by John Goode
Oberon looked past Hawk and then back to his son. “You gave it to that filthy human and sent him away with the Crystal Court.”
Hawk’s smile wavered a fraction and told Oberon all he needed to know.
“It’s a good plan, but did you think I would just let them escape?”
ADAMAS’S GEMS were ferrying the rest of Ferra’s people through the portal when Oberon’s people rushed into the room.
“Keep casting!” Olim yelled to Adamas as she wheeled toward the troops, her eyes glowing the same white as freshly fallen snow.
The first dozen men were frozen so quickly that the men behind them had no time to pause before slamming into them. The frozen men shattered into a million shards of red ice as they scattered across the floor.
“Witch!” one of the fairies cried.
“I. Am. A. God,” Olim decreed as she brought the temperature in the room to absolute zero. The men in front were well armored, clad in the finest mythrel armor crafted on Faerth. It was designed to protect the Arcadian guard from most forms of physical damage. Save the dwarven metal adamant, there was nothing stronger in the lower realms.
What the armor was not designed for was to be instantly frozen while being worn.
The metal cracked and then shattered as it contracted around the men, crushing their limbs and torsos. The men behind them cried out as the magical shrapnel whizzed past them, cutting even more troops down in the process.
The barbarians were clear now; only Olim and the human remained.
Adamas had cast a carrying spell to move Kane and was halfway across the room to him when a cold iron crossbow bolt came flying from the doorway, striking Olim in the chest. She screamed, and a gale-force wind exploded from her. The winds grew stronger as her pain increased, and hurricane-force gusts of ice rushed out, pushing everyone away from her. Adamas was buffeted about as he tried to reach the boy, and he couldn’t make headway.
He noticed a slight glow around Kane, probably his power subconsciously protecting him, but it was growing dimmer.
Knowing there was no way to save Kane while Olim remained in the room, Adamas turned and flew at the ice queen instead. Riding the winds to maneuver around her, he waited until he was behind her and then shot himself at her back with all his power. He struck her solidly, and the two of them went flying into the portal.
The winds died instantly, leaving the throne room empty save for the unconscious human.
OBERON SAW his lieutenant emerge from the palace, carrying Kane in his arms. “My people already secured the castle.” He nodded for his guard to turn Hawk around to show them carrying the unconscious body out of the castle. “Now what, dear son?”
Hawk’s mind spun as he realized they were all about to die, and his father was going to gain the secret of ascension. He let out a defeated sigh and wondered if he could beg his father not to kill Kane….
Two pillars of light came thundering down from the sky, one striking the guard holding Hawk, the other hitting Kane’s captor. Hawk fell to the ground, dazed, and looked behind him. All that was left of the guard were his two severed arms and a pit of blackness where his body had stood.
Oberon wheeled around, and his jaw dropped open in shock.
Nystel stood on the ridge, surrounded by a hundred elven warriors. Her voice echoed out across the battlefield as easily as Oberon’s had. “Fairy King, you have been accused of murdering hundreds of elven civilians in an unprovoked attack on Stygian. How do you plead?”
Hawk coughed and chuckled. “The kindness of strangers indeed.”
Three days earlier
“ME?” MOLLY exclaimed, making the idea sound insane. “I don’t know a thing about combat. I’m useless in a fight.”
Kane looked like he was going to argue, but Ferra held a hand up to stop him. “Give us a second.”
“Don’t go far,” Kane said. “I have a task for you too.”
As the two girls walked away, Kane turned to Ater. “We need more help.”
The dark elf said nothing since the statement was obviously true.
“From what I get from Hawk’s mind, your people have a place….”
Ater shook his head. “His father already attacked it, trying to find the prince. If there is anyone left, they will be in no shape to fight.”
“So we’re screwed,” Kane said, biting his bottom lip.
Ater looked back to the castle and thought of Kor.
“There… there might be a way,” he said hesitantly.
“What?” Kane asked, jumping on any advantage.
“Kor and I can return to his lands and ask for aid,” he explained. “Well, he can ask. They won’t listen to me.”
“Wait, like light elves? Not dark elves?”
Ater nodded. “If I offer myself up, I am willing to bet that Nystel might be persuaded to help your cause.”
Kane didn’t like that idea at all. “I don’t want you to offer yourself up to anyone. What is their problem?”
Ater put a hand on Kane’s shoulder. “This is not your concern. Kor and I will come through.”
“And if you don’t?” Kane asked, seeing the girls walking back.
“Koran has a saying. When all is lost, you can always count on the kindness of strangers. Pray for that kindness, Kane, because I know Koran stopped listening to me a long time ago.”
As Ferra walked up, he began walking back to the castle, knowing they had no other choice.
OBERON TRIED his best not to seem intimidated and shouted back, “Those were dark elves. Our treaty specifies they are a common enemy.”
Nystel seemed unimpressed. “Two things. One, I don’t recognize your authority to speak for the Arcadian throne, and two….” Her eyes narrowed in anger. “All lives belong to Koran. May he find mercy on your soul.”
She raised her hands, and Oberon pulled a transport rune out of his tunic. “Ealu,” he cried out as the clouds parted for another beam of light. He winked out of existence as the ground he had been standing on was scorched by another holy strike.
There was silence on the battlefield. The Arcadian troops stared in horror as their leader fled.
Nystel spoke in the lull. “Lay down your weapons or, as Koran is my witness, I will try you for crimes against the Light.”
The sound of metal hitting the frozen ground echoed all around the castle.
It was the last thing Hawk heard before he passed out.
Chapter 15
“Where the flesh may betray you,
the soul is always true….”
Lord Charmant
HAWK TURNED the corner and walked into Adamas’s throne room.
He paused as an intense feeling of déjà vu passed through him. Then he noticed another “Hawk” speaking to the king
“So I need a favor,” the other Hawk asked Adamas.
“If it is within my power to grant it, it’s yours.”
Hawk saw himself nod, expecting the answer. “I need you to craft me a small gem.” Other Hawk took the chain from around his neck, and the seed for the next world tree appeared on the end of it. “It needs to be the same size as this, and I am going to need some way of duplicating the enchantments placed on the necklace. Though it’s invisible to normal detection, I have a feeling if one knew the exact spell used, it could be tracked.”
Adamas floated around the seed, examining it from all sides. “You wish to make a decoy necklace in case you are defeated.”
Other Hawk nodded. “It is unlikely, but I’d like to be ready just in case.”
“It can be done; my mages can simply transfer the enchantments to the decoy necklace and cloak the actual one, which means even the caster who made the spell would only find the fake.” The diamond paused and then asked the prince, “But who would you trust to hold the actual one?”
“You gave it to me,” Kane said, standing next to Hawk, watching. Hawk looked over and was not surprised to see him standing there. “You changed out the necklace before we left and didn’t eve
n tell me.”
Hawk realized he had to be unconscious if Kane was seeing these memories. He had been working so hard to keep them from Kane that it was the only answer. “The necklace vanishes when it is under a shirt; unless you know it is there, it is intangible.”
“You gave the most important object in the worlds to me?”
Hawk nodded.
“Why the hell would you do that?” Kane screamed as he hit him in the shoulder. Hawk flinched from the mental attack as Kane kept shouting. “I have no idea what to do with this thing! What if I broke it or something?”
Hawk grinned despite Kane’s anger. “It is the most powerful object in the Nine Realms. I don’t think you can break it.”
Kane kept thumping him. “Look who you’re talking to!”
Hawk grabbed Kane’s hands and held them still. “I know exactly who you are.”
Kane’s despair rang like a musical note between them. “I am going to screw this up. I just know it.”
Hawk’s love came back like a symphony, drowning out all the doubts and fears the other boy was feeling. “And I know you are going to do fine.”
He leaned in to kiss Kane but was stopped by a hand in his face. “This is a dream, right?”
Hawk tried to move the hand away. “If you weren’t real, I would dream you up, yes.”
Kane pulled away from Hawk’s embrace. “No seriously, this is our mind. Are we unconscious?”
I OPENED my eyes, and the light was like daggers stabbing me in the brain.
“Turn it off,” I moaned, covering my face with my arm.
I heard a familiar female voice say, “I apologize. I was not aware your eyes would be so sensitive.”
I cracked one eye half open and could see the blurry form of Silica, Adamas’s nurse, floating above me. “Where am I?” I croaked, my throat feeling like I hadn’t drunk anything in a month.
“You are in Olim’s castle,” she answered, passing a beam over me as she talked. “Adamas was forced to knock you out.”
I had a memory of being in the throne room, but it was muddy….
Sitting up, I reached into my shirt and began to dig around. It took a few seconds, but my hands passed over something metallic, and I pulled it out.
And there was the world tree seed.
“I’m going to kill him,” I growled, reaching out with my mind to Hawk. His grogginess was a few rooms away. I slipped off the bed and shakily walked to Hawk’s room with Silica following behind me. He was barely up when I pushed the door open.
“Hey,” he said weakly, trying to sit up.
“Hey yourself,” I said, pushing him back down onto the bed. “Take this thing back.”
I took the necklace off and tossed it toward him. Midway to him, it gave off a flash and vanished. We both looked at each other in shock for a second, wondering where it had gone. Then I felt its weight back around my neck. Slowly I reached into my shirt and pulled the chain out again. I pulled it over my head and tried to hand it to Hawk.
As soon as he touched it, it flashed again and disappeared.
“Knock it off!” I snapped, pulling the damn thing out again. This time I put it down on the bed, but the moment my fingers left it, it flashed, and I knew it was around my neck again. This time I just yanked the chain off, not even bothering to unfasten it, and threw it across the room.
Flash, around my neck again.
“Make it stop. Why is it doing that?” I complained.
Olim’s voice came from behind me. “Because it has bonded to you.” She walked in with Ruber floating behind her. There were bandages across her chest, and she looked a little less… mighty. “It explains how you are able to use your power so easily—the seed is augmenting it.”
I sat down on the bed, knowing I had broken something again.
“It seems your prophecy is coming true,” Ruber said to Olim. “If the seed has bonded to him, then he’s the only one that it will allow to plant it.”
The ice queen didn’t look like she enjoyed being right this time. “It’s not my prophecy,” she said sadly. “I’m just trying to make sure it comes true.”
“Why?” I asked her, not wanting to be part of anything that ended up with me starting an all-out war.
“Because the alternative is unimaginable.”
Hawk sat up some. “And that is?”
“My sister takes the tree and will have all the power we had as Fate with none of the obligations.” She paused for that to sink in. “She would be able to change anyone’s fate to anything she wanted, no matter the consequences.”
I felt my stomach sour at the thought. “Okay, well, that does sound bad.”
“So then, what do we do now?” Ruber asked in the silence.
“Kane makes his choice, and then we get ready to defend it, no matter where the seed is planted,” Olim said gravely. “Because the moment it is in the ground, every major power in the realms will make a move to grab it.”
It took me a second to figure out they were all waiting for me to say something.
“Well, doesn’t it have to go back to Earth to realign everything? I mean, isn’t that the logical choice?”
Olim nodded. “It would put things back to the way they were.”
I looked over to Hawk. “Are you okay with this? I mean, it would mean Faerth would just go back to being one of the Nine Realms.”
He was conflicted, but I could feel him moving past it because he knew the right thing to do. “Whatever you decide, I will support.” And he meant it.
“So how do we get back to Earth?” I asked everyone.
OBERON STUMBLED out of the teleport spell, shocked to find himself still alive.
The throne room was empty; all his troops had been left behind. He was alone, truly alone. “Damnation! I was so close!” he raged aloud.
He had underestimated Hawk. The thought of the boy giving that kind of power to someone else never crossed the king’s mind. Now the world tree seed was even farther away, and he had no way to get at it.
“It does seem that all is lost, doesn’t it?” a female voice asked from the throne. He turned around, summoning Thanthos to his hand.
A beautiful woman wearing a dress that looked as if it was made entirely of silver sat on the throne. Oberon tried not to marvel at her perfection, but it was hard for him to pull his gaze away from her scarlet hair and forest green eyes.
“Who are you?” he asked, unsure how to react.
“I’m the person who is going to tell you how to gain leverage against the Earth boy and get the world tree seed back,” she said, smiling. “And I am the person who can get you there.”
“And why would you do this?” he asked, not trusting her at all.
She stood up, and he could see her dress shimmer as she moved. “Because I’ve been planning this for a very long time, and you, dear Oberon, are the last part of the puzzle. You are the man who is going to kill Kane for me.”
“And who are you again?” he asked her.
“My name is Inmediares, but you can call me Glinda.”
Epilogue
DONALD VESS looked out his hotel room in San Francisco and tried to shake the feeling of dread that had descended on him.
It was silly. The concert had gone off without a hitch. It had been so long since he had played in front of that many people, he assumed his nervousness was from stage fright. But here it was, hours later, and he still felt worried.
Kane wasn’t answering his phone, which was not like his son at all. He knew it had only been a day since he had left Athens, but still, he had this lingering feeling he had made a mistake leaving Kane alone. He wasn’t sure why. He just knew he had forgotten something important, and his son was going to end up paying the price.
He had spent most of Kane’s life feeling this way. It had been worse during the boy’s infancy. Donald had been obsessed with keeping Kane safe inside Athens. However, as the years passed, the compulsion faded, and he began to think his worries were keeping his s
on from actually living his life. And he knew there was something he was forgetting….
When his phone rang, he jumped, expecting it to be Kane, and he’d worried for nothing.
Instead, he saw it was Jewel, and he knew he’d been right; something had gone wrong.
He answered the phone, and she began telling him what had happened. Then, between one word and the next, after years of not knowing, something clicked in Donald’s mind, and he suddenly remembered.
He remembered everything.
And he knew Kane was in terrible danger.
“Jewel, I’m on my way home now,” he said, then hung up and called his agent. He needed to be on the next flight to Iowa, no matter what the cost. Even as he packed, he knew that even if he had the magical power to simply appear in Athens….
He was already too late.
Author’s Note
WELL NOW, how was that?
I hope you’re coming here after the story and not before, because there might be some spoilers, so you were warned. A lot of people have… gently commented… on the cliff-hangers and how these stories end, and I think I should take a few seconds to answer the question and explain why.
My name is John and I am a comic book junkie.
You say “Hi, John” back and then I begin to share.
I grew up on comics. My grandfather used to bring me home Richie Rich comics from the barbershop he used to work at every day. To him it was a clever and creative way to get me to read more; to me it was like he was bringing me a whole other world contained within twenty-two pages. I devoured them, and when I discovered the comic book shop in the back of the pottery store in the small town where my grandparents lived, well, let’s just say my fate was sealed. I moved to Flash to Teen Titans and finally to X-Men, where I found that comic books weren’t just comics but a medium in which specific storytelling could take place.
