by John Goode
“Are you okay?” Ruber asked, floating down to my line of sight. “Did the teleport affect you?”
See? That’s what I mean. Sixteen years and never once did someone ever ask me something like that.
I shook my head. “It isn’t that. I’m just tired.” Which was only part of it. Growing up, I never understood Dorothy and her constant whining. I mean, she lived on a pig farm in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas, her world was black and white, and some skeevy-looking farmhands worked for her aunt and uncle, and that was what she dreamed about going back to? She was in a world of color and magic and Lollipop Guilds and all kinds of cool crap, but all she went on about was how she needed to get home. I really thought she was just the dumbest girl I had ever seen.
Now I know exactly how she felt.
I missed my dad, I missed Jewel, and I felt sick to my stomach that they were out there thinking I was gone or worse. Every time I tried to picture what my dad must be going through, I wanted to fall down and cry.
But there was no time for that. The only thing we had time for was figuring out where there might be people willing to follow Hawk and then splitting up to find them.
Hawk knelt down and took my hand.
He knew the truth about my thoughts, the same way I knew he was dying inside not knowing if his mother was alive or not. Yet he didn’t say a word out loud about his fears. Even when Molly, Ferra, and Caerus, Ruber’s sister, had left the mountain to follow a lead the three of them had discovered, Hawk hadn’t let a sign of worry surface, although risking other people to help save his family was tearing him up inside. To the outside world, he looked like the very model of a confident leader. But I could hear him praying inside that they would come back safe, because if they didn’t, he would never forgive himself.
I leaned forward and rested my forehead against his, and we mentally hugged. But that hug was so much more than a physical embrace that I don’t know if words could ever convey the actual feeling. It was like being surrounded by this warmth of love so pure, so… yeah, I was right. Words just aren’t going to get it done. Let’s just say it’s the most intimate thing you can imagine, times ten.
Ruber’s voice interrupted my nirvana. “Is this a thing?”
From what I understood, gemlings don’t experience emotions the same way humans do. Hawk had suggested that because they had brains created literally out of stone, they were unable to experience feelings as deeply as we could. Ruber had suggested that Hawk shouldn’t talk about things he didn’t know about, which would leave him with very little to say at all. Hawk had suggested Ruber do something that would have been impossible even if the elemental had been flesh and blood, and the topic was dropped.
Hawk had literally saved my life with his love, and it was hard not to be overwhelmed by that. His people referred to what we felt as the Calling. The Calling was their version of love at first sight, except it seemed to come with magical powers and stuff. We had merged our… life forces? Souls? See, this is more X-Men stuff, so I don’t know how to explain properly, but trust me when I say it’s like we were one person sharing two bodies.
One of the bodies was handling everything better than the other.
“You could have warned me that the house was a Transformer,” I said to Hawk quietly.
I could feel him grab the relevant images from my memories. In the same moment, I could “read” the magical equivalent of robots in disguise. Turns out they were mechanical constructs like Molly, only giant-sized and without the manners.
“I thought you would know because I know,” he answered once he could feel my thoughts settle down. “I’m sorry.” The feelings of regret and sorrow were so real that even Ruber should have seen them oozing out of him, but then again, gemlings don’t really understand human emotions, so I wasn’t that shocked.
“I try not to pry” was all I could muster, because he knew the last few times I had pried, he’d pretty much lost his shit and yelled at me. There was so much in his mind he was afraid for me to know that it was easier not to read his mind than you’d think it would be.
He brought me in for a much needed hug, which of course brought a humph of impatience from Ruber.
If you ever have the chance to be friends with a talking magical ruby, turn it down. Talking magical rubies are major mood spoilers.
“So where are we again?” I asked after a few seconds of hug.
Hawk stood up and looked around. “This is—” I could feel him sifting through my mind to find a response I could understand. “—a panic room of sorts.”
The “room” we were in was several times larger than the one we had walked into, and there were three doors besides the one we walked in through, meaning it was so much more than a panic room. “You mean a panic mansion, don’t you?”
He grinned and walked over to the entrance. “You tell me,” he said, opening the door.
His thoughts were veiled, which meant he was just aching to surprise me again. Playing along, I walked over and stepped outside. It looked like a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Not even a nice cabin, but something more like one of those Abraham Lincoln cabins that no one, not even Abraham Lincoln, would want to live in. I looked inside and the room went on for days and days; outside, it was a tiny little structure. He stared at me with a small smile, waiting for me to lose it.
“So it’s a magical construct that houses a stable tesseract bending the laws of space?” His expression went from smug to outright shock in seconds flat. “In other words, it’s bigger on the inside.” I walked back in and closed the door behind me. “I watch Doctor Who, bitch.”
I swore I could hear Ruber chuckle quietly.
Hawk shook his head and tried to regain his mental footing as I sat back down. “Yes, good. Doctor Who… of course. My mother constructed this place some time back to be a secure location in case the capital was ever compromised.”
His words made my spider sense tingle.
“So either your mother is, like, the smartest person in the world, or she was expecting this somehow.” I could see by the reaction on his face he had been thinking the same thing.
“Puck has no idea Teach Folaithe Titania exists. The list of those who do know I could count on my hand,” he continued, ignoring my statement altogether.
“Okay.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “So we’re safe. And that’s great, but I thought we were looking for an army.”
“We are.” He walked over to one of the other doors and opened it. Looking back at me, he asked, “Coming?”
And resting time was officially over.
I asked Ruber, “Do you have any idea what we’re doing?” as we headed over to the open door.
“The prince has not found it necessary to share his plan with me.” From the tone of Ruber’s voice, he was not impressed by Hawk’s magical house either, or doing a better job hiding it than I was.
“All in good time,” Hawk assured us. “The fewer who know what we’re doing, the better. I have no idea where Ater or Ferra went, and they would have no idea where we are either. It’s for the best.”
What he wasn’t saying was that if one of us were captured and tortured, we couldn’t tell our captors what the rest of us were doing. The fact that he thought there was a very real chance we were being hunted did not make me warm and fuzzy inside.
I was so caught up in trying to figure out what Hawk was up to that I hadn’t noticed anything but the floor of the room we had entered. Hawk nudged me mentally, and I looked up. And up. And then up some more. Followed by up.
You know those giant libraries in movies, with the books that go from floor to ceiling and stretch off into the distance like they’re showing how short a football field is by comparison?
Those libraries were secretly trying to be like this one. Massive? No, bigger than massive. Uhm… oh God, I’m blanking on words for it. Vast? Epic? None of them really captured how encompassing the room really was. The roof was vaulted and composed of a series of curved amber skylights that
made the room look like it was just going on late afternoon outside. There were huge velvet-covered chairs, and a fireplace against one wall that roared into life as soon as the door closed behind us.
“What in gay hell?” I exclaimed, craning my neck to keep on staring upward.
Hawk hadn’t stopped walking, so he was halfway across the room when he saw I wasn’t following. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
I gestured around us. “What is all this?”
He looked around curiously and then shrugged. “A library?”
Yeah, and “Dancing Queen” is just a song.
“This is impressive,” Ruber noted as he floated up to the books.
“See?” I sputtered. “The ruby who looks down his nose at everything thinks this is impressive. Why in the world would your mother have all this in a panic room?”
Hawk opened his mouth to respond, but Ruber beat him to the punch. “Most probably because she was concerned that the information contained in these tomes is too valuable to be left anywhere less secure.”
Hawk’s mouth closed into an angry line.
“Oh come on!” I protested before Hawk could lose his temper. “Just admit your mom knew something was up if she had a place like this ready.”
He glared over at me, and I could see the frustration and anger in those emerald eyes. “It is a library. Leave it at that.”
I looked over at Ruber and shook my head, telling him to drop it. Although I never knew for sure where his face was, he seemed to understand and continued a slow spiral up the shelves of books.
“So how does this get us an army? Do the books come to life or something? Because that would be badass.”
Hawk paused for a moment. “An army of books wouldn’t be very effective.”
“Seriously? You can read my mind but still can’t figure out when I’m joking?”
His expression didn’t change one bit. “I knew you were joking; I just didn’t find it funny.” I swatted at him, and he let out a small laugh. “Even though we’re far removed from the capital, Teach Folaithe Titania is still part of the royal grounds.”
His explanation meant nothing to me.
He strode over to the huge marble fireplace, with a mantle that bore an engraving of the royal seal. “There are certain things that the royal family can do on royal ground.” Casually, he traced his finger along the stone grooves of the carving. I thought he was lost in thought, or trying way too hard to be mysterious.
“Oh, that is clever,” Ruber noted, obviously understanding what I wasn’t.
“What is clever?” I asked, hoping one of them would answer.
The seal began to glow softly as Hawk took his hand away. The two chairs in front of the fireplace slid abruptly across the room, while the intricately woven carpet that had been beneath them faded away completely. I saw the royal seal again, this time carved into the stone floor and surrounded by a perfect circle.
In a loud, commanding voice, Hawk said, “I am the royal heir to the throne of Arcadia, and I have a message for the Family Crimson.”
Silently, the outlines of the seal darkened and deepened. In a trickle at first, and then more rapidly, what I could only think of as liquid light filled the incised marks. The light glowed brighter and brighter until I had to cover my eyes and look away. I was almost knocked over a few seconds later by an explosion of air. The library practically shook from the crack of thunder that seemed to come from nowhere. My vision was blurry and my ears were ringing as I looked back at the seal. A small figure, just a form as far as I could tell, hunched inside.
“Now see here,” a high-pitched voice exclaimed. “This is highly irregular, most improper.”
When my vision cleared, I could see whoever it was stood no taller than a child, wearing a weird hat.
“I am protected by the Seven Accords signed by the Crimson Monarch, Queen Demain herself. To touch my person is to declare war on all of Aponiviso!”
I rubbed my eyes, because there could be no way I was seeing what I was seeing.
In the center of the circle huddled a white rabbit about the size of a five-year-old child; it was wearing a vest, jacket, bow tie, and what I’d thought was a weird hat were actually its ears. As adorable as it looked, there was nothing cute about its tone of voice, which had escalated from outrage to the verge of panic.
“I am Milo Farnsworth, royal page for the Family Crimson. I demand to know where I am.”
I stared at Hawk and asked in shock, “Did you just kidnap the White Rabbit?”
Hawk’s expression was stern as he replied, “It’s only kidnapping if you ask for a ransom.”
Milo gaped at him and then back to me, his nose twitching in fear. “Oh my.”
THERE WAS the sound of whooshing air and then nothing.
The darkness was thick and oppressive, and Ferra swore she felt something staring back at her from the blank abyss as intently as she was staring into it. “Light?” she asked, trying to keep her voice as calm as possible. A greenish beam emanated from Caerus in response. The illumination did nothing to dispel Ferra’s wariness; she knew, if nothing else, the light gave an enemy something to aim for. “Are we here?” she asked aloud, her hand clenching into a fist. Ice began to form inside her grip.
A quiet whirring of gears from inside Molly was her only answer. About to ask again, Ferra stopped and watched as two lenses of incandescent green slipped into place, one over each of Molly’s eyes. The clockwork girl surveyed the darkness, and Ferra realized the lenses were helping her see in the dark. “We are in some kind of waiting area,” Molly announced in her melodic voice. If she felt any trepidation about the murk, she surely didn’t express it.
Caerus tried to increase the light. “I told you this was the most likely spot for the workshop to be.”
The location for the fabled workshop for Tinker and Jones, the inventors who had made Molly, had been one of great debate among the three women over the past weeks.
Tinker and Jones were the best clockwork makers in all the Nine Realms. Their creations were so sophisticated that it was nearly impossible for someone to claim they were not alive in some strange way. Coveted as the best of the best by the most influential people in the worlds, they went from being two little-known inventors to the only word in clockwork construction. They built a massive factory in Djupur Byrjun, Realm of Earth, to be closer to the raw materials needed to keep up with the ever-growing demands of customers. They were the very model of overnight success, and the legend was that both men grew insanely wealthy off their talents.
Which was why the dwarves of Kh’zdule had enlisted their aid against the Gnome King.
They had ordered an army of tik-tok soldiers to aid them in their struggle for survival and traded several hundred tons of raw material in exchange for the inventors’ services. It is here that the narrative becomes muddled. Some legends say that Tinker and Jones took the payment and fled Djupur Byrjun entirely. Other stories stated that the duo did indeed create an army of tik-toks but were attacked by the Gnome King before they could activate the army to defend them. These stories explain how the Gnome King was able to successfully attack the factory and wipe it off the face of the Djupur, leaving no trace of it at all.
Either way, the army, the tinkers, and the factory were never seen again.
More than a few adventurers had tried to find the fabled workshop, claiming that the tik-toks were the most mundane of the treasures that could be found within. Every decade or so the tales resurfaced and grew in stature, fueling even more curiosity about the lost factory of Tinker and Jones.
Caerus believed she knew where the factory was most likely to have been constructed and destroyed.
Molly, who had been designed and built at the factory, said she had no knowledge of the factory’s whereabouts but was adamant it had to be somewhere still within the city of Evna, the fallen capital of the Land of Eva. Caerus explained that the ruins of Evna had been explored extensively numerous times and had never once yielde
d a clue to the factory’s whereabouts.
The sapphire believed the Gnome King had not destroyed the factory but had instead stolen the entire building and laid waste to the city to cover the theft.
Ferra had settled the debate by saying the trio should explore both possibilities.
They had spent ten days rummaging through the ruins of the once great capital city and had found what every other explorer had found: absolutely nothing. Molly and Caerus, who had no need for sleep or sustenance, had searched the ancient ruins without pause, covering in seven days what other exploration teams had spent months doing.
Ferra had done her best not to show how bored she was with the whole endeavor and spent the week trying not to imagine the city as one giant tomb. Now, surrounded by a darkness that had eyes, Ferra realized she wished she was back in the tomb.
Molly walked out of Caerus’s light before Ferra could stop her.
“We should stick together,” the barbarian called out to her companion.
Silence answered her.
“Molly,” she tried again.
More nothing.
“Can you see in this?” she asked Caerus, worried.
“There is some kind of enchantment in the area…,” the gemling answered in a tight voice. She was obviously straining to push past the magics around them.
“Molly! Answer me!” Ferra shouted into the darkness. More silence, which had developed from a nuisance into a menace in only a few seconds. Ferra’s warrior’s instinct came to the fore, and she took charge.
“Follow me,” Ferra said to Caerus. “Make as much light as possible.”
They got two steps before the walls began to give off a slight glow. Within seconds, the barbarian could see Molly standing next to the far wall with her hand pressed flat to its surface. As the glow intensified, the details of the room became visible, pretty much dispelling any question that Caerus had found the first tangible proof that the workshop had not been completely destroyed.
One wall was covered with a brass construction in the shape of the Tinker and Jones logo, the same one on the key Molly used to wind her personality springs. The furniture in the room was as odd as anything Ferra or Caerus had ever seen. The arms and legs of the couch and three chairs had actual hands and feet connected to them, and the cushions were adorned with two closed eyes, while the seat had a painted mouth. After a second glance, Ferra could see they looked like they were actually squat, wide people.