Darkness had crept into the forest, more and more insects revealing their presence in a growing chorus of mating calls. Paul sat with his arms folded, leaning against a nearby tree, his face set in a grimace. Sofia was curled up in a ball several feet to Paul’s right, still moaning, leaves sticking to her clothes as if she’d been rolling around in them since morning. The strange devices Mr. Chu had attached to them were gone.
Surprisingly, Tick felt the pain sliding away, feeling better by the second. Pushing against the ground, he got his feet under him and stood up. Though sore, he no longer felt the pinpricks and bruises he’d suffered from just moments earlier. It was as if someone had injected him with two shots of morphine.
“Dude, what happened? ” Paul said through a groan, stretching his arms out before him.
Tick stepped over to Sofia, who seemed to be regaining her strength as well. She rolled onto her back, blinked up at Tick, then held up an arm; Tick helped her to her feet.
“Is that guy still your favorite teacher?” she asked, brushing leaves off her clothes. “He’s a real joy to be around, that’s for sure.”
“I… I don’t know what-” Tick stopped in mid-sentence, staring at something over Sofia’s shoulder. He squinted to see through the dim twilight, then squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. “What the heck is that? ”
“What?” Sofia and Paul asked in unison, turning to look in the same direction as Tick.
Without answering, Tick walked toward the oddity that loomed over them just a few dozen feet away.
“Whoa,” he heard Paul say from behind him.
Deeper into the forest, several trees had melted into a twisting, gnarled, monstrous-looking mass of wood that was as tall and thick as a house. Several other trees had been lifted out of the ground, their roots sticking out like naked fingers, clods of dirt swaying back and forth. Tick could only stare, disbelieving his own eyes. It looked like some giant magician had grabbed dozens of trees, transformed them into liquid wood, and then smashed them together, twisting and squeezing all of it into a deformed, hideous shape.
Sofia gasped, then pointed to a section of the wood-blob near the ground. “Is that what I think it is? Oh!” She covered her face with her hands and turned around, her body visibly shuddering.
“What?” Paul asked, stepping closer to take a look. Tick joined him, and immediately saw the source of her disgust.
Somehow twisted into the wood was the body of a deer. Three legs poked out of the main trunk; its face was half-sunk into the wood, the one visible eye somehow displaying the fear it must have felt at the last second before death.
“That’s downright creepy,” Paul whispered.
By the time they reached Tick’s house, almost all of the intense pain they’d felt had disappeared, leaving only a weary soreness. Tick, like Paul and Sofia, had hardly said a word on the walk back, trying to figure out which had been more disturbing-the agonizing pain or the deformed super-tree with the dead deer sticking out of it.
“Could this day have been any weirder?” Paul asked as they walked up the porch steps to Tick’s house.
“Maybe if we’d grown bunny ears,” Sofia replied.
Paul let out a bitter laugh.
They walked in to the wonderful smells of dinner, all of them pausing to take a deep breath. Tick was starving. He couldn’t tell what his mom had cooked, but he had a feeling she’d felt the need to prove to Sofia that she could cook, too.
“So are we gonna tell your parents what just happened?” Paul whispered.
Tick thought a minute. “Maybe later. My poor mom’s worried enough as it is. No harm, no foul, right?”
“Yeah,” Sofia agreed. “Let’s just stay in the house and stare at each other until it’s time to go meet Master George.”
“Sounds good,” Tick said. “Hopefully we can stay out of trouble for one more day.”
They walked into the kitchen.
Mistress Jane felt discouraged.
She sat next to the large stone window of her apartment in the Lemon Fortress, closing her eyes every time the soft, warm breeze filled with the sweet smell of wildflowers blew up from the meadows below. The day was beautiful, the slightest hint in the air that autumn lay just around the corner. Everything was perfect.
And yet, a stinging sadness tempered all of it.
It had been four months since her Barrier Wand had been stolen, trapping her inside the Thirteenth Reality. At the time, she’d been so intrigued by the Realitants’ ability to wink away with a broken Wand, and its potential implications for her, that she’d gotten straight to work-studying, experimenting, building. There was a lot about the mysterious power of Chi’karda she’d not yet discovered, and the little group’s seemingly miraculous disappearance had led her to change her thinking. She had already made some exciting discoveries.
However, at the moment, she was very frustrated.
For one thing, her efforts to build a new Barrier Wand had hit a major snag. Frazier Gunn, the leader on the project, couldn’t find one of the key elements for the wire that would transmit the Chi’karda from its Drive packet to the body of the Wand. The needed material was a complicated alloy of several rare metals, and one of them was proving impossible to find within the Thirteenth. Frazier had grown noticeably irritable, obviously realizing the potential consequences if he failed in this project. His room for error with Jane had grown very thin.
But all of this was secondary to what troubled her most.
She was starting to feel guilty.
She couldn’t remember when it started, or when it had grown to such a staggering weight on her heart. But now, every minute of the day, all she could think about was how evil she had become. When had it come to this? How had it come to this? In the beginning, all she’d ever wanted was to make the world a better place, to improve life for all her fellow human beings. It was to fulfill those lofty and noble goals that she’d joined the Realitants years ago, devoting her life to studying the Realities. Though she’d never voiced her intentions, she’d planned from the first day to seek out those things in other Realities that would lead to her ultimate goal.
A Utopia. A perfect world. A haven for all people, where pain and sorrow would cease to exist. Where everyone could be happy.
That was all she’d wanted. That was all she still wanted.
And yet, here she was, a fierce and cruel ruler of an entire world, using its mutated powers to create horrific armies of creatures, to repress those who opposed her, to destroy those who dared to fight back. She was a despicable, disgusting person. A terribly unhappy person.
But she couldn’t change. Not now. She knew that as clearly as she’d recognized what she had become. It was too late for change. Her plans were in full motion, and if it took her full cruelty and reprehensible reputation to win the battle, then so be it.
She realized what that meant. She was willing to sacrifice her own dignity, her own reputation, her own… soul. In the end, though, the worlds would thank her. In the end, everyone would be better off. In the end, life would be perfect.
She looked to her right just in time to see her latest servant-girl, Doofus, stumble through the door and drop a tray, dishes clattering all over the floor.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Jane’s mood couldn’t have been worse.
She threw her hand forward, unleashing a burst of the mutated Chi’karda. Doofus shot into the air and slammed high against the stone wall, pinned near the ceiling by the invisible force. Choking sounds filled the room as the poor girl kicked at the air, her heels thumping the wall.