Max didn’t answer. Clare glanced at him, a question on her mind, but she couldn’t form it now.
“I have a greater will than that,” Clare shouted. “I know who I am and what I want to do with my life. I have plans, despite what Al says. I understand now. I will bring Sun Age to Revary and make it stronger than ever before.”
“You don’t make any sense,” the dragon sneered. He let his guard down a little now. “Your little games will make no difference.”
“Won’t they?” Clare raised her eyebrows. “I am utilizing my mind for a great purpose! I know who I am!” She faced Max and Lance. “I’m so sorry for the way I’ve been acting here. I’ve been self-important and ignored the fact you two have a role to play. I’ve been selfish and wanted to play a certain role. But I see what I am now.” She faced the dragon. “You have to devour all the stars because they were the light in the darkness. They were your greatest enemy.”
In her heart, Clare had always known who she was in this world. She had known her powers were stronger than she knew. She would wonder later if she had held herself back, too concerned with playing the noble hero. She had trained for adventure her whole life, but hadn’t known what to do when the opportunity was presented to her. Time stopped as she realized regret would not help her here. She was not Stella; she could handle a little power.
Trying not to close her eyes, she concentrated on Greylheim’s smoldering orange eyes. His light was dying. Hers was just kindling. She felt the light inside her trying to grow. She knew she had to let it out. It was like trying to relax at the dentist when she was a child: she knew it would be easier if she did, but horrifying at the same time. When she gotten her wisdom teeth removed, Max had gone with her.
Max and the others were there with her. She was not alone. She could relax.
A great white light exploded out of her. Her hair glowed and her fingernails sparkled. Her sword had vanished and her clothes transformed into great flowing, midnight purple robes with deep red lining. Her skin glittered in the dark light.
“I am a bearer of the Light,” she said to the dragon. “You have come to kill me, but you will hold no power over me and my friends. You were wrong, Greylheim, you have not devoured every star. Light banishes darkness.”
With a scream of terror, Greylheim lifted his wings and began his retreat, his claws scraping and slipping on the dirt in his haste.
“You may be able to speak and have it be so now, earthling,” he called back. “But what will your powers do when this world is destroyed? Try to fight me now!”
The earth spun under them and the three of them fell to the ground.
“Think!” Clare shouted to her friends. “Just think up the best character you could ever be and we can fight him. We have a great power, if we can only grasp it!”
A terrible wind swooped up behind them and the scene shifted strangely before their eyes. Where once stood the crumbling mountains and the dying sun now swayed a familiar landscape. The woods in which they had played Sun Age was swimming before their eyes. It was half materialized and half hazy as the whipping wind pushed and tugged at them. Ahead, they could still see Greylheim.
Lance drew his gunblade and aimed. As he did, Max used his magic to cast a spell on it to make it more accurate.
“You won’t have our kingdom, either!” Clare shouted. Her voice finally had an effect on the dragon’s mind, but only as she struck him with a blaze of starlight from her hand. She felt her powers over his mind. Touching this unearthly creature’s consciousness was like looking into the eye of a hurricane. She felt dizzy, wind-swept, and out of control except for the tiny hold she had found. He could destroy stars in Revary, but she was an earthling star.
He roared and clutched his head, his mind bending to her will.
“Stop!” she commanded.
The dragon flailed against her commands, but was grounded. “How?” he hissed through gnashed teeth.
They dashed after Greylheim as the scene again wavered and dissolved in front of them. He was trying to run. Now it was the school halls. The dragon had crashed through the fading walls and was attempting an escape through what would have been the locker rooms if they had finished materializing. With the two boys at her side, Clare felt more powerful. They gained on the dragon as he stumbled drunkenly away from their pressing attack. He was slowing down.
“Lance, aim,” she ordered.
Lance put the gunblade to his shoulder and aimed. Max’s spell for accuracy was still humming along the barrel. Clare put her hands on Lance’s shoulders, enveloping all three of them and the gun in her starlight. She didn’t know exactly what she was doing, but it felt right. She imagined the bullet leaving the gun like a shooting star and piercing Greylheim’s heart.
“Fire,” she whispered.
The thing that shot out of the barrel of the enchanted gun was exactly what she imagined. It streaked across the shifting scene and struck with a crack of thunder.
The dragon fell with a heavy crash, parts of his flesh and scales mauled by the astral bullet. Lance ran right up to the dragon’s desecrated chest, plunged the enchanted blade in, and fired.
They were back near the sundered Nether Gate. The vanishing and materializing had stopped and they all felt the effects as their stomachs clenched and churned. Lance pulled the sword out with all his strength.
Clare walked to face the fatally wounded dragon. “Now, servant of Umbra, know what kind of earthlings are working to protect our world and ensure the growing and nurturing of human hearts and minds. You will not corrupt us all.”
Greylheim tried to laugh, but the bullets had lodged in his throat making him gargle and spit hot, smelly dragon’s blood. “Little earthling, you are very brave. I am sorry, but even you cannot save your world for eternity. It must be done again and again.”
Lance laid his blade on the dragon’s neck. “Stop speaking in riddles.”
“You will save your world for a time,” he said. “But no earthling can stop the great Umbra forever. That is a task for another. You are all doomed.”
Clare motioned for Lance to prepare to strike. “We’ll find one story that will give humans hope for eternity,” she promised. “It exists. And that story is the greatest story ever told and will inspire for millennia. I am content to just be a small part of an eternal story.”
She stood before him, shining brightly, making him blink as he tried to match her gaze.
“There will be more like me. I am not the first.” His voice trembled as he tried to speak.
“There are more like us too,” Clare whispered.
Max held his hand out and enchanted the last bullet in Lance’s gunblade. Gripping the handle with his electric glove, he shot bolts of power through it to the tip of the blade. With Max’s magic hope, Clare’s light, and his strength, he brought the blade down, firing the last bullet and severing the head of the greatest servant of the darkness.
Clare exhaled long and loud.
“We slayed a dragon,” Max said softly. “How’d you do that?”
“Same way you do,” Lance panted, wiping hot blood off his face, his lips quirking up just in the corners into a satisfied smile.
Clare raised her brows and nodded. “He was too weak from his own poison. He had already let Umbra eat away at his strength. It helped us defeat him because he was only half as strong. But it cost us.”
She took a shuddering breath and shook her hands. There was still a tingling sensation from her newfound power. A power she had made up herself. But it was costing her too. She was trembling with weakness as well.
Then she choked trying to suppress a laugh, her fear shifting into hysteria. “Star powers, activate,” she giggled, shyly striking a pose with her fist in the air.
“Really?” Lance’s eyes went from the giant dead monster to Clare. He and Max joined her laughter over the bloody corpse.
Chapter 25
A Kingdom Like Heaven
“That,” the oracle breathed in the sil
ence that followed, “was a wonderful display of teamwork.”
Clare stood up from a brief respite, shaking her head and smiling weakly. “Is that all you can say?”
“It’s all I shall say. Look around. The corruption isn’t stopping. We need to move.”
With bleak hearts, they observed the planes. The clouds were still black, the starless sky was still torn, and the hole leading to the Other Plane was gaping wider and wider as they stood there.
“We have to run,” Max shouted. “It’s going to swallow us up!”
“To the ship,” Lance called and they all dashed back to the ladder, climbing desperately to the deck.
When they boarded, they saw that every crew member was gone. The whole ship was empty just like every plane of Revary now. They’d have to do it themselves.
“Forget it,” the oracle said as Lance began to quickly bark orders and how-to’s in a frantic voice. “We just have to go. See, the Golden Tree has fallen and is on this plane. Just go there. I am fading I think.”
It was true; his glow had gone and his eyes were turning white.
“Can the Golden Son help us?” Clare asked.
“He must be able to,” the oracle replied. “I don’t think I have the power any more. I’m…” he hesitated, fear clear on his face. “I’ve stayed too long. I’m Revarian now and my world is hardly alive.”
Remembering what Greylheim said about Revarians turning into corrupt thoughts and stories in her world, Clare wondered what would happen to an earthling when they stayed too long in Revary. The oracle had already tried to warn her about that. She didn’t want to find out now.
“Let’s go,” she said. “To the Golden Tree.”
Lance had to fight the terrible wind that had picked up. From the gaping hole that had once been a majestic mountain range, the black tendrils began to reach out and claw the earth, pulling it further and further in. He urged Max on as he spun the wheel to release the last of the special chemicals into the steam engine. With a hissing explosion, the Exorcist leapt forward, some of its sails flapping free from the ropes as the wind cut through them. Just ahead was the Golden Tree, sloping frighteningly to the right as the ground under it no longer supported its weight. Looking back, the earthlings watched Greylheim’s massive body tilt under the shifting earth and fall under at last. Clare wanted to cry for Galis, but her eyes wouldn’t allow the tears to come again.
There was nowhere for them to land the great airship so Max loosed the anchor down. It cracked through one of the beautiful platforms in the tree and held the ship in place against the wind. They quickly flipped the ladder over the side and slid down.
The Golden Tree was no longer glowing and shimmering like it had before. All the leaves were being torn from the elegant branches and drifting away in the wind into the darkness they could not see beyond. Running to the great doors, no other soul or being was met. Everyone was indeed gone.
“Leave your weapons out here,” the oracle said in a whisper. His voice was even fading now. “You won’t need them in there.”
Obeying, each earthling let go of their weapons and laid aside every defense they had. Max even dropped the Arcanum into the pile. After that, Clare looked up. The sky seemed to be pressing down on them as the ground vanished.
“What is that?” she asked the oracle. “Is the sky coming down?”
“Seems to be,” he replied. “Like Revary is collapsing in on itself. Like a great black hole.”
Without another word, Clare led them all inside at a dash. They were running out of time quickly. The sun was gone and ice was forming on every surface as the wind turned to a lethal chill. They entered the throne room of the Golden Son.
He was standing at the head of the round table like before. The white marble surface was no longer whole. It had sundered right down the middle and lay on either side of the Son at sad angles. He was facing the door as if he knew they would come in. Clare ran to him first.
“Please, we’ve destroyed Greylheim. Now save Revary!” she cried. But the tears still did not come.
Looking more like a king now than a child, but still young, the Golden Son’s eyes grew sad. His was a grief Clare recognized as her own. He wanted to help, but he couldn’t.
“It is not up to me,” he said quietly. Outside the wind tore at the Tree and a great crack was heard as part of it was torn away, falling into the blackness that was coming closer. “I am not an earthling. You must save this land. You and the earthlings with you now.”
She looked back to Lance and Max, who hurried to her side.
“Not just them.” The Golden Son smiled a little. “Every earthling who is reading your story now can help as well. I am like the dragon. I am neither Revarian nor of your world, but I serve one greater. You must take the lessons you have learned here back to your world and you must utilize them. Only then will Revary be saved.”
“Send us back,” Max said. “We’ll fix things there too.”
The Golden Son smiled and laughed lightly suddenly. “Brave Hero Maximus. You cannot save the entire world. That task it not for you or any other earthling.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?” Lance said a little irritably. “We can’t save this land, we can’t save ours. All those people died! We came here, put our lives in peril, and lost some of our friends for nothing?”
“No,” the Son said calmly and sternly to Lance. “You have seen how this world effects yours and how yours effects this one.” He faced Clare. “Tell me, sweet earthling girl, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
Clare stared in horror at first. How could he stand here and ask such a high school question while his kingdom, his entire world, was falling away to the worst corruption? But when his face didn’t change, she answered.
“I don’t know.”
He smiled at her, willing her to speak her mind.
She said, “I do know, but it’s not practical, and it’s not going to help anything now.”
“Your ideas are not worthless, Clare. Tell me what they are.”
She thought a moment. “I want to teach, maybe. I want to go to college and graduate school. I want to help kids and show them the joys of learning and utilizing their imaginations.”
“What is standing in your way?” he asked. “You leave school soon.”
She hesitated and crossed her arms, uncomfortable. “I need to be more practical.”
“Your plans sound very practical.”
Looking away she mumbled, “But I want to keep doing what I’m doing. I want to incorporate that into my teaching and stuff. Maybe.”
The Golden Son smiled. “Sun Age?”
She blushed. “Yeah.”
Now he nodded. “I understand. You must grow up. Leave childish things behind you. Clare, the children are your world’s future. How can you reach them if you put those things away? They need someone to teach them the meaning of all those stories. If they become so lost in their modern, fast-paced world with no one to make them slow down and see, dream, think, and be, then what will happen?”
Understanding dawned on her face. She stuttered as she spoke. “They’d be empty. They’d be so easily corrupted if they were allowed. Umbra would have a firmer hold on my world.”
He nodded. “You understand now how to save your world.
The boys smiled too as they understood. “Where does that put me?” Lance asked. “Football isn’t exactly brain food.”
“Never underestimate the power and inspiration of a good athlete,” the Son laughed. “Temper it with knowledge and knowledge with it.”
The oracle groaned from where he hung. His eyes were closed and his mouth hung open as he panted.
“Looks like you all have it figured out. Unlike me.”
“Do not think you were useless,” said the Golden Son. “Your story was bound with theirs. You just had to wait longer to see it done.”
Just then, the Golden Tree jerked violently to the right as the land underneath it began to give way.
The three earthlings held onto each other for support, arms clasped tightly around each other.
“That’s my cue then,” the oracle sighed. “Well done, you three. You have a wonderful story to tell now.” He sighed and let out all his breath.
Max untethered the head and put it between the three of them. They all knelt by him.
“Thank you,” Clare said. “You helped us so much. We couldn’t have done it without you. I wish we could have told your story so others would know it.”
The oracle smiled. “Some stories are meant to be mysteries. Mine will be one of those. They will ask, what did he do? Where did he go? Was he really good or bad? How did he come to stay there? Ah, that may be the biggest question of all.”
Clare nodded. “I did wonder.”
But the oracle didn’t reply. He smiled, closed his eyes, and never spoke again.
The three of them sat for a moment, but another cracking sound alerted them to the present again.
“We have to leave,” Clare said. “We need to go home and make things right.”
With a gut-churning suddenness, the Golden Tree dropped out from under them. The earth had at last given way and they were falling. Clare screamed and Max grasped her tightly in his arms as they tumbled and fell around the room. The sundered pieces of the round table fell against the walls and shattered into powder as they fell. In a moment of horror, one large piece fell and crushed the Golden Son under it. Clare screamed again.
“What do we do?” she cried over the sound of breaking marble, thunder, and howling wind.
“Let’s dream something up!” Max shouted.
“I can’t,” Clare replied in fright.
They slid across a wall and slammed hard into pieces of the Tree that had come loose. A large chunk flew and hit Lance square on the temple. He yelled in pain and blood spurted from the side of his head.
“Wait, I know what to do,” Max said, excited as they began to careen and tip again. “I was bit by that vampire. I say I turn into a true Revarian vampire from exposition to Revary and the power of the venom. With that, I can hold onto the wall and keep you safe.”
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