“Such a wonderful thing,” said the figure, flexing his fingers. “Such power, such—”
Ben lunged. He threw himself forwards, making a desperate grab for the glove. The man in the hood made a gesture with the gauntlet and Ben jerked to a sudden stop. His arms and legs were pulled outwards until his body formed an X shape. He hung there, unable to move, floating just above the floor.
“As I was saying,” continued the stranger. “Such wonderful little tricks.”
The man came closer, his long grey robe swishing on the metal floor. His hood hung down over his face, so that Ben couldn’t tell if he was even human.
“But that’s all they are, really,” he said, and that whisper echoed every word.
“Tricks. I mean … super strength. Portals! Such childish flights of fancy.”
“Yeah, it’s rubbish,” said Ben. “Might as well give it back to me.”
The man laughed at that. It was a sharp and hollow sound, and nothing like a real laugh at all. “Yes, quite,” he said, then he turned away. “It’s ironic, Benjamin. Dadsbutt thought I was looking for this glove, but the truth is quite the opposite. I knew precisely where this glove was. I have known for a very long time.”
He looked back to Ben, and for a moment Ben thought he saw a glint of two red eyes in the shadow beneath the hood. “I was looking for the other one.” He made that sound again that wasn’t really a laugh. “You look surprised. Gloves come in pairs, Benjamin. I thought everyone knew that. Your parents certainly did.”
Ben jolted, as if a goat had butted him. “My … parents?”
“Lovely couple. Such a terrible shame what happened to them,” said the man in the robe, and this time only the whispering voice laughed. “But let’s not talk about that.”
“What do you know about my parents?” Ben demanded.
“I said, let’s not talk about that,” spat the man, in a voice that had become icy cold.
Ben’s arms were starting to hurt. He tried to pull them down, but they were fixed in place. “Who are you?”
“My name is Antagonus. But soon you shall call me ‘master’.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” said Ben.
“There are two gloves. There’s the Alpha Gauntlet – this one. And there’s the Omega Gauntlet, which I am on on the brink of locating. When I do… When I have both gauntlets in my possession, their power shall be magnified a hundredfold. There will be nothing I cannot do. You shall call me master then, as shall the whole world.”
A bell rang out from the console behind him. Antagonus turned sharply, and studied a number of dials and gauges. “Pressure,” he muttered. “What’s happening to the gas pressure?”
“Oh yeah, I forgot to mention,” said Ben. “My friends are freeing all the trolls you kidnapped. Hope that doesn’t ruin your evil plans or anything.”
Antagonus whipped around, the gauntlet raised, his hand shaking with barely contained rage.
Destroy him.
The whisper spoke all on its own this time. Ben gasped as he felt his arms and legs being stretched further apart.
“No,” said Antagonus. With his other hand he forced the gauntlet arm down by his side. “No, there is no need. I have all the gas I require, and even if not, I’ve always got the spares.”
With a wave of his hand Antagonus turned Ben in the air. The hulking outline of Dadsbutt crouched at the far end of the room. Two trolls were strapped on more of the bucket contraptions, and the ogre was putting the finishing touches to restraining the third.
“Scumbo,” called Ben, but the troll’s mouth was already crammed with sprouts, and he could only trump noisily in response.
“So you see, Benjamin, your little plan has failed,” Antagonus said. “I have the Alpha Gauntlet, and the Omega shall soon be within my grasp. I sense it is close by, somewhere on this mountain.”
He stepped closer, until Ben could hear his breath rasping in and out below the hood. “But don’t worry. I am not going to kill you. Not yet. Not until I have made you watch everything your parents ever fought for turned to dust.”
He paused to let his words sink in, but the moment was spoiled by an outburst of loud parping from the other end of the room.
“For now, though, I’d like you to do something for me,” Antagonus said. He raised the gauntlet. “I’d like you to get off my airship.”
Ben frowned. “Airship?” he said, then an invisible force hit him like a hammer-blow. He tumbled backward, spinning and rolling as he was hurled over the steering wheel and out through the wide-open window. His back slammed against the rocky stone wall, and then he was falling, sliding, tumbling down the gap between the mountain and the metal walls, the ground racing up to meet him.
He reached out, grasping for the trailing roots that stuck out here and there from the cavern wall. He flipped and rolled, the world a blur of rock and metal and sickly green light. His hands missed the roots, but his foot snagged on one and he jolted to a sudden painful stop just a metre or so from the floor.
With a groan, the metal wall lurched a few centimetres towards him, and Ben felt sure it would squash him flat. Instead, the base of the towering construction raised off the floor. It moved slowly at first, but quickly picked up speed as it lifted up through the gap in the cavern roof.
“H-help!”
“What’s happening?”
Ben hauled himself free of the roots and landed with a thump on his back. From the floor he caught a glimpse of Paradise and Wesley at the windows on the second storey. They leaned out, waving frantically at him.
“Look out!” Ben cried, pointing past them. They both looked up, then ducked inside just in time to avoid being smashed against the cave roof.
As the hulk of metal cleared the hole and rose up into the open air, Ben was at last able to see it all in one go. He could see the two bottom floors where the trolls had been trapped. He could see the storey above where flowers had covered every surface. Above that, jutting out on all sides was the much larger top floor he’d just been thrown out of, and above that…
Above that…
It was a balloon. The largest balloon Ben had ever seen. It dwarfed the rest of the airship – an enormous oval of pigskin that was swollen and fat with lighter-than-air troll gas.
Ben did the only thing he could think of. He ran.
Back along the tunnel he went, back through the forest and through the ruins of Loosh. It was a ten minute sprint back to his house from there. Ben did it in five.
Tavish was tinkering with some cogs and springs when Ben burst in through the door, puffing and panting and covered in mud. The blacksmith set down his tools and pushed his protective goggles up on to his forehead.
“There you are. What time do you call this?”
“No time to explain,” Ben wheezed, too out of breath to form sentences. “Bad guy. Airship. Dadsbutt.”
“Dadsbutt?” gasped Tavish, leaping to his feet. “The ogre?”
Ben nodded. “You … know him?”
Tavish hesitated. “What? Um, no. Never heard of him. Anyway … airship? What do you mean, ‘airship’?”
“Big balloon,” said Ben, his breath gradually returning. “Bad guy has my glove. Says it’s one of a pair. Says other one’s up on Mount Nochance. He’s going to get it.”
“Wait, he has the gauntlet?” Tavish said. He sighed. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you have it. You’re too young to look after it properly.”
“I have to go after them.”
Tavish crossed his arms. “No. No way. It’s far too dangerous. I should have put my foot down at the start, no matter what the Soothsayer High Council might—”
“He has Wesley and Paradise!” Ben said.
That shut Tavish up. The blacksmith’s eyes and mouth formed three little circles of shock. He tried to chew his fingernails, but picked the wrong hand and almost shattered his teeth on his metal fingers.
“We’ll form a search party,” he suggested.
“There’
s no time,” cried Ben. “I got them into this. If anything happens to them it’s my fault, so I am not going to let anything happen to them.”
He stepped closer to the blacksmith and shot him a pleading look.
“Please, Uncle Tavish. You’re the best inventor in the world. You must have something that can help me.”
Tavish blushed modestly. He looked deep into Ben’s eyes, and saw something there that was not to be argued with. A faint smile crept across the blacksmith’s face. “Well, now that you mention it, there is a little something in my workshop I’ve been working on.”
He gestured towards a door at the back of the house. “Shall we take a look?”
Ben pedalled.
The wind whipped at his eyes. His legs ached. He still didn’t quite believe this was actually working. But still he pedalled. It wasn’t like he had a lot of choice.
The Pedal-Driven Feather-Based Vertical Transport Device, that’s what Uncle Tavish had called it. He never had been very good at coming up with catchy names for things. Ben had immediately decided to call it the Flycycle instead.
His legs whirred round on the pedals, turning the chains that spun the cogs, which made the Flycycle’s three-metre-long wings flap up and down above him. Far overhead, Ben could see the airship, already pushing up through the early-morning clouds as it rose up the side of Mount Nochance.
There were two things below him. One was the ground, and it was a frankly ridiculous distance away. The other was much, much closer and was either the best idea Ben had ever had, or the worst. Only time would tell for sure.
Gripping the handlebars, Ben stood up, his legs pumping harder on the pedals. The front wheel of the Flycycle angled upwards. The wings began to beat faster. Ben whooped with delight over the howling of the wind, as the gap between him and the airship rapidly began to close.
“We’re done for,” sobbed Wesley. He was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, his head held between his knees.
“Try to relax,” Paradise soothed. “Like we talked about. We have to stay calm.”
“B-but—”
“I said we have to stay calm!” Paradise snapped. At the other end of the room, a dozen trolls jumped in fright.
The trolls were all huddled together, still recovering from their sprout ordeal. The door downstairs had slammed shut before any of them could escape, and the smell they were creating was making Paradise’s head spin.
“Sorry, just … try to take deep breaths,” she urged.
“If I take deep breaths in here my lungs might explode,” Wesley pointed out. He stood up and began to pace nervously back and forth. “Oh this is hopeless. We’re done for. Where’s Ben anyway?”
“You know where he is. You saw him yourself, he…” Paradise stopped. A look of surprise darted across her face as an impossible shape sped upwards past the window. “Oh,” she said, racing over to look out.
“What? What is it?”
Paradise turned to Wesley, her eyes ablaze with excitement. “You are not going to believe what I just saw!”
Antagonus tapped a dial on a control panel to the right of the steering wheel, then shouted back over his shoulder. “More sprouts, Dadsbutt.”
“N-not more!” begged Scumbo, trumping angrily into the bucket.
Antagonus spun on the spot. “Perhaps you’d prefer … cabbage?” he said.
Scumbo’s jaw dropped. “You wouldn’t!”
Beneath his hood, a wicked grin crept across Antagonus’s face. “Yes. I think it’s time we hit them with the cabbage. Mr Dadsbutt, do the honours.”
The ogre grunted. He unhooked a brown sack from the wall, rummaged inside, then bounced a cabbage off Scumbo’s head.
“Ow!”
Antagonus sighed. “No, I didn’t actually mean hit them with it, I meant feed it to them and…” He stopped. “What are you staring at, Dadsbutt? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Slowly, the ogre raised one hand. A scarred finger pointed past Antagonus and out into the sky beyond.
Antagonus turned. He squinted. There was a pause before he said, “Is that a goat?”
With a meh that managed to sound both confused and furious at the same time, a goat came swinging in through the window on a length of rope.
Something that looked like a large mechanical bird flapped down into view. Pedalling steadily, Ben flashed the occupants of the airship a grin.
“Delivery for Antagonus,” he said, then he twisted the handlebars and spun to the left as Antagonus fired an energy blast from the gauntlet. It scorched through the air, singeing one of the Flycycle’s wings.
Ben felt the bike go heavy. It lurched sharply back to the right, sending his stomach up into his throat. The chain clanked, the cogs rattled, and Antagonus took aim for a second shot.
“Oof!”
With a sudden lunge, the goat butted Antagonus in the groin. Crossing his legs, the villain sank to the floor, only for the goat to twist around and fire its back hooves into his ribs.
“D-Dadsbutt, help me!”
“DADSBUTT COMING, MASTER.”
The ogre clanked and thudded across the floor, cracking his knuckles and snapping open his mechanical jaw.
“Bit quicker!” Antagonus wheezed, as the goat hoofed him in the stomach.
Outside, Ben’s frantic pedalling was having little effect. Clumps of feathers drifted off on the breeze and the Flycycle bobbed unsteadily in the air. There was only one thing for it. He had to kiss the bike goodbye.
Gritting his teeth, Ben hurled himself towards the airship. His fingers caught the edge of the window and his body slapped against the ship’s metal side. Glancing over his shoulder he saw the Flycycle vanish through the clouds as it plunged towards the distant ground.
Kicking and heaving, Ben pulled himself up into the airship. Antagonus was on the floor, trying to shield himself from the goat’s furious kicks. Dadsbutt had almost reached him. There wasn’t a second to lose.
Ben made a dive for the gauntlet, but Antagonus spotted him. A bolt of blue energy crackled from the tip of one of the gauntlet’s fingers. Ducking, Ben felt a blast of heat whistle by above his head. The bright blue bolt bounced off a metal wall and began to ricochet around the room. It punched through a control panel, turning the switches to dribbles of melted metal.
With an ominous groan, the airship tilted to the left. Ben and Antagonus began to slide on the suddenly sloping floor. Ben grabbed for the glove and dug his fingers in under the cuff. He yanked sharply and felt it pull free of Antagonus’s fingers, but then they clattered against the wall and he lost his grip.
Before Ben could move, Antagonus was on him, both hands on Ben’s throat. Ben could hear his own heart thudding over the sounds of the howling wind outside, and of the goat headbutting the control panels to pieces.
“My airship!” the villain spat. “You’ve ruined my airship! Do you know how many pigs I had to skin just to make this thing? And you go and bring a wild goat on board!”
Struggling for breath, Ben managed a grin. “Yeah. And that’s not all I brought.”
Ribbit.
Antagonus’s head tilted down. There, surrounded by straw in a large glass jar, was an Explodi-Toad. Even through the hood, Ben heard Antagonus gulp.
“Picked it up before I came here,” Ben explained. “You’d be amazed how fast that bike could go.”
Antagonus was still staring at the toad. “You wouldn’t.”
“Oh, he so would,” said Paradise. She and Wesley were clinging to the railing at the top of the stairs. “He’s really reckless when it comes to stuff like that. I’d do what he says.”
“One shake of that jar and this whole thing goes bang,” Wesley added.
Dadsbutt stopped. Even his dim brain realised the danger the toad posed.
He wouldn’t dare, hissed the whispering voice from beneath Antagonus’s hood.
“He would,” said Antagonus in the more human of his two voices. “He’s got too much of his father in
him.”
Slowly, cautiously, the villain backed away. Ben sat up and thrust the jar towards him. Antagonus gave a yelp and drew back against the wall.
“The glove,” Ben said. “Give it back.”
“It makes no difference,” Antagonus spat. He slipped the gauntlet from his hand and tossed it across the room, well out of Ben’s reach. “I’ll get the Omega Gauntlet, then I’ll come back for that one. It’s not yours, you know. Not really. You’re just keeping it safe for me until I want it back.”
“Your ship’s going down,” Ben pointed out. “You’ll never get the other glove.”
“Come now, what sort of villain would I be if I didn’t have a Plan B?” said Antagonus, and he made a dive for the window. There was a rope out there, tied around a metal hook. Antagonus hurriedly undid the knot and the rope began to rise.
Another balloon! Antagonus had another balloon!
“Goodbye, Benjamin,” cried Antagonus, the wind whipping at his robe as the balloon pulled him out through the window. “See you again soon!”
Ben tried to make a dive for him, but a roar from Dadsbutt knocked him backwards off his feet.
“LEAVE MASTER ALONE!” the ogre snarled. He caught Ben by a foot and hurled him across the room. With a clank, Ben slammed against a wall, then tumbled down heavily on to the tilting floor. Raising his head, he saw the gauntlet. It was a few metres away, but slowly sliding closer.
Dadsbutt began to advance, but a tiny figure in a green robe blocked his path.
“No, you leave Ben alone!” Paradise warned him.
“Y-yes,” agreed Wesley. “Leave him alone.”
“OR WHAT?”
“Or you’ll have h-her to answer to,” said Wesley, quickly pointing to Paradise.
With a flick of his wrist, Dadsbutt sent both Paradise and Wesley sprawling. The ogre’s one good eye fixed on Ben and he began to charge, faster and faster, his feet pounding like hammer blows on the metal floor.
The Swivel-Eyed Ogre-Thing Page 6
