Out of This World (25 page)

“Can you stop Hirth from closing our portals?” asked Jenna.

Wyland thought about this. “When he comes back, he’ll have a yellow crystal with him, energized with magic from the entire Grand Council. He’ll use this to close down the one active portal between our worlds and destroy the thousands about to emerge. Which will also destroy your California. I can’t open or move portals, as you know, but with this crystal I can block the one active portal from being used.”

“So if you had this yellow crystal,” said Zachary, “we could go to Earth and make sure no one else could ever follow.” He paused. “If we did that, could Hirth or the Council still destroy the emerging portals? Or would they have to be on Earth to do it?”

“They’d have to at least travel to Earth to place the crystal.”

“Any way to prevent this active portal from being used
without
the yellow crystal?”

Wyland frowned. “Not a chance,” he said. “And that’s the problem. Hirth’s magic is stronger than mine. I’d be lucky to hold him off for even a short time. But I’d have to defeat him to take the yellow crystal, and that’s not going to happen.”

“Maybe that’s true if you fight him alone,” said Jenna. “But what if we work as a team? Maybe we can distract and weaken him enough for you to win.”

“I think Jenna’s right,” said her brother. “It’s the best chance we’ve got. The only chance. We have to get the yellow crystal from Hirth to save California. It’s as simple as that. Which means we can’t run. We have to stay here and throw everything we’ve got at him.”

Jenna sighed. “Then you’d better sprint as fast as you can, Zack, and revive Mom and Dad. You’re a lot faster than me, and we’ll need all the help we can get.”

“I agree,” said Zachary. “I’ll be back as soon as possible,” he added, and without wasting another second he raced off toward their parents.

“Stop!” shouted Wyland at the top of his lungs.

Zachary screeched to a halt, fifteen feet away.

“My intuition is telling me we’ll have a better chance of surviving if
Jenna
gets your parents,” said the short alien, his blue robe shimmering in the light. “I don’t know why.”

Zachary considered this, but only for an instant. He wasn’t about to bet against Wyland’s intuition. Not now. “Jenna, go!” he shouted to his sister.

Jenna nodded, and without another word sprinted off through the woods in the direction of her parents.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Battle

Both Wyland and Zachary prepared for battle in their own way. Zachary hurriedly gathered rocks and set up piles of them behind dozens of trees and boulders, while Wyland levitated nearby, with four crystals of different colors spinning around him.

Five minutes after Zachary’s preparations were complete, Hirth reappeared in a flash of light, thirty feet away, hovering above the ground.

He looked very much like a glowing, furless Ewok, yet he somehow throbbed with power, and Zachary felt terror rise up within him even greater than the terror he had felt when facing the mighty Grull. Even that all-powerful predator would have been no match for Hirth, harmless though his appearance might be.

The moment Hirth saw Wyland floating in the air, a look of astonishment came over his face. “
How did you escape?”
he demanded.

Zachary could barely breathe and felt himself trembling, but he knew he had to buy at least another five minutes before Jenna would return with their parents. With his mom and dad’s memories erased, he wasn’t sure how much use they would be, but the more people fighting Hirth the better chance they would have. Millions of lives were hanging in the balance.

Wyland was about to reply when Zachary jumped in ahead of him. “You were right to be afraid of us, Hirth!” he called out as loudly and confidently as he could manage. “Your crystal may have stopped Wyland’s magic, but
mine
is far more potent. I was able to use it to escape your pathetic prison.” He paused for effect. “
Now give me the yellow crystal and I’ll let you leave here alive
.”

Hirth threw back his head and laughed. “Good try, Zachary. But I’ve seen you bluff before. I don’t know how you escaped, but one of my talents is the ability to tell when someone has used magic recently. And you
haven’t
. So forgive me for not quaking in my boots.”

“Don’t do this, Hirth,” pleaded Wyland. “The humans can still be our allies.”

“Are you kidding? Do you think the ease with which these human kids escaped my prison makes me
less
worried about their potential? Now I’m even more convinced they’re too dangerous to let loose on Orum. We have to isolate their world
now.
While we still can.”

“Let’s talk about this,” said Zachary. “I get why you’re worried. How about this? How about if I volunteer to do more testing? To prove to you that we aren’t a threat?”

Hirth looked around suspiciously. “Where is the girl?” he said. After a few seconds of thought he added, “She’s off to free your parents, isn’t she? And you’re trying to stall me until she does.”

Hirth shook his head in contempt. “Stall all you want, it won’t do you any good. And neither will your parents. Maybe with years of practice they could challenge me.
Maybe
. But right now an Orum
infant
has stronger control of magic than they do. I can flick them away like insects. Speaking of which . . .” he added, and without warning a transparent bolt of energy shot toward Wyland at great speed, warping the air around it.

Wyland moved a crystal to block it, but some of its force got through. The residual energy from the blow sent him reeling backwards, and he crashed to the ground. His crystals dropped to the ground beside him.

“As I had expected,” said Hirth calmly to his fallen fellow magician, “the Council voted to have the Lane family executed. I was going to take care of this when I returned from Earth.” He shrugged. “But I guess there’s no time like the present.”

Hirth turned to face Zachary, but as he did so a rock slammed into his arm. He screamed in pain, his crystals momentarily dropping from the air.

 Zachary quickly threw two more stones, but missed Hirth by inches both times, as the magician recovered and his crystals darted up from the ground to rejoin him.

Hirth was astonished that the human boy could propel stones with such speed and accuracy, making him unexpectedly dangerous, even without the use of magic. The magician glared at Zachary with a blistering rage and teleported to another position in the woods, forty feet from where he had been.

Zachary hadn’t stopped Hirth, but he had distracted him long enough for Wyland to recover from Hirth’s initial blow, and the short alien had levitated once again. A house-sized wall of smoke shot from a dark green crystal by Wyland’s head and raced toward Hirth like a battering ram. This time it was Hirth who was thrown to the ground.

Zachary shook his fist triumphantly.

But this celebration was premature. Hirth recovered almost instantly, sending another invisible beam of force back at Wyland, which distorted the air even more profoundly than had the first.

This time Wyland was ready and managed to block the entire beam with a dazzling pink crystal.

Zachary hurled another rock at Hirth from behind a tree, but missed. This time, Hirth responded with a weapon of his own, firing back a bolt of lightning that scorched the sky and missed Zachary’s leg by inches as he dived behind a boulder. Another pile of rocks was waiting there for Zachary and he rose and fired once more at the powerful magician.

The rock hit Hirth’s forehead dead center!

At least it
should
have. But somehow the rock went right through the alien’s head, not troubling him at all.

Hirth ignored Zachary and turned all of his attention to Wyland, who was firing everything he had at Hirth from multiple crystals. Smoke and light and invisible forces were exchanged between the two magicians in a hellish mask of energy and noise and destruction. Tree branches crashed, the ground shook, and the air between them became a seething, venomous hurricane whose single touch would kill a non-magician in an instant.

When the smoke cleared, Wyland was on the ground, gasping for breath, and Hirth was hovering ten feet away, looking as though he had barely been touched. “You knew you had no chance against me!” thundered Hirth. “And now you’ve dug your own grave!” He plucked a crystal from the air with his hand and held it toward Wyland, preparing to deliver a death blow.

Zachary raced toward Hirth, intent on tackling him. When he was seven feet away the alien diverted a small fraction of his magic to create an invisible barrier, exactly like the walls of the prison he had created earlier, and Zachary crashed into it and was thrown painfully to the ground.

Zachary would have given anything to lie on the ground until he had fully recovered, but he didn’t have that luxury. If he allowed Wyland to be killed, millions of others would follow, including his entire family. He found an extra reserve of energy and will and jumped to his feet, a rock in his hand. “
Stop!
” he shouted at Hirth, his arm cocked behind his ear. “I can’t miss at this range! Back off or you’ll get a fastball to the head!”

Hirth just smirked and turned his back to him, focusing all of his attention on Wyland once more.

Zachary rifled the rock at Hirth’s back, the invisible barrier not impeding it at all.

It was a perfect throw, but it went right through the alien magician. Zachary wasn’t surprised, since Hirth hadn’t been the slightest bit worried about Zachary or his rocks.

But what kind of magic was this? How could Hirth make rocks go through him? Zachary had hit the alien in the arm and had hurt him badly. But by the next rock, Hirth had made some kind of adjustment. But what? What was he missing?

The answer hit Zachary like a baseball bat to the head.

Hirth was a master of illusion
.

He could make Zachary see anything he wanted him to see. After he was hit the first time, he had just made sure Zachary always saw him as being in a different place than he really was.

Energy was pouring from the crystal in Hirth’s hand into Wyland, whose body was convulsing as it did so. The short alien was sprawled on the floor of the woods and his eyes were slowly shutting, as whatever internal magic he was using to survive the onslaught was finally breaking down entirely.

Zachary’s mind raced. If he didn’t think of something in seconds, Wyland would die, and all would be lost.

And then he had it! He knew exactly what he had to do.

He picked up a handful of loose dirt and threw it in a wide spray to the left of Hirth. Without waiting, he picked up a second handful and threw it to his right. The particles of dirt eight feet to Hirth’s right stopped in their flight, as if hitting an invisible, Ewok-sized object, while all other particles to his left and right continued on.

There you are, Hirth
, thought Zachary, grabbing a rock and firing it as hard as he could, eight feet to the right of where he had been fooled into seeing the alien magician.

The stone slammed into Hirth’s invisible back and sent the crystal in his hand flying. Hirth’s false image eight feet away vanished, and the real Hirth screamed and fell to the ground, now clearly visible.

 Wyland groaned and tried to inch behind a tree. He was still alive, but not by much.

Zachary took a few steps. The invisible barrier was down, as he had hoped.

This was his chance.

Zachary
rushed forward and rifled through Hirth’s glossy red robe as the alien lay stunned on the ground. In a matter of seconds he found the yellow crystal and shoved it in his own pocket.

He reached for Hirth’s throat, but he was too late.

Hirth rose from the ground once again, defying gravity, and the glow came back to his body. Somehow he must have had magic that acted as body armor, softening the blow from Zack’s rock and allowing him to recover far faster than he would have otherwise.

Zachary raced for cover behind a nearby boulder.

But it was too late
.

An invisible force seized Zachary, lifted him into the air, and pinned him in place, ten feet away from Hirth.

“
Congratulations, Human!
” roared Hirth. “I underestimated you. I should have killed you right away rather than toying with you. But now I’m ready to take you as seriously as you deserve.” His eyes blazed with an inner fire. “You’ve earned my undivided attention, Human,” he added icily. “And I don’t think you’re going to like it much.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Magic

Jenna snapped her fingers in front of her zombified parents, but they continued to stare into space, as if their brains had been removed by a mad scientist. Hirth’s magic trance worked better than she had expected.

Still gasping for air after her half-mile sprint, she began frantically searching for a crystal in the vicinity. After scanning the area for only forty seconds she found it. It was red with blue streaks running through it. She could have just tossed it away, but she found a large rock instead and smashed it into pieces, which was somehow more satisfying to her.

The moment the crystal shattered her parents snapped out of their trance and were fully awake, both with stunned looks on their faces.

Jenna rushed toward them and threw her arms around them, one at a time, tears streaming down her face.

“Jenna, darling, are you okay?” her mother asked anxiously, her first concern being for her daughter, but this was followed quickly by curiosity. “Where
are
we? The last thing I remember is eating dinner in our kitchen.”

Her father’s eyes widened. “Jenna, why does the sky look a little . . .
greenish?
”

 Jenna laughed through her tears, so happy to have her parents back that she allowed herself to forget their predicament for just a moment. But she quickly returned to reality. Hirth could well have returned by now, and they didn’t have a second to waste.