Bad Unicorn Read online

  Princess turned her back on the carnage, casually walking to where Magar stood. The wizard had been unable to tear his gaze away from the melee.

  “What have you done?” Magar asked, unable to mask his horror at what he was watching.

  “A lesson, Magar. Unicorns are the most powerful creatures in the Magrus. Everyone thinks it’s dragons, but they’re wrong. I’ve never seen a dragon do that.” She motioned over her shoulder to where the others were fighting desperately to escape the undead knight.

  “I didn’t know you could do that either,” Magar answered. If he’d been fearful of Princess before, he was terrified now.

  “There’s lots of things I can do that you don’t know about,” Princess said, raising her eyebrow mischievously. “I don’t mind killing innocents, as you know, but these so-called honor-bound lords are even more entertaining. But I’ve made my point. So where to now?”

  “We, uh, follow the coast to the borders of Wallan. Then turn west toward the mountains and the Tree of Attenuation.”

  “And you’re sure that’s where the Gimbal was pointing?” Princess asked, brushing sand off her clothing and putting her horn away.

  “We can check it again if you like?” Magar asked, doing his best to sound composed while the discord of the combat continued.

  “No, not right now. I’m tired of this sand. Wallan is green and lush, full of lakes and quaint little villages where the two of us will look like simple travelers.”

  Magar and Princess left the spires of Nyridos and the battling knights behind them.

  Later, when the last of the setting sun was diminishing in the west, Magar decided to break the long silence that had marked their afternoon. “What will happen to that . . . thing?” the wizard asked as he looked over at the Crystal Sea and noted how the sun sparkled against the tide. “The knight you turned.”

  “Oh, well, with zombies you can never tell. Mostly they’re run off and burned by villagers. I heard once that a zombie made it all the way to the Techrus to work at a middle school.”

  “I see,” Magar said, trying to picture it.

  “But the last one became a politician. It was even re-elected.”

  Magar supposed politics seemed a reasonable enough occupation for the soulless undead.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MAX FINDS A SPELL

  (THE TECHRUS—FUTURE)

  MAX SAT PROPPED AGAINST A LARGE TREE, READING BY THE LIGHT OF A snow faerie, who was locked in a small, gilded cage. The faerie had its head buried in its hands, and as it started to nod off the glow began to fade.

  Max cleared his throat, startling the faerie awake and causing it to glow brightly again.

  “Seriously, you still want to keep reading that book?” the faerie asked, sounding cross. “How about we both catch some sleep and you read tomorrow, in the daylight.”

  “I’m sorry,” Max said, speaking over his shoulder. “But the frobbits said if you cooperated you’d get time off for good behavior. And besides, if you weren’t picking fights with them you wouldn’t be in a cage.”

  “Look, I’m a snow faerie,” the tiny glowing creature shot back. “In the Magrus we can do all kinds of magical things. But here, I can glow and I can fly. Big whoop. The only thing to do for fun is mix it up with the frobbits.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t be fighting,” Max added. “Even if you’re bored.”

  “Ah, what do you know?” the faerie replied, waving Max off. “You humans were so dumb you thought unicorns were rainbow-colored magical horses. Didn’t even see it coming when Princess started eating y’all.”

  “And you’re some kind of expert on these things?”

  “Hey, I watch cable. We have the History Channel, you know.”

  “Not in that cage you don’t,” Max replied. “So maybe you should just concentrate on helping me.”

  The snow faerie harrumphed, turning around to face the other direction, but it kept glowing all the same.

  Max returned to the Codex. All night he’d been reading strange topics such as the art of goblin humor and the life story of Randall the Amazingly Unlucky (a fairly short tale). Max prepared himself for something equally mundane, but instead he found something important . . .

  On the Fifteen Prime Spells

  ALL MAGIC IS A REFLECTION OF THE Fifteen Prime Spells. The origins of the Fifteen Primes are unknown because they were not so much created as found. And of all the great sorcerers, only Maximilian Sporazo had enough understanding of the Fifteen Prime Spells to capture and utilize them in their raw form. Many other sorcerers have tried but went mad or were destroyed as a result. For this reason, the Fifteen Spells were hidden from man and his weaknesses.

  The Fifteen Prime Spells, in alphabetical order, include the spells of

  Captivity

  Density

  Elemenity

  Fixity

  Futurity

  Gallimaufry

  Gravity

  Irony

  Liquidity

  Nimiety

  Panoply

  Parity

  Tutelary

  Unity

  Vacuity

  As far as talk of there being a secret sixteenth spell, that’s just unfounded rumor and speculation. Probably started by crazy people. It’s not even certain how such hearsay gets spread around. In any case, there are just fifteen prime spells—fifteen. Don’t even think about there being a sixteenth, because there totally isn’t.

  Futurity!

  It was just sitting there, buried with all the other names Max didn’t recognize. But he’d heard this word before, and the big-as-the-universe voice that had said it. It had to mean something!

  Max turned the page to see what else he might find, but all talk of spells was gone. Instead, the Codex detailed the step-by-step process for making a frobbit mandolin. Max turned the page back, expecting to find the list of spells again. But this time, he saw an example of snow faerie poetry:

  Oh frobbit, with stinky smell,

  Think ye are so tough?

  Wanna ring me faerie bell?

  Come and try, cream puff.

  Max decided snow faerie poetry was pretty awful. He began frantically flipping the pages back and forth, but the list of spells had disappeared. Max couldn’t understand why the Codex was so unhelpful. Finally he decided to just keep reading—it was how he’d found the list of spells in the first place.

  An hour or two later, following several mild cage-shaking incidents to rouse the snow faerie, Max had found no further mention of the spells. His eyes were so blurry that he had to close the book, since it was physically impossible to read further. The Codex, for whatever reason, had given up on sticking with one topic. Now every turn of the page brought on some random and completely unhelpful new topic, from examples of popular orc recipes to how to catch snow faeries in mason jars. Max’s head was filled with such an array of gobbledygook that he felt as if his brain might explode.

  With the sound of snoring frobbits filling the night air (the noise was not unlike trying to pull-start a weed-eater that didn’t have any gas), Max felt himself tumbling into the deep well of sleep. He decided to surrender to it, letting the snow faerie slowly dim while he scrunched up on a straw mat of the kind that frobbits used as a bed. Then, in that last moment when all his worries and anxieties had slipped into the background, and all the information rattling around in his brain had succumbed to the impending quiet, the spell of futurity came roaring back. It was like an electrical shock that ran the entire length of Max’s body, and he shot straight up as a surge of power exploded through every cell. Max felt the power move from the Codex and enter him, growing so thick that his head and limbs felt as if they were underwater. He could sense the spell. It was like a small black moon in an immense universe, and it was blocking him from something behind it—something brilliant and powerful that reminded Max of the sun. In his mind’s eye, he began to move, and the closer the dark moon became the more he could sense the thing raging with
power on the other side. In the strange, incorporeal space where Max’s body drifted in currents of power and energy, he began to slip past his intended destination. He wanted to get closer to the black sphere that was the Spell of Futurity, but he was being pulled by something much stronger. As he drifted past, Max could see the black shape was actually a funnel, and at its end was a tunnel that twisted and turned along an impossibly long path. And yet, despite the length, he could see what was on the other side—almost as if looking through the wrong side of a telescope. There were three kids gathered around a book, and he recognized them at once. Max was looking at himself and his friends, frozen right before they had been cast into the future. For a moment, home felt close.

  Max tried to move toward the tunnel, but the currents of power pushed him away, past the spell and toward the brilliant light. It was a ball of pure luminance—blinding and pulsing with a power that made Max feel insignificant and small. And when the first small rays reached out and touched him, they splattered him with a dazzling brilliance. Max felt a sense of something unlike anything he’d ever felt before: He was connected with everything around him—an infinite number of moving pieces flowed through his consciousness. It lasted for only a moment, and then he was enveloped by a world of white.

  Max opened his eyes. He was lying in the dark of the frobbit treeshire, the cool air drifting across his sweat-drenched face. “Whoa!” he exclaimed. The sleeping snow faerie turned on its side and mumbled something. Max scrambled to his feet and ran across the cold ground until he came to the tree where Dirk was sleeping. He pushed through the unlocked door (frobbits didn’t have doors that locked) and hurried over to his friend. He grabbed Dirk by the shoulders and shook him until his eyes fluttered open. “Something happened, Dirk! I had it in front of me. The spell! The one that will get us home!”

  Dirk smiled, a half-awake sleepy smile. “Yay.”

  “No, you don’t understand—there’s a way back! I know it now. I just have to find it again.”

  Dirk patted Max on the head, yawning. “Tell me all about it in the morning, little camper. Now is nighty-night time.” Dirk turned on his side and fell immediately back to sleep.

  Max stood there for several moments, not sure what to do. Finally, he went back to his room and lay with his eyes open for a very long time. He didn’t remember falling asleep again.

  The next morning, after a breakfast of berries and goat’s milk, Max tried to explain what had happened to the others.

  “So you found this spell, but then it was gone?” Sarah asked, doing her best to understand.

  “It’s hard to explain,” Max replied as he pulled the Codex out of his backpack and opened it. “I spent the first part of the morning looking through it all again, but the Codex is just totally random. See here?” he said, pointing at the text. “It’s just talking about how squirrels use the hammer-and-anvil military maneuver to crush their opponents.” The group all leaned in, looking at the strange symbols.

  “We’ll have to take your word on that,” Dirk said.

  “Oh,” Max replied, feeling slightly awkward. “I forget you guys can’t read it. Anyway, I just need to find where the Prime Spells are hiding.”

  “An invisible man hides from more than his friends,” Glenn added, joining in the conversation. “He hides from himself as well. Don’t be that guy, people.”

  “Uh . . . sure,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “It sounds like maybe you were overthinking things,” Sarah continued, turning back to Max. “Almost as if you were trying so hard to figure everything out that your own head was getting in the way.”

  “That would be a first,” Dirk offered, slurping the last of his breakfast from a wooden bowl. “Except in dodge-ball. It was like you could just close your eyes and throw the ball and you’d probably hit that big noggin of his.”

  “Nice. So we’re going with the big head jokes now?” Max said, defensively.

  “Sorry, it’s a perfectly normal head,” Dirk shot back. “If you were eight feet tall and had gigantism.”

  Max looked around to find something to throw at Dirk when Sarah put her hands on his head, holding him still. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dirk,” she said, turning Max’s head to get a better look. “I think it’s a perfectly normal head.”

  Max felt his cheeks burning with embarrassment. “Can we please talk about something else?” he managed to get out.

  Sarah smiled. “Of course, like you figuring out how to find that spell again.”

  “Yeah. But at least we know it’s there.”

  “So you gonna take another imagination trip and then voilà, we’re back in our time?” Dwight asked, scratching at his whiskers.

  Max took his glasses off, cleaning them with his shirt. “I don’t know—maybe. I’ll just have to experiment.”

  “Yeah, well ‘maybe’ sounds a tad noncommittal to me,” Dwight complained. “Experimenting could make things a lot worse. Messing with magic is like getting into a cage with a gracon and poking it with a stick. You shouldn’t do it unless you know what you’re doing.”

  “What’s a gracon?” Sarah asked.

  “There’s an old saying that might help,” Glenn piped in. “If you and a gracon go on a picnic and you don’t pack a lunch, it won’t be the gracon coming back hungry.”

  “I bet a gracon’s some kind of scary monster from your world,” Dirk said, stating the obvious. “Like, what level is it?”

  “Bah! You don’t know nothing about the Magrus, do you?” Dwight exclaimed. “A gracon’s got liquid fire for blood. It eats scary for breakfast.”

  “Cool,” Dirk said, trying to visualize it. “Probably level sixty.”

  Yah Yah approached, bowing politely. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but our elders are most anxious to talk with you now. Would you be willing to come and meet them?”

  “Of course,” Max said, thinking of the hospitality the little frobbits had shown him.

  Yah Yah led the group through large trees that made up the frobbit treeshire. The sun had begun to drive off the morning mist and the whole of the village felt alive and green. Max and his friends received curious looks from the women carting laundry to and from a nearby stream, and from the wide-eyed children who dashed away as soon as they made eye contact. There seemed to be very few adult males.

  “You would think this is a happy place,” Yah Yah said as they made their way along a small trail that wound around the gnarled bark of a tree. “But the weight of the world is heavy on us.”

  “The frobbits I knew had hardly a care in the world,” Dwight said, stepping over a large root as he walked. “That’s what made them easy targets. Nobody captures dwarfs like that.”

  Yah Yah lead them to a small clearing where they came to the largest tree any of them had ever seen. It had a set of double doors dug out at its base, and various windows poking out along its considerable girth. “This is our council chambers,” he announced. They went down a set of stone steps that approached the narrow door, but Dwight suddenly stopped.

  “Nope, I’m not going in,” Dwight said resolutely. “I’ll just wait out here where it’s not so stuffy.”

  Max remembered what the Codex had said about dwarfs who were born afraid of enclosed spaces, and that Dwight was one of them. It must have been hard to be afraid of the very thing that defined his people. “I understand,” he offered, feeling bad for Dwight. “Nobody’s going to make you go in.”

  It was a moment that Max thought he really connected with the dwarf. Dwight nodded, a kind of understanding seemed to pass between them. Then Dwight shifted his hips, lifted his stubby leg, and farted loudly. “That’s what I think of you and your human sympathy!” he shouted, laughing hysterically. Max didn’t think it was particularly funny.

  After the group passed through the door and descended a narrow set of stairs, they could still hear Dwight laughing.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A PLEA FOR HELP

  (THE TECHRUS—FUTURE)


  THE UNDERGROUND ROOM WAS SPACIOUS BY FROBBIT STANDARDS, and Max and the others could actually stand without hitting their heads on the ceiling. It had been a short walk from the small door at the base of the tree to the chamber they now found themselves in. The room was shaped somewhat like an elongated egg, with a set of small circular windows near the top that allowed sunlight to filter in. Two frobbit guards, each holding a crudely fashioned spear, watched them impassively. Seated in the center at a thick wooden table were the frobbit elders—three males and two females. They all wore brightly colored robes, and the two females had colored ribbons in their gray hair.

  “May I present our human visitors,” Yah Yah announced, waving his hand and ushering the group inside.

  “How pleased the earth must be to feel human feet upon it after so long a time,” one of the females began. “I am Ayriah, and these are my counselors Hyril, Samtri, Goshri, and my sister Sayri.”

  The council all nodded. “Waz’up peeps?” Dirk exclaimed.

  Max stepped forward, giving Dirk an elbow in the ribs for good measure. “Sorry for my friend here,” he offered. “He doesn’t mean to be rude.”

  “No offense was taken,” Sayri said pleasantly.

  “Oh, good. Well, I’m Max.”

  The council members frowned, casting glances back and forth. “That’s . . . unfortunate,” Ayriah finally responded. “We’re truly sorry to hear that.”

  “He doesn’t have the itch!” Yah Yah blurted. “ ‘Max’ is a human name.”

  The council members nodded to one another, seemingly relieved.

  “So, uh, these are my friends,” Max continued, the color fading from his cheeks after his initial embarrassment. “Dirk, Sarah, and then there’s Dwight the dwarf, but he’s waiting outside.”

  “And let’s not forget Glenn the Legendary Dagger of Motivation,” Glenn added. “Because everything’s okay in the end. If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.”