by C. A. Pack
“Why not let her go?” Johanna asked.
RS:⌘ Because she is more than she claims to be.
Back on Lumina, the overseers waited patiently for Master Ryden Simmdry’s return; however, they couldn’t help but speculate on what their next steps should be. If Johanna and Jackson managed to stop an interloper from gaining access to Myrddin’s spells, the overseers would be able to take their time while planning their next course of action. However, if the thief remained at large, they would have to re-double their vigilance, plan in haste, and second-guess every step they took.
As a group, they knew they would have to wait for the master before they could finalize their plan. They took the time they currently had to explore the avenues of action open to them.
Before the overseers could seal the portals on Juvenilia, two Terrorians escaped through the shattered back window of the library in pursuit of the children who tormented them. Most of the Juveniles quickly scattered, however, Marbol remained hidden in a tree with his sonic scrambler and soon found himself eye-to-eye with another confused Terrorian. Perspiration oozed from every pore of Marbol’s fifteen-year-old body, and he shuddered uncontrollably. The Terrorian’s eight oversized tentacles snaked toward the teen, but Marbol jumped out of the tree and hit the ground running. He tore around the building and bolted across the town square, racing through the neighborhood until he dove down an embankment leading to the village pond and sought refuge in a storm drain. He prayed it was too small for Terrorians to enter.
He needn’t have worried. The Terrorians were not used to the bright Juvenilia sun and practically staggered by the time they hit the town square, blinded by sunlight and choking on fresh, dry air.
A quarter mile away, Marbol pushed through the storm drain, following it back into town. In some places, he stopped to hack away intruding roots with a pocketknife but eventually reached the catch basin that abutted the Juvini City Center. He waited and listened, and when he felt assured there were no Terrorians waiting nearby to pull him limb from limb, he worked to loosen the metal grid covering the drain.
Furst stared at his image in a looking glass. He adjusted his new Dramatican curator uniform. It was comfortable and fit well, however, the diamond-encrusted sash that contained the Illumini constellation would not fall evenly. He didn’t want to disgrace himself by wearing it wrong, but he couldn’t understand how to make it stay in place.
He heard an odd musical note and immediately left his quarters to see what had caused it. Overseer Pru Tellerence stood waiting at the circulation desk.
“Honored, I am, so quickly, that you returned.”
The overseer looked at his new uniform with its crooked sash and smiled. PT:★ May I? She stepped forward and unbuttoned Furst’s epaulette. She hooked the sash on an eyelet hidden under the epaulette and then re-buttoned it.
“A trick, it is.”
PT:★ Not a trick. A simple aid to hold the sash in place. She stepped back and looked at him in uniform, then nodded. PT:★ It looks very nice.
“Too formal, it is not?”
PT:★ This is the way the curator of a Library of Illumination should look.
Furst nodded. “Create the same, you will, for Jackson of Fantasia?”
Pru Tellerence pursed her lips to hide her smile. PT:★ The people of Fantasia don’t judge someone’s importance by the jeweled embellishment of their clothing quite like they do here on Dramatica. The citizens of your world need to know you are in charge.
Furst stood a little taller. “In charge, I am,” he said. Then he allowed a deep breath to escape. “Disappoint you, I hope I do not.”
PT:★ I doubt that you could. She hesitated.
PT:★ Have there been any other problems with the Terrorians?
“Not returned, they have. Scared them away, we have.”
PT:★ Don’t let your guard down, Furst. The Terrorians are tenacious. Once they decide to invade, nothing can dissuade them. And now there’s word they’ve invaded Romantica and Juvenilia.
Furst’s curls tightened. “Help those realms, we must.”
PT:★ For now, your place is here. You and your kinsmen must make sure the Terrorians cannot gain entrance here. However, we may take you up on your offer to help the other realms in the future. The Romanticans and the Juveniles are not as quick on their feet as you and your men.
PT:★ I must return to Lumina. Contact me immediately if anything out of the ordinary happens here.
Furst looked up at the Curator’s Key.
Pru Tellerence followed his gaze. PT:★ You won’t need to climb up there. She removed a small book from within the folds of her robe and handed it to the curator. PT:★ This diary is linked directly to me. Write down any questions or problems you have and I will respond as quickly as I can.
“Yes. Do that, I can. Thank you.” He rewarded Pru Tellerence with a crooked grin.
Suddenly, the air around them pixilated, then returned to normal.
Furst’s eyes widened. “See that, did you?”
PT:★ Yes. I must get back. Be on guard!
—LOI—
2
Ryden Simmdry grabbed the black cube, said goodbye to Johanna and Jackson, and departed.
Jackson turned in time to see Johanna’s eyelids flutter.
She wavered and placed her hand on his arm. “I think I need a nap.”
“One minute you have all of Myrddin’s knowledge racing through your brain, and the next minute you’re making a date with the inside of your eyelids. You may have absorbed all of his energy but it amounts to zippo, considering he’s dead.”
“My head is buzzing, but the rest of me is spent. I think my brain is still trying to process all the information that passed from Beck to me. I hope it’s not some short-term thing. I think I’d like to try out some of Myrddin’s magic. But not right now. I’m too sleepy.”
“And when you do try some of it out, you’re going to teach me, right?”
“Of course, but first I’m going up to my room to lie down.”
“I guess being a great sorceress has its downside.”
“I guess. Are you going to be okay alone?”
“I think I’ve got this down. I’ll just hold things together here until the next bomb drops. It will have to be a bomb. With Ava and Chris packing heavy artillery up in the cupola, nothing less than a bomb is going to get by them.”
Johanna scrunched up her face. “Do you really think the Terrorians would open a portal just to throw a bomb inside and then wait in the relative safety of their own library while an explosive here does the job for them?”
“Aarrgghh…why did you have to give me something new to worry about?”
“I never thought of it before.”
“Do you have a tennis racket?”
“Non sequitur…” she said in a singsong voice.
“It’s not. Really. If you have a tennis racket, I can use it to bat back a bomb if they send one flying through.”
“If you swat a bomb with a tennis racket, it will probably explode on impact, killing you instantly.”
“True.”
“Besides, I don’t own a tennis racket.”
“I guess we dodged a bullet, then.”
“I guess we did.” She kissed his cheek and headed toward the curator’s staircase.
After sliding the cover aside, Marbol hoisted himself out of the storm drain. He replaced the grate and scrambled inside the Juvini City Center, bolting the door behind him. There were several entrances to the building, but he was only concerned about the one he entered through. He ran up the stairs to the “wreck-wroom” and didn’t stop to catch his breath until he slammed the door behind him. Pollo and the other Juveniles were already there.
Pollo did a double take when he saw Marbol. “How’d you get away? I thought you were a goner.”
“I jumped out of the tree when the beast reached for me, and then I ran as fast as I could to the pond and doubled back through the storm drain.”
> “Good thinking. Where are the monsters now?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen them since I took off.”
A fourteen-year-old girl called Jee-Joy ran into the room. “You’re never going to believe this. A couple of kids from the east side said they were in the town square and saw two big, ugly octopi wearing pants, stumbling around. I asked them what kind of sqwitch-juice they were drinking.”
“They’re in the town square?” Guffle cried. “We’ve got to ring the bell and alert everyone to the danger.”
“And how are you going to do that?” Marbol asked. “The bell is in the library, and the last time I checked, it was full of monsters.”
Jee-Joy cocked her head, narrowed her eyes, and placed one hand on her hip. “Very funny.”
“They’re real, Jee-Joy,” Pollo said, “and they have to be dealt with.” He turned to Marbol. “That scrambler still working?”
Marbol looked down at his hand. He hadn’t realized he still had a death grip on his homemade weapon. He looked up and nodded.
Pollo grabbed his arm. “We need to get inside the library now. We need to ring the bell. And we need to free Selly and Cici and the others.”
“You want to go back there?”
“Yes. We have to.”
Marbol stared at the scrambler. “We’re going to need more than this. We’re going to need something with fire power.”
“Fire! We can use the scorchers we made to stop the demon-fire from spreading past Freehollow last year,” Guffle said. “The ones we used to scorch the fields so the flames would have nothing left to feed on.”
Pollo started for the door. “Where are they?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Downstairs in the basement. I think we have four of them. I hope that’s enough,” Guffle answered.
“It will have to be,” Pollo called back.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Marbol said, as he followed Pollo out of the room.
On Romantica, Natalia Dalura looked over Dame Erato’s shoulder and noticed the message from Dean Horatio Blastoe that appeared in Dame Erato’s diary. She read out loud. “The libraries will be sealed.” Her brow furrowed. “What do you think that means? Sealed from invaders, or sealed so that I can’t get back inside?”
Dame Erato asked the overseer to clarify his statement.
All entrances from the libraries will be sealed. Those outside cannot get in. Those inside cannot get out.
Natalia’s shoulders slumped. “But it’s my home.”
The older woman took pity on her. “You can stay here until it’s all sorted out. With the Terrorians gearing up for a fight, I’d say we’ll all be facing upheavals in our lives for a while to come.” The air around them blurred for a few seconds. “Something just changed. If we return to the library now, you’ll probably find the door sealed.”
“Maybe not. Will you come with me?” Natalia asked.
“What makes you think I want to face a bunch of war-mongering Terrorians?”
“I thought if we could get in and sneak up to my quarters, you could help me carry back some of my belongings….”
“What if we’re inside with the Terrorians when the overseers seal the libraries and we’re stuck there? Have you thought about that?”
“No.” Natalia sighed. “You’re right, of course. We’d best keep our distance.”
The time machine would not allow additional troopers to cross the portal to Juvenilia, and instead returned them to their point of origination—Terroria. Nero 51 bristled. “We will try again!” The mechanism seemed to evaporate in thin air but again reappeared on Terroria filled with soldiers.
The curator exited the vehicle and found General Barzic 922. “What has changed?”
The general appeared confused. “Nothing has changed, what do you mean?”
“I mean we cannot deposit our troops on Juvenilia. Either the time machine is not working properly, or something else has gone wrong. Contact Plala 6 and find out if he’s made any adjustments to the biometric armbands that could be disrupting travel.”
“Right away,” the general said, heading for the spiral staircase.
The Terrorians had removed all the stacks and obelisks from the top level of the library to make room for the time machine. It gave Nero 51 a clear view of everything happening in the library. He crossed all eight of his tentacles over his chest and glared as the general slowly made his way down the cupola stairs. The curator bellowed, “Faster, General. We need answers now.” He watched as his subordinate picked up the pace.
When the general reached the main entrance, he wrapped his tentacles around the door handle and pulled the front door. It wouldn’t open. He checked the lock and tried again.
“TODAY, GENERAL,” Nero 51 screamed from five stories above.
“The door appears to be stuck,” the general called out. He asked a few nearby troopers to help. First, they took turns trying to open the door. Then, they all tried pulling on it together as a team.
Nero 51 took a deep breath and wrapped his tentacles around the guardrail in the cupola. He jumped over the railing and used his tentacles to lower himself to the floor—five stories below. He pushed everyone out of the way as he grasped the door handle and pulled. When the door failed to budge, some of the Terrorians snickered.
The curator pointed to a stone pedestal. “Ram the window and climb out. I need Plala 6 now.”
Four troopers grabbed the pedestal and propelled themselves against the window. No matter how many times they tried to break through the glass, they failed. They asserted their efforts on various windows without success.
“Shoot out the window,” Nero 51 said in a steely voice.
A soldier trained his weapon on one of the windows and fired. A micro-moment later, he and his weapon disintegrated.
“We’re sealed in,” one of the soldiers shouted.
Nero 51 glared at them. “I want you all to disperse immediately into the different areas of the library and look for a way out. There has to be a weakness here, somewhere, and the soldier who finds it will want for nothing for the rest of his life.”
The Terrorians fanned out, looking for a chink in the library’s armor that would turn into their golden key to a lifetime of riches.
The Fantasian wizard known as Robert Birk, or Rathbarth, son of Visbur, had once been a Mysterian prophet named Odyon, who rose to the post of high priest on his native world. It was Odyon’s ancestors who had negotiated with the Terrorians and Adventurans to start the Two Millennia War, and he had become a soldier—like his forebears—fighting for a better life for Mysteriose. But it wasn’t enough for Odyon to win. He wanted to rule. He felt he was smarter and more powerful than the others who, to him, were merely mortal. He had experimented with alchemy and longevity and had made a number of private breakthroughs that helped him survive well past the end of the Two Millennia War. Unfortunately, he had been separated from his realm but prospered after meeting a Fantasian sorcerer named Myrddin Emrys. They formed a friendship for a time, sharing secrets, but then they had a parting of ways after disagreeing on how far they should go to affect change with magic. Odyon already possessed the expertise that allowed him to shape-shift, but Myrddin had perfected methods of healing and time travel that Odyon would never have come to possess without having met him. And together, they fine-tuned and developed control over life forces, creating the Longevicus Blessing.
Their friendship ended when Rathbarth, who practiced déofolkræft—the black art of devilcraft—tried to use it against Myrddin to steal all his power. When he failed, Rathbarth charmed Viviane, the Lady of the Lake, into luring Myrddin to the Isle of Skokholm and using his own spells against him. Odyon told her to entomb the wizard within the sandstone cliff that rose out of the sea off the coast of Wales.
Viviane and Myrddin were long dead, yet Myrddin’s spells were still out of Odyon’s reach. He vowed to unlock their secrets—even if it was the last thing he’d ever do.
Ryden Simmdry took
his place at the head of the overseers’ U-shaped conference table on Lumina and placed the small black cube in front of him.
RB:⧳ Have you secured the thief?
RS:⌘ No. But we may have captured an accomplice.
RZ: Ω Who resides within?
RS:⌘ A witch, as powerful as she is wily. She would have us believe she is merely trying to perfect her magical skills, but on closer investigation, I discovered she possesses much stronger powers than she professes to have.
PT:★ Do you think it wise to have brought her here?
RS:⌘ There is only one way to find out. He waved his hand over the cube, and the form of Alianessa Anjou took shape in the center of the horseshoe.
She brought herself up to her full height and scowled, before actually noticing the people surrounding her. Slowly, she looked from face to face of each overseer and visibly withdrew inside herself. “What is this place?” she asked quietly.
RS:⌘ You like to think you have special powers. I have brought you to a place where you can put those powers to the test.
“Is Odyon here?”
RS:⌘ I thought you didn’t know anyone named Odyon?
Alianessa drew herself up a bit taller. “I thought we were past that.”
RS:⌘ Ahhh, yes. You know Robert Birk, but not Odyon.
“You’re the one who calls him Odyon. Is he here?”
RS:⌘ Not yet. But I’m sure he would visit if he could figure out how. He’s been here before.
“What do you mean he’s been here before? Where are we?”
RS:⌘ This world is known as Lumina. Odyon is a high priest from Mysteriose who hasn’t been seen since the end of the Two Millennia War and was presumed dead. He was curator of the Library of Illumination on that world and visited here in that capacity.