The last pendant clicked into place like the last piece of a perfectly cut puzzle. The surface of the metal rippled and symbols that hadn't been there before became visible. And then the key started slowly rotating in the pedestal.

The earth rumbled as a barely noticeable tremor passed through the shrine.

"What is happening, boy?" Varlon demanded to know.

Kress felt sick. Not in pain, but experiencing an entirely different, nauseating feeling. Similar to the first time he had come here and thought he was hallucinating, but on a completely another level. He wanted to pull his hands back from the pedestal, but forced himself to stay still, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. "Water...I see water."

"That can't be right. Focus harder." Varlon's communicator beeped and he picked up the call. "This better be important."

"Sir, some sort of antenna rose from the water and a light is pointing out to the sea."

"It's above the ocean," he notified his captives. Probably far as no ship had ever spotted it.

"No..." Kress swallowed. "It's not above the ocean."

"What are you saying, boy?" Varlon asked.

The earth was trembling. Kress wasn't sure if it was real or a part of the vision. "It's...under the ocean." His eyes snapped open and he forced his hands away from the pedestal. "Please order your soldiers to evacuate the shore!"

"What for?"

"It's rising from the ocean. Movement of a land mass that size will cause a tidal wave!"

Varlon wasn't completely convinced Kress wasn't making that up, but better safe than sorry. "Did you hear that?" he asked through the communicator.

"Yes, sir!"

"Then proceed. Get everyone as far from the shore as you can." Then he asked Rolan, "Will this place flood?"

"I doubt it. The entrance is quite far inland. But..." He moved slowly so that the soldiers wouldn't get any ideas to shoot him and pressed a small switch next to the door. The door slid closed. "The shrine can be sealed completely. I'm more worried about the town."

"My soldiers will do whatever they can." He did consider these people disposable, but letting them die for no reason was simply stupid. The kingdom would still need workers - especially the farmers and fishermen to feed the population -, even with the access to all the technology in Tavali.

Everything was completely quiet, unnervingly so. Finally Varlon's communicator beeped again. "Go ahead."

"Sir, the boy was correct. It looks like the worst is over now."

"Give me damage report."

"No human casualties we know of. The wavebreaker near the shore seems to have lessened the effects, but quite a few ships were wrecked and there's debris all over the harbor and nearby streets. What it did to the surrounding farmlands we don't know yet."

"Leave a minimal crew and a scout party's worth of soldiers to the airship and dispatch the rest to help with the repairs. Also, send a few people along the coast to see if any other harbor towns were affected." He closed the connection and returned his attention to his unwilling companions. "Shall we go then, kids?"

~*~*~

While they had been gone, Tamaris had been hoisted to the airship and given some first aid for her injury. The burns were still bad enough to require hospital care, but she could barely feel the pain with the drugs she had received.

Mrei hesitated what to do when Varlon ushered Kress and Lucas towards another door at gunpoint, but in the end she couldn't leave Tamaris. They'd be fine. They had to be.

"I'm so sorry for everything," she whispered to her nurse. "None of this would have happened if I hadn't run away."

"It's not your fault...Varlon told me to help those boys escape. Even if you had stayed in the palace, I would have been involved."

Mrei didn't know what to say to that.

"Princess...if I am to die today, I want you to know my sins. All the despicable things I did that hurt you in the end."

Mrei shook her head. "Please don't say that. Just hold on. We'll be there soon. You'll be okay."

"Please...just listen." Tamaris drew a sharp intake of breath as the weak attempt to reach for the girl made her chest again pulsate with irregular, numb pain. "There has ever only been one child in the royal family for each generation. That prevents succession wars."

"I understand that." Or at least she thought she did. It made sense that if there was only one prince or princess, there would be no fighting who would become the next king or queen.

"Ensuring this is a long-honored duty of my family," Tamaris continued. "But...your mother figured out something was out of ordinary when she could not conceive another child. She wouldn't believe any excuses, no matter how many doctors backed the story up. I was her confidante, and she told me that she suspected someone in the court was working against her and her husband in the matter. She was even gathering proof." Although she hadn't figured out yet that it had been Tamaris who added drugs to prevent pregnancy into her food.

She weakly stroked Mrei's cheek. "I was only trying to protect you all. But I had to kill her before she told the king."

Mrei took a moment to digest the words. "You...killed my mommy?"

Tamaris nodded.

"How could you?!"

"I'm truly sorry, Mrei. I will regret it until the day I die. But...I had to. I couldn't let her risk a civil war for her selfish desire to have more than one child. It would have destroyed everything the Dawn King built."

"I don't understand it."

"Mrei..."

"No, I don't want to understand it!" Why was the adults' world so difficult? Why couldn't everybody just be happy? Why were people constantly hurting each other over conflicting beliefs?

"I'm sorry." Was there anything else to say? Mrei must have hated her now. Her precious little baby would never forgive her. But somehow...she still felt relieved to finally get it out of her chest.

~*~*~

Meanwhile, the boys and chancellor Varlon waited in another room. Kress and Lucas sat side-by-side on the bed, with Varlon in a chair on the opposite side of the room. His solar gun rested on his lap, near enough that he could easily shoot either of them should they try anything.

Kress kept staring at Varlon with such intense hatred that it was enough to make Lucas even more uncomfortable than the threat of death hanging over their heads.

"Do you know him from somewhere?" he whispered to Kress.

"He's the reason I was locked in that cell," the other boy replied.

"Why?"

"I don't know. I just saw him frequently and he was always in charge."

"Would you like to hear a story, boys?" Varlon asked conversationally. "It may still be a while before we reach our destination."

"Not really," Kress stated flatly.

"How about you...Lucas, was it?"

Lucas had to admit he was a tiny bit curious. "...What kind of story?"

"Hmm-m, that would be about a royal bastard and blood of the six clans. Interested?"

Despite the irate look Kress gave him, Lucas eventually nodded. "Yeah."

"Did your mother ever tell you the legend that the messenger would appear once the clans were ready to become what they once were?"

"My father did."

"You see, they were once one people. A great civil war tore their nation apart - that's why they ended up stranded on earth. In order to reclaim their homeland they would first need to become one people again."

"And you know this...how?" Kress asked skeptically.

"The Dawn King wanted to erase all connections to the sky people, down to trying to ban the worship of the Sky spirits completely, but he did see that one day his descendants might need to know where they really came from. About two decades ago a hidden vault was found underground near Delavia. It contained - in addition to blueprints for some of the technology we use every day and some still unknown to us - a historic record that also explained the entire backstory to heathen prophecies and myths."

"So the messenger is someone with the blood of all six clans?" Kress was catching on quickly. He had known it couldn't have been some divine intervention. Fate or whatever.

"That's correct."

"How is it possible I'm one? I'm not a heathen and neither were my parents. As far as I know they had no connections to Skyfall tribe at all."

"One: they were not your real parents. You're the product of a one-time encounter between the king and some young lass he fancied." He waited a moment as he was met with stunned silence. "That's the blood of one clan. Two: the rest were slowly integrated into your genetic makeup with samples taken from heathens with suitable genes. Gene manipulation technology is actually a lot more advanced than the public is allowed to know yet. Experimenting on humans being unethical and all that."

"Unfortunately, you ended up flawed. I had already given up on you when Lucas here stumbled upon you with his pendant and showed that you might actually be up to the task after all - if only you lived long enough."

"If you knew the pendants were the key, why did you let Romi keep hers?"

"I didn't know what the key was until that moment." He had known the king had held a similar piece of metal as family heirloom, but hadn't been able to connect the dots at that time. "I suppose I figured that if I succeeded in creating a messenger, he or she would find the pieces. And you did."

This didn't add up. "Kress, did you tell someone about what happened back then?" Lucas asked. The keys were not something Skyfall tribe told about to outsiders.

Varlon chuckled. "He didn't need to. That cell had video surveillance all along. I intentionally dropped the key for the princess to pick up and let you escape. Tamaris was supposed to make sure you two get out of the city, but she messed up in letting her highness join you."

"Oh, do you want to know how I found you? It's really simple actually. Your trio stands out a lot - all my spies would have needed to do was to ask around. And there's also a tracker chip under your skin that allows pinpointing your location once a tracker device is taken within a few miles from it. The only real hindrance was that soldiers loyal to the king were also searching for the princess and got on my way a few times."

"I don't really care how you found us," Lucas stated. "I want to know what you did to my mother. And why did you take my sister too if it was mother you wanted?"

"I wanted to isolate the factor that gives 'special powers' to some heathens. You see, my clan was engineers - they made marvelous technology, but had no inborn abilities. It's possible that anyone from each clan would have worked for creating a messenger, but can you blame me for wanting just a little better results than average?"

"The Sky spirits choose who they give their blessing to. You can't just...isolate it."

"On the contrary, boy. It's a collection of genetic traits and I think I succeeded quite well in transferring them to Kress. As for your sister, she was a hostage to make your mother cooperate. As well as my back-up plan in case she'd die too soon." He smiled at Lucas in a very unsettling way. "If I had known about you, I would have made sure to capture also you. But unfortunately your parents had only registered one child and apparently someone hid you before my men came to your home."

Lucas shuddered. This man was really creepy.