Pittacus Lore - The Power of Six

“Where do we go?” I shout as we step onto the bridge.

Nine says, “We go under.”

Nine grabs my hand as we reach the peak of the bridge, and my world literally flips upside down until we’re running along the underside of the arch. Without warning Nine lets go of me, but my shoes still firmly grip the belly of the bridge somehow. I reach over my head and scoop up a pile of the green lava, and by the time we’re standing on the other side of the room, I have a perfect green ball of fire in my hand. I wing it at the Mogs on the bridge and visualize it spreading over them. I can hear the sizzling of their flesh when we duck into another cave.

I’m out of breath when we reach a steep decline. I’m judging the grade of the drop when I’m hit with a blast from behind. I topple forward and fall at an amazing speed, and when the ground finally levels out, my recently dislocated shoulder hits it first.

I roll onto my stomach in unimaginable pain. The blast hit me square in the back, and my muscles are stuck in an uncontrollable spasm. I can hardly breathe, let alone search my Chest for my healing stone. The only thing I can do is stare at the slivers of moonlight that appear and disappear at the end of the tunnel. The tarp. It’s flapping in the forest wind. I’m back to where I started.

I hear the sound of rocks crumbling behind me. I’m in more pain than I thought imaginable, and all I can think about is leaving the mountain. “Straight ahead. It’s the exit. We can regroup out there,” I manage.

If we can make it outside, then I can heal myself, hide our Chests in the forest. And maybe BK can come back in with us now that we’ve destroyed the gas tanks. The four Mogs who guarded the entrance are gone, and Nine jumps out through the tarp and into the forest. I follow. The stench from the dead animal carcasses hits us fast, and we both gag as Nine jogs into a line of trees. I collapse against a trunk. I need five minutes, I think. Then we’re going back in for Sam. Guns and hands blazing.

Nine digs around his Chest and I close my eyes. Tears roll down my face. I’m startled by something rough touching my left hand. I open my eyes to see it’s Bernie Kosar in his beagle form, licking my fingers.

“I don’t deserve that,” I tell him. “I’m a coward. I’m cursed.”

He notices my injuries and tears, and then sniffs Nine’s face before expanding into a horse.

“Whoa!” Nine jumps back. “What the hell are you?”

“Chim?ra,” I whisper. “He’s a good guy. He’s Loric.”

Nine quickly pets BK’s muzzle and then presses a healing stone to my back. As it works through my system, I notice a menacing storm brewing over the mountain.

The sky suddenly rages with lightning and booming thunder, and I’m so grateful Six has returned that I stand, ignoring the remaining pain in my back. The clouds shift and stretch in a way I’ve never seen before, though, and the sky feels suddenly evil. This isn’t Six. She’s not back to help.

I watch the funnel cloud that I’ve only seen in my worst visions form.

Bernie Kosar rears backward as a perfectly spherical spaceship, milky white like a pearl, sweeps down through the tornado’s eye. The ship lands right in front of the mountain’s entrance, sending tremors through the ground. In the same way as I had seen in my visions, a door appears from out of nowhere on the ship’s side, simply melting away. The Mogadorian leader from my visions, he’s here.

Nine gasps. “Setrakus Ra. He’s here. This is it.”

I’m silent, frozen in fear. “So that’s his name,” I finally whisper.

“That was his name. For every day they tried to torture me and my Cepan, I’m going to stab him with this.” The red pipe glows in Nine’s hand. Its ends expand with rotating blades. “I’m going to kill him. And you’re going to help me.”

Setrakus Ra walks towards the cave’s entrance but stops before going in, one massive silhouette, stark and spectral. Through the raging wind and torrential rain, he turns, lifting his gaze in our general direction. Even from as far away as I am, the faint glow of the three pendants is unmistakable around his thick neck.

Nine and I charge out of the trees with Bernie Kosar galloping behind, but it’s too late. Setrakus Ra has disappeared into the cave and the same bubbling blue force field that covered the prison cell doors appears over the entrance.

“No!” Nine yells. He slides to a stop and stabs the ground with his pipe.

With my dagger in my hand, I keep going. I hear Nine scream for me to stop, but all I can think about is killing Setrakus Ra, saving Sam and his dad and ending this war, right here, right now. When I hit the blue force field, everything goes black.

THUNDER ROLLS, FOLLOWED BY BRILLIANT STREAKS of lightning, and in their glare I see the clouds expand and drop. Rain falls in heavy sheets, and the armored Mogadorian looks down at me. He presses the cannon against my blue pendant and says something I can’t understand. My wound in my stomach has almost healed, and I hear Ella yell my name over the thunder.

If I’m going to die, then I need to release Ella first. One of us needs to live to tell the others. I cautiously lift my hands and envision the trunk separating, when a bolt of lightning cracks in the distance. Less than a second later, the bolt strikes the Mogadorian standing over me, and he turns to ash and is swept away in the wind.

I climb to my feet and see that I’ve opened the beech tree’s trunk halfway. I continue to separate the tree as I run towards it. “Ella? Are you okay?”

She spills out of the trunk and falls into my arms. “I couldn’t see you,” she says, squeezing me. “I thought I lost you.”

“Not yet,” I say, grabbing my Chest. “Come on.”

We turn to run, and see Crayton and Hector coming towards us. Hector’s been hurt, and his arm is over Crayton’s shoulders for support. The wind and rain are raging. Behind them, the first wave of Mogadorians and krauls are charging up the shore after them. When I see this, I break away a large limb from a dead tree and hurl it hard at the closest pack of krauls. It knocks down several, but they’re back up again in no time. A Mogadorian soldier throws a grenade that I intercept midair with my mind and send right back into his stomach. It explodes, throwing several Mogadorians and krauls to the ground in soggy bits of ash. I send tree after tree, rock after rock, knocking many to the ground, killing more.

“Help me!” Crayton yells.

I rush to take Hector from him. He has a bite wound in his stomach and a bullet hole in his arm, and both are bleeding badly.

“Come on, everyone!” Crayton yells, pulling bullets from his coat pocket and quickly sliding them into his gun’s empty clip. “We have to get to the dam!”

I open my mouth to respond, but an enormous lightning bolt snaps over us. It spreads across the sky like the veins of the gods, leaving the distinct taste of metal in the air. A deafening clap of thunder reverberates off the mountains. The wind and rain cease, and the clouds rotate around and around in a massive maelstrom, until a dark, glowing eye forms, staring at us from high over the mountaintops. The Mogadorians are just as mesmerized as we are. The wind kicks up again, and the dark clouds and the thunder and lightning come with it, slow at first, but quickly gaining speed, heading our way. A perfect storm, beautiful at its cataclysmic heart, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. All any of us can do is watch the thick clouds rolling towards us with a deep growl.

“What’s happening?” I scream over the gale force winds.

“I don’t know!” Crayton replies. “We’re going to need to find some cover!”