Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

The smoke from the missile’s engine was still blowing forward, and it licked my fingers. Immediately the line of smoke quivered. I screamed and a wave of power shot from my chest, pulsing up the line of smoke like water in a tube, moving toward the fighter, which was screaming along in the same path its missile had taken.

The wave of power hit the jet. All was silent for a moment.

Then the fighter just … fell apart. It didn’t explode, like one might see in an action movie. Its separate pieces simply departed one from another. Screws fell out, panels of metal were thrown free, pieces of glass detached from wing and cockpit. In seconds, the entire machine looked like a box of spare parts that had been carelessly tossed into the air.

The mess shot over the top of Dragonaut, then fell toward the clouds below. As the pieces dispersed, I caught a glimpse of an angry face in the midst of the metal. It was the pilot, twisting among the discarded parts. In an oddly surreal moment, his eyes met mine, and I saw cold hatred in them.

The face was not all human. Half looked normal, but the other half was an amalgamation of screws, springs, nuts, and bolts—not unlike the pieces of the jet falling around it. One of his eyes was of the deepest, blackest glass.

He disappeared into the darkness.

I gasped suddenly, feeling incredibly weak. Bastille’s mother crouched, one hand steadying herself against the roof, watching me with an expression I couldn’t see through her knightly faceplate.

Only then did I notice the cracks in the top of Dragonaut. They spread out from me in a spiral pattern, as if my feet had been the source of some great impact. Looking desperately, I saw that most of the giant flying dragon now bore flaws or cracks of some kind.

My Talent—unpredictable as always—had shattered the glass beneath me as I’d used it to destroy the jet. Slowly, terribly, the massive dragon began to droop. Another of the wings fell free, the glass cracking and breaking. Dragonaut lurched.

I’d saved the ship … but I’d also destroyed it.

We began to plummet downward.

Chapter 5

Now, there are several things you should consider doing if you are plummeting to your death atop a glass dragon in the middle of the ocean. Those things do not, mind you, include getting into an extended discussion of classical philosophy.

Leave that to professionals like me.

I want you to think about a ship. No, not a flying dragon ship like the one that was falling apart beneath me as I fell to my death. Focus. I obviously survived the crash, since this book is written in the first person.

I want you to think of an ordinary ship. The wooden kind, meant for sailing on the ocean. A ship owned by a man named Theseus, a Greek king immortalized by the writer Plutarch.

Plutarch was a silly little Greek historian best known for being born about three centuries too late, for having a great fascination with dead people, and for being way too long-winded. (He produced well over eight hundred thousand words’ worth of writing. The Honorable Council of Fantasy Writers Whose Books Are Way Too Long—good old THCoFWWBAWTL—is considering making him an honorary member.)

Plutarch wrote a metaphor about the ship of Theseus. You see, once the great king Theseus died, the people wanted to remember him. They decided to preserve his ship for future generations.

The ship got old, and its planks—as wood obstinately insists on doing—began to rot. So, the people replaced the rotting planks. After that, other pieces got old, and they replaced those too.

This continued for years. Eventually, every single part on the ship had been replaced. So Plutarch relates an argument that many philosophers wonder about. Is the ship still the ship of Theseus? People call it that. Everyone knows it is. Yet there’s a problem. None of the pieces are actually from the ship that Theseus used.

Is it the same ship?

I think it isn’t. That ship is gone, buried, rotted. The copy everyone then called the ship of Theseus was really just a … copy. It might have looked the same, but looks can be deceiving.

Now, what does this have to do with my story? Everything. You see, I’m that ship. Don’t worry. I’ll probably explain it to you eventually.

Dragonaut fell into the clouds. The puffs of white passed around me in a furious maelstrom. Then we were out of them, and I could see something very dark and very vast beneath me.

The ocean. I had that same feeling as before—the terrible thought that we were all going to die. And this time it was my fault.

Stupid mortality.

Dragonaut lurched, taking my stomach along with it. The mighty wings continued to beat, reflecting diffuse starlight that shone through the clouds. I twisted, looking to the cockpit, and saw Kaz concentrating, hand on the panel. Sweat beaded on his brow, but he managed to keep the ship in the air.

Something cracked. I looked down, realizing that I was standing in the very center of the broken portion of glass.

Uh-oh …