The Blade of Shattered Hope

Lisa squeezed Kayla’s arms, then moved to get up from the bed.

“No!” Kayla shouted.

“It’ll be okay,” Lisa said softly, taking her sister by the hand. She hated saying those words again. “Come on.”

Kayla looked up at her with moist eyes, then slowly slid off the bed and followed Lisa, their hands still clasped. They walked to the doorway and into the hall. From there, the woman led them down a set of stairs and into a living room that was as ugly as the rest of the house, all dull colors and boring furniture. Several other ladies were sitting on chairs and a worn-out sofa. Every pair of eyes was glued to a television set on a small table.

When Lisa saw and heard what was coming from the TV, she almost forgot how terrified she’d been just moments earlier. It was a news program, a man’s tight voice narrating as the view switched from one scene of destruction to the next.

Fires. People trapped under cement, bloody and crying. Sirens. Shaky film of a large building, the horrendous crashing sounds booming from the television speakers when the structure crumbled to the ground. A massive car wreck. Smoke everywhere.

At first, Lisa was too shocked to read the words flashing across the bottom of the screen or hear exactly what the reporter was saying. But then she focused. The scrolling words accompanying the images made it clear the disasters were happening in different parts of the world. Paris. London. Berlin. Moscow.

Wait, she thought. Those cities were all in Europe and spread apart by hundreds and hundreds of miles. What could possibly be happening?

“The earthquakes are still rumbling as we speak,” the reporter was saying. “They’ve already shattered all known records in terms of length of time, and they still continue, as you can tell from the shaky video footage. All of Europe and Asia seem to be affected by these quakes. Mass panic is spreading out of control.”

Lisa felt an entirely new fear grip her. It made what she’d been feeling back in that prison of a room seem silly. That fear had been about just her and Kayla, trapped in a room, but otherwise safe and sound. This was something else. And whatever it was that was happening, Lisa knew the world would never be the same.

“What’s going on?” Kayla asked, her small voice breaking Lisa’s heart.

“I don’t know, sweetie. I don’t know.”

The last word had barely left her mouth when the lights suddenly went out. The TV made a popping sound as the screen went black. Kayla screamed, and the ladies in the room started bustling about in the darkness, each of them calling out things that jumbled into a chorus of panicked nonsense.

The room started to vibrate.

The floor trembled.

And then the house shook like someone had picked it up and thrown it.

Tick couldn’t take it anymore. He had to do something.

As the black tree hummed and throbbed its pulses of energy, as people ran about adjusting computers, as Mistress Jane stood completely still, her expressionless mask pointed at the tree, as Paul and Sofia and Master George fidgeted in their chairs, Tick leaned forward, closed his eyes, and searched once again for the flame of his Chi’karda.

With mental hands, he probed and picked and prodded.

There it was—a puff of heat.

He found it much more quickly this time. Encouraged, he threw all his thought and concentration into the warmth, grasping it, tensing his body as he imagined himself enveloped in the heat, consumed by it. Once again, he had no real clue what he was doing, but he did it anyway. Somehow, with his mind and heart, he became one with the Chi’karda. He felt it spread through his organs and veins and skin. Felt himself burn.

Ordering the power to stay, to wait, to hold, he opened his eyes.

Everything was as it was before, except for one small change. He saw things more clearly, more crisply. He heard sounds more distinctly, each one somehow separated from the other, each one crystal clear. He sensed vibrations in the air, particularly from the black tree, its power tickling across his skin with every throb.

He looked at Jane standing in front of the tree, probably throwing her powers into the Blade of Shattered Hope, maybe even close to flicking the final switch and severing the Fifth Reality. Tick turned his gaze back to the black tree. Its darkness was so deep, its edges so finely detailed, he had a hard time believing his own eyes. His vision had gone beyond anything he thought possible—maybe this was what they called four-dimensional sight. Maybe five or six. Maybe infinity.

None of it mattered. He had to act. He’d convinced himself of this without realizing when or how, but he had to try. His family would be safe. He’d make sure of it. He’d do whatever it took.

Focusing as deeply as possible on the trunk of the black tree, he imagined a pinhole in the imaginary barrier he’d created within him. With his eyes wide and his hands gripping his knees, he released the slightest bit of pent up Chi’karda. He felt an almost untraceable amount of heat leave his body.

A trickle, nothing more.

And not knowing what else to do, he focused all of his thoughts into one distinct line of words, saying them over and over in his mind, projecting them at the same spot where he’d aimed the Chi’karda.

Stop the Blade. Stop the Blade. Stop the Blade.

Sato ran, though he fell down with every fourth or fifth lunging leap forward.

The others did the same, stumbling and bumbling about like they’d just been granted the gifts of legs and were trying to figure out how to make them work. Rutger was having the hardest time of it. Sato swore he actually saw Rutger roll forward like a ball a few times.

Mothball stayed by her friend’s side, helping him along as best she could. Tollaseat and Windasill worked together, pushing and pulling and balancing each other. Sato was on his own. He kept his head down and ran.

The earthquake continued to rage, shaking the entire world and everything on it. Crashes and clangs and breaking glass sounded like small explosions. The air reeked of sulfur and gas and burning wood. Screams came from every direction, from young and old, male and female.

And even though neither Sato nor anyone else knew where they were running to, there didn’t seem to be any choice. You ran from terror, and that was that.

A booming crackle sounded to his left, splitting the air just as he caught a flash of bright light on the edge of his vision. He snapped his head around, but it was too late. The light was gone. It had been like a bolt of lightning.

Another one exploded in front of him. He barely had time to register the jagged line of brilliant white before he closed his eyes, hoping he wasn’t blinded for life. Electric thunder rocked the air and shook the ground. Sato fell on his face and rolled three times, feeling rocks bruise and batter his body.