The Brothers Locke, page 23
The triplets came together momentarily. In response, the Bascelics circled them, one flying in the air while the other two closed in from the left and right. They weren’t very fast creatures, their wings and clawed feet making their movements clunky and stiff. Avoiding them was easy but also pushed the brothers farther away from their friends.
“Von Strauss is at the Spire with the Key,” signed Sharp.
“Right, and everyone else is occupied. We have to stop him from opening the Spire,” Mouth said.
“We have to get that key away from him, brothers,” Echo added with a sense of panic. “I don’t know what this is I’m hearing but … they’re saying … oh no!”
“What is it, Echo? You know I don’t like riddles,” said Mouth.
“I don’t know. I can’t tell exactly, but there are voices from that thing. Whispers. Panicked, angry whispers. He can’t use that key. He has no idea what he’s doing.”
“What is he talking about?” Sharp signed to Mouth.
“I don’t know. We don’t have time to figure it out.”
“Trust me, for more than just Dana’s sake, he cannot open that thing!” Echo warned them.
Mouth saw one option open to them. They could easily avoid the Bascelics and make a run for the Spire. There was a clear path between them and Von Strauss, who was still trying to recover his eyesight. It was now or never.
“Head straight, Echo,” Mouth told his brother.
Mouth started off first, blowing past the Bascelics and into the open space of the valley beyond. Sharp and Echo followed, which confused the Bascelics momentarily. They screeched to one another and then chased after the brothers.
Mongrel had nearly caught up to Dana. For such a large creature its speed was uncanny. As it closed in on her, it raised one of its arms and swung downward. Dana barely avoided the strike, sliding on her heels and changing direction as the fist slammed into the ground. An odd sound rang out from beneath them, a noise comprised of a shriek and the sour note of an poorly tuned piano. Mongrel puzzled at the spot where it had struck, the ground depressed and then quickly reforming as the web of lines beneath the surface converged and repaired the earth.
“Dana, this way!” Kale shouted out to her.
Dana saw her companions and ran in their direction. Kale and Jocelyn, now completely exhausted, had given up running. Kale was bent over with his hands on his knees nearly hyperventilating.
“Where are the brothers?” Dana asked once she reached them.
“They were distracting the Bascelics,” Jocelyn explained.
“Bulk is fighting Bando over there somewhere,” Kale added, waving his hand in some random direction to his left but not looking to see if that’s actually where the two mercenaries were. “I just need a minute.”
Jocelyn looked beyond Dana and Kale to find Mongrel. The monster was preoccupied with something in the ground and had given up its pursuit for the time being.
“I don’t know what it’s doing, but it stopped chasing us for now,” Jocelyn said.
Dana knew they couldn’t delay, “We need to move.”
“Okay, more running. Okay, I can do it,” Kale said, completely out of breath.
“And we have to stop Von Strauss from opening the Spire. We’re ending this now. Are you two up for it? You look exhausted.”
Kale sucked in a breath, let it out with a laugh, and stood up straight. “Dana,” he said, “we’ve come this far. We can go a little more, even if my lungs burst.”
Dana smiled and patted him on the back.
“Thanks for coming back for me despite everything,” she said.
“Don’t thank us,” Jocelyn responded. “Thank the brothers. Thank Sharp.”
By this time, Von Strauss had regained much of his eyesight and was about the task of inserting the Key into its slot at the bottom of the Spire. There was a pressure there, stronger than he had felt before, as though some force was trying to push him down and away from the lock. It didn’t matter. Better to face the forces that were against him here than go back to Shallowhale and face the wrath of his master. A second effort was needed, and a third, and a fourth, but on the fifth, he managed to get the Key into the slot. Now just to turn it.
“Come on,” he muttered as he strained to make the Key turn.
“Hey!” a voice came from behind him.
Von Strauss turned immediately only to see Mouth and Echo charging towards him at full speed. They tackled the slender man, shaking the Key loose from the slot in the process. It clattered against the hard ground.
“Sharp! Get the Key!” Mouth called to his brother.
Only a few paces behind his brothers, Sharp had a clear path to the Key. He reached for it but had his arm wrenched in the opposite direction by the talons of the flying Bascelics. He wrestled to free his himself from the creature, but it was too strong. The other two were closing in quickly on his position. There was nothing he could do.
“Get off of me!” shouted Von Strauss. He pushed Echo and Mouth aside and scrambled towards the Key. It was not as easy as he had hoped. The brothers were immediately on his back, grabbing at his arms to restrain him. Von Strauss went to reach for his weapon, but the brothers were so voracious in their attack on him that it was impossible. Their struggle pushed Von Strauss back a few feet, so much so that his heel slid and knocked the Key into the air some ten feet away from the platform.
“Bulk! The Key!” Mouth shouted.
Bulk and Bando were still engaged in their own battle but not so much so that Bulk didn’t hear the boy. He looked to his left to see the Key skitter across the ground in his direction. Bando took this chance to land a significant blow to the side of Bulk’s head, knocking the leader of Solas down to the ground.
“Stay down, Bulk,” he said.
Now it was Bando who had an opportunity. He took the Key up in his hand and held it high like a fisherman who had made his largest catch ever. Bloodied and bruised, he turned to his former friend to gloat but was met with a punch to the face. It was hard enough to water his eyes, sting his nose and, more importantly, drop the Key.
Bulk went to snag the prize, but Bando kicked him in his bad leg as he knelt down. Shouting and cursing in pain, Bulk rolled on his side, clutching at his leg. The pain was too much. He couldn’t move. He cursed Bando for being too good at his job, perhaps even better than he was. Bulk wanted to reach out again and stop the giant from claiming the Key, but every time he let go of his leg the pain would come roaring back, causing him to recoil.
“I told you to let this go, Bulk. You don’t understand what is about to happen here,” Bando gloated.
“But I do,” came Dana’s voice.
Dana had found her way back to the Spire, the last place she wanted to be. The monolith gave her a sense of unease. Her stomach turned in knots, and her heart stiffened just being near it.
That all dissolved as she stood face to face with her abductor. This she understood. A fight. When they worked with the zealots in Icagoro, she always had the best of him in any kind of sparring contest. She suspected that he had been holding back at the time, and she wouldn’t be so fortunate now. Or would she? This wasn’t practice; it was as real as it got, and she would find out one way or another how good a mercenary she really was.
“I thought you had given up fighting this, Dana. You must feel it now. Can’t you hear it calling out? The Spire is ready for you,” Bando sermonized.
“I don’t care what it wants or what you want. What I want right now, after all this time of listening to you talk, is a fight.”
The two mercs circled one another; Bando with his hands balled into a fist, Dana with hers at her sides, fingers twitching and jaw clenched. Each looked at the other to spot any weaknesses, a hitch in their steps, a shift in a muscle, how the other breathed, all in preparation for combat.
Bando smirked and then lunged forward at Dana. He had either forgotten how quick she was or assumed she was worn down from the journey, but she easily dodged his attack and fired off a few punches to his back. The hits annoyed him more than anything else. Lazily, he reassumed his fighting stance and tried again, and again there was the same result.
“You’re tired and a lot more hurt than you let on,” Dana said.
With a grunt, Bando launched himself again. This time he stopped just short of reaching Dana. She tried to dodge him in the same way she had before and didn’t realize her mistake. This time he caught her. Everything became a blur as he whipped her into the air and violently threw her to the ground. There was that sound again; the same one she heard when Mongrel had pounded the ground before.
“And you are sloppy,” Bando gloated. “Not to mention predictable.”
Dana spat out a wad of blood and sprung back to her feet. Bulk Brown had managed to stand now, eager to help. Dana gave him a dismissive look, waving at him to back away. This was her fight.
“Ready?” Bando smiled.
“Always,” Dana answered.
The two exchanged a flurry of punches, kicks, holds, and counter holds. There was a rough beauty to their fight. It wasn’t choreographed to be stylish, but it wasn’t a brawl. The story of the giant and the heroine played out in this battle, not through words but in the force of their kicks and the fury of their punches.
As well as she was doing, Bando was getting the upper hand. Dana had left herself open when trying to swing at his head. With her side exposed, he forced his enormous boot into her ribcage, making her wince in pain. Seeing his advantage, Bando swung twice more now with his fists, drawing another stream of blood from Dana’s mouth.
“Stop it!” Jocelyn called out.
“Don’t worry. You’re next on my list,” Bando spat at the girl.
It was all the distraction that Dana needed.
From the ground, Dana leaned back on her shoulders, pressed her hands behind her head, and lifted both of her feet upwards into Bando’s arm. The Key sprang free, again flying high into the air. The giant shouted as he realized what had happened. The next sight he saw was the butt end of his own rifle that he had dropped earlier. Dana smashed it into his forehead twice more until the giant fell to the ground unconscious.
“Thanks,” Dana said to Jocelyn.
Jocelyn went to help Bulk Brown who was having a hard time walking. His leg was useless at this point, which made him no more than a spectator. How he had managed to get to the Spire in the first place was a question Kale and Jocelyn wanted to ask him, but that would have to wait for another time. The brothers were still tangled up with Von Strauss and the Bascelics. Now they were in trouble and in need of rescue.
“Here you go,” Kale said to Dana, picking up the Key and handing it to her.
“I don’t want to touch that thing,” she said.
Kale closed his fist around the Key, and its glimmer diminished as he did so. The group’s focus was now on helping the brothers and then somehow finding their way out of this place. The low hum they had been hearing the entire time they were in this valley was intensifying. All of them noticed it, and none of them wanted to guess why it was getting louder.
“Look out!” Jocelyn shrieked.
Mongrel, no longer spellbound by the changing ground, was rampaging towards them. Kale was not quick enough. There was the sound of a loud grunt, and then everything went black as he beast plowed into him. The Key of the Spire once again flew loose in the valley, landing in the worst possible spot it could have, beneath the monster.
Bulk, Dana, and Jocelyn could only stare at the object as Mongrel hovered over it with its hulking, gorilla-like posture. It roared ferociously as it beat its fists into the ground, again causing the earth beneath it to react. The ground shifted and reformed with each pounding blow. There was no way to get to the Key while it was beneath the behemoth.
“Someone’s got to get that thing away from the Key!” shouted Bulk.
Sharp was the closest, having fended off the Bascelics for the time being. He turned to the beast, took one look at Dana and smiled, and without a moment of thought to his own safety, headed towards the monster.
“Sharp! Stop!” Dana cried out.
It was too late. Sharp was athletic and skillful, but the monster was deadly, and the teenage boy could do little against it. Everyone watched with gaping mouths and stunned looks in the seconds it took for Sharp to reach Mongrel and the Key.
The monster heard him coming. They had played this game before, and Sharp knew exactly what to do. Much like the encounter at Pharracrop, he would outsmart it. He just had to be quick.
Mongrel swiped at the boy, but Sharp dropped into a slide, passing right underneath the massive limb and between the beast’s legs. In one smooth motion, he grabbed the Key, continued his glide past the monster, and rolled away before Mongrel realized what had happened.
“He got it. I can’t believe he got it,” said Bulk.
It wasn’t over. Mongrel would not be outclassed by this kid again. It huffed and twisted its body around. Sharp had not thought this part through. He took a solid punch from the monster square in the chest, which rocketed him ten feet across the field. Miraculously, he held on to the Key.
Bulk and Dana went to his aid, but the monster kept them away. It had its prey and would not be denied this time. As it approached a crumpled Sharp, it raised both of its arms in the air and clenched both fists into a hammer, intending to squash the boy into jelly.
“LEAVE HIM ALONE!”
The words shot through the valley like a bullet, focused and straight, aimed squarely at Mongrel. Mouth had done what he had sworn never to do since he hurt his father with his power. His scream, so strong that it could burst the eardrums of anyone who was too close, struck Mongrel like a weaponized soundwave. The monster flipped twice in the air, pieces of its unnatural body falling to the ground in heaps until it landed with a resounding thud.
Sharp was still down and not moving. While the scream had saved Sharp, it had weakened Mouth to the point that he collapsed. The strain was so much that bruises had formed along his throat.
Bulk and Dana were the only ones left standing. Kale was being tended to by Jocelyn, Mouth by Echo, and Sharp laid motionless on the ground.
Before they could get close to him, a shot rang out. The bullet nearly hit them, but it was just meant to get their attention.
“You are only alive because I need her alive,” Von Strauss said.
He walked with purpose towards the fallen teen, his aim still trained on Bulk Brown. With no other options, Dana and Bulk lifted their hands in surrender as Von Strauss confiscated the Key from Sharp’s limp hand and pocketed it.
“This ends now. If you want your friends to survive, you will do as I say, Dana. I will play no more games with you and these children. Fail to do what I say from here on and they will pay the consequences, are we clear?”
Von Strauss moved the gun’s target from Bulk down to the unconscious Sharp, suggesting that if she didn’t do what he said, he’d shoot the boy right here and now.
Dana looked at her friends, the teenagers all fallen and in pain. It was a miracle that they were still alive to begin with. They had done their best, pushed as hard as they could, but this was the end. For a minute she had hope, but realistically how else could this have ended?
Her saddened eyes turned to Bulk, who nodded to her reluctantly that there were no other options. She had to do what Von Strauss said. It was either that or watch her friends die and do what Von Strauss wanted anyway.
With a deep exhale, Dana lowered her hands. “Let’s get this over with.”
***
What a strange sky, Mouth thought as he looked upwards at the mountainous creation that was the Spire. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the top of this four sided pyramid emitted a steady stream of colors flowing in all directions. Mixed ribbons of blues and reds, greens and yellows, ambers and golds, and colors he knew no words for flowed effortlessly in the atmosphere far above them. They obscured the split sky above — one half in the starry darkness of night, the other in the beaming glow of midday. This truly was the center of the Dea and its opposing halves. It was where everything met and at the same time was split in two. The East and the West, both equal and powerful, fueled this pendulum, and at the same time, it fed the land, its energy pouring not only in the streams of color above but also in the veins beneath the surface.
The magnificence couldn’t hold back Mouth’s sadness. They had failed. It was a good attempt but ultimately a futile one. Mouth turned to his left and right. His brothers were to his left, bound and defeated. Bulk, Jocelyn, and Kale were on his right, their faces downturned.
Bando wanted an audience for this. No one was quite sure why except him. Maybe it was his ego or some mandate he was following from the zealots he was emulating here. This was his greatest achievement in life, and in a few moments the Dea would be made whole again, washing away the filth that had corrupted it and bringing power to those who would be left afterward.
“The Key would not turn before,” Von Strauss told Bando as he presented the bejeweled opener.
“You cannot open it,” the giant said. “She has to do it. Only a Child of the Spire can open the lock.”
“I see,” conceded Von Strauss, feeling somewhat embarrassed at his oversight.
He and Bando stood beneath the base of the Spire with Dana, unbound and morose, between the two. Mongrel and the Bascelics remained behind their kneeled captives to make sure there would be no more interference in the ceremony.
Von Strauss cautiously handed the Key over to Dana. His hands shook, revealing that despite his ambition to complete this ceremony, he was not entirely comfortable with it. Dana saw his trepidation and snatched the item from his hand. She was no longer afraid, just resigned to this fate, one she had spent a lifetime avoiding.
“Open it,” Bando ordered.
The hum of the Spire, which had been growing during this entire ordeal, was suddenly silent. The energies around the base of the structure had subsided. All that could be heard was the quiet whisper of wind flowing through the valley beyond.
