The Iron-Jawed Boy and the Hand of the Moon (Book 2, Sky Guardian Chronicles)

by Nikolas Lee

  A gust of whispers passed through the crowd, and Lady Borea turned her attention back to the contenders. “This second event is also special in that our Future Hands are allowed to choose one ally to aid them in the Retrieval for Vinya’s bow—an ally we call a Watcher. Esereez, Vasheer, and Thoman—you must choose from your fellow Illyrians, while Lillian and Ion must choose from the two Guardians. Vasheer, since you won the last event, you may go first.”

  Vasheer nodded and without a second’s thought, said, “Adalantis.”

  The silent Illyrian of the deserts, whose sewn-shut mouth looked extra disgusting today, bowed and walked over to stand behind Vasheer, his long, earthen-colored robes dragging the floor behind him.

  Lady Borea looked to Thoman, and the god of war replied, “The Unseperated Ones.”

  Eos and Ezra smiled at one another, and when they’d taken their place behind Thoman, Esereez said, “I won’t be needing a Watcher just as a true god of the Moon wouldn’t.”

  “Very well, my child,” Lady Borea replied, though not looking as impressed as Esereez had clearly wanted her to be. “Lillian, you’re next.”

  Lillian thought for a second—well, Ion assumed she was thinking—you could never really tell what she was doing with that expressionless, elven face of hers. “Theodore.”

  “Yes!” Theo said, flames igniting upon his shoulders when he punched the air.

  And so, with no other options, Oceanus became Ion’s Watcher. A wrench in the plan, he immediately realized. There was no one who liked to win more than Oceanus. With her at Ion’s side, helping Vasheer retrieve the Bow was going to be even harder.

  “Future Hands, let us now turn to the edge of Illyria, and watch as the Lost City of the Wastelands unfolds before us.”

  The Future Hands turned, peering over into the abyss of clouds below.

  A great moan like the sound of a hundred singing whales rushed over the island, and either the clouds were suddenly growing taller...or the island was sinking. A violent breeze rushed upward through everyone’s robes and hair—except, of course Lillian’s—as the island descended. Through the clouds it sank, until they’d come out the other end, and the Lost City of the Wastelands came into view.

  Ion’s jaw dropped. He’d never, ever seen anything like it before. There was an entire city spread out before him, nearly seven times as big as Protea.

  Poisonous gray and green clouds stretched on for as far as Ion could see, even washing over the mountains that seemed to encircle the many miles of the Lost City—just like the Isle of Eldanar. It was a valley, Ion could tell, with millions of charred, crumbling houses in the outer reaches, while in the center of it, beneath the floating Isle of Illyria, stood buildings that reached for the skies, all lining a very long strip of road. Ion was breathless at the sight of the towering structures—they were massive, rivaling anything on Protea or even Illyria. But they, too, were blackened like the houses in the outer reaches, charred and left to rot by whatever had happened here.

  The mighty groan that had passed through the island when it’d begun its descent sounded once more as it came to a slowed halt. The Isle of Illyria now hovered above the middle of the long strip of road at the city’s heart.

  “The Lost City was once a mecca for the humans of the Outerworld,” Lady Borea said. “It was a place of leisure and sin for the humans, an oasis in the middle of the desert. A blight on the face of Earth. The humans brought water and electricity, and so the city boomed. That was until they’d taken the life of my dear son, the late Lord of the Darklands, Omeer. This city was among the first to fall—an easy target, if you will. The drought from Lady Nepia came first, and the heat of Vasheer’s Sun came second, and after that, a great fire and a nuclear meltdown to poison the air. Though, there’s no need to worry—the poison has long settled, and gods remain immune to such things anyway.

  “The Moon Bow has been placed atop the Tower at the heart of the long road below called the Runway. The competitors must scale the Tower without flying. You shall be scattered equally about the flanks of the Runway, so that everyone’s certain the event will be fair.”

  Ion looked to the other competitors and their allies. All but Lillian wore the hungriest of grins, each mapping out the scene below.

  “Future Hands and Watchers?” Lady Borea asked, “are you ready to begin the Retrieval?”

  Everyone nodded, Ion doing so only after a nudge from Oceanus.

  Lady Borea looked to the Skylord, and when he clapped his hands together, thunder shook the island. With a burst of blinding light, heat surged through Ion’s body and when his skin began to feel like it was burning, the light cleared and he stood at the end of the Runway with Oceanus at his side.

  Ion shook away the heat, realizing he’d just ridden his first lightning bolt. He looked around, taking in the sight of the city now towering all around him. The Runway was much wider than it had looked from Illyria, with a great structure rising to his left—one that, beneath the grime and decay that had stained its walls, was plated with what appeared to be gold. Beside it rose a grand black pyramid, and beside the pyramid, a massive castle from what Oceanus explained looked to be from the Dark Ages.

  “A mysterious city, to have so many eras in one place,” she said.

  Then, Lady Borea’s voice rang through the air: “Future Hands, the ten second countdown to the start of the Retrieval begins...now!”

  “Lady Borea said the Bow’s at the heart of the Runway,” said Oceanus, focused ahead.

  “Nine!”

  “So we run to the middle.”

  “Eight!”

  Ion saw the hungry look on Oceanus’s face. She even licked her lips at the thought of winning the Bow. He wanted to tell her of what Queen Onyxia had told him, the words resting on the end of his tongue. But he glanced down at his own shadow—something that until this point he’d always been able to trust—and knew telling was not an option.

  Vasheer must win.

  “Two! One!”

  A horn sounded from the floating isle above, and Ion and Oceanus raced down the Runway, wind powering Ion’s steps, Oceanus riding atop a small, but no less raging wave of water.

  They raced down the Runway, passing the pyramid and the castle on the left, and a colossal, yet crumbling lion statue to the right, until the Tower Lady Borea had spoke of came into view. It stood upon four iron legs that convened as a single spire soaring toward the heavens, though blocked by the rocky underside of the Illyria hovering just above it. A building stood beside the Tower, a sad fragment of itself with a massive chunk of it long blown out.

  “We’re the first ones!” Oceanus shouted over her raging water, her face bright and determined.

  But when they’d come within a few yards of the Tower, Esereez slid in front of them, his twenty arms at the ready. All at once, he slammed his fists to the floor, and from out of the collision shot a fault line of violently rupturing stone, shrieking as it tore through the street toward the Guardians.

  Ion swerved to the left, while Oceanus leapt to the right, dismounting her wave. In midair, however, she threw her arms out, and in almost slow motion, Ion watched as the mass of water Oceanus had been riding exploded upward beside her, taking the shape of a massive whale leaping out of the ocean. She spun in her place, and so, too, did the whale. She landed, the whale crashing down upon Esereez and washing him to the side in a torrent of roaring water.

  Ion thought he’d only looked for a second, but when he turned to see where he was running, an arm appeared out of nowhere and struck him in the throat. He flipped through the air, landing with a thud on the cold, unforgiving street. He coughed uncontrollably, grabbing at his neck, which felt as though it’d been strangled by Oceanus at her angriest.

  He looked up and there was Thoman, the lenses hovering around his head clinking and clanking as they moved about. “I must confess,” said Thoman, “you, Sky Guardian, are a much more impressive fighter than I thought you’d be.”

  And then, the
fifty lenses circling Thoman’s head quickly shifted, sliding until all fifty of them were stacked in front of Thoman’s big main eye. A great whistling filled the air as a bright, red light began to accumulate at the end of the lenses, Ion scrambling to his feet.

  The ground rumbled, however, and the whistling was replaced by a roaring. Just behind the Overseer raged a column of twisting, whirling, howling wind, its walls made of golden desert sand. The winds pulled at Thoman’s arms and legs until they’d sucked him into their rotating walls, pummeling him before spitting him out the side, into the windows of a yet another towering building across the street—this one made of silvery, glass-like metal.

  Ion backed away, fighting the pull of the twister. He watched as a hole formed in its side, and through the violent desert winds, Ion saw Adalantis hovering in the middle of the vortex, his sewn-shut lips stretched into a contemptuous smile. But when the gap in the wall of winds closed, the twister let out a great howl and barreled toward Ion.

  Ion spun on his heel—again and again and again—until one spin had turned into sixty, and he was suspended within the heart of his own twister. Against the force of the winds, Ion locked his arms over his chest, and the twister barreled forward, colliding into Adalantis’s.

  The whirlwinds clashed, the air screaming and the sands flying as it formed one furious tornado, Ion and Adalantis battling in the eye of it. The Illyrian threw a fist made of sand, but Ion ducked and it missed. He threw a punch to the left—Ion swerved to the right. Then another punch, and another after that. But the sand was pelting Ion’s eyes, and when finally he was forced to close them, he felt a sandy fist strike his chest. He hissed at the pain, but drew his fist back, and felt the familiar tingle in his fingers. With a roar, he struck Adalantis in the stomach, and a bolt of lightning surged out of his fist, launching the god out of the twister and into the building Thoman had been thrown into.

  The winds immediately died, and Ion fell to his hands and knees, coughing on the gritty sand in his mouth. Wiping his eyes and mouth of the sand, he turned to the Tower. And at the sight of Lillian already climbing up one of its iron legs. To the right of her, his blades of heat piercing the metal of the Tower, was Vasheer.

  But the ground shook once, then twice, and suddenly Eos and Ezra, who were five times their original size, were lumbering toward the Tower, sights set on Vasheer. The massive shadow of Eos and Ezra shifted suddenly, shattering into a million pieces—pieces that flew toward Ion like a swarm of Solara’s locusts, attacking his own shadow until it’d been completely consumed.

  A warning from Onyxia if he’d ever seen on. A warning that Vasheer must win.

  Ion spread his feet apart, feeling the skin of his arms and back cool. Clouds seeped out of his pores—from his face, from his arms, from his hands, even his legs—rolling through the air and congregating into a small cloud system behind him, just as he’d imagined it. He balled his hands into fists and bared his teeth. He threw his arms forward and twenty screaming lightning bolts shot out of the clouds behind him, exploding against Eos and Ezra and launching them into the rubble yards away.

  While Vasheer continued his climb unhindered, Esereez rushed by and leapt onto the Tower. He grabbed hold of the iron sides with his hulking hands and climbed, his twenty arms sending him up the structure faster than any of the others. Ion lunged onto the Tower with a breath of wind, the metal so rusted it bit into his palms, daggers at his skin with each grasp. Before he could get even a third of the way up the Tower, however, there came a whistling noise, and sure enough, there was Thoman standing atop a small building across the Runway, crimson light accumulating at the end of his stacked lenses. The whistling finally came to a crescendo, but as the beam left Thoman’s eye, Theo crashed into the windows beneath the Illyrian and Thoman was knocked to the ground. The beam missed the Tower and struck the crumbling building beside it, the structure decimated in an explosion of heat, stone, and steel. Ion held on tight to the Tower, the blast nearly shaking him from its side.

  Through the chaos and the now collapsing building only yards away, Ion focused on Esereez, who by now was almost half way to the Moon Bow. Ion drew back his arm, a sphere of lightning screaming into existence in his palm, and loosed it upward. The ball screeched as it flew past Esereez. A miss. Ion shot one sphere after the other: miss...miss...miss. Esereez was moving too fast.

  There came a gentle roaring and Oceanus rose at Ion’s side, hoisted up to the waist by a massive geyser.

  “Keep climbing!” she shouted at Ion. “I’ll take care of Esereez.”

  Water from the geyser swept over her arms, crystallized before they reached her knuckles, and shot from her fingers as sharpened icicles, pummeling Esereez on the back. He stopped in his place, roaring under the pain of the barrage, while Ion seized the moment to climb higher and higher.

  And then it came again—the whistling.

  Thoman stood on the same building below, light collecting at the end of his lenses.

  “Oceanus!” Ion screamed down at his sister, pointing at the Overseer. “Take him down!”

  She reared forward and the column of water collapsed, flooded outward and rose as a colossal wall of water, Oceanus riding atop it. The whistling swelled, and the wave rushed forward, eclipsing Thoman and his lenses. But it was too late. The searing beam pierced the wall of water before Oceanus could call it down upon Thoman, and the beam sliced through the metal of the Tower, from one end to the next. The horrible scream of buckling metal ripped through the air, and Ion felt the Tower lean backward. But even with the metal spire seconds away from falling on top of them, the Future Hands continued their climb.

  Vasheer and Lillian had passed Esereez, Ion only a few yards away. But while Ion continued his climb, sure he’d have to do something to take down Lillian, he heard Vasheer scream her name. When he looked up, bright white light was streaming out of the Illyrian’s mouth, bowling over Lillian. If she refused to shield herself, she’d be blind in seconds. And so with no other option, she clamped both her hands to her eyes and fell from the Tower.

  “Lillian!” Ion screamed, watching as she tumbled past him. Ion tried grasping the winds to slow her fall—something, anything, but she was falling too fast, and before he knew it, she’d sunk beneath the clouds of dust and ash that covered the ground below.

  Ion looked up. And there was Vasheer, smirking.

  Ion’s skin warmed until it felt as though he’d been lit on fire, his jaw blistering hot against his flesh. Green lightning coursed off the ends of his eyes, crackling, hissing, connecting with the metal of the Tower in front of him.

  A familiar voice spoke to him then. Quiet, but clear, like the whisper of a wind. Vasheer. Mustn’t. Win.

  Ion faced the heavens, gritted his teeth, and with a furious thought, pounded the metal before him. A thick bolt of lightning shot down from the clouds and with a concussive blast of thunder, struck the Tower beside Vasheer. Launching both him and Esereez from the side and into the clouds of dust and ash below.

  The Tower gave one last groan then, and Ion turned in a panic, watching as the layer of clouds below grew closer and closer. He was no longer climbing now, but hanging. With only a second to spare before Ion was flattened beneath the Tower, the clouds of dust parted below and there was Lillian, her feet spread apart, both of her hands held stiff in the air. She roared louder than he thought an elf even could, and with a heave of her arms, the Tower swung just slightly back the other way and crashed to the earth with a force that could rival any earthquake.

  Ion let go of the metal bar he held and met the sandy floor below. He touched his face, chest, and arms—incredulous to be in one piece. “I’m alive!”

  Lillian appeared through the clouds of dust. “You’re also lucky,” she said flatly. “For a second I didn’t think that was going to work.”

  Ion hugged her tight, much to her dismay, and said softly, “Thank you, Lillian.”

  “No problem,” she said, pulling away uncomfortably. “Just...don
’t hug me again.”

  “That’s fine,” he said with a smile. “I can do that.”

  After the dusty air finally began to settle, and the wreckage of the crumbled Tower could be properly made out, a cry that could only come from a man pierced the air. Ion and Lillian both looked to the left, where Esereez sat among the rubble, head in his hands. For there, standing on the crumbled iron that was once the peak of the Tower, was Thoman the Overseer—his hand wrapped around the interlocking antlers of the Moon Bow.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WHAT A GOD MUST DO

  The Isle of Illyria was crowded with fog when the Future Hands and their Watchers had returned from the Retrieval. They walked down the road of the Silken Vale, the sound of the cheering citizens louder than it’d ever been. Thoman walked at the front of the procession with Eos and Ezra at his side, his long arm high in the air, brandishing the Moon Bow for all to see. Flowers showered his feet as he proceeded, while Vasheer, who walked behind Thoman, burned each flower to ash with just his passing.

  But Ion was certain Queen Onyxia was going to do more than burn a few flowers.

  After the contenders had left the shade of the silk trees, they stopped at the foot of the Obsidian Steps, where the other Illyrians waited. The crowd gathered all around, quickly quieted by the rise of Lady Borea’s hand.

  She smiled down upon the competitors, taking a bit more time on Thoman. “What a show,” she said. “Don’t you agree, my fellow Illyrians?”

  They nodded, all except Onyxia, who was too busy drinking from her goblet of mead and staring down at Ion with eyes as pointed as swords.

  “Thoman, you fought with such vigor this time around,” said Lady Borea. “How clever of you, to bring the Bow down to you instead of climbing to it.”

  “It is an honor to even behold my dear sister’s Bow,” said Thoman, gazing down at the weapon, “let alone hold it in my hands. She was a beautiful woman, both inside and out, and to know that this victory has gotten me one step closer to sitting upon her Throne warms my heart.”