The Void of Mist and Thunder (The 13th Reality #4) (21 page)

The tornado of mist still churned where it had been, with nothing but open sky above it. Except it wasn’t much of a tornado anymore.

It was a seething, roiling mass of gray, its billowing surface frothing and foaming before turning back in on itself, leaving little wisps of fog streaming out like some kind of dreary decoration. Lightning continued to flash and strike in huge bolts of brilliant white, the thunder rumbling across the ground and echoing off the wall of trees behind Sato. The mass was probably fifty feet wide and a hundred feet tall. It was still moving in a circular motion, but not as intensely as a tornado anymore. It was like a living thing, devouring the air around it and ever growing, slowly.

Members of the Fifth Army were scattered all over the field, groaning and rubbing their eyes and stiffly testing their joints, looking for injuries. Sadly, some
weren’t
moving, and Sato felt the heavy weight of leadership once again. He’d led people to their death.

Something caught his eye as he scanned the area—a body that lay lifeless but wasn’t as big as the others. A boy.

Tick.

A blister of alarm popped in Sato’s heart as he leaped to his feet and started running, finding strength from some hidden part of his soul. He dodged and maneuvered around soldiers, his eyes focused on his friend, who wasn’t moving a muscle, not even a twitch. Sato didn’t know if he could take another death of someone so close to him. He was ashamed that he didn’t feel quite the same about his army fighters, but this was different. Tick had become not just one of his closest friends, but a symbol of everything the Realitants stood for.

Sato jumped over a prostrate woman of the Fifth then slid onto the grass like a baseball player, coming to a stop right at Tick’s head. The first thing he noticed was that his back was rising and falling, ever so slightly. Tick lay on his stomach, his arms spread out awkwardly, as if he’d landed and conked out immediately. But he wasn’t dead. Thank the Realities, he wasn’t dead.

Sato reached out and gently shook his friend’s shoulders. No response.

He grabbed him by the arm and carefully rolled him over onto his back so he could get a good look at him. His eyes were closed, his clothes ripped and filthy, his skin covered in dirt and soot. But most troubling was a huge gash on the side of his head, blood matting the hair down like dark red gel.

“Tick,” Sato whispered, trying to fight back the tears that wanted to pour out. Why? Why did everything in their lives always have to be so terrible?

“Tick,” he repeated. Then he picked him up and slung him over his shoulders, grunting under the weight. He began to walk, though he had no idea where he was going.

Chapter 30

Coming Together

Paul walked through the twilit forest of the Thirteenth Reality, Sofia and Rutger to his right, Mothball, Sally, and Master George—using his Barrier Wand like a cane—to his left. No one said a word as they picked their way through the bush and bramble. The massive concussion of sound they’d heard a few minutes earlier was enough to silence anyone for a week. Paul forced his thoughts away from the terrible possible explanations for that sound and concentrated on moving forward.

Ever since he’d returned to the Realitant headquarters, he’d been dying to know what in the world the little button in the box Gretel had given them was for. Old George had sent them to Gretel for a reason, had given them a secret password for a reason, had wanted that box with nothing in it but a plastic green button for a reason. But neither he nor Gretel would tell him what it was supposed to be used for. Phrases like “a need-to-know basis” and “you’ll find out soon enough” were thrown around. But that didn’t satisfy Paul.

Not one bit.

Oh, well. They had much bigger problems on their hands. There was trouble here in the Thirteenth Reality, and any notion they’d had of getting rest and relaxation was out the window. Master George hadn’t needed to tell them that when he said they’d all be winking there to regroup with Sato and find Tick. The situation was surely dangerous.

Paul smiled. It was as if his brain was so used to bad stuff that it wasn’t allowing him to focus on the best piece of news he’d ever received in his life. Tick was alive. Tick was back. Now they just had to figure out this mess and get him home safe and sound.

The woods had slowly thinned over the last hundred yards or so, though the air up ahead seemed slightly murky, like a dust storm had passed through recently, which seemed impossible for a place so green and vibrant with life.

“Shouldn’t we pick up the pace a little?” he asked the small crowd of Realitants.

“No need for haste, my good man,” came the not- surprising reply from Master George. “Our old friend Jane might have placed a few traps along the edge of the forest. Won’t do us much good to run willy-nilly right into them and spring the things.”

Paul was annoyed. “Won’t do us much good if we show up and everyone’s dead, either.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Sofia said. “He’s going to be fine.”

Paul heard a deadness in her voice that scared him. He realized that she had already begun the process of accepting that just because Tick was back and alive didn’t mean he was okay or safe. Paul didn’t look at it that way. If their friend was back, he’d figure out a way to get out of any mess thrown his way. The guy was a freak of nature—in a good way.

“I mean it,” Sofia added.

“Sorry,” Paul muttered. “I’m just anxious to see him. Help him if he needs it.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything.

They finally reached a point where the end of the woods was visible, and all of them saw it at once. A person with a body slung over his or her shoulders, stumbling at the last line of trees. Even as Paul watched, whoever it was fell down and out of his view. For the first time, he could focus on the scene beyond. And it was like a scene out of an old war movie.

Dust-choked air. Bodies littering the ground, many moving sluggishly to get up, some not moving at all. Countless chunks of rock and wood strewn about the grassy fields. And past all of that, the closest edge barely in sight, was a big pile of ruins and rubble. Paul had been here before so he knew what it was—Mistress Jane’s castle, completely destroyed.

Sofia broke into a run, her feet crashing through the weeds and twigs of the forest floor. Before Paul could follow her, she stopped like she’d seen a big snake. Then she was yelling.

“It’s Tick and Sato!”

Tick’s head felt like the end of a stubborn nail that refused to go into the wood straight. Like a hammer had pounded on it, bent it, yanked it straight, then pounded it all over again. He was barely aware of someone picking him up, then later falling again. He tried opening his eyes, but the light was like a sunburst right in front of him, stabbing and making the ache in his skull even worse.

Now he lay face-first on a ground that was prickly with twigs and pine straw. He groaned a couple of times to make sure whoever had tried to help him knew he wasn’t dead, but even the sound of that went off in his head like clanging church bells. A sudden burst of nausea filled his gut.

Please don’t throw up,
he thought to himself.
Oh, please don’t throw up.

He heard noises then, shouts and the cricking and cracking of footsteps. It all became a painful blur to him, and he figured it didn’t matter much anymore. He hurt, and that was that.

Someone rolled him onto his back, and that was the last straw. He jolted to his elbows and threw up to the side. When he finished, he flopped back flat to the ground and grimaced as a fresh wave of agony punched its way through his skull and down his spine.

“Tick?” said a soft voice. A girl. It took him a few seconds to recognize Sofia’s voice, and his heart lifted. “Tick, are you okay?”

He wanted to tease her that she’d just asked him the dumbest question in history, but he figured that raising his voice—even talking at all—would hurt too much. So instead he mumbled something. Not even a real word, just an acknowledgment that he’d heard her. He still refused to open his eyes, terrified of the light.

He heard a crunch of ground covering right next to him and figured someone had knelt there.

“Master Atticus?” That was definitely George, and his heart lifted a little more. “Goodness gracious me, boy. What on earth has happened here?”

“Yeah, man. Quit napping down there and talk to us.”

Paul. The relief inside Tick was swelling more by the second. At least his friends were safe, and he wasn’t dead. Things could’ve been a lot worse.

“Really, Paul?” Sofia said. “Even now you have to be sarcastic? Look at that nasty gash on his head. We’re lucky he didn’t bleed out.”

“I’m sure he wanted to hear that,” Paul muttered back.

“Sato, what happened?” Master George asked.

Sato too?
Tick thought. This was too good to be true. Maybe he was having one of those dreams where you see all your friends and loved ones before you died. That thought jolted him back to reality.

He sat up, the pain like strikes of lightning in his head. “My family. My mom. Lisa. Where . . .”

The pain and nausea were too much. He passed out again.

Lisa was starting to accept the fact that she was about to die.

It surprised her how easily the realization came. Although she felt a terrible sadness, it wasn’t really about death itself. It was more about not seeing her dad and Kayla and Tick before she went. At least she had her mom.

They’d been silent for so long now. After a couple hours of trying to move the rocks and debris that blocked their exit from the Great Hall, they’d finally given up. Almost nothing would budge, and the one chunk of stone they were able to move was instantly replaced by several more from above. There was no sign of daylight in any of the cracks. What an awful way to die. They’d either starve or suffocate.

With cheerful thoughts like those, she’d resigned herself to sit with her mom, holding each other as they waited for the inevitable.

She was just thinking how stuffy the air had become when she heard a scrabbling sound near the exit, as though an animal was trying to burrow its way through the stack of debris. Then there was a crunching, some cracks, and the hollow scrape of stone against stone. Dust billowed out from the mess as rocks began to shift and collapse. Lisa didn’t know what to think, but refused to let herself feel any hope as she waited to see what was happening.

Finally a huge section of the rubble shifted and slid away, leaving a huge gap, choked with dust. A robed figure appeared, hunched over and filthy. Mistress Jane stepped into the room, the light from the lone torch barely reflecting off her dirty red mask.

Mordell lost every ounce of her usual reserved demeanor. “Master!” she yelled. “Master, you’re alive!”

“For now,” she said in her raw, scratchy voice—it sounded weaker than ever. “Come. We have a lot of work to do.”

Chapter 31