The Rise of Greg

by Chris Rylander

  His soft-spoken argument was received with a decent smattering of applause from the crowd.

  “Okay, I get that, but the world can be better than that!” I shouted. “I mean, we can all choose—”

  “No, it can’t!” someone else interrupted. “I think we’ve bloody well proven that we are all pretty fallible. Nobody can be perfect, and by proxy, the world can’t be either.”

  “For the love of Odrick’s Beard, I’m trying to have a big hero moment here!” I cried out. “Please stop interrupting me!”

  But it was too late; the crowd was getting antsy and restless, and several arguments were already breaking out among the soldiers.

  Then suddenly Edwin was beside me.

  I figured he was there to put me out of my misery. Perhaps a swift beheading would have done nicely. But instead he slammed the tip of the Sword of Anduril into the ground. The magical spark and concussion that followed silenced the rowdy crowd immediately.

  “May I remind you all,” he boomed in his naturally authoritative voice, “that Greg saved all of your lives here today. He is a hero. And we owe it to him to hear what he has to say!”

  And then I had the massive crowd’s full attention once again.

  “Thank you,” I whispered to Edwin.

  “I can’t do that again, buddy,” he whispered back. “So you better change your game plan and make this good.”

  I cleared my throat and tried once more.

  “Okay, you’re right,” I said to the crowd. “Destroying all weapons everywhere isn’t going to happen. But I want to at least believe it is actually possible. And I know you all do, too. If we stop believing our best intentions are achievable, then we may as well stop trying completely. Which is why I just threw my ax into the lava. The most powerful Dwarven weapon ever created. And I don’t regret it, even now. As that person down in front just said: We are all fallible. Which means no one person, no single weapon, no entity, should ever have that much power. Weapons that can destroy the whole world probably shouldn’t exist.

  “I won’t ask you to destroy your own weapons, but I will ask you this: Why must armaments always be our first recourse when things don’t go our way? Or when we feel like we’re being cheated? I mean, even if you are being cheated, fighting is never the best way to solve it. That’s what we’re faced with now. How will we react to adversity going forward, knowing that bloody battles like this one can be a possible outcome?

  “My answer to that question was to destroy a weapon too powerful for its own good. What will yours be?”

  I had the crowd’s full attention now. Nobody interrupted. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.

  “This our chance to start anew,” I continued. “Right now we can all start making little choices every day to help the world be a better place. And if we can collectively make more kind and empathetic decisions than selfish and fearful ones, I do think that the world can get better. That we can be better.”

  Everyone stood in silence, staring at me and one another uneasily, clutching their weapons to their breastplates, not quite ready to give up on fear entirely. But at least we weren’t bashing and maiming one another anymore.

  “Greg’s right,” Edwin said suddenly. “No single person, no single governing body, nobody deserves this much power. Weapons as powerful as this shouldn’t exist.”

  Edwin turned and held up the Sword of Anduril.

  The blade ignited with magical fire again, glowing more brilliantly than ever, almost as if begging him not to do what he was about to do. Almost as if it were speaking to him, trying to remind him that many horrors still remained in this world. And maybe it even was speaking to him the same way the Bloodletter spoke to me?

  And Edwin hesitated then, the blazing purple flames on his sword reflecting little fires in his eyes. I thought for a moment that he was going to change his mind. That he couldn’t actually go through with it. That the safety the sword provided outweighed the idea that nobody should have this much power.

  But I knew him better than that. This was still the same kind, funny, generous kid who had been my best friend for the past three years. The same kid who loved lame puns and playing chess.

  That kid would always try to do the right thing.

  Edwin sighed, then turned and threw the sword out into the lava lake.

  The crowd gasped as the flaming blade spun through the air. It somehow sounded fearful, shocked, and hopeful all at once.

  The Sword of Anduril landed in the thick molten lava with a searing hiss of steam.

  Then it was gone.

  Of course I wish I could have found a way to end all wars forever, like in the other ending. But unfortunately, nothing, not even magic, will ever stop people from making bad decisions, from doing bad things. From unfortunate circumstances leading to unfortunate events, and so on and so forth.

  You simply can’t force everyone to be good all the time.

  Which means this war is far from over.

  But at least Edwin and I spared us all the worst possible outcome this time around. By destroying the two most powerful weapons in existence, we’d at least assured we would not find a way to destroy the whole planet just yet. And we had, for a moment, actually united Elves and Dwarves—something that had seemed totally unfathomable to many Elves and Dwarves for thousands of generations—to defeat a common enemy, the Verumque Genus. And we did it together, as real friends. Like we even joked about way back when I first discovered the true nature of my past.

  And so my dad’s vision turned out to be more complicated than simply: We all lived in peace and harmony forever and ever.

  But that doesn’t mean any of us are giving up. Just the opposite. If anything, this battle has made all of us—Elves, Dwarves, Humans, monsters of all kinds—realize just how much of a difference we can actually make. Maybe not always on our own, but especially when united with our friends, family, allies, and sometimes even our enemies.

  We’ve now experienced firsthand that when people and creatures, no matter who or what they are, truly work together for a common goal, good and sometimes great things can be achieved.

  Things can get better.

  And so that’s what we’re going to keep trying to do going forward. One day, one problem, at a time.

  I know. I know. This is all really cheesy.

  But why should that make us uncomfortable?

  Isn’t that what we should all want?

  Of course, finding a more peaceful existence is going to be a very slow process. The future will continue to be messy, complicated, violent, trying, challenging, and all those other words nobody likes in their lives. But as long as Edwin and I, and Elves, Dwarves, Humans, Werewolves, Orcs, etc., etc., keep doing our best to work together, I am confident* that we will, at the very least, make the world a better place to live during our lifetime.

  And that was my dad’s true vision.

  Even though he’s gone now, and even though I will die (not at the hands of some Troll, but no doubt from something ironically random like a freak lightning strike, or choking on a chicken wing), before seeing his full vision come to fruition, I will at least die satisfied, knowing me and my friends did the best we could for the world.

  There’s still more work ahead, of course. There will be other threats. But at least now I take comfort in knowing that whatever we may face in the future, me and my friends—and a hopefully united alliance of Elves and Dwarves and whoever else wants to join us—will be ready to handle them.

  Together.

  Because peace will always have its enemies.

  And this new magical world really is just beginning.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  * * *

  I’d like to thank all the people who played a role in bringing this series to life. All the copy editors, editors, agents, publicists, designers, illustrators, everyone at Temple Hill and Put
nam, and more. If I missed your name specifically, please forgive me: Pete Harris, Stephanie Pitts, Jennifer Besser, Katherine Perkins, Kate Meltzer, Steve Malk, Brian Miller, Alli Dyer, Cecilia de la Campa, Wyck Godfrey.

  Last, thanks to my epic beard for giving me all my powers.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chris Rylander is the author of The Legend of Greg, The Curse of Greg, the Fourth Stall saga, and the Codename Conspiracy series, and he's also the co-author of the third book in the New York Times bestselling House of Secrets series, Clash of the Worlds. A fan of berry jams, hornless unicorns, and invisible squirrels, he lives in Chicago.

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  * You know, the one where he would break into a dazed state and spout off nonsensical Kernels of Truth for up to ten minutes at a time.

  * Aside from one unfortunate mishap during which I almost incinerated Finnegan the parrot, i.e., the captain’s left hand.

  * None of the old texts really addressed whether Rocnar meat was edible, but our food supplies were desperately low, and so it was a chance we’d have to take. Besides, it was part of the old Dwarven code that if you killed a living creature, you had to find a way to use its remains in a practical manner. No death should ever be wasteful and senseless.

  * In case you forgot, an Elven poison called Shawara Marar Yarda had resulted in my dad basically going insane, and the only cure, according to the Elven doctor who had brewed the poison, was yet another Separate Earth potion.

  * Or maybe even do one better. Put down this book and go get a music-playing device of your choice. Go on, I’ll wait. Now find that hero song that’s in your head, press play, and listen to the song for real while you finish this part of my story.

  * Which, in case you forgot, was to take away magic from everyone but him and his closest allies, so they could then essentially take over and “police” the world into peace.

  * Getting out had been much easier than getting in. A new doorway had appeared beneath the twin turtle heads, which then promptly sealed shut once again after we had all made it out.

  * Since we were now in an ancient, magical forest, teeming with talking blobs and bloodthirsty Giant Squirrels, I couldn’t be sure of what anything actually was anymore, including the trees and bushes.

  * Sailing Vessel Row Boat Powerham

  * Before you get all up in arms, let me assure you these Bugganes were being well paid for their service. Bugganes are hulking creatures with powerful upper bodies and an extreme loathing for idle laziness—there’s truly nothing they prefer more than productive manual labor.

  * Eagan had to stay behind. His new position on the Dwarven Council kept him too busy to embark on any more missions with us, no matter how important.

  * Some consideration was given to including Humans, but it was decided that they would likely cause more harm than good, being so poorly prepared to deal with foes like Orcs and Dragons, and with the majority of their weapons now dead and useless.

  * Though technically Dwarves don’t believe in grave sites. Traditional Dwarven death rituals included scattering ashes in nature, or simply letting lost loved ones decompose back into the earth right where they fell, so we could once again become one with the elements.

  * Because remember: Dwarves don’t lie, not even to their psychopathic magical axes.

  * One of her dagger Lightbringer’s inherent magical traits, along with being able to expand and contract several inches as needed.

  * Apparently also known as the Plain Tongue back in Separate Earth

  * It has been said that Dwarves have only two states of fullness or hunger: 1. Starving or 2. Quite Hungry.

  * Lady Vegas was her ax’s name. Despite my repeated attempts to find out, she never revealed the origins or the meaning of the name.

  * Ha-ha! A Dwarf confident and optimistic, imagine that!

  * I should mention here that the day and a half of hiking to get there had not been uneventful or easy. In fact, we’d had to battle past a Hulking Gragglebrax and several swarms of Lacridous Whettle Wasps. But those are stories for another time, perhaps.

  * Mainly just to give him something to do so he wouldn’t follow us and distract us constantly with inane stories.

  * Though in reality the decision to save her life almost cost the life of my other friend Eagan. But I’d do it the same way all over again if I had to.

  * Well, kinda sorta maybe...

  * And, of course, it was magic! It was, after all, the secret entrance to an enchanted forest.

  * No, seriously, if Dwarven bones were as weak as Human bones, I’d have been jangling like a sack of M&M’s.

  * Because we did still have a mission, a very dire mission upon which rested the fate of, if not the whole world, then at the very least the lives of a great many people.

  * Yes, I’m fully aware of how insane that sounds.