by Oxford, Rain
Thirty minutes later, Stacy, John, Drake, Kyle, Sen, and I were sitting at the table in the kitchen. Breakfast was eggs, bacon, and hash browns because I was too distracted for anything extravagant… which was odd, since I normally found cooking to be soothing.
“How is your brother doing?” Stacy asked.
“He’s well,” I lied.
“But you want to take Drake with you?”
“I can handle it, Mom,” Drake said, scowling.
John sighed. “Will it be dangerous?”
“Very, but don’t worry. You know me; I always have a plan. I will protect Drake.” It took another half an hour of convincing his parents, and although Drake whined about them smothering him, he never once tried to use his powers on them. Before we left, Stacy and John hugged and kissed their child goodbye like he was going on a trip.
I focused my mind on the field with the castle and mountains, took Sen and Drake’s hands, and let my magic take us there. Light filled the room and I felt Earth’s force fall away. The energy that greeted me when the light cleared was new; I had never been to this world before.
The gravity was very similar to Earth’s, as was the air. Assuming I had not traveled in time, the only worlds it could be was Mulo, Kahún, or Dayo. Since Mulo was a cold world, where the surface was nearly inhabitable, and Kahún was mostly water, it was my best guess that this was Dayo… which meant that the people here hated magic and magical creatures with an almost fanatical passion.
“Hide your magic unless you absolutely have no choice,” I told my friends. “We’re looking for a weapon. I have no idea which one.”
“What about the charm that Zeb gave you?” Drake asked.
I pulled the necklace out from the inside of my shirt and clinched my fingers around it. “Okay, I’m here. Show me what I need to know.” I really didn’t expect anything to happen, so when it immediately grew warm, I figured I made a dangerous mistake.
“The son of Dylan Yatunus asking for help… What a scandal.” Alice appeared in front of me. “If you can’t figure out how to do this on your own, maybe you should ask your father for help.”
“I am not just the sum of my parents, and even my dad needs information to solve his cases.” Drake and Sen both glanced around in confusion since they couldn’t see who I was talking to.
“That’s not how Avoli sees it. He thinks you’re just as powerful as Dad and irresponsible as Mom.”
“How do you know that?”
“Who are you talking to?” Sen asked.
“Because you know that. I’m just a hallucination, remember?” she asked, ignoring the dragon mage.
“Yeah, but I want to know why it’s you. You’re here to help me in Hail’s stead, but why am I seeing you and not him?”
“Who do you see?” Drake asked.
“Only you know the answer.”
“No, see, that’s the problem right there; Hail would just answer me because he knows me. Either you are here instead of Hail because you’re not just in my head, or because you are a clue I need to figure out. You said you’re here because of the demon charm.”
“I am in your head, but I’m not a hallucination. I am the Dragoa. The charm around your neck is using demon magic to communicate. Your mind chose Alice to interpret the information. Right now, we can help each other. You want to defeat the demons, while I want the balance to succeed.”
“But the demons obey the balance. How could you want balance and to defeat the demons?”
“First of all, the demons obey the balance when they’re outside the void. The demons who want to take over the universe are not doing so for the sake of the balance. Instead, they follow a creature even more powerful than the balance. The balance is what keeps the universe stable and separate from the void. The gods are a threat to the balance, but not as much as Dylan. Unfortunately, the demons do not want to stop at Dylan’s death.”
“Why is he a bigger threat than the gods?”
“You know why. You have all the answers; you just refuse to see them. You never discount clues; you label, categorize, and archive them. The weapons were hidden in an act of the balance because the god war was extremely detrimental. In order to find the weapons, you must prove that you can put the balance first.”
“How did Vretial get the sword?”
“Vretial completed one of the tests. He did it the hard way, however, because he didn’t have me. You are correct in deducing that this is Dayo. The item you seek is the dagger, which has a history most gruesome. You will find the task ahead of you equally immoral, but you must do it if you are to prove you are acting on behalf of the balance and are worthy of the weapon.”
“Why is the dagger’s history gruesome?”
“The god who created it used it to kill his children. Just inside the castle wall is a statue of a monster that once terrorized the population of Dayo. The creature was created by the fae to stop the Blood Cleansing, but it never spared the magical beings. Rilryn used the enchanted dagger to stop the creature by turning it into a statue.”
“So it is an actual monster, not just a statue of one?”
“Yes. The dagger is still in the back of the creature, so to retrieve it, you need only to pull it out.”
“What happens when I pull it out?”
“Does it matter?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“The statue turns back into the monster and kills off the remaining population. However, the regeneration will be slow, giving you plenty of time to escape with your friends.”
“I can’t subject these people to that just to get the dagger.”
“Without the dagger, the demons will win the war. This creature is impervious to magic, so what can you do against it?”
“I’ll come up with something,” I said. She vanished.
“What is happening?” Sen asked.
“I just had a conversation with the amulet. We need to find the dagger that is in the back of a statue inside the castle gates. When we pull the dagger out, the statue will come alive and start killing people.”
“We can’t let it kill people,” Drake said.
“What’s the plan?” Sen asked.
“I don’t know yet. Let’s go take a look at what we’re dealing with.” We headed for the castle. When we made it to the giant wooden gates set in the stone walls, I raised my hand and focused my energy.
“Wait!” Drake demanded. “You can’t just break in like that! They’ll think you mean to attack them.”
“We can’t just knock on the door!” Sen growled at him. The dragon was normally such a sweet, if not annoying kid.
“Why not?” I asked. “Then if they tell us we can’t come in, we’ll break in.” I looked around until I saw a large piece of log, but right before I summoned it with nominal energy, I remembered that magic was even more feared here than on Earth. “How do we knock on the door? Hail could like, lift a log and beat the door or something.”
Sen reached into his pocket for a gem. “I got it.”
“No magic,” I said. “We have to be clever to hide our magic here.”
“I say we just do what we have to and if they don’t like it, we’ll overpower them,” Sen said. The ten-year-old glared at the massive gate as if he could melt it. Of course, with the right stone he could.
“No. We can do this without disrespecting their culture,” Drake argued. “Right, Ron?”
“I don’t care about their culture. The people here slaughtered half their population because they were afraid of magic. They are no better than the dile as far as I’m concerned. I just don’t want them ganging up on us when we’re trying to fight the monster.”
“We can scale the wall,” Drake suggested.
“Yeah, because that is so much less suspicious than---” Sen started.
“Both of you shut up. I don’t need arguing and stress, I need… Oh. Okay, that could work.”
“What would?” Drake asked.
“That’s part two. We got to get in
and attain the dagger first. How do we get their attention without magic so we can get inside?”
“We could stand outside their door and be weird until they notice us,” Sen said, pointing up at the two view posts framing the gate.
In each post were two men who had clearly noticed us. The posts were high enough that it was difficult to make them out, not that their appearances mattered. One man held a small black box to his mouth. “Turn around, travelers,” he said. The mechanical box amplified his voice so that it could easily be heard.
“Does he mean travelers here or world---”
I held up my hand and Sen stopped. “We want to visit the castle,” I yelled in my gentlest voice.
“We do not let outsiders in.”
“Open the gate and let us in!” Drake demanded. They instantly obeyed.
“I knew there was a reason I brought you along,” I said quietly as the doors opened.
The white castle towered over the village of huts and tents as a crowd of people went about their business. Most of the women wore colorful, if not ragged dresses while the men wore more drab clothes. Children worked beside their parents as they sold materials, transported water, or cleaned. There were no cobblestone or paved streets; merely dirt paths that made everything seem filthy. Strangely, there were several medium-sized, white cats meandering around.
It wasn’t a large enough community to warrant splitting up. We blindly made our way through the dusty, densely populated streets for about half an hour until the crowd thinned out. Hidden behind the castle was a statue of a monster horrendous enough that both Sen and Drake winced.
“We have to wake that thing up?” Drake asked.
The creature was enormous to the point where the castle itself barely hid the statue from someone viewing the front side. In fact, its claws were as long as I was tall. “Son of a biscuit,” I said.
“That’s similar to what I was gonna say,” Drake agreed. “Are you in my nightmare or am I in yours?”
Its face was more a mass of tentacles than anything with red eyes that glowed even in stone. Hell, it seemed as if it was glaring down at us. The creature’s body was shaped like a giant, muscular person’s except for the massive wings on its back stretched out in an attack position and wicked claws on the end of its hands and feet.
“Do we really need the dagger?” Sen asked. “Because I’m going to need bigger stones.”
“This thing is invulnerable to magic. Once we remove the dagger, hiding our magic won’t be necessary. If my brother was here, he could use his bow, or if my uncle was here, he could use the azurath blade. We have no weapons and our magic won’t work on it.”
“Then what do we have?”
“The balance. I can open a tear into the void.”
“That doesn’t sound safe,” Drake asked.
“The void is the space outside the universe and it destroys all life and magic besides the void energy. If the tear becomes out of control, something could get out or the actual structure of the universe could begin unraveling. Also, I’ve never opened the void before.”
Both of my friends stared at me like I was nuts. “We should take the dagger and leave before the creature wakes,” Sen suggested. “You shouldn’t risk every world just for these people.”
I sighed. “I’m not risking anything; I can do this.”
Drake rubbed his hands over his eyes. “Hail never tells you ‘no,’ does he?”
“Why would he?”
“Because you’re insane!” he insisted.
I gaped at my friend, once a docile sweetheart who wanted nothing more than to help us. He loved Superman and followed Hail around like a little puppy. When did he start talking back?
“Leave him alone. Ron can do anything,” Sen snapped at the fae. “That being said, I think we should just take the dagger and leave.”
Honestly, I would rather Drake say I was insane than to wake this creature and leave the people to deal with it. From what I heard about Dayo, they deserved to be wiped out for their hatred and ignorance, but I wasn’t going to be the one to do it. I wouldn’t have been able to look my dad in the face if I hurt these people, because how would I be any different than the demons?
“My dad would put the people first,” I said. “I know I can do this. Hail would tell you if he was here. I’m going to do what Dad would do, and I’ll succeed.” How could I possibly become more powerful than the gods if I couldn’t even outsmart the balance?
“Don’t do this,” Drake said, dejectedly.
The sensation that pressed against my mind like an urge startled me, not because the fae would try to use his powers on me, but because I could feel it. My mind and power were easily able to overcome the half-hearted coercion, yet Hail’s spell should have protected me better than that. Even worlds apart, our magic over each other was impenetrable. If Drake’s power was able to get through, it meant my brother was no longer protecting me.
It wasn’t a conscious thought but a reflex of my fear that caused me to strike Drake with raw Iadnah energy. He gasped and fell to his knees. Sen was there in an instant to try to sooth the fae. I wanted to apologize, but he had to learn not to use his powers on me, and I knew he wasn’t hurt so much as startled and uncomfortable.
I turned to my frozen opponent, then studied the ground beneath the creature. “Sen, do you have a stone that can make this beast stuck in the sand?”
“No,” he answered.
I sighed. I needed a way to slow my foe enough to force it into the void. “I need something localized; not loud or dangerous but that only affects a specific target. A diversion or distraction wouldn’t work. I need a trap, or a way to lead him where I want him.”
Drake shrugged his black backpack off his back, pulled it around in front of him, dug through it for a moment, and pulled out a rope. “Tie him up before you wake him up.”
“Rope would never hold… oh, wait. Magic won’t work on the creature, but it will work on the rope, so I can strengthen it. Do we have enough?”
“Not while it is a statue. If its feet were close, we could tie two toes together. Or we could trip the monster. We could tether it between two trees and make it chase us through it.” Drake sounded so hopeful.
“Okay, that’s a good idea. Go find two trees that are close enough together.” When Drake took off, I turned to Sen. “Go with him. He’s half human, which is like a delicate sago; he needs to be protected.” Sen nodded and followed the fae.
Drake could get us into places and sen could protect him, but this was my mission. I would prove to the gods that I wasn’t just the son of Dylan, and more importantly, I would prove to my brother that I could handle the darkness.
With my friends out of the way, I could do what I had to do, which was to remove the dagger, open the void, and infuriate the creature enough to chase me into the void. Both my parents warned me of the danger of the void many times, but I would survive. I could do it.
I used the left crooked knee and outstretched wing to hoist myself up and onto the base of the wings, where I could reach the dagger. It was stuck hard, so I had to wiggle and jerk it free, which made me flinch in sympathy for the creature.
The black handle of the double-edged knife was simple, while the small hand guard was covered in fancy etchings. As soon as the blade came free, the stone around the wound turned dark brown. I jumped from the wings onto the ground softly and got a good ten feet away before turning back to the creature.
Stone turned to flesh far faster than I had expected. Having never been taught to open the void like my father had, I visualized the effect and focused on the light of the void. My Iadnah energy rose to obey my will, but the darkness inside reacted instantly to stifle my magic. The sensation left me feeling out of breath and frustrated, as if my magic was panicking.
The wings of the creature before me rapidly shook. I tried again to open the void and once more, the balance stopped me. I formed my energy into an orb to strike the monster with, but the balance killed th
at as well. The balance wasn’t letting me do anything to this creature.
When the tentacles of its face began moving, I knew I was out of time. My magic was working, but the balance was preventing me from harming it. Somehow, the darkness must have thought the monster was acting on behalf of the balance.
I can’t do what Dad would do or what Hail would do. What would Mom do? No, Mom wouldn’t have to fight the balance. Vretial was not powerful enough to fight the balance either, but… he knew how to use other people’s strengths to his own advantage. I’m sorry, Xul.
“Hey, ugly creep! Down here! Tell me the truth; was your mom an octopus that slept with a bat or was it the other way around?” Glowing red eyes focused on me and narrowed angrily. Though the creature may not have understood English, he must have understood that I was insulting him.
This monster was large enough to kill me by stepping on me and I couldn’t use my magic against it. In order to overcome my weaknesses, I had to admit them, so I would concede that I didn’t have the power to beat this foe.
Instead of running, I held my ground. “I heard octopi were incredibly intelligent. I was obviously told wrong, because you’re a moron! I mean, who gets defeated by an itty-bitty knife?”
A rumbling sound, which I assumed was a growl, came from the creature and grew in volume until I felt vibrations through the ground. The sound became a roar so loud I felt true fear. When the creature reached for me with his huge claws, I doubted my plan.
Finally, Xul appeared with Mordon, who struck as fast as lightning with the azurath sword. The blade easily sliced through the creature’s hand, eliciting a roar that nearly damaged my eardrums. I felt pity for the monster I provoked into attacking me, but not enough to help it. When Mordon pulled back the sword in a threatening pose, the monster didn’t heed the warning.
Xul pushed me into the stone wall of the castle and created a shield of energy around me as the monster attacked Mordon. Fortunately, my uncle had no trouble separating the monster from its arms… I shuddered.
The monster tried to eat the dragon, who dived under his larger foe and stabbed it in the heart. When Mordon slid the blade back out of the creature’s flesh, the monster turned back into stone. Mordon sighed, tired but not injured. I noted the fact that his black, button-up shirt was torn and the right knee of his black pants was wet with blood.