Lord of Monsters

by John Claude Bemis

A tiny muffled reply sounded. “A bit dizzy, Your Majesty. But managing.”

  Pinocchio tucked it back away and continued on.

  When at last the bottom came into view, it seemed to be filled with a thick fog. Were the monsters sleeping beneath it? They stepped off the final stair. Mezmer waved a hand to part the fog.

  The floor was empty. No monsters. No sands. Only a thick layer of dust and the ruins of the broken stairs. Pinocchio couldn’t believe it! This wasn’t as he’d seen in Regolith’s memory. Were they too late?

  “Where are they?” Mezmer asked.

  “They have to be here!” Rion said. “Spread out and search!” He drew up his bow and disappeared into the fog.

  “I’ll give the orders,” Mezmer snarled, but halfheartedly. She too was so perplexed and desperate to find the sleeping prisoners, she simply added, “Look for them, darlings! And look for an opening. Maybe they broke through somewhere down here.”

  Pinocchio ran through the fog until he reached a wall. He followed it, tracing a hand across the ancient wood, to the corner and on around the perimeter. The walls were intact, with no signs of any breakout, which added to his worry because he knew they too would have to find a way to escape the prison eventually, especially with the stairs above broken.

  He stumbled back toward the middle of the floor to wait for the others, his mind racing with a swirl of questions. If the prison was empty, how had the monsters gotten out? And if the monsters weren’t here, where were they? A thousand escaped monsters! Wouldn’t they have attacked by now? Abaton would surely be in grave danger. Maybe it already was. Maybe, while they were down here, back at the Moonlit Court—

  A black shape swooped out of the gloom and snatched Pinocchio by the shoulders.

  He was lifted off the ground. He gave a cry of alarm and had only an instant to spy Mezmer below, turning to him and rearing back with her spear. But whatever had him pulled him up fast.

  Pinocchio scrambled to draw his sword and had barely gotten a grip before the creature dove into a tunnel halfway up the wall of the tall chamber. The creature released him, and Pinocchio tumbled end over end. When he landed, the creature pounced once more. Hot breath filled his face and then the thing was off him again. Pinocchio leaped to his feet and twirled around, reaching…His scabbard was empty.

  He heard his sword clank to the floor. Standing over it was the manticore.

  In the narrow tunnel hung with tendrils of illuminated fog, the manticore looked much bigger than she had at the banquet. Her batlike wings scraped against the ceiling beams. She gave a smile, showing her mouthful of fangs. “Prester Pinocchio,” she hissed. “Delivered.”

  “Very good,” a voice whispered behind Pinocchio. “This makes amends for your failure at the banquet.”

  Pinocchio turned to see a dim square glowing in the fog at the back of the tunnel. A hooded figure stood shadowed against the thin light.

  “Who are you?” Pinocchio said. But even as he said it, a shard of fear pressed into the pit of his stomach. “Diamancer!”

  He couldn’t see the crimson face beneath the hood, but a faint laughter lilted out.

  “The others are awake?” Pinocchio asked. “You’ve found a way out of the prison?”

  “Yes, but this is not the prison, Prester Pinocchio. This is a trap.”

  Ice filled his veins. “No.”

  “Oh, indeed it is. And your knights aren’t here to protect you.” Diamancer tsked scornfully. “Not that they’d be much good. What a pitiful lot they are.”

  Pinocchio could hear Mezmer and Kataton and Goliath’s voices echoing around the chamber outside, calling his name.

  “I don’t need them to protect me,” Pinocchio said fiercely, casting an eye back at the sword by the manticore’s clawed feet.

  “But they need your protection, Your Majesty. Because if you do not give me what I want, they will perish.”

  In Pinocchio’s mind, he could almost see the monsters surrounding Lazuli outside. He started breathing harder. There was no doubt what Diamancer wanted. The Ancientmost Pearl.

  “You can’t have it,” Pinocchio said.

  “Very well.” Diamancer lifted a hand. “We’ll start with General Mezmer’s group.”

  A blast resounded outside the tunnel. Voices cried in alarm. Falling debris smashed to the floor. Pinocchio charged toward the manticore to get past her, but she swatted him like a monstrous kitten, knocking him back before giving an amused smile.

  “Shall we try again?” Diamancer whispered.

  Pinocchio lay panting, desperately weighing his options. “I can’t give it to you. It’s impossible!”

  Diamancer started to raise a hand.

  “Wait!” Pinocchio shouted. “Even if I wanted to, I can’t give you the Pearl. It’s…it’s inside me.”

  The manticore growled.

  “I’m telling the truth!” Pinocchio shouted.

  Diamancer tilted his hooded head. “How can the Pearl be inside you, Prester?”

  Pinocchio hesitated, unsure how—or even whether—to explain this. He had to escape. That was the only option. Even if he had his sword, it would be useless against the hulking manticore and whatever magic Diamancer possessed. If he was going to fight his way out, he had no other choice.

  He focused on summoning fire, and his gloved hand began to glow with rising heat.

  “He’s using the Pearl!” Diamancer shouted.

  The manticore pounced, landing on Pinocchio’s back, her claws scratching him and her fanged maw opening.

  But then a blue light streaked through the tunnel, striking the manticore squarely on her face and bouncing around like an angry hornet.

  The aleya!

  The manticore leaped back, releasing Pinocchio and swatting at the agitated, tinkling orb.

  Pinocchio rolled to one side and snatched his sword. Springing to his feet, he dashed past the manticore down the tunnel. “Come on!” he cried to the aleya.

  “Stop him!” Diamancer cried.

  As the aleya streaked past, an alarm seemed to go off in Pinocchio’s head—although he might flee, Diamancer could still harm the others. Pinocchio spun around and threw out his blazing hand, feeling his legs tingling.

  The fire was not the little ball of flame this time. It was as if all his anger and all his fear for his friends had ignited into an inferno. Great sheets of fire rushed down the tunnel. The manticore’s eyes widened and she turned.

  “Send me back!” she screamed, charging at Diamancer. “Send me back!”

  Before she reached him, glass shattered as if the manticore had run into a window. Diamancer disappeared, but his voice cried out unnaturally loud, “Finish destroying the building! Once they’re dead, we’ll dig the Prester’s corpse from the ruins and take the Pearl.”

  But oddly, the manticore vanished in a plume of fog, much as she had at the banquet. There was no time to wonder. The flames had caught upon the wooden walls and began engulfing the tunnel.

  Pinocchio spun around and hurtled through the tunnel, launching out the opening.

  He fell.

  The aleya spun around him as he plummeted, chiming rapid terrified notes. Pinocchio hit the floor hard, coming down on his hands and knees. It would have broken his bones. A fall that far should have! But the automa wood in his arms and now in his legs had saved him.

  “Pinocchio!” a voice shouted.

  He rolled over, groaning. Lazuli’s face peered down at him.

  “What are you doing here?” Pinocchio murmured.

  “Rescuing you,” she said.

  “How…” Pinocchio stood, the muscles in his back stiff from the fall. “How did you get down here?”

  “I jumped,” she said, helping him to his feet. “My landing was a lot lighter than yours.”

  “Where are—”

  “Over here, darling,” Mezmer said, emerging from the fog with Kataton and Goliath. “When Sop told Lazuli about the bridge collapsing, she thought we needed help. She arrived just befo
re that other set of stairs came down. Lucky for us.”

  Pinocchio screwed up his brow, unsure why that was lucky.

  “I called up a wind,” Lazuli explained.

  “We would have been crushed!” Goliath looked at her, amazement sparkling in his tiny eyes. “It was just wow and then whoa. Incredible, Your Majesty! I had no idea a sylph could summon such a wind!”

  Mezmer gave Pinocchio a displeased look. “This is twice now you’ve run off to fight that manticore without me, darling. Look, I’m the general and I keep missing the glorious combat. It’s my job—”

  “I didn’t run off,” Pinocchio began. “That thing grabbed me—”

  A sharp crack rang out from somewhere above. Flames bloomed in the upper recesses of the pyramid. Broken timbers began toppling down.

  “Watch out!” Mezmer shouted.

  While the others hurled themselves to one side, Lazuli threw out her hands. A wind rose, much more powerful than anything he’d seen Lazuli do before. She reached with her hands as if physically taking hold of some invisible ribbon and twisting and shaping the air until she sent the debris crashing to one side.

  “How did you do that?” Pinocchio gasped.

  She dropped her hands to her knees, gulping deep breaths. “Ever since I became prester…I’ve noticed…my powers…are getting stronger.” But the effort had clearly cost her.

  Flames from the tunnel were now lapping along the interior while new flames emerged higher up. The entire pyramid groaned.

  “Listen,” Pinocchio said to Lazuli. “We can work together. If we both summon wind—”

  “No!” Lazuli said, grabbing him by the arm and flinching with worry as her fingers found wood. “You mustn’t! I’ll handle this. Help Mezmer find a way out.”

  Already more beams and sections of the staircase were coming down. Taking a deep breath, Lazuli threw out her arms. The wind was like a tornado, pulling up pieces from the floor and hurtling them against the falling debris, before crashing over to the side.

  Mezmer grabbed Pinocchio by the wrist, pulling him away. “I don’t see how we’ll get out.”

  Goliath jabbed a finger at the wall. “We break our way through.”

  “With what?” Mezmer gasped.

  Goliath made a fierce face. “With me.” He smacked a fist against his mushroom cap. “Take me by the arms and legs! Use me like a battering ram.”

  Pinocchio and Mezmer exchanged shocked expressions. Only Kataton seemed unbothered by his outlandish suggestion.

  “You heard me,” the little mushroom said, leaping into Kataton’s arms. “Start smashing!”

  Mezmer took him by his other arm and leg, and swinging him back, they brought his rock-hard head against the wall. A crack resounded. Pinocchio hoped it was the wall and not Goliath. But the little mushroom only bellowed, “Oh, you call that smashing? Keep it coming! Harder now! That wall is thick. Goliath is thicker!”

  As Mezmer and Kataton pounded Goliath against the wall, Pinocchio pried away the broken wood. From the corners of his eyes, he saw the fires growing brighter and smoke rapidly filling the room.

  More debris fell. Lazuli threw out her arms, blasting the smoldering timbers away. The pile was growing ominously closer to them.

  “How’s it coming?” she called.

  “I think…” Mezmer grunted as she hammered Goliath. “…we’re getting…” They swung him once more. “Through!” Goliath’s head punched into the splintered wall.

  Pinocchio grabbed the edges of the jagged hole and, with automa strength, wrenched back hunks of broken wood until he opened a hole wide enough for them to climb through.

  “Go!” he shouted.

  The aleya shot through first. Mezmer snatched Lazuli by the elbow and they scrambled out. A thundering of beams came down. Pinocchio shoved Kataton and Goliath and dove after them, landing on the sloped side of the pyramid’s exterior and quickly grabbing the sticky webs to keep from rolling.

  Flames had made their way through the walls of the pyramid, dancing against the dark like sinister foes. Clinging to the arachnobat webs, they scrambled up the side, working their way higher and avoiding the maze of crumbing, smoking holes that were forming.

  “To the vine!” Mezmer cried. “Hurry, darlings! Kataton, speed is now necessary.”

  Up at the top, Sop was racing around frantically by the door and screaming their names. Pinocchio hoped the mushroom people and Maestro were safely away. The stupid, faithful cat. He should have gone with them!

  When Sop spied them, he wailed, “There you are! Do you realize the prison is on fire?”

  “We noticed,” Mezmer panted.

  The fact that the pyramid was becoming a flaming ruin wasn’t their only problem. As Pinocchio looked up, he saw the situation was so much worse.

  Flames engulfed the tangle of vines holding up the suspended pyramid. Not only was their only escape back to the Upended Forest blocked, the whole structure was about to break. Once those vines burned through, the pyramid would fall. And they’d be on it.

  He had to put out the fire. Holding out his hands, Pinocchio summoned water.

  “Don’t, Pinocchio!” Lazuli cried.

  But they had no choice. His father had said life or death. This was life or death. The water curled in sheets like a torrential storm, hissing against the flame. But the vines were snapping rapidly, spraying soggy ash. The pyramid jolted beneath his feet, once and then again, each time dropping lower as the remaining vines screeched under the strain.

  “It’s going to break!” Goliath howled.

  From out of the billowing smoke above, a swarm of arachnobats descended, circling around them. Pinocchio was about to shoo them back to safety, but then he saw the streams of webs they were ejecting.

  “Grab hold of them, Your Majesties!” the elder mushroom’s tiny voice sounded from above.

  The others took hold of the webs trailing up to the forest.

  Pinocchio felt the pyramid give way beneath his feet. Bounding on his seven-league boots, he caught a web, feeling the elastic pull under his weight. Looking down, he watched as the enormous flaming pyramid went crashing into the gloom below.

  Dazed, Pinocchio began pulling hand over hand up the sticky web, until he joined the others in the upside-down trees. They all collapsed against the twisted trunks, coughing and heaving for breath. Maestro sprang on Pinocchio’s nose, trembling with happiness to see him and at a rare loss for words. The mushroom people gathered around, relief swimming in their little eyes.

  “Thank you,” Pinocchio gasped to them.

  Mezmer peered around at Kataton, Goliath, and the aleya with tears of pride welling. “My dearests, you might not look like knights, but if I had a hundred more like you, the Celestial Brigade would be unstoppable.”

  Grins spread across their faces. Except for the aleya, who bobbed about brightly.

  Lazuli jolted up. “Where’s Rion?”

  Mezmer’s smile faded. “After the explosion and the prison began to collapse, we never saw him again….We…Oh, no.”

  The mushroom people sent out arachnobats. The aleya shot into the darkness toward the smoldering ruin of the pyramid far below. Even Maestro searched. From the branches, the others all called Rion’s name over and over until their voices grew hoarse. But soon the cold truth of the situation settled over them.

  Mezmer sank to the branch, her fox face awash in shock. “I can’t believe…our glorious archer Rion…” She made a terrible grimace, so full of pain that Pinocchio couldn’t bear to watch her. “I snapped at him. For not following my orders. But all he wanted was to be a brave knight. Why did I have to chastise him for that?”

  She covered her face, and Sop put a paw to her back. The cat had a patchwork of singed spots on his fur from the pyramid.

  Pinocchio wrapped himself in his arms, bent forward as tears filled his eyes. He didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what to feel.

  Back when he’d been a foolish, curious automa peeking into the graves o
f Geppetto’s wife and son, he’d first learned what death really meant. He’d thought nothing was more horrible than what he’d seen there. But when Prester John died, Pinocchio had decided that sometimes death was not a bad thing. Lazuli’s father had lived so long and was ready for his ancient life to come to a close.

  But it was different with Rion. Rion was young. He wasn’t ready to die. He was the first person Pinocchio had actually known who had lost his life in such a tragic way.

  The thought of Rion never living again was too horrible to contemplate. He wanted nothing more than to be back with his father, back in the bright safety of the Moonlit Court with its gentle breezes and sweet-scented gardens. Anywhere but in this gloomy tomb of a cavern.

  He wiped his face and looked over at Lazuli. She sat motionless on a branch. Her eyes stared vaguely ahead like she wasn’t seeing anything at all. She hadn’t shed a tear. Wasn’t she upset? Surely she was. But why wasn’t she showing it?

  “Lazuli?” he whispered, breaking her from her trance.

  For the barest instance, her face began to contort, but then she closed her eyes and fixed her expression in that royal mask.

  “Your Majesties,” Goliath said, “I think I know what caused the explosion inside the prison.” He loped over with something cupped in his hands. “On the floor of the chamber, after the first explosion knocked down the stairs, I found these.”

  They looked like broken-open shells.

  “What are they?” Sop asked, picking one up to inspect.

  “Thunderfruit seeds,” Goliath said. “There are a few of the trees deep in the forest. We have to be careful to avoid them, because if the arachnobats bite the fruit…well, munch, crunch, BAM!” He made a dramatic wave of his hands. “The seeds erupt when broken. Gruesome business. Really quite disgusting.”

  “I’ve heard of thunderfruit trees,” Lazuli murmured. “There’s an orchard in the Mist Cities. I remember my aunt warning me not to pick the fruit.”

  “She was wise,” the mushroom said.

  “I only hope Diamancer was still in the pyramid when it came down,” Maestro said viciously.

  Pinocchio shook his head. “I’m not sure he was even there at all. Diamancer seemed to be behind some sort of glass. At first I thought it was just a protective shield, but when it shattered, he was gone. And the manticore vanished as well. Like she did back at the banquet.”