Coronation: A Kid Sensation Novel (Kid Sensation #5) (28 page)

Vicra shifted his weight, trying to swing the pulse pistol back to my head. I countered by going with the momentum of his arm motion but thrusting upwards. The result was that the gun ended up pointed above us, at which point it fired a volley of shots into the ceiling.

Chunks of heavy Caelesian plaster rained down on us. A large chunk struck the pulse pistol, knocking it from Vicra’s grasp. Undaunted, he started trying to punch me in the face with the now-unencumbered hand.

“You’re ruining everything!” he shouted. “Why couldn’t you just leave?!”

“Leave?!” I roared, grabbing the wrist of the arm he was attempting to jab me with. “I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you! Everything that’s happened is a result of your machinations – all because you want to be king!”

Vicra let out a short, harsh bark of laughter. “You think this is about sitting on the throne?”

He cut his eyes to where Queen Dornoccia’s bed was located – towards Myshtal. And with that, everything became clear.

Vicra’s actions weren’t a result of his designs on the throne; they’d come about because he had designs on Myshtal. Everything he’d done was borne of misguided affection for her and jealousy. (And I was incredibly slow on the uptake; he’d called her “Myshtal” when I was trying to keep him talking – a sure sign of how he’d felt about her.)

My thoughts must have distracted me, because all of a sudden, Vicra shifted his weight and made a move I was unprepared for: he let go of the Beobona Jewel. Without him pulling on it to counter my own yanking, the hand holding the gem flew backwards. I felt the gem strike something behind me and involuntarily turned to see what it was: the statue of the Unbeaten Warrior. In the next moment, several things seemed to happen all at once.

First of all, the Beobona Jewel seemed to go completely bananas, shining brightly while cycling through a wild kaleidoscope of colors. Looking closely, I noticed that – whereas before one end of the jewel appeared to be broken off and missing – it was now completely symmetrical and uniform in shape. I also seemed to sense some new power in the gem, as if something long-dormant had awakened.

Unfortunately, my fascination with the Beobona served as the perfect distraction for Vicra. He took a slight step to the side, planted one of his legs behind one of mine, and then twisted, throwing me to the ground. I managed to hang on to his wrist, thereby dragging Vicra down on top on me, but banged my head hard enough to see stars. In fact, as I lifted my head from the ground, I could have sworn I saw the statue of the Unbeaten Warrior blink, making me wonder if I had a concussion.

I shook my head, trying to clear my vision, and the world spun crazily. When it stopped, we were no longer in the repository; instead, we were in a grassy depression in a hilly area populated by lots of trees. Vicra had moved us through time again. Moreover, as a slight breeze moved through the branches of trees, I heard music. Looking again, I recognized that the trees were Cantillates. Vicra had taken us far into the past.

Speaking of Vicra, he was still on top of me, moving in an odd way that suggested he might be hurt. Unexpectedly, he reared up, raising both hands above his head. To my horror, I saw the glint of something metallic in his grip. As he struck down, I swung the Beobona in an attempt to parry the blow. The jewel struck Vicra’s weapon, which I now saw was the Telumem, much to my surprise.

There was a brilliant flash of light as the jewel and the trident collided, and for a second I was blinded. Simultaneous with the illumination was a soft boom, like a muffled explosion, followed by a queer creaking sound – as if molten metal had somehow been woven into a blanket that was then stretched until the constituent threads were on the verge of breaking.

After a few seconds, my vision came back and I realized that Vicra was still on top of me…and still holding the Telumem. However, he was staring down at me in a wild, bug-eyed fashion – almost in horror. As I watched, the Telumem slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground beside me; the next second, Vicra was madly scrambling backwards on all fours, like some insane crab.

Watching him in fascination, I tried to sit up, finding it more difficult than I would have thought. It was as if the ground had grown hands and was trying to hold me in place. After a few seconds of struggling, I was finally able to achieve success, and then gained an immediate understanding of what had terrified Vicra.

It hadn’t been me that he had been staring at in terror before; it was the ground. All around me – where there had previously been grass – there was now some weird type of metal. And it seemed to be attacking me.

Attack is probably not the appropriate definition of what was happening, but it was close enough. The weird metal seemed to be trying to hold me in place so that I couldn’t move. At the same time, it was spreading – moving up my legs like some metallurgic creeper.

The metal seemed to fill the little depression that we were in, but didn’t appear to extend much farther than that. In fact, Vicra wasn’t particularly far from me, but apparently had escaped its clutches.

I thought back, trying to remember exactly what had happened. My best guess was that somehow – and for some reason – the Beobona had transformed the soil in this area into this metal scourge that was threatening to engulf me.

With a herculean effort, I was able to yank one foot free and take a step. The other was pretty much stuck in place, as the metal had rolled up past my knee on that one. Seeing the Telumem on the ground, I reached down with my right hand and picked it up, then attempted to use the prongs to scrape the metal off. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

I looked around, trying to see if there was anything else in arm’s reach that could help. There didn’t seem to be anything – no branches, no rocks, no vines. I even looked at Vicra, although I knew I was the last person he’d ever help.

He seemed to be favoring his side slightly, and it looked like he might even be bleeding a little. That seemed odd, since I didn’t remember inflicting any injuries there. Then, in a flash of insight, I knew what had happened. When he had fallen on me, the Telumem must have stabbed him in the side. Wondering what had poked him, he’d reached for my rucksack and found the trident.

My looking in his direction seemed to have brought Vicra back to himself. More to the point, he realized that I was no longer holding him…no longer in his temporal field.

“Enjoy the past, J’h’dgo!” he shouted, and then disappeared.

For a few seconds, I stared at the space where Vicra had been, completely in shock. He’d trapped me in the past – the far past, if the Cantillate trees were any indication. And I was about to be consumed – for lack of a better term – by some possessed metal, which had now moved up past my waist. Fearing what was to come, I attempted to close my visor and faceplate, but only the latter still worked. Thus, my face had some measure of protection, from nose to chin, but not around the eyes.

With nothing to lose, I began shouting for help. I had no idea if anyone was within earshot, but it was my only option. I kept it up for a few minutes, until the creeping metal came up over the faceplate and threatened to enter my mouth if I opened it. Having come up my legs to my torso and branching out from there, it almost had me completely covered. The only areas still bare were probably the space around my eyes and my hands, in which I held the Beobona and the Telumem.

At that point, I had given up on help coming. Even if anyone did show, what could they do? I was still stuck, literally as well as temporally. I had failed to stop Vicra. I had failed my grandmother. I had failed everyone who would suffer from Vicra’s manipulation of time.

After a few minutes of wallowing in despair and self-pity, my thoughts were interrupted by movement near the upper rim of the depression I was in. The sun was setting in that direction, so I couldn’t get a good look at them, but I knew it was a person. A moment later, they slid down into the area where I was, and I noticed it was a young Caelesian boy.

He was young, maybe the equivalent of twelve Earth years old, and dressed plainly. I wanted to shout to him to watch out for the metal, but he seemed to have sized up the situation on his own and hadn’t come forward. Instead, he merely looked at me.

A moment later, the boy was joined by a man who looked to be entering early middle age. He had thinning brown hair and carried a sword at his side, although it looked to be ceremonial rather than practical.

“There you are, you little whelp,” the man said in a fairly congenial tone. He spoke in Caelesian, but with a bit of an unusual accent. “You know you aren’t supposed to slip off.”

“I know, Yorn,” the boy said, “but I heard him calling for help.”

“Eh?” the man, Yorn, said, seeming to notice for the first time that I was there as the boy pointed at me. A befuddled expression came over his face, but the man seemed to recover quickly. Getting as close as he could without touching the odd metal that was on the ground, he stretched a hand in my direction.

On my part, I deftly spun the trident in my grip, holding the pronged end in my palm and covered by my closed fist while the shaft extended towards the man from between my middle and ring fingers. It was about the only movement I was capable of at the moment. My other arm and hand, including the Beobona, had been covered by metal even before the boy found me.

“What are you doing, Plavicre?” asked an authoritarian voice up near the depression’s rim. At the sound of the voice, Yorn stopped reaching for me and turned towards the speaker.

Plavicre
? I glanced at the boy, wondering…
could it be?

“Well?” said the voice from the rim, obviously expecting an answer.

Glancing in that direction, I saw the outline of a man, tall and well-muscled. With the setting sun behind him, I couldn’t see his face but there was something about him that was familiar. After a moment, I realized what it was.

Like my father, Alpha Prime (Earth’s greatest superhero), this man radiated power. There was a self-confidence and assuredness that was evident just in the way he stood, not to mention his voice. Even without any of my abilities, without being able to see his face, I could sense that he was a rare breed of person.

“There’s a man here, cousin,” the boy said. “I think he’s hurt. Can you use your power to heal him?”

The man’s head seemed to move slightly, the only indication that he was now looking in my direction. He seemed to simply observe the scene for a moment in silence, as if the very environment were telling him things about what had happened.

All of a sudden, I felt someone inside my head – a powerful telepathic presence. Although my own telepathy was currently gone, I still had my mental shields and I quickly tried to reinforce them to keep this intruder out. However, I knew just from the way he probed that this man could obliterate my mental defenses without breaking a sweat; they would be about as effective against him as a mud hut at keeping a bear out.

To his credit, the man didn’t ram his way in, as he could have. Instead, he sent me comforting images and thoughts, things that made me feel happy and mellow. In retrospect, I couldn’t really say what those things were, just that they left me without a care in the world. After a moment, I realized that it was more than just thoughts; he was manipulating my biological systems, increasing the presence of dopamine and other chemicals that produced a euphoric feeling before withdrawing.

He apparently wasn’t done with me, however, as a second later, the weird metal seemed to peel back from the Beobona, which – now that it was uncovered – was still seen to be radiating a wild array of colors. I felt something fiercely yanking on the Beobona, trying to pull it from my hand, and I realized a moment later that the man on the rim was also telekinetic. (And from the way he had lifted the metal from the jewel, his powers must also have been formidable in that arena.)

I felt myself getting a little miffed, despite my current state of bliss. I didn’t care how powerful this guy was; I wasn’t giving up the Beobona without a fight. I really couldn’t move, but mentally I willed myself (between bouts of joy) to hang on to the jewel as tightly as possible. Apparently it worked – at least to some extent – because a second later, there was an earsplitting crack, like a diamond being split in two. Then, I saw the vast majority of the Beobona Jewel – no longer glowing, and in the asymmetrical shape that I had first seen it – go floating up to the man on the rim. In my grip I held the remainder of it. On some level, I was horrified by this, but for the most part I was still ecstatic.

“Interesting,” said the man on the rim, studying the jewel as it floated in front of him. Then he turned to the boy. “Plavicre, back to your studies.”

“But–” the boy began.

“No ‘buts,’” the man said.

The boy lowered his eyes. “Yes, cousin.” A moment later, he had climbed out of the depression and left.

“I’m sorry,
Koorateen
,” Yorn said. “He got away from me, but the boy is a rapscallion and as slippery as a
junquato
.”

“I know, and I agree with you on all points,” said the man on the rim. “But he’s also the rightful king, so let’s try to keep him alive, despite his best efforts to the contrary.”

“And the man?” Yorn asked.

There was no hesitation in the response. “Leave him.”

“But
Koorateen
…he’ll die.”

“I said, leave him. That’s an order.”

“Yes, Lord J’h’dgo.”

J’h’dgo?
Through my euphoric haze, I felt my interest piqued. This was the fabled First King? Although I’d had minimal interaction with him, I had no trouble visualizing him as the conqueror of an entire planet.

“And send some men back later to collect some of that metal,” J’h’dgo said, taking the Beobona Jewel in his hand. “I have an idea…”

J’h’dgo turned and walked away, with Yorn following swiftly after him.

Have a nice day
, I thought, and attempted to wave goodbye to them. My body, however, largely encapsulated at this point, refused to cooperate. Even concentrating intently, eyes narrowed, I wasn’t able to budge so much as a finger, which left me feeling frustrated – an odd contrast to the intense exhilaration I was simultaneously experiencing. A few moments later, the metal covered my eyes, engulfing me completely, and everything went black.