Bad Unicorn

by Platte F. Clark

  “Reconnoiter?” Max asked after Sarah was out of earshot.

  “I think it’s a fancy way of saying ‘look around,’ ” Dirk replied. “But if you say it like that you sound like you totally know what you’re talking about. Like calling someone a sesquipedalian because they use big words. That usually shuts them up.”

  Yah Yah decided the conversation had gotten too confusing, so he ran after Sarah. He motioned for a group of frobbits and faeries to follow him.

  “And in the meantime, I’ll have my priests call upon the power of the great and terrible Dirkster,” Dirk offered, his robed followers nodding that it was a good idea.

  “Maybe it would be helpful if you took this a little more seriously,” Max snapped.

  “Hey, the machines are playing a game with us—the only way I know how to win is to play back.”

  “You’re right,” Max said. “I’m sorry.”

  Dirk saluted and turned, calling his priests over. “Okay, in this next battle we need to be ready. Remember, we’re the healing class—we may not get all the glory, but nobody wins without us around.”

  Suddenly an explosion rang out in the distance. Max hustled to the edge of the ruined starship in time to see a skyscraper of junk come down, its sheer size making it fall as if in slow motion. A giant cloud of debris rose ominously alongside it.

  “The hunter is here,” a frobbit announced, pointing at the gray cloud. Max looked down to see a yellow daisy painted on the frobbit’s armor—it wasn’t exactly confidence building. Max hurried over to an old hangar where Sarah was clearing material away from the floor. He pointed in the direction of the crash.

  “I know,” she responded, “but look: There’s a pit in here, like some kind of maintenance area or something.” A number of frobbits were working hard to haul off various pieces of twisted metal and parts. “Maybe if we can get it to fall in we can trap it. Assuming it’s not too big or can fly or something. It’s the best I can come up with on short notice.”

  “It’s better than doing nothing,” Max managed to reply.

  Yah Yah and several other frobbits pointed to a large piece of sheet metal on the other side of the bay. “Will this do?” he called out.

  Sarah looked at it and did some quick measuring in her head. “Yeah, I think so,” she yelled back. “Drag it over.”

  A group ran over to help Yah Yah move the sheet toward the pit. Sarah ordered several more squads of frobbits and faeries to take up positions around the hangar. “It’s an ambush,” she announced. “We’ll need to lure the hunter in—but we’ll need some protection in case it has projectiles or something.” The frobbits nodded and began to disperse.

  “What if there’s more than one?” Max asked, suddenly feeling vulnerable.

  “We have to plan according to what Cenede told us, otherwise we’re really in trouble.”

  Max looked up. The former blue skies of the desert were gray and overcast now. “If the hunter falls in we should have the others ready to attack. And while it’s busy, I can cast a fireball spell. In a tight space like that, it might get pretty hot—maybe hot enough to melt its chips or something.”

  “Then it’s a plan,” Sarah declared. “But just so you know, you’re the only one who stands any chance of destroying whatever it is. Everything else is just a distraction.”

  Max gripped the Codex in his hands. “And if we can’t get it to go into the pit? Or if it has bionic legs and jumps out? Or what if it’s fireproof?”

  Sarah stopped what she was doing and thought about it for a moment. “There’s no alternative,” she finally said. “Either it works or we’re probably not going to make it.” It was ominous hearing Sarah talk like that.

  Before long they had the pit covered and the ambush set up. All they could do now was wait. Max and Sarah hunkered down behind a small pile of junk parts, where they had a clear view of the hangar, while bands of frobbits huddled together beneath piles of scrap or within the shells of hollowed-out equipment and ships. Squads of faeries took the high ground, detached to support the frobbits wherever possible. Dirk and his priests remained inside the shell of the large spacecraft, ready to help the injured.

  Sarah looked around and took everything in. She understood she didn’t have the kind of knowledge a true general would have, so she had to just go with what she’d written about for her history class. She couldn’t help but second-guess herself, however, and she was about to stand and reposition one of the frobbit platoons when suddenly they heard it. It was a squeaking, tanklike sound—a mechanized, heavy crawl moving toward them. Sarah and Max ducked low, waiting and watching.

  Wall-up turned a corner at the far end of the clearing. The hunter was slow, methodical, and more or less a cube. It had binocular-like eyes that pivoted on an elongated neckpiece and carried a large hammer on its back. Two electronic arms with clawlike hands were opening and closing as if in anticipation of crushing something. It wasn’t exactly as intimidating as the other robots that Max had imagined in his head, but it looked sturdy, which could be a real problem.

  Max pushed his glasses up and watched as the hunter rolled to the area between the hangar and the spaceship shell. Its head kept swiveling as it searched for its prey, and Max could see ocular lenses turn like a camera trying to focus.

  “Ready?” Sarah asked, turning to Max. Max opened the Codex to the place he’d bookmarked and nodded.

  Sarah held up a small, reflective bit of metal and signaled the others. There was a sudden commotion as frobbits jumped out, banging metal pipes and yelling. A volley of faerie arrows arched through the air and began falling around the hunter. The robot stopped, its eyes swinging around and focusing on the dancing frobbits. Then the tracks turned, swiveling the robot in the direction of the trap.

  “That’s it,” Sarah said under her breath. Max looked down at the Codex and saw the fireball spell; his hands were shaking. He needed to be ready at exactly the right moment.

  The frobbits continued to make noise and call after the hunter. Insults ranged from “Over here, blockhead” to “Your mother was a trash compactor!” The frobbits appeared emboldened after their last (and probably first) victory, and many had moved too far from their hiding places.

  “Get down!” Sarah yelled as the frobbits drifted away from their cover. “Get back!”

  The frobbits were used to swift-moving hunters, and even with their new survival training they didn’t think much of the slow-moving Wall-up, so when the laser erupted from the binocular head, the explosion caught them by surprise, sending several of them flying.

  “No!” Sarah cried out, standing up. Max had to grab her and pull her down as Wall-up’s head swung around and fired at them. Max could feel the heat of the beam sizzling the air overhead. The robot’s head swiveled back as the tanklike tracks propelled it closer toward the ruins of the old hangar. Farther inside, another frobbit jumped out, egging the hunter on. But the laser was too fast for it, and after the explosion there was no sign of the little soldier. All the while the faeries continued to fire their arrows, but they bounced harmlessly off the metal skin.

  The frobbits, however, had gotten the point about the laser and so they stayed hunkered down.

  The hunter pulled the hammer from its back and continued toward the hanger.

  Sporadic fire from the faeries seemed to egg Wall-up on, and before long it approached the pit. The opening had been hidden by the large sheet of metal and other debris, and looked solid.

  Sarah and Max crawled back to their spots at the top of the pile. “Come on, keep going,” Sarah whispered, urging the robot forward under her breath. “Just a little farther.”

  But when Wall-up got to the edge, it stopped. Its free pincer arm extended, grabbing hold of the metal and lifting it a few inches off the ground.

  “Max, it’s not going to work!” Sarah exclaimed, realizing the robot had figured it out. “You need to do something—now!”

  Panicked, Max quickly opened the Codex to the place he had ma
rked. He started reading the spell at once, but it immediately felt wrong—something had changed. In a flash the energy of an enormous flame had gathered around him, swirling and building like a vortex. The pages of the Codex began to flap in the hot wind, threatening to rip free from his hand. Max struggled to keep his eyes open, and he managed to see a single word written across the top of the open page: Firestorm. That wasn’t a spell Max had even come close to attempting.

  “Max!” Sarah shouted. Her hair was starting to whip about as the torrent of hot air intensified. Max tried to concentrate on the spell, to slow it down and push it back into the Codex. But it was no use. He could feel the power of it as it grew, exploding into the sky with greater and greater fury. Dust and debris began to lift into the air, joining with the magical storm. Then, before he knew what had happened, the Codex itself was wrenched from his hands. Max jumped to his feat, leaping after it, but the wind hammered him like a fist. He was sent crashing and rolling down the mound of junk, suffering numerous cuts across his exposed skin. When Max rolled to a stop at the bottom of the pile, it was all he could to do to look up and find Sarah.

  “Run!” Max cried, his face bloody and his glasses barely hanging on his head. Around him, the maelstrom surged and heaved. Sarah ducked and began running for shelter.

  A loud thunderclap exploded in the sky above, and as Max rose to his feet, doing his best to keep his balance, he could feel the temperature of the air surge with heat. He started to run, forgetting everything he hated about running as he made a mad dash across the clearing toward the battered skeleton of the gutted spaceship. It was the first time he ran without feeling pain—he didn’t feel his legs, or the burning in his lungs, or the sharp ache in his side. Something inside him had shut all of that down and he simply ran with all the force his body had. He yelled for everyone to take cover. He wasn’t sure anyone could even hear him over the rising tempest, but he had to try.

  Sarah was ahead of him, and she barely avoided a lightning strike that exploded near her. She managed to scramble into the stripped spacecraft as another thunderclap shook the ground, knocking Max forward so that he fell into the interior of the old ship. His momentum took him over a bolted-down table and into the metal wall. As he got to his feet, his ears ringing and stars dancing across his field of vision, it began to rain. Only it wasn’t water—it was raining fire.

  The frobbits took cover wherever they could; hiding in small nooks or covering themselves with anything they could find. The robot, exposed along the edge of the roofless hangar, cranked its binocular eyes up as a sheet of fire fell from the sky, drowning it in molten red.

  At the ship, Sarah ran over and helped Max to his feet—they were protected but still too close to the raging inferno outside. She led Max farther into the spaceship’s interior, until they found a spot where they could collapse against a wall. Outside the torrent of fire continued, and around them drops of liquid fire crawled along walls or dripped into burning pools on the floor.

  “I lost it,” Max exclaimed as his head began to clear. “I lost the Codex.”

  Sarah simply had to push the news from her mind. The very thought of it was so terrifying she knew it would keep her from thinking and doing the things necessary to stay alive.

  But all Max could think about was the horrible truth that he’d lost the only way for them to get home. And in the process, he’d summoned something so destructive that he might have killed every soul he’d tried to save.

  “I shouldn’t have even tried. Look what I’ve done.”

  Sarah knew that she should try to comfort him, but the words just didn’t come. She sat there and watched as the world erupted.

  The storm lasted only a few minutes, but in its aftermath the earth sizzled and steamed. When it was over, Max and Sarah slowly stepped outside, feeling the tug of their shoes as their rubber soles began to melt. They hurried along the edge of the ship’s frame, finding groups of frobbits and faeries that had made it through the storm. There were many burns, and when Max found Dirk he was helping his priests attend to the wounds. The frobbit healers had numerous medicines they kept in woven bags, including leaves that could be chewed to dull the pain.

  Sarah headed toward the hanger, finding Wall-up severely damaged but still alive. The binocular eyes had melted away, leaving only the singed square body and slowly opening and closing clawed pincers. What remained of its wheels spun in the melted black goo that had been its tracks. Max and Dirk walked up to Sarah as frobbits crawled out from their hiding places to join them. Many, but not all.

  “Finish it,” Sarah said coldly. Max, remembering Glenn at his belt, slowly drew the dagger and pressed it against the hunter’s chassis. He expected it would take a bit of work to get through the steaming metal shell in order to pry it open, but when he pushed, the magical blade slid in easily, driving itself through bundles of electronic nerves. There was an audible snap as the system overloaded and the wheels and claw stopped moving. Wall-up was no more.

  As Max returned Glenn to his sheath, he noticed that Sarah had several burns along her arms. Seeing them made him nauseated—not because they were too serious, but because he had caused them. “I did that to you.”

  “No, Max, you won,” Dirk offered, noticing his friend’s change in demeanor. “You killed it. It was like a tank and you totally took it out.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like that—there were other spells—”

  “And you think a normal fireball would have hurt that?” Dirk asked. “You did exactly what you needed to.”

  “But it doesn’t matter, the Codex is gone,” Max lamented. “And even if it wasn’t, I’m not using it again.” Max turned to see frobbits and faeries gently carrying their dead to a tarp that was being used to cover them. The sight made tears rush to his eyes. “I did this. I killed them.”

  Yah Yah ran up to him, grinning. “Max, we did it!” But Yah Yah could see that Max did not share the sentiment. The frobbit’s features softened, and he walked over and gently placed his hands on Max’s head, forcing him to look at him. “No. You do not blame yourself for this. Every day we were hunted, and every day more of us fell. There’s not one here, frobbit or faerie alike, who would have lived to survive the machines. And so each of us would gladly give our lives if it meant saving others—if it meant protecting our homes and families. Do not dishonor those who stood with us, my friend. Every one of them would have come even if they had known their fate. We were proud to fight with you. We are proud to fight still.”

  Max listened to Yah Yah and felt the burden begin to lift from his heart. It was a terrible loss, but his friend was so sincere, he realized he had to hold on to some measure of hope. Max smiled and shook Yah Yah’s hand. “Thank you.”

  “No, thank you,” Yah Yah started to say, but the world changed again and darkness fell over everything.

  Max thought it peculiar that he couldn’t feel the ground beneath him anymore, and when he tried to speak there was no sound. The machines were changing the board again, only now he had no magic to defend his friends. Max considered this for a long time, and at some point he must have slept. He had dreamed he was drifting in the air with his friends. Then one by one they were snatched away, reaching for him as they were dragged into the darkness below. In his mind he heard them screaming. Or perhaps they really were—he couldn’t be certain.

  Robo-Princess watched as the screen showing the beloved Wall-up went dark. Two hunters had now been put down. The battle had been more than impressive—it was magnificent. Robo-Princess had never seen such magic in the Techrus, and for the first time she realized the boy wizard had a power that eclipsed even her own. Yes, he was a novice—that much was obvious. He lacked the control and precision of those who spent their lives cultivating and understanding what it was to wield such power. But if there had been any doubt about the reality of the Codex, it was now gone. Max Spencer was dangerous.

  “Citizens of Machine City,” Robo-Princess announced. “We have witnessed
another tragic defeat and have lost our beloved Wall-up.” A wave of blinking lights filled the stadium, drowning out the stars in the night sky overhead. Robo-Princess knew the machines were going to take the loss hard, but she was starting to sense something else—fear.

  “Let us take comfort in the fact that he left our world fighting to the very end. But know this—vengeance will be ours! You see now just how powerful the human has become. He wields magic like no other. But then, our next champion is like no other as well. Fear not, for in the battle of magic versus technology we have only begun to fight. The humans will pay for what they have dared to do to us!”

  Robo-Princess cut the communication channel. She climbed down from the podium as an automated voice announced a brief broadcast intermission. “Did you see that?” she said as she approached Robo-Magar, grateful her robotic voice didn’t betray the anxiety she felt.

  “That last display of magic—it has been lifetimes since I have seen such,” Robo-Magar replied. “I may be a machine, but I was a human first. I forgot just how resilient we were.”

  Robo-Princess decided enough was enough, and sent a sub-routine to bolster her resolve while servos attended to her during the break. She began to feel better immediately. “You forget I wiped them out—all of them, single-handedly,” she replied, the last of her fears blocked from her system. “Humans and all their technology were no match for me and my magic. And now I have both.”

  “True,” Robo-Magar said coolly. “But to command the Codex itself, had that been available to the humans during the war—”

  “It would not have changed a thing. Don’t fret, Magar, all is happening according to plan. One more defeat and then I’ll make my final appearance and destroy these humans myself.”

  “Perhaps you’re a bit overconfident,” Robo-Magar said carefully. “Maybe we should rethink our strategy?”