Nephew of the Forgotten One, Chapter 20
Nephew of the Forgotten One, Chapter 20
Dusty
"Tracy! Paula!" Ness cried. "Are you all right?"
He and Ñrutas were running towards us. I hadn't taken offense to his only naming Tracy and Paula, but I looked around to see if anyone had; I was wrong.
"We're all right, big brother," Tracy said.
"Don't worry about us, Ness," Paula mused. "We can take care of ourselves."
"I know," Ness replied, slowing down as he further neared us, "but I was worried, seeing that dome collapse." He looked at us. "Am I seeing double?"
I followed his gaze, which landed somewhere between BJ and I.
"Two BJ's?" Ñrutas wondered.
"No. One BJ," BJ replied.
"And one Dusty," I added.
"You can't be Dusty!" Ñrutas complained. "Dusty's evil!"
"I'm sorry, but you're thoroughly mistaken," I replied. "Someone's been running around, masquerading as me. And I've got the feeling that you just encountered him again."
Ñrutas looked up at BJ. "Lying? Truth?"
"He's telling the truth, 'Roots," BJ answered, picking Ñrutas up.
Deedly deedly deet.
Ness looked at his pocket and pulled out his receiver phone, which was ringing. He answered it.
"This is Ness. Tony! Where are you? OK, I'll bring you back. He put the phone back."
"Where is Tony?" Tracy asked, finally realising that someone was missing.
"Summers. The robed kid popped up in Scaraba near Dungeon Man. He must have interfered with my Teleport somehow."
"Robed kid is mean," Ñrutas exclaimed.
"I'll agree with that," I mused.
"But now what do we do?" Tracy wondered. "Lomond and Jeff are still missing."
"Don't forget Poo," Paula said. "When we were in that prison, I saw Poo there too."
"And the scanning software seems to be in the Sky Runner that brought Ñrutas and Tony to Scaraba. I'll get Tony, but then we'll have to teleport to Winters, cross the lake, pick up the scanning software and teleport back here."
"Why bother?" I asked, pulling out the Eight of Wands. "I can use my tarot cards to teleport right there and back."
"You can?" Picky pressed. "You don't need to have visited there?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "No, I need to have been there; but if I'm with someone who has been there, I can go right there."
"I've been there," Tracy said. Tracy looked at Picky, I suppose wondering if he would take offense to her going with me. After all, they'd thought I served Giogas for some time.
He shrugged his shoulders, which I took to be an unstated "Go ahead".
I chanted the words in my head, activating the strange powers that had entered into my tarot cards. That dream had taught me a lot.
As I learned to harness those powers, the tarot had lost some of its mystique.
"Field of View!" I finally cried, breaking out of the daze I'd brought myself into. Winters. Dr. Andonuts' Lab. I added silently.
The world melted about Tracy and I, eventually shifting from the metropolitan wasteland of Fourside to the rural utopia of Winters. I shivered slightly, not knowing how cold it really was.
The Eight of Wands burned in my hand. It wasn't really burning, though; it was just insanely hot. Luckily, the pain was weakened by the fact I was wearing rubber gloves.
"Tracy, we should get this scanner as soon as possible. I'm pouring all the energy I can into the card to keep it from conking out before we're ready to leave," I said, running towards the lab."
"You can control how long a card can still be used?" she asked, seemingly surprised.
"Yes. I never tried it before because there was no real point, and I would have fainted within twenty minutes from the energy drain."
She opened the door to the lab. "Dr. Andonuts?" she called. "Can we take the scanning software?"
A short, balding doctor turned towards us. His mouth was ringed by doughnut crumbs. An open, half-empty doughnut box was on the table he had been sitting at. Not a very smart idea, mixing food and chemicals. My science teacher last year, Mrs. Goryn, warned us about eating in the chemistry lab.
My legs twitched slightly, the card drawing the energy from mine.
"Go ahead," the doctor said.
"Hurry, Tracy," I murmured, my head getting a strange headache. Was it fatigue brought on by the card drawing the energy from me?
She jogged over to a construct that looked like the stereotypical definition of a UFO and entered it. About half a minute later, she came out of it.
I walked towards her, but my legs locked. My vision seemed to be narrowing; I could only see a bit of what I should have been able to see. Tracy ran over to me.
"Stay awake, Dusty," Tracy pleaded. "I have the scanner."
The card was burning hotter now. It was now or never. My energy was almost gone; if I waited any longer, the card would fizzle out.
"F... Field of View!" I stammered, the words forced out. Where we were in Fourside.
As soon as I saw Julia again, my eyes closed, the card fell out of my hand.
Dusty's dream
I woke up. ...I was in my room? No. It was a dream. I'd had this dream before.
I moved my hand. It was doubled, kind of like the double-vision you get when you stare at something for too long. But only the hand doubled.
The room was dark, like the dream always was to begin. I walked towards the light switch and turned it on, the light-switch doubling. This dream wouldn't end unless I turned the light on.
The message came quickly, as always: Beware of both those who speak separately and those who separate the speakers, for they will relate ancient stories that will harm you. The messages were never very sensible, of course.
My dream-room spun about me, spinning faster, faster, faster...
"Dusty!" Julia cried. "Wake up!"
My eyes opened. "Could you be quieter?"
She hugged me warmly. "I was worried," she explained. "I care too much for you to die."
A deafening sound howled about us, and then Ness appeared with someone I assumed to be Tony.
"Am I seeing double?" Tony asked. "And if not, why is there a BJ lookalike over there?"
"It's not a lookalike or a double, Tony," Paula answered. "It's Dusty."
Tony lifted an eyebrow, clearly unbelieving. "Sure. And may four and twenty blackbirds be baked in a pie."
"Baking blackbirds?" Ñrutas wondered. "That's possible?"
"No, he was being sarcastic, 'Roots," BJ muttered. "You need to learn to recognise both tact and sarcasm. He doesn't believe that he's Dusty."
"He really is Dusty?" Tony said, suddenly realising his error.
I stood up. "Yes, I really am Dusty. We've all been wronged by that robed kid: kidnappings, attacks, and mimicry."
The dreams danced through my head, the messages screaming in my ears. They were cryptic, more cryptic than Cryptic Crosswords. And those are about as cryptic as you can get. I'd had five of these dreams, including the one I'd just had.
They all proceeded the same way: I would see my hand double, I would turn the light on, I would get the message, then I would wake up. Completely constant, except for the message; that always changed. Not that I'm complaining.
"Dusty?" Julia asked. "Are you okay?"
I shook myself out of my thoughts again and looked at the charred Eight of Wands beside me. "Yes, I'm okay. Except for the fact I'm hungry."
Ness tossed me a hamburger. "Eat that. Tracy's trying to get the scanner working so we can find Jeff, Lomond and Poo."
I hungrily devoured the hamburger, my energy somewhat returned to me.
"Feeling better, Dusty?" Julia asked me.
I picked up the Eight of Wands and slipped it back into my deck. "Yes," I answered, sighing.
"Ness, I'm going to look for Lomond now. He doesn't have a lot of battle experience, and he could be anywhere," Tracy announced.
"What about Poo?" Ness wondered. "He can Teleport; shouldn't we look for him first?"
"That's the problem. Paula just contacted Poo; he's still in Dalaam. But he isn't leaving where he's hiding until we find Lomond and Jeff."
"Why isn't he leaving, Paula?" BJ asked.
"He says he's afraid that Giogas' henchman suspects that he didn't take the real Poo, and isn't leaving until he can make his 're-appearance' by being 'rescued' by us."
"That's shrewd," Ness noted. "A lot more shrewd than I'd give him credit for."
"Big brother," Tracy said, "we have another problem."
"Another?" Ñrutas asked. "BJ's good with problems."
"'Roots, this is a different kind of problem," BJ muttered. "A whole different kind."
"What's the problem?" Ness asked.
"There's more kinds of problems?" Ñrutas wondered, typically naïve.
"English can get confusing, Ñrutas," Picky replied. "Words can have multiple meanings."
"The scanner's indicating that we're right on Lomond, big brother," Tracy explained, her voice worried. "But that's not possible. Is it?"
Tracy
"But that's not possible. Is it?" I asked.
"It's possible." Ness shrugged his shoulders. "We'll have to teleport to the Lost Underworld and work from there."
"I'm too tired and hungry to do much for now," Dusty said.
"You're still tired?" Ness asked, shocked. "Does this happen every time you use those cards of yours?"
"Yes and no." Dusty lay down on the grass. "I'm still tired, but it only happens if I try to keep the card running for a prolonged period of time. Once, I could only hold the card's power for ten seconds. I can hold it for a few minutes now. But holding the power sucks the energy out of me like a vacuum."
He looked at the Crystal-shards we had laid out on the grass: my fire, Picky's water, BJ's darkness, and the two clear Shards that we'd found with Paula and Ness. He stood up and picked one clear Shard up, then the other.
"These Shards . . . it's like they're trying to draw energies into them. Wind and thunder, I think. But they can't." He looked at the Fire, Water and Darkness Crystal-shards. "Yet these three can. Does the colour -- or lack thereof -- belie whether or not the Shards can draw energies into them?"
"Yes," Picky answered. "If the Energy Point has been found and absorbed into the Crystal-shards, I guess that the Crystal-shards rely on the energies of the elements -- not that many of the elements that the Crystal needs are elements -- after the absorption to operate properly."
"Is anyone interested in helping Tracy and I look for Lomond?" Ness demanded, breaking us out of our conversation.
"I'll go," Paula said.
"And so will I," BJ answered.
"That'll be enough," I said. "We only need a few. Robe could reappear here, and if there's few people who can fight his strange powers, we lose whatever Shards are on us at the time."
Ñrutas grumbled. I could tell he wanted to come along, but we had to consider prudence and Robe when dividing our party.
Ness brought the three of us, me, Paula and BJ, over a bit. He ran down the street, picking up speed, and eventually the world ripped apart, then reconstituted itself as a skyless place that was, strangely, lit.
"Welcome to the Lost Underworld," Paula said.
"Lost? But if it's lost, then how was it found again?" I wondered.
"That's rhetorical, Tracy," Ness answered. "There are probably secret portals out of the Lost Underworld all over that only the Tenda can find."
"The Tenda?" BJ asked. "The tribe of formerly shy dwarves who lived in Scaraba until about 995 A.D., then strangely and mysteriously abandoned the islands, leaving their pyramids and fortified town, fleeing to Deep Darkness?"
"You seem to know a lot about the Tenda. World Civilisation class?" Ness wondered.
BJ nodded.
I activated the scanner. Lomond Fyne. Lomond Fyne... Lomond Fyne.
The scanner's needle shook about, agitated. Finally, it came to a rest, but not before one last tentative jiggle.
I pointed. "There. That's where Lomond is."
A mountain was in our way.