The Monster War

by Alan Gratz

  “Okay, we gotta do something,” Clyde said at last. “Here goes nothing.”

  Everyone stepped back as Clyde spun the dial. It stopped randomly on a character that looked like a mountain with wavy lines over it. He looked around at them to make sure they were all ready, and pushed the button.

  Shunk. The door in the ceiling closed and a panel about two feet wide by one foot tall slid open high on the round wall. Water cascaded from it, hitting the floor with a splash. Five of the six heroes stepped back out of the growing puddle’s reach. Only Martine stood where she was, still studying the symbols.

  “That’s not good,” Fergus said. In moments, the whole floor would be covered in water.

  “Quick! Try another symbol!” Kitsune said.

  Clyde spun the dial to a different character and pushed the button.

  Shunk. An identical hole opened up below and to the side of the first, pouring twice as much water into the room as before—and twice as fast.

  “Told you so!” Fergus said.

  Kitsune spun the dial again and hit the button.

  Shunk. Another panel opened, and more water gushed in. It swirled around their feet and swallowed their ankles.

  “Don’t!” Hachi told her.

  “Well what else are we supposed to do now?” she threw back.

  Gonzalo pulled Señor X from his holster and shot low at the wall. The raygun beam ricocheted harmlessly into the water at their feet.

  “No, no,” Clyde said. “I’ll stay down here and keep trying symbols. Everybody else, on the ladder! Now!”

  Gonzalo and Kitsune sloshed over to the ladder and climbed, and Fergus pulled Hachi along with them. Martine stayed where she was, staring at the words on the wall, while Clyde tried the other characters one by one. If there had only been three holes spilling water, he would have had time to try them all. But each time he pushed the button on a wrong symbol, another panel opened up and more water poured in. The water rose faster and faster, coming up to Clyde’s chin and Martine’s chest.

  “Martine! Martine, get up the ladder! You’ll drown!” Clyde gasped, treading water to keep his head above water.

  “She can’t drown,” Gonzalo called down. “She can breathe underwater.”

  “What?” Clyde said. “Why didn’t anybody say so? Martine, put in more symbols! Hurry! One of them has to work!”

  But Martine just stood there, staring at the rows of characters.

  Clyde didn’t have time to get through to her. He held his breath and dove, trying another symbol. Another panel opened. The water swallowed Martine entirely and she floated off the surface, still staring at the rows of symbols as she rose. Clyde came up for air and tried to dive again, but it was already too far. He burst from the water gasping for air. They couldn’t have put in a dozen of the forty-two possible characters yet.

  “Martine!” Clyde yelled. “Martine!” She couldn’t hear him underwater. Clyde put a finger to the shell in his ear. “Martine! You have to put in more symbols! Hurry! The water’s more than halfway up!”

  Martine didn’t answer. She just stared at the rows of symbols on the wall like she was mesmerized.

  Hachi helped pull Clyde onto the ladder.

  “What’s she doing?” Hachi asked over the roar of the waterfalls.

  “I don’t know!” Clyde said. “Maybe that Mangleborn’s got her mesmerized again. She’s not listening!”

  “Gonzalo!” Hachi called. “Get her attention!”

  “What?” he said. “How?”

  “She means shoot her,” Kitsune told him.

  “I’m not going to shoot her!” Gonzalo told her.

  The water rose so high Hachi and Clyde had to let go of the ladder and float, or they wouldn’t be able to breathe. Martine still hung in the water below them, motionless.

  “Just enough to get her attention!” Hachi said, fighting to keep her head above water. “An arm or a leg or something!”

  The ceiling was just a few inches above their heads now. Fergus and Kitsune let go of the ladder so they wouldn’t drown, and Hachi swam over and helped the struggling Fergus keep his face above the water.

  “Gonzalo!” Clyde burbled. “Do it!”

  Gonzalo drew his raygun and fought to aim it in the swirling water.

  KaPOM. The raygun made a strange sound underwater, but it shot out straight at Martine.

  “We missed!” Señor X said.

  “What do you mean, you missed?” Kitsune said. “You never miss!”

  “She moved!” Gonzalo told them.

  Hachi ducked back underwater. He was right! Martine was swimming down to the dial! The tattooed Karankawan girl turned the dial until she found the symbol she was looking for, and pushed the button.

  Shunk! The panels on the sides of the walls closed all at once, and the water drained quickly from the chamber. They rode the water down most of the way until it became a whirlpool slurping down at the center of the room, and they grabbed hold of the ladder again not to be sucked down. The water emptied down the sewer-sized hole that had opened up in the floor with a slurrrrrrrrrrch, leaving Martine standing alone on the floor.

  “You did it!” Gonzalo said as everyone climbed down to join her.

  “And took your time about it,” Hachi grumbled.

  “Did you translate it?” Fergus asked. “What did it say?”

  “I do not know what it says,” Martine told them.

  “Then … how’d you know what symbol to put in?” Clyde asked. “Did your great-grandmother tell you?”

  “No,” Martine said. “We are no longer in contact. And this room was built by humans, not by Mangleborn.”

  “But we saw you. You waited until the last second and just put in the one.”

  “The right one,” Kitsune said, shaking out her fox tail.

  “The friendliest one,” Martine said.

  “The … the friendliest one?” Hachi said.

  Martine pointed to a symbol. “This one is remorseful. She’s done something bad. This one is vigilant. I almost picked him, but he was orange, and orange is not a reliable color. This one,” she said, “is bored. I was certainly not going to pick her.”

  “You picked a symbol because of the way it made you feel?” Gonzalo asked.

  “No,” Martine told him. “I picked a symbol because of the way it was feeling. And because it was blue. I like blue.”

  Hachi scanned the tall column of letters. Not one of them was any color but black. Hachi shook her head. Martine couldn’t tell one human emotion from another, but she saw emotions in meaningless symbols. And they had almost drowned while she was off in la-la land doing it. But she had come back with the right answer. Just how she did it, none of them understood.

  “Martine, it was right clever of you to figure all that out,” Clyde told her. “But next time, we need you to talk to us, all right? You don’t need to tell us everything you’re thinking. Most of us wouldn’t understand it if you did, and that’s a fact. But you need to tell us if you’re thinking things that can help, so we know what’s going on. Got it?”

  “I understand,” Martine said. “I apologize for not being more communicative.”

  THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

  “Archie?” Clyde called on the shell again. “Archie? Can you hear me?”

  Still nothing. Did no response mean there was something wrong with his shell, or something wrong with Archie?

  THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

  Clyde motioned everyone down through the hole that had opened in the floor, where another ladder was visible.

  “If you can hear me, Archie, hang tight,” Clyde said. “We’re coming for you.”

  23

  The ladder from the water tank went down, down, down, for more thousands of feet than any of them besides Martine cared to count, finally ending in a tall, broad cavern carved from the bedrock far beneath Sonnionto. Curved metal braces in the shape of snakes ran up the rock wall to hold up the roof, and on the floor was engraved the enormous image of
a snake eating its own tail. Martine bent to run a hand along the carving.

  “The Ouroboros,” Señor X whispered, sounding awed for the first time since any of them had met him.

  “The what?” Clyde asked.

  “The Ouroboros,” Señor X said. “That symbol on the floor. That’s what the Greeks called it. But the symbol was older than they were, far older. Older than Atlantis, or Lemuria, or Mu. The Greeks believed the symbol originated with the First Men, whom they called the Ouroboros—Greek for ‘the tail-devouring snake.’ The First Men were the first to understand that everything that happens has happened before, and will happen again and again and again, like a snake eating its own tail.”

  “That’s cheery,” Fergus said.

  “No,” said Martine. “It is not.”

  All around the room stood brass statues of Ouroboros warriors, their faces hidden behind broad helmets with long, pointed chins, slits for eyes, and U-shaped snakes on top like horns. On their short, squat bodies they wore scaled armor that hung like dresses down to their booted feet, and their long, muscular arms would have hung down almost as far if their hands weren’t resting on the hilts of long, snake-shaped swords that were planted upside down in the ground in front of them.

  “What I wouldn’t give to have a look under one of those helmets,” Señor X said.

  “Aye. Be careful,” Fergus said, “or you’ll get your wish when one of those things comes after us swinging his big snaky sword.”

  “Fergus,” Hachi said.

  “What? You know I’m right!” Fergus said.

  The Ouroboros warriors stood sentinel over a series of U-shaped snake statues throughout the hall. Beyond them on the far wall, ringed by another snake eating its tail, was an enormous door.

  THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

  The door shook with the force of the blows from the thing behind it, rock and dust tinkling down from the ceiling each time. They stood and watched for a moment, none of them sure they really wanted to open that door and face what was behind it.

  “Do you hear that?” Gonzalo asked.

  “The big booming sounds? Aye, I think everyone in Sonnionto can hear that,” Fergus said.

  “No. The hum. Something around a high C,” Gonzalo said.

  “He’s right,” Señor X said. “I’ve got it. It’s barely audible, but it’s an E all right, somewhere around 510 hertz. Good ears, kid.”

  “There are more notes too,” Gonzalo said. “E, B, A—”

  THOOM. THOOM. THOOM. Everything in the room shook and vibrated.

  “They’re tuning forks,” Fergus said. “The snake statues. That’s why they’re in U shapes. They’re great metal tuning forks. The pounding’s making them vibrate.”

  “They have to have something to do with opening the door,” Hachi said. “That’s the way these things work.”

  “Well, if we hit them harder, they’ll ring louder,” Gonzalo said. “But do we want to do that?”

  “Nae, we don’t,” Fergus said.

  “Yes, we do,” said Clyde. “But which one?”

  THOOM. THOOM. THOOM. The thing behind the door pounded away.

  “There’s nothing to do but try one,” Hachi said.

  Gonzalo took out Señor X and spun the raygun on his finger. “Just say which one.”

  The rest of the League looked at each other warily.

  “Everybody get ready,” Clyde said.

  Hachi pulled out her knives and summoned her flying circus. Fergus tried to get a new spark after being shorted out in the pool. Martine’s aether harpoon glowed. Kitsune disappeared.

  “Go, Gonzalo,” Clyde said.

  Gonzalo shot across his body without moving, picking out one of the low humming tuning forks. KaPOW! Señor X’s yellow beam hit the statue and glanced off into the rock wall beyond.

  The tuning fork rang deep and long over the sound of pounding beyond the big set of doors. The low G that echoed in the chamber was matched by a second sound—another low G from the little U-shaped snake atop one of the Ouroboros warriors’ helmets.

  KA-shunk. Something mechanical activated inside the warrior, and the statue stirred. It moved haltingly at first, as though it was an old man getting up on a cold morning, but the dust quickly cleared from its ancient clockworks. The Ouroboros warrior pulled its sword from the ground and advanced on them, its enormous boots thundering in the tall, round cavern.

  “What did I tell you?” Fergus cried. “What did I tell you?”

  The Ouroboros warrior raised his giant snake sword.

  “Leaguers—full steam ahead!” Clyde said.

  Everyone ducked or ran or charged. The clockwork warrior’s sword swooshed down, missing everyone but striking another of the U-shaped snake tuning forks.

  Triiiiiiiiiiiing. Another note rang out, and another Ouroboros warrior came to life.

  KaPOW! KaPOW! KaPOW! Gonzalo shot the clockwork giants, knocking them back but not penetrating their brass bodies. Fergus tried shocking one with what little lektric charge he could muster, but to no effect. Martine buried her aether harpoon in the chest of one of the warriors, but the giant kept coming.

  Triiiiiiiiiiiing. One of the warriors hit another of the tuning forks, and a third clockwork giant came to life.

  “This is clinker!” Clyde cried.

  “The U shapes on their helmets are matching the resonant frequencies of the larger tuning forks,” Martine explained.

  “Aye,” said Fergus. “And they’re using that vibration as an energy source. These clockworks don’t wind, they run off vibrations! Brilliant!”

  “You think we can marvel at the ingenuity of the ancients after we destroy it?” Hachi asked, jumping out of the way of a warrior’s sword.

  “Would stopping the big forks from vibrating stop the big guys from running?” Clyde asked.

  “Nae, I don’t think so,” Fergus said. “Now that those thingies on their heads are vibrating, I’d say they’ll run on their own for a long while. But they are helping, I suppose.”

  Triiiiiiiiiiiing. The warriors hit another tuning fork. Now there were four of the giants stomping around the cavern swinging swords at them. And so far, none of the Leaguers had found any way to stop them.

  “There are three more tuning forks than there are clockwork warriors,” Martine observed.

  “The other three must be the ones that open the door!” Hachi said.

  “Aye, but which three?” Fergus asked.

  KaPOW! Gonzalo shot one of the still tuning forks. And another. And another. More Ouroboros warriors came to life.

  “Gonzalo, what are you doing?” Clyde yelled. He jumped out of the way as one of the new warriors almost stomped him.

  Gonzalo kept shooting tuning forks until every last one of them was ringing. All the clockwork warriors were awake and thundering around the room, chasing the Leaguers with their swords.

  Gonzalo stood very still, listening. “Just keep ’em busy,” he told the others.

  “Keep ’em busy, he says!” Fergus cried.

  Hachi climbed one of the snake-like supports on the wall and leaped onto a warrior’s back. She tried grabbing onto the vibrating U on its helmet, but it quivered too much for her to hold on. Kitsune leaped from clockwork giant to clockwork giant, trying to get them to swing at her and hit each other instead. Martine hurled her aether harpoon. Clyde distracted one while Fergus tried to climb up under its armor.

  “If you’re gonna do something, Gonzalo, now would be a good time to do it!” Clyde said. Thoom. A giant sword smashed into the ground where he’d just been standing.

  Gonzalo turned his head this way and that. “D. F. B … A,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Señor X said. “That’s what I get too.”

  Gonzalo ran across the cavern with Señor X and lined up a shot. KaPOW! A yellow beam shot out from his turquoise raygun, ricocheting from tuning fork to tuning fork. Tring-tring-tring-tring!

  Nothing happened.

  “Must have to hit them in order,” Go
nzalo said.

  “There are twenty-four possible combinations in a four-note sequence,” Martine called from across the room.

  “Twenty-four? We’re not going to make it through twenty-four tries!” Clyde cried. He and Fergus were hiding behind a rock that had shaken loose from the ceiling.

  “Gonzalo—the Ouroboros,” Señor X said. “There’s a snake eating its tail on the floor.”

  “Where? Take me.”

  Señor X guided Gonzalo to the center of the room, dodging the giant battling warriors. Gonzalo spun slowly, listening to the vibrations from the tuning forks all around the room.

  “Gonzalo! Look out!” Hachi cried. An Ouroboros warrior had found him, and was raising its sword high over its head to smash down on the ranger.

  “No, I got it. I got it—” Gonzalo said. The clockwork giant swung. Gonzalo raised Señor X and fired. Tring-tring-tring-tring!

  Whhhht. The Ouroboros warrior’s sword stopped inches from Gonzalo’s head, and the clockwork giant straightened and returned to his place. So did the rest.

  Gonzalo spun Señor X on his finger and slid him back into his holster.

  “You did it!” Clyde said, and they all rushed to congratulate him. “How’d you know which ones to hit?”

  “Well, I just shot them all, then listened for the ones that didn’t have matching resonant frequencies on the warriors. The ones without a match had to be the ones that opened the door.”

  “And you struck those notes in order by color, in order of decreasing wavelengths,” Martine said.

  “Um, no,” Gonzalo said. “I stood in the circle the Ouroboros made on the floor, and there was only one way to hit all of them from there with one shot.”

  Martine tilted her head. “But you did strike the colors in order of decreasing wavelength.”

  Gonzalo shrugged. “Okay.”

  The last of the giant clockwork warriors returned to its place, and the only sound left was the echo of the chord Gonzalo had played.

  KA-CHUNK. A mechanism inside the wall activated, and the half-circle doors inside the Ouroboros on the wall began to part.

  “Oh, crivens,” Hachi said.

  “Everybody behind Gonzalo!” Clyde said. “Gonzalo, you know what to do!”