Armadron: The Otherworld Series: Book 1

by Corey Tate

  “Why did we leave, though? We didn’t do anything!” Scott cried. “And we could have gotten someone to help!”

  “No one could have saved him. And as for getting the hell out of here, we didn’t do anything, sure, but no one knows that,” Nick pointed out.

  “Think about it, Scott,” Seth added. “I pull out a ball of intense electrical energy and Ernie dies less than a second later. How might that look to people? Look, Nick knows Ernie’s son; the whole thing sucks. Believe me. But we’ve got more important things to worry about, like a freakin’ world catastrophe in just a few days.”

  “Yeah, I guess it could look bad,” Scott admitted slowly, thinking it through.

  “Yeah. Not only that, but when he died, I had a vision of him falling on the cooler. He broke it,” Claire told them.

  Nick and Sam both groaned in unison.

  “What!” Scott shouted, incredulous. “You’re talking about a cooler when—”

  “That’s a shame—”

  “So much damaged meat—”

  “When a man just died?!” Scott finished his sentence.

  They all looked at Scott. That’s when it dawned on him.

  “Wait. People are . . . gonna . . . eat him?” Scott felt dizzy.

  “Yes,” Claire answered. “Every person matters.”

  “We have to provide for each other, Scott,” Sam said.

  He fell on his side before anyone could reach him and threw up for the second time on Armadron.

  “I’d say he’s ready for the Infinite Cave,” Nick said, grinning, in between Scott’s heaves.

  The Infinite Cave

  “Is this the way in and out of the Cavern?” Scott asked, looking ahead.

  They were standing inside the Cavern on the familiar hard-packed black soil. About half a mile in front of them, the vast walls and ceiling that had surrounded Scott since he arrived in the Cavern came to an end. Jagged rock on both sides formed a gigantic eerie doorway. Beyond the opening, Scott could see only mist.

  “I don’t get it. That’s a big entrance. What’s stopping Terminus from coming in here and annihilating everyone?” Scott asked.

  “What’s stopping Terminus from entering Cavern Pass?” Seth said. “The Invisible Telemine Blockade.”

  “The Invisible what now?”

  “The Invisible Telemine Blockade,” Nick answered impatiently. “Telemines are little mines that teleport you to a different part of Armadron. Sometimes they can teleport you through a wall and the result will kill you. Other times you are teleported thousands of miles away. Occasionally you’re teleported only a few feet from where you started. They’re remnants of ancient tech from a time when Armadron used to be a thriving planet.”

  “How many of them are there?” Scott asked next.

  “Thousands. Hundreds of thousands,” Sam answered. “They’re invisible, too, so stay close.”

  She began walking. Claire fell in step behind her, and Nick pushed Scott in front of him. Seth brought up the rear.

  “I’m getting a strong World-War-Two-landmines vibe, Charlie,” Scott muttered nervously.

  “Me, too,” Seth agreed.

  “His name is Seth,” Nick corrected Scott. “And stop the Earth-talk. Focus.”

  Seth rolled his eyes.

  Soon they reached the beginning of the mist. As they were about to go through, a boy stepped toward them from the side.

  He was a younger kid, maybe Jared’s age. He had long brown hair with a tiny patch of white on the top of his head.

  “May I help you?” the boy asked pleasantly.

  “Yes.” It was Sam who answered. “It’s been a couple months since we left . . . could you be our guide, please?”

  “Sure. That’s what I’m here for.”

  The boy took up the lead, and they fell in line behind him.

  “I can’t read his mind,” Claire whispered to Sam, nodding toward their pint-sized leader. “I don’t know about this. Are you using your curse right now, Sam?”

  “No, I’m not,” Sam frowned. “Should I be?”

  “Aww,” Nick crooned to Claire, overhearing. “You scared that he’s smarter than you?”

  “No, I’m scared that he’s—”

  “Come along, you’re falling behind,” the boy called back to them.

  They were almost through the mist when Scott heard a very light ping somewhere in the distance.

  “What was that?” Nick asked.

  “Probably someone stepping on a mine,” the boy answered nonchalantly.

  —I don’t like this, guys, Claire projected her thought to the team.

  They walked about ten more steps and the boy stopped.

  “What are you doing?” Sam said apprehensively.

  The boy leaped to one side, and the ping that Scott heard earlier now sounded like a hundred angry bees.

  —They’re poachers! Duck! Claire mentally shouted.

  Scott had just enough time to duck before something flew over his head. Surprisingly, he recognized it. It had three large fruits attached to three strings, all joined at the center with one string larger than the other two. It was a bola, and there were a lot more hurtling their way, spinning around and around like propeller blades on an airplane.

  As Scott lay on the dirt, he watched Claire, who was now at the front of the line. She stood up and threw her arms out. A thick wall of shimmering energy wrapped itself like a cocoon around the team.

  Scott gazed at it in admiration.

  —It’s a force field, the voice of Claire echoed throughout his mind. It’ll stop the bo—

  Three bolas came out of the mist and went right through her force field.

  The first one wrapped itself around her feet before she could move. The second came from the side and tethered her arms. Even before Claire dropped to the ground, a third shot out of the mist and violently coiled around her neck. One of the fruits at the end of the bola hit Claire in the face with a sharp crack. She dropped to the ground, completely knocked out and immobilized.

  For a second, the bolas stopped.

  “They’re Carcan fruits!” Nick bellowed. “Everyone, stand next to me!”

  Seth ran next to Scott, and they both stopped when they reached Nick, Sam, and Claire, who was now draped across Nick’s shoulders.

  Scott heard what sounded like hundreds of angry bees again. More bolas were coming. A hell of a lot more.

  “What do we do?” Seth screamed.

  “We stay together and step on a telemine,” Nick answered calmly.

  “What?! That could teleport us anywhere! We could wind up in Terminus’s castle for all we know!” Sam cried.

  “Or dead!” Seth added.

  Scott could hear the bolas getting closer.

  “Ummm, guys,” he said.

  Nick repositioned Claire on the top of his left shoulder.

  “We’ll be dead if we stay here! We gotta go! Now!” Nick yelled.

  “You’re not the team leader!” Seth argued.

  “Claire’s out cold, so, yeah, I am!”

  “There’s no time!” Sam screamed.

  The bolas were rocketing toward them, now less than forty feet away. Sam reached for Seth’s hand, and Seth squeezed it nervously. Nick stood in front of everyone and threw up a ten-foot high wall of metal. Seth put a hand on his shoulder.

  “You guys run! I’ll hold them ba—”

  Nick’s hero speech was shoved back into his throat. He, along with Seth, Sam, Claire, and Scott, were thrown about ten feet sideways. Scott instinctively grabbed Sam’s other hand. Just before they crashed against the jagged surface of the Cavern wall, they all vanished into thin air.

  * * *

  It was like being whipped around and around in an endless tornado.

  Seth tried to hold on to Sam’s hand, but he just couldn’t anymore. He let go and immediately put both hands on Nick’s shoulders.

  Scott felt as if his face would peel from his body at any second. He tried to scream, but his thr
oat felt like it was on fire. He wasn’t sure if his eyes were open or not. He saw only darkness.

  He reached out and brushed against someone’s hands. He reached for them again and was whipped around by the vortex. Scott’s body accidentally knocked the hands aside, and he reached for them blindly. He didn’t find the hands, but he did find what felt like a metal-made elbow or a shoulder. It had to be Nick in his armor again.

  Just at that second, everything halted.

  Realizing his eyes were shut, he immediately opened them. The first thing he noticed was a sense of déjà vu. He was lying on hard-packed pure-black dirt. The sky was also black and streaked with bright-purple lightning. Scott had seen this when he had first entered Armadron with Sam.

  He stood up and looked around. Nick was less than two feet away from him. His body was indeed now covered with metal, and he was buried up to his shoulders in the black soil upside down.

  Just as Scott started to assume the worst, Nick’s body gave a little kick.

  He quickly stepped over to Nick and clawed at the dirt with his bare hands. It barely gave way, it was too hard! Nick would run out of air and die if Scott didn’t do something. Already Nick’s feet were lashing back and forth.

  Scott would have laughed if the situation weren’t so desperate.

  What can I do? he thought.

  —You can grow some balls and use your curses!

  —What?! Claire? Is that you? Scott looked around but didn’t see her.

  —Yes. Focus. Save Nick.

  He stopped looking for Claire and concentrated on the soil in front of him. He willed it to move, but it didn’t budge. Nick’s feet stopped kicking.

  “Noooooooo!”

  Scott Accelerated and the soil blasted Nick into the air with a loud boom!

  The metal ripped off his body, and he flew like a rag doll. He went about a hundred feet upward and began to fall back down.

  He still wasn’t waking up. Nick was going to fall on his head in the small crater that Scott had just created.

  Without even thinking, Scott shot out his hands. The air as far around as Scott could see fizzed, and the crater rapidly filled with water. Nick splashed into the newly made pool and came up gasping for breath.

  “Are you okay, Nick?” Scott called to him, coughing. It suddenly was a little hard to breathe.

  “Help! Help!” Nick was thrashing around, terrified.

  “Nick, just swim!” Scott yelled.

  “I can’t!” he screamed, kicking his arms and splashing in a completely counterproductive way.

  —Scott, Claire thought to him, Armadronians don’t have hybrid lungs like you. We can’t really hold our breath, and our pores are used to just separating oxygen from the abundant nitrogen in the air.

  —Ohhhhh, he thought, my bad.

  Instinctively, Scott raised his hand and water surrounded Nick in a bubble and deposited him out of the crater, splashing everywhere.

  “Did you do this?” Nick asked incredulously once he stood up, looking back at the crater filled with water.

  Scott nodded his head.

  Scott’s vision went black on the edges, and he would have fallen to his knees if Nick hadn’t caught him.

  “You okay?” Nick looked Scott in the eye.

  “Uugggh . . . yeah,” Scott replied dizzily. “I feel like a pile of crap.”

  “Hmmm.” Nick pursed his lips. “You’ve been using too many of your various curses. I think you should rest for a minute while I figure this out.”

  “’Kay.”

  Nick flicked his eyes up behind Scott and said something. Scott was too tired to turn around, so he just closed his eyes and listened to what was going on. After a couple seconds Claire sighed and said, “Thank you.”

  Scott groaned and painfully turned around. He was too curious not to want to see what was happening behind him.

  Nick had an arm under Claire, who was lightly rubbing her neck, and she was leaning on him while they walked toward Scott. She didn’t look too good. Sam was behind them holding the three sets of bolas that had attacked Claire.

  As the three of them reached Scott, he saw the dark-purple marks and the tortured, raw skin on Claire’s neck, arms, and legs where the bolas had been. Each mark looked painful. Coupled with her left pointer finger and thumb that she had apparently broken a while ago, she looked like a mess.

  “How are you feeling, Scott? Nick just told us what you did. Are you okay?” Sam asked kindly.

  “I’m good.”

  “He’s gone,” Claire said in a deadpan voice, looking at the ground.

  “What d’ya mean, gone?” Nick was baffled.

  “I can’t sense Seth’s mind anywhere. He’s either gone or in a very powerful place that’s blocking my curse.”

  “What?” Sam cried. “I thought he stepped on the same telemine that we did! He has to be near us!”

  “Not necessarily,” Claire muttered, then spoke louder. “Were any of you holding on to Seth when we were transported?”

  Suddenly Claire flinched, and her eyes turned completely white as she dropped to her knees. Nick rushed over to her and put his arms around her. Claire thrashed wildly about, muttering random things. She didn’t react to Nick’s touch. She didn’t seem to see any of them anymore either; it was like she was in a whole different place now.

  “Sam,” Nick half yelled between Claire’s spasms, “do you think you should turn her power off? This looks like a powerful one. It might hurt her.”

  “No,” Sam answered breathlessly. “No. She needs to do this. Let the vision play out. It might help us find Seth—and maybe it’ll show us something about the next few days.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Nick muttered as Claire continued to twist and throw her arms around.

  Scott took an involuntary step back. Is this what my seizures look like? he wondered. This is . . . it’s horrible.

  Nick gritted his teeth and kept holding on to Claire as she twisted around like a snake. She moved in every direction, her spine looking like it wanted to snap. She Accelerated, her red eyes burning with the crazy intensity of a supernova.

  Nick Accelerated in response and they both grew to their full sizes, looking like scary urban legends. He wrapped his long, thick arms and legs around her body, trying to keep her from hurting herself.

  She continued to writhe wildly for several minutes, then went limp.

  After what felt like a very long time, Claire blinked her eyes, and they returned to normal.

  “It’s okay, Nick. You can let go of me now,” Claire reassured him, though her body was still weak.

  Nick released Claire slowly. Decelerating, she sat up and collected her thoughts a moment before speaking.

  “I know what kind of questions you’re going to ask, but I don’t have a ton of answers. So please bear with me.”

  Sam and Nick nodded their heads eagerly. Scott just sat down, watching everyone closely.

  “Scott, pay attention. Most of this is about you.” Claire glanced at Scott before continuing. “Seth is still alive. He’s too far away for me to sense him, and he is in a place of great power. I learned that in order to find Seth, Scott must go into the Infinite Cave . . . with Nick. Apparently, the two of you together must face a creature so powerful that it has the ability to tear my vision apart. It’s fuzzy but . . . I think that this creature is going to help us. Somehow.”

  “What?” Nick shouted. “You want me to go in there with Scott?”

  “No, but what I want doesn’t matter. You need to do this. I saw it in my vision, and you know how powerful they are.”

  “No way. I went in there when I was thirteen. There is no way I’m going again! Plus, every Armadronian is supposed to find themselves in there—by themselves! Scott shouldn’t be denied that chance.”

  “Nick,” she said quietly, “you know that my visions don’t lie. You have to go in there with him—or we will have no idea how to find Seth. Do you really want to risk that?”

  “
Hold on.” Nick raised a hand, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small device, pressing buttons.

  Scott realized with a start that it was a Bastum.

  Nick looked at the device. It lit up red and started blinking. He grunted disapprovingly, then collapsed the device and put it back in his pocket.

  “Out of range,” Nick explained to everyone, then added, “and I’m not going with him.”

  “Are you scared?” Scott asked.

  “Yes,” Nick said, staring him down, “and you would be too if you were smart. You have no idea what is in there.”

  Scott looked away, and Claire continued speaking.

  “In my vision I saw you picking up a sword in front of Scott. He was on his knees screaming at you, saying, ‘Kill it! Kill it!’ Doesn’t that kind of sound like he needs you?” She stopped talking and waited.

  “No.”

  Claire dipped her shoulder and put her hands on her hips, glowering at Nick.

  “Alright, fine. I’ll babysit him,” Nick faltered, looking away.

  “Good.” Claire smiled.

  “Did you see anything else, though? Anything?” Nick pleaded.

  “Nothing.”

  “Let’s go. There’s no time to lose!” Sam cried. “Let’s get to the cave and deal with this. We need Seth.”

  “We would if we knew where to start looking.” Nick turned in place, taking in his surroundings. “Oh.”

  The entrance to the Infinite Cave was right there, about a hundred feet behind them. It was a slanted hole in the ground with a set of old stairs running down.

  The rest of the group turned around and saw the cave.

  “The probability of us being dropped here of all places is so astronomically low that it’s hilarious to even think—”

  “Who cares?” Nick interrupted Claire. “We’re here. Let’s just get this over with.”

  “Nick, we should stop and think about this,” Sam said.

  “Stop, Schmop,” Nick waved his hand at Sam.

  They all walked over to the entrance without another word.

  The opening was just big enough for one person to squeeze through at a time.

  “Cheery,” Sam said with a nervous smile.