by Dean Lorey
“Right,” Charlie said. “Perfect.”
“Perfect?” Theodore repeated as he scrambled up out of the pit next to them. “What do you mean, perfect? How are we gonna get the milk? This isn’t a supermarket. We can’t just walk up and buy a quart!”
“Shhh!” Charlie and Violet said at the same time.
“Look, Theodore,” Violet continued. “Finding the Mother Hydra was the hardest part. Now one of us just has to sneak over there and milk her.”
“Oh, is that all?” Theodore whispered. “Just sneak up and milk the giant monster? Easy!”
A couple of the nearby baby Hydras turned and looked at them.
“Shhhh!” Charlie and Violet said again, more forcefully this time.
“You don’t have to worry about it,” Charlie added, “because I’m the one who’s gonna go do it.”
“Negatory,” Theodore replied. “This operation requires skill and subtlety, exactly the kind of procedure that Dr. Dagget performs—the Doctor of Gettin’ It Done! I’m all man, baby! That’s just the way I roll.”
“Uh-huh,” Charlie said, grinning. “Well, tempting as that offer is, you’ve got to stay back here to portal everyone out in case something goes wrong.”
“Like what? You die?”
“Theodore!” Violet snapped.
“Hey, don’t look at me—he brought it up!”
“I’m not gonna die,” Charlie said. “I just mean…there’s a lot here we can’t control.”
“Which could lead to you dying,” Theodore repeated. “Which is why I’m doing this and you’re not.”
“The decision is made.” Charlie turned away from him as if that settled it.
“Ah, the decision is made. Okay. Gotcha. So is there anything in particular you’d like me to tell your parents if things don’t work out with this great decision? And how would you like us to handle your remains? For instance, if there’s just a finger left, do you want us to retrieve it for the funeral or would you prefer a closed casket?”
“Theodore, that’s sick!”
“And it’s not gonna work,” Charlie added. “You’re not gonna scare me. I’m doing this.”
“What about me?” Violet said, “I can do it. Or am I out of the running because I’m a girl?” Her stare was withering.
“Look, I know you can do it,” Charlie said. “But you have to stay back here to keep the Hydras off Theodore while he makes a portal in case something goes wrong. Basically, I need you here to fight.”
“I can fight,” Theodore said. “She’s not the only one who can fight, you know, just ’cause she’s a Banisher.”
Charlie closed his eyes tightly.
“You guys are making me crazy, you know that? Will you both please just stay here and handle things on this end without a gigantic argument so I can go milk the Mother Hydra in peace?”
“Sure,” Violet said.
“Good. Theodore?”
“What? Yes! Just go milk your stupid Hydra. Geez.”
“Do you have a plan, at least?” Violet asked. “I mean, how do you think you’re gonna get across all that open ground without being spotted?”
“I’ll show you.” Charlie turned to the nearest baby Hydra and called out to it: “Hey there, little fella.”
The baby Hydra’s six heads swiveled toward him. It’s actually kind of cute in a crazy way, Charlie thought. He continued sweet-talking to it. “That’s a good baby. Come over here, nice little Hydra. Come to Charlie.”
The baby looked at him quizzically, then stumbled toward him on its four unsteady legs.
“What a good boy!” Charlie whispered. “Here, Hydra, Hydra, Hydra…here, cute baby Hydra…”
“Well, that’s not something you hear every day,” Theodore said. “Out of curiosity, what makes you think the baby won’t want to, you know, eat you? It may be an infant, but it’s still twice your size.”
“It won’t eat me because it doesn’t eat meat yet. It’s still drinking mother’s milk, which means it should take me straight to the mother.”
After a couple of seconds, the baby Hydra arrived, and Charlie gently stroked one of its six heads. It cooed, seeming to like the attention.
“Okay, here we go.”
Charlie glanced at the adult male Hydras that were busily shuffling around the large cavern. They seemed unaware of what was happening, so he quickly jumped out of the pit and slithered underneath the monstrous infant. He wrapped his arms and legs around it, clinging to its belly like a baby monkey.
“Let’s go, little fella. Let’s go to Mommy. Aren’t you hungry? Aren’t you thirsty?”
The baby just stood there. Charlie couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t moving until he realized that it was staring curiously at Theodore.
“Goo-goo-goo!” the skinny boy said to the baby monster. “You are a little six-headed mutant! You are a scaly little freak!” He put his thumbs in his ears, wiggled his fingers, and stuck out his tongue while making a raspberry noise.
“Theodore?” Charlie said through gritted teeth, still desperately clinging to the underside of the creature.
“Yeah?”
“Will you please…stop distracting…the monster.”
“Oh, sure thing.”
Without another word, Theodore slid down into the pit to join Pinch in the tangle of bones.
“Good luck,” Violet said. “You either be real careful or real lucky.”
“I’ll try to be both.” He gave her a quick smile, then turned to the baby Hydra. “Come on, little fella. Let’s go see Mommy.”
The baby Hydra turned and headed through the vast cavern while Charlie clung to its belly. As it weaved uncertainly through the adult male Hydras, Charlie held his breath, praying that none of them would see him or smell him. To his relief, not a single beast even glanced in his direction.
Finally, the infant arrived at its mother.
From this close, her stomach looked like a cliff face, tall and hard and sheer. Charlie could hear the babies suckling as they crowded around the many rows of milk-giving ducts.
Just relax, he told himself. Be still.
Luckily, the babies were too interested in feeding to notice him. As for the Mother Hydra, four of her heads were asleep and the two that remained awake had heavy-lidded eyes and looked as if they might nod off at any time. As Charlie’s baby Hydra began to suckle, he slid out from underneath it and, searching quickly, found an unused duct that wept a thin white fluid.
Milk! he thought gleefully. Hydra milk—finally!
Then—to his complete horror—he realized that in all the craziness he hadn’t brought anything to put the Hydra milk in.
Oh, no, he thought. How could I have forgotten something so simple? Stupid! Stupid!
He forced himself to calm down and think. There must be something he had, some little container that that would work, right? He frantically inspected everything on him: belt, shoes, wallet? No, no, and no.
C’mon!
The more he searched, the less he seemed to find until, suddenly, success—
Chapstick.
In his pocket was a little tube of grape, Flava-Craze Chapstick.
He took it out, popped off the cap, and spun the dial until the waxy stuff inside was completely exposed. Then he threw the innards away, leaving himself with a small, cylindrical container and a cap.
Thank heaven, he thought, sweating profusely. That should do it. After all, the Headmaster had said that the Guardian only needed a sip, didn’t she? The Chapstick container should hold more than enough.
Forcing himself to focus despite his frantically beating heart, he turned back to the weeping duct—
—only to find himself face to face with one of the Mother Hydra’s heads.
The great beast’s lips drew back to reveal black gums that held crooked teeth as long as baseball bats. Her orange eyes drew down to snakelike slits and she stared at him with silent fury.
“Oh no,” Charlie gasped. “This can’t be happening.”<
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“How’s Charlie doing?” Theodore asked.
“It’s hard to tell,” Violet replied, looking intently. “There’s so many babies crawling around over there that I can’t really even see him.”
Just then, the Mother Hydra roared loudly enough that the sound waves caused violent ripples to form in the still pools. The great beast leaped to her feet, all six heads awake and snapping furiously.
“Run!” they heard a voice cry out then—it was Charlie. “Portal away! Mayday! Mayday!”
The little figure of Charlie Benjamin came running toward them from across the cavern floor, but he was still almost a football field away.
“How did I know this was going to happen?” Pinch moaned, as adult Hydras descended on them from all sides in a forest of chomping jaws. Violet’s ax seemed to spring into her hands so fast that it looked like a magician’s trick. With a few quick swipes of its glowing blue blade, several Hydra heads dropped down into the pit, twitching wildly.
“Open a portal!” Violet yelled to Theodore. “And I’ll hold them off you as long as I can!”
She began to spin, bobbing up and down with her double-bladed ax, lopping off monster heads as she did. Theodore, meanwhile, closed his eyes and tried to access his core fear—
If I die in here, he thought, my dad will kill me.
Charlie sprinted through the cavern like a man who…well, like a man who had a giant Hydra chasing after him. He lifted the closed Chapstick container to his ear and gave it a quick shake.
There was a slight sloshing sound in there.
Milk.
Hydra milk.
Just before the deadly beast attacked, he’d managed to steal one quick squeeze of milk from the duct nearest him. It’s not much, he thought, but hopefully it will be enough.
Even though his tremendous skill as a Banisher gave him unnatural speed, the Mother Hydra quickly gained on him, the hot breath from her mouths blasting his back like a furnace. He knew he couldn’t outrun her or outfight her, so his only option was to outthink her.
“Catch!” Charlie yelled and threw the Chapstick container across the cavern and into the waiting hands of Pinch.
“Got it!” Pinch shouted back, ducking the jaws of one Hydra while getting saved from another by Violet’s astonishing ax work. While Theodore tried to open his portal, Charlie got ready to open a different one—this time to the Pacific Ocean.
Wetwash, he thought. Time for the last resort.
Running frantically, he extended his right hand, closed his eyes, and started to open a portal—
—but, before he could finish, the ground began to rumble violently.
Stalactites plunged from the ceiling and slammed into the rock below like massive spears. The water from the many pools sloshed over their banks, creating a slick surface that Charlie and the Hydras skidded across wildly.
What’s happening? he thought.
There was something familiar about the shaking, about the way the ground was moving….
No, he thought. It can’t be!
The rocky floor in the center of the chamber exploded upward, and a gigantic wormlike creature sailed out of it. Its massive, gray body was as thick as a rocket and seemed nearly as long. Hundreds of legs lined its sides, like a centipede, and its head was a pointed dome that looked for all the world like a giant drill bit. The creature hovered high in the air, curled in an S shape, until the hard dome of its head peeled back to expose two large, dark eyes and a buglike face with waving antennae.
Midway down its body was a shiny black belt, covered in red runes. Charlie immediately recognized it as one of the Artifacts of the Nether.
“Hello, Charlie Benjamin,” the Named Lord said in a voice choked with dirt.
“Hello, Slagguron,” Charlie replied.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SLAGGURON THE UNCHANGING
“You know who I am?” the Third Named asked. His thunderous voice caused tremors throughout the cavern.
“Well, I’ve met the other Named, and you’re wearing one of the Artifacts of the Nether”—Charlie pointed to the glowing belt around Slagguron’s oozing middle—“plus you’re the size of a building, so I just made an educated guess.”
“I had heard you were smart, Charlie Benjamin. Quick. To be respected.” Slagguron smiled. “I heard correctly.”
“Well, you may have heard about me, but I haven’t heard much about you. Near as I can tell, no one’s ever even seen you.”
“I stay underground. Alone. Unlike the others.” Slagguron said the word others with a hint of distaste.
“You don’t like them?” Charlie asked. He figured that any rift among the Named could be used to his advantage in the future—if he lived to see the future.
“I don’t like or dislike them. I am one of Four. I serve my purpose.”
“To summon the Fifth?”
The great creature nodded. “To do what I must, I need your help, Charlie Benjamin. You must open a portal to bring me to Earth.”
“I thought you had a different plan.” Charlie began to walk toward him. “I thought you were using children to kill the Guardian, and then you were planning to escape through the Anomaly.”
“No. That is Tyrannus’s plan. The Anomaly is too high for me to reach. I cannot fly.”
Charlie was a little taken aback—that had never even occurred to him. “I guess you can’t. So you didn’t scheme to bring those children to the Nether?”
Slagguron shook his head. “They do not belong here.”
“Trust me,” Charlie said, “we’re not going to leave any of them behind. Any kids we find, we’re taking straight back to Earth.”
“Take me with them.” Slagguron’s voice was steady and calm, as if he were asking nothing more challenging of Charlie than to give him a quick ride on his bike to the 7-Eleven.
“You can’t really believe I’d do that, do you? I mean, that would be crazy. You’re planning to kill us.”
“Yes.”
“So why would I ever help you?”
Slagguron slithered forward—it was like a skyscraper moving. “We four Named will get to Earth, Charlie Benjamin. With you or without you. Join me and you will be respected. Protected.”
“That’s a lie. Barakkas told me the same thing, and then he tried to kill me. Verminion said the same to Pinch before he slaughtered his whole family.”
“That’s right,” Pinch said from somewhere far behind Charlie.
Slagguron flicked a look his way. Pinch quickly retreated.
“That is true,” the monster said, “but do not compare me with the others. Verminion is a liar. He says one thing but means another. His words shift. They change. I am unchanging, like the rock I burrow through.”
“What about Barakkas?” Charlie prompted. “What do you think about him?”
“One moment he is normal, the next he rages. He is not steady. He changes. I am unchanging, like the rock I burrow through.”
“And Tyrannus?”
“Tyrannus is insane. His mind is filled with madness. He is ever-changing. I am unchanging—”
“Like the rock you burrow through?” Theodore called out.
Everyone glared at him.
“Sorry.” Theodore pretended to zip his lips shut.
“Will you help me, Charlie Benjamin?” Slagguron asked. “Your safety is guaranteed.”
“How do I know you won’t change your mind? That it will remain…unchanging, just like you say you are?”
“Look at my actions. I have already protected you once, from the Hydra.”
Charlie glanced at the Mother Hydra. In all the chaos, he had actually forgotten about her. She hung back, clearly afraid of the colossal Named creature.
“Well, if we were on the debate squad,” Charlie said, “someone—not me, of course—could argue that the only reason you saved me from her is because I couldn’t help you if I was dead.”
“So I saved you to use you?”
“Someone could argue t
hat—not me, of course.”
“But she is not threatening you now.”
Charlie shrugged. “Not really. Not with you here.”
“So I have nothing to gain from killing her now, do I?”
“I guess not.”
Suddenly, Slagguron whipped his massive body forward and slammed himself down on the Mother Hydra with the force of a building collapsing. She was crushed instantly under his incredible weight. When he rose back up to his full height, her corpse—leaking black ichor—didn’t even twitch.
“Why…why did you do that?” Charlie said, aghast. He was stunned by the Named Lord’s sudden, unprovoked violence.
“It was just a token. A small gift from me to you.”
A gift?
Charlie could barely speak. It wasn’t as if he cared about the Mother Hydra—after all, she had just tried to eat him—but that was only after he had messed with her babies and stolen her milk. She had a right to be at least a little angry, didn’t she?
But now she was dead.
Even worse, they had lost the opportunity to ever get her restorative milk again…or maybe that was Slagguron’s plan all along.
“I…I don’t know what to say.”
“Help me now and I will protect you, Charlie Benjamin. You have my word. My word, like me, is unchanging.”
Charlie didn’t know how to respond. It had clearly come to the point where he had to make a choice, but all of his options seemed terrible.
He could try to portal away with his friends, but after seeing the sheer speed of Slagguron, he knew they couldn’t do it in time. The only other option was to do as Slagguron asked and bring him to Earth—but that was madness, wasn’t it? After his failure with Barakkas there was no way Charlie was going to be responsible for bringing another Lord of the Nether into the world, even to save his own life.
But was that a choice he could make for his friends? If he had a chance to save them, even a slight one, shouldn’t he take it?
“Let’s just kill him!” Theodore shouted from across the cavern, his eyes filled with manic energy. “We got the DT on our side, not to mention Ms. Ax Attack. Plus I can sling a portal with the best of them, and then there’s Pinch, who can do…well, whatever it is that Pinch does. Trust me, that big worm doesn’t stand a chance!”
