Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

It wasn’t the first time I’d felt that icy pit of terror, that sense of horrible doom that came from thinking I was going to die. I felt it on the altar when I was about to get sacrificed, I felt it when Blackburn shot me with his Torturer’s Lens, and I felt it as I watched the F-15 turn back toward us for another run.

I never got used to that feeling. It’s kind of like getting punched in the face by your own mortality.

And mortality has a wicked right hook.

“We need to do something!” I shouted as Dragonaut lurched. Australia, however, had her eyes closed—I’d later learn that she was mentally compensating for the lost wing, keeping us in the air. Ahead of us, the fighter’s cockpit began glowing again.

“We are doing something,” Bastille said.

“What?”

“Stalling!”

“For what?”

Something thumped above. I glanced up, apprehensive as I looked through the translucent glass. Bastille’s mother, Draulin, stood up on the roof of Dragonaut. A majestic cloak fluttered out behind her, and she wore her steel armor. She carried a Sword of Crystallia.

I’d seen one once before, during the library infiltration. Bastille had pulled it out to fight against Alivened monsters. I’d thought that maybe I’d remembered the sword’s ridiculous size wrong—that perhaps it had simply looked big next to Bastille.

I was wrong. The sword was enormous, at least five feet long from the tip of the blade to the hilt. It glittered, made completely of the crystal from which the Crystin, and Crystallia itself, get their name.

(The knights aren’t terribly original with names. Crystin, Crystallia, crystals. One time when I was allowed into Crystallia, I jokingly dubbed my potato a “Potatin potato, grown and crafted in the Fields of Potatallia.” The knights were not amused. Maybe I should have used my carrot instead.)

Draulin stepped across the head of our flying dragon, her armored boots clinking against the glass. Somehow, she managed to retain a sure footing despite the wind and the shaking vehicle.

The jet fired a beam from its Frostbringer’s glass, aiming for another wing. Bastille’s mother jumped, leaping through the air, cloak flapping. She landed on the wing itself, raising her crystalline sword. The beam of frost hit the sword and disappeared in a puff. Bastille’s mother barely even bent beneath the blow. She stood powerfully, her armored visor obscuring her face.

The cockpit fell silent. It seemed impossible to me that Draulin had managed such a feat. Yet as I waited, the jet fired again, and once again Bastille’s mother managed to get in front of the beam and destroy it.

“She’s … standing on top of Dragonaut,” I said as I watched through the glass.

“Yes,” Bastille said.

“We appear to be going several hundred miles an hour.”

“About that.”

“She’s blocking laser beams fired by a jet airplane.”

“Yes.”

“Using nothing but her sword.”

“She’s a Knight of Crystallia,” Bastille said, looking away. “That’s the sort of thing they do.”

I fell silent, watching Bastille’s mother run the entire length of Dragonaut in the space of a couple seconds, then block an ice beam fired at us from behind.

Kaz shook his head. “Those Crystin,” he said. “They take the fun out of everything.” He smiled toothily.

To this day, I haven’t been able to tell if Kaz genuinely has a death wish, or if he only likes to act that way. Either way, he’s a loon. But then, he’s a Smedry. That’s virtually a synonym for “insane, foolhardy lunatic.”

I glanced at Bastille. She watched her mother move above, and seemed longing, yet ashamed at the same time.

That’s the sort of thing they expect her to be able to do, I thought. That’s why they took her knighthood from her—because they thought she wasn’t up to their standards.

“Um, trouble!” Australia said. She’d opened her eyes, but looked very frazzled as she sat with her hand on the glowing panel. Up ahead, the fighter jet was charging its glass again—and it had just released another missile.

“Grab on!” Bastille said, getting ahold of a chair. I did the same, for all the good it did. I was again tossed to the side as Australia dodged. Up above, Draulin managed to block the Frostbringer’s ray, but it looked close.

The missile exploded a short distance from the body of Dragonaut.

We can’t keep doing this, I thought. Australia looks like she can barely hold on, and Bastille’s mother will get tired eventually.

We’re in serious trouble.