by T. S. Hall
Sas stopped at the end of the path staring intently at the rock wall in the corner of the cave chamber. There appeared to be nothing special inside. It was a hollowed-out moist cave, with no distinctive character to suggest that anyone lived there. Sas faced the far wall and began slowly swinging his arms in a strange, circular motion, expelling light from his palms. The gritty stone wall glowed as Sas repeated his circular motions in different patterns. When he stopped, light shot out from the wall. The piercing beam imploded into the stone, which then formed an almost fluid exterior that shimmered strangely. “This way,” the tall, furry beast directed before he sank into the wall and disappeared.
Allora followed, moving through the swirling liquid, and stepping into the interior of Sas’s home base.
Upon reaching the other side of the mysterious wall, they walked into an intricately designed cavernous chamber, lit by large, glowing orbs that hung from the ceiling. Along the walls lay a myriad of trinkets, knickknacks, and various objects commonly found in rubbish. The junk seemed to be purposely arranged in a peculiar manner, forming a vast, eccentric sculpture. Soda cans, metal spatulas, barbeque grills, tent poles, magnets, car doors, hats, lighters, water bottles, and other objects had been placed together to form an array of grand art that lined the path into an elaborate hall full of cascading waterfalls.
“I’m pretty sure that you are a hoarder, Sas,” Dax said, picking through one of the piles of camping chairs.
A shadow moved across the expansive rock ceiling as Sas moved out from behind a strange, aqueduct-type system. Made of sheets of aluminum cans, it began at the top of a small waterfall and ended in a luminous aluminum bowl. He motioned them over and smiled. “I’m sure you’re all thirsty. This is a natural spring. It is safe to drink, if you wish, and you can wash up over there.” He pointed down the path toward the back of the cave, where the water emptied into a large, crystal-clear pool.
“Yeah, but why would that rover go after us?” Allora asked, prompting Katie to try and stop the response.
“Probably because you’re a royal Allora.”
“Sas!” Katie yelled, provoking Allora to raise her eyebrows at her best friend.
“Wait…,” Allora said, moving toward the blonde with her finger pointed. “You knew?”
Katie bit down, showing her teeth as she backed up toward her brother.
“Smooth move ya dumb ape,” Dax added.
“Oops,” Sas said.
“You knew too?” Allora said, crossing her arms and glaring at Dax. “What about you?”
“I have no idea what’s going on,” Tanner replied, shrugging his shoulders.
“I can explain,” Katie said.
“Your mother told us that we had to keep it a secret,” Dax said, placing a hand on his twin sister’s shoulder. “She’s the one that ordered us to remain silent.”
“Milly. Yes. I should go get her,” Sas said, swirling the ground into a portal, and quickly escaping the cavern.
That left the four friends to an awkward silence, as Allora tried to come to terms with the term, ‘royal’. The slight trickle of the waterfall echoed in the cavern.
“So, how about that fight earlier?” Tanner said, trying to break the tension.
“Look, I’m sorry for not telling you,” Katie interjected.
“You should be! We promised not to keep anything from each other.”
“Yeah, but this was an order. Milly would have crucified us!”
“So then, do you two know who my father is?”
“No, all we were told was that he was a part of the royal family, and that you had blood rights to the throne of Titanis,” Dax said.
“That is heavy,” Tanner added.
“Not helping,” Allora replied. “Anything else you want share with me?”
“Our father is alive,” Katie said. Allora’s eyebrows lifted. “He’s a general in the rebellion. Jarrod and Maureen adopted us in a way, but they were originally our security personnel, working under our father’s command.”
“Fantastic,” Allora said, throwing up her arms in protest. “My whole life is a lie.”
Suddenly, the ground near the water’s edge swirled, opening up. Sas sprung out, followed by Milly, May, and Bell.
“Mom!” Allora yelled and ran to hug her.
Milly grabbed her daughter, held her close, and sighed with relief, but in the blink of an eye, the reunion turned ugly. “How could you sneak out like that?” Milly scolded.
“And how could you not tell me about my royal status?” Allora responded.
“You told her,” Milly said, angrily eyeballing the twins. They reacted quickly, both pointing directly at Sas who bit down trying to maintain a smile while fumbling around awkwardly.
There was a general consensus among the adults, a compromise many had been waiting for since the last time an agent had entered the area, the night Allora’s uncle had been killed. No one wanted to relive the painful events of Ben’s demise, and they had been torn about how much information to disclose.
“Allora…,” Milly paused thinking about how best to address the situation. “Our family came to Earth because we were being systematically exterminated. General Salazar, assassinated the royal family, along with most of the leadership in Titanis that had the means to confront him. We were barely able to make it out of the city. Your father was a direct line to the throne, which means that when you turn eighteen, you are the rightful ruler of Titanis and most of Sonora. That makes you the ultimate threat to Salazar’s grip on the kingdom. That is why we have kept you here, and it’s why we’ve had you training for all these years.”
“That’s heavy,” Tanner remarked.
“No kidding,” Allora said.
“I didn’t want you to have the burden of knowing. I just wanted you to be able to have a normal life here on Earth. A normal childhood.”
“Mom, I hang out with an eight foot tall Sasquatch, train in a magical realm, and can shoot fire from my hands. How is any of that normal?”
“Good point,” Milly said.
“So, that is why that creature attacked us tonight?” Allora asked, prompting Milly to glance over at Sas.
“A rover. We be having at least one agent in the area. My guess would be that more will come.”
“Did it identify any of them?” Aunt May asked.
“No, I got there first,” Sas replied.
Milly walked across the room. When she tripped on a broken hubcap, she winced and said, “Couldn’t you invest in a housekeeper, and get rid of some of this junk.”
“Hey!” Sas replied, grabbing the hubcap and placing it back in the pile. “None of this is junk!”
“You will be their bodyguard. If they are not at school or at home, it will be on you to make sure they are safe.”
Sas nodded quickly, giving her no debate.
Milly’s order was direct and forceful, as if spoken by a military officer. Even Allora knew when not to rebel against her mother. The brief silence was filled with the sound of cascading waterfalls splashing into the cave pool.
“Were you able to track it?” Aunt May asked.
Sas shook his head. “I lost the trail.”
“Isn’t that good?” Allora inquired.
“Right,” Dax agreed. “It must mean the thing’s not around if old smelly, here, can’t smell it.”
“We need to leave,” Milly ordered.
“What!? But I wanna know more. What about—” Allora protested.
Ignoring Allora, Milly grabbed the hand of her other daughter, who had remained speechless the entire time, and gestured for the others to follow. She made a circling motion with her hands, opening a portal into the ground. Swirling light escaped the vortex, causing Allora to marvel at her mother’s gifts.
“Seriously, you have to teach me how to do that,” Allora said.
Milly and Bell disappeared into the ground. Meanwhile, May whispered something into Sas’s ear. Then, she winked at Allora and followed the other two into
the quicksand-like portal. The others followed, jumping one-by-one through the portal until only Allora and Sas remained. He grabbed her wrist, and closed the portal. Allora glanced up at the tall hairy warlock, questioning his actions.
“I need to give you something,” Sas said, wandering off into the stacks of junk, and flinging stuff across the room.
He quickly rummaged through a potato sack. “A-ha!” he said, pulling out a rolled-up piece of beige parchment. He handed the document to Allora, his face somber as he placed it in her hands. “Ben asked me to be giving this to you when you were ready for it,” Sas said, unable to hide his grief. “I believe that time is now.”
At the mention of Ben’s name, Allora began to tremble, and tears threatened to gush from her eyes. When she was ten years old, her mother had arrived home one night with bloodshot eyes and had broken the news that Ben, her uncle, had been killed in an avalanche on Mt. Hood. Since Allora had grown up with no father, Uncle Ben was the only male presence in her life, and his death had left a gaping hole in her heart that she’d never been able to fill. Holding back her emotions, Allora said, “You’ve never mentioned him before this.”
“He be a friend, and one of the bravest, most selfless individuals I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing,” Sas said. “Ben made me promise to be giving you this parchment when you became of age.”
Allora stared down at the foreign object in her hands. It felt light and worn, and the edges were uneven and torn. She slowly unrolled it, exposing a sequence of numbers: “8 5 3 2 1 1 0.”
On the other side, a poem was delicately inscribed. The writing was intricately done but barely legible. At the bottom, it read, ‘The Eye of the Titans’. Written in the middle were four lines of script. Allora read the poem out loud:
At last you come to the cavern of gold
Grand monuments to the gods of old
Do not take more than you seek
For penalty of greed will destroy the weak
“The Eye of the Titans is an ancient artifact that Ben and Swan were searching for, and this be one of the clues to its location.”
“Swan, like my teacher Mr. Swan?” Allora asked.
“Yes,” Sas said, nodding his head. “You may want to ask him about it because he’s been trying to find the other two pieces of the parchment.” Sas swirled his hand, opening up the portal leading to Allora’s home. “Now, I be needing to go patrol the area for that rover.”
Allora hugged the furry creature tightly, and then jumped through the portal, landing upside down on the couch in the living room. She swung her feet around, and stared down at the piece of old parchment, wondering about its secrets.
An overwhelming feeling of trepidation engulfed Allora’s mind. The faces of the people she held closest revealed a quiet unease, one she’d never experience before. In that moment, she felt a kinship to Pandora from the Greek story. Her episode at soccer tryouts had opened up a box of untold evils on the world. Did anyone bother to ask Pandora why she opened the box? She’s been known throughout the centuries as the woman who brought evil to all humankind, but was it really even her fault? Am I somehow to blame for all this?
In a heartbeat, Allora’s curious excitement about her special abilities turned into angst. Nothing could free her from the responsibility of her new life. A powerful burst of emotion had opened a box of evils, and Pandora’s guilt was now her own. Soon, she’d have to make a dreadful decision to either wither before the overwhelming obstacles ahead or fight back. With that grim thought on her mind, she stood up and went to her room, finding a discreet spot in the corner of her armoire to place the piece of parchment, vowing to solve the puzzle and find the Eye of the Titans.
Ten
SWAN
“What’s going on?” Mrs. Ferris demanded, perplexed by the sudden departure to the dank, secluded high school basement. The eerie echoes of old pipes softly clanked and clamored on the ceiling. An ancient furnace filled the air with a pungent burning odor.
“I found the second piece!” Mr. Swan whispered.
“Really?” Mrs. Ferris exclaimed enthusiastically. She then gasped at the sight of a rat that scurried along the edge of the concrete floor. “Couldn’t you have told me this upstairs?”
“That’s the problem.” Mr. Swan inched closer, well aware of the danger of their situation. “It’s no longer safe to talk about it in school.”
“How do you know?”
“They somehow knew I was going to Peru. There was a Chenoo waiting at the base of Manchu Picchu when I arrived.”
“How’d they find out?”
“I’ve got no idea. I was able to fight the rock man off, but I’m almost positive I was followed when I came back here,” Mr. Swan said with guilty apprehension. “It was most likely a—”
“No…” Mrs. Ferris pulled back and again whispered in the darkness. “Where’s your proof?”
“I ported back, and the residual of someone else came through only minutes afterward. It’s got to be an agent.”
“You ported? Why the hell would you do that?” she asked.
“I had to. It was the only way I could get out alive, with the…” Mr. Swan trailed off and paused, his senses picking up on the muffled sounds of voices. Out of his peripheral vision, he caught a shadow dance along the wall, near the doorway. He grabbed Mrs. Ferris and moved toward the back corner, barely making it around a stack of milk cartons before two individuals turned the corner.
Footsteps grew louder as two sets of feet walked up only a few yards away. One pair of feet stopped on the other side of the crates, followed by eerie silence. Electricity sparked from the edges of Mr. Swan’s fingertips as he moved to get a better line of sight.
Then, one of the individuals spoke. “We only need two crates of milk, right?”
“Yeah. I don’t think the kids will drink any more than that.”
Mr. Swan let out a sigh of relief, realizing it was only the cook and the custodian. The two left with their supplies, leaving Mr. Swan and Mrs. Ferris in the dark, catching their breath.
“Why in the hell do they keep milk down here in this dungeon?” Mrs. Ferris asked.
Mr. Swan ignored her question and went back to their discussion. “It’s imperative that we get our hands on that last piece.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“I think so, but I can’t get to it,” Mr. Swan said, glancing back at the metal basement door. “If I was followed, my identity has been compromised.”
“And you want me to go after it? Not exactly in the best of shape here Swan.”
“Well, we can’t ask Milly or May. They haven’t been supportive of this quest ever since Ben.” Silence ensued as they both pondered what they had to do. It was an important task, but it was also a dangerous, risky one. “There is one other option…”
“That ain’t happening,” Mrs. Ferris snapped quietly.
“Do you have a better option?”
Again, they stood contemplating, and neither could think of a better plan.
“No. It has to be them, I guess, but how will you ever send them without Milly knowing?”
“You’ll see.” Mr. Swan grabbed the door, then remembered one last thing. “Oh… you should give them a lesson on glues. They’re gonna need it.” With that, he left the room.
Another rat scurried across the floor, causing Mrs. Ferris to quickly follow behind him. “But I hate making glues!” she proclaimed softly. “It’s almost as bad as… rats!”
* * *
“Do you know what The Eye of the—?” Allora asked.
Mr. Swan turned pale, yet his body suggested an odd fervor. He leaned forward. “Where did you hear that name?”
Allora was about to speak, but Mr. Swan pressed his finger to her lips.
“Wait,” he cautioned. “We’re not safe here.” He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where screaming students zoomed past as they socialized before their next classes.
“Bring the other three to my cl
assroom after fourth period. We’ll talk then.”
As she left the classroom, she sensed something strange in the hallway. Allora tried to make sense of it. She joined the herd of students, while deep in thought. Why is everyone so freaked out about this Eye of the Titans? She thought to herself as she arrived at English class.
Allora didn’t hear a word her teacher said as she waited anxiously for fourth period to tick away. As soon as the clock struck the hour, she grabbed Tanner, Katie, and Dax and led them to Mr. Swan’s room.
“Close the door and sit,” Mr. Swan said, as they entered.
They did as instructed. Mr. Swan put a finger to his lips, then placed a round, white, gel-like ball on the table. The four of them crowded around, trying to get a glimpse of it. The ball had a strange metallic tint and seemed to swirl with an odd, flowing glint against the light of the dim room.
“You might want to stand back,” Mr. Swan suggested.
When he pointed his finger, a green spark shot out and struck the peculiar white ball. It exploded, and a layer of clear goo covered nearly every surface in the room, including the curious individuals standing bug-eyed in a circle around the desk. They tried to speak, but no sound came from their mouths, and no one could hear anything.
Mr. Swan pointed his finger, sending green sparks toward each student. The clear goo fell toward the floor, collecting into a small ball at each of their feet.
“What was that?” Allora said, not at all happy with the teacher’s weird, slime-shooting contraption.
Mr. Swan collected the small balls and put them together to form one medium-sized, clear ball. “This is silencing glue,” he said, gently placing the ball in his desk drawer. “It coats an interior area and creates a soundproof space.” As he explained it, the clear gel formed to the walls and disappeared. “Mrs. Ferris is still trying to perfect the formula.”
“So we can say whatever we want, and no one will be able to hear us?” Katie asked.
“Exactly,” Mr. Swan answered.
Katie went up to the wall to see if she could feel anything, but it felt completely normal. “That’s so cool,” she said.