The Torchbearers

by Ally Condie

  To Opal’s surprise, Aster giggled, shaking her head.

  “What’s going on?” Nico asked. “What’s that gurgling sound?”

  “The Darkdeep is acting wonky.” Logan had moved to another trunk and was now counting torches. His expression grew anxious as he sat back on his heels. “I don’t like it. I can’t shake this feeling that the well knows we’re planning to battle the Eater, and maybe doesn’t approve.”

  Opal felt an unpleasant flutter in her chest. “What does that mean?”

  Aster looked up from her maps. “Ignore the nervous boy. Tyler is keeping watch.”

  Nico stared. “You left Ty alone down there?”

  Emma paused mid-lean, her rosy cheeks turning scarlet. “Uh … yeah. And, actually, it’s been a minute.”

  “Guys,” Opal scolded. “Everyone agreed—we only go down in pairs now!”

  Opal hurried for the trick wall panel. Descending the steps she stopped short, and choked down a gasp. Nico crashed into her from behind and they both grabbed the railing to keep from falling into a flood of black water that blanketed the floorboards.

  The Darkdeep was overflowing.

  Tyler was up to his knees in the dark liquid, staring at where the well’s mouth would’ve been were its contents not spreading across the floor. The deluge had almost reached the bottom riser.

  “Did you not hearing me yelling?!” Tyler squawked.

  Nico’s voice squeaked a full octave above normal. “What happened?!”

  “The Beast!” Tyler seemed frozen in place. “It … it was here a second ago.”

  Opal blinked. “Excuse me?”

  A wave of black ballooned outward from the center of the chamber, but then the water level dropped abruptly. As they watched in stunned silence, the overflow drained away like a plug had been pulled, gallons of inky liquid running back into the well. In seconds, the pool was gone.

  Opal put a hand to her forehead. “Okay. What was that about?”

  “I told you,” Tyler said, trying to catch his breath. “Beast. Here. Just now. Big scary bad.”

  “You’re saying … The Beast … attacked our houseboat?” Nico was incredulous. “Through the Darkdeep? How is it even in the pond?”

  A roar sounded from beyond the wooden hull. Opal broke out in goosebumps.

  “He didn’t attack, Nico.” Tyler was shivering head to toe, but Opal heard elation in his voice. “I called him, and he came.”

  A second roar shook the houseboat. Then, impossibly, it sounded to Opal like another bellow answered—similar to the first, but slightly different in tenor.

  Nico flinched as if struck. “What … what was that?”

  Logan and Aster clattered down the stairs in a tangle.

  “What’s going on?” Logan yelped. “Emma’s on lookout—there are huge ripples moving in the pond. Is the Stalker attacking? Did you guys make another figment or something?” He tried to shove a dagger into Opal’s hand, but she waved him away distractedly. Opal couldn’t shake that second call. It had almost seemed like …

  No. Impossible. There’s only one Beast on our world.

  Aster hefted a dagger as if testing its weight. “The giant water creatures are not friendly,” she said, her voice grim. “Once they have your scent, they do not give up.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Nico shouted, holding up both hands. “Everybody hold on a second!”

  “That was our Beast,” Tyler snapped. “I called him here.”

  Aster stared at him like he’d grown a third arm. “Your Beast? What insanity is this?”

  “We’ve got one on the team,” Logan explained with a nervous laugh. “It hates Takers. He’s kind of our buddy.”

  Opal was still trying to get a grip on the situation. “How did you summon him, Ty?”

  Tyler spoke rapidly, both hands darting for emphasis. “I was keeping an eye on the Darkdeep, because the well was acting funny. I was just staring at it. Not waving algae sticks, or old flags, or anything like that. I was only thinking, ‘man, if we have to go at this Eater dude, I wouldn’t mind our giant sea monster pal helping out with the fight.’ Like sixty seconds later, the Beast’s head came up through the Darkdeep.”

  Opal stared, dumbfounded. “Its head. Was inside the houseboat.”

  Tyler nodded like a sock puppet. “Yup. It screamed at me once, then was gone. I nearly wet my wetsuit.”

  Worry lines dug across Logan’s forehead. “But the last roar came from across the pond. Much farther away.”

  “There were two distinct calls,” Opal said quietly.

  Nico glanced at her, eyes pinched in alarm. Did he notice it, too?

  Logan shook his head. “No. Same roar, different times. You’re hearing things is all.”

  Opal’s jaw firmed. “The second one sounded … strange.”

  Tyler rubbed his face nervously. “Like: I’m mad at Tyler now, strange?”

  “No. Like: I’m a different Beast, strange.”

  Shocked silence.

  Logan broke it. “No way. Come on. How could we have missed a second Beast all this time?”

  Opal bit her lip, trying to make sense of the situation. She could’ve sworn the second roar was unique from the first, the way different people had different voices. But why wouldn’t Thing have told them about another Beast? Had it not known?

  “Wait!” Tyler snapped his fingers. “Not a second Beast. A Beast figment! Our Beast was just inside the Darkdeep, after all. He somehow made a figment copy of himself!” Then his eyes grew wide. Tyler actually started jumping up and down. “Guys! I’ve got it! That’s what we have to do!”

  Outside, two roars sounded in tandem. Everyone jumped.

  Opal’s blood turned to ice. Hearing them in concert was terrifying.

  Emma came pounding down the steps. “Guys, there are two angry sea monsters circling the houseboat!”

  “It all makes sense now,” Tyler whispered. “The answer was staring us in the face this whole time.”

  Logan’s voice cracked. “Do tell, Ty. What the heck is going on?!”

  Tyler crouched, wiggling both hands out at his sides. “Earlier down here, I was also thinking about how we’ve got no chance against the Eater.”

  At an annoyed grunt from Nico, he shrugged. “Sorry, dude, it’s true. He’s got an army. We’ve got a few stone knives. But then Beastie Boy showed up in the Darkdeep, and now there are two of them doing laps out in the pond.”

  Opal gasped. “A figment Beast. And if it’s as real as the conjurings Aster made—it could … could help us.”

  Nico grabbed his head with both hands. “Of course! This whole time we’ve been agonizing about how we could fend off an invasion. Meanwhile the solution is swirling below our feet!”

  Energy sizzled through Opal. Could it be true? Was it that simple?

  “We make our own army,” Tyler growled, pointing at the Darkdeep. “We have the tool right here.”

  Aster placed her hands on her hips, a look of realization dawning on her face. “ ‘The ultimate weapon,’ my governess said. ‘Unique in the universe.’ ”

  “We just need to do what the Beast did!” Emma danced in a little circle, clapping delightedly.

  Logan seemed almost in shock. But he began nodding as the idea took hold.

  Opal looked down at the well.

  Make figments.

  Create allies to battle the Eater and his army.

  Can we really do it? Do we have enough control?

  Opal glanced at Nico. She could tell he was asking himself the same questions.

  “Dangerous,” he whispered.

  “Playing with fire,” Opal agreed.

  Nico’s eyes flashed. “But it’s our only chance.”

  Opal took a deep breath. She turned to the group. Silence fell like a curtain.

  “At first we didn’t understand the Darkdeep,” Opal said. “We made mistakes. But it made us face our fears.”

  The Darkdeep gleamed in the center of the chamber.
/>   Opal’s heart was pounding in her chest, but she grinned wickedly.

  “Now, we’ll use those fears to fight.”

  29

  NICO

  Nico tugged on the sleeves of his wetsuit.

  The well was churning again. Slowly, like on the day they first discovered this gloomy, freaky, nightmare of a hidden chamber.

  Into the Darkdeep, one last time.

  Nico winced at his own thought.

  Sheesh. Why did I think last? One more time, Nico.

  One more.

  A tremor ran through him as he reached for his swim gloves. They’d decided to create figments to help battle the demon army. And, given the carnage such a clash would surely bring, the Torchbearers didn’t want it taking place on this world. Not at Yellowstone, not at Timbers, not anywhere on Earth.

  So they’d take the fight to the Eater. Stop him on Thing’s world.

  You shall not pass. Nico chuckled darkly to himself.

  It was time to go.

  “Everyone ready?” he asked.

  The others nodded, bouncing on heels and shaking out arms and legs. Preparing to enter the Darkdeep’s black embrace yet again. Where they’d make figments on purpose, and hope they could harness their power. Use them, for the very first time. Nico tried not to worry about how to actually do that. He tried not to panic at the thought of deliberately making monsters.

  How would they control the creatures? Or keep them from running away?

  This experiment ran the risk of loosing another horde of terrors on Timbers. Nico was afraid he’d think up something terrible, then never even see it, bobbing in the Darkdeep’s nothing-space while whatever monster he’d conjured dragged itself over the cliffs of Still Cove.

  He turned to Aster. “How’d you make them stay with you?”

  Aster seemed lost in her own dark thoughts. She glanced at him, brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “The figments at your tea party.” Nico suddenly felt this was vitally important. “How’d you make, uh, make them”—he spun his hand in a circle, searching for the right word—“I don’t know … attend?”

  Aster squinted at him in the semidarkness. “They had no choice. I created them as guests of the festivity.” Sadness filled her voice. “They were people I knew. Before.”

  She imagined lost friends. Nico felt a rush of sympathy for the girl from another time.

  Opal straightened, eyes intent on Aster. “Explain that part. Inside the Darkdeep, we’ve only tried thinking of specific imaginings. We’ve never attempted to give our figments, like … I don’t know …” She was also struggling to express her thoughts.

  “Purpose?” Tyler chimed in.

  “Yes!” Opal said. “Exactly, Ty.” She turned to Aster again. “How did you make them want to show up?”

  Aster looked from face to face, eyes suspicious, like she thought this might be some sort of trap. Then she shrugged. “When I enter the well, I think, this is what I want. Not, this is what I wish to see, or this would be fun to play with. I was particular, and the figments did as I wished.”

  Emma pressed a fist to her chin. “That’s it! We forgot about the link!”

  “The what?” Logan asked, eyebrows narrowing.

  “The link to our minds!” Emma spun on Nico, talking excitedly. “Remember when we first read about the Darkdeep, in the old book from the Torchbearers’ vault? The one that calls it the Deepness?”

  Nico nodded, but didn’t see where Emma was going.

  “Well, it said that a part of the Deepness gets inside you, right?” Emma seemed to be working out her theory as she spoke. “The Darkdeep leaves a trace of itself in your mind, so it can feast on your hidden fears. That’s what went so wrong originally. But maybe that link is more than just a nasty leach on our subconscious. Maybe we can do more if we concentrate harder!”

  Aster was nodding. “Yes. I was focused. I thought, Welcome, Uncle Pierre. I invite you to my tea party.”

  Nico felt like a door had been kicked open in his brain. Ideas were linking together like Lego bricks. “This whole time, we’ve been limiting ourselves. We’ve only thought about what we want figments to be. We never considered what we wanted them to do.”

  Tyler smacked his hands together. “That’s how we build an army! We don’t just make a bunch of figments and hope they help us—or don’t kill us. We create allies whose sole purpose is to fight the Eater!”

  Nico held up a hand for quiet, his mind racing. “Okay. So. When we go into the Darkdeep, only think about creatures who want to fight the Eater. Don’t let their purpose get separated from their existence.”

  Logan shifted uncomfortably. “That sounds great, Nico. But how do we do it?”

  Opal answered for him. “Think about monsters that could fight on Thing’s world. In fact, think of them as being there already. Imagine that world for them—tell the figments it’s where they belong. Then maybe they’ll follow us. Through the Rift, into the Void, and over to the other dimension.”

  She seemed to falter as she laid out exactly what was needed. Could they really make all that happen?

  Nico saw shoulders droop around the room. He couldn’t let the group lose confidence.

  “This will work,” he said firmly, meeting eyes. “If we gather a strong enough force and block the Eater’s army, we can stop this invasion from reaching Earth. We’ll be in and out as quickly as possible, to avoid another time jump.”

  “We’d better,” Tyler grumbled. “If I miss another whole day, I might as well chill there for a week, until I’m technically eighteen on Earth and can buy a plane ticket to Mars.”

  “We’ll stay no longer than last time,” Opal confirmed. “You’ve got the watch timer, Ty. When it goes off, we bail from Thing’s world, no matter what. We can regroup in the Void if we have to.”

  “Right.” Nico tapped the side of his head. “Smart and fast. We’ve got this, guys.”

  Emma and Logan both nodded, with only a trace of uncertainty, while Tyler gave a shaky thumbs up. Opal shook off her jitters, voicing agreement. For her part, Aster seemed confused as to why they were troubled at all.

  New girl thinks she’s already a figment master. But maybe she was?

  In the hole below them, the Darkdeep coughed. Rotten-egg smell filled the chamber.

  “No more debating,” Nico said swiftly, preparing his things. “Let’s get to work. Remember—don’t just think of figments. Hold in your mind what you want them to do.”

  Emma lofted a hand. “Let’s kick some alien butts.”

  High fives went around the circle. Everyone looked ready.

  Nico approached the lip of the well. He looked down into its whirling, lightless depths.

  One last time.

  But this time, the thought didn’t frighten him.

  Splash.

  Cold.

  Blinding light, then a deep, dark pull.

  Nico surrendered himself to the Darkdeep, found himself floating in its black emptiness.

  He focused his thoughts on creatures that could fight. Some he knew from stories, others he made up on the spot. He let the menagerie race through his mind like a fever dream, hoping his friends were doing the same. The entire time, Nico imagined himself standing beside these figments, on the surface of Thing’s planet, ready to fight the Eater.

  Something electric ran through his body. Nico felt his mind skip the rails.

  Pain lanced into his brain. Nico ground his teeth. Let out a mental scream.

  As quickly as the spasm came, it was gone.

  Nico found himself floating in the vacuum of the Darkdeep. Felt a pressure on his wrist.

  Opal.

  She was holding hands with Emma, who was linked to Logan. Tyler and Aster joined the chain on Nico’s opposite side. The group floated in the Darkdeep’s current, everyone seemingly exhausted by what they’d attempted.

  But they were alone.

  No figments.

  No army.

  Nico�
��s head dropped in despair. Had they unleashed those terrible thoughts on their own town?

  A hiss echoed in the darkness.

  Nico looked up. He squinted into the ether.

  A small glow appeared at the edge of his vision.

  As he watched, the circle of light expanded, became a shimmering band of fire. Its blinding radiance arrowed toward them, picking up speed as it closed.

  Nico felt the bottom of his gut fall out.

  The fiery band separated into a dozen individual points. Then two dozen. Then a hundred.

  The mass was barreling straight for where they hovered.

  Nico? Opal sent.

  He licked his lips. Um, yeah?

  Those lights are coming on fast. Can you make out the center one?

  Nico peered as hard as his sight would allow. Then he let out a soft whimper.

  Similar groans sounded all along their human chain.

  You mean the dragon?! Tyler sent, in more of a mental gasp than anything like words.

  That’s the one! Opal squealed.

  Emma’s voice crashed into Nico’s head. Sorry! She’s mine!

  A bit more dangerous than my rude uncle. Aster’s whole body was quivering.

  Nico spun, searching for a way forward. For the nebulous path out of the Darkdeep’s clutches and into the Rift.

  The pinpricks of light took clearer form.

  Figments.

  Snarling and howling. Tearing across the emptiness.

  Headed straight for them.

  Tyler edged backward in space. They know they’re supposed to fight for us, right?

  Let’s not wait to find out. Nico closed his eyes and imagined his destination. The Rift. Suddenly, he felt its awful gravity.

  The figment pack streaked closer. Shrieks echoed in the nothing-space.

  Nico blasted the Rift connection to his friends while reaching for it in his own thoughts. His consciousness stretched like a rubber band. He felt himself hurtling through darkness as a ball of screams echoed in his mind.

  He awoke within the chaos of the Void.

  Opal was shaking him. Get up, Nico! We’re not there yet!

  Nico snapped fully alert. A vague memory of swimming down into the Rift flickered through his brain. He glanced around at the glimmering in-between space of color and light. Aster and the other Torchbearers were already arrowing for the Rift to Thing’s world.