There was something disturbing about the hooded man’s voice. It was only when he spoke again that Ben realised what it was. It sounded as if two people were speaking the same words at exactly the same time. One voice was deep and almost pleasant-sounding. The other was a whispery hiss that wormed inside Ben’s head and made him think of nightmares long forgotten.
“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?”