Story Thieves by James Riley
“Krtttlqqqfbapr,” Owen said, trying to work his way through the first syllable of the first word. Weirdly, he felt nothing this time. No warm or cold feeling, just strangely . . . empty.
A sudden chill made Owen shiver, like the entire cave dropped a good twenty degrees in temperature.
“Did it just get colder in here?” Charm asked, glancing at him and rubbing her arms. Great. He hadn’t imagined it.
The next word came out, and the light spell he’d cast earlier flickered, struggling to remain lit. The shadows all around them seemed to grow taller and somehow hungrier.
Well. Things definitely seemed to be taking a very horror-movie-type turn, didn’t they?
Instead of waiting, Owen just shut his eyes, recited the last word, and finished the spell as quickly as he could.
And just like that, his light spell fizzled out, leaving them in complete darkness.
For a second, nothing happened, and Owen and Charm both waited, holding their breath in the dark. Then a pair of sickly green lights lit up the darkness, right about where the First Magician’s skull had been.
“Finally,” Charm said.
“So, so bad,” Owen whispered.
The light in the skeleton’s eyes expanded, flooding that sickly green shade out to surround the First Magician’s bones. The light wrapped itself around the body, then faded into ripped skin, fading organs, and other unpleasant things.
“Um, Mr. First Magician sir?” Owen squeaked, his voice somewhere at the bottom of his pants.
The green eyes didn’t respond.
“Oh, Kiel,” Charm said quietly. “Please don’t tell me you just made him a zombie.” Owen noticed that the green light reflected off her ray guns, which she’d pointed at the former skeleton.
Green Eyes shuddered once, then again. Finally, his formerly skeletal arms moved, and he pushed himself to his now flesh-ish feet. The decaying hands pointed somewhere generally in Owen’s direction, and they began to glow green like his eyes.
Then the energy flickered out from his fingers to explode throughout the cave.
“DOWN!” Charm yelled, shoving Owen to the floor. She shot her ray guns at the magician, but the blasts just bounced off that green light and back into the cave.
“What’s he doing?” Owen whispered, his voice hoarse.
Behind them, metal began to creak and moan, almost like a living thing. Voice boxes crackled with static. Rock scraped against robot.
The First Magician’s green eyes turned down and stared directly at the two of them.
“I might have zombified him,” Owen admitted.
“That’s not all,” Charm said, nodding over her shoulder. Owen threw a glance behind them, where all the broken Science Soldiers now had glowing green eyes, at least the ones that still had eyes. Even those without eyes had begun picking themselves up and were shuffling mechanically toward Charm and Owen.
“Okay, great,” Charm said. “Now the robots are zombies too. That’s not even possible. This really went well. Nice job, Kiel.”
“YOU were the one who told me to make him live again!” Owen screamed at her.
Charm started to shout back, then looked up just in time to see the zombie First Magician’s hand light with green fire, then fire that magic directly at them both.
CHAPTER 31
A birthday party. Four candles on the cake. Bethany watched, dreamlike, as a bunch of little kids screamed and yelled, while a woman and a man corraled them all toward the table.
In front of the cake sat a little girl with bronze-colored hair, wearing a bright-blue dress and a huge smile.
“Daddy, watch!” she shouted, bending her head over the cake.
Then she pitched face-first straight into it, sending frosting, candles, and cake flying everywhere.
The man laughed, long and loudly as the girl in the blue dress pulled her head out of the cake and laughed too, wiping the frosting off her face with both hands, then shoving those hands into her mouth.
“That’s not how we eat cake!” the woman said, but smiled in spite of herself. “What about the other kids?”
“You heard her, kids!” the man said. “Go for it!”
One by one, the kids shoved their faces into the cake, taking away mouthfuls as they retreated for the next kid in line to have a turn. Cake and frosting ended up on every surface in the dining room, while the girl in the blue dress clapped her hands loudly. “I love my party!” she shouted.
Bethany walked through the room unnoticed, no one touching her, even as the kids ran around her, mere inches away. It was as if she weren’t there at all, a presence that no one could see or touch.
She squatted in front of the girl in the blue dress.
“I’m Bethany,” Bethany said to the girl, everything feeling unreal and foggy. “What’s your name?”
“Bethany?” said the man, and Bethany turned. As did the girl in the blue dress.
The man held up a pile of wrapped gifts. “Who’s ready to open some presents?”
“PRESENTS!” the girl in the blue dress yelled, and ran past Bethany toward the living room.
“Get them out of here,” the woman told the man. “I’ll . . . well, I was going to say clean up, but I think we’re past that now.”
“This should distract them for a little while at least,” the man said, carrying the presents into the other room.
“No,” Bethany whispered, but wasn’t sure exactly why. What was this? Why did it seem so familiar?
“You know how this story goes, Bethany,” said a deep male voice, a voice she recognized. Bethany looked around, but she was alone now, apart from the woman. The man and all the kids had left to open presents in the other room.
“I don’t,” Bethany said, fighting to clear her head. “Who are you? Where . . . where is this?”
“This is your home,” the voice said. “You are living out the story of your life. A mistake was made here, a mistake that will haunt you for years to come.”
“I’ll . . . I’ll change it,” Bethany said, and took a step toward the living room, not knowing what the mistake was, but feeling like that’s where she ought to be. “I’ll fix things. Whatever went wrong, I’ll make it right.”
“Will you?” the voice asked, and suddenly Bethany froze, unable to move. She struggled against whatever invisible bonds held her, but they tightened even more in response.
From the other room the girl in the blue dress yelled in surprise and happiness. All the other kids shouted too. Something about a gift.
“This is your life, Bethany,” said the deep voice. “Yet you are not in control here. You have no power. Your life happens here, now, at my will, and you have no power to change it.”
“No,” Bethany whispered, and something in her mind screamed that she’d been here before, seen all of this. Years and years ago . . . The memory was so hazy, though. Why couldn’t she think?
“What is it?” the man in the other room asked.
“A book!” shouted the girl in the blue dress.
The woman in the dining room next to Bethany froze in place, then dropped the plates she was holding back to the table. “No,” she whispered, just like Bethany had.
“How does this feel, Bethany?” asked the deep voice. Time seemed to slow down as Bethany watched the woman start to run to the other room, her mouth open like she was screaming something.
And then Bethany was moving with her, too slowly to do anything, too slowly to change anything, just fast enough to reach the doorway to the living room at the exact same point as the woman, as her mother. . . .
The empty living room. Empty but for a few wrapped gifts, a couple of toys, and a book lying open on the couch right in the middle of everything.
“NO!” her mother screamed, and she ran for the book, time speeding up again.
“NO!” Bethany screamed as well. “Not again! This isn’t happening again!”
“Come back!” her mother screamed at the book, her voice breaking. She scr
As her mother screamed, Bethany turned away, unable to watch and more angry than she’d ever felt in her life. “Why are you showing me this?” she shouted at the voice. “Why are you torturing me?!”
“You have to see how it feels to live a life out of your control,” the voice told her. “A life that chooses for you. A story controlled by another, putting you through horrible things for the entertainment of others. This is what you would have for me, and for my people. Do you see now, Bethany?”
“This is some sort of lesson?” Bethany shouted as her mother fell to the couch, sobbing, the book clutched to her chest. “You put me through this just to make a point? How could you!”
“Perhaps I did,” said the voice. “But the lesson isn’t over.”
Abruptly, a tiny hand reached out of the book.
Bethany’s mother shouted in surprise and grabbed the hand, pulling it and the body that followed out of the book. It was one of the children from the party, with another following right behind. Another, then another child climbed from the book, some crying, some seemingly happy.
Finally, the girl in the blue dress climbed out, a huge grin on her face. “Did you see, Mommy?” the girl asked excitedly. “Did you see what I did?”
“Where is your father, Bethany?” her mother yelled, holding the girl tightly by the shoulders. “Please, tell me where he is!”
“Perhaps stories might still be changed,” said the voice of the Magister, “when writers are no longer in control of them.”
The little girl’s face grew determined, and she leaned back into the book, her arm completely disappearing, only to grunt and pull back out.
And holding her hand tightly was a man’s hand, a hand that then grabbed the edge of the book and pulled. And there, just moments later, stood her father.
Her mother cried out, grabbing the man and hugging him tightly.
“Let’s not give her any more books for now,” her father said, and hugged little Bethany and her mother closely.
CHAPTER 32
Charm’s robot arm slammed Owen backward, smacking him against the wall as the First Magician’s green magic bolt exploded right in the spot Owen had been lying. “We’re in a little trouble here!” Charm shouted, tossing a ray gun at him. “No more magic, just shoot them!”
The First Magician aimed green magic at both of them, and Owen ducked as Charm took a hit in her robotic arm. The arm shuddered, then turned on Charm and began to clutch at her throat, as if it had a mind of its own.
Charm shouted in surprise, then shot her arm off at her elbow, letting it fall to the ground. The robotic arm hit hard but kept coming, clawing and scraping its way at her until Charm shot it over and over with her ray gun.
This is a horror book. What had changed? There’d never been any horror in Kiel Gnomenfoot, but now it was coming out of the walls! Was this meant to happen in the story, or was it because Owen had done something different than Kiel would have?
If Bethany was okay and he lived through all of this, he’d gladly sit for hours while she told him how stupid he’d been, and how right she was about everything. Hours.
A moaning Science Soldier zombie grabbed for him, and he yanked away, firing his ray gun at the creature. Holes exploded in the robot’s chest, but it didn’t stop coming until Charm dropped a computer monitor on its head.
“Watch out!” he shouted at her as the First Magician turned to them again. Owen aimed his ray gun at the zombie, but Charm pushed the gun off course before he could fire.
“Don’t kill him! We need to know where the last key is!”
“I don’t care!” Owen shouted at her. “That almost got us killed in the Original Computer, and it’s definitely going to kill us here!”
Charm just stared at him. “Wait. It’s the same trap. The same one, Kiel! Someone set these up to protect the Seventh Key. The viruses were the science version, and this is the magic version!”
“So?”
“Magic saved us last time, so maybe science will work here.” She felt around in her pocket and pulled out a tiny field medical pack, then tensed, like she was looking for an opening to move.
“What are you doing ?” Owen shouted at her, shooting his ray gun at the robot zombies behind her.
“Fixing this,” Charm said, pulling open the med pack with her teeth and shaking something out into her remaining hand.
The zombie blasted green magic at them, and this time Owen couldn’t move fast enough. The blast hit the spell book under his arm, and the book began to shudder and shake. He quickly dropped it to the ground, where it began to drool and slobber, using its cover to drag itself over toward Charm.
“AAH!” he shouted, shooting the spell book over and over until it stopped.
Well. That was it for any more spells, then.
“I’m going,” Charm said, jumping past him and the now-dead spell book, weaving in and out so the First Magician zombie couldn’t get a fix on her. “Cover me!”
Owen just gritted his teeth, his eyes everywhere at once. The zombie robots were about to overwhelm him from behind, but every time he tried to shoot them, the First Magician almost zombified him. And now Charm was actually running straight at the undead creature? With a first aid pack?
The First Magician raised his hands together, forming an enormous ball of the same green magic just as Charm reached him. “Hope this works,” she muttered, then smacked the item from the med kit right into the zombie’s chest. It stuck there, a white square of plastic with a big red button on its front. Charm slammed her hand on the button, then jumped away.
Thousands of volts of electricity jolted into the zombie’s chest, and the green ball of magic went careening off into the back of the cave somewhere. The First Magician toppled over, still shaking and shuddering, while Charm just grabbed her ray gun with her now-free hand and aimed it at him warily.
The shaking stopped, and the magician didn’t move again.
“I thought you said not to kill him!” Owen shouted at her, finally able to turn his attention to the shambling robotic zombie horde shuffling toward them. For every robot he shot, two more zombies rose from the ground, replacing their fallen comrade.
Charm kicked the First Magician. “Huh. Thought that’d work.”
“Work? Shooting him full of electricity?”
Charm stared to reply, then leaped backward with ray gun raised as the First Magician began to cough, then slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position. “Ah,” he said in a dusty and rarely used voice. “Guests!”
“Shoot him, he’s awake!” Owen shouted, and turned his ray gun on the First Magician.
“Don’t!” Charm shouted. “He’s going to be okay. I restarted his heart.”
“You what?!”
“Ah, the robots,” the First Magician said with a frown. “I’d forgotten about them. I never did like robots much. What say we do away with them?” He gestured, and green magical energy swept out, playing like lightning through each of the zombie Science Soldiers. As the magic touched them, the robots immediately dropped to the ground, unmoving.
Owen looked at Charm, who grinned for maybe the first time ever. “Science wins again,” she said.
“Excuse me for a moment,” the First Magician said, waving his hand over himself. “I just want to tidy up a bit.” A long white coat grew out from his clothes like a living thing, covering his tattered outfit and decaying skin. Glasses pushed up from his face, and sensible brown shoes from his feet, along with a pair of brown pants. All in all, he looked like nothing more than—
“A scientist?” Owen blurted out.
The First Magician raised an eyebrow. “Well, of course I was. Once. But that’s not important right now. You’re probably here to ask me about the Seventh Key, I would suppose?”
“I’m Charm Mentum of Quanterium, and this is Kiel Gnomenfoot of Magisteria,?
The zombie nodded. “Ah, I can see why you would need the Seventh Key, then. Are the two planets still really at war? Seems like yesterday we invented magic, left Quanterium, and formed Magisteria, just to stave off that kind of problem.”
“Invent magic?” Charm asked.
“Form a planet?” Owen said.
The First Magician started to say something, then seemed to almost faint. He grabbed for the circuit-covered throne, while Owen rushed forward to help him. “I don’t have much time,” the zombie said. “I used the science in this cave to keep my body preserved, in the hopes that someone would come along and use the throne’s circuitry to reanimate me.” He looked from Owen to Charm. “I suppose you two found a different way.”
“Kiel’s fault,” Charm said. Kiel gave her an indignant glare.
“But I think we’ve reached even the limits of science,” the Magician continued. “This body is just too old. As for the key, I must pass my secret along before I sleep once more, if the danger is so great. Everything was arranged to ensure that neither Quanterian nor Magisterian could ever find all seven keys without the other’s help.” He smiled gently at Charm and Owen. “You two seem to be exactly what I’d hoped for.”
Charm snorted. Owen just shook his head. The First Magician probably wouldn’t be thrilled to learn that one of them wasn’t a magic-user so much as a kid from the real world who’d been magically disguised to look like one.
“The Seventh Key doesn’t actually exist, not anymore,” the Magician said, then keeled over in pain. When Charm tried to help him, he shook his head. “We destroyed it after locking the vault. But it can be re-created. The magic of the vault ensures that only a person with a truly selfless intent may open it, and that’s where the final key comes in. Re-forming the key requires a heart that wishes to open the door for others, not for him or herself.”