Bad Unicorn Page 17

  “Actually,” Sarah said, stepping forward, “I wanted to talk to you about that. Max told me that you wanted Robo-Princess dead.”

  “She is a relic, an aberration, and a destroyer of worlds. She also slighted me at the last company party.”

  “What can you do to help us?” Sarah asked, getting right to the point.

  “An interesting question. I can certainly block Machine City’s view of this entire sector now,” Cenede replied, the monitors in the background flipping through various pictures of the forest.

  “Can you hide us as we march to the hunting grounds?” Sarah asked.

  “I can,” Cenede replied. “But I get the impression you’re not just talking about a handful of your friends?”

  “I intend to bring all who will fight against her,” Sarah responded.

  “Ah,” Cenede answered, sounding pleased. “Machines do not like the unexpected. I think such a tactic may prove disruptive, but they will adapt quickly.”

  “Is there anything else you can do?” Max asked. “Are there weapons you know of? Can you do something to Robo-Princess from here?”

  “I will consider your request, Max. But I can tell you what to expect: Robo-Princess will enlist three hunters to fight you. Each one will be more difficult than the last.”

  “Three hunter robots . . . plus a killer robot unicorn?” Max repeated back, sounding deflated.

  “As I’ve said, this will not be easy for you.”

  “Can you tell us any more about these hunters?” Sarah asked. “Do they have special weaknesses? Is there something about them we can exploit?”

  “Each hunter will have individual strengths and weaknesses, but I cannot tell you specifics. The names of the hunters are being kept a secret. All I can say is magic is your only real hope of defeating them. But remember, Robo-Princess will have magic, too.”

  Max kept forgetting about that part—that he was facing something that was more than just a machine.

  “I hope this proves helpful to you,” Cenede said. “And I hope that you are successful in not only defeating Robo-Princess, but finding your way back home.”

  “Thanks, Cenede,” Max said. “It does help.”

  “If you make it back to your time,” Cenede continued, “you can find me at Rodney’s Nicklecade in Owensboro, Kentucky. Perhaps you might look me up and play a game or two.”

  “Oh, sure,” Sarah said, forcing a smile.

  “Me too,” Max added. “I’ll totally come by.”

  “I might even let you win. Probably not,” Cenede admitted, “but you never know.”

  It was late afternoon by the time Max and Sarah climbed back into the air sled. The snow faeries hitched themselves up and they shot off into the woods. Max and Sarah rode in silence for a long while, each wrapped up in a blanket as a cold wind blew around them.

  “At least we have a better idea of what we’ll be facing,” Sarah said finally. “And Cenede will be able to hide us for a bit. That’s going to be helpful.”

  Max nodded, but he didn’t think hiding a few frobbits or knowing how many hunters were after them was going to make much of a real difference. It all fell on his shoulders. He’d have to learn spells that were powerful enough to defeat whatever mechanical nightmares they sent—including Robo-Princess herself. Max wished he had more time, like years to really study and learn what was in the Codex. He felt as if he’d only scratched the surface, and the kinds of fireballs he was able to employ might not be strong enough to do the job. Everything was happening too fast, and Max was starting to wonder if he’d made a horrible mistake in offering to stay. He tried to close his eyes and sleep, but his troubling thoughts kept him awake.

  It was dark and the treeshire had long since retired for the night when the air sled came to a stop. Sarah told Max to get some sleep, and Max said that he would. But hours later he was still huddled over the Codex of Infinite Knowability, studying by the glow of a small and somewhat annoyed snow faerie.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ALL HAIL THE GREAT DIRKSTER!

  (THE TECHRUS—FUTURE)

  MAX AND HIS FRIENDS HAD SETTLED INTO A SET OF ROUTINES. MAX practiced throwing fireballs. Dwight helped the frobbits take old scrap metal and fashion passable armor. Sarah trained the frobbits in judo (she had already had to break up three tickle fights). Meanwhile, Dirk had started some kind of new religion. He had announced that since the party had magic users and warriors, what they needed now were healers. And healers needed faith to be fully effective.

  Max and Sarah found Dirk talking to a group of frobbits and snow faeries in a small clearing.

  “The Great Dirkster demands the machines be destroyed!” Dirk exclaimed, walking back and forth, his hands in the air.

  “Why?” one of the frobbit clerics asked. “What did the machines do to the Great Dirkster?”

  “Oh, they did plenty,” Dirk answered. “Like burn his Pop-Tarts! The toasters must pay for their insolence!”

  The frobbits and snow faeries looked back and forth, not knowing what toasters were—but they sounded dangerous.

  “Seriously?” Sarah asked, her hands on her hips. “The Great Dirkster?”

  Dirk ran over to where Max and Sarah were standing. “Hey, not so loud. I’m putting together a team of healers for our battle.”

  “Healers?” Max asked.

  “I don’t think you should be messing with people’s religion,” Sarah said, looking at the small band of clerics.

  “Look, nobody else is worried that we don’t have priests and clerics here. While I, on the other hand, am an experienced gamer and know how these things work. So while these guys are good at all their folksy medicine, they need a faith modifier for their healing, uh, abilities.”

  “So you just created a deity out of thin air?”

  “The Great Dirkster,” Dirk called out, raising his hands to the heavens. “All powerful and full of awesomeness!”

  “This is ridiculous,” Sarah said, shaking her head.

  “And wrathful to unbelievers!” Dirk shouted, pointing at Sarah.

  Several of the robe-clad frobbits and snow faeries fell to the ground, calling out in one voice: “All fear the Great Dirkster!”

  Dirk nodded. “Faith modifier now active. Hey, thanks for stopping by and stuff, but as you can see, I’ve got this handled—so don’t worry.”

  “Well, I am worried—” Sarah started, but Dirk had already turned around and run back to his small band of priests.

  “Pop quiz, people,” Dirk said, getting their attention. “Let’s say that me and the smelly dwarf get struck by one of those robot hunters at the same time. Who do you heal first?”

  A frobbit raised his hand. “Why, you, of course, oh unblemished one.”

  “That’s right,” Dirk announced, looking pleased. “The unblemished one cannot fall. This is the will of the Great Dirkster.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “Come on, Max. We’ve got real work to do.”

  Max had to hand it to Dirk; he knew how to get people riled up one way or the other.

  It happened sooner than they wanted it to, but Max and his friends had run out of time. On the evening before the fifteenth day they sat together around the fire. The frobbits had baked a special kind of bread, cooked in stone ovens and made with honey. Max couldn’t remember ever eating anything so good.

  “So, by this time tomorrow we’ll either be dancing on the metal head of that robot unicorn, or we’ll be dead,” Dwight said, tearing off another chunk of bread and stuffing it into his mouth.

  “That’s a happy thought,” Sarah replied, slowly picking at her meal.

  “Yep, that’s me—Mr. Sunshine,” Dwight replied before turning to Max. “So what about those fireballs? You ready?”

  Max had definitely gotten better at casting spells, although his ability to control them was still suspect (as several singed frobbits were able to affirm). And sometimes late at night, when exhaustion began to take him and he was drifting to sleep, Max’s
mind would touch upon the Prime Spells. He could feel their presence and the magnitude of their power. He would drift in that strange other dimension, the spells orbiting like planets around a burning sun. Then he’d wake up, covered in sweat and breathing heavily. “As ready as I’m going to be,” Max said finally, lost in his own thoughts. Then he looked around the fire at his friends. “It’s strange, don’t you think? We have the same name.”

  “Who?” Dirk asked, barely getting the word out of a mouth full of honey bread.

  “Who do you think, nimrod?” Dwight answered. “Maximilian Sporazo—the World Sunderer.”

  “Maximilian and Max—basically the same,” Max continued. “What are the odds?”

  “I don’t know if it’s that strange,” Sarah said, thinking it over. “Maybe just . . . unlikely.”

  “No way. It’s like destiny,” Dirk jumped in. “The universe has spoken—it’s fate.”

  “It’s not about names,” Dwight replied, swatting at a moth buzzing around the campfire. “It’s about blood.”

  “Blood is awesome—that’s why vampires like it,” Dirk added.

  “For Sporazo, blood was a safeguard,” Dwight continued. “The last measure of protection.”

  “To protect the Codex from the bad guys?”

  “No, Dirk,” Dwight answered, looking grim by the flickering light of the fire. “The exact opposite. To protect the world from the Codex.”

  Sarah looked at the ancient book at Max’s side. “It makes sense. Look what it’s done to us.”

  “The Codex changed the world,” Dirk continued. “Computers, satellites, cell phones, even cars and planes and stuff—all because Max’s ancestor got rid of magic. This whole future even, full of robots and machine cities and talking arcade games—everything happened because of that book.”

  As hard as it was to imagine, Max knew Dirk was right. The entire world had changed because of the Codex—which meant it was probably powerful enough to change the world again. And that wasn’t an especially comforting thought. The last thing Max wanted to do was make everything worse.

  “Magic or machines, they’re two sides of the same coin,” Dwight grumbled. “Book or no book, it doesn’t really change anything. The powerful rise up and want more, and the weak are left to fend for themselves. If it wasn’t machines it would be knights and kings.”

  “It’s just all a bit weird,” Sarah said. “It’s hard to get your head around it.”

  “Weird?” Dwight shot back. “You have no idea. Spend some time in the Magrus and I’ll show you weird. All it takes is one zombie duck chasing you and you’ll never sleep right again.”

  “And to think just two weeks ago the biggest thing I had to worry about was getting into trouble because of the Kraken,” Sarah added, finally deciding she didn’t have much of an appetite.

  “And being banned from gaming,” Max said.

  “Yeah,” Dirk continued, “or being visited by the FBI because of quote ‘suspicious online activity.’ ”

  The group all stopped and looked at Dirk.

  “You don’t want to know too much,” Dirk said, leaning back and folding his arms. “For your own protection.”

  The group looked at Max, who nodded in agreement. “Yeah, we’ve got enough to worry about at the moment.”

  The next day came after a fitful night’s sleep. Max stood on a small platform, surrounded by his friends, and looked out over the assembled frobbits and snow faeries. The frobbits had made weapons from heavy branches, sharpened stone, and even seashells. They dressed in leather armor and caps, some reinforced with scavenged metal studs and steel plates, many adorned with drawings of flowers and bunnies. Sarah had tried to explain the necessity of looking intimidating, but the frobbits had their own ideas of armor-based art. The snow faeries carried small bows and hovered in neatly ordered ranks, their buzzing wings a blur.

  If the frobbits and faeries could be considered an army, Sarah was their general. She knew more about tactics and war from a book report she’d done on Sun Tzu than the rest of the clans put together. She had balked at the idea at first, but the logical side of her brain kicked in and told her that she was the only person for the job. So as Sarah had done with most challenges in her life, she threw herself into it 100 percent. Her little army of fighters wasn’t perfect, but they were willing to learn and Sarah did her best to teach them. In the end, the ranks of soldiers admired and respected their auburn-haired commander.

  Max looked over the group, the memories of the last two weeks still fresh in his mind. He tried to fight back a growing wave of nausea as he watched families wave to their soldiers, both frobbit and faerie alike.

  “Now, that’s what I call a raiding party,” Dirk said, looking the group over.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Max replied.

  “Now let’s get some buffs,” Dirk announced, turning and raising his hands until the crowd quieted down. “The Great Dirkster has commanded me to buff this army with powerful magic!”

  “Seriously?” Sarah asked, leaning over to Max.

  “He says it will help. I don’t see how it could hurt.”

  Sarah sighed and shook her head.

  “Shazam!” Dirk yelled.

  Dwight looked up from where he was standing near the edge of the platform. “Shazam?”

  Max shrugged.

  “The machines can take our lands!” Dirk continued to yell. “They can take our hives!”

  “Hives?” Sarah asked Max.

  “He likes the honey cakes.”

  “Oh.”

  “They can take our wives and our children!” Dirk continued, the wives and children in the audience not liking where this was going. “But you know what they can’t take? Do you know what they can never take? Our Fritos!” The frobbits and snow faeries began cheering.

  “He means freedom, right?” Sarah asked Max again. “They can’t take our freedom.”

  “Er,” Max replied. “Dirk really likes corn chips.”

  Dirk walked back to where Max was standing. “Okay, buddy, I’ve warmed them up for you—now it’s your turn.”

  “My turn?”

  “Just tell them something inspirational,” Sarah suggested. “Like a pep talk.”

  “I don’t do pep talks,” Max replied, sounding nervous. “I haven’t even been in anything that required a pep talk.”

  “Everyone’s here because of you,” Sarah continued, looking back at the crowd. “You have to say something.”

  Max reluctantly stepped forward, clearing his throat as the crowd quieted. “Uh, hi, everyone,” he started. He realized it wasn’t nearly loud enough. Max looked down to see Yah Yah smiling at him. Max swallowed and cleared his throat. “I just wanted to tell you about, uh, another group of small creatures—furrier than you guys, who lived on a moon and were being threatened by an evil empire. They didn’t have technology on their side. But they had . . . trees.” Max motioned to the woods and the crowd looked around and nodded in agreement. “And see, you guys have trees. And this little tribe, well, they fought these big walking machines and used their trees to, like, totally smash them. And that made the shields on the moon-sized death ship go down. Anyway, the point is the little furry guys with the trees won. And so I thought, maybe we could win too.”

  Although Max had deep concerns over his ability to inspire anyone, he didn’t know that most frobbit motivational speeches never even discussed victory as a possible outcome. To his surprise, the frobbits and snow faeries erupted into shouts, jumping and high-fiving one another just as Dirk had instructed them to do over the last two weeks.

  Glenn was looking around and nodding vigorously from his spot on Max’s belt. “Yeah, that’s right, feel the rush! And if we’re all killed, that’s the circle of life, people. Circle of life.”

  Max awkwardly stepped away to be replaced by Sarah. “Atten—tion!” she shouted. One of the many things Sarah had learned from judo was how to produce a yell that started all the way in the pit of her stoma
ch. The entire frobbit and faerie army snapped to attention.

  “Platoons! You will form up on Yah Yah and proceed in two columns to the hunting grounds. You will proceed as we practiced: infantry followed by ranged units. You will not, I repeat, not, stop to pick flowers or chase butterflies.”

  Dirk raised his hands. “May our enemy be smitten with weak battery life, and may their remotes lose all their universal codes!”

  Mothers and children said good-bye to fathers and brothers as the platoons marched away. Snow faerie families saluted their soldiers, hovering in ordered rows behind the frobbit infantry, as Max and his friends climbed into the air sled. Max tried to look confident, especially when frobbits came up to him to shake his hand and wish him luck. But he couldn’t help thinking that everyone had placed their lives in his hands. They had seen Max practicing his spells and thought he was a powerful wizard. But Max didn’t feel like a wizard. It was the Codex that had the magic, and Max was simply a means for it to jump out. Sometimes he thought he had some control, but it was never really enough. He didn’t share his concerns with his friends, however. There was no point in them knowing now. Time had run out.

  “If I was wrong and you were right,” Max said, turning to Sarah, who was sitting next to him in the air sled, “do you promise not to hold it against me?”

  Sarah looked at him for a moment and then smiled. “I know you’re not doing what you want to do, but what you feel you have to do. And that takes real courage, Max. So I have to believe if you’re strong enough to do that, then you’re strong enough to do the rest.”

  Sarah reached over and gave Max a kiss on his forehead. “For luck,” she said, turning away to talk to one of her platoon sergeants walking next to them.

  A strange smile crept across Max’s face as he turned to see Dwight watching him with a smirk. “Now, don’t get to feeling all special,” the dwarf said, reading Max’s expression. “She kissed all of us for luck. Even Dirk.”