by Rain Oxford
“I think my brain must be leaking,” I said privately to Merlin.
“Did you think the exact same as him the exact same time he said it?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting.”
“No, it’s not. It’s creepy and annoying. Just because we look the same don’t mean we are anything alike.”
Adel went to a clump of foliage next to the wall and started pulling apart the vegetation. She soon revealed a stiff tan blanket, which she yanked off a machine. It was made primarily of black metal, with gold front and back ends. The front half was just a rounded block of metal. The back half consisted of two rows of red leather seats, one facing the front, one facing the back. The machine had wheels like a wagon, but they were black, not wooden. From the front to the back wheel on each side of the car was a gold-colored, wooden step.
“What is that?”
“A car. If you liked the carts, you’ll love this.”
“Oh, no. Please, no,” Yuri said.
Merlin threw up.
It took Adel a while to start the car, which she did by opening the front end of it and setting some wood on fire. The wood was in a small cage. “How does it work?” I asked.
“The wood burns, creating heat, which travels through that pipe there and heats the water in the steam tank. The water molecules expand and turn to vapor, which pushes a piston that powers the pump. Get it?”
“No, but keep going.”
“That’s it, really.”
“Do you have any books that explain it more?”
“Well, yes, but they’re really just designs and instructions. They’re not stories.”
“That’s fine. If I read what it does and see what it looks like, I can probably figure out how it works.”
She smiled. “Do you want to learn how to drive it?”
“Absolutely.”
She used the step to climb into the car smoothly, not unlike one would mount a horse. I followed her lead and sat in the seat beside her. In front of me was a metal panel covered in glass circles and squares. In front of her was a wooden wheel, which looked similar to the wheel of a ship.
“Is there a sail?” I asked.
“No need.” She pointed to one of the glass circles. Through it, I saw four gold circles and a gold spike. “That is the most important gauge in the car. It tells you if any gobrin bigger than the car is near.”
“Oh. What if there is?”
“Then you’d better drive faster or get out of the way.”
Merlin and Yuri got into the back seat and watched.
“This one here,” she said, pointing out more gauges, “tells you if there is anyone on the road, coming the opposite direction. If that happens, you have to stop the car and flip this switch.” She flipped a tiny lever into the upward position and I got an instant headache. Merlin growled furiously and Yuri covered his ears. “Make it stop!” the prince yelled.
Adel did. “Once they signal back, you can both continue until you meet and very carefully pull off the road in order to pass each other.”
“I don’t know what that has to do with the car.”
“You will.” She pulled out a knob on the right side of the wheel and pushed it back in. “This is the pump that gives the car power. If we have to run from something, we pump this. Not too much, though, or it’ll blow out the engine.” She pumped it twice more before the car started growling.
“It’s mad now!” Yuri said.
I aimed my staff at it, but Adel calmly put her hand on the crystal of my staff and lowered it. “This is why we’re taking the car and not the plane. It’s not alive.” She grabbed a lever on the left side, which was all the way down. “And this gives the car speed. She slowly pushed it up and suddenly, the car lurched forward.
Before I could voice my shock, the car was moving steadily. It was like a carriage, except without the horse or the top half of it. Once that concept dawned on me, I realized it was no scarier than being on a unicorn.
“This is better than the crates!”
“I’m going to be sick,” Yuri said, trying to sink down to the floor of the car. Merlin was… being sick off the other side.
The car followed the cliff until there was a break in the jungle. A narrow road had been carved through the foliage, which was barely wide enough to accommodate the car. Nevertheless, that was where we went, and we steadily gained speed until we were going twice as fast as a horse and almost as fast as a unicorn.
“Can I get one of these for Caldaca?” I asked Merlin.
“When goats fly.”
“I can definitely make that happen!”
“I will bite you.”
I was quiet for a moment, trying to think of some way to convince Merlin that we needed a car. Then I asked Adel, “Can I sail it?”
“No!” Yuri and Merlin shouted at once.
* * *
Eventually, the jungle thinned out and the road widened slightly. The trees were still massive and the air was still hot and humid, it just wasn’t as dense. In areas where we could see the sky through the trees, there were white bars that started on one side of the road and curved in the sky to touch down on the other side. Adel said that these were designed to keep the flying predators from attacking the car, but I thought they looked more like perches for the flying predators.
Giant gobrin roared in the distance or cawed in the sky. I watched the gauge closely, but it didn’t say anything. “Are you sure this is working?”
“Yes. You’ll know if a gobrin larger than the car comes within range.”
“Because we’ll see it,” Yuri said. By this point, he had gotten used to the car and didn’t seem to be bothered by it.
Merlin wasn’t doing so well. “We will be fine,” Merlin said, lying in the seat. He had nothing left in his stomach. “Monsters rarely like fast food.”
It sounded like he was making a joke, so I ignored it and focused my attention on Yuri to distract myself from the fear of being eaten. “You’re immortal. Why are you so afraid of the cars?”
“You heard Alice. With the egg, I’m immortal. Without it, I’ll die.”
“She said that you would be immortal for as long as the egg is safe. I’m sure that if it was destroyed, you wouldn’t be able to track it.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. I’m simply not ready to give up yet. Besides, if you would take my wand, maybe you wouldn’t feel so defenseless.”
“I don’t use other people’s wands!”
“Stubborn goat.”
“Smelly peasant.”
I stood. “Conceited ponce!”
He stood. “Ugly… I mean…” he stammered.
“Call me ugly to your face again!”
“Children, behave.”
“Turn left!” Yuri and I said simultaneously. Then we both blushed and sat back in our seats simultaneously.
Adel swerved off the road and kept on going. This made the ride even bumpier than before, and she had to focus all her attention on dodging trees.
“Are you sensing the egg as well now?” Merlin asked.
“No. And if I am, it’s because of my galaxy stone, not because of Yuri.”
“You do realize that the chances of you looking identical and not somehow being---”
“Merlin, no. For once in my life, I’m happy being me. I’m not ready for there to be another me.”
“There is a thought. Perhaps he is you.”
“What did I just say?”
“I have explained that there are many worlds. Consider, for a moment, that there are numerous realities overshadowing each world.”
“I don’t get it.”
But he wasn’t listening; he was thinking in my head. He called it teaching, I called it annoying. The one time I said this, however, he told me that he had to use my head, because his was too full and mine wasn’t.
“For each choice a person makes, he creates a future based on that choice. Seers can predict the consequences of our choi
ces.”
“Merlin.”
“For example, say that a man chooses between two women, and we will call them Sally and Suzie. If he marries Sally, he will have two children and live until he is eighty. He affects many people and his children affect many people. They have children who affect more people. He has essentially created a reality. However, if he chooses Suzie, well, it turns out she’s barren. Also, he gets run over by a reindeer two days later because he had to run out and get some milk for her. Now think of all those people he didn’t affect. He has created a completely different reality.”
“I’m going to jump out of the car and die, Merlin.”
“My point is that there are so many of these realities, perhaps there was one in which you were born to wizards instead of sorcerers. Of course, that makes no sense at all if you were born on any world other than Caldaca.”
“I’ve been checking on Kalyn with Mason’s magic mirror every night since she left and I’m not really sure why.”
“It could be that when the black star was at its peak, some of reality started to unravel on account of Caldaca being a world based on magic. Maybe an alternate version of you ended up misplaced in our reality.”
“I lied; I do know why. I’m going to ask Kalyn to marry me.”
“Then again, it begs the question of genetics; your parents both have black hair and you have blond. You have blond hair because your magic is primarily light and that is a well-known concept on Caldaca. It is also rather insensitive of the world, to make everyone with dark magic have dark hair. I have dark hair and I would hardly consider myself a sorcerer.”
“I have the perfect plan to defeat Zuras. It’s so great that I’m not even going to tell you what it is. Just know that it will be huge.”
“So, is he some alternative version of you, is he somehow connected biologically, or are you two so similar of heart that the extremely specific combination of physical characteristics happened to occur twice at roughly the same time? Perhaps the un-hatched dragon has more answers.”
“Thaddeus and Mason are getting married.”
“What?” he asked, blinking as if I had appeared in midair.
“Welcome back.”
“What did you say about Thaddeus and Mason?”
I shrugged. “I was only trying to get your attention. You are so weird sometimes.”
He sighed. “And you, young sorcerer, are so oblivious sometimes.”
Before I could decide whether or not I wanted to ask what he meant, Adel stopped the car. Yuri had been giving her instructions while Merlin and I were distracted. We were at a house, smaller than my mother’s cabin looked from the outside. The walls were primarily glass windows with some stone to support them and wood to frame them. The roof was curved and reflective like a black mirror.
“This isn’t on the road. No one should be living out here on their own,” Adel said, getting out of the car.
I heard a loud crash and someone shouted with distress.
Chapter 8
It took a lot of convincing, but eventually, Adel agreed to wait outside and guard the car in case we needed to escape suddenly.
We went inside… because that was apparently the thing to do when there was the obvious sign of a battle inside. I pushed up my goggles, mostly to give my eyes a break, and was relieved to see that the sunlight wasn’t blinding in the house.
The inside was small and cramped. Tables lined every wall, but there wasn’t a single speck of visible surface. They were piled high with scraps of metal, gears, springs, bottles of oils and powders, books, and tools. There was no organization whatsoever. Every scrap of wall and half of the windows were covered in drawings of machines, most of which had wings or sails.
In the center of the room, a statue of a creature stood, posed in a striking position. It was unmistakably reptilian. Although we didn’t have many reptiles on Caldaca, I had seen a lizard before. It was considerably less intimidating than this creature.
Green and brown, scaly skin, yellow diamond eyes, and wicked claws made me glad it wasn’t a creature native to my world. Its mouth was posed closed, but I had no doubt it contained sharp teeth.
It was a biped, though its arms were long and thin, held inward as if their length was a hindrance, and the creature slumped over as if it was meant to be a quadruped. Its tail was thick and long, ending in a thin whip. On each hand and foot were three black claws as long as my hand.
As if the weapons it was born with weren’t frightful enough, it was also covered in shiny metal armor. This was not part of the statue; someone had put real armor and a real saddle on the statue. They were planning on riding one of these creatures.
This wasn’t the focus of the room, however; Zuras was in the middle of a duel with another man. Zuras was using a short, fat, metal wand, which emitted a thin beam of red light that was half the length of my staff. Instead of casting curses, however, he held it like a sword. His opponent was a short, scrawny, old man with white hair and sky-blue eyes. He wore goggles that made his eyes look huge. He was also fighting with magic.
He didn’t have a wand, but he kept blasting fireballs at Zuras. Zuras blocked them with his light beam, which absorbed the flames.
A thud made me turn to see Yuri on the floor, clutching his head in pain. I pointed my staff at Zuras’s wand. “Brjóta!” I yelled. Blue magic struck his metal wand and disintegrated it.
Merlin had been teaching me dragon magic since we learned I could do it and especially since we learned how I could do it. It was a greater strain on my energy and I had to really feel what I wanted, but it was far more powerful. Most importantly, my wand or staff could misinterpret my normal magic; it couldn’t misinterpret my dragon magic. If I doubted myself, said the word wrong, or didn’t desire it enough, my dragon magic would fail. If I screwed up my normal magic, I was likely to make things worse.
We now had Zuras’s full attention, and he couldn’t have looked more shocked to see us. “How did you follow me?”
“We have our ways. Give up the dragon egg. You can leave and we’ll go back home.”
“You can’t defeat me!”
“That’s not our intention. We just want the egg.”
“He is here for something,” Merlin said.
“Saving the egg comes before recovering stolen goods.”
“That is not my point.”
Just then, the stranger who had been fighting Zuras struck the sorcerer in the chest with a fireball. Zuras flew back. The old man was huffing and puffing with his arms stretched out.
I tried to help Yuri up, but he flinched away, so instead, I approached Zuras cautiously, my staffed aimed at his chest. He groaned. “How are you doing this to Yuri?” I asked.
“I’m not doing anything to him,” he said, clutching his chest.
Yuri showed no sign of recovering, which told me Yuri had been right; it was the egg, not Zuras. It occurred to me that the egg could contain a malevolent dragon. Zuras’s robe was open, revealing two small pouches in addition to the larger one, which I hoped contained the egg. I reached down to grab it, only to see his hand move towards his pocket. I stabbed his hand with the end of my staff, which left me vulnerable to Zuras’s kick.
Fortunately, his aim was off and I was kicked in the thigh instead of where he had intended. I ended up tumbling over my staff and landing next to him. He rolled and snatched my staff out of my hand. He stood above me, laughed triumphantly, and said, “Now you will pay for pursuing the mighty Doctor Time!”
“I thought you had named yourself Captain Chaos.”
“I changed it!”
He could have swung the staff down, bashed it into my head, and killed me instantly. Instead, he wanted to gloat.
Merlin leapt onto a table, and as the mountain of junk started to slide off, he jumped up and latched onto a chain handle. He pulled it down with his weight, causing gears and chains to rattle. A ladder above Zuras released and hit Zuras in the face. The sorcerer went down. Only then did I notice
that there was a second level to the house.
Pushing that out of my mind, I scrambled to my feet and grabbed my staff. By then, Zuras had pulled another device out of his pocket, which looked similar to the grow-ray, except it was light blue. He aimed it at the stranger. “You think you’re so smart to blast me with fire!”
Merlin slammed himself into the side of the same table he had cleared and flipped it on its side.
The stranger opened his mouth to speak.
“Silence!” Zuras shrieked. “Tremble before Doctor Time and his freeze-ray!”
Merlin was already shoving the table towards the stranger by the time blue light spewed from the device. An instant before it was too late, the table intercepted the path of the blue light and became encased in ice. The ground was also covered in ice, however, and Merlin couldn’t stop in time to avoid it. He slid across the ice and into the wall. Zuras turned the freeze-ray on me. I aimed my staff at him.
Zuras was faster than me…
Yuri was faster than him.
A ward closed around me and Yuri at the same moment I realized Yuri had jumped in between me and Zuras. My ward did absolutely nothing against the weapon. Yuri froze solid in a block of ice.
Zuras decided he was outmatched and reached into his pocket yet again. I was a little envious of such large pockets, and wondered for a second time how his trousers didn’t fall. He retrieved a small cloth pouch, which he threw down at his own feet. An angry cloud of smoke burst forth and hid him.
Glass shattered and the smoke faded, mostly through the newly broken window that Zuras had leapt out of.
Merlin staggered to his feet, carefully sidestepping the ice. The stranger also got to his feet and pushed the table aside. “Thank you for your help,” he said.
“You can thank me by helping me save…” I trailed off when water started to drip. “Oh, right. He’s immortal.” The ice was slowly but surely melting. Deciding he was in no danger, I turned my attention to the stranger. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, thanks to you all. I don’t think I could have held him off much longer.” He leaned against one of the upright tables. “My name is Ivan Theophilus Hawk, by the way. You can call me Hawk.”