higher, leaving Obrenox – or rather, the pile of robes that had animated Obdrenox – on the wet stone expanse.
I looked down, surveying the dark palatial room. Most of the lights that had flashed and flickered so incessantly on that huge wall of monitors and screens had gone out; the wall opposite it with the rows of twinkling stones stood dull and lifeless. The emptiness of the templar space after so much strife was eerie.
“Dragon, don’t push yourself so hard,” I said as I leaned closer to his ear. “You were just … well, you know. And it’s not like anything is chasing us.”
Dragon pumped his wings with the same vigor. We rose steadily higher and higher toward the peaked ceiling to the spot vacated by the peridiote rock. The swirling stone pattern of the ceiling tiles blended and confused my eyes; monochrome eddies created an optical illusion and I couldn’t tell flat from pointed. I blinked and shook my head.
“I assure you, Evechild, there most assuredly is something chasing us,” Dragon said between gulps of air. I had never heard him breathless before.
“Aye, dinnae ken fer a wee moment that thah wee squirmin’ robes is done fer; that radge will be up in arms once another yella stone is delivered and thah radge dries out a bit,” Baert chimed in grimly.
“You guys are so cynical. Look, Obrenox is at least decommissioned for the moment, Dragon is alive and well. Can’t we just take the win and get my mom and sister?”
Dragon and Baert were both silent. Two more giant thrusts and we hovered just under the very top of the fortress’ vault. I looked down and gasped; the view looking down was decidedly more intimidating than the view looking up.
“Keep holding on, I’ll need to breach the catch,” Dragon said, looking up at a small circular window in the ceiling’s point. The peridiote stone had been there, giving Obrenox power. Without its glow cast upon him, the villain still lay lifeless at least 40 stories below us.
“Nae tah rush ye, but ye might want tah hurry!” Baert’s voice said shakily.
Dragon sniffed a glowing residue clinging to the beveled glass.
“Hmm. No smell ... and it can’t tolerate water … but is found in space … Maybe argon?” he murmured to himself as he worked.
Dragon steadily traced the outline of the thick window with a single talon that singed and cut through the glass surface. He squinted his eyes a little and stuck out his tongue as he concentrated. I smiled, feeling actually optimistic in this moment. I glanced at Baert over my shoulder. His eyes were bulging, his gaze fixed on something moving down below.
The mighty stone door that had shut so tightly behind us was slowly creaking open. A whirring echoed behind it, a mechanical buzz grew louder.
“How ye doin’, boody?” Baert shouted.
“Do not rush me!” hissed Dragon. “For, I remind you, we do not know what awaits us on the other side of this enclosure!”
A tornado of dronettes suddenly burst through the heavy stone door. The door groaned open as wave after wave of dronettes roared in. I peered over Dragon’s wing at the swarms below,
“What the – ? They’re not even coming up here!”
“Aye, it’s worse! Look!” Baert screamed.
As Dragon continued his precise glass cutting, I looked where Baert pointed. Hives of dronettes swirled about Obrenox. They flew en masse, diving and looping about the robes in some creepy ritual. I recognized a strange glow that emanated from them. Through the dim light and the dark, I saw that the glow was actually a bunch of little lights, each one attached to a dronette. One by one, the tiny plane-like machines dropped a single light around the mound that had been Obrenox. Only they weren’t lights … they were yellow stones!
“Shit,” I whispered. No other word would do. “Uh, Dragon? Those guys are piling a million tiny pieces of peridiote on top of Obrenox, and ….” I spoke nervously and quickly, but Dragon cut me off.
“Duck!” Dragon yelled as he barreled us forward. We shot through the hole in the glass he cut.
I thought we would be immediately through to the other side, like simply climbing through a broken window. But we were in a dark, shimmering glass tunnel. Strange reflections had a rear-view mirror-like effect. I couldn’t tell what direction we were going as scenes from all over bounced off the iridescent walls. “Keep holding on!” Dragon yelled.
I buried my face against Dragon’s scales and felt behind me for Baert. His hand grasped mine. As we shot through the air and into the dark beyond, I dared to look back. Behind us, a cyclone of dronettes had risen Obrenox from the dead. Holding yellow stones in either hand, he stood, reanimated. His whirring subjects waved up and down in a tide of reverence. Mirrored fragments played the ghastly scene from all angles as we flew cautiously through.
Obrenox cackled and raised his arms to adjust his red hood. Just when I thought I might finally catch a glimpse of his face, we were all the way through the thick mirrored tunnel. A pinkish light shone brightly on the other side.
I loosened my hold on Dragon and inched forward. Baert’s weight barreled against me and the two of us lost our balance and slipped right off Dragon.
“Whoa!”
“Evechild! Baert!”
We were in freefall.
Floating.
Falling.
In a pink sky with pink ground below.
A single dronette buzzed behind us, caught our pace, and flew up to my face. It tilted its small antennae as if evaluating me. I swiped at it in the air and its white, blinking face turned red in anger. It buzzed closer to me and another small antenna pulled a tiny yellow stone from its underside and thrust it toward me.
“Gah!” I shrieked and swiped more vigorously.
Still in freefall, weightless, I stabbed my hand out.
“Come on,” I whispered to myself. “Focus.”
Flopping, turning, I held my palm toward the dronette to control the little yellow stone. The dronette squealed, sparked, and fell away. A giant black shadow fell over us. Dragon grabbed the dronette in his talons, crushed it, and tossed it away from me.
“Relax your body, Evechild,” Dragon said calmly.
“Relax? Relax? I’ve been falling for, like, seven minutes straight! And you just crushed a tiny robot flying at me with a piece of a killer stone!”
“All true,” Dragon responded. “Your tension adds mass and makes the fall most uncomfortable. Relax; I promise you’ll feel infinitely lighter and more at ease.”
Something flipped near me. It was Baert. Not panicking, not crying, not hyperventilating, not thwarting the advances of evil-rock-wielding dronettes. He was flipping. Laughing. Somersaulting through the air.
I pulled some strands of floating hair away from my face and adjusted the duffle so its weight was on my belly. I leaned back as I looked at Dragon with cautious confidence.
“See?” is all he said.
I took a deep breath and relaxed my shoulders. I unclenched my fists. Right away, I felt weightless, like I was bobbing on an inflatable raft in a pool. I looked to my left: the expanse of the stone fortress cascaded above and below me. To my right: an empty vista of whirling, churning pastel clouds, gauzy and pointless.
“What is happening?!”
“Inter-dimensional gravity is not constant, because the mass and space here in the Seventh is not constant.”
I tucked my knees up to my chest, securing the duffle bag against my stomach. Pulling my arms around my knees, I tilted forward and then back. I did a backflip. Then another, and another.
“What?” I said mid-flip between giggles.
“Space in extra dimensions becomes stretched. In some places, gravity’s pull is distorted.”
I shot some finger guns at Dragon and demanded he watch me do a bigger, better backflip. He frowned.
“I thought your uncle went over the finer points of Kaluza’s work with you.”
“Hey Baert, watch this!” I yelled over at the spiraling elf, totally ignoring Dragon’s raised eyebrow.
As I pulled my knees up and arched my back, I had the sudden sensation of falling out of a tree.
“Whoa! What! Aaaah!”
My arching shoulders hit the ground first; my chin tucked into my chest hard and sent a searing pain through my jaw. My tailbone fell with a thud followed by my legs. My body hurt, my ego hurt. Again. And I had bit my tongue.
Dragon leaned over me.
“Right. So. In some places, gravity’s pull is distorted,” he repeated.
Baert landed expertly on one foot, balanced, and shot is arms over his head in triumph.
“Oh, well done, Leftenant Cuithbaert! Well done, indeed!”
I didn’t have time to roll my eyes. From where I lay, flat on my back with the wind knocked out of me and the unpleasant taste of blood in my mouth, I saw a wave of dronettes pour out of the tunnel. Like a hive of wasps, they horded together and shot straight down toward us.
Baert somersaulted to us as Dragon opened his immense wings.
“Lassie, duuuuuck!” he cried and bowled into me just as Dragon’s mouth blazed fire. Quick bursts of fire balls shot upward.
Two, six, maybe twenty dronettes caught fire and dropped from the air like dead flies. They lay black and scorched in stark contrast to the pastel background. But as many as fell to Dragon’s spitfire, just as many populated behind them.
“Evechild, the spheresaii again!” Dragon sputtered between breaths of fire. “I need … time … to … breathe …!”
Frantically, I thrust my hand into my trusty bag. The canvas felt clammy and the little orbs seemed to roll away from my touch.
“Ah, c’mon, guys! I just need …” I rummaged about the bag, annoyed now how they all kept rolling out of the way. I thrust my hand deep into the bag’s corner and grabbed onto one. “Ah-ha!”
I pulled out a white sphere. The white sphere. The one I knew absolutely nothing about. I groaned and went to toss it back into the bag, but it affixed itself to my palm. I looked at it with a raised eyebrow; its round white body shimmered brightly. And, I don’t know how, but I got a very sinister vibe from it.
“Lassie! Ye’ve got tah help! Look!” Baert cried.
He leapt up and knocked dronettes out of the sky with just his tight, compressed body. I didn’t have time to gawk, but between him and Dragon’s fireball aim, what a sight! My awe turned back to fear.
“Dragon! There’s something trailing behind the dronettes!”
“Keep down!” Baert screamed.
Balanced atop a swarm of dronettes stood Obrenox – a a twisted Apollo with second-rate chariot. His robes flared outward. His red hood was bright and ghastly against the swirling pastel landscape. For a moment, he nearly looked intimidating. But then, this:
“Not ssssssooo fasssssssst! The breeeezzze issssss chilling my legsssssssss!”
I caught a glimpse of the most pale, sickly leg. Even from his lofty heights above me, I could see blue veins protruding from the opal pallor of his goiter-laden calves. The mawkish white skin marbled with blue was even more sickening next to the ridiculous red sneakers on his long, narrow feet.
I swallowed hard as I refocused on the pearly orb. My arm was sore, tired, as I thrust it straight out and held the white sphere out. It flashed brightly and started to spin. Slowly at first, I felt it turn in my hand. Then it quickened, spun faster, hovered slightly, faster, higher … .
Baert tugged at my other hand impatiently.
“Just let it do its thing,” I hissed. “I don’t know what this one does!”
Suddenly, a brilliant arc shot out over us. A fantastic spray of pearly light emanated from the moving sphere. A vibrant white gauzy sheen gently fell and enclosed us in a nearly opaque dome. The white orb all the while kept spinning; it was suspended in the air now, sparkling and flashing like an out-of-control disco ball.
“What’s it doing? Is this some sort of protective shield?” I asked to no one in particular.
I felt Dragon’s talons around my shoulders again. When I looked up, I saw that Baert was already atop his back. Baert was constantly full of surprises. Maybe those Kips were right to salute him all the time.
“Evechild! Now!”
“Gah! Right! Now?”
“NOW.”
I jumped onto Dragon’s arm and he flung me up onto his back with Baert.
“Lassie! Look at that!” Baert pointed up, his eyes wide. I followed his gaze and gasped.
The little white orb, still spinning with all its might, was not only holding a brilliant white shield over us. On the other side of its pearlescent veil, everything stood in hushed inanimation. All action was arrested mid-movement. The dronettes froze mid-flight. Those hit by fire balls floated with charcoal smoke around them; flames at all different stages burned paralyzed in time. Even Obrenox, still quite high and far away from us, was immobile mid-flight. His black robes billowed out and hung in place, his red-cloaked head cocked awkwardly to the side while one hand was holding on to the folds of his flyaway robes to keep the front of his legs covered.
I giggled, delighted to discover the power this white pearly orb held. A rush of wind from Dragon’s wings nearly knocked me off-balance.
“We can’t leave it!” I yelled at Dragon, motioning toward the little sphere.
“It is not prudent to wait,” shot back Dragon, “We must get away while we have the chance! The dronettes are self-populating!”
I saw then that the fallen dronettes were shivering and shaking from the ground, the scorched metal patches turning a steely silver once more under the domed refuge of the sphere. As they recharged, reanimated, re-whatever they were doing, they emitted a mind-numbing hum.
“But where do we even go?! There’s nothing! Just … pink!” I shouted to Dragon again, waving my arms in the air.
“It’s a trick, lassie,” Baert leaned over and growled in my ear. “That pinky-ness, tis a trick, a mirage, a right cloak.”
“What?!” I shouted back.
My brain hurt from the hum of the dronettes and the crushing weight of indecision. Dragon flew at full force and headed toward the section of the pearly, gauzy dome farthest from Obrenox and his dronette armies. He was going to burst through the walled veil!
“Dragon! No!” I shouted abruptly.
Shocked, Dragon pulled his wings forward and brought us to an awkward halt. Baert and I skidded against his neck and jolted back in the force of the stop. I gulped.
“If we leave this dome, what’s to keep us from also getting frozen in place like everyone else?”
Dragon and Baert said nothing. Dronettes pelted the dome outside. The white orb all the while spun, flashed, and kept the dome in tact overhead.
“An excellent point,” Dragon said finally.
“We’ve got to pull the pearl orb back and launch out of here simultaneously,” I ventured. Neither Baert nor Dragon responded. “Right?”
Dragon nodded. Baert sighed and agreed.
“Ok then. So, um, on three … I’ll call the sphere, and you keep us as close to this dome wall as possible,” I said, shifting uncomfortably atop Dragon and readjusting the duffle so its opening was in front of my stomach.
I took a deep breath once more, very aware that I still had no plan beyond this immediate moment. For all I knew, we were farther from my mom and Philippa and not closer. I rolled my shoulders back and cracked my neck side to side. I thrust my arm out again, my palm erect.
“You ready, Dragon? Is this as close as we can get? Ok, here goes … Nunc colligentes!”