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Chapter Thirty-Two

2-8: Hemera

INVENTORY:

* MYSTERIOUS SCROLL

* STEALTH CLOAK

* IVORY TORCH OF THE ENDLESS FIRE

* TROPHY 2

* MOUSE

* POWER GLOVE

* ENERGY SWORD

=== SKILLS: ===

* SWIM

* FOOTGLIDE

Max doesn’t follow Bode. He’s on to something. The power glove has to fit in somewhere. It has to be the solution to some puzzle. It didn’t make him physically stronger. It must do something else. The monument that hid it had the same message he found on Hadley’s scroll. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

There’s got to be a hint he missed. “Read scroll.”

YOU WANT PROOF? YOU’LL FIND IT AT— YOU CAN’T READ ANY MORE OF THE SCROLL UNTIL YOU UNLOCK THE MAGIC SPELL BINDING IT.

“Unlock scroll.” With the magic glove in hand, the command succeeds.

THE MAGIC SEAL DISSOLVES, UNBINDING THE REST OF THE SCROLL.

The glove disappears from inventory. Max’s eyes widen. The location of the final trophy. He’d have this information before Hemera, giving him the advantage.

“Read scroll.”

YOU’LL FIND IT AT THE PLACE WHERE YOU FIRST BEGAN.

Huh? What did that mean? Where he began what? The hospital where he was born? The fire station where he was abandoned? The scroll was addressing him directly. What if someone else had read the scroll, would it then refer to a different location?

Reading beyond the end had worked before. “Read scroll.”

YOU DON’T APPEAR TO HAVE A SCROLL.

After reading it, the scroll self-destructed. A one-time hint.

“If you’re done playing with your toys, we need to move from here,” Bode says. “This place will soon be overrun with garbage collectors.” She leaves.

Max’s dead foot throbs, or at least seems to. He doesn’t need another run in with those things. Time to get moving.

Once he catches up with Bode, Max says, “Nice trick, with the fireballs.”

“Yes, quite,” Bode says. After an awkward silence, Bode says, “And?”

“Look, Hemera’s had plenty of time to prepare for us. She’s not going to just let us waltz into there. I need, well, more skills. Gliding alone isn’t going to cut it.”

“What do you have to offer me in return?” Bode asks.

“I’ve got a second-rate energy blade, but honestly I thought I’d kinda need it against Hemera. I’ve got the Eigenthief’s cloak, which doesn’t seem to do much good. Then this ivory torch—I don’t even know what it does.”

“None of those things interest me,” Bode says.

“Come on. If I get instantly pasted, what good does that do you?”

Bode says nothing.

There is, of course, an inventory item Max didn’t mention. The trophy. If Max died, it would be up for grabs. Was that what Bode has been interested in this whole time?

If that’s the case, why didn’t Max get a fireball to the face immediately? Because of the other trophy. That means…

“You need my help to get into the citadel,” Max says. “Therefore, it’s in your interest to equip me with skills.” Max crosses his arms.

“There are very few skills I am capable of granting,” Bode says. “But all I have is yours. Now let us move on.”

Max checks his inventory again. The bottom half reads:

=== SKILLS: ===

* SWIM

* FOOTGLIDE

* RESIST POISON

* HAMMER

“Resist poison and hammer? Seriously, that’s it?” Max asks.

“I said I have nothing further to offer you. Move quickly!”

Max notices the blur of approaching garbage collectors. He can’t see them directly—it’s like they only move in between the spaces of perception. “Can I drop the hammer on one of these guys?” he asks.

“I wouldn’t advise it,” Bode says.

“Move quickly then. I’m convinced,” he says, and glides ahead.

Minutes later, the two of them crest the summit, the top of a long road running all the way from the shoreline to here. The walls that had been hemming them in fall away and an open Cartesian plain awaits them. Much closer now, the citadel fills the horizon. Max still hasn’t figured out how he’s going to get inside. Nothing obvious would work, because otherwise Hemera would’ve already taken the trophy and left.

“What skills does Hemera have?” Max asks. In particular, he’s curious whether she has the hammer skill (whatever it is). Because if not, that seems like a useful skill for breaking into a citadel.

“I am not able to access her inventory,” Bode says. “Which means she has admin level access.”

“Admin? As in god mode?” Max asks.

“She’s no god,” Bode says. “But as soon as she is within sight, you’ll need to stay close.”

“I see the drawbridge gate,” Max says. Light glints off the iron bars sealing it off. “Where’s Hemera?” Nobody answers.

Bode, who stood alongside Max a second ago, is nowhere to be seen. “Bode?” Before Max can figure out what happened, Bode comes tumbling out of the sky, landing in a heap in on top of Max. A fresh blossom of pain lances up his leg and across his bruised ribs. He tastes blood.

Max carefully gets his shaking legs under him again.

“That’s a new one,” Bode says, righting herself.

“New what?” Max asks.

And Hemera is there, right in front of him. She has a weapon—a metal club with a spiked ball on the end of it. A mace, if Max recalls the proper name for it.

She points the weapon at Bode, and a blinding arc of electricity jumps out from it, cutting right through Bode. In between the purple blotches left behind in Max’s vision, for a second he sees daylight passing through his former guide. Hemera jerks her weapon skyward, and a glowing silhouette of Bode rockets upward, still basked in electrical fire.

A rain of ash and items falls from the sky. It takes Max a second to realize what he’s looking at, scattered amidst several items. That’s a trophy.

But Hemera is there before Max can even formulate a plan to collect it. She picks it up, accompanied by the sound effect of adding something to inventory.

“Such an annoying creature. Won’t be missed.” She turns her attention to Max. “You have two things I want.”

Two?

She does something, Max isn’t sure quite what, but it feels like a small earthquake that starts in the soles of his feet and works its way up to the crown of his head. All of Max’s inventory scatters out on the ground in front of him. Including his trophy. Max scrambles to pick things up again, but the trophy’s attracted to her like a magnet. She collects his trophy, again with the inventory sound. She takes the energy sword as well but ignores the rest.

With the trophy she started out with, plus Bode’s and his, now she has three of the four.

“The other thing I want from you? Come on, junior, you’re going to open the citadel for me.”

Max glances back at the remains of Bode, a drop of black staining the ground where the ashes pile. He turns to Hemera.

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