The Games for Gaiathal (Part 3 of 'A Tale of People and Apples Trilogy')

Chapter 24: Daybreak

Lleyton Alva, her uncle, the Six who was supposed to be trapped at the bottom of the sea, the Six who killed her father, stepped out of the brush, with a dead man who he effortlessly lifted in his hand. He slowly walked his way to Eeva and Maeve, and with a casual throw, Warrax the Warrior's body slumped to the ground at their feet in a heap.

Eeva pieced it together in her perplexed and dazed mind.

The Dark was already at Orconia City, and had burned away the Gifted-made chains and anchors which bound Lleyton in the depths of the Southern Sea, freeing him.

With his knowledge of the Labyrinth, he would have been able to navigate within and to the Trees where he found himself now. Lleyton had crushed Warrax's throat as the man tried to escape his way to the Labyrinth, Lleyton finally exacting his revenge upon the General who committed genocide against his people.

But Eeva still had no clue what Maeve meant about doing it all for him, why Luka had to die for him.

Petrified, Eeva recoiled as Lleyton reached for her, but she calmed slightly as she realized it was an embrace. An embrace from her uncle, not an attack from her father's killer.

"Thank you. For sparing her," Lleyton whispered in her ear, bringing his estranged niece closer to his chest as tears of his own fell to her shoulder. His clothes were wet and tattered and salty from the prison Eeva had subjected him to. "I'm sorry what she has done. I'm sorry what I have done. I can assure you, it hurts me just as much. But if you killed her, we would have been lost."

Lleyton released her to walk his way to the Trees, and to fulfil Maeve's orders.

Eeva started sobbing as she finally pieced in the last piece of the puzzle, dropping to her knees in the orange glow and her face in her hands.

Lleyton, a golden apple eater, had lost everything.

His people, the Wolves.

His son, Markus.

And now his other son, Luka.

But he had something to live for. And more specifically, someone. The woman Eeva almost stabbed to death in revenge.

Lleyton's wife, and love, Yulia.

Yulia, who was a prisoner of Solan's from the start, part of his very earliest blackmail of Lleyton. The prisoner who watched Luka stab her biological son Markus to death at the bow of Solan's ship on the east coast upon the beach. The prisoner who Solan brought along, and just now stabbed Luka and finally exacted her revenge, with the exact same Golden Dagger Luka killed her son Markus with, because as Yulia said, actions have consequences.

The next hours were a deafening blur for Eeva.

She watched bewildered as the dark sky started to eerily blow, and branches from the very crowns of the golden burning Trees began to rain down, delicately, floating, despite the powers they would afford anyone who wielded them in moments, due to Lleyton's outstretched hands and the now satisfied prophecy.

The golden sharp shards of golden bark and branches stuck into the ground, Julien and Goddard picking them up in their arms and rapidly fastening handles to make swords and shields which Maeve started rapidly distributing for the exact moment.

In Eeva's daze, she watched her uncle Lleyton approach Luka who lay upon the forest floor. Through shaky breaths and tears, he kissed his adopted son's forehead and said words to Luka at his empty ear, under his breath and for them alone to share.

Calysa remained at his body, his hand in hers, not ready to let him go, even though he was gone.

As the black clouds above them started to enclose and tighten upon the last opening of the entire sky, Eeva turned, stunned, to the marching of thousands upon thousands of feet.