“Good,” Loridas says, voice raspy. “Now give an old man back his dignity.”
With a wave of his hand, Pittacus restores Loridas’s Legacies. The Elder changes shape again, still old, but not disconcertingly so.
“How many Legacies have you mastered with your Ximic, Elder Lore?”
Pittacus rubs the back of his neck, looking modest. “Dreynen makes seventy-four. Never bothered learning it before. Didn’t think I’d ever need to use it.”
Dreynen, that’s my Legacy, one of the few I share with my grandfather, which lets us take away Legacies by touch or by charging projectiles.
“Impressive,” Loridas replies, turning his attention back to the object spread out on the table before him. “Ximic is the rarest of our Legacies, Pittacus. The ability to copy and master any Legacy that you’ve observed. It is not a gift to be taken lightly.”
“My Cêpan used to give me lectures about that,” Pittacus replies. “I understand the responsibility that comes with power. I’ve tried to live my life with that in mind.”
“Yes, and we are fortunate that Legacy found you and not someone else. Imagine, Pittacus, if your friend Setrákus found a way to duplicate your power. To make it his own. Or grant it to anyone he chose.”
Pittacus grits his teeth. “I won’t let that happen.”
Loridas holds up the object he’s been working on. It looks like a rope, except the braided material isn’t similar to anything I’ve ever seen on Earth. It’s thick and sturdy, about twenty feet long, and one end is knotted into a complex noose. The noose portion of the rope has been molded and hardened, one edge razor sharp. Loridas demonstrates tightening the noose and, when he does, the lethal edge makes a shink sound.
Pittacus makes a face. “A little old-fashioned, don’t you think?”
“It has been centuries and you are young, but this is how we once punished treason. Sometimes, the old ways are best. It is made from the Voron tree, a plant almost as rare as you. The wounds caused by Voron cannot be healed by Legacies.” Loridas motions Pittacus over. “Come. Let me borrow that Dreynen of yours.”
Pittacus walks around the table and rests his hand on Loridas’s shoulder. I can’t see it happen but I can sense—Legacy can sense—that Pittacus uses a Legacy-transferring power just like Nine has, granting Loridas use of his Dreynen. Loridas concentrates on the noose. It begins to emit a faint crimson glow, exactly like when I’ve charged an object with my leeching power.
“You will have this charged with Dreynen now, in case he takes your Legacies before you can take his,” Loridas explains, carefully swinging the sharpened edge of the noose. “Collar him with this and—”
“I know how it works,” Pittacus interrupts.
“It will be quick, Pittacus.”
Pittacus takes the rope from Loridas, careful not to touch the charged noose. He clenches the rope tightly, his expression grim and determined.
“I know what I must do, Loridas.”
And we—the ones watching him here in the future—we know that he screws up big time.
Setrákus crawls across the canyon floor, smeared with dirt and ash, his face and head covered in small cuts. In the background, a team of Garde commanding all kinds of different elements lay waste to his Liberator. The machine belches huge plumes of black smoke as it begins to collapse. The bodies of his assistants litter the ground. They weren’t killed by the Garde, though. No, something sinister and black seeps from their pores even in death.
“I’m not the one who’s crazy . . . ,” Setrákus says, spitting blood into the dirt as he drags himself away from his dig site. He doesn’t look back when his machine explodes, although a look of almost physical pain does cross his face. “The rest of you, all of you—you’re the wrong ones. You don’t understand progress.”
Pittacus follows along behind Setrákus. The noose dangles from his hands. His strong jaw is set and determined, but his eyes are glistening.
“Please, Setrákus. Stop talking.”
Setrákus knows that he can’t escape, so he stops trying to crawl away. He rolls over onto his back, flat in the dirt, and looks up at Pittacus.
“How can I be wrong, Pittacus?” Setrákus asks breathlessly. “Lorien itself gave me the power to dominate other Garde, to strip their Legacies as I see fit. That’s the planet’s way of saying that it wants me in control.”
Pittacus shakes his head and stands over his friend. “Listen to yourself. First you decry the way Lorien gives out its gifts at random, and now you claim that your Legacies are destiny. I’m not sure which thought I find more disturbing.”
“We could rule together, Pittacus,” Setrákus pleads. “Please. You are like a brother to me!”
Pittacus swallows hard. With his telekinesis, he loops the noose around Setrákus’s throat. He crouches down so he’s straddling his fellow Elder, his hand poised on the thick knot of rope that will tighten the noose.
“You went too far,” Pittacus says. “I am sorry, Setrákus. But what you’ve done . . .”
Pittacus begins to tighten the noose. He should do this quickly, but he can’t quite bring himself to end things, not yet. The sharpened edge bites into Setrákus’s neck. My grandfather gasps at the pain, yet doesn’t fight against it. There’s a sudden knowledge in his eyes, a resignation. Setrákus leans back. The noose bites deeper into his flesh. He stares up at the sky.
“There will be two moons tonight,” he says. “They’ll dance on the beach like we used to, Pittacus.”
Blood darkens the ground beneath my grandfather. He begins to weep, so he closes his eyes to hide this.
Pittacus can’t go through with it. He pulls the noose from around Setrákus’s throat, tosses it aside and stands up. He doesn’t make eye contact with Setrákus. Instead, he peers off towards the Liberator and Setrákus’s research area, watching as the entire place is put to the torch. He believes in his heart that this means it’s over. He believes that Setrákus can come back from this, that he has realized the error in his ways. He still sees his old friend there, lying in the dirt. He doesn’t know the monster he will become.
The Liberator is a long way off. No one back there notices when Pittacus uses telekinesis to drag one of Setrákus’s already-dead assistants across the dirt towards them. While Setrákus watches, wide-eyed, Pittacus uses his Lumen to set the body on fire until all that remains is a charred and unrecognizable corpse. When it’s done, Pittacus looks away.
“You are dead,” Pittacus says. “Leave here. Never return. Maybe one day, you can find a way to heal what’s been damaged, here and inside you. Until that day comes . . . good-bye, Setrákus.”
Pittacus takes the burned body with him and leaves Setrákus there in the dirt. He stays perfectly still, letting his blood pool from the circular wound carved into his pale neck. Eventually, he wipes the tears out of his eyes.
Then, Setrákus smiles.
We linger in that canyon as the years begin to fly by. The ash from the battle is blown away, the scorch marks fading from sunlight. The remains of Setrákus Ra’s machine erode, eaten away by the red dust and the winds that whip through the mountains.
Every year, when there are two moons in the sky, Pittacus Lore returns here. He stares at the wreckage of the Liberator and considers what he did. What he almost did. What he didn’t do.
How many years go by like this? It’s hard to tell. Pittacus never ages thanks to his Aeturnus.
And then, one day, as Pittacus stands in the very spot where he should’ve killed my grandfather, an ugly insectoid ship cuts across the sunset and zooms down towards him. It looks just like an older version of the Mogadorian Skimmers that I’ve seen so many times. As the ship lands in front of him, Pittacus lets flames curl over one hand, the other encased in a spiky ball of ice.
The ship opens and Celwe steps out. Unlike Pittacus, she has aged. Her once-auburn hair now gray, her face deeply lined. Pittacus’s eyes widen when he sees her.
“Hello, Pittacus,” she says, self-c
onsciously tucking strands of hair behind her ears. “You haven’t aged a day.”
“Celwe,” Pittacus breathes, at a loss for words. He takes her in his arms, she hugs him back and they linger for a long moment. Eventually, Pittacus speaks. “I never thought I’d see you again. When Setrákus Ra—when he—I didn’t expect you to go into exile with him, Celwe.”
“I was raised that we Loric mate for life,” Celwe replies, not coldly.
Pittacus raises a skeptical eyebrow at this but says nothing. Instead, he looks past Celwe towards the old-model Skimmer. “That ship. Is it . . . ?”
“Mogadorian,” Celwe replies simply.
“Is that where he’s been hiding all these years? Where you’ve been living?”
Celwe nods. “What better place than one the Garde are forbidden to travel to?”
Pittacus shakes his head. “He should come back. It has been decades. The Elders have erased him from the histories, his name forgotten by everyone but us. I truly believe after all these years that his crimes could be forgiven.”
“But the crimes have never stopped, Pittacus.”
That’s when he notices it. The telltale black veins running along Celwe’s neck. Pittacus takes a step back, his expression hardening.
“Why have you returned now, Celwe?”
In answer, Celwe turns back to her Skimmer. “Come here,” she says and, a moment later, a timid girl, no more than three years old, peeks out from the Skimmer’s entrance. She has Celwe’s auburn hair and Setrákus Ra’s stern features and suddenly I’m reminded of Crayton’s letter. Setrákus Ra may call me his granddaughter, but I’m actually his great-granddaughter. There’s no denying it now—not just because Legacy knows, but because I recognize myself in her—this child will grow up and give birth to Raylan, my father.
“This is Parrwyn,” Celwe says. “My daughter.”
Pittacus stares at the child. “She’s beautiful, Celwe. But . . .” He looks at the elderly face before him. “I am sorry, but how is it possible?”
“I know I am old to be a mother,” Celwe replies, a distant look in her eyes. “Fertility is Setrákus Ra’s speciality now. Fertility and genetics, to help uplift the Mogadorians. They call him Beloved Leader.” She scoffs at this, shaking her head. “Yet he wouldn’t see his only child raised among them. So here we are.”
Parrwyn creeps forward, hiding behind her mother’s leg. Pittacus Lore crouches down, waves his hand over the canyon’s lifeless rocks and causes a single blue flower to bloom from the sandstone. He plucks it and hands it to Parrwyn. The girl smiles brightly.
“I will arrange for your protection here,” Pittacus says to Celwe, not looking at her but her daughter. “You can live a normal life. Keep her safe. Do not tell her of . . . of him.”
Celwe nods. “He will come back one day, Pittacus. You know that, right? Except it won’t be like you imagine. He won’t be seeking forgiveness.”
Pittacus touches his throat, running a hand along the place where Setrákus Ra’s scar is located.
“I will be ready for him,” Pittacus says.
He wasn’t.
The vision ends and the darkness returns. There are starbursts of Loric energy all around me. Once again, I’m floating through the warm space that is Legacy.
“What now?” I ask. “Why did you show us that?”
So you would know, its voice replies gently. And so knowing, now you will meet.
“Who will meet?”
All.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
I WAKE UP IN A LIBRARY, FACEDOWN ON A SOFT carpet, surrounded on all sides by comfortable lounge chairs. “Waking up” probably isn’t the right term, actually. Everything has a fuzziness at the edges, even my own body. I can tell that I’m still in the dream state that Ella created, except I’m no longer in full-on spectator mode. I can move around and interact with the room, even though I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do next.
I stand up and look around. The lighting here is mellow and the walls are covered in old leather-bound books, all of the titles written down the spines in Loric. Normally this would be the kind of place I wouldn’t mind exploring, except that back in the real world there’s one nasty Mogasaur bearing down on me and my friends. Ella assured me that we’d be okay. That doesn’t mean I’m cool just sitting around some astral library waiting to see what will happen next.
“Man, somebody break out the violins for that crybaby Pittacus Lore.”
I turn around to find Nine standing in the middle of the room where there was nothing but empty space a moment ago. He nods at me.
“What’re you talking about?”
“You saw that too, right? The Setrákus Ra life story?”
I nod. “Yeah. I saw it too.”
Nine looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Dude should’ve killed Setrákus Ra when he had the chance instead of getting all mushy with it. Come on.”
“I don’t know,” I reply quietly. “It’s not easy holding someone else’s life in your hands. He couldn’t have known what would happen.”
Nine snorts. “Whatever. I was shouting at him to kill that chump, but he wouldn’t listen. Thanks for nothing, Pittacus.”
In truth, I’m not at all ready to process that vision, especially not with Nine’s commentary. I wish I could replay it back so I could take the time to really examine my home world as it was centuries ago. More than anything, I wish I could see more of Pittacus Lore using that Ximic Legacy. We’d heard stories about how powerful he was, about how he had all the Legacies. I guess that’s how he did it. Seeing him use Ximic got me thinking about the time I developed my healing Legacy. It was in a desperate situation when I was trying to save Sarah’s life that the Legacy manifested. What if it wasn’t a healing Legacy that manifested at all? What if it was my Ximic kicking in when I really needed it, and I’ve just been unable to figure out how to harness it for anything but healing since?
I shake my head. It’s foolish to hope for something like that. I can’t will myself to stronger Legacies any more than Nine can will the past to change. We’ve got to win this war with what we’ve been given.
“What’s done is done,” I tell Nine, frowning. “All that matters is that we stop Setrákus Ra. That’s the mission.”
“Yeah. I’d also like to avoid getting eaten by that big-ass monster back in New York,” Nine says, glancing around. He doesn’t seem at all weirded out being here in this dream state. He’s going with the flow. “Ugh, books. You think any of these talk about how to kill Godzilla back there?”
I look around too, but not at the books. I’m looking for an exit. This room we’re in doesn’t appear to have any doors. We’re stuck here. Ella, the Loric Entity, whoever’s doing this—they aren’t done with us yet.
“I think we’re in some kind of psychic waiting room,” I say to Nine. “Not sure why.”
“Cool,” he replies, and flops down into one of the lounge chairs. “Maybe they’re going to show us another movie.”
“What do you think happened to Sam and Daniela? I saw them pass out at the same time we did.”
“Beats the hell out of me,” Nine says.
“You’d think we would end up in the same place.”
“Why?” Nine asks. “You think there’s a lot of logic in operating some kind of shared telepathic hallucination?”
“No,” I admit. “I guess not.”
“So, you think Ella’s doing all this, right? I’m picking up a total Ella vibe.”
“Yeah,” I say, nodding in agreement. Nine’s right. I’m not sure how I know that we’re in Ella’s psychic projection, I just do. It’s intuitive.
Nine whistles. “Damn, man. Girl got a serious power upgrade. I kinda feel like we’re slacking off. I want to copy some Legacies like your boy Pittacus. Or at least get some sweet razor-edged lasso thing.”
I sigh and shake my head, a little embarrassed to hear Nine say out loud what I was just thinking. I change the subject. “We need t
o find a way out of here.”
Nine gives me a funny look, so I turn away and walk over to one of the bookcases. I start pulling books off the shelves, thinking that maybe I’ll trigger some kind of secret passage. Nothing happens and Nine just laughs at me.
“We shouldn’t be sitting around,” I say, glaring at him.
“Dude, what else are we going to do? You know how hard I tried to murder young Setrákus Ra while we were watching that highlight reel? Pretty hard.” Nine punches his hand into his open palm, then shrugs. “But, you know, I didn’t have any arms or legs. We can’t do anything right now. So let’s just chill out. I’ve been brawling my ass off for days and even if this chair is just, like, a figment of my imagination, it’s hella comfortable.”
I give up pulling books off the wall and return to the center of the room. Ignoring Nine, I tilt my head back and shout at the ceiling. “Ella! Can you hear me?”
“You look so stupid right now,” Nine says.
“I don’t know why you’re just sitting there,” I say, staring at him. “Now is not the time to chill out.”
“Now is exactly the time to chill out,” Nine replies, glancing down at an imaginary watch. “We’ll get back to almost dying as soon as Ella’s showed us whatever weird prophetic crap she needs to.”
“I agree with Nine.”
I spin around at the voice to find Five standing a few feet away from me, newly manifested in our little lounge. He purses his lips and shrugs his beefy shoulders at me, like he’s not that happy to see us either. Even in this dreamworld, Five is still missing one of his eyes. At least it’s covered by a normal-looking eye patch here instead of the grungy pad of gauze he sports in the real world.
“What the hell are you doing he—?”
There’s a guttural battle cry from behind me and then Nine is by me in a blur. He drops his shoulder and aims right for Five’s gut. For some reason, Five doesn’t expect to be attacked on sight and barely has time to brace himself before Nine is on him.