Menagerie’s torso bounced once on the floor. His left hand flopped limply against a small squiggle tattooed behind his ear and he suddenly vanished. I blinked, wondering where he’d gone, but had no time to dwell on the matter.
The sphere, the cube, and the pyramid had all separated, hovering in the air, spinning to face new targets. The jade sphere shot toward No-Face as a deafening, high-pitched scream erupted from within. With only inches to spare, the faceless mercenary leaped from the path of the green ball, leaving the toothy maw aimed at Father Ver. Yet as No-Face dodged, he let his iron ball and chain trail behind him. The giant mouth snapped down as the weapon passed through its mineral lips. Shards of jade sprayed out as the teeth snapped on the iron links. With a grunt, No-Face planted his feet and jerked the chain taut. The jade orb spun dizzily as it cut an arc, narrowly missing Father Ver. Infidel dropped her pack and leapt into the curving path of the spinning sphere, drawing back her fist.
A thunderclap echoed through the chamber as she landed her punch. The gleaming green stone shattered, sending sharp, fist-sized chunks in all directions. Chewed-up bits of golden throne bounced on the marble floor. What must have been hundreds of concentric platinum hoops, in diameters from ten feet to smaller than a wedding ring, spilled out, rolling everywhere.
There was no sign of Menagerie’s legs amid the rubble, though I didn’t exactly spend a lot of time looking. My attention was drawn to the cube and the pyramid, which were hanging in the air, unseen motors within whining like a billion mosquitoes. Unlike the sphere, no mouths opened on these solids as they selected targets and launched forward.
The iron cube raced toward Infidel. She reared back to punch it, but the flying cube smashed her in mid-swing, flattening her against its face. The whining, buzzing noise within rose in pitch as it built speed, pushing her with it. With a shock wave that knocked Relic, Father Ver, and the Deceiver from their feet, the cube hammered into the chamber wall.
I thought of the flattened skeletons I’d found embedded in stone and felt sick. Any normal person would be nothing more than a smear of blood after such a blow. Yet, when the cube pulled back, Infidel looked intact; the marble panel behind her was shattered into gravel, and she was driven into the dense volcanic soil behind. She looked dazed, but was plainly alive.
The cube whirled and targeted Lord Tower, zipping in a straight line toward the knight. Tower was hovering an inch or two in the air. Steel spikes snapped out of the soles of his metal boots and he kicked down onto the marble floor, driving the spikes into the stone. The cube hit him with an ear-splitting WHANG, driving him backward. Marble fragments flew as Tower’s boot carved a long, ragged gouge in the floor. The pitch of the unseen engines grew ever louder, but the cube’s speed was visibly diminishing. I wondered if Tower could actually stop it before they reached the wall.
My eyes were drawn elsewhere before I saw the outcome of Tower’s braking action. Amidst the larger chunks of chewed-up throne, I spotted what looked like a bit of brownish red intestine wriggling on a scrap of purple silk. I looked closer, in morbid fascination, wondering if Menagerie had been chewed up so completely by the inner workings of the sphere that this was all that was left. I stared closer, and suddenly understood what I was seeing: half an earthworm, pinched off at one end, writhing in pain.
Was there a second half to this worm amid the rubble? Could Menagerie be restored if we could join the two halves? I turned to find Relic to share my theory, but was distracted as the glass pyramid flashed past me.
Unlike the straight paths the sphere and cube had followed, the pyramid moved chaotically through the air, darting a few yards in one direction, then shooting off at a crisp angle without losing speed in defiance of all logic and physics. Its glass faces were cycling through colors, pale blues, bloody reds, banana-yellows. It rang with a sound like off-key chimes as it jerked through the air. No-Face chased after it, trying to shatter it with his ball and chain, but the pyramid would tumble aside before his blows connected, shooting off in some new random direction.
Aurora, meanwhile, was grabbing the fog that surrounded her, shaping and pressing the mist into her palm until she’d packed a ball of ice the size of a grapefruit. She hung back, studying the pyramid’s lurching flight path, her eyes narrowed. Perhaps she figured out a pattern, or perhaps it was only luck, but when she reared back and flung the ice-ball, aiming to the left of the pyramid, her target obliged by darting left. The ice-ball hit the triangle face dead center, passing through the glass as if it wasn’t even there. Instantly, the neighboring face flashed green as the ice-ball shot out. No-Face, still chasing the dancing pyramid, wound up getting punched right in the gut by the projectile. He stumbled, off balance, clutching his belly.
“Sorry!” shouted Aurora. She turned her eyes away from the pyramid for only a second, but in that second all the faces turned black as it charged her. She looked up, raising an ice-covered fist as the pyramid overtook her. Instead of the crash of glass hitting ice, the collision unfolded with eerie silence as Aurora simply sank into the ebony surface. The pyramid tumbled as it passed over her, kissing the floor where she stood before shooting straight up, once more flashing through a spectrum of bright shades.
Aurora was gone.
Meanwhile, Lord Tower had finally won his contest of momentum against the cube. He now held it motionless in mid-air, with a single hand holding the Gloryhammer across the cube face while his free hand popped open the compartment on his belt that held his magic notebook. The visor of his helmet lifted on its own as he awkwardly flipped through the book with one hand. Finding the page he wanted, he brought the book to his face and bit down on the edge, trapping a page open as he let go with his hand and brought his fingers to the long, skinny item sketched on the page. He drew his hand back, tugging a loop of leather from the paper, followed by a long shaft of narwhale tusk that he kept working out a few feet at a time, continually adjusting his grip. The bone-white shaft proved to be eighteen feet long, tipped with a gleaming heart-shaped blade of pinkish ice.
If this wasn’t the Jagged Heart, it’s hard to imagine what was.
Tower let the book tumble from his mouth. With a grunt, he pushed the iron cube away from him, tapping it with the Gloryhammer so that it flew back a half dozen yards. The iron block whined as it shot toward the knight once more. Tower brought the tip of the harpoon down, dropping the Gloryhammer to grasp the shaft with both hands.
The iron cube ground to a halt as the ice tip burrowed into its solid face, sinking nearly a foot. Cracks spread across the iron as the whining noise within changed to a growling grind. Tower twisted the shaft and the entire cube shattered. Fragments of springs and gears bounced all around him.
The knight didn’t waste any time savoring his victory. Instead, he charged back across the room, his spiked iron boots shooting out sparks as he ran, the harpoon held like a lance. The glass pyramid flashed white on all faces as Tower neared, a bright, burning light nearly impossible to look at.
I turned away just as the light suddenly dimmed and a cacophony of breaking glass reached my ears. I looked back and saw that the pyramid was gone; all that remained was glassy dust scattered across the floor like snowflakes.
“Uhrurruh!” No-Face shouted, dropping to his hands and knees. He ran his fingers through the glass dust. “Uhrurruh!” he cried again.
Tower surveyed the scene. “Is everyone okay?” he asked.
“Aurora was inside the pyramid when you broke it,” said Zetetic, now back on his feet. He nudged his boot around in the glassy remains, until he found a splinter the size of a man’s thumb. He picked it up and looked at it closely. “She’s gone forever, I fear.”
“Nuh!” cried No-Face.
Tower, his faceplate still open, turned pale. “I didn’t know,” he said.
“What could you have done differently if you had known?” said Father Ver, still sitting on the floor. “You couldn’t let the thing keep tumbling until it had swallowed us all.”
No-Face stood up, his whole body trembling. He stared at Lord Tower with his single, misshapen eye, his fists clenched. He screamed at the knight, “Yuh guhdum muhfugguh! Yuh kuh uhrurruh!”
“It was an accident,” said Tower, lowering his faceplate.
Relic was back on his feet, wandering through the rubble that covered the floor. He pushed aside bits of shattered jade and chewed up gold with the tip of his staff. At last he leaned over and picked up a small, moist, wriggling bit of meat, then moved to the other half of the worm I’d spotted on the silk.
“Is this going to work?” I asked. “Can you read Menagerie’s thoughts?”
Relic didn’t answer me as he placed the two halves together, letting the bisected worms touch at their shared wound.
There was a rapid blur of motion, as the thin, squiggling worms gained mass and muscle. In the span of a heartbeat, the worm was gone and Menagerie sat before us, restored once more. The speed of the recovery left me seeing double.
Only, I wasn’t seeing double.
There were two Menageries, sitting facing each other, both the size of pygmies.
“What the hell?” they both asked in unison. Their voices were high-pitched squeaks as they asked, “How did… It wasn’t supposed to work like…” They each reached out to touch the other, their fingertips tapping together in mirror symmetry.
Both reached for tattoos on their shins and suddenly two small bears were staring at one another. “Terrific,” both bears said, in a resigned tone.
Father Ver walked toward the twin bears and looked down, his eyes narrowed. “You’re to blame for this! You were ordered to ignore the treasure. You’ve cost us the ogress and the War Doll by your disobedience.”
Relic shook his head. “The War Doll is still functioning.”
Infidel punctuated his sentence by tearing free of her stony outline, staggering onto the floor, still looking dazed.
The Truthspeaker continued to glare down at the small bears. “Disobey again and your contract will be terminated.”
The Menageries shifted back into their twin, pint-sized human forms. They both placed their hands across their knees and sighed. They said in their stereo voices, “You don’t need to threaten me. No one feels worse about this than I do. The sight of all that gold made me stupid.”
“Muh fuh,” said No-Face, looming over his fellow Goon. “Nuh whoowa smuh guh?”
“Yeah, you’re the smart Goon now,” the Menageries said, shaking their heads.
The faceless giant held out his hands. Menagerie took them, and let himselves be pulled back to their feet.
While this was happening, I’m certain that I’m the only one who noticed that the Deceiver had pulled out a piece of cloth and wrapped the largest shard of glass within it, stuffing it into his bag.
“Let’s take an hour to rest,” said Tower, sliding the harpoon back into the book. “There are prayers of penance I need to perform for having allowed a book to touch the ground. No-Face, you’re bleeding; let Father Ver stitch you up.” The big man’s hands and knees were red with blood from where he dug through the glass fragments searching for Aurora. Finally, Tower turned to Relic and said, “Make certain your War Doll is still functioning. If you need more time for repairs, let me know.”
“Of course,” said Relic. He left the others and headed toward the shadows of the hall where we had first entered. Infidel sat there, crouched down out of sight of the others. She’d removed her shining steel bra, which was squashed flat. She was hammering the flattened plates back into cup shapes with her fists, using her knee caps as a guide.
“I’m sick of this,” she grumbled softly as Relic approached.
“Patience. You may shed your disguise soon enough.”
“I don’t mean I’m sick of my disguise. I’m sick of this mission. Stagger and I goofed around in these ruins for a decade before he got killed. This team is dropping like flies. Maybe Aurora and I weren’t always friends, but she deserved a better death than that.”
Relic squatted down beside her. With his limbs hidden within the confines of his cloak, he looked more like a heap of rotting rags than a man. “We can’t be certain that Aurora is dead. Her thoughts simply vanished when the pyramid swallowed her. Perhaps she was transported elsewhere.”
I also had my doubts she was dead. Unlike Ivory Blade or Reeker, Aurora hadn’t lingered behind as a ghost. Or would a human ghost and an ogre ghost go to the same afterlife? The Great Sea Above she’d described certainly was nothing like the church’s version of heaven. Since the ghosts usually only lingered a moment, had I simply missed her in all the excitement?
Infidel tried the repaired cup on for size. It was still dented, but it did vaguely resemble the curve of her breast again. “The Black Swan said that only two people survived this quest, and made it pretty clear I was one of them. Tower’s probably the other survivor, given his bag of tricks. It doesn’t bother you that your death has been foretold? Why don’t you get out while you still can?”
“Whatever the Black Swan saw, she’s already altered our fates. It’s possible we will all survive, and the dragon will die.”
Infidel didn’t look at him as she worked on the second bra cup. Her lips were pursed tightly together for several seconds before she said, softly, “Or maybe all of us will die. Even me.”
I put my ghostly hand on her shoulder, wanting to comfort her. I’d never heard such despair in her voice.
“I thought I was done with this,” she said, hammering the metal on her knee.
I didn’t think she was talking about the bra.
Relic nodded. “And now you are afraid again.”
She picked up the cup-shaped steel and began to smooth it between her fingers. “I haven’t felt like this since I left the palace. I used to be so timid and terrified. I never wanted to feel that way again.”
I was surprised to find out she’d been afraid of anything as a child. It seemed counter-intuitive. As a princess, I would have guessed she’d been protected from everything.
“I was treated like a china doll,” she said. “I wasn’t allowed to play outside because I might fall and get scratched. I couldn’t sit too near a window, because the sun might burn my skin. I slept with armed guards stationed at my bed because my father was afraid of kidnappers. My whole family had tasters who sampled our food to make certain it wasn’t poison. Being constantly reminded I was so fragile left me in a constant state of terror.”
Relic nodded knowingly, but I had trouble imagining a fragile, frightened Infidel.
She sighed. “I wanted to do this treasure hunt as a quick smash and grab, making stuff up as we went along, the way Stagger and I always played it. Events never got out of control when we were together, because we never tried to control them. We just moved on whim and instinct, living fast and fearless. Now, Tower is talking about destiny and history, the Black Swan is playing with people’s lives like they’re pawns in some game, and it sounds like my father is already studying maps of this island figuring out where to build his new palace. I can’t help feeling that all this planning has put things out of control. We’re all going to die.”
Relic rose up, stretching his back, sinews popping. His hunch disappeared as he rose to the height of an ordinary man. His body was still hidden by the tattered cloak. His eyes glowed like red embers in the shadow of his hood.
“Perhaps you’re saying these things hoping I will reassure you,” he said, in a stern tone. “I need offer no comfort. All the strength you need to prevail pulses within your veins. You ceased to be a frightened little girl the second you devoured the blood of a primal dragon. A dragon soul shares your body now, a soul more powerful than the sniveling child you once were. Surrender yourself to the dragon inside and our victory is assured.”
Infidel shook her head slowly as she tested the second cup. Satisfied, she worked silently with the link of chain that held the cups together, crimping the ends between her fingernails, then slipping the whole thing on from the back like a vest before pinching the final connecting link between the cups shut at the front.
She stood up. Relic, still standing straight, looked down upon her, a good head taller. She peered up into his glowing eyes. “Who the hell are you?” she asked.
“I’m the second survivor of this mission,” he said.
“How can you know this? Are you a seer as well as a mind-reader?”
“No,” said Relic, as his head lowered once more, returning his outline to his hunchbacked profile. “But you cannot imagine the trials I’ve endured to reach this moment. There is nothing left for me to fear. Not even Greatshadow.”
“So tell me about the trials. Tell me who you are. Why should I keep listening to you?”
Relic shook his head. “I must remain an enigma until we achieve our goals. Greatshadow can pluck thoughts from the minds of others. If you knew my true identity, he might learn it as well. I’m the one enemy he should fear above all others… because he doesn’t even know I exist.”
“Why are you his enemy? Why do you hate the dragon so?”
Relic clenched his gnarled fist. “This too, must remain my secret. But know that my hatred for the beast is deep and righteous. Turning back is unthinkable. I cannot live any longer in a world that contains Greatshadow.”
I rolled my eyes and said, “I’m really getting tired of your mystery man act. Just answer her questions.”
Relic ignored me.
Infidel shrugged. “Fine. I’ve lived with your mystery man act this long, I can put up with it for another day.”
“And your fears? Can you put them behind you?”
She pulled back her shoulders and clenched her fists. “Dragons are cold-blooded. That’s the only blood I’ve got now. So cold my heart’s just a block of ice, incapable of fear, or doubt, or remorse. Timid little Innocent has long since been devoured by the monster.” She cracked her knuckles, as all emotion drained from her face. She looked like a machine once more. “Let’s go kick Greatshadow’s scaly ass.”