Hodera took a deep breath before responding through gritted teeth. “Of course, my Lord.”
“I know you hate them, my dear. I share your contempt for these rodents, but please remember that there are still Denarians with many useful gifts that can only aid in the Krunation cause. And they must be treated as such.”
“I understand, my Lord.”
“Good. You have ensured she is being treated well? And fed well to keep her strength?”
“Yes. Yes, she is very healthy,” Hodera answered, much to her own chagrin.
“A Denarian from the Quarteran clan that also possesses the Enterrand gift is precious. She is of no use to me if she is weak.” Hodera stifled her bitterness and simply nodded.
“With her help, Danaak will be properly punished, the Master’s gift will return to me and the Denarian race will finally be exterminated.” Nocterar stopped. The general thought she saw something in him sag. “But I must rest for now, Hodera. I leave you in command here.” His voice was noticeably diminished in strength. Nocterar turned and was swallowed up by the darkness, leaving Hodera alone.
Hodera slowly ascended the uneven steps toward the throne. She sensed the power emanating from this chair, and cautiously wrapped her hand in her flowing satin cape before wiping a shower of dust particles off the seat and into the icy air. The deep engravings on the magnificent chair gave it a sinister majesty. It would suit her well, but first, she would have it cleaned.
* * *
“How is he?” Matthew asked Zorribis in a worried tone as the Denarian shut Jason’s door behind him.
“He’s going to be just fine,” he answered. “Karini’s taking care of him and monitoring his body’s changes. More than anything, he needs to rest. Wait until you see him when he wakes up in the morning. Jason will be a new man.”
“I can believe that. If his changes are half as good as mine…”
Zorribis cut him off. “Oh, yours aren’t done yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“By the time you wake up tomorrow, you’re going to be taller and stronger than you are now. And just wait until you get to hold the sword. You’ll feel all of Excelsior’s lifeforce within you. It’s going to be a great day when he adds his power to yours. Before long, our people on Denab IV will be rejoicing.”
Matthew nodded and wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. It wasn’t from the heat. “Sometimes I don’t believe what’s happening.”
“Believe it, my friend. I have only heard of the transformation that Semminex made, but I can see it in your eyes. And seeing what you did earlier, how you changed the settings on the Krephth so that Karini could safely use it on Jason, only someone of Excelsior’s exceptional imagination and innovative abilities could do something like that.”
Matthew gulped down the ball of anxiety that was clogging his airway but still had to struggle to speak. “Can we… can we take a walk outside? I need to get some air.” He put out a hand to steady himself.
“Sure,” Zorribis said as he took Matthew by the arm and led him out of the house. Once outside, Zorribis put a paternal arm around Matthew’s shoulders. “Breathe. Just breathe, in, out, let your chest fill with air.” Zorribis’ powerful abdomen started rising and falling and Matthew tried to match his rhythm.
“Better?” Zorribis asked.
Matthew nodded. There was something solid about Zorribis that had a calming effect. “Thanks. I think I’m a little, uh...”
Zorribis nodded as he held Matthew at arm’s length. “I know. You appear a little better, Matty, but I sense tension is still there.”
Matthew looked into Zorribis’ face and felt a forgotten squeeze of longing for his father. “It’s just that a few days ago I thought I was making up these stories about Denab IV and Excelsior leading his people to ultimate victory and now…”
“And now you’re suddenly living in your own creation?”
“Exactly! Look at me. I’m in high school. How am I supposed to lead the people of Denab IV against the likes of Nocterar and Danaak and…”
“I remember hearing something from your video archives about how some individuals have greatness thrust upon them. Matthew, on Denab IV, there are many who have been called into action before they thought they were ready. I have seen these unready Denarians exceed all expectations and none of them have the gifts you possess even without holding the sword.” Zorribis motioned to the sidewalk. “Come with me, Matty.” Matthew decided to say nothing about the unexpected nickname. No one had called him Matty in years.
They headed down the sidewalk toward Northern Boulevard “Were you called before you were ready?” Matthew asked.
“No, I was not... No.” Zorribis fell silent.
Matthew glanced at Zorribis, then changed the subject. “How was it growing up on Denab IV?”
Zorribis smiled. “Well, our culture is very different than yours. I am not even sure I can find parallels.” Two teenage girls dressed in tight T-shirts walked past them. “For example, why do you wish for your young women to look like nursing mothers, but do not allow mothers to nurse in public?”
Warmth rushed into Matthew’s face. “Um... how do you know that?”
“Knowledge and learning are among our prime values. Long ago, the Elders made sure that every clan could educate their children, teach them everything from farming to science to literature to combat. My Uncle Mellatis taught me how to slay large predators and to conjugate verbs. Do you learn these things in your schools?”
“Not really. I don't know about combat or farming and I’m pretty lousy at conjugating verbs. How do you know all of this and not know about pizza?”
“We do that on purpose, no preconceptions regarding food on another planet. It allows us to keep our minds open.”
“I gotcha,” Matthew answered. “Do you have tests over there? I’ve never been a fan of them.”
“Oh yes, we have tests. We have what I think you call challenges or maybe, ‘rights of passage.’ There is one for each of our prime values. For my Challenge of Knowledge I proved the theorems of Elder Tricerus, the great mathematician. For my Challenge of Peace, I ran with the throngar. You must run with them in a way that allows them to accept your presence and remain untroubled.”
“Throngar?” Matthew could have sworn he had heard that word before, but he drew a blank.
“Trust me. Once you see them, you will know why you have to run peacefully with them. Or else you will not be running long.”
They turned onto Northern Blvd and walked in silence for a couple of blocks. “Zorribis?”
“Yes, Matty?”
“I get this weird feeling when you talk about Denab IV, like when your parents’ stories become so familiar, you’re not sure if you were there or if you just heard about it so much you imagined you were there.”
“It sounds as though Excelsior’s memories are rising and combining with yours.”
“It’s more than memories. I could see myself as Excelsior earlier today. I was walking with a group of Denarians and I was talking with this boy who said he had lost his mother.”
“That must have been Wilitar. Those who have been lucky enough to know Excelsior often share their stories. Wilitar was so proud of that encounter when Excelsior told him about his potential he told of it often. He is the fifth man on our team, very good with our technology. I think you’ll like him.”
Matthew smiled. “Is he home fighting the Krunations?”
“Yes, he is continuing the battle until we return. We’ve all been trained to defend and to restore. We await the day when Excelsior comes back to us and we’ll be able to rebuild.”
“What’s your family like?”
“My mother and father were…” Zorribis took a deep breath, then continued. “They were executed by General Hodera.”
“I’m sorry,” was all Matthew could say.
Zorribis nodded. “It happened when I was younger. I was welcomed into Karini’s clan. It was with them that I continued my educat
ion and I wound up falling in love with his sister, Niterra.”
Matthew smiled. “So there’s a woman in your life?”
“Not just a woman, THE woman. Very brave. She volunteered to spy on a Krunation outpost, but was injured just before we left.”
“You’re lucky to have someone to love,” Matthew said. “All I have is my uncle. My parents are both gone, too. I always thought that if I left tomorrow, nobody would notice me. But that was before I got to help my friend who was getting beaten up. Now all of a sudden, everyone wants to know more about me.”
“You do not have to worry about that place. If our plan goes well, you will leave here tomorrow.”
"Of course," Matthew said as they continued walking along the sidewalk. “Speaking of the plan, how exactly are you guys going to get the sword? I don’t know if Klierra told you, but museums have a lot of security and they don’t like to have their exhibits stolen.”
“Well, it’s a mixture of Denarian technology and my sharpshooting skills.”
Matthew stopped abruptly. “Wait a second. Sharp… SHOOTING? You’re going to shoot something at the sword to get it out? You have to walk me through this. How are you guys going to get the sword?” Matthew’s voice held the same command, a reflection of how he spoke when he confronted Nick and Kelly.
“We have what your history archives call a transporter. We simply call it a ‘flip device.’ The target is shot with a series of flips that activate a field that allows us to break down the matter into a signal, encode it and move it to another point. It was originally developed to remove the Krunations’ arms on the battlefield.”
“And the device is fired out of some kind of gun?”
Zorribis nodded. “I am my team’s finest marksman. The range between the flips and the transporter can be about twenty tronks, so we don’t have to be near the museum to get the sword.”
“You don’t understand. We need to come up with something better than a gun. Trying to steal a priceless artifact is one thing, but you’re gonna be seen by security and tour guides and other people and if you pull out something that looks like a gun and start…” Matthew stopped. “What’s a tronk?”
Zorribis pointed to the end of the block. “See the distance between the start of this walkway and the end right here?” Matthew nodded. “Twenty of those equal about one half of a tronk.”
“Oh, I get it. So forty of them equal one tronk. That helps. But it doesn’t matter what kind of range it has. You can’t shoot it onto the sword.”
“Guns are only allowed for your protection or entertainment. I’m sorry, Matthew, I had forgotten.” Zorribis shook his head.
“Let’s go back to my house. I have an idea,” Matthew said, turning toward home. When they walked through the door, Matthew led the Denarian upstairs to his room.
Once Matthew turned the light on, Zorribis saw the various Excelsior pictures and comic strips that were taped onto the walls. He gasped. “So you have been writing about our lives in these stories?”
“Well, not quite your life or Karini’s life. But I guess you can say it’s a good Denarian history lesson.”
Zorribis walked around the room, reflecting on the drawings on all the walls, and came across a very simple looking design beside Matthew’s bed. No color to the crude drawing. From what Zorribis could see, it looked like someone wearing a helmet that had two high points on the top and two triangles where the eyes were likely peering out. “What’s this?” he asked.
Matthew walked over. “This was the first sketch I ever did of Excelsior. The morning after I touched the sword, I had a vision and started drawing, but this was the best I could do at the time. My drawing’s gotten better over the years, and I wanted to keep a little bit of that original helmet since the character’s changed a lot. So I made some changes to the helmet design and--”
Zorribis cut him off. “And you made that design the centerpiece of the sword.”
“Right. And now it looks a lot more like the sword that’s up in the museum. So let me what you have to shoot onto the sword. I have an idea to make it a little bit more self-contained so you don’t have to use the gun. Oh, there's one more thing.”
“What's that?” Zorribis asked.
“This 'Matty' thing. Let's keep that just between us, okay?”
CHAPTER 8
The cramping in Matthew's hand came just as he finished the last pencil line in his drawing. He sat back and shook both hands, loosening up the fingers as he admired his work. The landscapes finally looked the way they should be, his vision of Denab IV so clear that the mountains could have been traced from a photograph.
Matthew squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and when he opened them, the paper had suddenly grown twice its size. He felt his eyelids getting heavy and massaged his brow with one hand, “Must have been working too hard.”
He lifted his pencil and noticed it was heavier than normal. It was a little larger, too.
“What the hell?” The pencil slipped from his grasp and fell to the floor. His next words stuck in his throat as he looked down at his feet. Any other night they were planted firmly on the floor, but tonight, they dangled with several inches of air beneath them.
Matthew grabbed the arms of his chair – which were further apart than they were before – and pushed himself off. He expected to hit the floor immediately, but an extra second of freefall caused him to yell in fear. When he hit the floor, he went limp and rolled, hoping to minimize any chance of injury.
He stood up, looked around his room and gasped. His chair towered over him, the seat ten feet away from the top of his head. The pencil he dropped was now half his size. Matthew started to hyperventilate as he began to walk out of the room, but with every turn of his head, everything around him grew taller.
He tried to yell again, but this time, no sound escaped his lips. Beads of sweat poured down Matthew’s face when he heard thundering footsteps that felt like small tremors. A looming shadow suddenly blocked out the light and he slowly looked up to see its source.
Matthew gazed upon what looked like a 20-foot-tall cut-out of Excelsior. This particular version of Denab IV's savior was a design that Matthew hadn't drawn since he first tried capturing him on paper seven years ago. Excelsior was black and white with no contouring; his yellow eyes the only color. He was a paper doll drawn by a child and just about as anatomically correct. However, this didn't make him look any less threatening or soften the fear as Matthew stared up at him.
The giant two-dimensional figure opened its mouth to speak and raised its right foot off the ground directly over Matthew's head.
Excelsior's voice boomed through the room with a mixture of authority and pity. “I… am… sorry!”
The giant foot came down. Matthew screamed.
* * *
The screaming echoed in the bedroom as Matthew bolted upright into a sitting position, his eyes still wide in terror. He looked around the room - all of his furniture was the correct size. He untangled his feet from the sweaty sheet and swung them over the side of the bed, taking a deep breath of relief as they easily hit the floor. Odd. The legs of his pajama pants were halfway up his calf. Matthew stood and tugged at his waistline. The beautiful abs he received remained as flat as yesterday, but somehow the pants felt as if they’d shrunk in the night. He stood and stretched.
Rip! Matthew looked down and saw his shoulder muscles bulging out of the armholes of his pajama top. He took the shirt off and rolled it into a ball and fired it into the trash basket in the corner of his room. Bulls-eye. Was it his imagination or did the distance to the corner of the room seem shorter this morning?
Matthew gave a shudder, thinking of his dream. Everything was changing, his body, his uncle, his life and most frighteningly, his identity. Today he would hold the sword of Excelsior. He wondered if any amount of instant conditioning would make him strong enough to carry it.
* * *
Carl sat quietly at his console, his eyes glazing over as they stayed fixed
on the monitor. He seemed so spaced out that it took Melissa six finger pokes on his shoulder to get any sort of response. On the sixth poke, Carl snapped.
“Stop it!” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “How long have you been doing that?”
“Long enough to see the line of drool coming out of the corner of your mouth,” Melissa said. When Carl moved his hand to wipe his mouth and felt nothing, Melissa smiled. “Made you look.”
“So mature.”
“I'd ask if you were dreaming about me, but I already know the answer to that.”
Carl smiled back at her. “You know me so well.” He then looked back at the monitor. Everything was unchanged. “How long do I have to keep looking at that thing in the chamber?”
“Oh, you mean, Ritgen-Man?'” Melissa rolled her eyes as she exaggerated the name. “You know that Teddy is taking full credit for this regeneration miracle. If we don’t watch the monitor and contact Dr. Ritgen as soon as we see something new we’ll be Teddy’s academic bitches forever.” She hopped onto the console and crossed her legs, then looked down at Carl. “By the way, it will sound really good during your oral dissertation when you call him a thing.”
“Listen catty, I’m not stupid,” Carl responded. “So what do you think that thing is?”
“I don't know, and quite frankly, I don't care. A desiccated corpse can’t regenerate living tissue, it’s against the laws of nature. It’s obviously some sort of elaborate hoax and we’ll be the idiots who fell for it.”
Suddenly a monitor grabbed Carl’s attention. He leaned forward to get a closer look and cranked a dial to get the camera to zoom in.
“What's up?” Melissa asked.
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