Call of Kerberos: Twilight of Kerberos, The - Jonathan Oliver Page 0,67

shadow on the face of Kerberos. Something made Silus feel that he was further away from home than he had ever been.

Then he had it. He had fallen not through space, but time.

As Silus wondered why the creature that called itself the Great Ocean had dragged him into the past, there was movement at the edge of his vision and the dark moon drifted towards him. This time, however, it paid him no heed. Instead, it came to rest before Kerberos, hanging in the void.

As Silus began to wonder what great revelation it was that he had been sent here to witness ripples passed through the surface of the moon. The black orb convulsed and a great rock erupted from its surface to go spinning towards Twilight.

Silus was dragged into its wake, following it as it sped towards his world.

After the endless silence of space the booming concussion that the rock made as it entered Twilight's atmosphere was deafening. Fire erupted from fissures in the stone and gas vented from cracks to surround Silus in billowing steam.

The clouds broke and Silus saw that they were hurtling towards the sea, the water coming up to meet them at a sickening speed.

He braced for impact but the scene changed suddenly, and he found himself beneath the waves rather than falling towards them.

Silus was standing before a beautiful citadel, much like the one he had explored with the crew of the Llothriall. But whereas that city had been broken by war and time, this one shone in its perfection. Great towers reached from the seabed - linked by arches that looked like they had been formed from polished quartz - while domes of glass nestled amongst forests of seaweed, the green fronds alive with the play of brilliantly coloured fish. Shafts of sunlight filtered down through the surface, moving slowly over the scene, picking out the smooth green stone of the buildings one moment and shining from the glass domes in dazzling coruscations the next.

As Silus looked more closely he could see tiny lights darting through the city like fireflies and when a shaft of light moved to rest on one of them for a moment he saw that they were attached to strange creatures.

They were humanoid in appearance, though thin silvery tails propelled them quickly through the water and small globes of light hung from either side of their jaws, looking much like the lures of anglerfish. Their heads were larger than an average human's, with great dark eyes staring from above a circular mouth lined with hundreds of needle-like teeth. At the ends of their hands were not fingers but fronds, not unlike those of a sea anemone.

These are the Calma, the voice of the Great Ocean said. A simplistic and mongrel race.

The creatures moved through the city with a balletic grace that was a joy to watch. As Silus saw two of their young race each other to the surface, he realised where he had seen such incredible beings before. His vision in the broken citadel. He had seen himself killing the Calma. He had revelled in their deaths while standing knee-deep in their fallen.

There was a commotion above the city then and Silus saw a host of Calma rushing away from the surface, as though fleeing from something there.

Panic overtook the city as a great shadow fell upon it.

Silus wasn't sure what had happened but he was suddenly surrounded by a thick cloud of debris. Dark shapes moved past him in the murk, and he could just make out chunks of broken rock and the tangled masses of shredded corpses tumbling through the clouds.

Then as rapidly as the cloud had rolled over him it was gone, and Silus now found himself looking at the ruins of a shattered city.

The scene before him blurred, light strobing erratically across it, as though the sun was racing through the sky far above.

Eventually the light stabilised and Silus could see survivors crawling through the ruins.

At the centre of the broken citadel sat the great black rock that he had followed into Twilight's skies. Dark tendrils were reaching out from the burnt and pitted stone, and where they touched the Calma survivors a horrible and violent change wracked their bodies.

The sheen of their scintillant scales darkened to a pitch black, while the fronds of their hands retracted and stiffened, razor sharp claws bursting from the flesh of their newly forming fingers. The process looked agonisingly painful and the screams of the creatures confirmed the