Rialta hazarded a glance back at the man. His eyes were glazed over and bloodshot. “You. Don’t. You don’t—” He heaved and coughed. “You don’t do this kind of prayer. This kind of spell. Do you understand me? It’s wrong. It’s—it’s wrong! It’s blasphemy! We don’t tolerate it in this house!”
Rialta nodded, her lips trembling.
The man stood upright and turned to walk out of the room. He took a couple stumbling steps toward the door, and Rialta was relieved to see that he was leaving. But just then, he turned hard on his heel and lashed out, striking her with a hard slap across the face. Rialta recoiled and fell hard to the ground. Tears welled up in her eyes as the vision faded away.
There was another bout of swirling, infinite darkness, and once again she seemed to be falling through an infinite vortex. And then the world resolved around her once again. She was in the same shabby, broken-down bedroom. She was sitting on the edge of the bed and staring down at the ancient script of a massive, leather-bound tome. Remmy’s tome. She must have been older than before. Her frame was much longer and lankier than before.
Just as she went to turn one of the tome’s fragile pages, the same burly man from the previous vision came crashing through the door. She immediately swept the tome off the bed and under the sheets. The man looked far worse than before. His face was splotchy and pale. The rage in his eyes was wilder and more unhinged than before. He was holding a large, corked vial of murky, brown liquid.
“What are you doing, Liam?” Rialta asked in Remmy’s voice. Her eyes darted between the vial and the crazed man.
But Liam did not answer. He ran forward and clamped a massive hand around Rialta’s face. She struggled and tried to scream, but Liam covered her mouth. Liam bit off the cork from the vial he held, then pressed it into Rialta’s mouth and tilted it back, forcing her to drink the unknown potion. Rialta attempted to struggle as she tried to escape, but Liam held her in place, forcing her to drink. When the vial was empty, Liam stood and smashed the empty vial against the brick wall.
“I told you to cut the shit, Remmy,” he said, panting. “But you just didn’t listen. So now it’s done. All of it. I hope you’re proud of what you made me do.”
Rialta’s vision faded to darkness once more.
She returned to the present with a violent, tremulous gasp. The snowy hillside, the beach, and the dreary green sky came crashing into view, and she was there once more, still held captive along with John and Remmy.
“Oh my god, Remmy,” Rialta said. “I’m so sorry…”
She wanted to apologize to him for every moment she had ever criticized him. She wanted to tell him that she understood his difficulty casting spells, and that none of it was his fault. It would have been pointless, though. Remmy did not acknowledge her. He looked away as best he could, but Rialta could see that he was shuddering. A dull, gray cloud formed around him, then drifted toward H’s scroll, which imbibed the strange energy.
“You next, I think,” H said, his hand drifting out in Rialta’s direction.
Rialta’s eyes shot open wide, and her mind raced through all her worst memories. A bully at school throwing her up against the lockers. The time she had almost drowned when learning how to swim. The death of her pet dog, Fluffles. Before she could decide which memory was the worst, the dark, endless void returned.
Rialta, no more than a little girl, bounded around the living room as her mother sank into a beaten old recliner in the far corner of the room. Rialta laughed and shrieked and danced and snatched up toys from a collection that seemed to be evenly scattered throughout the entirety of the room. Her mother watched her with a feeble smile and drank a tall glass of iced tea. After some time, Rialta came to a stop next to a small shelf nearest the entrance to the kitchen. The shelf contained all of her favorite story books, each of their spines decorated in bright colors and vibrant designs. There was one in particular that she chose to reach for. It had green binding and a very frayed spine. Although she had not been able to read the words at the time, there was a picture of a chubby little beetle smiling on the cover. Rialta stood on her tip toes, plucked the book from its shelf, and held it up in the air.
“Cuddle bugs!” the little Rialta shouted, running toward her mother.
Her mother smiled as she approached. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Rialta noticed something peculiar about this memory. As a child, she would never have noticed the tired, broken-down look on her mother’s face. Her smile was entirely genuine, but not without a haggard edge. It would have been evident to any parent that her smile was taking a herculean effort, but little Rialta remained entirely oblivious.
“Again?” her mother asked with a little laugh, a disguised dread curbing her bright voice. “Aren’t you getting a little old for this one?”
“Cubbugs! Cubbugs!” Rialta persisted, smiling and jumping up and down.
“All right, all right,” her mother said. “Come here.”
As Rialta approached, her mother scooped her up and sat Rialta on her lap. She took the book and opened it to its first page.
“The ten little cuddle bugs of Blueacre Farms were as happy as could be. Every night, they would cuddle up together and sing themselves to sleep. One rainy night, though, one of the bugs went missing!”
This was, in fact, the 357th time that Rialta had heard the story, but she gazed at the pictures on the page like it was the first time she had seen them. The vision faded out, then back in as her mother read the final page:
“…and so, reunited, the cuddle bugs of Blueacre Farms were just as happy as they had ever been. They all grouped together for a cuddly, wuddly night of peaceful sleep. The end.” Rialta’s eyelids must have been growing heavy, as the vision slowly faded into nothingness.
Rialta woke up in her bed, not remembering when her mother had put her there. She pulled off her covers and slipped out of bed. She pushed her bedroom door open and walked into the hall of the cottage.
“Mama?” Rialta called out.
The house remained silent and still.
“Mamaaaaa?” Rialta called out again as she walked into the kitchen. But it was empty.
Rialta backtracked and ran back down the hall. She pushed her way through the doorway to her mother’s room. The bed was still made from the day before, and the room was completely empty.
“Mama?” Rialta shouted again panic creeping into her voice now.
A loud knock at the front door startled Rialta. But then she smiled, ran to the front door, and whipped it open.
“Ma—” But she stopped as she looked up at the towering figure of a uniformed man with a big, bushy beard. He held a wrapped parcel in his arms.
Rialta screamed and leapt backward into the house. She continued to scream as she frantically waved her hands in front of her, causing faint little bursts of flames to pop into existence before dissolving into nothingness.
“Whoa! Whoa! Take it easy, kid!” the man shouted. He crouched down and gently set his parcel on the ground. “Listen, I’m not here to hurt you. I won’t even come in the house, okay? I’m just here to deliver some food for your mother,” he said, opening the parcel to reveal carrots, onions, mushrooms, celery, and other vegetables. “Usually she’s the one who answers the door. Is she around?”
Rialta lowered her arms. “I—I don’t know,” she said.
“You don’t know?” the delivery man asked, concerned. “What’s going on here? Are you okay?”
Something about the man’s deep, gentle voice was reassuring, so Rialta took a step forward. “I am okay, but I do not know where my mama is.”
“She’s not in the house?”
“I … I just woke up this morning and I could not find her.”
At this, the delivery man frowned. “Have you checked the whole house?” he asked.
Rialta nodded.
“Okay then,” the delivery man said, standing up and scratching his beard in thought. “Do you know any of your neighbors?”
“I know the
Sandersons,” Rialta said with a nod.
“Does your mother trust the Sandersons?” the delivery man asked.
Rialta nodded again. “Sometimes they watch me while mama goes on trips out of town.”
“Perfect,” the deliveryman said, looking relieved. “Why don’t you head over to the Sandersons for now? I think I need to have a talk with the police.”
“Is my mama okay?” Rialta asked.
“I’m sure she’s fine!” the delivery man responded a bit too enthusiastically. “I bet she just went out for a walk last night, and maybe she got a little lost. But we’ll ask the police to check on her just to make sure, okay?”
“Okay,” Rialta said with a feeble smile. She ran out the door straight past the delivery man, turned onto the narrow cobblestone path, and ran toward the Sandersons’ cottage at the end of the lane.
The vision faded away. Rialta blinked, and she was back on Tyntala, pinned to the ground beside Remmy and John. Silent tears streamed down her face as a blue fog enveloped her, then flowed out toward the scroll in H’s arms.
“And that just leaves you, John,” H said. Rialta watched H reach his hand out over John. To her surprise, he remained stoic—impossible to read.
Before she knew what was happening, Rialta found herself standing in the bedroom of what must have been a magnificent mansion. A very high ceiling loomed far above her head. There were portraits hung along all four walls, and a down-stuffed mattress sat atop a fine oak bedframe in the middle of the room. For one wild moment, she thought she was back in the viceroy’s manor house—but just then, she caught a glimpse out the window. The sky was not green, but blue, and from what she could see, she was back on Ro.
“John, dear?” a voice called from beyond a closed door in the corner of the room.
“What, Mom?” Rialta called back, annoyed.
“Our guests will be here soon, dear! Are you ready? Your brother is already in the dining room downstairs!”
Rialta let out an angry grunt and approached a mirror above a dresser in the corner of the room. She stood in front of it to find the reflection of a much younger John staring back at her. He was dressed in a black suit and a wrinkly white shirt. A poorly tied necktie hung from his collar. Inwardly, Rialta thought that although this younger John was nowhere near as broad, muscular, and tall as the modern-day version, he was still absurdly large for his age, which could not have been more than twelve judging by his youthful face.
“I’m ready, Mom,” Rialta called back to her bedroom door.
“Okay, dear, well—”
There was a shriek of pain, and then a great weight slammed against John’s closed bedroom door.
“…Mom?” Rialta called out.
There was silence at the door. Rialta frowned as she crept toward it. “Mom?” she repeated. She came to a halt beside her bedroom door, then, after another moment’s hesitation, she flung open the door. She poked her head out into the hall, and everything went black.
Rialta found herself in the midst of a great, deep sleep. Yet no matter how much she willed herself to succumb to that sleep, a rhythmic, nagging humming kept creeping into the edges of her consciousness. Perhaps it was her older brother, barging into her room once more to annoy her before she was ready to wake up for the day.
“Shut up, Ralph,” Rialta muttered.
But Ralph did not stop. He kept making a very strange sound, something between a hum and a burp.
“Gross,” Rialta said. “Come on, Ralph, cut it out.”
She reached an arm out to slap him away, but her hand connected with something slimy and wet.
She was brought to her senses immediately. A horrible pain erupted in the back of her head as she sat upright, and she suddenly realized she was not in her bed but facedown in what felt like muddy grass. She blinked into the low light of the night as she tried to observe her surroundings. The noise she had been hearing was not Ralph—it was the sound of dozens of frogs croaking out into the night air. She looked down at the ground and found she was sitting in the middle of a dense bog, and she blinked several times as she tried to regain her composure. But when she sat up and looked about, she was barely able to see in the faint light of the moon. She picked several frogs off her chest, arms, and legs and set them down beside her.
“Where is this?” she muttered.
And almost as soon as she asked the question, she saw the outline of Ralph lying in the grass only about ten feet away. She crawled over to him and placed a hand on his cold shoulder to roll him over.
“Hey, Ralph, what are you…”
Ralph’s eyes were wide open and milky white. His dead face was stretched into an expression of terror, his arms thrown up as if to defend himself from an unseen attacker.
Rialta screamed. It was a deep, guttural scream of agony and horror. The scream echoed into the night, and the vision faded to darkness, then resolved into the dull, cloudy green sky on Tyntala. A purple cloud formed around John before drifting into H’s scroll.
“I’m sorry I had to do that,” H said.
“Spare us,” Rialta spat. “Tell me—I have to know before I die. If that’s what the scroll did to us, then what are your plans for the emerald?”
“Well, there’s good news on that front. The emerald was already imbued with the power I require when you found it,” H said. He turned and held the emerald up so that it sparkled in the morning light. “Yes, precisely… precisely…” H muttered with a smile, and he seemed to be truly happy for the first time since Rialta, Remmy, and John had encountered him. He walked away toward the dock, where the massive ship awaited him.
“Now is the time to make peace,” H said over his shoulder. “It won’t be long now.”
Chapter 29
H’s Farewell
This was it. There was no escaping. There was no fighting it. Rialta knew, without question, that they were all dead. John had been right, in a way. H was just a man. It was just unfortunate that he happened to be a man whose extraordinary skill, talent, and power dwarfed their own. A man with a lifetime of fighting experience and magical study that they, a bunch of kids, could not possibly overcome. With these bleak thoughts, something strange happened. Immobilized, lying on the ground beside a similarly bound John and Remmy, Rialta felt a tremendous sense of calm. She felt no more fear. No more worry. H had promised a peaceful death, and she believed him. After all, he had no reason to lie to them or manipulate them any longer. He’d achieved his goal, and now they were irrelevant to him.
Soon she would be dead, and she would have nothing to be concerned about anymore. She was going to discover that mysterious place souls vanished to when their bodies ceased to breathe any longer. She would be reunited with her mother. A spark of bittersweet longing ignited within her. Perhaps she would even see Nivin again. She could tell him all about what had happened since they had left the temple. She could tell him about how sorry she was that she had not been on her guard when he was killed. She smiled at the thought. She did not sob, but tears began to flow freely down her cheeks.
The feeling of the warm tears pooling underneath her kept her rooted to the present. She turned her head to look around, for that was all she could manage to do anymore while under the influence of H’s spell. She looked up to the sky, through which an endless cascade of thick, gray clouds flowed by. She turned to look to the plains below the hills. The wind died down, and the flurries of snow became slower, more subdued.
Rialta rolled her head to the other side and she happened to catch Remmy’s gaze. He was shuddering with fear, looking at Rialta with a contorted mixture of desperation and surprise.
“Remmy?” she whispered.
“Rialta,” Remmy started, and then he began to cry in earnest. “I’m scared.”
Something about this vulnerable confession sparked an inexplicable unease within Rialta—she might have accepted her own death, but it was sheer hell to watch Remmy cower in the face of his own. She couldn’t take it. She wouldn’t let him die a
lone and afraid. With a force of will that took every last ounce of energy she could muster, she began to inch her way over to Remmy. Fighting H’s spell was agony, but Rialta didn’t care.
With a final heaving grunt, Rialta managed to rest her head beside Remmy’s arm. She managed to inch her arm up toward his own, but it was no use. Her hand stopped mere inches away from his.
“It’s okay, Remmy,” Rialta said softly.
No sooner had she said it than a massive hand slammed down on the earth between her and Remmy. “It’s been good knowing you two,” John said, holding their hands in his own.
“Yeah,” Rialta said, smiling.
They hadn’t managed anything akin to a comforting embrace—not even close. But the simple act of physical contact between the three of them seemed to change everything. Remmy became quieter, his breath more even and relaxed. He let out a few shuddering sighs as Rialta lay at his side. She forced herself to turn her head to John, who was staring straight up into the sky, his eyes completely dry and half-shut. If it weren’t for the circumstances, Rialta would have assumed he was bored.
“D-d-d-dearest gods above us, please hear our prayers,” Remmy whispered.
Rialta turned back to Remmy and offered him a pitying smile. It was, after all, heartbreaking that even at a time like this, he would resort to one final prayer. In a bizarre moment of nostalgia, she recalled the first blessing she’d seen him perform—that ridiculous, sarcastic proclamation to the gods he had made from the hilltop as she and John fought for their lives. It was funny that back then, when she had a chance at survival, she’d found herself in the most frantic panic she had ever felt in her life. Yet now that death was inevitable, she felt nothing of the sort.
But just then, Rialta’s eyes opened wide as a sudden thought occurred to her, and an uncomfortable, icy sensation having nothing to do with the weather blasted through her veins. Gregor’s voice echoed from the depths of her consciousness:
His powers are just as developed as your own…
You need to take him seriously…
A Quest for Chumps (Departed Dimensions Book 1) Page 27