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  Sarah turned to see Max stumbling forward. A second group of police bots had closed on the center of the floor and were engaged in a furious fight with the mechanical spiders.

  “Max!” Sarah screamed as a police bot swung an energy baton at him. Max barely managed to duck, and heard the crack and sizzle of the electric sparks that played along the weapon’s surface.

  “Help!” Dirk cried as he scrambled to free himself from the arms of a police bot. Sarah rushed toward him, grabbing Dirk’s hand. The police bot raised a metallic arm and a foot-long spike extended from it. Sarah panicked, pulling harder to free Dirk, but the police bot had him trapped. The robot turned the weapon, ready to strike, then suddenly lurched forward. The police bot froze as a shower of sparks flew from behind it. Its arms loosened and Dirk spun out of its grip as the robot fell forward, crashing to the ground.

  Dwight stood where it had been standing, his battle-axe in hand. “Finally I get to kill something!” he shouted, turning to engage another police bot.

  Max had managed to make it to his feet and was starting to reach for Glenn. He didn’t have the Codex anymore, and if it was going to come down to hand-to-hand combat he didn’t give himself much of a chance. But as he was about to pull the dagger free a rapid explosion of gunfire erupted. The police bot in front of him was ripped in half as other bots and mechanical spiders exploded around him. Max dove to the ground, wrapping his arms around his head. The Frobinator had entered the melee, and its shoulder guns were decimating everything in its path.

  Across the hall, Yah Yah commanded the frobbit infantry to charge into the weakened line of police bots. As the frobbits ran forward, waving their improvised weapons, Yah Yah directed the faerie archers to turn and take aim at the Frobinator. They pulled back on their bows and let loose.

  Sarah watched as the tiny arrows arched over her head and began falling around the hunter, bouncing off its armor. And while the faeries had gotten lucky with the design of the police bots, the Frobinator had no such weaknesses. The Frobinator turned its cannons and began shooting into the air in a massive display of firepower. The remains of mechanical spiders fell like rain. Seat cubes also exploded in the distance as the hunter continued its rampage, not caring if it destroyed friend or foe.

  “Enough!” Robo-Princess shouted. A band of white lightning exploded from her horn, tracing a path across the creatures around her and stretching up to engage the hundreds of remaining spiders hanging from the pillars or lurking in the shadows above. There was a flash of light and the remaining spiders fell to the ground, their frames twisted and smoldering.

  Guns smoking from its shoulders, the Frobinator beat its chest with its fist as the small faerie arrows bounced harmlessly off its thick armored shell.

  At the same time, the frobbits had closed the distance with the police bots and were fighting them in a desperate clash of hand-to-hand combat. The Frobinator ignored them for the moment, choosing to train its guns on Yah Yah and the faerie archers. “Time to die, little faeries,” the Frobinator announced.

  Robo-Princess snarled, her metallic teeth glistening. She leapt forward, knocking Dwight and Dirk on their backs and driving Sarah to the ground. She lowered her head, placing the point of her horn beneath Sarah’s chin, and pushed a metallic hoof on her chest, pinning her.

  “I’ll start by killing you,” Robo-Princess said. “And as you lie there bleeding you can watch as I slaughter your friends, destroy your pitiful army, and devour Max Spencer bit by bit. Time for the human race to finally come to an end.”

  Max rose to his feet, the Frobinator’s carnage all around him. He began to reach for Glenn, deciding that he wouldn’t let his friends die without him trying something—no matter how doomed it was to fail. But then he remembered the words of the Wez: When things get bad—just relax and listen. It was the hardest thing Max had ever done, but he stopped reaching for the dagger and closed his eyes.

  Robo-Princess was watching him out of the corner of her eye. “Oh, come on now! At least try to put up a fight!”

  Max ignored her. He heard the pinging of the arrows as they continued to fall harmlessly on the Frobinator’s armor. He heard the ratcheting of a new belt of bullets being locked into place. And he heard the sounds of fighting as the frobbits began to succumb to the powerful police bots. Max pushed everything out of his head, even though his mind was screaming that he had run out of time. He did the practically impossible—he relaxed. Max took a deep breath and pictured the Codex. He wasn’t concentrating on finding the book’s location or retrieving a particular spell, he just stretched out his mind and opened himself to the book’s influence. At first there was nothing but the sound of his own heart. Max pushed past that, willing himself to go deeper until all of the sounds around him had been muted out. And then, suddenly, Max could feel it, like stepping outside and feeling the sun on the first day of spring. The sensation was as old and as powerful as anything in the universe—but it was also familiar. And somehow, at the moment, Max knew that the Codex itself didn’t matter—that it was simply a key that opened something . . . else. Max felt a great sense of power begin to swell as it stretched out and filled every part of him. Then a voice echoed in his ears: The world is an ironic place, Max—wouldn’t you say?

  A word came to Max’s mind and he felt it form in his mouth. The word was like a great sphere, pulled from an infinite ocean. But this time Max was not helplessly adrift—this time he summoned the spell with the same inevitability as gravity pulls a falling star to earth. Max took the immensity of the thing and drew it into him, compressing it down until it raged within him—a burning inferno. Then he let the spell go with a voice that sounded only a little like his own.

  “Irony!” Max shouted. The sound shook the entire building as the spell heaved itself into reality, sweeping the remaining robots off their feet like a child casting toys off a table. The Frobinator was flung across the ground, crashing hard against a large column. Robo-Princess flew from Sarah, spinning in the air until she landed hard against the marble floor. And the police bots were blown into the rows of statues, exploding in a shower of concrete and metal. For several moments afterward, no one moved.

  “Whoa,” Dirk said, climbing to his feet. Sarah looked over at Max. “Max . . . ?”

  Robo-Princess had been around magic her entire life. As a unicorn she was one of the most powerful creatures in existence. But the enormity of what she felt was beyond anything she had ever experienced. She knew that she should be afraid—truly afraid for the first time in her life, if only she wasn’t so hungry. A new appetite was rising, insatiable and enticing. The smell of flesh, gathered and amplified by her enhanced robotic body was suddenly repugnant. Instead, the scent of the machines had awakened something new. From their warm processors, pulsating at fantastic speeds, to their hydraulics and electronic neural networks—each and every part of the machine’s anatomy brought on a hunger so deep and profound that nothing was more important than satisfying the need to taste and devour.

  In a flash Robo-Princess sent a lightning bolt from her horn and into the Frobinator. The surge caused the hunter’s systems to instantly overload. But even before it stopped writhing on the ground, Robo-Princess was on top of it, ripping open its chest and chewing on its circuits and electronics. A collective gasp exploded from the machines around the stadium. Robo-Princess ignored them—the taste of the Frobinator was the most wonderfully exhilarating thing she had ever experienced. But there was no satisfaction, only an increasing need to devour more. She bounded up to a police bot that was trying to get up. Robo-Princess ripped into it, casting its electronics over the ground as she chewed and tasted. But each time, the satisfaction of eating never came, only the increased hunger. A panic erupted throughout the stadium now as police bots, servos, and other machines fled in terror. Robo-Princess, who had hunted and killed for centuries, was brutally efficient. Nothing escaped her. With magic and machine-fueled ferocity she destroyed everything in her path. When the sphere Pink fl
oated down, demanding to know what was going on, she speared it with her horn, impaling the orb like a shish kebab before flinging it against a wall and tearing out its insides.

  Max hurried to join his friends, and Sarah flung her arms around him until he stopped feeling awkward and hugged her back.

  Meanwhile, Robo-Princess continued her devastating and brutal attack.

  “What happened?” Dirk said, looking around him as a plume of smoke began to rise. “You don’t have the Codex.”

  “I don’t know,” Max answered, letting go of Sarah. “I think it might have spoken to me.”

  “Sounds a bit crazy if you ask me,” Glenn chimed in. “A talking book.”

  “You said ‘irony,’ ” Dwight added. “Right before everything happened.”

  “And now Robo-Princess is eating all the machines instead of us,” Dirk replied. “Sort of ironic, if you think about it.”

  Another crash sounded in the distance, followed by various alarms.

  “So, how long do you suppose this will go on?” Sarah asked. The frobbits and faeries were embracing one another and tending to their wounded.

  “I don’t think Robo-Princess will stop . . . ever,” Max said. “I think she’ll eat every machine on the planet. And when she’s done, the only thing left will be herself.”

  “Ew,” Sarah said, crinkling her nose. “That seems kind of gross.”

  “Not as gross as being a monkey in their messed-up zoo,” Dirk replied. “I was prepared to throw things. Unmentionable things.”

  Yah Yah ran up to them, smiling broadly. “Come, my friends, let’s go home! Soon this city will be destroyed and our overlords will be gone. Peace! It was too much to even hope for until you came to us. Peace at last!”

  Yah Yah bowed to Max, which made Max blush. “Don’t do that,” Max said, trying not to offend his little friend. “It’s embarrassing.”

  Yah Yah rose, never taking his eyes off him. “You’ve done it, Max. You’ve saved us.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  THE SLEEPER RISES

  (THE TECHRUS—FUTURE)

  FOR MANY MONTHS FOLLOWING THEIR VICTORY AT MACHINE CITY, Max tried to find the Codex by reaching out with his mind. When that failed, he and Dirk trekked to the hunting grounds and searched for the book there, but it remained lost. They did find the floating frobbit caught in the branches of a tree, however, and with a little help, they managed to get him back to the ground. The spell must have worn off because the formerly singed, flamed, and airborne frobbit remained earthbound, (although whenever he saw Max he’d run in the opposite direction).

  As Robo-Princess continued leveling Machine City, a great council of frobbit nations was called and the various clans came together to form a government. They had asked Max to be their ruler (he declined), followed by Sarah (she politely refused), then Dwight (he laughed at them), and finally Dirk (who had enthusiastically accepted at first, but after many heated discussions with Max and Sarah had finally stepped down). There had been no more hunts, and in time the frobbits decided the whole hunting business was over and done with for good.

  At first Max’s friends were patient with him as he tried again and again to find either the spell that would take them home, or the Codex itself. But as the weeks wore on he could feel their growing anxiety. Living with the frobbits wasn’t bad—they liked to sing and dance and cook, but Max was growing more and more unsettled. He thought again and again about the visit from the Wez, who had been absolutely right in telling him to relax in order to access the deeper recesses of the Codex. But with the book gone and unable to find it in his mind, he started to feel hopeless. Max spent most of his days in his tree house (the frobbits had given each of them one), puttering around or just sleeping. Sarah had organized more judo training, and tried to occupy her mind with as much of that as possible. But it was clear she was also getting more and more unraveled by the thought of having to stay with the frobbits forever. Dwight lost himself in whatever drink he could concoct, and only Dirk seemed to adapt to his new environment, exploring the area with many of his frobbit and faerie pals, and teaching them variations of his favorite games.

  Fall drifted into winter. With the cold forcing them indoors for much of the time, the gradual depression that had been working its way through Sarah and Max only deepened.

  When spring arrived, Max took an air sled and visited Cenede. She was in the process of rebuilding her spiders, having lost nearly all of them in the battle against Robo-Princess.

  “Aren’t you concerned that she’ll come for you?” Max asked her one day. The question had been weighing on his mind.

  “Robo-Princess will come for me when I am the last,” Cenede answered without emotion. “It’s a fitting end to an unnaturally long life, wouldn’t you say?”

  “But she’ll destroy you.”

  “Knowing that I destroyed her first,” Cenede replied. “And then we will be done and this world can go back to its first caretakers.”

  “So this is my life, then,” Max said with a sigh. “We came so far that I just thought we’d go all the way.”

  “All the way home you mean?”

  Max nodded.

  “Perhaps it’s your destiny to make this your home now. I know I would enjoy your company.”

  Several weeks later when Max returned to visit Cenede again, he found her destroyed remains scattered around the chamber. And there, in the center of it, was the gutted shell of the metallic unicorn. Robo-Princess had turned on herself just as he had suspected, until whatever life she had was gone. Max sat down and stared at the electronic remains for some time, noticing a strange translucent compass scattered among the debris. He took the object and put it in his pocket. It was well after dark before he returned to the air sled and had the faeries take him back to the treeshire. He didn’t bother telling his friends what he’d seen.

  A few weeks later when summer was in full swing, Dirk pulled his friends together and announced that they needed to spend the night in a cave he’d found on one of his expeditions. Both Sarah and Max declined, but Dirk was so insistent that they finally gave up and agreed to go. He’d even managed to get Dwight to tag along by promising him a new kind of berry with special brewing potential.

  Getting to the cave actually required a bit of a climb, but when Max and his friends made it to the top they were rewarded with a spectacular view of the forest on one side, and the ocean on the other. Near the cave’s entrance the mountain fell away for hundreds of feet, so they were careful not to get too near the edge.

  “It’s beautiful,” Sarah said. Max was feeling too tired to really enjoy it, so he sat down instead. “We should probably start a fire before it gets dark.”

  “That’s okay,” a voice came from farther inside. “I’m hoping we won’t be staying that long.”

  Everyone jumped, except for Dirk. He looked back and raised his hand. “It’s okay. He’s the reason I brought you guys here.”

  “He?” Dwight exclaimed, pulling the axe from off his back.

  The figure that stepped out of the cave’s interior was dressed in flowing black leather and moved with the kind of economy of motion that reminded Max of the sharks he’d seen swimming in the aquarium. The man’s face was hidden behind black cloth, perfectly wrapped around his chin and neck, and the rest of his features were lost in the shadows of a cowboy hat. “Forgive me for startling you, but it was better if I met you away from your frobbit hosts.”

  Max’s hand unconsciously drifted toward Glen.

  “It’s okay, guys,” Dirk continued. “I met him the other day when I was exploring. He’s been looking for us.”

  “Wait, so there isn’t a new berry up here?” Dwight asked, sounding upset.

  “If I may introduce myself,” the man continued, “my name is Obsikar. And as Dirk has said, I’ve been looking for you for a very long time.”

  “Obsikar,” Dwight echoed back, the word tumbling around in his memory. “Seems I’ve heard that name before.”
r />   “I am known to many,” Obsikar replied. “And I have walked the three realms since the dawn of their creation.”

  “What’s going on?” Max asked, turning to Dirk. “What have you done?”

  “It’s okay, like I said. I told Obsikar the whole story—how we’re stuck because you lost the Codex. No offense.”

  “We’re not stuck,” Max said defensively. “I just haven’t figured everything out yet.”

  “If I may be direct,” Obsikar said, stepping forward, “even if you had the Codex it is unlikely you could use it to return to your time—not in the short life afforded to humans to work such things out. I say this having gained a certain understanding of what it means to travel through time—a mastery gained from a life measured in centuries and not years.”

  “What are you, exactly?” Max asked. “Not a human, I take it.”

  “I was born of the Shadrus, sometimes called the shadow realm. I have been called demon, king, and even death itself. All are correct in their own way, I suppose. But what I am now is the last of my kind.”

  “You said you were looking for us?” Sarah interjected.

  “Across the realms of existence and through the umbraverse.”

  “Umbraverse . . . ?” Dirk asked.

  “It’s like an alternative reality or something,” Max said, remembering reading about it in the Codex.

  “An unknown,” Dwight added, putting his axe down but not taking his eyes off the stranger. “Much like this stranger here. And I don’t believe in trusting in the unknown.”

  Obsikar tipped his hat to Dwight. “Of all the commodities the dwarfs pull from the mines of Thoran, trust may be the rarest.”

  “And for good reason,” Dwight replied with a grunt.

  Obsikar turned to Max. “So it is true, you can read from the Codex? Its absence must be unsettling.”

  “He doesn’t need it,” Sarah said coolly.

  “They are bound together—one will not exist without the other now.”