by Matt Ryan
The stone room came back into focus, and the pain, the weight of seeing my dad die, all of it, made me scream in agony and rage. Tears flowed from my eyes and my very soul ached for it all to end. Had my entire life been a lie? Was my sole purpose just to make this stone?
I wanted to pull my hand back, but the stone felt as if it weighed a ton and it pinned my hand against the center stone. Mom and Mark kept feeding me souls. The room swayed, and I knew I was going somewhere else.
“No more!” I screamed.
I floated over a dining room table with Mark, Mom and Sarah sitting at it. I recognized the table from back in Summerville. It was Mark’s old house.
“I’m not hurting her,” he said.
“You don’t have to hurt her, you just have to guide her along,” Mom said. “Certain things need to happen in order for her to arrive at the final destination.”
“You people make me sick,” Mark said. “She’s a human being, and an awesome one at that. Just spend a minute with your daughter and you’ll see for yourself. She’s right over there, not fifteen feet away.”
Tears filled my mom’s eyes. “I want to more than anything, but she’s more important than my selfish needs.”
“This is dumb,” Mark said.
“Mark,” Sarah interjected. “All we’re asking is for you to get her to like you a lot, and then, you know . . .”
“Crush her?” Mark said. “Give the ultimate fuel to her fire?” He slapped the table. “I’m not going to let you ruin another life. She’s one of the good ones, and she deserves to know everything you just told me. She’s a person, not some piece of clay for you to mold.”
“She can’t know. Not now. There’ll be a place and time for that.” Mom looked out the back window.
Was I in that house, just a few feet away from my mother?
Mark got up from the table and pointed a finger at my mom. “You make me sick.”
“Mark, stop this,” Sarah said.
“No, not this time. Not her.” He turned away, and his mom stood up and grabbed his hand. He looked stunned and pulled his hand back—and then he fell to the floor.
I gasped and floated closer to him. It appeared to be a knockout stone.
“I told you, he’s got a righteous streak a mile long,” Sarah said.
“I see. Maybe we should just leave them to it. I mean, a teen romance usually ends badly all by itself,” Mom said.
“I don’t know. I’ve seen the way he looks at her.” Sarah knelt next to Mark. “We can’t leave him like this.”
“I have a memory stone. It should clear out any recollections of this encounter, or of me,” Mom said, and pulled out a clear stone.
“You think it’s safe to keep using them on him?”
“They shouldn’t bother a rube too much,” Mom said.
“And my payment?”
Mom sighed and pulled out vials of material I recognized as the time stone I’d created for Sarah. “At some point, you’re going to have to choose a side.”
“I already have. My side.”
I floated through the ceiling, past the bedroom and out through the roof. I spotted the birthday decorations in my old backyard and tried to pull myself back down to no avail.
Back in the stone room, I screamed. The soul stones were striking the back of my hand. Anger and despair filled me, and even though I wanted to give in to the pain—let the stone be absorbed into me—I couldn't allow it. The room went blurry.
“Bring it on,” I screamed in a ragged voice.
The idea that my whole life had been a scam sent my rage over the edge. I wanted to hurt my mom, my dad, and everyone else who had manipulated me into this very spot. They would all pay when I took the stone for my own.
I felt its power resting on my hand; the knowledge of the world flowed into me.
Many of the pictures flashed by before I could understand anything about them. Great fields of grass, a woman being murdered, a dog chasing a boy, a group of six young people around a stone, two kids cowering below a rock with a man standing over it.
Next, I spotted a young guy sitting in an alchemists’ prison. He looked up, and I could see his blue eyes and blond hair. It was Leo, and I knew where he was. Then it all stopped and slowed down, becoming a clear image of a young girl looking me directly in the eyes. She terrified me, and I could see into her mind. She was coming for us, and she would destroy everything.
None of it made sense, but I could feel all of those people, their worries, their ambitions. Each one meant something, but I didn’t know what.
All I could gather was that there were worlds, many worlds. I floated through the cosmos and the need for more struck me. I wanted the knowledge behind these images. I wanted to find these people in these different worlds. There was so much more out there than I could have ever imagined, and the stone was only giving me a glimpse of it. It had limitations, and that was what terrified me more than anything. This stone wasn’t the end, but the begining. It wanted to consume. It was hungry for more.
The stone room crashed back to clarity.
Pain wracked my entire body and I slumped down, feeling another soul stone hit the back of my hand. Tears streamed from my eyes and I felt the will to hold on to my emotions slipping. I screamed out, trying to force my hand free. It wouldn’t move. The stone had locked it in place.
The bones in my hand cracked and I yelled out in pain, crying to make it all stop.
Mark ran to me. His hands caressed my head. “It’s over. That’s all of them,” Mark said, and I heard a crack in his voice.
Another bone snapped, and I felt the tendons and ligaments giving way to the great weight of the stone. It was pushing into my hand, and I did everything I could to keep from absorbing it.
Another bone cracked, and my skin ripped open. The stone fell through my hand and I fell backward, free from its weight. I reeled back, grabbing at my hand and the hole through it. Blood spewed everywhere, and I shrieked in pain and shock.
The stone rolled down my ramp and partially up the pillar ramp before rolling back to the other side. It settled between the ramps, a fiery red stone with swirls of many colors. The colors appeared to shift and move within the stone.
“Cathy, help,” Mark said, laying me on my back. “She’s hurt.”
But my mom didn’t listen. She walked over to the stone and reached out for it.
“Mom,” I said, sitting up. “Don’t touch it. It’s not the end. It will never be the end.”
Mom looked at me with so much wonder in her eyes, I knew I wasn’t getting through to her.
“Mom. Don’t do it. We need to destroy it. I know how.”
“You want it for yourself,” Mom said.
“No, I don’t.” I winced as jolts of agony shot through my hand. My mom was partially right, though. The idea of someone else holding the stone terrified me. I wanted to figure out the world’s mysteries and solve all of the problems, but I knew the stone was a liar. It fed you just enough that you would want infinitely more.
Mom touched the stone. I thought she wouldn’t be able to lift it, but for her, it was as light as any other stone. She held it out and closed her hand around it. “Oh my God.” She floated off the floor, and the room around us shook. Dust and small bits of stone fell from the ceiling.
“There’s so much. So much more,” Mom said. Her eyes glazed over, and I knew the stone was showing her its infinite possibilities. I felt jealous in a way, and glad in another. Let her bear the stone. She had wanted it more than anything, even her own daughter. She deserved it.
“So many worlds, so many souls,” Mom whispered, and it gave me chills.
She floated back down and her feet touched the floor. She opened her eyes and stared at me with a look of horror. I knew what she was feeling. This stone wasn’t the end; it was just the beginning.
It would demand to be more, but the cost of growth would not be in the billions, or even trillions . . . This stone would have a never-ending thirst to
evolve to the next level. Our own world wouldn’t be enough to quench its thirst.
“Let it go, Mom. Drop the stone!” I yelled.
“I can’t.” She pulled down her shirt and slapped the stone against her breastbone. The sound of her bones cracking echoed around the room. She pulled her hand away, and I could see the stone stuck in her halfway. “I see it all now, Allie,” Mom said. “And before I do what I’m sure you know I must do, I need you two to leave. I have so much work to do.”
“What about Quinn?” Mark said.
“He means nothing.”
“What about Allie?”
“Take her, Mark.”
“You were supposed to stop the war, unite the alchemists,” he said.
“There will be no more wars. There is only me now, and soon, everyone will know my name.” She floated higher, and I wasn’t sure how, but she lit up. She looked terrifyingly angelic.
“I’m no angel,” Mom said, reading my thoughts. “I am God.”
Mark grabbed my uninjured hand and slapped his portal stone on it.
I screamed, “No!” I wanted to help my mom. I wanted to make her drop the stone, to destroy it, or even give it to me for proper use. But we were floating before I could say another word.
We landed on a field of grass. Looking around, I knew this place.
This was the same grassy field the stone had shown me.
Mark picked me up and carried me. I flopped around in his arms, and consciousness came and went. I called for him, trying to wrap my hands around him, but I kept slipping away.
I was in a car, and a woman was wrapping my hand up.
An IV bag was hung above me, with a line running down and into my arm. I was lying in a small bed with a thin white blanket covering me up to my chest and several pillows arranged around me. The room smelled of sanitized air, and the lights above me were dimmed to a soft glow. The curtains were only partially drawn, and I could see the woods beyond.
“Mark,” I croaked, seeing him looking out into those woods.
He jumped at my voice and hurried to my bed, then took my left hand into his. I lifted my right hand. A large bandage was wrapped around it, and only my fingertips were showing. It didn’t exactly hurt, but there was a dull pain, probably subdued with pain medication.
“Allie,” Mark said. His eyes looked red and puffy. “You’re awake.”
“How long?” I asked.
“Four days,” he said.
The number shocked me. I had been expecting hours, not days. How much could my mom have done in four days? “Has she done anything? Did you hear what happened to Jackie or Bridget?”
“See that?” a smug voice asked. “She mentioned me first.” Jackie walked into the room with Bridget in tow.
“Oh, please,” Bridget said. “Why don’t you just go all lesbo on her and get it over with?”
“Maybe I will,” Jackie said. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she gave me a hug. Bridget walked to the other side and Mark got up to give her a spot.
“It’s so good to see you guys,” I said. “What happened up there?”
“Screw that. We want to know what happened in the halls of doom. Mark here’s about as good of a storyteller as a dictionary,” Jackie said.
“My mom . . .” I didn’t know how to say it without sounding too crazy. “Used the stone.”
Jackie rolled her eyes as if I was stating the obvious.
“How’s the hand?” Bridget asked.
I lifted it and turned it, looking at the bandages. “It feels . . .” I moved my fingers a little bit and pain shot through the center of my hand. I inhaled sharply. “Pretty bad.”
“Hey, look at the positive. Now you have another hole for Mark to—”
“Good Lord, make it stop, Jackie.” Bridget slapped her shoulder.
I smiled. I was so happy to have my friends around me. I wanted to wrap all three of them up and never let go. Could we finally be free of the alchemists’ world?
“Where are we?” I said, looking out the window.
“Sydney,” Jackie said.
“Australia?”
“Nope, nowhere cool like that. Your boyfriend here brought you to Sydney, Nebraska.”
“Nebraska?” I asked. “Why?”
“I spent some time here with my mom when I was young,” Mark explained. “She was scamming some alchemist kid a few towns over from here. She didn’t need me much for that one, so I was able to explore. I fell in love with this area. The people are always nice, and there’s no smog. Things move pretty slow here.”
“Could you make it sound any worse?” Jackie said.
“I bet they have a Dairy Queen on every street,” Bridget said in a phony Southern Belle accent.
The view from the window did look nice. I’d been so wrapped up in the world of alchemy, I’d never really thought about where I’d go after the stone had been made. Apparently, Mark had, though I wasn’t sure if I was ready for a slow life just yet.
Sitting up, I gazed out the window. Through the trees swaying in the breeze, I saw her. I pushed Bridget out of the way and got off the bed. I tried to move to the window, but my IV yanked on my hand. I grabbed the IV dolly and pulled it along.
“What is it?” Mark said, looking from me to the window.
“I just saw her,” I said.
“Who?” Bridget asked.
They were all looking out the window, but I didn’t see her again. Had it just been my imagination? “I thought I saw my mom.”
Jackie and Bridget grabbed stones and looked at the door.
“Like those will do anything,” Mark said, gazing out the window.
“What?”
“You haven’t told her?” Bridget asked.
“She just woke up.”
Bridget walked closer to the door and I saw the black stone in her hand. A kill stone.
“Will someone tell me what’s going on?”
“It’s your mom,” Jackie said.
“She stopped the war, right? Quinn’s gone?” I asked.
“Yes, she stopped the war. But there isn’t any peace, at least not for people like us,” Jackie said, and looked at Bridget.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s killing the dark alchemists,” Bridget said from the doorway.
“She didn’t kill them. They sacrificed themselves for the ‘greater good’,” Jackie said. “She’s taking people and creating soul stones from them.”
“Who and why?”
“She’s absorbing all of Quinn’s people. It’s sickening. She has a main group around her now, feeding her these stones. I’m not sure why, but I think she needs them for something.”
“It’s the evolution of the stone. I felt it when it was in my hand. It wants more. It promises more.” I sat back down on the bed and rubbed my forehead with my good hand. “This is all my fault. She told me to not let her take the stone. She told me she wouldn’t do good with it.” I looked up as they stood around me in silence. “Don’t tell me there’s more.”
“We’ve sent the Minis in to report back on what’s going on,” Bridget said.
“What? Wes, Kylie, David?”
“Carly as well,” Jackie said. “But we haven’t heard from them in days. I’m afraid something bad has happened to them.”
“My mom wouldn’t hurt them, would she?”
“She’s running out of alchemists pretty quickly. Rubes turn into soul stones, but only weak ones. There’s rumors swirling around that she’s building something terrible. She might have ended one war, but another one has started.”
“No, no, this can’t be right. She wouldn’t kill those people.”
“Jackie and I bounced the second we heard Cathy had the stone instead of you. It took us days to track you and Mark down,” Bridget said. “Sorry to tell you this stuff, Allie.”
I shook my head in disbelief. There had to be another explanation.
“She’s building stuff,” Jackie said. “Out of this world kind of stuff. I
don’t know what it is, or what it’s for, but I think once it’s done, it’s going to be the end of us all.”
What could she be building? I thought of the image the stone had shown me of my mother, floating over a large city. She was going to harm everyone there. “It’s my fault. I should have taken the stone,” I said. “It tried to show me.”
“You did what you thought was best,” Mark said.
“No, I did what was selfish. I didn’t want the burden of that stone. I wanted . . . I wanted to be with you, Mark. I wanted to be far away from it all.”
“Nebraska far,” Jackie said.
I gazed at my friends and tried not to think of all my other alchemist friends who were as good as dead at the hands of my mother. If I stopped and let it sink in, I knew I’d cry. But crying would have to wait.
I stared at Mark and shook my head. “I created her, and now I’m going to have to stop her.”
The room froze, and my mom appeared at the end of the bed. Mark, Bridget, and Jackie all stood still—stuck in a suspended state. The sounds around me dulled as well and the picture on the TV froze with the weather guy pointing at a map.
“Mom?” I asked, because she looked different. Younger, prettier than she ever could have been before. An aura surrounded her as well, as if her skin had a glow.
“Yes, Allie. The second I felt you awake, I came. The connection from a mother to a daughter is a strong one. Something I never realized until I was awakened.”
“I’ve heard you’ve been killing people, taking their souls. Mom, please stop. Remove the stone, and I can help you destroy it.”
Mom cringed at my knowledge of the stone, and then I realized that perhaps I was the only person in the world who knew how to destroy it. Fear built deep inside me.
“You don’t ever need to fear me, Allie. I made a promise to you.”
“And my friends.”
“Yes, and your friends. I keep my promises, but I also can’t have you around while I’m completing the next phase of this stone.” My mom produced a stone in each hand.
“You can’t do this, Mom.” I scooted back in my bed.
“I spent some time creating this for you and Mark.”
