Sonora, and the Scroll of Alexandria

by Travis Hall

  “OK, Allora, you go check out the gym, locker rooms, and football field,” Mrs. Ferris instructed, ignoring the twins. “Tanner, you try the freshmen hallway down on the lower level. I’ll keep searching the science department and cafeteria. You’ve got your com units. Use them if you locate the bugger.”

  Allora left and descended the stairs toward the gym. She checked around the bleachers and then down toward the football field. While there, she glared at the new turf, built on top of the charred remains of her battle only a few months back. She remained still, remembering the fear and power that had flowed within her while she battled the shifter.

  As she stood on the field, something hit her on the top of her head and dropped onto the ground. She picked up the pinecone at her feet and rubbed her skull. Just as she looked up toward the roof that hung over the outside bleachers, another pinecone hit her in the forehead. She swore as she stumbled back, tripping over her own feet and dropping onto her butt. Shaking her head, she opened up the communication bracelet as the gremlin stood on the edge of the roof, laughing in a high-pitched squeal that sounded like a hyena mixed with a mouse.

  “I found it,” Allora said, getting to her feet and scolding the little creature that stood defiantly above her. “He’s on the roof above the football field. I’ll get him.”

  Allora went to the ladder attached to the exterior wall of the gym and climbed to the top, where the gremlin had been accumulating pinecones to throw at his oncoming target. The high-pitched laugh continued as the little creature began tossing the prickly objects at Allora. She simply placed a hadron shield in front of her to block the natural missiles. The gremlin snarled as pinecones bounced off the invisible shield.

  “Come here, you little pest,” she said, readying to snatch the tiny beast.

  Getting down low with her knees bent, she danced side to side as the gremlin tried to escape. Seeing an opening, she lunged forward but slipped on a pinecone and fell to her right and over the edge of the roof. She quickly grabbed the gutter with her left hand as her body flailed in the air. Barely hanging on by one hand, she tried to swing and grab with her other hand but missed. The gremlin appeared above her with a maniacal smile, sharp pointed teeth, and yellow vertical irises. The blue-skinned creature inched forward, staring down at her fingers, which clung onto the metal gutter.

  “Don’t you dare,” she uttered, glancing down at the thirty-foot drop to the track below.

  The gremlin laughed as he pried her index finger from the overhang. One by one, the little creature pulled off her fingers as she whispered loudly, trying not to attract attention. With one finger holding her weight, she tried in vain to grasp the gutter. The gremlin kept laughing as he jumped onto her finger, releasing it from the overhang. Allora screamed as she fell, flailing her hands as she tried to right her body. Three feet from the track, her back arched onto a squishy surface, and then she flipped backward as the bubbled surface pushed her legs over her head. Landing hard on her stomach, she writhed in pain, gasping for air and cursing silently at the high-pitched laugh that continued on the roof. Four bodies came running at her while she continued to wiggle on the rain-soaked turf.

  “I hate it. I hate it so much,” Allora said between struggled breaths.

  “I thought you said you got it,” Tanner said, smiling.

  “Shut up,” Allora answered, getting to her feet and wiping the water that had soaked into her jeans. “What did I just land on? I thought I’d hit the ground a lot harder than that.”

  “I created a hadron bubble underneath you,” Mrs. Ferris said as she lifted above the ground, standing on an invisible bouncy bubble, and then floated back down. “It’s like a pocket of energy that cushions your descent. Now where did that thing go?”

  They scanned the area, but nothing was moving. Then, near the tennis courts, something blue streaked toward the school.

  “Move it!” Mrs. Ferris said, running after the thing.

  They sprinted up three flights of stairs. In the distance, a little smiling blue creature jumped through an open window on the bottom floor of the school. They ran after it, entering the school through the bottom double doors to the freshmen hallway. They turned the corner to hear a shriek coming from one of the English rooms.

  Rushing in the room, they saw a young, blond English teacher knocking over desks as she screamed and flailed around the room with a little blue demon clinging onto her head. Finally prying the creature from her hair, she flung the thing into the chalkboard and ran out of the room in complete fright.

  “Well, I don’t think she’ll be back next semester,” Mrs. Ferris joked.

  She then instructed the others to surround the gremlin, slowly moving toward the thing as it licked its bruised forearm. The creature stopped when it saw the tall bodies of the teens moving in on it. It turned its eyes up at them and snarled, searching the area for an escape.

  “Come here, you midget demon,” Dax said, leaping forward.

  The creature jumped as Dax slipped, crashing into the wall. The gremlin hopped on Dax as Katie tried to grab it. The pesky creature slapped her, causing Katie to lose her balance and trip over Dax. It jumped onto a desk and flipped over Tanner, who was trying to reach the creature as it bounced around the room. Mrs. Ferris, Allora, and Tanner leapt over desks, bounced off walls, and ran into each other, and the gremlin kept slipping from their grasp. Allora and Tanner ran forward as the gremlin tried to make his escape. The creature jumped sideways as they both came at it, causing them to crash into each other and fall to the floor. Tanner spun around, grabbing Allora around the waist so that he would break her fall.

  Allora quickly got to her feet, glancing around awkwardly, unable to look at Tanner. She then stomped out of the room in pursuit of the gremlin. Katie came up behind her brother and smacked him on the back of the head.

  “What was that for?”

  “For being an idiot,” Katie said, leaving the room.

  Allora ran after the hopping blue gremlin as it traveled up the back stairwell toward the other side of the school. Her mind suddenly flashed, entering a dreamlike state. Her eyes were fuzzy, and her head pounded, but the clear image of a green doorway on the right side of the hallway appeared. Without thinking, she opened the door and entered into a storage room. In the distance, she could hear the faint voices of her friends as they continued the pursuit of the gremlin, but her objective seemed to have changed as she scanned the room. Metal shelves lined the closest wall, and boxes of books, supplies, and toiletries filled the floor area. Her mind flashed again on the back wall in the corner. She looked down at her hands, which weren’t her own. They were calloused, strong, and manly. She walked forward, moving without conscious thought. The dream kept flashing to a time when the room seemed much cleaner and more organized. She placed her hand on the solid cement wall, feeling the hadrons around. Sparking the surface, she turned her hand in a pattern that she couldn’t quite control. It was as if someone had possessed her body, moving her hand in a preconceived rotational combination.

  After six turns, her hand stopped. The wall was a thick liquid state, allowing her to put her hand through and pull out a round object. When her hand came out, there was an odd green cube the size of a walnut in her palm, completely made of jade. As soon as she laid her eyes on the cube, her head began to pound like it was in a vise. She stumbled back through the door to the storage room and fell to the carpet in the hallway. An image of a man, blurred in the dying light, was running toward her as her mind faded into a dark chamber. Her vision focused upon the glint of steel coming down toward her as she pulled up a sword. Spinning around, she thrust the blade into the masked warrior, clad in full black battle suit with a gold dragon insignia on his shoulder. She leapt high, coming down on two other battle suit–clad soldiers. Knocking them out cold, she saw in the distance an old man in robes swinging a staff, fighting off five soldiers at once. The old man looked familiar. She had seen him in a dream the night after her incident at cheerleading practic
e over a year ago. The old man sent a wave of energy that forced the soldiers off their feet and into the wall on the far side of the chamber. The room they were in was grandiose, with majestic marble pillars and beautiful glowing orbs circling the ceiling, which was painted in an intricate mural of wondrous creatures, landscapes, and battles.

  The old man beckoned her forward. They ran to the back of the chamber where there was an altar sitting at the center of a circular interior room. On the floor, detailed lines were carved into the black stone, flowing like waves toward the middle. The old man placed what looked like an obsidian orb into the concave indentation in the middle of a stone plate hovering above the altar. The plate dropped down into the circular altar, and the jade cube appeared, along with the first piece of parchment that had led them to the Eye of the Titans. The old man quickly handed it to Allora.

  “It has begun,” he said. “You must start the journey.” He looked disheveled, with scorch marks on his brown robes. His grayish-white hair was sticking out in different places, and small cut marks littered his face. He was worn and tired, looking almost defeated, as though he’d been through a fierce battle for his life.

  “What about the Purge?” she found herself saying, but the voice was that of her uncle’s. “What about the others?”

  “You have a far greater task ahead.” As the old man said this, a wave of soldiers entered the chamber. “And when she is ready, you must show her the way. Now go!” Allora nodded and grabbed Mr. Swan’s barely conscious body. She entered the secret escape corridor and watched as it shut, leaving her with no light. Her head again pounded in the vise, and the blackness turned to a fuzzy image of a man kneeling over her. Mr. Swan looked much less emaciated.

  He was smiling, staring at the jade cube that he had picked up from the carpet. “You found it.” Mr. Swan helped her up, put her arm around his shoulder, and led her down the hallway to the science department. “Here you go,” Mr. Swan said, handing Allora a ceramic mug containing a steaming liquid. She took a sip and cringed, sticking out her tongue. “Yeah, it tastes nasty, but it’ll help with the headaches.”

  Suddenly, four bodies crashed through the door trying to restrain the violent gremlin that squirmed around attempting to release himself from their grasp. The gremlin snarled and spit as they dragged the creature further into the room, knocking over desks. Mrs. Ferris pulled a clear, hard plastic ball from across the room with her hadrons, lifting it above the creature. The ball opened and dropped on top of the gremlin. From inside, electricity jolted the creature, freezing it in place. The ball closed around the creature as the others let go of its arms and legs.

  “Nasty little buggers, aren’t they?” Mrs. Ferris said, wiping the sweat from her brow. The creature suddenly started to secrete a weird goo that dropped to the bottom of the round enclosure. Through osmosis, the liquid permeated through the thin material, dripping down into a small vial that Mrs. Ferris had grabbed from the shelf. She raised it up to the light and moved the liquid around, inspecting it closely.

  “What is that stuff?” Dax asked.

  “Gremlin sweat,” Mrs. Ferris replied.

  “Ew,” Katie said.

  “And this stuff looks clean enough to use in our balloon glue recipe.”

  “All that work for this thing’s sweat?” Tanner asked.

  “Oh, yeah, gremlin sweat has some very magical properties. It’s just really difficult to get since the import and export of gremlins is strictly forbidden on Earth.”

  “How did you get this one?” Tanner asked.

  “Swan found me this little guy.”

  “I had to barter with a real ugly dwarf for that thing,” Mr. Swan said.

  Allora was staring at Mr. Swan, picturing him beaten and bruised. Her dream had been so vivid and brutal, like stepping into his tortured past. He looked at her as if he knew what she must have seen. His look was that of empathy, but also pain, like the look of a tortured soldier leaving the battlefront of a long war.

  “What was the Purge?” Allora asked.

  Glass shattered on the floor. Allora turned her head to see Mrs. Ferris staring down at the floor. She had dropped a large beaker. Her body looked as though someone had placed a large weight upon her shoulders. Swan took a broom and swept it up, whispering something into her ear.

  “I have a few more integral ingredients to acquire,” she said, her voice faint and distant. She grabbed her briefcase, placed the gremlin through the hidden wall near the shelves, and left the room. Once Mrs. Ferris was gone, Mr. Swan addressed Allora’s question.

  “The Purge happened at the height of the Rebel Wars, a few years after Salazar’s coup against the royal family.” Mr. Swan walked around to the front of the classroom, as if by habit. “I had been spying for the rebellion at the time, relaying information to Ben as much as I could. Salazar knew that there were parts of the internal government in Titanis that were still loyal to King Tildar and Queen Kalia. Salazar had been systematically cataloging the inner workings of those in the military and intelligence community. From a strategic point of view, it was genius. He had made everyone inside believe that the threat from the rebellion was on the front lines, when he knew the most important pieces were right next to him. The Purge was intended to eradicate every threat within Titanis, and it worked too well. We were clueless. All of our assets inside were either assassinated while they slept or tortured for information, such as myself. The only reason that I’m here is Ben. He came back for me.”

  “And what happened to Mrs. Ferris?” Tanner asked.

  “Her two sons were killed during the Purge. Many people lost family members during that time.”

  “Our mother?” Dax asked, clenching his fist.

  Mr. Swan simply nodded.

  “I saw you in my dream,” Allora said. “You were in a temple of some sort, and you looked like you had been beaten pretty badly. An old man handed my uncle this cube and the piece of parchment. I’ve seen the old man before in previous dreams.”

  “The man you saw in your dream was the grand master of the keepers, Archimedes. He was like a shaman or holy man. He was the one who told us about the Eye of the Titans. He told us that it was time for us to play out a destiny that was put in motion thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, I didn’t listen to Ben when he told me of its importance. I was so angry and vengeful from my time being tortured that I went back to the war as a soldier. I only returned here when I learned of your uncle’s death.”

  “So then what is it?” Allora asked, staring at the jade cube in her palm.

  “I have no idea, but I do know where we may find out,” Mr. Swan said, staring at the familiar object. “Shangri-La.”

  chapter

  EIGHT

  Skipper

  Rain covered the soft metal as Allora straddled the strange contraption, following Sumatra’s meticulous instructions. She tried to wipe off the mud that stuck to her hiking boots and then placed her other foot into the indent on the back of the skipper. Tanner, Dax, and Katie did the same, listening to Mr. Swan as he went over pretakeoff procedures. The slight drizzle continued, a staple of a normal Oregon November. The plain gray sky seemed endless. A fog was starting to roll into the field where they hovered above the ground, waiting to start out on their first hover ride. Allora gripped the soft metal handlebars¸ staring out into the foggy morning.

  “Swan, we’ve been asking you for weeks about Shangri-La,” Allora said, ignoring his instructions. “When are we going?”

  “Like I told you before, I’m trying to work out a compromise with your mother,” he replied, sounding slightly annoyed at the repetitive nagging. “It will most likely be in December when they have the annual guardian council meeting. Now pay attention. You’ve got to input the height that you’d like to hover above the surface,” Mr. Swan said, pointing to the screen in front of Allora and snapping her back to reality. “The closer you are to a surface, the faster you can go. Try not to exceed six hundred miles per hour. Most can’t sustain s
tability at that speed.”

  Allora glanced over and saw how jubilant Dax was, like a kid on Christmas morning.

  “All right, let’s do this!” he exclaimed, hopping up and down on the skipper.

  “Now make sure you follow all of my instructions,” Mr. Swan said, looking apprehensive. “Do not put it on manual. Do not go through the forest. Stay above on the canopy with a clear line of sight, and if you do crash, make sure not to move. The skipper will enclose you in a protective bubble glue shield that will prevent serious injury.”

  “Got it,” Dax said, revving the hadron mercury core engine and accelerating before being giving the go-ahead.

  He sped off through the field, checking his speed before he got to the tree line. The sudden acceleration caught him off guard, and he forgot to hit the boosters, which didn’t give him enough momentum to get above the foliage. The skipper went vertical, and then gravity brought him quickly downward. The enclosed skipper filled with bubble glue, along with the exterior. The large ball of balloon glue bounced on the soft, wet grass and then came to a stop at the edge of the forest.

  Allora giggled as they all slowly turned the handle controls and eased the hovering vehicles toward the other side of the field, stopping at the ball. Mr. Swan got out of his skipper, sparked the ball, and stepped back. The glue receded, sucking back into open lines on the exterior and interior of the plank of soft metal. The encasing shifted back, revealing a bug-eyed, embarrassed boy.

  “I don’t think I did that right,” Dax said.

  They all giggled, while Swan put his hand on Dax’s shoulder.

  “At first you don’t succeed, try, try again. You know what you forgot, right?”

  Dax nodded, pointing to the booster button at the end of the handlebars. His eyebrows furrowed, and he pressed his lips together tightly as he gripped the handlebars. The metal casing went back over him, and he took off through the field, turning around and then accelerating right toward them. They cringed as he got closer, while Mr. Swan sat calmly on his skipper with his arms crossed, smiling slightly. A few feet away, Dax’s skipper launched above them, hopping on the foliage and then zooming across the top of the trees.