“We’ll be done soon.”
“But we’ve been walking a whole hour.”
“Trust me. There’s something you really need to see up here.”
Barrel trudged after him with a sigh. Neither boy spoke as, eventually, they entered a small clearing surrounded by trees. The spot was barely big enough for a campfire.
“There she is,” Kellan said.
He was pointing at a flowering vine that had wrapped itself around the base of a tree.
“A weakvine,” Barrel said, gaping at it. “These only grow in tropical climates. How did you find this?”
Kellan stood with his arms crossed, a smug look on his face. “That’s why I needed you to come with me. I couldn’t believe it myself.”
“These are valuable. They’re used for paralysis potions.”
“I know.”
Barrel approached the vine, which itself was not dangerous. It was the oily, purple flowers growing along its length that he had to stay away from. Their poison could render a person immobile for hours.
But this was too incredible to leave behind untouched. They had to cut it somehow and take it back to campus to learn how it had managed to get this far from its native home.
“Did you bring a knife, by any chance?” Barrel asked without looking back at Kellan.
“Sure. Let me look for it.”
As Kellan dug through his pockets, Barrel got on one knee and studied the vine. He followed its length, expecting to find its base embedded in the soil.
Instead, he found a knot.
“That’s strange,” Barrel said. “It almost looks like someone tied it around the tree. But why?”
“Here,” Kellan said. “The knife. I found it.”
Barrel turned. He gasped at the sight of the dark figure standing over him. Kellan had been replaced by someone else—a man wearing a black hood with holes for the eyes and mouth and black gloves that looked like those of an assassin.
The hood was familiar—terrifyingly so. It was the same one worn by the kidnapper in all those WANTED posters.
“It’s you,” Barrel said. “You’re the kidnapper. But I thought you were supposed to be a Feral…
“What, this?” Kellan covered his eyes for a moment, and when he lowered his hand again, his eyes were bright orange.
It had been an illusion the entire time.
“Really threw everyone off, didn’t it?” Kellan said, smiling proudly. “Amazing what a simple spell and a fake tail can do to convince people of what they wish to believe anyway.”
Barrel spat his next words in disgust. “You coward.”
Kellan lunged at him. Barrel tried to roll away, but the bigger boy was faster and stronger and pinned him easily to the ground, his clenched teeth visible through the mouth hole. Kellen’s eyes had gone tight with rage.
“Studying with you is so boring,” Kellan said. “I thought it would never end.”
He dragged Barrel toward the weakvine.
“What are you doing?” Barrel said, flailing to get away. “Let go of me!”
“Shut up.”
Kellan punched him in the jaw. Stunned, Barrel could only watch as the weakvine came closer and closer. The spicy scent coming off its flowers made his nose tingle. It even smelled toxic.
He screamed as Kellan mashed his face against them.
“Study this,” Kellan said.
Within seconds, Barrel’s entire face went numb. He lost the ability to scream as the poison attacked his central nervous system, paralyzing his entire body. All he could do was lie there and watch as another masked figure emerged into the clearing.
He was shorter and stockier, and he carried an impulsive anger in his eyes that differed from the dead-calm contempt in Kellan’s. He had also brought a large black sack, which he immediately unrolled like a pirate brandishing a flag.
“Took you long enough,” Kellan said.
“I was there the whole time. Just waiting for the right moment.”
Barrel knew that voice.
Hey, goldenwings! I’m talkin’ to you!
“Take his Araband,” Kellan said, “and don’t touch that plant.”
“I know that,” Garig said.
Kellan gave a condescending chuckle. “You sure?”
Barrel watched helplessly as Garig stole his Araband right out of his pocket, then crushed it inside a Sargonaut’s bone-breaking grip.
“Arabands are for sissies,” he said. “Figures you would have one, Betty.”
Barrel despised that nickname. No one had ever called him that to his face, but he knew about it thanks to Owen. He had laughed once—yes, it had been high-pitched, like a girl’s—and Owen had warned him the name would stick if he didn’t watch it.
Garig tossed the crumpled Araband down by his boots, then stomped it into the ground, making sure to smear dirt across it to hide the evidence.
“All right,” Kellan said. “Let’s do it quickly.”
With a nod, Garig got to work slipping the sack over Barrel’s head and body. Darkness engulfed him. His stomach did a nauseating flip as Garig slung him over his shoulder. Then they were carrying him—but where, exactly? And to what purpose?
The air grew colder as they ascended. Barrel kept silent, stifling the sobs trying to claw their way out of his chest. Begging for release would be useless. This was no prank—it was a legitimate kidnapping. Instead of crying and pleading, he tried listening for sounds that might tell him where they were going.
One thing was certain—Kellan and Garig were taking him up into the mountains, away from Theus Academy, his friends, and the rest of civilization. He might never come back down again.
CHAPTER 18
T he ride into downtown Theus was a lesson in torture.
Milo’s consciousness had become a prisoner inside a body no longer under his control. All he could do was watch the city’s passing towers as the rest of him—his voice and hands, both hijacked—went through the motions of piloting and landing.
The best he could do was try and send a mental message to Zander. But the foreign presence in his head blocked his attempts.
Their destination was the same fountain Uncle Manny had shown the orphans their first day in Theus. Back then, no one else had been in the park. Now, a dozen people were bent over the bowl’s edge, scooping greedy handfuls of blue energy and splashing it across their faces.
Milo dismounted and left Zander behind as he approached the fountain. The levathon neighed anxiously. The people at the fountain took no notice.
He struggled to deny each step. The foreign presence also struggled—to resist Milo’s efforts and keep walking. A battle was being waged, and Milo was losing.
Let it go, boy, a voice not his own whispered in his head. Stop resisting.
He knew that voice. Finally, his suspicions had been confirmed.
Kovax was the one behind all this.
Kovax Leonaryx, the man who had murdered his father.
I no longer have to convince you to do it, the low mage crooned. My power is such that I can command you like a puppet.
The man was bragging.
It wasn’t enough to ruin Milo’s life. He had to brag about it while he did it.
It was true that he had turned Milo into a puppet. His legs and arms moved as if yanked by invisible strings. His tongue licked his lips, and his clawed hands reached for the light. Milo staggered, zombie-like, trying to resist, but Kovax had somehow managed to invade a much deeper layer of his brain, where the controls for movement resided.
It was almost amazing, a spell of that power and complexity. Milo would have been impressed, were he not so terrified.
That’s it… Thattaboy…
Milo’s vision filled with sizzling blue light as, hungrily, he dipped his hands and face into the frothing essence. This time, Emma wasn’t around to pull him away.
BURIED in a deep layer of Milo’s hijacked mind, a change occurred.
A power grew restless. It didn’t quite come
awake—it only trembled.
Like an eye stirring beneath its lid.
CHAPTER 19
“…I can command you like a puppet,” Kovax was saying, his face awash in blue light.
He still couldn’t believe he had come this far. The connection was a deeply intimate one. As he thrust his clawed hands toward Sightwielder, a shudder ran through his entire body. The boy was resisting.
He was strong of will. No one could deny that. But Kovax was stronger.
“…Thattaboy.”
He eased Milo’s hands and face into the light.
Mission accomplished.
A sudden burst of pressure and light tossed Kovax like a rag doll. He flew back from Sightwielder and slammed into a machine. Strangely, there was no pain, but then he understood why. His body had ceased to matter. Another reality had wrapped itself around his mind, whisking him away.
Memories—someone else’s—suddenly threw up walls around him. He was trapped in someone else’s past. His mind’s eye was allowed to roam in what he soon came to experience as an incredibly vast forest. He found himself drifting among millions of branches, each carrying an infinite number of leaves. Each leaf was the experience of a boy not yet an adult. And he had access to all of them.
Time was short. Kovax homed in on the memories that mattered to him, using mental techniques he had already practiced in advance. Words and phrases like rebel, Forge, and hidden bases served as shortcuts.
In one memory, Milo and Emmanuel stood in front a holographic map of Taradyn covered in at least a dozen red circles.
These are vaults buried throughout the continent, Emmanuel told the boy, touching one of the circles to zoom in on it.
Hideouts, Milo said, for the Forge.
Exactly. Memorize these and the ones from the other continents. Once we leave here for good, these databases will self-destruct. Should you ever find yourself in need of allies or equipment, you’ll know where to look.
In another, Milo sat studying the maps, memorizing coordinates and reading inventory lists from all the different hideouts.
Jackpot.
Kovax chopped down as many of those branches as he could and stored them. These were his memories now, not Milo’s. The boy would never be able to recall those moments again.
Before he could finish, something went horribly wrong.
A storm exploded, and the forest shook.
Kovax screamed as a force yanked him down into a subterranean darkness. The connection was lost, the memories gone except for the ones he had stored, but even they would be no good if he woke up brain-dead.
Reality shifted. It was nauseating. Kovax plunged and rose again, bobbing like a man trying to walk his way out of an earthquake. Blackness overtook his senses. He could feel his limbs again, as well as the pain carpeting his lower back.
He opened his eyes. Pushing himself into a seated position on the floor, he thanked the gods for the failsafe spell he had implanted in Sightwielder. He could only go so deep before triggering it. Then the spell was supposed to bring him back. At least now he knew it worked.
Had he lingered a minute more, his brain would have been fried.
“Papa, what happened?”
The voice startled him. Kovax closed his eyes and willed his heartbeat to slow back to a normal rhythm. Then he yanked the needle out of his wrist and tossed it aside, his own blood spraying across the floor. Sightwielder immediately went dark, reminding him of how close he had come to death.
It had been worth it.
“Boy, help me up,” he said.
Kofi ran to him, slung one of his father’s arms across his shoulders, and lifted. Kovax stood on shaky knees, his mind racing.
“The rebel hideouts,” he said, recalling the memory as he would one of his own, “the circles on the map, the coordinates—they’re clear as day. Kofi, we did it.”
Kofi smiled. “We did?”
“Yes, my boy. It worked.”
He dashed across the room, leaving Kofi to scratch his head in confusion. A quick tap turned on his command console, and a few more brought up a map of Astros.
“Zoom in on Tower of Dusk number four.”
The hologram shaped itself into a four-foot version of the tower he had recently built in Taradyn’s mountain range.
“Status of charge?”
A vertical red bar appeared next to it. The tower’s blood crystals were at full capacity.
Kofi stood next to him, looking on in silent wonder.
“Watch and learn, boy,” Kovax said. “This is how wars are won.”
He tapped the bottom of the status bar, summoning a threshold indicator. Numbers and a symbol appeared next to it.
0.00 percent.
He slid the indicator’s gray line upward, increasing the numbers along the way.
12.50 percent, then 24.5.
“This should do it.”
67.66 percent.
“What do you think?” he asked his son. “Should we go higher?”
Kofi nodded eagerly. “Do a hundred.”
“I don’t see why not.” He flicked his finger, sending the bar up to the top.
100 percent.
“That should do it. Initiate the casting sequence.”
Liquid fire poured from vents in the tower’s outer walls and dove upward, red as gushing blood. The energy gathered above the tip, congealing and brightening as it became more dense, more destructive, and surprisingly, more beautiful. Kovax was certain he had never seen such an aesthetically pleasing sight.
“That’s what it would look like?” Kofi said. “If it was a big tower? One of the real ones?”
Kovax shook his head, pleased with himself. “That is a real tower. And this is happening right now—far away from us, but it’s still happening.” With a scissoring motion of his arms, Kovax split the hologram into two identical displays. “Give me a strategic terrain map of Taradyn on the right.”
The console obeyed, and the tower on his right vanished, replaced by a two-dimensional map. Tower four appeared as a pulsing red triangle nestled the thickest section of the mountain range.
He recalled the coordinates he had gleaned from Milo’s memories and punched them into the console. A red X appeared in a northwestern region of the continent.
“There it is. Wipe it off the face of the realm.”
The fireball shot away from the tower, leaving a trail of black smoke as it arched through the air. Kovax adjusted the displays to get a singular view of its path. The speed was that of an asteroid about to crash into the planet. Or, in this case, an unsuspecting forest on Taradyn, where a secret lay buried beneath the earth—though not for much longer.
INSIDE VAULT SEVEN, located beneath a Taradynian forest known as Waking Elms, a dozen Forge soldiers in brown uniforms stood around a hologram in one of the meeting rooms. The display was of a metal, spider-like device with a luminether crystal embedded in its back.
One of the men—an officer with a short gray beard and a pink scar slashed across his forehead—moved his hand across the hologram’s surface to rotate it.
“The creeper is the only known way to completely take out a tower from ground level,” he explained to the others. “We’ve manufactured a few dozen in the next room, all of which are set to be delivered to our bases across Astros…”
He paused. The hologram blinked and stuttered as if from a bad connection, but this was a recording, not a transmission.
“A mechanical error?” one of the soldiers said.
“Not likely,” the officer replied.
The creeper blinked again, and this time it seemed another image was trying to take over by dissolving the first.
An alarm went off. The soldiers flinched at the sudden noise. Before anyone could speak, the creeper disappeared, replaced by a burning, red-hot fireball. Numbers counted down toward zero beneath it—altitude and distance being shed as the fireball approached.
“Run,” the officer shouted. “Into the sub-levels. Hurry!”
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It was too late. With an earth-shattering boom, the ceiling collapsed, crushing and burying everyone inside. Seconds later, fire consumed their bodies, along with everything else.
A fiery, smoking crater was all the remained of Vault Seven.
One hundred and fifty-nine souls, lost in the blink of an eye.
CHAPTER 20
A fter more than a week of watching the Orglots ready themselves for the upcoming battle, Oscar feared they might never leave their mountain lair at all. The Orglots barely slept, while Oscar snatched a few hours of sleep here and there when he could.
Ruk had finally ordered the collar and chain to be removed, freeing Oscar from his bondage. He could have escaped if he had really wanted to, but the thought was far from his mind. Ruk wasn’t worried about it, either. The connection between them was strong enough now that both understood the nature and importance of their commitment. They trusted each other in a way that reminded Oscar of his relationship with his father.
“You have been a gift to my people, Speaker,” Ruk told Oscar at one point, his shoulders back and his chest thrust out in pride. “When we achieve victory, your name will be included in our battle songs for the rest of time, alongside those of our warrior ancestors.”
“Thank you, Ruk.” Oscar dipped his head solemnly. “It will be an honor to join your clan in battle.”
Then, one day—or night, Oscar couldn’t tell the difference down here—Ruk approached him with an entourage of painted warriors bedecked in weapons and shields.
“The time has come,” the elder said. “You must use your Voice to call the broadbacks so that we may begin our journey.”
They had planned this out in-depth already, yet it still seemed too crazy and far-fetched of an idea to work. Oscar would have to stretch his ability farther than he’d ever tried. Led by Ruk, they began their long journey through the tunnels, this time along a different route. The expedition lasted over three days. When they were close to the end, Ruk let Oscar take the lead.
Finally, Oscar emerged from a cave half buried in the moonlit coast, a hundred Orglots at his back. The night air was cold and salty. His sharp ears picked out a noise coming from the dark, undulating seascape—a watery blowing sound that erupted now and then.
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