Eos Rising: The Third Book of Regenesis Read online

  Eos Rising

  Across a Savage Sea

  The Third Book of Regenesis

  D. Scott Dickinson

  Eos Rising, Across a Savage Sea and The Book of Regenesis

  Copyright © 2021 by D. Scott Dickinson.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover by SelfPubBookCovers.com/RLSather.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1. Land of the Cone-Mountains

  Chapter 2. The Seven Sisters

  Chapter 3. The Seven Deadly Perils

  Chapter 4. Shadow-Runner

  Chapter 5. Tsunami

  Chapter 6. Out of the Abyss

  Chapter 7. Night-Stalker

  Chapter 8. Typhoon

  Chapter 9. The Quest

  Chapter 10. The Maze-Herder

  Chapter 11. A Changed World

  Chapter 12. Sea-Wolves

  Chapter 13. Separated

  Chapter 14. Land’s End

  Chapter 15. The Riverine Delta

  Chapter 16. The Sleeping Death

  Chapter 17. The Seekers

  Chapter 18. Men in the Mist

  Chapter 19. The Stronger Sex

  Chapter 20. Earthquake!

  Chapter 21. Regenesis

  Prologue

  Exhausted by their persistent struggle fending off the sucking whirlpools, the seven sisters sleep soundly this first night on the open ocean. The easy motion of a calm sea rocks them gently in their wicker cradle as it propels them ever farther from the island of cone-mountains.

  They do not suspect the horrific scene that will greet them when they awaken.

  Mei-o-Peia is first to rise. She silently parts the wicker next to her starboard berth to view the reassuring presence of the homeland they are leaving.

  She is met by the first rays of a single sun, rising alone. The absence of its twin is an unpleasant omen. Fraught with foreboding. A portent of evil in the air.

  The cold light reveals no cone-mountains!

  Only columns of steam billowing skyward in a series of tephra jets. Now too distant to hear distinctly. Like serpents’ breath, their hissing explosions rise from the violent clash of angrily escaping lava with the waiting sea.

  The first daughter’s heart sinks as the distant columns rise from the sea. She does not know they are the funeral pyre of her island people. But she does fear in her heavy heart that the disappearance of the cone-mountains is a sign of the end-time her mother, the village shaman, warned would come.

  As she stares in horrid fascination, a great plume of pyroclastic cloud begins moving slowly in her direction, also off the starboard beam of the tiny craft. Great streaks of flame within the cloud create a pulsing glow.

  It is a lightning-limned inferno of toxic gas and ash, leaving only destruction and death of everything in its wake.

  But the eeriest aspect of the throbbing lightning is its utter silence. No sound of thunder betrays its menacing approach.

  Suddenly, the wicker craft is pelted with a hail of volcanic spherules—small orbs of glass formed from the ash particulate by the superheated lightning. But the tightly-knit fibers in the roof of the craft repel the raining spherules and muffle their impacts to a barely audible thrum.

  As quickly as it began, the volcanic thunderstorm ceases, and the towering plume of ash begins to dissipate into wispy tendrils of black and gray as it draws back away from the craft.

  Leaping to her feet, Mei-o-Peia races to the port side . . . then fore . . . and finally aft. Where she sees . . .

  Nothing!

  Only empty ocean marching in swells away from the rising sun.

  Waking her sisters, she gathers them starboard to view the shocking spectacle of towering columns of white cloud rising from the ocean floor off in the distance. Still wondering what it means.

  All she can be certain of is that their cone-mountain island is gone!

  She does not know the cataclysm struck in the night.

  She does not know the cone-mountains all imploded as one, suddenly and completely.

  She does not know the island she called home is a vast, magma-filled caldera whose walls even now are collapsing into the sea.

  And she does not know she and her sisters are all that remain of their island civilization.

  Seven souls adrift on an unknown sea.

  Seven orphans who can go home no more.

  Chapter 1. Land of the Cone-Mountains

  While they slept, death visited the village.

  It came in quaking, rending gashes from the pit below.

  It came in steady, streaming torrents from the hills above.

  It was death in all its hellish personas.

  The shaman was first to confront its many faces.

  Alone in the twilight on the shore of the placid lagoon. Searching for her daughters. Finding no one there. Feeling her heart race from the panic building within her.

  As she emerged from the forest path, she espied a single, serpentine file of footprints snaking its way across the soft, serrated sand. She followed it to the mouth of the nearby river, where she discovered skid-tracks climbing down from its bank.

  She looked out on the lagoon. Nothing marred its smooth surface.

  The shaman read the signs and knew:

  Her rebellious daughters had fled!

  Abandoning their village.

  Abandoning their mother.

  As a wave of disappointment and loss washed over her, the shaman became aware something else was different. Something disturbing the serenity of the lagoon.

  Sensing danger. Troubled by what she saw.

  It began as a ripple on the smooth surface of the lagoon. The water became agitated. The ground trembled.

  Gazing at the solitary sun on the far horizon, she knew.

  Knew the third daughter of the red-yellow-violet Mother of All Being was rising.

  Knew she would break her earthly bonds and join her twin sisters in the sky.

  Knew the island world would perish.

  Knew the end-time was here.

  Then the island did shake. Throwing the shaman to the ground and toppling tall trees.

  Then the earth did part. Opening a yawning gulf between her and the village.

  Then the water did rise. Welling up into a single wide wave crashing ashore and engulfing open beach and dense forest alike.

  Then the mountains did weep. Shedding long tears of fire that gathered mass and force as they swept down to flood the village in flame.

  Trapped between competing forces, the shaman leaped over the widening vent and sprinted along the forest path leading back to the village. Becoming more unsteady as the quaking ground became more unstable, she fell repeatedly. Slowing her progress along the well-worn path.

  When she reached the clearing in front of the village, she froze in horror at the scene that greeted her.

  Every structure in the village was afire. And so was every villager. Some running frantically like torches tossed through the air. Others lying still, the fading embers of their former selves.

  Recoiling in horror, the shaman was struck by a blast of heat. Forcing her back into the forest. Igniting the trees and brush at the edge of the clearing.

  Looking up beyond the destruction of the village, the shaman witnessed the cone-mountains melting beneath streams of fire cascading down their slopes.

  They were the last images she would ever behold.

  Calling in a croaking, heat-parched voice, she cried out:

  “Flee, my daughters! Flee fast and far!”

  They were the last words she would ever utter.

  Turning her thoughts inward, the shaman marveled at fulfillment o
f the prophecy. Acknowledging the prophesied return of the missing fire-laden daughter to the great red-yellow-violet Mother of All Being. While grieving the loss of her own.

  They were the last thoughts she would ever have.

  Like the forest around her, the shaman burst into flame and was herself engulfed in a fountain of fire erupting from the volcanic vent opening beneath her feet. Swallowing and consuming the pulsating embers of all she had been in life.

  The vent raced across the island, joining up with other vents before it. Until the retreating earth could hold itself together no longer. And the entire landscape imploded.

  Gone are the cone-mountains.

  Gone is the shoreline of sand.

  Gone are the forest and the village.

  Gone are all the singular life-forms spawned in its leeward isolation.

  The emerald eminence of the island of cone-mountains, with its towering verdant cone-mountains, is no more.

  In its place is a hideous, open sore.

  Suppurating flaming fluid from its pores.

  Befouling the vanishing lagoon.

  Reaching out to the reef whose creatures it seeks to destroy.

  Cauterizing all aquatic life within its grasp.

  The hellish caldera will continue to pour out its hot spite and deadly malice until a healing ocean washes it clean.

  The death and destruction are hidden from view. Masked by a growing column of toxic gas and ash that blossoms into mushroom when it reaches the upper atmosphere. Forming a cicatrix of death over the angry wound in the ocean below.

  The sisters gaze wistfully at the curtain of rising cloud as the ocean currents draw them slowly away.

  It is the only feature on the flat, wide, empty sea.

  The fleecy white columns drop lower and lower as the craft moves steadily away from them. A mere speck on the far horizon, they gradually melt into the dimness of dusk.

  Gripped by the enormity of their loss, the sisters gaze dolefully at the retreating image that was their home. Seized by gentle ocean currents, their craft drifts aimlessly. Bearing its vagabond crew ever farther from that home.

  For them, it is a time of reflection.

  And Mei-o-Peia digs deep within the stirrings of her racial memory to recall the legacy of the life they are leaving.

  Flashing back to her earliest memory, she recaptures the exuberance of her first independent venture along the well-worn path leading from her village to the mysterious lagoon.

  As a small child, she experienced the wonder and mysticism of the impossibly high cone-mountains frowning down on her village and the smooth, sparkling surface of the sun-filled lagoon beckoning her to its magical clarity and colorful fauna. Those were the carefree, delightful days of early childhood, and she relishes them still.

  These fond memories only increase the poignancy of the loss of innocence that followed. Adolescence changed everything.

  That is when she learned of the darkness brooding over her village. Of the superstitions imprisoning her people. Of the monstrous rituals holding them in thrall.

  And that is when she fully grasped the unbridgeable gulf separating herself and her sisters from the males of the village. A divide that reached beyond their striking differences in appearance. Rendering the males a nearly distinct species.

  Her personal understanding was informed by observation and instinct, while her outward professions were shaped by the demands of her mother, the village shaman. But her beliefs remained her own. Secret and unspoken.

  For they betrayed her people’s traditions and her mother’s faith.

  Her people worshiped the cone-mountains, awed by the latent power chronicled in the tales handed down, generation-to-generation, from the ancients who vouchsafed their creation.

  The legends were compelling. Rooted in a cosmology validated daily by the physical evidence of the world around them.

  In the beginning, their watery world literally dropped from the black sky. From the womb of the great red-yellow-violet Mother of All Being.

  No light shone, as their new world was born in the darkness of eternal night.

  While the world was covered by deep ocean, a single patch of dry land emerged. It was a bare sand barren, swept constantly by the harsh winds and lashed relentlessly by the angry waves of an unrestrained sea.

  In the heavens above, the Mother of All Being gave birth to three fire-laden maidens. Bringing forth light to reflect the majesty of her red-violet-yellow magnificence.

  But her vanity had a price.

  The very fire that bestowed the Mother’s radiance stoked an infernal torch within the daughters’ souls. A fiery temperament led to three quarrelsome daughters. All jealous of one another. Each lusting to secure the Mother’s favor.

  Radiating their spite and wrath, the three suns glared down upon the barren sand turning it into a blaze of fiery heat.

  No life dwelt on the hellish land.

  Then came the celestial strife that would free the island from the lifeless existence it had endured.

  The three suns quarreled over which would be first among them to help the Mother of All Being rule the heavens. And in the war that followed, two suns conspired and cast the third down out of the firmament to the scorched earth below.

  Fearing their malice, the third daughter went into the earth, was swallowed by sand and hid in darkness.

  Not satisfied, the other daughters deflected their heat away from the island to warm its waters. To lure the small sea-creatures they sought. To set them building a great-reef wall around the island.

  Thus did they imprison their fallen sister. Barring her escape from the darkness beneath the earth.

  And thus did life begin on and around her island dungeon.

  But the third sun became restless. Agitated by the watchful presence of the two suns looming in the sky overhead. She resolved to keep her own watch on her sisters and, to that purpose, created towering cones reaching into the heavens.

  But the more she watched, the more grief-stricken she became over her banishment from the celestial realm. So grievously sad that, when she could bear her shame no further, the buried sun wept flaming tears that flowed from the cones of her eyes.

  The weeping stopped once she accepted her fate, and the cone-mountains have stood their silent vigil of the heavens ever since.

  Giving life a chance.

  As the island became lush and filled with life, strange creatures reached its shore and made it their home.

  Unlike the native fauna, the invaders walked upright on two limbs alone. And unlike the native fauna, they employed the branches of trees and rocks from the ground for many potent and practical ends.

  The alien invaders were the product of a deliberate evolution, nature’s concertmaster on this planet.

  Endlessly seeking equilibrium within every species.

  Constantly striving for harmony among them.

  That is why the perpetuation of life on the planet is as ordered as the movements of a symphony. The offspring of every intelligent species, from the furry bipeds that fled their remote polar home to the erect creatures that made theirs on this isolated island, are regulated both in number and frequency so that perfect equilibrium is maintained.

  So that every population remains constant. Equal to its needs. No more, no less.

  So that every population leaves a finite footprint on the natural world. No more, no less.

  Consonant with the needs of other species. No more, no less.

  Every generation.

  To the end of time.

  That is the destiny of life on the planet. Not on the island of cone-mountains.

  The coda of life on this island already is written and, like a clash of cymbals, now has reached its spectacular finale!

  It is human nature, in the aftermath of life-changing events, to dispel the darker shadows of the past and recall the fondest memories of times gone by.

  So it is with the seven souls adrift on an empty sea as they mourn the
loss of their island home.

  But life there had been harsh. Bearing witness to human sacrifice, bestial assault and loss of innocence. All in the name of the banished third daughter of the Mother of All Being. Like her, the seven sisters were trapped in bonds of superstition that were as brutish as they were dehumanizing.

  A bondage whose island roots stretched back into deep time.

  Chapter 2. The Seven Sisters

  The males of the island’s newest species were hairless creatures with plain faces, small black eyes, broad, heavily muscled shoulders and a body of smooth skin tinted copper by the rays of two suns. While they exhibited great physical prowess and strength, they were slow and dull-witted in movement and thought.

  The females were altogether different in appearance and temperament. So different they seemed a distinct species.

  Like the males, they had the same smooth, copper skin. And like the males, they wore neither adornment nor concealment of any kind. Clothed only in the richly pigmented skin the two suns provided.

  Unlike the males, they sported long, smooth muscles on lithe, graceful limbs. And instead of slow movement and even slower wit, they fairly bristled with high energy, firm purpose and keen intelligence.

  But the females' most distinctive feature was their oval face: large luminous-green eyes, perfectly symmetrical brows, long curling lashes, a pert nose, full pouty lips and delicately sculpted ears. All crowned by a mane of flowing tresses of fine cascading raven-black hair that caught the light of two suns and reflected it back in every prismatic hue.

  The traits distinguishing males from females had been passed down from generation to generation without variation. Every male was the image of every male before him. Every female identical to every female before her.

  Like other life-forms in the most remote habitats of this planet, the species in this secluded, protected place were evolutionary isolates. Developing along unique lines of their own. Unaffected by the world beyond the great reef.

  The very blueprint of life here had a singularity shared only by the creatures of other isolated ecosystems. In these special places, sheltered from the world at large, the phylogeny of life was not driven by dominant and recessive gene patterns, with their predictive distribution of traits.