Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

Chapter 16

Now, I would like to make it clear that violence is rarely the best solution to problems.

For instance, the next time you get attacked by a group of angry ninjas, one solution would be to kick the lead ninja, steal his katana, and proceed to slay the rest of the group in an awesome display of authorial fury. While this might be fulfilling—and a little bit fun—it would also be rather messy, and would earn you the ire of an entire ninja clan. They’d send assassins after you for the rest of your life. (Having to fight off a ninja in the middle of a date can be quite embarrassing.)

So instead of fighting, you could bribe the ninjas with soy sauce, and then send them to attack your siblings instead. That way you can get rid of some unwanted soy sauce. See how easy it is to avoid violence?

Now, there are some occasions when violence is appropriate. Usually those are occasions when you want to beat the tar out of somebody. Unfortunately, “somebody” at this moment happened to be me. Folsom’s punch was completely unexpected, and it hit me full in the face.

Right then I realized something quite interesting: That was the first time I’d ever been punched. It was a special moment for me. I’d say it was a little like being kicked, only with more knuckles and a hint of lemon.

Maybe the lemon part was just my brain short-circuiting as I was tossed backward onto the chamber’s glass floor. The blow left me dazed, and by the time I finally shook myself out of it, the scene in front of me was one of total chaos.

The soldiers were trying to subdue Folsom. They didn’t want to hurt him, as he was a nobleman; they were forced to try to grab him and hold him down. It wasn’t working very well. Folsom fought with a strange mixture of terrified lack of control and calculated precision. He was like a puppet with its strings being pulled by a kung fu master. Or maybe vice versa. A trite melody played in the background—my theme music, apparently.

Folsom moved among the soldiers in a blur of awkward (yet somehow well-placed) kicks, punches, and head-butts. He’d already knocked down a good ten soldiers, and the other ten weren’t doing much better.

“It’s so exciting!” the prince said. “I hope somebody is taking notes! Why didn’t I bring any of my scribes? I should send for some!” Rikers stood a short distance from the center of the fight.

Please punch him, I thought, standing up on shaky knees. Just a little bit.

But it wasn’t to be—Folsom was focused on the soldiers. Himalaya was calling for the soldiers to try to get their hands over Folsom’s ears. Where was Bastille? She should have come running at the sounds of the fight.

“The Alcatraz Smedry Theme” continued to play its peppy little melody, coming from somewhere near the prince. “Prince Rikers!” I yelled. “The book! Where is it? We have to close it!”

“Oh, what?” He turned. “Um, I think I dropped it when the fight started.”

He was standing near a pile of unsorted books. I cursed, scrambling toward the pile. If we could stop the music, Folsom would stop dancing.

At that moment the battle shifted in my direction. Folsom—his eyes wild and wide with worry—spun through a group of soldiers, throwing four of them into the air.

I stood facing him. I didn’t think he’d do me any serious harm. I mean, Smedry Talents are unpredictable, but they rarely hurt people too badly.

Except … hadn’t I used my own Talent to break some arms and cause monsters to topple to their deaths?

Crud, I thought. Folsom raised his fist and prepared to punch directly at my face.

And my Talent engaged.

One of the odd things about Smedry Talents, mine in particular, is how they sometimes operate proactively. Mine breaks weapons at a distance if someone tries to kill me.

In this case, something dark and wild seemed to rip from me. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it snapping toward Folsom. His eyes opened wide and he tripped, his graceful martial-arts power failing him for a brief moment. It was as if he’d suddenly lost his Talent.

He toppled to the ground before me. At that instant, a book in the pile beside me exploded, throwing up scraps of paper and glass. The music stopped.

Folsom groaned. The trip left him kneeling right in front of me, confettilike scraps of paper falling around us. The beast within me quieted, pulling back inside, and all fell still.

When I’d been young, I’d thought of my Talent as a curse. Now I’d begun thinking of it as a kind of wild super power. This was the first time, however, that I thought of it as something foreign inside me.

Something alive.

“That was incredible!” said one of the soldiers. I looked up and saw the soldiers regarding me with awe. Himalaya seemed stunned. The prince stood with his arms folded, smiling in contentment at finally getting to witness a battle.

“I saw it,” one of the soldiers whispered, “like a wave of power, pulsing out of you, Lord Smedry. It stopped even another Talent.”

It felt good to be admired. It made me feel like a leader. Like a hero. “See to your friends,” I said, pointing at the fallen soldiers. “Give me a report on the wounded.” I reached down, helping Folsom to his feet.

He looked at his shoes in shame, as Himalaya walked over to comfort him. “Well, I give myself nine out of ten points for being an idiot,” he said. “I can’t believe I let that happen. I should be able to control it!”

“I know how hard it is,” I said. “Trust me. It wasn’t your fault.”

Prince Rikers walked over to join us, his blue robes swishing. “That was wonderful,” he said. “Though it’s kind of sad how the book turned out.”

“I’m heartbroken,” I said flatly, glancing about for Bastille. Where was she?

“Oh, it’s all right,” Rikers said, reaching into his pocket. “They have the sequel here too!” He pulled out a book and moved to open the cover.

“Don’t you dare!” I snapped, grabbing his arm.

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, probably a bad idea.” He glanced at my grip on his arm. “You know, you remind me a lot of my sister. I thought you’d be a little less uptight.”

“I’m not uptight,” I snapped. “I’m annoyed. There’s a difference. Himalaya, how’s the sorting going?”

“Uh, maybe halfway done,” she said. Indeed, the mountains of books were quickly becoming large stacks, like walls. A much smaller stack was particularly interesting to me—it contained books in the Forgotten Language.

There were only four so far, but it was amazing to me that we’d managed to find them among all the other books. I walked over to the stack, fishing in my jacket pocket for my pair of Translator’s Lenses.

I swapped them on in place of my Oculator’s Lenses. I almost forgot that I was wearing those. They were starting to feel natural to me, I guess. With the Translator’s Lenses on, I could read the titles of the books.

One appeared to be some kind of philosophical work on the nature of laws and justice. Interesting, but I couldn’t see it being important enough for my mother to risk so much in order to get.

The other three books were unimpressive. A manual on building chariots, a ledger talking about the number of chickens a particular merchant traded in Athens, and a cookbook. (Hey, I guess even ancient, all-powerful lost societies needed help baking cookies.)

I checked with the soldiers and was relieved to find that none of them were seriously wounded. Folsom had knocked out no fewer than six, and some others had broken several limbs. The wounded left for the infirmary and the others returned to helping Himalaya. None of them had seen Bastille.

I wandered through what was quickly becoming a maze of enormous book stacks. Maybe Bastille was looking for signs of the diggers breaking into the room. The scraping sounds had been coming from the southeast corner, but when I neared I couldn’t hear them anymore. Had my mother realized we were on to her? With that sound gone, I could hear something else.

Whispering.

Curious and a little creeped out, I walked in the direction of the sound. I turned a corner around a wall of books, and found a little dead-end hollow in the maze.

Bastille lay there, curled up on the cold glass floor, whispering to herself and shivering. I cursed, rushing over to kneel beside her. “Bastille?”

She curled up a little bit further. Her Warrior’s Lenses were off, clutched in her hand. I could see a haunted cast to her eyes. A sense of loss, of sorrow, of having had something deep and tender ripped from her, never to be returned.

I felt powerless. Had she been hurt? She shivered and moved, then looked up at me, her eyes focusing. She seemed to realize for the first time that I was there.

She immediately pushed away from me and sat up. Then she sighed and wrapped her arms around her knees, bowing her head between them. “Why is it that you always see me like this?” she asked quietly. “I’m strong, I really am.”

“I know you are,” I said, feeling awkward and embarrassed.

We remained like that for a time, Bastille unresponsive, me feeling like a complete idiot, even though I wasn’t sure what I’d done wrong. (Note to all the young men reading this: Get used to that.)

“So…” I said. “Er … you’re still having trouble with that severing thing?”

She looked up, eyes red like they’d been scratched with sandpaper. “It’s like…” she said in a quiet voice. “It’s like I used to have memories. Fond ones of places I loved, of people I knew. Only now they’re gone. I can feel the place where they were, and it’s a hole ripped open inside of me.”

“The Mindstone is that important?” I asked. It was a dumb thing to say, but I felt I should say something.

“It connects all of the Knights of Crystallia,” she whispered. “It strengthens us, gives us comfort. By it, we all share a measure of who we are.”

“I should have shattered the swords of those idiots who did this to you,” I growled.

Bastille shivered, holding her arms close. “I’ll get reconnected eventually, so I should probably tell you not to be so angry. They’re good people and don’t deserve your scorn. But honestly, I’m having trouble feeling sympathy for them right now.” She smiled wanly.

I tried to smile back, but it was hard. “Someone wanted this to happen to you, Bastille. They set you up.”

“Maybe,” Bastille said, sighing. It appeared that her episode was over, though it had left her weakened even further.

“Maybe?” I repeated.

“I don’t know, Smedry,” she said. “Maybe nobody set me up. Maybe I really did just get promoted too quickly, and really did fail on my own. Maybe … maybe there is no grand conspiracy against me.”

“I guess you could be right,” I said.

You, of course, don’t believe that. I mean, when is there not some grand conspiracy? This entire series is about a secret cult of evil Librarians who rule the world, for the Sands’ sake.

“Alcatraz?” a voice called. Sing wandered around the corner a moment later. “Himalaya found another book in the Forgotten Language. Figured you would want to look at it.”

I glanced at Bastille; she waved me away. “What, you think I need to be babied?” she snapped. “Go. I’ll be there in a moment.”

I hesitated, but followed Sing around a few walls of books to the center of the room. The prince sat, looking bored, on what appeared to be a throne made of books. (I’m still not sure who he got to make it for him.) Folsom was directing the moving of stacks; Himalaya was still sorting, with no sign of slowing down.

Sing handed me the book. Like all of the others in the Forgotten Language, the text on it looked like crazy scribbles. Before he had died, Alcatraz the First—my ultimate ancestor—had used the Talent to break the language of his people so that nobody could read it.

Nobody except for someone with a pair of Translator’s Lenses. I put mine on and flipped to the first page, hoping it wasn’t another cookbook.

Observations on the Talents of the Smedry people, the title page read, and an explanation of what led up to their fall. As written by Fenilious K. Wandersnag, scribe to His Majesty Alcatraz Smedry.

I blinked, then read the words again.

“Guys?” I said, turning. “Guys!”

The group of soldiers hesitated, and Himalaya glanced toward me. I held the book up.

“I think we just found what we’ve been looking for.”