Story Thieves by James Riley
“I think that people do horrible things when they’re frightened,” Bethany said quietly. “And I don’t just mean the people of Quanterium. Go back to your world, Magister. Leave this place in peace, and we can forget any of this ever happened. Literally. We’ll use a forget spell, and you can go back to being a hero, a mentor, a teacher, whatever your world needs. Whatever Kiel needs.”
“Kiel betrayed me,” the Magister said.
“This isn’t you,” Bethany said. “Not the real you. You’re someone that people here look up to. Someone they wish taught them, even though they don’t even believe you exist. Think about that. Think of what that means, that kind of inspiration, that kind of wonder. How do you think they’d feel if they saw you now?”
The Magister narrowed his eyes. “Do not test me, girl of two worlds. I tried to give you a world of happiness, but you rejected it. I still need your power, and it’s just as accessible if I leave you in my dungeon instead.”
“Hear that, Merlin?” Bethany said. “That the side you want to be on?”
Merlin dropped his head into his hands. “Part of me . . . yes.”
Bethany swallowed hard. Right. Merlin had some evil blood in him, if the stories were true. Which they were, if he was here. “Um, okay. Then listen to the other part. The part of you that you want to be, not the part of you you’re afraid you are. Embrace that half.” She forced a smile. “Embrace the fictional, Merlin.”
“You would return to your book, living out their stories?” the Magister told Merlin. “You’d prefer that life to one where we live in freedom?”
Merlin stood up and looked the Magister right in the eye.
“There must be another way—” he started to say, then immediately disappeared.
“So be it then,” the Magister said, then turned back to Bethany, his eyes furious. “You seem to be making a habit of turning my apprentices against me, girl. I have grown tired of this game. It’s time to end it.”
“What did you do with Jonathan Porterhouse?” she asked, eyeing him warily.
“I left him in a book, as I promised,” the Magister said. “First he wrote you a new life story for me, and now he will spend the rest of his days seeing if he can write his own. He cannot be left to control my world with his writing anymore!”
“Which book? There are thousands downstairs!”
The Magister glared at her. “The titles were meaningless to me.”
Bethany gritted her teeth. “He could die!”
“I . . . would hope not,” the Magister said. “But if so, would my world not be the better for it? And what about your friend Owen? Don’t you wish to know where he is?”
Bethany’s eyes widened. “What did you do with him?”
“This was not my doing, I assure you,” the Magister said, then held up a book that Bethany had seen the cover of earlier that day, in a poster as big as a wall. “Kiel Gnomenfoot and the Source of Magic,” the Magister read. “An advance copy, I’m told. It seems your friend didn’t want the story to go on without its main character.” He glared at her. “Perhaps Jonathan Porterhouse neglected to mention that he murders Kiel at the end of this book? And now your friend Owen plays at being Kiel, following his story. This sort of thing cannot continue!”
“No,” she whispered. “Give me that book.”
The Magister snapped, and flames burst into his hand, setting the book ablaze. “There are more,” he said calmly. “Down in the library, as well. Porterhouse had an entire box of them. But those will burn just as easily, my dear, if you continue to defy me.” He wiped the remaining ashes from his hand and raised an eyebrow. “So what now, Bethany? You have no protectors, no magic on your side. You’ve left behind your happiness, the only thing you wanted, and for what? To have your say here?” He shook his head. “Perhaps there really is no escaping our stories. It is not too late to help me. Kiel might listen to you. Join me, and together we will end these authors’ power once and for all!”
Bethany couldn’t stop staring at the ashes of the Kiel Gnomenfoot book. Owen was trapped in there, and going to . . . die?
All of the fear, the worry, everything she’d felt the last day or two suddenly just disappeared. No more guilt or panic about books or changing their stories. Owen? The same Owen who’d looked at the Everlasting Gobstopper with so much excitement, who’d told her about the locating spell for her father? The Owen who loved Kiel Gnomenfoot so much that he’d messed up the entire series just to be a part of it?
“Protectors?” Bethany said softly. “Magic? You think I need those things to face you? A made-up character? Everything you were was in those books. Out here, you’re nothing. A shadow. A fiction.”
Her mother, her father, everything just faded away in front of an all-consuming anger. Be more fictional, Kiel had said.
“You should not speak to me that way,” the Magister said, his voice low and cold.
“You talk a big game,” Bethany said, glaring at him with pure hatred. “Let’s see what you’ve got, Mr. Imaginary Magician.”
His eyes widened, and both his hands rose. “So be it, then. The dungeon it shall be for you, and this time, there will be no happy ending to your story!”
“Only if you catch me,” she whispered, holding up a page of a book that she’d taken from the library. “Come and get me, old man.”
And with that, she dove in.
CHAPTER 38
Owen opened his eyes to pain. Pain everywhere. He groaned, trying to figure out why he couldn’t move most of his body. Everything was smoky, and the air just felt hot, way too hot.
“Charm?” he said, his voice croaking from the smoke.
And then he noticed why he couldn’t move.
Charm lay on top of him, eerily still.
No. Oh please, no.
Most of her body had been blackened by the explosion, and she was missing her robotic arm and leg. “Charm?” Owen said, almost pleading, and gently tried to lift her off of himself. She weighed far more than she looked, and he could barely move her enough to slip out from under her.
All around them were the remains of popped plastic bubbles, what had to be some kind of protective crash mechanism. Somehow, Charm had saved him both from the crash and the explosion.
“Charm?” he whispered, gently touching her shoulder.
Her robotic eye opened slowly, but didn’t focus on him. “Kiel?” she whispered.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Owen said softly. “You look . . . good.”
She tried to smile, but only half her mouth seemed to work correctly. “My robotic parts . . . They usually send damage reports. I’m not even . . . getting those. I . . . I don’t think I can move.”
“You’re going to be okay,” he lied. “Seriously. You’ll be fine. You just need to rest.”
“I can’t move,” she said, and the light in her eye began to fade. “Kiel . . . you have to go. Go now. Get out of here.”
“I can’t just leave you here,” he whispered.
“You need to,” she said, her robotic eye fixed on him, finally, even as it grew dimmer. “The Science Soldiers will . . . be here any minute, if they’re not . . . here already. They’ll find you. . . . They’ll capture you!”
Owen glanced around at the carnage from the spaceship crash and thought he made out more than a few robotic casings. “I think we have a few minutes.”
“Go, Kiel,” she said, and the light in her eyes began to flicker. “Take the keys. They’re in my pocket. I got them . . . from the ship. Get to the vault. Stop Verity. Please.”
He started to argue, but the light in her robotic eye went out as she fell unconscious, and he just nodded instead. “I will. I’ll . . . I’ll go. I’ll take care of all of this. And I’ll come back and find you, when I can. Okay? Don’t worry about anything. I’ve got it.”
He wiped his eyes, then grabbed the six keys from her and pushed himself to his feet, his entire body screaming in pain. The sounds of Science Soldiers’ metal footsteps began to echo thro
He glanced down at the rubble and realized that maybe hiding wasn’t the best idea. Maybe he needed a disguise, instead. And not one made from magic.
The first Science Soldier to arrive, a commander, clanked its way to the crash site and found Charm’s unconscious body, as well as Owen wearing the outer shell of a beat-up Science Soldier like a costume, standing over Charm with a laser rifle held at the ready.
“REPORT, 4329918,” the commander said.
“SPACESHIP CRASH-LANDED, SIR,” Owen said in his most robotic-sounding voice. “CRIMINAL CHARM MENTUM THE ONLY SURVIVOR.”
“SURVIVORS HAVE BEEN ORDERED TO BE TAKEN TO THE PRESIDENTIAL PALACE FOR INSPECTION BY DR. VERITY,” the commander said. As more soldiers made their way into the crash area, the commander gestured for them to pick up Charm and carry her away. Owen began to follow, but the commander stopped him.
“REMAIN IN SURVEILLANCE MODE AT CRASH SITE, 4329918,” the Soldier said. “DR. VERITY ORDERED A THOROUGH REPORT. USE ALL AVAILABLE SCANNERS AND CHECK IN WHEN COMPLETE.”
Owen started to protest, then realized that robots weren’t exactly known for arguing. “SCANNERS DAMAGED WHEN THE SPACESHIP CRASHED INTO MY UNIT, COMMANDER,” he said, flinching under the Science Soldier helmet that he’d yanked circuitry out of in order to fit his head. “NEED REPAIRS BEFORE ANY FURTHER SURVEILLANCE CAN TAKE PLACE.”
The commander paused, tilting his head as if considering this. Or scanning Owen. Uh-oh. Owen slowly, subtly readied his laser rifle, just in case. But the commander just nodded. “SEE TO REPAIRS AT THE PALACE, THEN RETURN FOR SCANNING.” With that, the commander turned and marched away.
Well. That was easy. Robots might not argue, but they were pretty easy to lie to.
Owen fought the urge to sprint after the soldiers carrying Charm, and instead walked robotically after them toward the large troop transport that’d take them all back to the palace. He climbed in with the rest of the unit, each sitting frozen in their assigned seat as the transport began to move. Charm had been set on a stretcher that floated in midair within the transport, so at least she wasn’t getting hurt as the transport bumped over the wreckage from the crash.
Soon the ride smoothed, and Owen noticed that they had hit the empty streets of Quanterium. He’d read about the city in the books, of course, but the sight of it almost took his breath away, though that could have just been his lungs still feeling bruised from the crash.
Blue electrical energy crackled everywhere within transparent walls and beneath glass bridges over streets, filling each building with power. The buildings floated off the ground at varying heights, with trees and grass planted in perfect measured squares all around them.
Everything, everywhere was perfect. Quanterium had no sickness. Every known disease had been eradicated centuries ago, according to the books. No one was hungry, as food was created by specialized machines from the CO2 they breathed out. And with the Nalwork as a distraction, who needed money?
All in all, Quanterium would have been a paradise, if not for the robotic armies roaming the streets and the tyrant who was about to destroy a planet full of magic-users.
As Owen watched, the buildings grew more and more elaborate, though he noticed that they were all basically the same design, just with more or fewer features. There wasn’t much creativity here; everything had a similar look, as if the magic-users had taken all the imagination with them when they left Quanterium. Everything just felt so similar. Everything, that was, except for the Presidential Palace, which they now approached.
Carefully cultivated gardens surrounded the palace, kept in untouchable condition by a coating of plastic over all the plants, frozen in time at the peak of perfection. No animals or birds roamed these grounds, though, and no people sat on the benches that popped up every few feet.
Instead, Science Soldier units paraded up and down the glass pathway to the palace. As they drew closer, more and more soldiers appeared. When his troop transport finally ground to a halt, Owen looked out to find thousands of other transports on every side of him, each one filled with Science Soldiers. Some were gigantic, hundreds of feet tall, probably from a reality where everything was huge. Others floated along like bumblebees. Here, there were humanoid-looking robots, and there, lizard-shaped ones.
The armies of an infinite multiverse, that Dr. Verity had gathered to wipe out Magisteria.
Owen nodded to himself, then stood up with the rest of the Science Soldiers.
For Charm’s sake, for Bethany’s sake, to make up for his own mistakes, it was time to finish this story already.
CHAPTER 39
The Magister roared in anger at Bethany’s disappearance, then leaped right into the page after her. He landed easily on a world with three moons and one burning green sun. All around him, people gave him looks as they went about their business, all wearing clothes so fine and weightless they could have been made of clouds.
“What is this place?” the Magister asked.
Then something hit him hard enough to send him plowing through a nearby building.
“This is Argon VI,” Bethany said, standing over him with a hard look and her fists raised. “A world light-years from Earth.”
The Magister, a bit surprised he wasn’t hurt, started to murmur a spell, so Bethany picked up a hovering car and slammed it into him over and over. “You see,” she said as she hit him, “Earth was about to explode . . . for some reason or another, I forget. A couple of scientists decided to save their baby daughter, Gwen, so they put her in a rocket and sent her here.”
She picked the Magister up by his robes, swung him in a circle a few times, then launched him into the air.
He came down miles away in a desert, and Bethany landed just behind him. “You wouldn’t know, but it’s the reverse of something called Superman,” she said. “Argon VI has less gravity than Earth, so it makes Earth people superstrong.” Then she punched him into the sand up to his shoulders. “And the green sun apparently gives you the power to fly. I don’t entirely get it, but that’s EarthGirl for you.”
The Magister stopped his struggling for a moment. “That would mean that we both share these powers, then?”
Bethany grinned. “Yup.” She punched him farther into the ground, far enough so that sand poured in on top of him, blinding his eyes. When the Magister finally dug himself to the surface using his new-found superspeed and strength, Bethany was gone.
“You can’t hide from me, Bethany!” he shouted into the nothingness. A quick retrieval spell sent a page from another book flying into his hands, and he leaped in after her.
This time he emerged right in the middle of a crushing waterfall.
The Magister quickly cast a flying spell, which kept him steady beneath the torrent of water. Unfortunately, he still couldn’t breathe as thousands of gallons poured over him. Just as he tried to cast a breathing-under-water spell, two men plowed into him, sending him falling down into the river below.
A little ways downriver, the Magister floated to the surface, one of the men on his back. The other appeared to have hit the river too hard to survive, not having the benefit of a semi-floating magician to land on.
“Sherlock Holmes was supposed to die, falling off that waterfall,” Bethany said from the shore as the Magister floated by. “It was a whole thing with his nemesis, Moriarty. But you just saved him. Millions of readers will thank you. He’s very popular.”
And with that, she leaped into another page, which floated away on the breeze.
The Magister dragged himself out of the river and grabbed the page with another spell as quickly as he could. The farther ahead Bethany got, the more of these traps she could lay for him.
He poked his h
Only to quickly pull it back out as a dragon’s mouth snapped shut around the spot where his head had just been.
The Magister caught his breath, then murmured a spell of protection and pushed in again. The dragon bit down once more, only to stop in place as it hit a blue bubble of magical safety. “Tell me where the girl went,” the Magister asked the surprised dragon in its own language.
“The key is gone. Why must you torment me!” the dragon shouted, and sent a flame that could melt rock exploding into the blue bubble.
Even as the Magister realized where he was, the heat from the flame began to seep through the protective spell, and he soared into the air to get a better look, the flying spell he’d cast previously still in effect. Below him were vast piles of gold, enough to fill an ocean.
The dragon’s tail plowed into his protective spell from behind and sent him careening into the gold hard enough to send incalculable riches spraying. Though he wasn’t hurt, the Magister was starting to lose track of where he was, let alone where the girl might be hiding.
Enough was enough !
“STOP!” he commanded, unleashing the full power of his magic on the dragon. “I do not want your key. My apprentice already took it, did he not?”
“Yes, the Gnomenfoot!” the dragon shrieked, writhing in pain from the force of the Magister’s magic. “Please, let me be! I just want to be left alone, now that I’ve failed in my protection duty!”
“Tell me where the girl went,” the Magister demanded.
As the dragon opened his mouth to speak, something yanked on the Magister’s foot, pulling him down into the piece of paper that he’d been unknowingly standing right on top of.
He found himself floating in nothingness, surrounded on all sides by metal spaceships, much like the ones in Dr. Verity’s fleet, only larger and more dangerous-looking.
As he quickly cast a spell to ensure he could breathe, one of the spaceships sent out an enormous orange glowing light, streaking toward the largest of the other spaceships. The targeted spaceship sent out a light of its own, with both on course to collide right where the Magister floated.