Chapter Six

Solomon and Moses

Humans are closest to the Creator but inclined toward destruction

Elisium

The Fifth Loop, Year 491, 1st January (5L/491/1/1)

"I'm Moses, not Solomon," Moses said through clenched teeth.

What's this Solomon, Solomon? First Joseph and now this man.

I'm tired of hearing this word.

Yeah, the Crossing sometimes makes people go nuts. You're surrounded by crazy people.

"Hello, I am George," The leader of the group said extending his hand towards Moses. "Welcome to Elisium. Your captors had certainly planned to send you directly to heaven, but quite miraculously you survived the journey."

Moses rolled his eyes. "But I'm still as confused as before."

"Son, you will have all the time in two worlds to get your answers, but right now we need to get moving. We don't want any of those looters to return and throw you all back into the river."

George looked at his men. "Brothers, each one of you will carry a person on his horse. We should reach the Refuge before sunrise. Son, you come with me."

Going with strangers. Is it a good idea?

They look friendly and what other options do I have in this hostile world?

What if they kill you? Or torture you? Haven't you heard stories about the man-eating savages of Tenebra?

Those stories are fiction, poorly written by some horrible author. I would rather take my chances with them than become a feast for the beasts.

All the other survivors were on horseback by the time Moses had finished his discussion with his echo. Just before dawn, they entered a beautiful valley surrounded by rugged mountains. A large lake adorned the center of this valley and thousands of cabins and huts were built around it in a disorganized manner. It looked as if people came to this place and built a shanty wherever they liked. Moses looked at this huge, chaotic, jumbled mess. After having spent all his life in the intricately designed opulent capital of Aden, Moses couldn't even have imagined a place like this. From every aspect, this settlement was the exact opposite of Aurae.

Their caravan stopped in front of a shabby building. "Friends, I thought I must first bring you all to this place. There is a chance that here you might find someone you know," Geroge announced to the survivors.

Some old men were seated around a dining table inside the hall. Joseph went near a person, with freckled skin, greying hair, and wearing a worn-out suit and an ancient-looking hat. Joseph had last seen this man four decades ago, when he was just three years old, but had seen his photos wearing this same suit and hat. "Father," Joseph said in a quivering voice.

The old man looked at Joseph from top to bottom. "Joseph!!" He cried and embraced his son in a tight hug. "Well, I had lost all hopes of seeing you. I thought you might be amongst those consumed by the Drowning in the last few decades."

"Yet he never gives up and wears this suit at every Crossing," George added with a smile.

"Father, how did you recognize me?" Joseph asked Jacob. "I was a toddler when you were banished."

"Yes, but you have turned out to be a copy of me in my younger days. And dumb-head you are my only son, who else is going to call me Father?"

George's eyes were moist seeing this father-son reunion. "Your father's Banishment was the last instance in which Aden's soldiers did pull the prisoners out of the river."

"What did they do after saving them?" Moses asked.

Jacob answered his query. "Well, they took us deep into the jungles and set us free, to get lost in the wilderness. No one had ever made out of that forest alive until these lovely people of Elisium started rescuing the prisoners and bringing them here."

"We realized that all these banished people are like us, innocents oppressed by the tyrants. Besides that, bringing these people here had a few other benefits." George's cheeks turned pink when he said that.

Why is he blushing?

Yes, what's wrong with him? Overall he looks like a reasonable man.

All people in Tenebra are psychotic killers. Don't get fooled by these niceties.

You shouldn't have read all those gruesome comics about Tenebra.

Jacob chuckled. "Don't look at him like that. Well, he fell in love with my cousin Cynthia, the first woman ever to be banished. Cynthia made pulp of a few soldiers who had come to abduct her brother and the regime decided to banish her instead. George has a penchant for rebellious people so he instantly fell in love with this free-spirited girl. They are the first, and so far the only, cross-world couple."

George audibly cleared his throat. "I was not talking about that benefit. I meant by bringing in these survivors we get some useful information about Aden. Some of them like Jacob and Nathan have been a great help. But it seems that the end of this loop is getting on the nerves of these despots. Drowning innocent people?? They are desperate to avoid the Transition."

"What's a Transition?" Moses asked, inadvertently touching the amulet under his shirt. Jacob gave him a long stare before explaining the Theory of Transition to him in detail. He mentioned the amulet again and again, sometimes quite unnecessarily, during his explanation.

"But what's the exact role of this amulet in this whole saga?" Moses asked the question Jacob wanted him to ask.

While hiding from the regime, Jacob had worked in the archives of Aden and had studied a lot about the Transtion. "Well, as per the legends, this Transition is triggered by the person who possesses the Amulet of Transition and is a direct descendant of Adam the First, the great king who forged that amulet. Only someone from his lineage, our lineage, can unleash the powers of that amulet."

Joseph clapped his hand. "Wow! I never knew our family had such a great history."

"Yes, and that is also the reason why they are hunting down every one of us. Furthermore, all the Transitioners are born on the first Day of Darkness, exactly three decades before the turn of the loop."

"My daughter Jennifer was born on that exact date," George interrupted Jacob. "The first Day of Adversity two decades ago."

"Yes, I know," Jacob said through pursed lips. He never liked it when someone interrupted his flow. "I was there at her twentieth birthday party yesterday. By the way, the cake was too good for Elisium."

"Cynthia baked the cake, some secret Solomon recipe she says," George said with a hint of pride in his voice. It was quite clear, he was madly in love with his wife. "Jacob, Jennifer is also a descendant of Solomon, from her mother's side of course. Could she be the one?"

Jacob shook his head. "No, because there have been no female Transitioners, and all these Transitioners were born in the other world. They leaped on the day they became adults to kickstart the chain of events for the Transition. If these legends are true, the next Transitioner should now be the age of this young man," Jacob said pointing towards Moses.

Everyone in the room stared at Moses. Moses didn't know what to say. He just kept snapping his fingers.

"Son, will you stop doing that?" George said rubbing his forehead. "My daughter does that as well and I feel like someone is hammering my brain."

Jacob turned his attention to his son. "Well, tell me how did you escape the Drowning? Surviving that death trap is a miracle in itself."

Joseph cast an apologetic glance towards Moses and told everyone about what he saw during the Drowning. First the jets of fire and then Moses kicking the gate down. Now all eyes were firmly on Moses.

"Let me show you something," George said, holding Moses's hand and taking him to a small room adjoining the dining hall. "Do you know why I called you Solomon? My most famous ancestor Geoffrey, besides being the Commander of the Elisian army, was a skilled painter. King Isaac asked him to make a portrait of Solomon, a gift for the prince on his twentieth birthday. But King Isaac got murdered, Solomon mysteriously disappeared and the portrait just passed down the generations in our family."

George opened the gate of his office and pointed to the wall behind his working desk. "Now see this for yourself."

A life-size portrait hung on the wall. Moses's mouth fell wide open as he looked at himself dressed in lavish royal robes. The painting was a masterclass and it captured every little detail.

Broad shoulders, muscular build, firm jaw, green eyes, and a handsome face. Damn, just like you he even has a mole on his left chin.

This person doesn't look like me, he is me. Exactly the same. Inch by inch and hair by hair.

He may have your face but you don't have his grace. He's total royalty, from top to bottom. You're just a cheap copy.

Shut up and let me concentrate.

Moses's head started to spin. He held onto a table for support. "I'm no Solomon. I wasn't even able to save myself from getting banished and you expect me to do what Solomon did?"

"Well, that amulet in your neck will give you the power to do that."

Moses removed the amulet and put it down on a table. "Take this and do whatever you want with it. I don't want any of this. I just want to return to my world, my home, see my mother."

Jacob put a hand around Moses's shoulder. "All of us want the same. To regain our lost paradise but some looters are blocking our way."

An eerie silence hung in the room. Jacob and George had waited for this moment for their entire lives, whereas Moses didn't know whether this was a path chosen by destiny or a trap laid by fate.

Moses went to the small window in the office to breathe some fresh air. This building, built on a slope, gave a good view of the shambolic mess called the Refuge. "George, you keep saying that Aden and Elisium are identical, but your world's nothing like mine. This very place, The Refuge, there's no such messed settlement in Aden."

George joined Moses near the window. "Son, doesn't the word refuge ring a bell? There is no Refuge in Aden because there are no refugees. This place is the last sanctuary for the people who have been driven away from their homes. Nature may create identical twins but what if one sister attacks another and slashes her face."

"So Refuge is not nature's plan, rather a scar?"

"Yes. A painful scar on humanity's face. Nature planned to let the two worlds develop alternately, loop after loop, one by one, but humans, as always messed up its design. Now every decade thousands of soldiers from Aden come to Elisium and wreak havoc. This world was supposed to remain stagnant but stable, however, it is deteriorating at a very fast pace."

"Oh Wow," Moses said with a smirk. "You mean to say humans have messed up the grand scheme of things, overwritten nature's plan?"

George sighed. "Son, humans are closest to the Creator but inclined towards destruction, so never underestimate their capacity to self-destruct. Aden's ruthless exploitation has thrown this magnificent system of the gradual evolution of two worlds into chaos. The Dance of Two Sisters has turned into a swordfight — where Aden is using guns and soon there will be a backlash."

Jacob gestured to the houses outside the window. "Well, here not just the houses are worn down, even the people are in tatters. Their farms, homes, and self-esteem have been snatched away from them, along with any hope of a respectable life. You know how it feels when your kids cry out of hunger and you can't feed them, day after day. Since those gluttonous demons took over the reins of the brighter Aden, Elisium's gloom has increased manifolds. And now they want to stop these cycles of Transition, once and for all."

"But why are they against this Transition?" Moses's fingers were snapping again.

"Well, they want to keep Aden on top and rule it forever. If Transition doesn't happen at the turn of this loop, this Dance will stop forever. These looters will drain all the hope and happiness out of Elisium and truly turn into Tenebra, the dark world. There will be no way back. It will be pushed into the shadows for eternity."

George dropped to his knees in front of Moses. "Son, I know the odds are heavily against you, but you have prayers of millions of oppressed men women, and children with you. I don't know if all of us will survive to see the dawn of freedom, but you have to lead Elisians toward a new light. You will surely succeed because success is the only path when a failure is no longer an option."

George brought Moses out of the office into the dining hall. He held Moses's right hand and raised it. "Let us hail Moses, Moses the Savior."

Everyone in the room dropped to their knees and chanted in a single voice. "Moses the Savior."

Moses was crowned the Savior inside a small room.But with that coronation, the burden of saving two worlds fell on hisshoulders.