Shatterskin

by Beca Lewis

  My plan was not to kill Shatterskin from the outside, but from the inside. It was something he would not be expecting. Actually, we didn’t believe Shatterskin was thinking. We were sure that Abbadon controlled Shatterskin somehow, and the answer lay inside of that metal skin.

  All I needed to do was find the hole and fly inside without dying on the way—no big deal. The perspective that the star had given me revealed the opening, and I thought that once inside we had a great chance of stopping him.

  The plan was to melt the battery and whatever else was driving him, and then deal with Shatterskin’s body when it was still and silent. At the very least, I hoped to stop him from making any sounds. If we could prevent him from moving, that was even better, because the Ginete and Whistle Pigs needed me to stop him as close to where they were going as possible, since he would be hard to move as dead weight.

  As I headed towards the opening at breakneck speed, I was happy that everyone else was as safely out of range as possible. They were either high up with the dragons heading to another destination, or far below building the final trap.

  My flight from Lady to Shatterskin was the longest few seconds of my life. I knew if I didn’t hit the opening on target I would die. I only hoped that I would die before I shattered apart into a million pieces. A split second away from the door, I fired a beam of lightning at it to melt the covering and make the opening big enough for me to pass through.

  There was a mind-blowing moment of fear hoping that it would work before I hit the hole and slid in. I could feel the edge of the hot metal rip along my left arm, but the pain only helped me focus.

  We had thought that once inside Shatterskin we wouldn’t be affected by the sound. We reasoned that he had to have some system that blocked his own weapon from shattering his insides. Luckily we were right. The only sound I could hear was coming through the opening that I had made when I blasted the covering off of the entrance to Shatterskin’s insides.

  I hovered inside using my newfound flying ability, and a second later, the Priscillas flew in through the open hole, each of them holding a small shield Teddy had made for them. They had waited until the door was open before leaving Lady and following me, using their shields to block as much sound as possible.

  For them, with their tiny bodies, this was almost a suicide mission, but I couldn’t persuade them not to come. I was never so happy to see anyone. But we didn’t have time to celebrate. We had only just begun.

  I took their shields and welded them in place with the energy from my hands to block as much outside sound as possible. Once I closed the opening, my job was to find the battery and melt it. The Priscillas were to pull cables and cut wires wherever they saw them.

  Inside Shatterskin it was pitch black, and although relatively quiet, he was always moving, and we had to stay suspended in the air to keep from being banged against the walls.

  My backpack contained balls of tree pitch collected by Ruta for me. I stuck them to the metal and then lit them hoping they would stay. But if not, at least they would fall inside of Shatterskin and maybe do some damage.

  Once we had enough light, I could see what looked like the battery and headed towards it, blasting it as I went.

  Two things happened that scared the ziffer out of me. One, I tried to talk to Link and the team and let them know where we were and realized that I couldn’t hear them. Which meant they couldn’t hear me either. And two, Shatterskin starting shaking himself, throwing the Priscillas and me against the walls.

  I yelled to the Priscillas to grab onto me, and we descended together holding on to a cable that led to the battery. Pris shouted in my ear, “He must know we are inside, so make it quick.”

  As if I didn’t know. The tree sap started giving out, and I stuck more on the walls and lit them with a blast of energy. Some stuck, others didn’t, but the light they gave off made it easier to keep my eyes on the target. I did my best to avoid the things that were shaking loose inside of Shatterskin. I wondered if he knew what he was doing or if it was the machine’s version of a death rattle.

  I knew that even after I melted the battery, we were still in trouble. Because our communication was down, we couldn’t coordinate our plans. I couldn’t believe how much I missed everyone’s voice in my head. I had thought it was annoying, but I would have given anything now to hear something.

  We were on our own. The problem was, once we stopped Shatterskin, the rest of the team would begin their attack thinking that we were safely away.

  “Well then we better be safely away,” Pris said, reading my mind. Thankfully we could still hear each other even though Pris kept insisting on actually yelling at me.

  I knew what she was doing. She was making me angry. Angry worked. The Priscillas tucked into my jacket to be safe as I blasted everything I had at the battery. The shaking stopped and the Priscillas flew off to cut wires because we could still hear faint booming sounds.

  We had stopped him from moving, but not blasting sonic booms. There had to be an extra battery. I stuck pitch balls everywhere to light our way. We cut wires and melted anything that looked as if it contained power, but we could still hear the booms.

  La called, “Up here!”

  We all looked up to see her at the top of Shatterskin’s head pointing at a black box behind his eyes. Ah. The brain. Time to blast it to kingdom come. “Get back,” I yelled, and flew at the box blasting it with every bit of energy that I had. I let the anger fuel me. The view from the star had begun to fade, and I knew I was drawing my last bit of reserves.

  It had to be enough.

  Fifty-Seven

  “You’ll have to help,” I signaled to the Priscillas when I realized that the box was still intact even after all the lightning I had directed at it. That seemed impossible, but the Priscillas joined me, and we sent every ounce of energy that we had to that little box. Nothing happened.

  I was terrified out of my mind. After all this, we couldn’t stop Shatterskin? No one would be able to get close enough to stop him unless we ended his sonic blasts. What if the box was made of something that could not be destroyed? Perhaps we had lost after all.

  I thought of all the people of Erda counting on us to stop this monster. I thought of my family that had taught me about illusion. And I knew we had forgotten one crucial thing.

  “Stop,” I yelled. “It’s done. I know it is. We destroyed that box. It only looks like it is still intact because Shatterskin is using the power we are sending him to block our view of what we have done and to produce his blasts. We have to withdraw everything from him now. The only power Shatterskin has right now is to produce an illusion, and we are feeding it.”

  Not doing anything while the sonic blasts continued, knowing that the sound was shattering everything in its path, was the hardest thing we had done yet. But Aki’s training kicked in. We calmed ourselves. Pris hummed. We closed our eyes. I thought about the power of Love and how it had saved my family and me in the Earth Realm time and again.

  Then the Priscillas and I were at peace. And the noise stopped. It had worked. Opening our eyes, we could see that the box had been destroyed, and it was only the illusion that had kept us from seeing that our blasts had dissolved it.

  In the back of my mind, I realized that Abbadon was much cleverer than I had thought. But I tabled that thought. We didn’t have time to deal with it right at that moment.

  The rest of the team would be beginning our final part of the plan, and we had to get out before it started, and there was no way to tell anyone that we were still inside.

  After so much noise and movement, when Shatterskin came to a stop, and the booms had ceased, the silence was deafening. There was still a little light left from the pitch balls, but it was fading, and the four of us didn’t have any energy left to relight them.

  We should have been happy about the still
ness and silence, but we knew that meant that Pita and Teddy’s teams would now be doing their part of the attack. Well, it wasn’t an attack as much as it was a removal.

  Until we were trapped inside of Shatterskin, I had thought it was a great plan. Now it looked like we would be removed along with him. Shatterskin began to lurch, and the four of us screamed. Any other time I might have laughed at the squeak the fairies made when they screamed. My scream wasn’t much better. Not enough energy to give a good yell.

  We screamed, not because Shatterskin had come alive again, but because we knew that the ground beneath him had opened and he had begun to sink. I was proud of Teddy and Pita. Their plan was working. While we had been busy shutting Shatterskin down, multiple teams of Ginete and Whistle pigs had been frantically digging.

  The trees were helping of course by lining the walls of a hole big enough to drop Shatterskin into. But they had to wait until we shut off the movement and the sound to finish it.

  With a silent and still Shatterskin, they would tunnel to the surface and open a circle beneath him. Shatterskin would then slip beneath the surface and would end up deep in the earth.

  Eventually, Shatterskin would sink low enough to end up in a molten lava flow that the Whistle Pigs were directing his way. He would be gone forever. But then, if we didn’t get out, we would be gone forever too.

  “I have a plan,” I tried to tell the Priscillas, but the words stuck in my throat.

  That’s when I realized that we were running out of air. The pitch balls were consuming the last of the oxygen.

  Pris answered me inside my head. “We heard you, so what is it?” In my mind’s eye, I pictured the plan and hoped the three of them understood. They nodded. We had one chance.

  We each grabbed a burning ball of pitch and flung it through one of Shatterskin’s eyes. I could only use my right hand. My left arm had stopped working. It had also stopped hurting which didn’t seem like a good sign.

  All four of us screamed as the balls burned our hands, but we managed to get them to fly together at Shatterskin’s right eye burning a tiny hole in it.

  A small amount of air rushed in, and we each took a deep breath and then helped La, the smallest of the fairies to scramble through the hole. Then we waited. Either someone was out there or not. But at least La would survive, and Shatterskin had been stopped.

  I gathered Pris and Cil in my arms and found a wire for us to sit on, and then I passed out. My last thoughts were that I would never get to tell Zeid that I remembered him and that I would never be Queen of Erda.

  Fifty-Eight

  “Why didn’t you use the safety button Teddy gave you,” Beru asked.

  A few days had passed since I had awoken back in my old room at the Castle. When I had first opened my eyes, I was astonished to find myself in my own bed with Beru sitting beside me holding my hand.

  “Shh,” she had said, “Go back to sleep.” And I had. Off and on for days, and with only Beru there to take care of me, I knew that meant there was something terribly wrong. Where was everyone else?

  I tried to ask, but when Beru didn’t answer, I followed her instructions to go back to sleep. I had decided that for the time being it was best not to know what had happened to my friends because I knew if they were safe they would be there with me.

  When Beru finally asked me a question I knew she was ready to answer mine.

  I figured that I was better because she had helped me sit at a small table at the foot of the bed. The metal toadstools had appeared with food, and I had to restrain myself from patting their heads I was so happy to see them.

  “Well,” Beru demanded again. “Why didn’t you use it?”

  “If I tell you, will you tell me where everyone is even if it is terrible news? I am imagining the worst, and it would be better to stop imagining and just know.”

  Beru didn’t answer me, just sat there with her arms crossed, frowning at me.

  “Because,” I said, and then stopped.

  “Because, what?”

  “I didn’t know if that meant I could take Pris and Cil with me. I couldn’t leave them there. Makes me a foolish person I know, because obviously, I should have tried it.”

  I started to sob. I had been trying not to break down from the moment I had woken up the first time. Finally, I couldn’t keep it in anymore.

  “What are you crying about?” Beru asked.

  I answered Beru in the most snarky voice I had ever used. I didn’t care anymore. I had already hurt everyone else. “I lived, but no one else did? What was the point of doing any of this?”

  Beru sighed. “Kara Beth, perhaps before you make up your mind that you did the wrong thing, you might want to hear a story.”

  “Sure, go ahead, tell me one, but I doubt it is going to make me feel better.”

  I drank whatever strange drink the metal toadstool had put in front of me and staggered back to bed. My left arm was wrapped in a bandage from my shoulder to my wrist, but it worked, and I found a sliver of gratitude for that.

  Lying back against the pillow, I closed my eyes and waited, prepared to fall into a depression and never come out again.

  *******

  As Beru began to speak, I waited for her to tell me everyone had died. Instead, she told me the story about what had happened to the rest of the team.

  “After you dived through that hole in Shatterskin, we waited for Lady to come with us, but she insisted on circling above to wait for you. It turns out, that was a wise decision, but that’s the end of the story, so I’ll get back to it.

  “The rest of us flew on to the plant where we knew Abbadon was making the Shrieks. As you know, Earl, Ariel, and the Priscillas’ insects had destroyed every visible Shriek, but we knew there were more inside the factory.

  “However, we believed that it was not just Shrieks inside that building. We thought that Abbadon was using villagers to make the Shrieks, so we couldn’t just destroy the building. We planned to stun the remaining Shrieks the same way we had in the woods, rescue whoever was inside, and then let Coro and his storm destroy it.

  “It was a good plan. Except what we discovered inside was so much worse than we thought it would be.”

  By then, I was sitting up in bed anxious to hear what had happened.

  “So you made it into the wasteland safely?”

  “We did. But the ground around the building was so shattered it made it difficult to get inside without falling into one of the crevices. The building itself was levitated a few feet off the ground, so Aki had to help all of us who don’t know how to levitate up into the building. Thankfully we were invisible behind our shields, and inside the building there was no shrieking. Most likely so the beings inside wouldn’t die from the Shrieks. Instead, they were dying from something else.”

  When Beru saw me start to ask another question she said, “Let me tell it my way, please? I need to tell the whole story, because maybe then I can begin to forget it.”

  I nodded, but my fists were clutching the sheets, and I felt as if the breath in my body was clogged up inside my chest.

  “It was a huge, open space, like an Earth factory. At the end of what resembled an assembly line, a Shriek would pop out and then slither over to another room where they waited. Maybe to be called into action. Or they had to dry out or something before they worked. For whatever reason, we could see that it would be fairly easy to kill them off if we could stop the machines.”

  Beru held up her hand reminding me not to ask questions. “I know. Just turn them off. But we didn’t know how because the machines were not run by energy from the trees, or nature. Remember there weren’t any trees or nature, the Shrieks and Shatterskin had killed all the life they could find.

  “Abbadon needed another form of energy. We suspected what that source was when we reali
zed that when Shatterskin destroyed villages, we rarely found the bodies of the villagers. We had a suspicion he was using them to run the machines. We were partially right and partially wrong. They weren’t running the machines the way you might expect.

  “Instead, there were hundreds of beings hooked up to the devices on the assembly line, unable to move. It was their life essence that was running the machines. Abbadon was draining them, one at a time, to build the monsters that destroyed their land and killed their loved ones.

  “It was the most horrific thing we had ever seen, and I know that I will never be able to forget it. The beings stared at us with unseeing eyes, and the only way we could tell that they were still alive was they were still hooked up to the machines.

  “The floor was littered with dead bodies that had been unhooked once their life force was gone. How could we shut off the machines, Hannah, if we didn’t know what would happen to those poor beings?

  “Someone had to decide what to do. Someone had to take responsibility because we didn’t know how long it would be until the newly made Shrieks in the other room would awaken.”

  “Who did?” I whispered and then realized that I already knew the answer.

  I took Beru’s hand, and we cried together.

  Fifty-Nine

  “It killed some of them. Right then. We could see it. The last of their life force drained out, and they were gone.”

  I pulled myself closer to Beru and hugged her. “It had to be done, Beru. You couldn’t rescue them with the machines on. But I’m sorry.”

  We stayed that way for a long moment, then Beru pulled away, wiping her eyes, although the tears still ran down her cheeks at the memory.