end of the receiver --
“What was that?Julia?” he shouted, not completely shocked, not entirely surprised.
“Let me say,” she coughed and took a minute to catch her breath -- she was running -- “we can confirm that several hundred, perhaps thousand throwbacks have revolted.”
“It must be that Caesar!” he said, smiling, “Crush them, send the full-front of the Amazonian guard after them.”
“Over and out,” she hung up at her end.
Phaeton returned the phone to its cradle, looking at it, moving it around with his finger.“So the workers have rebelled, hmmm,” he said aloud.“Mwahahahaha!Hahahaha!”He stood and stumbled back into his secret antechamber to laugh at the sword, oblivious, for his office was so dark, that the explosion he had heard second hand had knocked off power to a large section of the local area.“I don’t need you anymore!” he mocked its six inch length, its unconscious eye.
But he was not the only one watching, laughing.The ancient mummy spread his arms wide, loose bandages dangled from his thin arms.Looming above him, the four, guardian statues crawled forward, their eyes ablaze as long-denied power coursed through their engraved forms.
Continued...
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