by C. J. Farley
And the most terrifying one of them all was coming right for him.
The Baron.
Even from a distance he could feel the sinister intent of the Crimson Beast. Through the failing light of day, he could see its eyes burning bright. The cavern of its mouth was filled with the stalagmites and stalactites of its teeth. Its bulky form towered above the landscape. Its wings, feathered like a crow’s in some places, naked like a bat’s in others, spread out wider than the branches of tall trees.
The two scratches across Dylan’s chest felt like they were splitting open. A chill ran through him. He put his hand to his heart—he could hear the Baron in his mind.
Leave this place.
Heck to the no.
What if all of this isn’t real? What if it’s a dream?
It is real . . . Why wouldn’t it be?
Remember your condition? The one that you won’t discuss with anyone, not even your best friend? Yes—you had another seizure. The game set it off. Your eyes rolled into the back of your head. Your limbs flailed like a drowning boy. You swallowed your tongue. You nearly died.
Stop it.
Video games trigger your seizures. And it’s happening again. You never made it to the Mee Mansion. You never entered the Tournament of Xamaica. You never left the nurse’s office! Where do you think those gashes in your chest came from? In your confusion you tried to tear out your own heart! Playing Xamaica triggered a massive seizure. Just like the doctor told you it would.
That’s not true.
King Games is dying! But it’s not too late to save yourself, to make your exodus. Remember Hope Road? You get three trips. You have one left. Close your eyes. Think of home. The path will appear. With a single step, you will leave your friends behind and the road will take you where you need to go. All this death will vanish like a dream. But if you insist on believing in this world, if you keep fighting for your friends, you will die. You will choke on your tongue. The seizure will kill you.
Images entered Dylan’s mind.
He was lying on the floor of the nurse’s office. Emma was there too. She was begging Dylan to get up, stand up, to leave whatever fantasy had gripped his conscious mind and come back to the real world.
No.
His real sister was still out there somewhere. If he was ever going to find her, he had to win this battle. The nurse’s office vanished.
You can’t win! You failed to discover the spell that can restore your powers. I know that secret. I’ve found the greatest source of magic: Greed! It is inevitable, inexhaustible, irresistible. We can create a new kingdom powered by greed.
“I’d rather destroy you than join you.”
You have no powers. I know about the cheat code. I know that it is your own name.
“H-h-how did you find that out?”
This is my world—I know all! This isn’t your place. This isn’t your problem!
“I don’t run from problems. Not anymore.”
Dylan was going to find his sister no matter what. Emma was a pain, yes, but they had always been there for each other. He missed her worse than he thought he could ever miss anything.
Suddenly Ines and Eli were standing beside him. But the Baron wasn’t finished yet.
Ines! Your father is gone, but I can make you queen of this world. With my Green Cloud you could live the fantasies of every Xamaican, and we could drain the dreams of Earth as well! You can be a monarch greater than any tale told on TV or in movies!
“I don’t believe you,” Ines said. “And I believe my father is still out there, somewhere. I don’t need empty fantasies or reality TV. I’ll bring Dad back without you.”
Eli—fight beside me! I can give you all the wealth in this world. I can give you Nanni’s book!
Eli laughed. “Don’t you get it? We’re the Game Changers! A true player knows when they’re being played!”
Then—Game Changers—prepare to meet your fate.
And just like that, the Baron vanished from their minds.
Dylan and his friends were back on the battlefield. Dylan felt his heart falter, and his stomach go jumpy. He turned to his friends. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Eli asked.
“For everything. For bringing you here.”
Ines struck him in the shoulder with her paw, not enough to knock him down, but hard enough to get his attention. “Don’t you know by now that, for us, the only place to be is where you are? Besides, it’s my fault too. Greatest. Adventure. Ever. Remember?”
“I gotta admit, hanging with you hasn’t been so bad,” Eli said to her. “When we started, I thought you were a shallow, empty-headed, corporate tool with a mean streak. Now I know you don’t have a mean streak.”
Ines flicked at Eli with her tail. The two kids exchanged smiles. But they no doubt knew, as Dylan did, that there was no hope.
“So, what’s your plan?” Ines asked Eli.
“This time,” Eli admitted, “I don’t have one.”
“Well, I do,” Dylan said. “You ever wonder why the Baron didn’t attack us at the Tournament of Xamaica?”
“I assume he was watching us, studying our moves.”
“So he’s gonna expect us to do what we did then. Stick together, work as a team.”
“So we should do the opposite,” Eli said. “Spread out. Each take command of a separate part of the army.”
“Why would they let us command anything?” Ines asked.
“Nobody here knows that we don’t know anything,” Dylan said. “And aren’t you an expert at pretending you know what you’re doing?”
Ines clapped her paws. “Neither does the ostrich!”
“The crazy thing is what she just said makes sense to me,” Eli said.
They quickly sketched out battle plans. This was the end of all things, but they were together, at least for now.
“One heart,” Ines said, lightly touching Dylan’s shoulder this time.
“One faith,” Eli chimed in.
“Group hug?” Ines suggested.
“I have to tell you something,” Dylan confessed. “When we played the game—I used a cheat code. It enhanced my powers.”
Ines smiled. “Yeah—it’s in your file. That isn’t the only reason you’re good. Your name is part of the code of this world—don’t you think that’s a sign you’re special?”
“I knew about it too,” Eli admitted. “Since when is hacking cheating? You won’t get out of the group hug that easily.”
The children embraced for a bit, and then moved on.
Dylan looked out across the battlefield. There was smoke, fire, flying creatures, slithering monsters, marching armies, roars and commands, sunlight glinting off weaponry, arrows flying through the sky. So much chaos. How would he find his own way, much less lead others into battle?
He thought about Emma. She’d probably have a quote for this, maybe something by that poet Claude McKay, the one about being surrounded and outnumbered and fighting back anyway.
Yes, they were going to die. Dylan couldn’t understand how it had come to this.
He stopped walking. He had to overstand. He closed his eyes, cleared his thoughts.
In his mind’s eye, the battlefield became a chessboard, with rows and columns. Where there had been chaos, there was now order. He could see where he had to go and what he had to do. He opened his eyes, drew his machete—and flames ran up the blade.
His friends by his side, Dylan prepared for the final charge.
* * *
Nanni anchored the center, Astrid led the left, and the kids—Dylan, Eli, and Ines—spread out across the forces on the right.
When Astrid raised the standard of the Maruunz, a blood-red flag, fair and bold, Nanni conjured explosions of light that appeared to blind their opponents. The Baron’s forces melted before the onslaught of the Maruunz, and for a moment there was hope.
Dylan and his friends—keeping plenty of space between them—waded through the lines of Hai-Uri. Nanni threw ligh
tning bolts that gave cover to their attack. The monsters fell back, howling, and the Baron’s army seemed in disarray.
Nanni’s attack was something to behold. She held no weapons, and she carried no shield. Her body undulated and her arms waved like smoke in the wind. This was Bangaran, mastered at its highest level. She appeared to one and all like a tongue of fire, bright and terrible. Men and creatures threw themselves upon her and fell back, singed and burned or utterly consumed by some magic conflagration.
But the center held. For it was here, around the captured Nestuh, that the Baron had concentrated his best fighters—the Iron Lions and the Soucouyants, the zombies and his imperial bird-dinosaur guard. From above came swarms of Higues, flying on their mosquito wings, their hoods thrown back to reveal their bulbous red eyes. Each carried a shield and a crooked dagger; and each had a proboscis that was already dripping with newly-tasted blood. There were hundreds of them, thick as insects over a fetid pond. The sound of their coming filled the air with a sharp wild buzzing that stung the ears and made the heart grow weak.
Nanni, however, brushed them off like, well, insects, swatting and swaying and unconquered on the piece of land she had claimed for her own.
But then, from the sides, came phalanxes of Rolling Calves. When they charged into Nanni, the sound was like a landslide. But still she resisted, using her Bangaran skills to throw them back, their fires extinguished, ashes everywhere.
On another part of the battlefield, Dylan was under attack. The Baron had dispatched the Soucouyants to ambush him. The creatures sent vinelike creepers to trip up the Maruunz warriors around Dylan and threw fireballs to finish them off. He dodged a few of them, unconsciously using some of the basic Bangaran moves Nanni had taught him. With his machete, he repelled a dozen more attackers, who retreated in fear at the sight of his flaming blade. But a fresh wave of Soucouyants continued the attack. Any moment now and they would be on top of Dylan and burn him alive. They screeched at him with their terrible chilly voices.
“Dylan needs our help!” Ines cried out from across the battlefield. “I’m not gonna get there in time!”
Eli was held up, many paces away, in a skirmish with the Higues. “Hold on!”
The Soucouyants opened their Venus flytrap hands, which immediately filled with deadly flames.
(No!)
Nanni summoned up deep reserves of obeah to blow out the flames of the Soucouyants and knock them back. Taken by surprise by Nanni’s defense of Dylan, some of the Soucouyants were finished off by the Maruunz, who suddenly had the upper hand. Dylan dispatched the stragglers with his flaming machete. The attack, however, took its toll on Nanni. Her face aged, her back bent, and her flame withered.
Now the Baron sprung his most fearsome trap. He had been waiting for the witch to divert her magic to help her friends—for then she would be at her weakest. Right at Nanni’s feet, the ground gave way and her concentration, for a brief moment, was broken. Beneath her swarmed all manner of horrible, gigantic worms—brown and black, crimson and emerald, golden and gray. They threw off a great heat, as if the ground had opened up into hell itself. These unexpected monsters were the dragons of earth, tamed by some mighty spell and compelled to follow the Baron’s bidding. The huge worms wrapped around Nanni’s arms and legs and waist and soon she was immobilized.
Nanni was a prisoner.
Two feathered dinosaurs, croaking with glee, clamped manacles on Nanni and flew her to the Baron. Before, he could imprison her, but not slay her, because the enchantment around her was too powerful. Now, with so much of her power dispersed to protect her allies, she was, at long last, vulnerable to attack. His centuries-long wait was over.
Finally, the Baron gloated, my victory is complete. I name myself Emperor Zarathustra I! The Great Web of the World will fall—and I will build an infinitely superior enclosure. The Grand Birdcage of Zarathustra—or so future generations shall call it—will cover Xamaica and Earth. I’m sick of sipping nectar. From this day on I’ll eat as other birds do—and all the people of two worlds will be worms!
There were so many crazy things going on in that speech, Dylan didn’t know where to begin. A giant birdcage? Two planets full of worms? That last idea in particular overwhelmed Dylan’s mind as he tried to imagine it. Every kid in his school—worms. Both houses of Congress—worms. All the actors and actresses at the Oscars—all worms. Okay, maybe the members of Congress and the actors and some of the kids in school deserved it, but what about all the poets and philosophers and skateboarders and doctors? How sick would it be to see city streets filled with a traffic jam of human-sized worms, or a river of worms slithering through malls and multiplexes and up and down the Washington Monument? It was too awful to think about.
The Baron—a.k.a. Emperor Zarathustra I—bared his teeth to reveal two long fangs dripping venom like a snake’s. His tentacles reached out from around his mouth and drew Nanni closer. He bit suddenly, deeply, and eagerly into her side. She convulsed three times and fell to the ground.
Dylan had to do something. But what could he do? A wall of Rolling Calves was headed toward him. There was still time for him to run and hide. The ground rumbled with the pounding of their hooves. The air was hot with their fiery breath. Flames ran up and down their long sharp horns and their eyes smoldered as they snorted ash and smoke. The wall of charging roaring burning snorting bull flesh and muscles and hooves was about to slam into him faster than a high-speed Internet connection.
Then it halted, as if an invisible barrier had come down between Dylan and the charging beasts.
The Black Starr had landed!
Dozens of pirates dressed in crimson and wielding swords charged off the ship and joined the battle against the Baron. There were pirate Rolling Calves, pirate Wata Mamas, pirate Maruunz, pirate Iron Lions—but far and away, most of the pirates were hummingbirds! The birds soared off the ship in a storm of swords, a frenzy of feathers, and a blaze of beaks. For a moment, the Baron’s forces were thrown in disarray, startled by an attack by so many of the Baron’s own people.
Dylan recognized one of the renegade birds.
“Don’t look down,” the patch-eyed hummingbird said as he flitted by, “on anyone.” The ranking on the bird’s chest was falling so fast Dylan couldn’t even read the number.
Another pirate, a human one, swinging on a rope and holding a cutlass, set down right next to Dylan. She was tall, with her braided hair wrapped in a crimson-and-pink bandanna emblazoned with a skull and crossbones.
Emma? . . . It was Emma!
Dylan and his sister held each other for a good long while, heedless of swords and magic and charging beasts.
“I’m sorry for everything,” Dylan began. “The portal, the Viral Emma video, the—”
“Break a vase,” Emma interrupted.
“What?”
“Break a vase—the love that puts it back together is stronger than the love that took it for granted when it was whole. Derek Walcott said that.”
“That’s actually a good one,” Dylan said. “Hey, what’s with the birds? They’re on our side?”
“A lot of the birds turned against the Baron,” Emma explained. “They figured out that anyone who cares so much about money and power doesn’t care about much else. You can’t judge someone by their feathers! I got these recruits because of you!”
“How?”
“When I heard your Grand Chirp, I went to Ssithen Ssille. You were gone, but lots of birds wanted to sign up.”
“So where is Ma Sinéad?”
Emma laughed. “You’re looking at her!”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation . . .” But before Emma could finish, shards of glass flew through the air.
The Rolling Calves had knocked the Black Starr aside. They were on the move again—and the beasts had help. They were being led by a trumpeting Airavata—a nine-trunked elephant—and a Moongazer.
The Airavata was Anjali, o
ne of the Loopy kids. It had to be. Even as a mythical beast she sounded like a French horn. And the Moongazer was that goon Chad who had chased Dylan out of school a million lifetimes ago. His gaseous body was still streaked with burns from Eli’s fireblasts. Chad had bullied Anjali at school, now they were both among the many children hypnotized, bamboozled, and coerced into fighting the Baron’s bloody battle. The Baron was baiting Dylan into an attack against people he knew. Here Anjali came, charging full force, her trunks in the air sounding death and destruction, her feet pounding out tremors as she approached ever closer. Chad, meanwhile, was rolling in like a fog bank. A Rolling Calf stampede was already unstoppable. This was beyond unstoppable.
Emma signaled to her pirate crew to take out the Airavata and the Moongazer.
“No!” Dylan yelled. “It’s Anjali and Chad from school!”
“Really?”
“Anjali—wake up!” Dylan shouted at the rapidly approaching beast. “Chad—this isn’t worth dying for!”
The Airavata plowed ahead. The Moongazer began roaring.
Emma placed a hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Dylan—my crew will never stop them in time. We’re both gonna get crushed! Nothing can stop a Rolling Calf stampede!”
Dylan had to clear his head and figure out what to do. Overstand. He remembered what he had in his pocket—a piece of that crimson feather.
“Take this,” he told Emma. “It’s not big enough for both of us.”
She looked at him in wonder, and took the piece of crimson feather from his hand. She kissed Dylan on the cheek, then floated away. Dylan exhaled. Emma was safe now. But the Airavata, the Moongazer, and the Rolling Calves were a few stomps away. What was that saying? Only death stops a Rolling Calf stampede. Dylan knew what he had to do. He didn’t have powers. He didn’t have a cheat code. All he had was himself. He spread out his arms, closed his eyes—and braced for impact.
And that’s when Dylan died.
