Perhaps I was reading too much into that simple glance. I didn’t really know what she was thinking, all those years ago. Here, wait a second. I’ll go talk to her.
. . .
Okay, I asked her and she says yup, that’s exactly what she does. Also, she said, ‘If you’re writing about the fall of Tuki Tuki, you’d better make certain to include that part where we caught you frolicking in the zoo naked. I think you were seriously going crazy there, cousin.’
Ahem. Let it be known that I was not frolicking. And the naked part ended the moment a Mokian woman in the glass owl brought me one of those colorful islander wraps they wear, and so I tied it on. There is NO MORE NUDITY. You can proceed with acting out the rest of this, if you want.
I stood on my head while singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and juggling seventeen live trout with my feet.
Oh, wait. I hope you weren’t wearing only a Mokian wrap like me. Sorry about that.
Aluki rushed up the gangplank a moment later, holding his spear. ‘The Librarians have liberated the captives in the zoo and the university! That’s what they must have gone to do after letting you go, Your Majesty.’
‘Shattering Glass!’ I said. My mother was free now. Her captivity hadn’t lasted long.
And I still didn’t know what I believed and what I didn’t. However, as I looked out of the cargo bay of the Owlport, I saw several Librarians fly their mechanical bats right into the walls of the glass dome. It shattered finally, falling in. The larger forces of Librarians outside the city surged into Tuki Tuki.
The city was burning. Huts aflame. People fought and warred in the night. Screams rang in the air. Shadowy groups moved against one another, struggling. In the background, an enormous force of Librarians – with hulking battle robots and wicked rifles – marched in through the open gap.
At that moment, I understood what it was to be in the middle of a war. And I came to a horrifying revelation.
The Knights of Crystallia were no cavalry come to rescue. Two hundred people, no matter how skilled, could not turn the tide of this entire war.
Tuki Tuki was going to fall anyway.
‘Let us be going,’ Draulin said, waving to a Mokian who was in contact with the flight deck.
‘Going?’ Kaz said as the gangplank was raised.
‘Back to Nalhalla,’ Draulin said, folding her armored arms. ‘We came here to get Alcatraz, after all. Now we can go back.’
‘What? No!’ Kaz said. ‘We have to fight! That’s why we brought you here, Draulin! Lower that gangplank!’
I simply stared out at the horrific scene.
Draulin stepped up beside me. ‘I’m not certain if I should curse you for forcing us into this nightmare,’ she said to me, ‘or if I should bless you for giving us the excuse to come and fight. Many of us wanted to, even though we knew it was hopeless. To fight in one great battle against the Librarians, rather than suffering as they slice us apart kingdom by kingdom.’
‘Draulin?’ Kaz said. ‘Blasted woman. You knights are all—’
‘She’s right,’ I said as the owl began to lift off. ‘I can see it. Even with the knights, Mokia can’t win. If you’d thought you could make a difference, you would have come and helped, wouldn’t you?’
‘It was a difficult decision to make,’ Draulin said, and I could see that her eyes were solemn. Agonized. ‘It was the decision of a surgeon with two patients, one less wounded than the other. Do you abandon the more wounded, let them die while helping the one you can save? Or do you try to help the more wounded, and risk losing them both? We thought Tuki Tuki beyond help. Many of us still wanted to come help.’
‘So you’re just giving up?’ Kaz demanded.
‘Of course not,’ Draulin said. ‘Now that we’re here, we will fight. And die. But my duty is to get Alcatraz – and you other two – to safety. My brothers and sisters will fight.’
And fail. The owl got higher, and I could see just how big the Librarian army was.
I’d done it again. I’d thought I was saving Tuki Tuki, but I hadn’t. Just like helping my father had been turned against me, I found my efforts here twisted on their heads. Not only would Tuki Tuki fall, but the majority of the Knights of Crystallia would be destroyed as well.
I’d accomplished nothing.
When I was young, trying not to break things had only made it worse. Fix Joan and Roy dinner, but burn down their kitchen. Polish my foster father’s car, but break it apart instead. It was all coming back to me, the times when the Talent dominated my life.
Things change. Perspectives change. The knights hadn’t been cowards for refusing to help Tuki Tuki. They’d made a difficult decision, the right decision. But I’d forced them to come anyway, turning a huge disaster into a colossal one.
‘We’re just going to . . . leave them?’ Kaz said.
‘This ship has the king and queen on board,’ Draulin said. ‘There’s a chance that we might be able to bring them out of their coma in Nalhalla.’ She didn’t sound like she believed it was very likely. ‘You’ve accomplished what you wished. Now, at the very least, allow me to salvage something from the fall of this city.’
My heart was a tempest of emotions, my mind a tempest of thoughts. I didn’t know what to feel or think. How could everything have turned upside down so quickly? The arrival of the Knights of Crystallia was supposed to save things, not make it worse.
‘What of my father?!’ Kaz said.
‘Lord Smedry is leading the evacuation of the children and the wounded,’ Draulin said. ‘He will leave with them.’
In the midst of my heart arguing with my mind arguing with my soul, one single thought pressed through the others. Something I could grab on to, something I could hold on to, something real.
Bastille was still down there. And she needed me.
I ran through the Owlport, leaving Draulin and Kaz behind. The ship rose high, passing through the hole in the dome – the one atop the city, not the one that had been broken in the side. Glass rooms passed beneath my feet and to my sides, but most of these Nalhallan vehicles were constructed with the same general layout. I burst into the flight deck a moment later, Draulin and Kaz chasing behind me, calling out, sounding confused.
Aydee and a Nalhallan man I didn’t recognize were in the piloting seats. ‘My name is Alcatraz Smedry,’ I said loudly, ‘and I’m taking command of this vessel.’
The man blinked at me in shock, but Aydee just shrugged. ‘Okay, I guess.’
‘Fly us down there,’ I said, pointing at the Librarian army camp outside the city. I could see the place where they’d taken Bastille.
‘Lord Smedry,’ Draulin said, voice disapproving. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Saving your daughter.’
Draulin showed a moment of indecision. ‘She’d want you safe, she is a knight and—’
‘Tough,’ I said. ‘Aydee, take us down.’
‘All right . . .’ Aydee said, steering the Owlport. The vehicle wasn’t terribly maneuverable – it was meant as a troop transport – and kind of lumbered through the air as Aydee flew it down toward the Librarian camp.
Most of the Librarians were invading Tuki Tuki, and the Librarian camp itself was relatively quiet. There were some guard posts and a couple of thousand Librarians as a reserve force. The prisoner tent was at the back portion of the camp, and the flaps began to blow as the Owlport flew down low.
A dozen or so guards raced out of the building. ‘Hey, Aydee,’ I said. ‘If we’ve got six plus six guards, how many is that?’
‘Er . . . four?’
‘Good enough,’ I said, and suddenly there were only four guards, the other eight having been sent away somewhere by Aydee’s Talent. Hopefully they wouldn’t cause too much trouble there. ‘Draulin, Kaz, four guards for you.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ Kaz said, Warrior’s Lenses in place. He raised his pistols as the Owlport settled down, face forward, resting on its belly.
Draulin gave me a suffering look, but opened a sid
e door with steps down to the ground, and then followed Kaz out. They charged to engage the Librarian guards.
That was mostly a distraction. I took the other door out and slid down the wing. The floor of the camp was made up of packed-down jungle leaves and fronds, trampled flat by Librarian feet during the months of their siege. They rustled as I ran around to the back of the tent and slipped in.
The Librarians had left their captives lying in rows. I found Bastille near the center of the row, lying asleep in her tight white shirt and uniform pants. There were several dozen others in the tent, all Mokians. Officers or generals who the Librarians had considered valuable as prisoners.
I felt horrible for leaving them behind, but there wasn’t much I could do. It was foolish of me to come even for Bastille, since we probably wouldn’t be able to wake her up. But with Tuki Tuki falling, with all of the mistakes I’d made, I had to try to do something.
I slung Bastille over my shoulder and – teetering (she’s kind of heavy, but don’t tell her I said that) – I jogged back out the way I had come. Draulin was dusting off her hands, Kaz holstering his pistols, the four Librarian guards unconscious on the ground before them.
And then a cannonball crashed through the Owlport, smashing in the side, blowing off one of the wings.
I stumbled to a halt. Another cannonball followed, smashing off the owl’s feet and toppling the massive vehicle to its side. I could hear Aydee inside crying out as it fell. A Librarian cannon team had set up nearby. The reserve force of Librarian soldiers was running out in front of it.
‘No!’ I cried.
Draulin shot me a withering gaze, something that said, ‘This is your fault, Smedry.’ Then she pulled out her sword and rushed at the Librarians. ‘Run!’ she yelled at me. ‘Lose yourself in the forest!’
I just stood there. I couldn’t carry Bastille with me, and I wouldn’t leave her.
Draulin charged against an army of several hundred. That seemed a metaphor for everything that had gone wrong in this whole siege. But instead of making me feel sick or depressed like it had earlier, this just made me feel angry.
‘Go away!’ I screamed at the advancing Librarians. ‘Leave us alone!’
Something stirred inside of me, something that felt immense. Like an enormous serpent, shifting, moving, awakening. ‘I want everything to make sense again!’ I screamed. Saving Bastille had turned out like everything else. Draulin and Aydee would get captured because of me, and Bastille would remain in a coma.
I’d failed Bastille.
I’d failed the Mokians.
I’d failed the entirety of the Free Kingdoms.
It was too much. It seemed to well up inside of me. Rocks around me began to shatter, popping like popcorn. The tent behind me frayed, the bits of threads that made it coming undone and falling apart.
There had been a time when I hadn’t known how to control my Talent. When I hadn’t tried to. I went back to that time.
Alcatraz the First had named the Breaking Talent the ‘Dark Talent.’ Well, sometimes darkness can serve us, work for us. It welled up inside me, bursting free, rising above me like an enormous and terrible cloud.
Reports of that day are conflicting. Some people say they could see the Talent take shape, like an enormous serpent with burning eyes, insubstantial and incorporeal. Others only felt the massive earthquake I caused, shaking the ground all around, breaking enormous rifts around Tuki Tuki.
I didn’t notice any of that. I was in the middle of what felt like an intense storm, spinning around me like a cyclone. It tried to get free, tried to rip completely out of me, and I held to it, clinging, trying to force it back inside.
Reports say it lasted only for the length of two heartbeats. It felt like hours to me as I struggled, both terrified and in awe of the thing I’d let loose. With a heave of strength, I pulled it back into me. In a second, it was contained.
I blinked, standing in the night. There were a dozen enormous cracks in the ground around me. The Librarians who had been running for me had been knocked to the ground.
Unfortunately, the fighting in Tuki Tuki was still going on, however. I wasn’t done. I took the thing inside of me and suddenly knew what to do with it. I reached down, pulling the single remaining Bestower’s Lens from the pouch at my pocket. I knelt beside Bastille, who lay on the ground beside me. I brushed back her hair and exposed her Fleshstone. It was crystalline and pure, translucent, like an enormous diamond set into the skin of her neck.
That stone connected all of the Knights of Crystallia together. I raised the Bestower’s Lens and looked into the Fleshstone, willing my Talent to pass into the stone.
It refused to move. It seethed within me, angry that I had stopped it from destroying. I gritted my teeth, angry, but I was feeling exhausted from all that had happened. I couldn’t force it.
So I tried a different tactic. I need to trick it, I thought. Grandpa had to be tricked into thinking he was late so that he could arrive early. Aydee had to be confused by numbers so that she could add wrong.
What did I need to make my Talent work? I need to think it’s breaking something important, I realized. Always, during my childhood, the Talent had acted to shatter, destroy, or break things that were very important to me or to those who cared for me. As I realized this, I found myself hating it again. But there was no time for that.
I focused on the Fleshstone, and I thought about how much I cared for Bastille. How important she’d become to me recently, and how if that stone broke, she’d die. The Talent – gleeful for something to destroy – snapped from me, but I raised the Bestower’s Lens and channeled it, sending the Talent into Bastille’s Fleshstone.
I felt an immediate draining within me as something very powerful was pulled through that Lens and sent into the stone on Bastille’s neck.
It sapped me, sucked away what strength I had left. Everything went dark, and I collapsed.
∞ + 1
Three hours later, the sun rose over a broken city.
I sat up in my bed, looking out the window. Tuki Tuki was in shambles; many of the huts had collapsed. Broken spears, bits of metal, and shards of glass lay peppering the lawns of fallen homes. Bits of trash blew in the wind.
There were no bodies, but I could see blood. The bodies had been removed.
‘Ah, lad, you’re awake.’
I turned to find my grandfather sitting in the chair beside my bed. I was in the palace, one of the few buildings that hadn’t fallen during the earthquake.
‘What happened?’ I asked softly, raising a hand to my head. It throbbed.
‘You saved us,’ he said. He seemed . . . oddly subdued. For my grandfather, at least. ‘My, my, lad,’ he said. ‘That was something incredible you did! I’m . . . not even sure what it was, but it was something incredible indeed!’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘The Librarian weapons fell apart,’ Grandpa said. ‘In the middle of the battle. Every gun, grenade, cannon, robot, everything they had. It all just . . . well, lad, it broke.’
I could hear drums. The Mokians were having a celebration. How could they celebrate when their city was in shambles?
Because they still have a city, I thought. Broken though it is.
‘How are you feeling, lad?’ Grandpa asked, scooting his chair closer to me. ‘Fine, actually,’ I replied. ‘Tired. No, exhausted. But remarkably good.’
‘Well, that’s great. Fantastic, in fact! Excellent to hear.’ He seemed hesitant about something. ‘I don’t want to push, lad, but . . . do you mind me asking what you did?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I knew that the Fleshstones on the necks of the Crystin are all connected. And once, when using the Bestower’s Lenses you gave me, I loaned someone else my Talent. So I figured . . . well, if I gave my Talent to all of the Knights at once, while they were fighting, it would work for them like it did for me. It would destroy the weapons of the Librarians when they tried to fire.’
My grandfather see
med disturbed. ‘Ah . . .’ he said. ‘Yes, very clever, very clever.’
‘It wasn’t supposed to be clever,’ I said, grimacing. ‘It just kind of . . . happened. But it looks like it worked.’
‘Oh, it worked,’ Grandpa said. ‘Maybe better than you thought . . .’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Well, lad, here’s the thing. You didn’t just break the weapons of the Librarians who were fighting here. You broke them all, every weapon being wielded by a Librarian anywhere in Mokia. In one moment, they all shattered, broke, fell apart.’ Grandpa raised a hand to his head, scratching at the fluffy white hair there. ‘They’ve retreated, called off the war, and gone back to the Hushlands. The Mokians have named you a national hero.’
I sat back, stunned.
‘Already the news is spreading through the Free Kingdoms,’ Grandpa said. ‘This is the first time the Librarians have been turned back from taking a kingdom they were besieging. It’s being called a miracle. You’re a hero, lad. Everyone is talking about it.’
‘I . . .’ I felt odd. I should have felt like celebrating, jumping up and screaming for joy. But I still felt troubled and worried. Something inside of me had changed. Being forced to confront my conceptions of what was right and what was wrong, who was good and who was evil, had changed me.
I didn’t want to celebrate, I wanted to hide. The world was a scary place. My Talent terrified me suddenly, even after I’d used it to save so many.
‘Lad,’ Grandpa said. ‘Do you know when the Talents . . . might come back?’
I felt a chill. ‘What do you mean?’
‘None of them work anymore,’ Grandpa said. ‘Me, Kaz, Aydee . . . no more Talents. They’re gone.’
Hesitantly, I reached out and touched the bed frame, engaging my Talent. But nothing happened. It wasn’t like before, when I felt reluctance within me. Now there was just a void, an emptiness where my Talent had once been.
I let it out, I thought. It can’t be! I contained it, kept it from destroying! I pulled it back in!
But I’d done something else. I’d . . . well, somehow, I’d broken the Smedry Talents.
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