Guardians Inc.:Thundersword (Guardians Incorporated #2)

by Julian Rosado-Machain

  “He has quite a history.” Ratatosk jumped onto Thomas’s shoulder. “He’s very well known to the Aesir and to the Danes in particular. He helped Cnut the Great conquer England. He’s a very shrewd and intelligent elf. The red etchings are battles he has fought.” Ratatosk pointed out the etchings in the armor and now that he had more information, Thomas’s Cypher abilities began to read the signs in the armor. Many were names of campaigns or individual battles, while others had the name of the enemy Joran had vanquished.

  “He fought in World War II,” Thomas said, approaching Joran. The symbol for the WW2 campaign practically covered the whole left chest plate, with names of places and battles intermingling in the design. “Troy, Constantinople, campaigned with Alexander the Great, Conquest of England….” The Elven general literally wore an impressive resume on his armor. He saw that the other elf had only two or three designs and not as intricate, while Joran’s armor was literally covered with designs.

  Thomas slowly approached his grandfather. Morgan was standing with his hands on his waist, looking at the front of a two-story house encrusted with shimmering ice. Thomas could feel the Oracle’s Magic emanating from the façade, and he was sure that Gramps was about to discover its meaning.

  “This is my grandfather,” Thomas told Ratatosk. He was tempted to touch him and see if he would receive another stream of memories from his parents, but he paused. His grandfather didn’t look too happy.

  “The other Cypher….” Ratatosk said. “He doesn’t look old enough to be your grandfather.”

  “It’s Magic,” Thomas said. “He’s actually seventy-three years old. Making him younger was one of the ways they persuaded him to work for the Warmaster.”

  “The Warmaster…” Ratatosk said, letting the words trail out from his mouth.

  “What do you know about him?” Thomas asked. The Guardians actually knew very little about him—a couple of sketches, a couple of actual sightings. The Warmaster could have been a ghost story if King Seryaan hadn’t battled with him during World War II.

  To the Faun Clans, the Warmaster wasn’t an evil warrior. They called him the “Lord Protector,” defender of the Fauns and hero to many. Even after working with Hitler, many Clans believed in the Warmaster’s cause and followed his Azure Guards.

  Guardians Inc. regarded the Warmaster as one of the most dangerous enemies they had ever faced. Thomas wanted to know whatever Ratatosk could tell him, but Ratatosk only answered with another question.

  “What do you know about him?” the squirrel asked.

  “Not as much as I would like.”

  “Mhmm hmm,” Ratatosk muttered.

  “I think it was the Warmaster who gave him Gram.” Thomas looked at Gramps’s side—the sword was in its scabbard, but even sheathed he could sense its power.

  “He must be quite a hero to be able to wield it,” Ratatosk said. “The last person to use Gram was Sigurd and he slayed a dragon with it.”

  “That’s what everyone tells me,” Thomas said, feeling a strange mix of pride and envy of his grandfather, whom everyone thought of as a hero. He patted the rod Odin had given him. How different from the sword his grandpa carried.

  “This is a great opportunity, Thomas,” Bolswaithe said. “This could really change everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You can get the sign,” Bolswaithe said, “and stop the threat posed by this team once and for all.”

  “What do you mean by stopping them?” Thomas became alarmed at Bolswaithe’s suggestion. Maybe the butler had already become a true killer. “You mean…kill them?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about that, although you can certainly do that if you wanted to,” Bolswaithe said matter of fact. “I was thinking more along the lines of taking them into custody. Maybe just Morgan. You could move him from here to the Mansion and lock him up. The Azure Guards would just see him disappear.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Bolswaithe,” Thomas said, relieved that the butler hadn’t been thinking about killing them on the spot.

  “Why not?” Ratatosk asked. “It would really solve your problems.”

  “And create a bigger one with Gramps!” Thomas said. He was sure that his grandfather would not just be furious with him, but he would probably stop talking to him forever. “He would never forgive me for doing that to him.”

  “It would solve a lot of problems,” Bolswaithe pressed.

  “I’m not doing it,” Thomas said.

  “Why not?” Ratatosk jumped and hung from the hood of Thomas’s jacket, dangling in his face.

  “It wouldn’t be honorable,” Thomas said slowly, and he believed in what he was saying, knowing that if Gramps was faced with the same choice, he wouldn’t do it either because it was not an honorable thing.

  Ratatosk twitched his whiskers. “Okay, I’ll accept that one,” he said. “So, what do you want to do then?”

  “And you Bolswaithe?” Thomas asked. “Are you okay with that?”

  “I know you,” Bolswaithe said. “I knew you wouldn’t go along with it, but I had to ask.”

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t make a statement,” Thomas said, thinking about the way they had been bested by Morgan and his team at the Falls. “I want him to know it was me who stole the sign from him.”

  “You have to get it first, Thomas,” Bolswaithe said. “How do you know he hasn’t deciphered it yet?”

  Thomas stood in front of Gramps, blocking his view as he stood frozen in time, looking at the building. The Oracle’s Magic was there, and he was going to decode it.

  Even without the Oracle’s Magic pervading the building, the façade was a spectacular sight. While all other buildings were encrusted with icicles running almost horizontally to the left, the Oracle had created a lattice of ice in this building. The icicles ran upside down as they crisscrossed, and some had been shaped in intertwining spirals by the wind. It was as if a great painter had taken water and molded the ice in precise shapes. Even the structure of the ice was special—in some cases white and in others crystalline, almost transparent.

  Thomas opened his field of vision and tried to encompass the whole structure, to take it in as a single image. The Magic reacted to him, and in his mind he began to lose himself into the Oracle’s message.

  The world dissolved into a sheet of gray and white.

  A circular shape grew from the center, and became a multicolored sphere, almost like a soap bubble with colored shapes moving over the surface. It hung there in the center of Thomas’s mind for a long time, peacefully floating against the gray-white background.

  Then the background itself seemed to compress into a fine line leaving behind a black, featureless void, and in a violent movement the line went through the sphere, but didn’t pop it. The sphere rotated a couple of times with the line going through it until it the whole thing exploded into a multicolor image that brought Thomas back to the real world.

  Thomas fell to his knees. As with the first sign, the Magic had made him float a couple of feet off the ground.

  Ratatosk jumped at him. “What did you see?” he asked. “What was it?”

  “I can’t tell you,” Thomas said.

  “Come on!” Ratatosk yelled. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I really can’t, I’m sorry,” Thomas said. “Even if I wanted to, I can’t. I know what I saw, I can recall it perfectly, but I can’t express it.”

  “That’s how his connection works,” Bolswaithe said. “He’s telling the truth, Ratatosk.”

  “Oh, I know,” the squirrel said. “I just wanted to confirm that you were in contact with the Oracle. You’re not the first Oracle Champion I’ve met.”

  “You’re just full of surprises aren’t you?” Thomas gave the squirrel a wiry look.

  “I’m the messenger of the Aesir,” Ratatosk said. “I’ve been around practically forever.”

  Thomas stood up from the snow. With a glance he confirmed that the Oracle’s Magic was gone. “
Okay,” he said, “now we need to make a statement. I want Grandpa to know it was me who stole the sign from him.”

  “You can leave him a note,” Bolswaithe said.

  Thomas stood in front of his grandpa. “A note is not good enough,” he said. “I want him to see me.”

  “He can’t see you at the speed you’re moving, Thomas,” Bolswaithe said. “The camera in this wristpadd is the most advanced one we could fit, and I can’t see a thing unless I’m static. I have been blind all this time except when I was connected to the dock.”

  “How long would I have to be in front of him for him to see me? Just a glimpse is enough,” Thomas asked.

  “A glimpse?” Bolswaithe asked. “A little less than an hour, but you would need to be completely static in front of him. Any movement and you would appear like a blur, like a picture out of focus.”

  “An hour? Without moving? Can't be done,” Ratatosk said, “Just leave him a note.”

  Thomas bit his lip; it would be impossible for him to just stand in front of Grandpa for an hour. Maybe a note would be enough. “I'm going to touch him too, Bolswaithe,” he said. “I need to get more memories from my family. Maybe that will convince him that they are still alive.”

  “Or maybe that will shock you both again,” Bolswaithe said. “You were pretty rattled by the first time.”

  “I'm going to do it anyway,” Thomas said. “I'll take the risk, and I need to know.” Thomas extended his hand and touched his grandfather on the shoulder before Bolswaithe could say anything to try to stop him.

  It wasn't as much as a shock this time, but it was unnerving to have his mind filled by images and feelings from another person.

  It was dark, warm and humid, but he wasn't scared. He was content. Sounds of dripping water and the skittering of what seemed to be hundreds of feet filled his ears. There was a prickly sensation all over his body. His eyes were closed, and strange smells filled his nostrils—some were tart, some sweet, and some flowery.

  He realized that he was receiving the memories of someone who was asleep.

  Something grazed his lip, a hard prickly thing covered in hair. Thomas opened his lips, and he felt an oily substance being poured into it and a sweet sugary taste filled his mouth. He wanted to know more, but a sharp pain in his forehead and cheeks made him break the connection.

  He released his grandfather and grabbed his forehead. He looked down and saw the snow stained with blood. He touched his nose, and a steady drip of blood flowed from it.

  “Lift your head backward,” Ratatosk said.

  “Are you all right, Thomas?” Bolswaithe asked. “Are you bleeding?”

  “It’s nothing,” Thomas said, tilting his head and using his glove to clean his nose. “I connected with one of them, Bolswaithe. They are asleep. Somewhere. Will Gramps receive the images too?”

  “I guess he already has, but he hasn’t had the time to react to them, and I wouldn't call a nosebleed nothing, Thomas. We need to head back to the Mansion and get you to rest.”

  Thomas rubbed his eyes. If Grandpa felt the same as he did, there would be no question that his parents were alive and that what he just saw and felt was a memory.

  Thomas looked around; he hadn't brought anything to write on. The best place for him to leave the note was in the ice façade, the one grandpa was looking at. He looked at Morgan's sword.

  “Gram might react against you touching it,” Ratatosk said, reading his intentions. “It's still a magical weapon.”

  “Right.” Thomas walked toward Joran and extended a hand toward the elf's sword, but waited until he got a nod of approval from Ratatosk. He pulled out the sword from Joran's side and saw something else in his belt.

  His hand crossbow.

  An idea came to mind. “About an hour, Bolswaithe?”

  “What?”

  “You said I needed to be static for about an hour in front of him for him to see me?”

  “More or less, but it would only be a glimpse.”

  Thomas checked the elf's belt. He didn't want the crossbow; he wanted the darts. He found a pouch full of the centipede darts—they were immobile, completely still, and ready to be used as a bolt. “The poison in these things will freeze me for about an hour, won't it?”

  “You're joking, right?” Ratatosk ran down Thomas’s arm to look at the centipedes.

  “You're pushing the line too much, Thomas,” Bolswaithe said.

  “Will it or not freeze me for an hour?” Thomas asked, checking one of the darts on his hand. The little beast seemed really dangerous, even in its frozen state.

  “It would,” Bolswaithe said. “Once the poison goes into you, your system would react normally to it, but you need to get bit. That's how the centipedes inject their prey.”

  Thomas exposed his left forearm and stepped in front of his grandfather. “I really want him to see me, Bolswaithe,” he said, getting ready to stab himself with the centipede.

  “Stop!” Ratatosk yelled, jumping on Thomas’s exposed forearm. “Are you nuts?” he asked. “Is he nuts, voice box?”

  “He's actually correct,” Bolswaithe said. “The centipede poison will freeze him long enough for his grandfather to notice him.”

  “And you're going to maim your arm to do this?” Ratatosk asked and Thomas nodded. “Okay…” Ratatosk huffed. “Give me that thing and I'll do it.” Ratatosk extended a hand.

  Thomas pulled the centipede away.

  “I said I will do it,” Ratatosk repeated, “but not as messily as you would.”

  Thomas handed the centipede to Ratatosk. The squirrel bit off the centipede's head and munched on it until only the fangs and the little sacks of venom remained. He even pressed the sack a little bit until a purplish liquid formed at the tip.

  “Assume the position you want him to see you in,” Ratatosk said.

  Thomas pulled down on his hood and opened his jacket a little. He looked directly into his grandfather's eyes. “Ready,” he said, feeling nervous.

  “You have to make a face,” Ratatosk said. “You know, of triumph.”

  “What?” Thomas flashed him a puzzled look.

  “A face!” Ratatosk said. “I don't know…of victory, mocking him, laughing, something other than just standing there. If you're going through all this you could at least make a face.”

  “Oh jeez,” Thomas said. “I can't just make a face.”

  Ratatosk pinched him; it burned and Thomas felt his arm going rigid, fear settling in. “No fear!” Ratatosk said as the venom began to freeze Thomas. “Go smug! Quick!”

  With the last of his mobility, Thomas managed, or hoped he had managed, to keep a smug smile. A look that said, “I got you.”

  Then he froze in front of Gramps.

  Ratatosk jumped toward Morgan’s head. “You still there?” he waved his tiny hands in front of Thomas’s face.

  “Yes, he's there,” Bolswaithe answered. “Don't worry he's fine.”

  “Nice face, Thomas,” Ratatosk said, smiling. “It's a mix of ‘I beat you’ and ‘you ain't seen nothing yet.’”

  At least he had managed to make a good face.

  “Okay,” Ratatosk jumped down and left Thomas’s field of vision. “I'll see you in an hour, and I'll check what's around.”

  “And I'll put the unit to sleep,” Bolswaithe said. “Conserve energy. Good luck, Thomas.”

  Thomas couldn't even move his eyes, and he realized that this could probably become the worst hour of his life.

  And all for a glimpse.

  It took him less than five minutes to realize that it had been a terrible idea.

  Thomas thought that if he was ever going to hell, this was what it would be like. He was fully conscious and frozen in place. He couldn't move, he couldn't blink, he couldn't sleep or even imagine things because his eyes were open and staring, fixed on his grandpa’s eyes.

  Even trying to adjust the depth of what he was seeing, forcing his eyes to focus on something else than grandpa’s irises, was impo
ssible. He wanted to scream, to yell at Bolswaithe or Ratatosk to close his eyes. At least that way, in darkness, he would be able to focus his mind on something else.

  The minutes crawled. He tried to think how much time had passed, but he couldn't. He began to count the seconds and the minutes…he talked to himself. He conjured up songs and tunes in his head, plots of books he'd read.

  It was mind boggling, easily by far the most horrible sensation he'd ever felt.

  Had he been able he would have quit after the first three minutes, but he couldn't. He was in for the duration. For a terrible minute he imagined himself trapped forever, and his brain panicked, but his body remained motionless. He promised he would never, ever do something like this again. What had compelled him to do it in the first place? Had he known what it would be like…

  Hindsight is always 20/20, Thomas, his father used to tell him.

  He grasped at Dad’s memory. He needed to or he was sure he would go mad. What else did his father like to say?

  Do as I say, not as I do. God! How he had hated that stupid saying. What gave his dad the right to say something like that?

  The Devil is wise because he's old, not because he's the devil. Where the hell did that one come from? Oh yes, from Gramps... another of his grandma's Spanish sayings that translated poorly to English.

  It's because he has experience, Dad had explained it once for him. The Devil is old and experienced. That's what makes him wise, not his nature as the devil. Thomas had been eleven maybe, and although he nodded, he didn't really know what Dad or Gramps were talking about. Until now.

  Experience.

  This was an experience that would embed in his memory and make him wise about trying to do things on the spur of the moment. He stared at the little patch in his grandpa's irises.

  All this for a stupid glimpse.

  A glimpse that might or might not register in his grandfather’s mind.

  Just look before you jump, Tom. This had been one of Mom’s sayings. She had told him the same thing many times when he was little and played with the sofa cushions. He would make houses and then, imagining he was a great monster or superhero, attack the sofa fort by jumping over it. It was one of his favorite games until he didn’t look before jumping.