by Erik Reid
“Here you are,” he said. “A set of metal shards on a ring.”
“Keys,” I corrected.
He held them up to his face and squinted. “No, not keys. Keys have more twists and sharp edges. These are more like tooth picks. Anyway, next we have a glass wedge.”
“iPhone 6,” I said. “Don’t make fun, I know it’s a few generations behind, but it’s hella more advanced than what you guys have got going on here. I don’t think you’ve even invented smoke signals yet.”
“And some kind of tarot card,” he concluded.
I tucked the other items into my pockets, though these leather pants were less accommodating on that front than my old jeans had been.
“It’s not a tarot card,” I said. “It’s what the old fortuneteller lady gave me right before the purple lightning swirly that sent me here. It sounds like she was one of those heretic witches I keep hearing about.”
Benoch’s face blanched. “She actually gave you the key? You’ve had this the entire time and didn’t think it might bear a small mention?”
“Now who doesn’t know what keys look like?” I asked.
Benoch balled his hands into fists and shook them in the air. “This is the magical item the witches use to pull back the veil between realms, you idiot!”
“Oh,” I said. “Wait! Does that mean I can use this card to go back to Earth? Oh my god, I know what to do.”
I pinched the card between my fingers, clicked the heel-end of my leather boots together, and chanted. “There’s no place like Thrillville.” It was even their goddamn motto! “There’s no place like Thrillville. There’s no place like Thrillville!”
Suddenly nothing. No stirring of wind or gathering of bright purple light that might reveal the way home.
“What are you doing?” Kaylee asked. She started to click her heels together as though this were a new game I invented.
“Nothing,” I said. “We’re never going to talk about that. Ever.”
Benoch, meanwhile, wandered back toward his bookshelf of dusty old leather-bound tomes. He yanked one off a shelf and flipped open to a page toward the end, with a diagram of a card much like the one in my hand. It was a rough sketch, though not of a specific realm. The artwork was empty, with only the hand-drawn words “realistic image” written in a scripted font. The decorative banner at the base of the diagram simply read “waypoint marker,” whereas the card I had recovered from Benoch actually said “Silura” when the fortuneteller handed it to me, and it currently read “Thrillville.”
Below the diagram there was a simple — though not entirely illuminating — explanation.
The above figure represents our closest understanding of the talisman used to travel between realms. It appears as a thin and flexible card, unassuming in its design. It is, in reality, the distillation of powerful heresy magic, capable of opening the sky itself and allowing the heretic witches to escape to realms long forbidden by the one true Goddess.
The method of activating the keys remains elusive, despite extensive testing and advanced questioning of the captive witch. We know it would require a tremendous quantum of energy to craft a storm as wild as the one that brought her here, but what energy would suffice? Cosmic? Astral? Shadow? The list is too long to extinguish in one lifetime.
I handed Benoch the book.
“You should leave this with me,” he said. “If A’zarkin gets ahold of the key to your world, he could wreak utter havoc.”
“Yikes,” I said. “That’s my least favorite type of havoc.”
“Take this seriously, Kyle,” the old man said.
“If A’zarkin leaves Silura, you’ll all be safe,” I said. “My world is so full of crazies, what’s one more reckless demon intent on forming a brood of wicked little monsters? We have a Snooki, and she’s doing just that.
“Right now, I’m more concerned with whether any of this leads to me seeing my home world again.”
“Is that what you want?” Dani asked. “You want to go home?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
“Because of the beautiful woman you showed me,” she said.
“Selena?” I asked. “She’s cute, I guess. When she tries. And yeah, most of the times that she doesn’t, too.”
“It’s in the way you smile just at saying her name,” Dani said. “You would risk bringing A’zarkin to your world just to see her again.”
I took Dani’s hands and looked into her eyes. “I would die happy spending the rest of my life in Silura with you, and Clara, and Kaylee.”
“Then prove it,” she said. “Rip up that card.”
“NO!” Benoch yelled. “No, no, no. We don’t know what that might unleash. Allow me to keep it, and study it, and—”
“The fortuneteller told me to keep it,” I said. “That’s what I plan to do. Maybe she was one of your time-traveling wicked witches from another dimension. At the time I thought she was a crazy old nut-job who went off her meds. Either way, this card is mine. Maybe I’ll even collect the whole set.
“Everyone,” I continued. “Gather your things. We leave immediately.”
The girls all left the room and I looked back at Benoch. “It’s not too late to change your mind. I’m sure the queen would welcome you home.”
“I’m old,” he said. “I might not live to see the end of this war, but if I die down here I want to leave something worth finding. The shard of onicite you brought me was the most thrilling discovery in my professional life. The only other piece of that rare substance to survive A’zarkin’s earlier rule was old and dried up, its power drained by the passage of time.
“Now, my real work can start. I’m going to design the next Oscar suit.
“Maybe it won’t have the same high-technology skills yours passes onto you, but it should have strength to it. Anything that advances our arsenal is a boon against a scourge like A’zarkin.”
“Good luck, Benoch,” I said.
“The same to you, Kyle, human Hero of Silura. Finish the job your predecessor left undone. Our very existence depends on it.”
CHAPTER 25
“Everyone, put your hands on my body,” I said. “Anywhere you like. Don’t be shy.”
Kaylee tied her blindfold around her wrist for safekeeping, then rested her chin against my shoulder blade and grabbed a handful of ass cheek. Clara held onto her new book with one hand and slid her other up my arm until it clutched my bicep tight. Dani held a pair of saddlebags by her side full of materials she had taken from Benoch’s kitchen, plus the rations we had carried with us from Varrowsgard.
“Come here,” I said.
She stepped forward. I slid one arm around her waist and pulled her close until her chest braced against mine and her arms reached behind my back.
I raised Oscar into the air, my fingers balled into a tight fist. “Activate waypoint travel!”
Activate Waypoint Travel? Y/N
“Yes, Oscar,” I said. “Way to ruin the moment.”
Select Waypoint Marker:
Benoch’s Bunker
Draykin Domain
Simki Sylvania
Tiny Town
“Draykin Domain,” I said.
Energy Reserves Down: 1.5%
A burst of light erupted, bathing our bodies in a brilliant blue glow that forced my eyes closed involuntarily. When they opened and adjusted to the sunlight beaming down from overhead, I took quick stock of the girls and found them all there.
It worked. Oscar drained a sizable portion of his onicite energies, but he came through.
“The royal stables,” Dani said, rubbing her eyes with the back of one hand.
“Yep,” I said. “While Gretna was inside selecting horses and gear, I was setting my first waypoint. It’s weird to be back here without her.”
“It’s worse than we left it,” Clara said.
Standing outside the royal stables, at the northeastern-most corner of the draykin capital city, I wasn’t immediately aware of the destr
uction around us. Glancing upward, however, changed that. Of the dozen stone spires that rose from the fortress castle at the city’s heart, more than half were broken off completely, the massive stone walls that built them several stories into the air had crumbled to ruin, some pieces resting on the castle’s sloped roof, the others likely forming piles at the castle’s base. That, I couldn’t see from afar.
What I could see, however, were the bodies of fallen draykin up and down the cross streets that intersected here, and the billowing black flames of a city still on fire. It had raged out of control in our absence, swallowing up rows of buildings and leaving them roofless squares of blackened mortar stacked side by side.
My grip around Dani’s waist tightened as a bloodhound sprinted down our street, black leathery wings flapping madly behind it.
“The city never recovered,” she said.
“This doesn’t bode well for that egg,” I said. “Dani, I need you to take the lead here.”
She nodded and ran, with the rest of us in close pursuit. A persistent howling cut through the streets, the sound emanating from near and far alike. The city was overrun with bloodhounds now, and I kept an eye overhead for any that had adapted to the wings they siphoned from draykin blood.
The purple flags that once flew over the city meant anyone airborne would face a swift arrow, but that threat felt hollow now. It was hard to imagine there were any guards left with crossbows atop the castle’s remaining few towers.
The city’s streets were narrow, further encroached by smoldering debris and corpses. Dani stopped short at an intersection ahead, where three bloodhounds stooped over a woman’s body. Her eyes were still half open, and those monsters all had their faces pressed against different parts of her exposed skin, sucking the blood from her veins.
So far, they hadn’t seen us, so I pulled Dani around the corner of a building where we could regroup.
“That poor woman,” she said, aiming her pleading, doleful eyes at me. I peered into her vertical pupils, unashamed of what I said next.
“I’m not squandering what little time we have saving one draykin. How do we get to the castle?”
“I know some back alleys,” she said.
“Good. Let’s go.”
We set out again, ducking past burning buildings and racing toward the central keep in a zigzag that avoided the attention of the monsters pillaging the city. My lungs burned more with each step from inhaling the soot that hung in the air, but we reached the castle’s entrance in one piece.
The doors, however, were off their hinges. Cracked panels of dense, carved wood lay splintered on the stone floor of the castle itself. We climbed over them and hurried onward, our footfalls echoing in the cavernous hallway that lacked any signs of draykin life.
Only a few of the stone urns that once held fire to light the throne room were active now, with some snuffed out and others tipped upside down. There had been fighting here, more than just our initial encounter with the blue-skinned demon who wanted Oscar for himself.
While there were no guards to keep watch over the kingdom’s most powerful woman, she did remain in her royal seat, perched atop a dense stone dais that lifted her above anyone else in the room.
“Queen Zolocki,” I said, panting as I came to a stop before her throne. Her dark, carnelian red hair was a mess of tangles that draped to each side, holding her thin golden crown at a tilt on her head. She looked up at me like a woman in a daze, only half registering who I was.
“You’re too late,” she said. “A’zarkin has made a fool of this kingdom once more.”
The queen’s vibrant red dress was smeared with darker streaks, draykin blood no doubt, and possibly her own. There were black stains as well, the viscous necrotic blood of the creatures running rampant in the streets.
Her pale skin still bore the intricate red markings that formed geometric tattoos up her arms and neck, but some were obscured by scratch marks that left her bleeding.
“The egg,” she said, “is gone. Poached by A’zarkin’s army.”
“Poached?” I asked. “No, probably just stolen. On the sunny side though, maybe we can really scramble to get it back.”
“How?” she asked.
“I’m no hard-boiled detective, but I think we can find your princess in another castle. Or in the very least, on top of the highest mountain.”
The queen shook her head. “Oh, my little Smaug. I let you down before you’ve even hatched into this world.” Her voice rose to an irritating wail. “Daughter of the draykin kingdom, with—”
I cut her off. “Look, omelet you finish, but we can’t give up now. Don’t get me wrong, this won’t be over easy, but we haven’t been beaten yet just because a demon whisked your golden egg away.
“Round up the guards and give us an army. We march on A’zarkin right away.”
The queen’s eyes glazed over and she tilted her head toward the shadows at her side. “How will my people ever forgive me? The queen who couldn’t hatch an heir.”
“Your majesty,” Dani said. “Hi, remember me? Blood debt girl. I’m making good on my sworn duty to support Kyle in all his efforts, but we can’t do this alone. A’zarkin’s magic is strong, and with that egg in his possession, he will eradicate our whole species from the continuum of time. We need whatever guards can travel.”
“There are none,” the queen said. “The last guard was dragged out of the castle an hour ago and murdered by those fiends. Why haven’t the bloodhounds come back to drink my royal blood and end my misery? Why do they leave me here to watch my capital burn?”
“We’ve lost her,” I said. “Somebody get this lady a Twitter account, because she is a rambling lunatic.”
“Kyle,” Dani said, pulling me aside and speaking low. “She’s lost her unhatched child. Her kingdom is in ruins. Of course she’s distraught.”
“She doesn’t have the luxury of being distraught,” I said. “She’s a leader. Her people rely on her to stand firm in times of crisis. She needs to snap out of it.”
“Hey,” I said, turning back toward the queen. “No more egg puns. This is serious business. We can’t go after the head demon without backup. What about the guards that hid behind your throne room last time we were here? They were slow to rush to your aid against A’zarkin, maybe there are more hiding back there.”
“In the treasury?” she asked. “No, they have all come forward, leaving only me to protect the castle and all of our revenue.”
“I doubt there’s a draykin alive with the strength or skill to climb a mountain and fight by our side,” Dani said.
“Guys,” Kaylee said. “We have company.”
Behind us, a triad of bloodhounds raced forward, all three with black wings on their backs. Their faces were still dripping from the last bloody draykin they had gorged themselves on, but that didn’t seem to staunch their appetite.
“I’m getting real tired of this shit,” I said. Oscar, however, flexed his fingers without my doing. He wanted more onicite hearts. Hell, I wanted them too. In a way the sight of those disgusting creatures gave me a strange sense of excitement. I was hungry for energy, and power, like Oscar’s appetite was starting to seep into my own psyche.
I shook that thought off and braced for impact.
The first bloodhound crouched low, then leapt high and spread its wings, flapping like mad until it lifted high above our heads toward the domed ceiling that rose two stories above us. The other two raced forward, snarling and hissing as they selected their prey. One veered toward me, while the other aimed for Kaylee.
Dani pulled her sword free of its scabbard and leapt into the air, beating her wings harder than I’d seen before. Still, she struggled to gain the same height as the bloodhound had.
I ran forward and swung at the one that came at me, but it ducked and charged, grabbing me around the thighs and lifting me up.
“Breathe,” Kaylee said out loud, punching a tight fist forward and then pulling her arms back to her sides. “Breath
e, breathe, breathe.”
“You can do this, Kaylee,” I said, punching Oscar against the monster’s back as it carried me toward the throne room’s rear.
With another firm punch in the spine, I got the bloodhound to drop me. It howled and stood on all fours, glaring at me with pale blue eyes that gleamed like they were lit from behind.
The queen stood from her throne and jumped down, spreading her crimson wings to smooth her descent into a short glide. “I am ready,” she said, her face wrought with desperation. “Take my blood and end my reign. I do not deserve my crown.”
“No,” I said, “we’re not doing that, lady. Take a seat.”
She stepped toward the middle of the fray, reaching longingly toward any bloodhound that came near her. They stole glances her way, but none threatened an ounce of harm.
“Please,” the queen said, resting on her knees and pleading with our attackers. “There is no life without my kingdom.”
“A’zarkin is watching this,” I said. “He won’t let you off that easy. He wants you to suffer.”
Clara reached out for the monster that Kaylee fought against, but the monster tore its arm away too soon. The kobold girl didn’t seem fazed, by it. She watched carefully for her next opportunity.
Kaylee had stopped reminding herself to breathe. She had also stopped breathing, at least in the calm, meditative way Benoch had taught her.
“Clara,” I yelled, fending off the bloodhound’s next punch. “Get the blindfold around Kaylee’s eyes. Hurry!”
Clara did as I asked, ducking and weaving between the fighters with exceptional grace as she reached for Kaylee’s wrist, tugged the simple knot loose from the band of fabric, and then leapt onto Kaylee’s back to tie the strip of cotton across her eyes.