He had a massive, muscular chest. Where the two thick straps crossed in front of his giant pectorals, there were two small crossed bones. His dark violet hood was pulled loosely over his head, which looked exactly like a yellowed human skull. And where his eyes should be, two pitch-black holes stared back at me.
“Foolish weakling!” The yellow skull shouted in a shrill voice. “Do you really think you can defeat a Grand Magus?”
He raised his staff, which I could now see was topped by a ram’s skull, and the stone embedded in its forehead glowed a piercing red.
“Prepare to feel the wrath of Craniax!”
37
CRANIAX’S YELLOW SKULL grinned at me as he raised his ram-headed staff. The blood-red stone on top of the ram’s head glowed brighter as a high-pitched noise began to grow. I quickly summoned my rod-sword to life and held it in front of me as a steady bolt of bright red energy shot out of the stone toward me.
At the last instant, my sword deflected the bolt into a bank of panels on the wall. The stream of energy cut through several meters of equipment, and when the stream finally stopped, it blew a hole through the wall.
That was new.
I ducked behind a nearby row of control panels as another bright red stream of energy sliced through the floor and then blew a hole completely through the thick metal grating.
I reached toward a large piece of the broken floor and, summoning the power of my purple stone, I sent it flying toward Craniax. He pointed his staff at the incoming chunk of metal and shot a bolt of energy through it, slicing it down the middle so that each half sailed harmlessly past him and clattered to the floor.
“Fool!” Craniax shouted in his shrill voice. “You have no idea how to use a philosopher’s stone!”
I then reached toward the two split pieces of metal flooring and, with my orange stone, pulled them back toward me, but fixed Craniax’s position as the focal point for their return. The metal slammed into his back and sent him staggering forward with a nasally scream.
I jumped up and extended my Power Glove toward a nearby seat. As I pushed it away from the floor, its base tore away with a screech and I threw it at Craniax, who was scrambling to his feet. He raised his staff, but instead of shooting it with a blast of energy, he simply knocked it out of the air with a powerful swing. Then he pointed his staff toward me and fired.
Before I could raise my rod-sword, the stream of scarlet energy screamed past my head and grazed my shoulder. A searing pain shot through my neck and arm and continued to burn long after the blast had stopped. I rolled to the side, ducking behind the closest bank of control panels.
I was no match for that staff and its energy blasts. And it was probably only a matter of time before he shot me directly with one of those. Maybe Craniax was right. Maybe I wasn’t a match for a Grand Magus, whatever that was. Maybe I was going to die here, in this very room.
I looked down at my trembling hands. I was afraid heroes were never afraid. Colonel Hiller definitely wasn’t afraid. I looked at my glove and remembered when Hiller had given it to me. “Be . . . the hero . . .” he’d whispered to me before he died.
I sure didn’t feel like a hero. But maybe that was it—maybe it didn’t start with a feeling. What if it started by doing something heroic, in spite of how you felt? Could a heroic action make you a hero?
I straightened my back and held my chin high. Okay, so I needed a heroic action—the bigger, the better. There—I pointed at a couple of nearby seats, quickly pulled them up, and sent both of them flying in Craniax’s general direction to buy me a little time.
I looked down at my Power Glove and my eyes were drawn to the tiny wires that connected the clasps holding the two stones. What had Rand said? That this little contraption of his might allow me to use both stones at the same time? I’d never tried it before, and there was a chance it could blow me and the rest of the city into a million pieces, so yeah—I’d say that counted as a heroic action. So I closed my eyes and went into my imagination.
I was back in my long-tailed tuxedo standing in front of an orchestra, but this time I held two batons—one in each hand. With one, I directed the brass section to play the heroic musical theme, and with the other, I roused the rhythm section to go to down on the drums. I even brought in an electric guitar for good measure. It started out sounding like a train wreck, but when I began to wave the two batons in sync with each other, the music evened out and began to sound okay. No—it sounded good.
When I opened my eyes and looked at the control panels across from me, I noticed the small cylinder I’d accidentally knocked over earlier. With my focus on the small metal object, I summoned the heroic sounds of trumpets and trombones and used the purple crystal’s power to raise it into the air. Then, still focusing on the cylinder, I ramped up that melody until it reached the furious pounding beat of the orange stone, fusing them into a single, rich melody. I could feel the gems on my glove growing warmer and out of the corner of my eye saw small sparks coming from the wires that connected the two stones.
Suddenly, the cylinder began to pulse with light—slowly and dimly at first, then faster and brighter until I had to squint to see it. I peeked out from the panel I was hiding behind and saw that Craniax was holding a hand up to his eyes to protect his eyeless sockets from the cylinder’s light.
He fired bolt after bolt of red energy at the glowing object, but I would jerk it out of the way as soon as I saw where the bolt was aimed. Every burst of energy he fired grew shorter and dimmer.
He was running out of energy.
I was, too. Every second I kept the object glowing, I felt my energy draining faster than it ever had before. And with each pull or push of my glowing object to dodge Craniax’s blasts, I could feel my energy drain that much more.
With one final push, I shot my makeshift glowing projectile at Craniax. He fired a weak bolt of energy as soon as it began its forward flight, and when the two connected in mid-air, there was a huge explosion that shook the floor.
When I opened my eyes, I saw that the upper walls had been blown off the room. I staggered to my feet, still weak from using the stones against Craniax.
I looked ahead of me and saw a purple hand burst through the rubble. Another hand pushed through, and this one was holding a ram-headed staff, but mercifully, the stone was either dark or so dim it might as well have been dark. And then, inevitably, the rest of Craniax broke through the debris and slowly got to his feet.
We stood there, facing each other for a long moment, our chests heaving. Craniax raised his staff at the same moment I raised my rod-sword, but nothing happened. We were both totally out of energy.
But I still had a sword.
So I willed myself to break into a run toward him with my sword raised. And he ran toward me, a devilish, lipless grin on his skull-like face, and lifted his staff.
Time slowed. I could feel each beat of my heart and every single muscle of my legs as they strained to carry me forward. And in this space of time, Hiller’s words echoed in my mind:
“When you’re true to who you are, the universe will bow down before you.”
I was Lucas Walker. I loved every single one of the fantasy stories my parents read to me. I adored every cartoon, every book, every vid, every game I’d consumed when I was young. And, in spite of everything I’d been through—all the bullying, the nights I’d spent crying myself to sleep, the fights with my parents, my mother’s coma—I still loved it. But more than that, I wanted fantasy to be my life, my reality.
Then I thought about the cartoon that reminded me so much of these Dominion leaders I’d been fighting. I remembered the hero of that show—He-Man. I realized now that I had known what it was called all along. And He-Man had had a magic sword and could summon incredible strength that made him the most powerful man in the universe. And that strength—that magic—was unleashed when he wielded his sword in the air and said. . .
“I HAVE THE POWER!”
The words came out of my
mouth the moment I thought them. There was a bright crackle of energy in the room as my rod-sword flared to life, more brightly than it ever had before. I brought the sword down, shattering Craniax’s staff. He moved to retaliate—but I was too fast. I was bursting with power. I plunged the glowing sword straight into his chest.
Under the dark purple hood, his yellow jaw moved wordlessly as I twisted out the sword and he sank to the ground.
Once again, the room shook. I looked down through the metal grating at one of the few patches of floor without rubble, and saw that the entire room was swaying. I needed to get out of here.
But what about Kovac?!
I quickly spun to face the door and started to scale an overturned control panel, when I heard the shifting of metal behind me. I turned and saw Craniax stretching his arm toward the glowing orb of swirling red that still lit the room. In his hand, he grasped the head of his staff, and with a raspy, high-pitched yell, he fired a thin bolt of energy into the orb.
The swirling shades of red moved faster and faster until they began to race around the surface of the orb in horizontal banded rings which moved up and down, crossing each other. When each of the rings finally met in the middle, the orb grew still.
Then there was an explosion of light. The walls of the building grew transparent for just a moment, and when I looked up, I thought I could see through Proserpina’s environmental dome, past Pluto’s moons, and then . . . was that Neptune? But the moment quickly passed, and I was back in the jolting, rattling control room at the top of a mining facility on Pluto.
I looked back down at Craniax, who was now speaking toward the flickering power stone embedded in the forehead of the decapitated ram-headed staff.
“I have successfully set the anchor point,” he said in a wet and wheezing voice. “Ready the next planetary oculus.”
Oculus? Did he mean another magic rainbow portal?
He dropped the staff’s ram head, looked up at me, and gave a halting, nasally laugh, “Ne . . . he . . . he . . . he—” and then collapsed.
As the room shook again, the ram’s head rolled down a sheet of metal and came to a stop near my feet. And on its forehead, the scarlet stone finally went dark.
38
THE RAM HEAD on Craniax’s staff stared up at me with its dead eyes, like it was daring me to take the dull ruby stone from its forehead. I began to hear the familiar sound of my smaller red stone’s chaotic music, but this time, there was a sort of stuttering rhythm to it that I hadn’t noticed before. I sheathed my rod-sword behind me and bent down.
When I reached out and touched the gem, I felt a strong tingling crawl up my arm, into my chest, and then extended to the rest of my body. At the same time I heard a deep, resonant note sound so loudly in my mind that I thought I’d go brain deaf. And then, just as quickly, the note faded. I had a feeling I was going to need to be extra careful with this stone, so I delicately sealed it inside a small zippered pocket near my waist, then stood up.
It took me a while to pick my way through the broken consoles and around the holes in the metal grating that opened out onto the vats of molten metal below, but after a minute or so, I was finally at the door.
It was still shut. This was a bit of a problem for me, since Hiller’s glove didn’t seem to work with the access panels in the building and I barely had enough strength to walk, let alone use the violet gem again to open the door. And there was no way I could open it myself—I was just too exhausted.
So I looked around and found a long, thin piece of metal I could use as a lever. Then I fished around in my pockets and found a small chunk of synthetic meat that had been stuck in a pocket corner and a half of a Venetian nut, both of which I swallowed without chewing. I was that hungry.
I could feel a little surge of energy building inside, so I quickly jammed the metal into the door frame, raised my Power Glove, and was just about to pry the door open when I heard a soft whimper coming from the wreckage behind me.
I didn’t have time for another damned robocat. So I gripped my thin metal lever and was about to pull it, when the whimper grew into a whine. Soon it was a howl.
There was no way I could focus on opening this door with such a loud, anguished noise right behind me. So I exhaled deeply, left the piece of metal sticking out of the doorway, turned around, and started digging through the debris for a giant killer cat.
It didn’t take me very long to find the howling mechanical creature—I just had to move a sheet of switches and push back a large monitor screen. There it was, with its head still trapped between the control panels where I’d trapped it just before fighting Craniax.
Its dark purple velvety skin had been sliced in several places, and a dark, oily liquid had stained patches of its surface even darker. When I touched one of these cuts, the cat howled even louder and struggled to pull its head out of the makeshift collar I’d created.
The building shook again, but I managed to stay on my feet—just barely. I didn’t know how much longer the top floor would still be the top floor before plunging down into the superheated vats of metal.
So now I had a dilemma on my hands. Should I abandon the dying animal and use what little energy I had to open the door and save myself? Or should I free the cat and risk being trapped with a deadly creature in a room that could fall into molten metal at any moment?
In the end, the pitiful howling got the best of me. I summoned the purple jewel’s brassy music, pulled the two terminals apart, and then scrambled behind a heap of electronic equipment. The mechanical cat pulled its deep purple head out and turned around. When it saw me, it snarled and started stalking toward me.
“Whoa there,” I said, holding up my gloved hand and reaching behind my back to grab my rod-sword.
“Nice kitty . . . ”
Suddenly, the purple velvet-covered cat laid down, crossed its front paws, and rested its head down on them. It looked up at me with its big yellow eyes, which didn’t look angry anymore. Instead, they somehow looked . . . kind.
Had I made it do that?
“Stand,” I said.
It leapt onto its hind feet. No—not “it.” This cat was a “her.” I wasn’t sure how I knew, but it felt right.
Now was the moment of truth. “Okay, girl,” I said. “Open the door.”
The cat got back down on all fours, crawled over the wreckage and stood before the door. I followed close behind with my sword in hand, just in case this was a trick. She batted away the piece of metal I’d left sticking out of the doorway, took a step backward, then leapt at the door with her strong front paws extended.
The door tore away from its track and flew outward. I ran through the opening and looked desperately between the moving waste containers for Kovac. I spotted him slumped against the nearest wall. He was holding a plasma rifle in one hand, which was resting on top of a dark grey metal heap, which I quickly realized was the lifeless body of the trooper with the sharp white helmet and glowing staff. In his other arm, Kovac was barely holding onto his light-less vibro-hammer.
The building shook again, and I heard the rafters above groan. I rushed over and struggled to help Kovac to his feet.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He grumbled. “Is anyone ever truly okay?”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said with a slight grin. “But I bet you’re starving.”
Kovac opened his mouth to reply, but stopped and looked past me, wide-eyed, and leveled his plasma rifle. I turned around and saw the mechanical cat stalking slowly toward us, ready to pounce.
“Wait!” I yelled, although I wasn’t sure which one I was talking to.
Kovac froze, as did the giant cat.
“Sit,” I said, this time to the cat.
She sat, and her velvet tail made a soft thump-thump-thump as it swished from side to side over the floor’s metal grating.
“So, you’re one with nature now?” Kovac asked.
I shook my head, then patted my pocket that was holding the sca
rlet stone I’d taken from the ram head. “I think it’s Craniax’s stone.”
Kovac lowered his rifle. “Good,” he said. “My hammer is slumbering soundly, and I have but a handful of slugs to my name.”
The building shook again, this time for half a minute. Kovac and I both crouched on the ground to keep our balance. When the shaking ended, a low groaning noise came from the facility’s control room. A high-pitched shrieking noise sounded from somewhere above the room, which was followed by a low clunk as the room’s walls separated from the ceiling. With another long groan, the room tilted downward, and with a loud snap, it separated itself from the rest of the floor and went tumbling downward. I heard a splash, and the open interior of the facility glowed a little more brightly for a few moments.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said.
I looked over to the track that had been taking waste containers back down to the ground floor, but something had happened with that last major tremor and all of the containers had stopped where they were along the track.
“All good things . . .” Kovac said as he looked at the broken track.
“There has to be another way,” I said. “Just give me a second.”
As I stood there trying to think, I kept getting distracted by the thump-thump-thumping coming from behind us.
I snapped my head backward. “Will you stop it with your tail already?”
The cat stopped and hung its large head in shame. That’s when an idea struck. An image came to my mind from the cartoon I’d been thinking about lately—a muscular, shirtless man with brown fuzzy briefs and matching fuzzy boots riding a giant green and orange-striped tiger. Yeah—it was a weird image, but why couldn’t we try it?
I turned to the cat and asked, “Can you carry us?”
She nodded her head slightly and got down on all fours.
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