The Undersea Kingdom

AXXIS BOOK 2

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Having discovered the first part of the key that will send the evil kingdom of Gondwana back down to the bottom of the sea, our six teenagers now have to find the other five parts.
Who has them and where, and in which time and space? The clues are in their medallions which they must decipher. The evil empress Cremelle is in pursuit to stop them. Why is she afraid of Axxiss, the Indian-American boy leading them?
Who is the mysterious black dog which protects and guides them? Who created the exact clones of the teenagers which are determined to kill them? Who has started the revolution against the empress in the undersea kingdom?
The six, growing closer to each other, have to survive the many dangers to find the secrets of this mysterious key.

ONE

Axxiss thought he had died.

One moment he was on the steps of Sir Isaac Newton’s house … the next he was whirled into a cloud. When Axxiss looked down, the earth was not in sight. He looked up—no sky. It was scary. He was suspended in space. Was he alive or dead? It was a peculiar feeling. He felt he had been here—wherever it was—before. The French thinker Jean-Paul Sartre had written that ‘to be dead is to be a prey for the living.’ Axxiss thought it was a very metaphysical statement. Sartre was talking about his own life and expected that when he was dead, his life would be analysed and dissected by the preying biographers waiting to pounce on his writings. Axxiss had read that in a paper at school and, now that he thought he could be dead, wondered who was preying on him. Prince Tsetse? Cremelle? They were his hunters. He looked around, expecting them to appear out of the mist.

To his relief, he saw his newfound friends across from him, also in this suspended animation. They were faint outlines, barely visible in the cloud that enveloped them and flowed through and over them. Axxiss felt they were floating in a dream, all in the same one too. They could move their arms and legs, turn their heads, yet not move from their positions. Time didn’t exist in their cloud. They remained afloat for seconds, minutes, hours. He couldn’t tell. He tried to talk but though he mouthed words, the others could not hear him. He could not even communicate telepathically with them though he did have that power. His thoughts didn’t move outside his mind and remained swirling in it. All was silent around them, not even the whisper of the breeze to stir the cloud or the rustle of their clothes. Axxiss believed they had grown deaf too. He wanted to wake from what seemed this dreamy sleep. Gelette too wasn’t in sight. He felt abandoned, locked in this cloudy prison with no means of escape.

Then the cloud evaporated and he was down to earth with the others, standing on the pavement in London. Gelette stood there, alert and scanning the surroundings.

‘Where were we?’ said Axxiss. He was the leader with the largest medallion around his neck.

‘Right here,’ Gelette said. ‘But in parallel time. I dematerialised you for your protection and moved you there.’

‘What’s that?’ Wan said, always the scientist.

‘You’re material, I de-materialised you,’ Gellete said, as if it explained everything. They waited for him to expand his answer. As always, he remained cryptic.