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  FOR MY VILLAGE

  1

  BLACK SMOKE RISING

  A hand grabbed Wily by the shoulder and shook him awake. It was still the middle of the night. The half-moon peeked through the fluttering silk curtains that hung from the wrought iron rods framing his bedroom windows. He rolled over, eager to discover who was standing beside him at this late hour.

  He saw no one. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. There was no face looking down at him. Wily felt his shoulder jostled once more. Startled, he tilted his head lower to see that the hand belonged to Righteous, the enchanted hovering arm that had once been firmly attached to the shoulder of the knight Pryvyd.

  Something was very wrong. Roveeka, his surrogate hobgoblet sister, might wake him up in the middle of the night if she had a bad dream. His blue-haired friend, Odette, might tiptoe into his room before dawn if she was feeling extra cheerful and wanted to watch the sunrise from the branches of the apple trees outside the royal palace gates with him. But Righteous would never stir Wily from sleep unless it was a matter of urgent importance.

  “What’s happening?” Wily said with alarm.

  Righteous responded by grabbing Wily’s trapsmith belt off the chair and tossing it onto the bed.

  Now Wily was certain there was trouble. He quickly strapped on the belt, made sure all its stuffed pouches and tools were still attached to it, and rushed after Righteous, who was already flying out of his bedroom and into the upstairs hall.

  Wily’s mind raced with possibilities as his bare feet pounded against the smooth stone tiles. Had the golems returned? Was Stalag attacking the outside walls with a new army of evil minions? Or was it even worse?

  He continued down the hall past the library where he had spent the last six months trying, in vain, to perfect his reading skills. He was starting to feel like he was the only thirteen-year-old in the whole land who still wasn’t a master reader. Righteous was knocking on the doors as it flew ahead.

  “Are you going off to adventure without me?” Odette said as she bounded out of her room. She was an extremely light sleeper.

  “I’m not even sure what’s going on,” Wily said as she hustled up beside him.

  “Mysterious missions in the middle of the night are way better than sleeping,” Odette chirped.

  Odette was a morning elf, bright and cheerful early in the day, no matter how early it was.

  Righteous led them past the tapestries of the old rulers of Panthasos to the high balcony that looked out over the countryside. Wily stopped in his tracks. In the distance beyond Trumpet Pass, he could see black smoke rising from the foot of Mount Neb. Although obscured by the hills between, he knew what stood there: the last of the prisonauts, which now housed the most traitorous and dangerous criminals in the land, including the very worst of them: the former ruler of Panthasos, Kestrel Gromanov, better known as the Infernal King. The cruel king was feared and hated by all, but none more than his son, Wily Snare.

  “What are you looking at?” a drowsy voice said from behind them.

  Wily turned to see Roveeka rubbing her eyes awake. He pointed into the distance.

  “The prisonaut,” Wily said with dread. “Can you see the smoke?”

  “That’s not good,” Roveeka said, still disoriented. “They’re having a midnight barbecue without us.”

  “I think it might be a little more serious than that,” Odette said as Wily stepped out onto the balcony, where Righteous was now floating.

  Wily looked over the edge to see that Pryvyd was on his horse alongside a dozen Knights of the Golden Sun, their well-polished armor sparkling in the glow of the half-moon’s light. Moshul, the mouthless moss golem, stood nearby, a swarm of fireflies buzzing around his head. The knights and golem appeared ready for travel.

  “Do you know what happened?” Wily shouted down to Pryvyd.

  “The prisonaut’s outer wall was blasted open,” Pryvyd replied. “All the cavern mages and oglodytes that marched with Stalag are escaping.”

  “That’s right,” a young prison guard said. “We need help. There’s too many prisoners for us to handle on our own. They’re not going to let themselves get recaptured without a fight.”

  “And my father?” Wily said with rising concern. “Did he escape too?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out,” Pryvyd said with a very worried look. “Hurry down! If they get too far, we’ll never find them.”

  “Moshul!” Odette shouted to get the moss golem’s attention. She then made a series of quick hand gestures. Wily was getting better at translating sign language. He had been training himself in the silent form of communication so that he could understand what Moshul was saying without Odette or Pryvyd having to translate for him. If he was correct, Odette had just signed “Catch me.”

  Wily’s eyes went wide as Odette took a few steps back and sprinted for the stone railing that encircled the balcony. With a front handspring off the railing, Odette soared out into the air. She somersaulted three times before landing in Moshul’s waiting arms.

  “Come on, Wily,” Odette shouted. “You’re next. It’s a thrill.”

  “Wait!” Pryvyd yelled. “If your mother knew I let you jump off the parapets, she’d kill me.”

  “She’s off replanting the Twighast Forest with Valor and the other Roamabouts,” Odette said. “She’ll never know.”

  “Well, I don’t know how comfortable I am with it either,” added Pryvyd as he surveyed the drop.

  “Now you’re sounding like a concerned parent,” Odette teased.

  Pryvyd seemed conflicted. Then, seeming as if he didn’t really want to, he shouted: “Come on already!”

  Wily sprinted for the edge and jumped. He hoped dearly that he wasn’t making a very big mistake. He dropped through the air and into Moshul’s mossy fingers.

  Roveeka cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted down to Wily.

  “Go without me!” the hobgoblet said. “I have to go to the kitchen first.”

  “I love her,” Odette said to Wily, “but sometimes she thinks too much with her stomach.”

  * * *

  AS HIS HORSE’S hooves pounded against the gravel path, Wily thought about the last time he had visited with his father. He had gone to him with questions about a statue that had been stolen from Stilt Village, one that had turned out to be a key part in Stalag’s plan to find enough neccanite to build an enormous unbreakable golem. During that discussion, his father had tried to escape, and it was through sheer luck that he had been prevented from doing so. Tonight, they might not be so lucky again.

  Coming around a bend in the path, Wily spied a thick plume of smoke rising from a giant hole in the steel wall of the prisonaut. The imposing structure had once rolled around Panthasos on giant wheels, but they had been removed after the Infernal King was dethroned. Since then, i
t had remained there, a dirt-swept relic of the evil reign that came before. But now it looked sadder still. The damage to the prisonaut was worse than Wily had imagined. Ribbons of metal lay scattered across the mountainside as fires burned within. The sounds of swords clashing were echoing in the darkness.

  “Only the spiked tail of Palojax, the great lair beast, is capable of this level of destruction,” Odette said as she rode alongside Wily.

  “Or the spell of a very powerful cavern mage,” Wily said. “Or more likely many cavern mages working together.”

  “Knights of the Golden Sun,” a shrill voice called out in panic.

  Wily turned to the left, in the direction of the voice, to see a mob of figures running past. Even in the dim glow of the moonlight, he could see they were fish-headed oglodytes sprinting away from the prisonaut.

  “Run for the river,” one of the web-handed escapees shouted to his companions.

  “Don’t let those oglodytes get to water!” Pryvyd called out. “Otherwise, we’ll never recapture them.”

  “We’re on it, Captain,” a knight called out as she pulled a weighted net from the satchel strapped to the side of her horse.

  Pryvyd and his fellow Knights of the Golden Sun turned their mounts to intercept the oglodytes. They stretched their nets between the galloping mares to scoop up the fleeing fish-folk. Wily watched as the first oglodyte was snared in the ropes and began flopping around like a tunnel trout pulled from an underground stream.

  “Keep heading for the prisonaut,” Pryvyd shouted to Wily. “Let us handle this bunch.”

  As the knights continued their pursuit of the oglodytes, Wily, Odette, and Moshul charged through a maze of boulders toward the hole in the wall of the prisonaut. Wily gave his horse a nudge to speed her along. He could see more prisoners flooding out of the steel structure. He only hoped that his father was not one of them.

  “Look out!” Odette yelled.

  A drooling slither troll sprang from behind a boulder and pounced onto the back of Wily’s horse. He dug his long claws into Wily’s shirt.

  “This horse is mine now,” the slither troll said as he lifted Wily over his head and tossed him from the saddle. Wily went tumbling through the air before landing with a crash on the ground. He watched as the slither troll galloped off with his horse. A careless mistake. Wily wondered how he could have been so foolish.

  Five more slither trolls bounded out from behind the rocks, swiping the air menacingly with their black claws. Clear liquid oozed from the hideous creatures’ skin and out of their long, crooked noses.

  “I want a pony too,” one of the trolls said as he tried to tackle the legs of Odette’s mount.

  “Sweet, slime-coated revenge,” a deep voice chortled from nearby.

  Wily looked up from the hard earth to see a rotund cavern mage floating a few feet off the ground. He had met this unpleasant character before, in the arid plain of the Parchlands: Girthbellow was one of the cavern mages who had joined Stalag in his quest to build a stone golem army that could take over Panthasos. Now the mage watched with delight as a trio of slither trolls jumped onto Moshul and began biting the moss golem.

  “Oh yes!” Girthbellow shouted as he hovered above the earth. “I am enjoying this.”

  “Were you the one responsible for this prison break?” Wily called out.

  “Not I,” Girthbellow replied. “But I certainly plan on taking full advantage of it.”

  Girthbellow raised his hand, causing a nearby rock to rise off the ground and levitate next to him.

  “This stone is very heavy,” he said with mock concern. “My enchantment can barely hold it up.”

  He thrust out his hand, sending the rock flying forward. It moved through the air, heading straight for Wily.

  “Oh dear, I think I might have to drop it,” Girthbellow chuckled. “And make some smashed prince preserves. My slither trolls would enjoy eating that on toast.”

  Wily rolled out of the way, trying to keep himself out from under the shadow of the hovering boulder.

  “No tomatoes to save you this time,” Girthbellow announced delightedly.

  During their last encounter, Wily had constructed a slingshot to fire mildly acidic tomatoes at the sensitive-skinned slither trolls. It had been a smashing success, but it had turned Wily off tomatoes permanently.

  The boulder was closing in on Wily when, seemingly out of nowhere, a knife soared through the air, hitting the back of Girthbellow’s hand. The impact interrupted the cavern mage’s spell, causing the boulder to drop to the ground right next to Wily’s feet.

  “But he has something better than tomatoes.” Roveeka’s voice could be heard from beyond the boulders. “He’s got a band of angry hobgoblet chefs!”

  This was followed by a chorus of voices excitedly shouting, “Grand Slouch! Grand Slouch! Grand Slouch!”

  To Wily’s delight, dozens of hobgoblets came riding into view, three to a horse. Since Roveeka had discovered that the entire hobgoblet society was tricked by humans into living in the Below centuries ago, Wily and the Kingdom of Panthasos had tried to make amends by inviting the hobgoblets back to the Above. Some of them had ended up working in the palace kitchen, a place most suited to their amazing knife-wielding and unique culinary skills, while others had spread across the kingdom to start their own restaurants and mushroom farms. Wily realized that Roveeka had not been going to the palace kitchen to get a snack; she had been recruiting a small, wart-skinned army.

  The droopy-eyed band of apron-wearing hobgoblets flew off their horses and onto the backs of the trolls. What ensued was a chaos of biting and poking.

  “Keep fighting, my friends from the Below!” Roveeka called out.

  Girthbellow realized that the odds of a quick victory were no longer in his favor. The cavern mage spun around in the air and began to hover off.

  “Not so fast,” Odette called out as she grabbed a fistful of yellow mushrooms from Moshul’s shoulders.

  She flung them at the ground beneath Girthbellow. The mushrooms exploded into a cloud of yellow smoke. The cavern mage coughed once before dropping to the ground like a confused bat that had smacked its head into a stalactite.

  As the hobgoblets continued their assault, Wily got back to his feet and snagged a loose horse. He had no time for celebration. He had a more urgent purpose. He snapped the reins of the horse and raced for the prisonaut.

  Getting closer, Wily could see guards, injured and coughing, come stumbling out of the smoke. The horse that he was riding, frightened by the flames, skidded to a halt with a fearful whinny. Wily dropped from the back of his mount and sprinted for the destroyed wall.

  “Turn back, Wily,” a guard said, grabbing him by the wrist. “It’s not safe in there.”

  But Wily ignored his plea. He twisted his arm free and ran through the shredded wall, leaping shards of steel that had melted into pools of liquid metal.

  Once inside the courtyard of the prisonaut, Wily discovered guards in sword fights with wild-eyed boarcus. A few of the cottages were burning, with thick layers of smoke rising from the wooden ceiling beams. There were many prisonaut guards in need of assistance, but before he could help them, Wily had to make sure that the biggest threat to the land was still in shackles.

  He ran past the prisonaut’s center fountain to the cottage that housed the most dangerous prisoner. He had been there before. He knew which one was his father’s. His eyes trained on a thatched-roof cottage with black outer walls.

  He could see that the door to his father’s prison cottage was open, swinging loosely on its hinges, and his heart skipped a beat. He sprinted for it, fear building inside him. Pushing past the wooden door, he found himself in a room with a single bed and a chair. The cottage appeared empty. His father had escaped.

  2

  CLUES ON THE GROUND

  Wily was about to turn and run back for the door when he heard something move under the bed. He quickly reached into one of his pouches, searching for an object with w
hich to defend himself. He pulled out a small bronze wrench. He suddenly felt very foolish for having come into a prison cottage alone and unarmed during a breakout. His father could have a sword or a knife or an arrow. What good would a wrench do against those? Despite his doubts, he held the metal tool aloft as threateningly as he could.

  “I won’t let you get past me,” Wily said with his boldest air of confidence.

  “Weez don’t want any trouble,” a trembling voice said.

  “We just want to be left alone-ish,” a second voice chimed in.

  This was not what Wily had been expecting. Neither voice belonged to his calculating and eloquent father. Instead, these were the voices of Agorop and Sceely, the oglodytes he had spent countless meals sitting across from during his childhood in Carrion Tomb.

  Wily pulled up the bedsheet to reveal the two oglodytes cowering underneath.

  “We learned our lesson,” Agorop said. “We isn’t goin a mess with you no more.”

  “What are you doing in here?” Wily asked, not trusting the two, who were well-known for telling lies. “This is my father’s prison cottage.”

  “The door was open,” Sceely explained. “We came in here to avoid the battle outshide. Most of the other prisoners aren’t as delight-ar-i-fic and friendly as us.”

  “Where’s my father?” Wily asked. “The Infernal King?”

  “Beats us,” Agorop said, shrugging.

  “How’s would we know?” Sceely said.

  “But we will help you as much as we can,” Agorop said as he placed both of his webbed hands before Wily’s feet as if worshipping him. Sceely did the same.

  “I must have missed something,” Pryvyd said, entering the cottage to witness this strange scene. “Where’s Kestrel?”

  “Not here,” Wily said as Odette and Roveeka pushed inside, past Pryvyd.

  “Well, if it isn’t you two again,” Odette said with a sigh as she eyed the two oglodytes.