Island of Dragons (31 page)

Florence stood near the front door of the mansion, picking up pirates whenever they ventured close enough and throwing them as far as she could onto a pile of frozen pirates, trying to knock them out. Her quiver and bow lay on the ground—all the magic arrows long gone by now since she'd had to use one every time Alex was about to get decapitated. She tried to stop the pirates from entering the mansion, but with the windows smashed, they had a dozen ways to get in. Finally she had to give up and focus on keeping people alive. And while most of the ships had stopped the flaming tar ball attacks now that their pirates were on shore and in the line of fire, the lead ship continued shooting them at the mansion. Florence could only guess they were trying to take out Simber and her.

Simber soared and dove, dodging the tar balls, picking up two or three pirates at a time and flinging them into the depths of the sea. But for every three he got rid of, six more arrived in a boat to take their place. Simber began to destroy the smaller boats so they couldn't be used to transport more pirates, but the task was made infinitely more difficult by the various rescues he had to make whenever an Artiméan nearby was about to die—which was often.

And Artimé's supply of lethal components had dwindled so low that Alex hadn't been able to give the squirrelicorns many to deliver to the other teams around the island. In a desperate move, Alex sent Fox to bob in the shallow water along the shore to see if he could find any heart attack components that had bounced off the pirates' shields, unused.

Thus, the spell casters were stuck using temporary spells like fire step and slam poetry, causing even more chaos and confusion with the pirates running this way and that as a result. One helpful spell was the freeze spell because it stopped a pirate in his tracks, but the spell only worked if it wasn't blocked by the pirates' shields, which was less than half the time. Using a permanent version of the spell took a lot more concentration than the temporary version, and after the night they'd had, the Artiméans didn't have concentration to spare—especially when there was no guarantee the spell would hit its mark. So when it did, the effects wore off quickly.

It soon became abundantly clear: There were so many pirates, so few spell casters, and hardly any deadly spell components left, that the task of stopping the pirates with magic was impossible.

Alex was the first to realize Mr. Appleblossom hadn't been seen or heard from in quite some time. With the world fighting around him, Alex used a huge pile of rubble to climb to the roof of the mansion so he could check on him. Once he pulled himself up, he looked all around, then crawled up to the tallest peak. He searched the rooftop, and his eyes widened. Mr. Appleblossom was lying on the shingles, unconscious, with a huge bloody gash in his chest that looked like it came from a sword. Had pirates climbed up here to stop Mr. Appleblossom's aerial attack?

“Mr. Appleblossom!” Alex shouted, crawling over to him. He slapped the man's face trying to wake him up, but the theater instructor didn't respond. Alex scooped him up and slung him over his shoulder, then maneuvered sideways to the edge of the roof and looked down.

“Florence!” he called.

Alarmed, Florence bashed her current attacker in the face and turned to see where Alex's voice was coming from. When she saw him carrying Mr. Appleblossom, she ran over and reached up so Alex could lower the man into her arms.

“Oh, Siggy,” she said, horrified. She vanished inside the mansion with him.

Alex stayed on the roof, fury rising up inside him at seeing Mr. Appleblossom like that. With hot tears blurring his sight, he noticed all the tar balls in the gullies and on the flat parts of the roof that would make excellent weapons. Fueled by anger, he began flinging the heavy balls down on unsuspecting pirates.

Florence returned to find Alex. “The hospital ward is full!” she shouted to him. “I had to put him on the floor.”

Alex, exhausted, could hardly process the horrible statement.
On the floor? The hospital ward full?
Alex's face was stained with sweat and dirt and blood. His clothes were ripped, and his body was covered in bruises and cuts. He looked down at the quickly deteriorating mansion, and at the masses of pirates tearing up Artimé and his people, and at all the dead and injured that littered the grounds, and at all the ships that surrounded the island with even more enemies still hiding aboard. He looked around for familiar faces of his friends, his team leaders, and he didn't see any of them. Not one. Were they dead? All of them? Where was Aaron? What if Ishibashi was wrong about the seaweed? He couldn't bear to consider it. How could he stand the grief of losing another friend? And then he choked on a ragged sob, and all the hope he'd ever held in his heart drained out in that moment.

That hope was replaced by the somber truth. Artimé was destroyed. There would be no prevailing this time. Soon there would be no more people for the pirates to kill, because they would all be dead, except maybe Aaron—and the pirates would just torture him until he finally outlived them all.

“Florence,” Alex said, his voice anguished.

Florence turned again to face the mage. “What is it, Alex?”

“I think we need to surrender.”

F
lorence looked at Alex. And without blinking, without reacting, without arguing, she shouted in her loudest, most booming voice, “SIIIMBERRR!”

Alex looked at her, aghast. “What are you doing?”

Florence shook her head in disgust. “I want to see you make that suggestion to Simber. I could use a good laugh right now. SIIIMBERRR!” she called again.

“Stop!” said Alex. “Don't do that. He's busy.”

Florence opened her mouth to call again, but Alex skittered down the slant of the roof.

“No!” he cried, and jumped on her, fists flailing. She caught him and held him up with one hand. “Really, Alex? You want to break your fists punching
me
?” Quickly she stuck out her other arm and clotheslined a pirate who was running by. He hit the dirt, and Florence grabbed his sword. She stabbed it through his chest, barely taking the time to look at what she was doing.

Alex deflated. He'd lost his mind. He stopped punching the air and hung limply in Florence's grip until finally she set him down on the ground. She pulled the sword out from the pirate's chest, wiped it clean, and gave it to Alex.

“Moment of insanity,” Alex mumbled, taking it. “Can we just pretend that didn't happen?”

“I'd certainly like to,” said Florence. She saw Simber flying at full speed toward them.

“You're not going to tell him?” asked Alex anxiously.

“Not today.”

“Good. Thank you. And sorry. I'm out of here.” Alex ran off to start swinging his sword at pirates.

“What's wrrrong?” Simber asked Florence.

“Nothing,” said Florence. “Only I see Claire and Sky at the edge of the lawn by the jungle. Do you see them?”

Simber turned to look. “I do now. And the rrrest of the teams arrre hiding on the otherrr side of the mansion, including Samheed and Lani, whose teams took some of the worrrst action. They just arrrived afterrr a skirrrmish with a group of pirrrates coming frrrom the lighthouse, and found the otherrrs setting up forrr an ambush.” Simber snarled at a pirate, clamped her in his jaws, tossed her into the air, and batted her out to sea.

“Well then, let's go assist,” said Florence.

“Wherrre's Alex?”

“Oh, he's around. Fighting hard.”

“Does he know about this plan?”

“I don't think so, Sim. Let's surprise him. He could use it right about now.”

Just then, a shrill whistle went up from the lawn where Claire and her team were standing. Automatically at least half of the pirates turned to see what was happening. With their backs turned, Carina and her team of forty rushed in and fired deadly spells at them, dropping a whole section on the lawn at once. They fired again and took down another group.

When the pirates realized what was happening, they all turned toward Carina's team. With a roar, the pirates rushed at them, giving Claire's team open targets on their backs. Claire's team fired, once, twice, three times, until all their components were gone, and another thirty pirates went down. Then the team went in with swords drawn and continued the attack, with Sky leading the way.

Florence and Simber rushed in to clobber any pirates who had been struck dumbfounded by the attack.

At the sight of Carina, Aaron, Kaylee, Lani and Samheed, and Claire and Sky, Alex felt his heart refire. His friends weren't dead! Sky was alive! And Aaron! All of them! They were alive and fighting and not in any way looking like they wanted to give up. Maybe the tide was swinging just the least bit.

“We fight until we win!” Alex cried to the returning teams, who were equally glad to see him alive. But the returning teams were less glad to hear that there were still pirates and Warblerans on the ships, and no one quite knew what was coming next. They all dug in and kept going.

But the twenty-four-hour battle had taken its toll on their bodies, and slowly their euphoria at the momentary victory began to slip away.

They fought valiantly, but the pirates on land still outnumbered them four to one. It was only a matter of time before the Artiméans would collapse from exhaustion.

“We must win!” came Alex's ragged battle cry. “We must win
at all costs
! Every human, statue, and creature—fight for your life! Fight for our freedom!”

It was those words that stopped Aaron cold. First, seeing Alex alive brought a huge sense of relief, and not an ounce of disappointment. But beyond that, what Alex had said stirred a new idea in his mind. He turned and looked at his brother, taking in the words.
Every human, statue, and creature—fight for your life!
And then Aaron slowly looked the other way, across the lawn, past all the fighting, to the jungle beyond. He stared for a long moment, his sword going slack in his hand. And then he dropped it on the ground and moved stealthily away from the action, around to the west side of the mansion, where the gaping holes in Alex's room were.

Aaron climbed up the rubble, stepped on a broken windowpane, and shimmied up the side of the window, thinking little of falling. He reached high and grabbed on to the opening in the wall left by the tar balls, and pulled himself up and into Alex's room. He dodged around the mess and the ransacked desk that had once held thousands of components, and ran out into the hallway. He tore down it to the kitchenette, and then stopped short. “Squirrelicorns,” he muttered, and raced back to the gaping hole in Alex's wall.

“Squirrelicorns!” he shouted.

Three of them flew to him immediately.

“I need you to come with me,” he said. “I've got a dangerous job, but I think you are the ones to do it.”

“Yes, sir!” the three shouted.

“Follow me,” said Aaron, starting toward the kitchenette once more. “Have you ever taken the tube before?”

T
he squirrelicorns folded themselves up quite efficiently inside the tube, careful not to poke Aaron's eyes out with their long spiral horns, and there was room to spare.

Aaron explained his plan briefly, and then hit all the tube buttons at once. Soon they were transported to the quiet, dark jungle, smelling its earthy musk.

“I've been in the jungle before, but never this deep,” said one of the squirrelicorns. “Sir.”

“Well, you're in it now—this is the very deepest part. And it's dangerous. So stay close and do what I say.”

The squirrelicorns agreed.

Aaron stepped out, twigs crackling under his feet. Within seconds, Panther came bounding toward them. She screamed at Aaron in delight, and sniffed at the squirrelicorns as if she might want to eat them. The squirrelicorns shrank back.

Then the ground shivered and the enormous rock caretaker moved into view.