The Blade of Shattered Hope

Tick felt the crunch under his shoes, smelled something burnt. When they were all standing in a circle, he reached out and took Sofia’s hand, then Paul’s. “The Haunce told me we need to hold hands. It’s easier that way.”

Tick was glad they didn’t argue. Sofia took Master George’s hand, and then the old man took Paul’s. Standing there in the dark desert with the slight breeze sighing as it passed over the towering rocks, Tick felt a major case of the creeps, like they were about to begin a séance.

“Okay!” he shouted. “Wink us away, Haunce!” The words sounded incredibly stupid, but he wanted to get this part over with. He had no idea what to expect once they got to where they were going.

Before this last thought even fully formed in his mind, the tingle shot across his neck and down his spine.

It had been a strange hour for Sato.

There’d been the reunion of Tick’s family—without Tick, unfortunately—as well as hearing more details about Mrs. Higginbottom (a.k.a. Lorena) and her brief stint as a Realitant. Sato had been amazed to learn that she and Mistress Jane had been partners of a sort in exploring and seeking out new Realities, and they’d been together when the Thirteenth was discovered. They’d realized that something was special about it right away, and how odd properties of Chi’karda ran rampant there.

It was the first time Jane had started to show the dual signs of her thirst for power and her edge of obsession with the idea of a Utopian Reality. When Jane threatened Lorena if she dared tell anyone about their discovery, that had been the last straw. Lorena decided to call it quits, realizing she wasn’t cut out for that kind of life—namely being killed by a crazy woman.

Sato eventually drifted away from the Higginbottoms. He suspected they probably wanted some time to themselves to bask in the joy of being together again. And, he admitted to himself, it hurt to see such a thing. It painfully reminded him that he’d lost his own parents, and that such a get-together would be impossible for him. It hurt, and he left them before it became unbearable.

But that’s when things had really gotten strange for him.

There were several hundred people from the Fifth Reality in the strange space, all of them winked in from the general location of where Mothball’s parents lived. How that had happened was beyond anyone’s guess, but they’d mostly gotten over their shock and just generally reveled in the fact that they were still alive.

Or, Sato figured, at least they hoped that was the case. The bizarre place to which they’d been sent didn’t seem like anything in the normal world. Maybe they had died and been sent to an afterlife. Who knew? Sato didn’t want to think about it until he absolutely had to.

Once all the people from the Fifth settled in, they began to notice him. They began to see the resemblance he had to their recently assassinated Grand Minister. His Alterant. And now they surrounded him completely, a huge crowd of giants, all of them staring at him, waiting for him to speak. But he refused, sitting cross-legged with his chin resting on his closed fists. Mothball had to get him out of this. She had to do something! If not her, then her parents.

But they seemed to be enjoying the spectacle, along with Rutger. The four of them sat outside the crowd somewhere—he’d lost sight of them a good half hour earlier.

Sato buried his face in his hands and groaned, hoping everyone heard the scream of frustration barely veiled within it.

The first thing Tick noticed was that the air was much cooler, laced with a wetness almost as thick as mist. Then he saw the tall, looming poles of shadow all around them—trees. Lots and lots of trees.

They were back in the Forest of Plague—the place they’d come a year ago on a mission to steal Mistress Jane’s Barrier Wand. This time they’d be going in the opposite direction; the Factory lay due east, according to the Haunce.

Tick felt the reassuring grip of Sofia’s and Paul’s hands in his own. “You guys okay?”

“Still in one piece,” Master George answered from a few feet in front of him. Tick couldn’t see his face very well. In fact, he couldn’t see much except for the trees and the dark shapes of his fellow Realitants.

“Fine,” Paul grumbled. “At least it’s not hot here. My pits are in desperate need of some deodorant.”

Sofia sighed. “Pleasant as always.”

“Okay, so where are we?” Paul asked.

“Yes, Atticus,” Master George added. “No more time for hasting about until you answer some questions. Where are we? What’s behind all this?”

Tick felt surprisingly calm despite the clock winding down inside his mind; he didn’t have the heart to look at his watch. He knew the calm wouldn’t last long. He knew terrible things lay ahead.

“Tick?” Paul prodded. “Speak up—can’t hear ya.”

“Alright, listen,” Tick began. “I’ll explain everything, but then we gotta get going. Jane screwed up the whole universe with her dark-matter tree—that stupid Blade of Shattered Hope. The barriers keeping the Realities whole and bound together are fragmenting, breaking apart. Right now there’s a lull, but the Haunce says in twenty-something hours from now, it’ll all snap, blow up, disintegrate. In no time at all, everything will cease to exist. That’s how the Haunce put it.”

“I feared the worst,” Master George whispered, a deathly rasp. “However, this is beyond even what I cooked up in my head. But if the Haunce told you as much, then it’s true.”

Tick nodded despite the darkness. “It thinks we can fix the problem somehow, but it’ll take me, Mistress Jane, and the Haunce itself together in the biggest Chi’karda spot in all the Realities. Which is this Factory place a few miles to the east of here.”

“Oh, goodness gracious me,” Master George said. The others stayed silent, maybe too shocked for words.

“Anyway,” Tick said, “we can talk more about the details, but the Haunce wants me to do a quick job first.” Tick reached into his pocket and pulled out the short metal message tube Master George had given him earlier. “First, it wants me to send an important note to somebody—wink it, actually.”

“Wink it?” Sofia repeated. “You mean . . .”

Tick held up the tube between his thumb and forefinger, barely able to see the silver shine of its smooth surface. “Yeah. The Haunce wants me to wink it with my so-called powers. Called it . . . practice.”