A Fortress of Pebbles

The Master of Life tugged her gently with a pair of tentacles. Cassandra was inclined to follow – that is, until one of the mouths started asking her what kind of mattress she liked. “I’m not going to bed,” she said, sitting back in the stone chair and drawing a look from some of the scribes gathered in her vicinity.

Most of the crowd, however, was listening to the Master of Maps give a status report about the state of Montana – the Last Best Place, as some of its bumper stickers proclaimed. A hologram of its terrain lay atop the council table like a patient on an emergency room table, bleeding information from a rupture at its heart. Cassandra’s house.

The Master of Life bobbed away and returned with the Master of Mind. Cassandra’s eyes were droopy, and her brain felt like a towel dried in a weird shape. The word mattress wouldn’t leave her head, but she tightened her grip on the chair’s armrests anyway.

Plink. A pebble dropped into her cup of cider. The gray light of mind magic shimmered up through the liquid.

“We’ve all been doing it,” said the Master of Mind. “Bypassing sleep.”

A single sip was enough. Her eyelids perked up. She suddenly wished she had her backpack, notebooks, and pens. In those around her, she could now see the same fire that burned in her.

Now, this was life. This was living.

***

Cat-Styxx unbuckled pouch after pouch of pebbles strapped to his body and tossed them one by one onto his black robe. Finally, he was wearing nothing but undergarments.

“I thought,” he said, “I was seducing you.”

“This is not seduction,” said Aissaba, kicking his clothing farther from him.

“Then why do I find it so exciting?” asked cat-Styxx, darting for the door.

Tassadu moved so quickly that Aissaba missed it. She heard the satisfying smack of cat-Styxx running into a wall of scales, followed by the thud of him hitting the flagstones. Tangled in Tassadu’s robes, though, he managed to pull the dragon down, too. In the resulting scramble, it seemed like Tassadu was going to end up top, but somehow cat-Styxx managed to do it – knocking the pebbles out of Tassadu’s hands in the process.

Straddling Tassadu, cat-Styxx said, “The topic of today’s lesson is chaos.”

With a flap of his wings, Tassadu sent cat-Styxx flying into the ceiling, cracking the stones. The dragon climbed calmly to his feet in the rain of particles, while the cat coughed and got up by way of his knees.

“It’s related to the Greek word for ‘chasm,’” said cat-Styxx, somehow still cocky, even covered in dust from his own impact.

“Let me get my notebook,” said Aissaba, rolling her eyes.

Cat-Styxx threw periodic jabs, but Tassadu flowed like water around the violence. At first, it was fun to watch, but soon Aissaba found herself wishing she could, just once, blink into Tassadu’s mind and make him throw a real punch.

“Predicting the behavior of a chaotic system,” said cat-Styxx, “can be impossible.”

Aissaba took a mind pebble from her pocket. Predict this, she thought, holding to her head and asking the polite TSO-duh to reflash it for her.

Meanwhile, cat-Styxx got too close to the door, inspiring Tassadu to knock him across the room into the wall beside the window. More cracks. More dust. Very satisfying.

“Yes?” said Aissaba. “Do tell us more about chaos.” She held the pebble casually in a free hand.

“That’s the challenge with body mods,” he said. “Keeping the neuro-biological systems orderly and predictable while pebbling around with your epigenetics. When I will my fist to extend, I want my body to respond in a predictable way, right?” He demonstrated this by failing to connect with Tassadu’s jaw, fist flying faster than Aissaba’s eye could follow.

A kick slammed into Tassadu’s gut, causing him to wince and stumble.

“That pain you’re feeling,” purred cat-Styxx, “comes from the nerves connected to your second stomach. Aissaba’s brain, by contrast, has no structure for processing such pain. You see my point?”

Aissaba did not. But she was starting to get a sick feeling in her own stomach at the thought that cat-Styxx might be toying with them. Maybe it was some kind of test. Being a hostage was one thing, but being the personal prisoner of a cocky Rot prince? One barely older than they were? One who fancied himself their teacher?

Not acceptable. The gray mind stone glowed in her hand, insurance against the chaos. (Blink: A similar gray pebble lay submerged in a mug of cider as Cassandra’s mind opened to the idea sleep was optional. And if sleep could be hacked, what about other things? What about fear, sadness, or anger? Her body tingled all over – her first moment of joy since losing Orion.)

***

Orion awoke, still in Mom’s arms. The buzzing was gone, and morning light was coming in through the window. Still on his mind was a strange dream about a kung fu battle with a lightning fast cat. His own cat lay purring in his lap.

He turned to look out the window, hoping to see evidence that last night’s armageddon had been part of the dream. No, there was still a bone dragon lumbering across the yard, bending down as if to sniff a crater in the soil. Plus, there seemed to be new mountains, tectonic plates just beyond their property having smooshed upward to block the usual view of the sunrise.

As for his own body, most systems seemed to be in working order. Skin: non-electric. Stomach: not pukey. The mannequin beside him wasn’t wiggling its toes. And whatever mom was saying seemed, at least for now, to be making sense.

“Just like Grandpa said,” she said. “We’re the eye of the storm. Untouched.”

Orion remembered Cassandra, and then chaos returned. The mannequin began to tweet like a magpie, so Dad revoked its Sega privileges. The cat in his lap grinned and told him that every living thing was a chaotic system.

The doorbell downstairs began to ring.

“What was that?” said Mom.

It rang again, and Orion began to wonder if maybe it was really happening.

“It’s the friggin doorbell,” said Dad.