Trust in Oneself, CH 40 (Patreon)

Silence became a high pitch whine, as forms finally came into focus in Paul’s vision. The form of a kangaroo looking around, his mouth moving, but the words not reaching the tiger. Sticks in the distance, with gray or green at their top. His usually good sense of color gradient didn’t seem to want to work at the moment.

The form sharpened, and Paul knew him to be Grant, and the expression resolved itself into consternation. The muzzle was still closing and opening, and Paul thought that here and there, sounds other than the whine made it through its lessening volume.

He and Grant were the only ones there, and that didn’t seem right. He shook his head to clear the fuzziness left over. It had to be why he couldn’t distinguish the hundred of Chamber who had been surrounding them with intent to capture, if not kill. When he looked around again, there was enough sharpness he realized it wasn’t that he couldn’t see the people surrounding them. It was that they weren’t there.

The bodies were sprawled among the broken trees hundreds of feet away. There were a lot of bodies.

Paul quick stepped to keep from falling when Grant pulled him along. The words were still more punctuations of sounds, but tone finally carried through, and it matched the urgency on Grant’s face.

The tiger’s thinking sharpened and consequences fell into place to the actions that had been taken.

The thunder that had accompanied the lightning Grant brought down had to have been heard at the mansion, no more than five hundred feet away now. That meant the Chamber knew something had happened. If no one replied to their radio calls, it would be easy to realize Grant had won. They either had to hurry the ceremony along, or send more people to stop them.

Why not both?

“How?” Grant muttered. “How the fuck this it happen?”

“How what?” Paul pulled his arm out of the hand and ran alongside the kangaroo.

“This!” Grant motioned around them. More bodies were on the ground where the detonations had flung them. “I don’t have a staff and Excalibur doesn’t do…that.” Another wave of the hand.

Paul avoided looking too closely. He didn’t need to know if any of them weren’t breathing right now. Then noticed Grant was looking at him.

“Why are you looking at me like I have any idea what’s doing on? I’m new at the magical thing, remember. I just told you what Wassa told me, them made adrenaline fueled guesses.”

Paul slowed and grabbed the kangaroo’s arm. “Grant?”

“Yeah. Where is everyone?”

The entrance to the mansion was unguarded.

A rat and raccoon appeared between them and their destination.

“Sorry we’re late,” Thomas said, panting. “Getting here wasn’t the straight line I was hoping it would be.”

“Where’s everyone?” Paul asked.

“What are you doing here?” Grant asked.

“I’m not letting you finish this alone,” Thomas replied, sounding offended. “I was kind of there when this mess started, remember?”

“This started long before we met, Thomas.” The kangaroo looked at Niel. “Shouldn’t you be with your friends leading people through the caverns leading to the mansion?”

“The problem with the caves leading to the mansion is that the Chamber in the mansion knew about them. They caved them in two hundred feet beyond the forcefield and we had to turn around.”

“And you’re here why? You definitely don’t have any fur in this.”

“Unless you don’t count they’re planning on killing my god,” the raccoon replied, “but don’t worry, I’m here to witness the momentous event of you stopping them, like any historian worth the name would.”

“I thought historians only spent their times searching internet archives and libraries,” the kangaroo said in exasperation. “And for all you know, I’m going to lose. Don’t you get it? It’s me against all of them. This is basically hopeless.”

“Bleakest,” Paul said, and ignored the trio of stares, “is when you’re the brightest. That something else Wassa said. She needed you to know that.” He looked over his shoulder. “I mean, she was right about the storm. She could be right about this, too.”

“But that doesn’t mean I’m going to win!”

“We certainly aren’t going to win standing here,” the raccoon said, walking backward toward the mansion. “And I’d really like it if we were done before Jarod gets here. I am not sharing this with that man.”

Grant looked at them as Thomas followed Niel.

“Kids,” he muttered, and Paul walked with him after the other two.

* * * * *

The mansion was empty.

There was an utter lack of sounds people made when they occupied a place that raised Paul’s hackles. There was no way they’d left the mansion unattended in the process of protecting the perimeter. This housed the big priceless machine that was at the center of their plans. Thomas had seen it.

So, where was everyone?

“It’s just ahead,” Thomas whispered as they reached the bottom of far too long stairs, in Paul’s opinion. The rat pointed at a doorway through which a soft golden light emanated. “Hold on to your balls, because it’s quite a sight.”

Paul grabbed Thomas by the arm before he stepped into the room, stopping the other two by putting his other in their way. “It might not be safe. Let me check for—”

The rat was no longer there.

Paul sighed and stepped into the room, ready to give his best friend a lecture about taking senseless risks… and the words died in his open muzzle as he looked on to a…

It was too vast to make sense, at least two-stories high, and the footprint had to be at least as large as the mansion itself. Column connected to the ceiling, and even if it wasn’t domed, the arrangement screamed cathedral to the tiger’s mind.

The soft light came from torches that hung on the walls and column, between the… there were just too many of them for all of them to be what he thought. There couldn’t be that many staves, could there?

“Oh, possibilities,” Grant whispered reverently, looking around.

It certainly seemed like Grant felt they were all staves.

“Guys!” Neil called, studying an object on the wall. “Come look at this. The design’s Inca.” He was off to another one. “That’s a Roman gladius.” To another one before anyone had time to more. “That’s an egyptian oar.” And on to something else, and the raccoon pointing out their origins.

“Are they all staves?” Thomas asked.

“Where is everyone?” Paul pulled his gaze from the dancing lights. Sniffing the air and wondering why there was no scent of smoke. “Niel, how about you get back here?”

“Come on,” the raccoon replied. “When am I going to have the chance to—oh, that’s Greek! And that next to it looked to be wood taken from a pagoda model. Oh, oh, that’s Babylonian!” he turned to face them. “Just how long have they been working on this?”

“Far too long,” Grant whispered. He touched an intricately carved bone feather and jerked his hand away.

“You know?” Paul asked, as Thomas blinked next to Niel.

Grant’s chuckle sounded incredulous. “They’ve found things that I only heard of in stories.” He rubbed his hand against his pants. “Things that aren’t supposed to have existed, that were spoken of in legends.”

“Like Excalibur?”

The kangaroo shook his head. “We knew that was real; we just thought it had been destroyed.” He pointed to a painted fan that looked old and fragile. “That’s Chi-Pei’s Wind Breaker. According to legend, it’s one of the first staves to have been made. That’s Alexander the Great’s chest plate, which I don’t know how many Chamber and Practitioners died looking for over the centuries. That’s Brutus’s knife, and that something even those telling its myth didn’t think was real.” His eyes flicked to the bone feather. “And some of them are…” he looked at a simple mask carved in the bark of a tree. “I don’t know. Old, older than our oldest legends, and powerful.” He glanced at and immediately away from a stone with an uneven, sharpened edge. Flint, Paul thought.

He took in the items attacked to the wall, stretching as far as he could see. They meant nothing to him, other than what they looked like they could have been, but there was something…

Maybe it was Grant’s awe that infected him, but when he said, “It’s a shame it all has to be destroyed.” He meant it. It wasn’t just the Practitioners who would lose something. It was magic as a whole.

“Yes.” Grant shook himself and his voice had more confidence. “Yes, but it has to be done. It’s better they be destroyed than perverted into what the Chamber plans for them. The universe would never want the creativity it bestowed on us twisted this way.” He pulled Excalibur from its scabbard, hesitate, then started walking along the wall. “But it is a shame the craftmanship that went into making this has to be destroyed in the process.”

Paul walked with Grant as he made a circuit of the room, keeping an eye on Niel and Thomas, while the kangaroo studied the staves.

He looked at the entrance again.

Where were the guards?

This was the culmination of centuries of work moments from being unleashed and they… what? Considered protecting the perimeter more important than anyone waltzing in with unknown intentions? Or to break things, in their case.

Paul sniffed the air. 

They were missing something; he just wished he could figure out what it was.

“Out of curiosity,” Thomas said, he and Niel suddenly walking next to them. “But how much power is tearing this down going to take?”

“Not that much,” Grant replied distractedly. He almost touched a seashell that had been carved with intricate representations of waves. “With the right focal point, angle, and source, Excalibur had more than enough to get the job done.”

“Isn’t it just a king’s sword?” Thomas asked.

Grant chuckled. “It’s so much more than that. It’s the concept of divine rights of kings to rule, of the ideals of chivalry in their purest idealized form, especially since it now includes what centuries of Arthurian fiction has inspired. Against this…” he motioned around them, “an arrogant theater made by despots to destroy gods without care for the danger that poses to those they should be looking after?” He snorted. “This isn’t going to last a second.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Niel asked. “Slash away.”

“I wouldn’t expect a fan of history to be in such a hurry to see all this destroyed,” Grant said with a chuckle. “Especially the way you were gushing over everything. But this isn’t something that can be destroyed by just blind slashing. This is going to take…” he paused, looked around. “Precision,” he finished thoughtfully.

“What is it?” Paul asked, on alert for what had the kangaroo searching.

“It’s the precision,” Grant whispered, moving two steps and looking around again.

“Isn’t precision the point of engineering?” Thomas asked. “I mean, you want buildings to be precisely made, right?”

“That’s not the kind I’m talking about. It’s the staves. I can’t tell what most of them do, but I’ve learned a lot about staves over the years; what they represent. How they’ve been placed on the walls, there’s… intention behind it.”

“The intention of giving this place a Gothic feel?” the rat asked with strained hope.

“The way they have the…concepts flowing next and around each other.”

Paul looked at Thomas and Neil, but they didn’t seem to have noticed it.

“It reminds me of how I think when…” the kangaroo froze. “Oh, possibilities, no.” He tan to the bone feather, the mask, then a stone carving that looked too rough to have been intentional. He stopped at another bone, this one with carvings that clawed at Paul’s mind, wanting to tell him something.

Grant bumped into him on the way to the seashell and Paul shook his head to clear it as he followed him.

“This can’t be real,” Grant whispered, dismay mixed with fear.

“Grant, what’s wrong?” Thomas asked,

“I was wrong… we all were.” He faced the rat. “Thomas, this isn’t a collection of staves to be used in a ceremony. I thought… I thought they’re turned them into a talisman, the way they have the concepts weaving around each other, but I’m wrong. All of this… it’s a staff.”

“It’s never been done,” Grant said, then swallowed, “but it gets worse.”

“How can it get worse than a staff of staves?” Niel asked. “Isn’t that like a ring to rule them all?”

The kangaroo pointed to the bone feather. “That’s not a staff. It’s… older.” He shuddered. “Don’t ask how I know, but it’s a piece of a dead god. They’re in this, among the staves. Pieces of the gods that came before the ones that exist now.”

“Wait,” Paul said, forcing his gaze away from the wall. “I thought the gods have always been around.”

“Gods need followers,” Niel said. “If people stop believing in the power they represent, they might as well not exist. If that means death of eternal starvation… no one’s figured it out, but to us, it’s academic.”

“Okay, so the Chamber made a staff with pieces of old gods.” Paul said, doing his best to work out what that meant. “I’m guessing that point is to let them control them? Doesn’t it make it more important that Grant breaks it? That is his thing, after all. Can it really last against him anymore than the others?”

“But that’s exactly it.” Excalibur clattered to the floor loudly. “They made this for me to break.”

Paul stared at Grant, not understanding what he was missing that—

A slow clap broke the silence and Paul turn in its direct as a koala appeared, stepping around… nothing. He wore jeans and a shirt, embroidered in a way that made Paul hyper of it.

“I was really hoping you wouldn’t notice that,” the koala said in American English with an accent Paul thought was from Louisiana. But it was the pride in the voice that took him by surprise. “But I should have known better, shouldn’t I, Son?”