A Fortress of Pebbles

Cat-Styxx had been making a compelling case for being released – namely that neither Aissaba nor Tassadu knew how to leave the Fortress. And that even if they did, they’d end up on Earth mid-armageddon. Or worse: on a completely different world they knew nothing about.

“No to mention,” said cat-Styxx, “if you really are connected twins, then you’re in grave danger.”

Aissaba almost rolled her eyes, but a slip of paper scrawled with Prediction: Aissaba will roll her eyes had already found its way into her possession via Tassadu the last time she’d done this.

“Like the danger from your guards?” she said.

“The connection between twins is formed by the creation of tiny portals within the gray matter of our brains. Structures responsible for perception and memory become fused with your twin’s. It’s more dangerous than it sounds. Eventually, one twin takes over – like the dominant hemisphere of a single brain, or the dominant partner in a relationship,” he said, winking at her. He’d been doing this since being immobilized, as if confident he could seduce his way out of the predicament.

One thing was certain: he and boring-Styxx were nothing alike, and it was easy to see which was “dominant.” One was a typical Fortress bureaucrat – prone to glassy eyes and long staring contests with empty space. She’d always assumed that the only thing he found rewarding about being Head Scribe of Recruitment was making their lives miserable. Putting them on probation. Docking their pay. Mispronouncing their names Ass-aba and Ass-adu.

“So you’re the dominant one?” said Tassadu. He meant it like a joke, gesturing at cat-Styxx’s frozen body.

“Do you want me to be?” he said. Raising a whiskered eyebrow. “When the two of you were an item, which of you was the–”

“We weren’t an item!” said Tassadu, his scales tinged orange. Almost as an afterthought, he muttered again, “We weren’t an item.”

She gritted her teeth. Whatever the cat was trying to do to them – whether it was seduction or something else – it needed to stop. Passing her hand over the mind pebble, she put the cat to sleep.

“This isn’t working,” said Aissaba. “Maybe we should just make a run for it. Try to get back to the Fortress. Now that my mom is running things, it’s probably not so bad.”

Tassadu rubbed his ribs, where cat-Styxx had struck him during their short sparring match. “Do you think he really has guards?”

They glanced at the chamber door, but it remained shut. The only sound was the whoosh of wind across the windows and the faint snoring of their sleeping prisoner.

“I think he’ll say anything,” said Aissaba. She found herself searching for Cassandra in her mind, trying to trigger a blink. But her “connected twin” was nowhere to be found. “How’s Orion?” she asked.

Tassadu cocked his head. “Reporters are everywhere,” he said. “The front yard is crawling with them. They’re interviewing the Johnsons and their neighbors. There’s a bone collector dragon idling in the front yard. Seems to be benevolent.” He paused, gazing into cat-Styxx as if he were a crystal ball. “Every now and then helicopters or military jets fly overhead. Orion is going inside because he doesn’t like the noise…” His scaly eyebrow ridges shot up. “Did you know it’s his birthday today?”

Aissaba tried to remember the last thing she’d blinked. She recalled a glowing cup of cider. Also, as if from a distant dream, she seemed to recall the Master of Language standing with her mother, hand in hand and eyes closed, as if they were listening to something, or praying. Aissaba wasn’t sure if she should be more freaked out by her inability to blink with Cassandra or with the apparent skin-to-skin contact between Tassadu’s not-dad and her mom.

Aissaba shook her head. “I can’t reach Cassandra. But I think she was in the antechamber at the top...” She trailed off, realizing that she and Tassadu were sitting approximately where her mother and his not-dad had been – albeit, in a twin Fortress, infinitely far away.

It was then that Aissaba noticed a small slip of paper in cat-Styxx’s hand. Great, another prediction. Tassadu followed her gaze and froze.

Slowly, he reached out to pluck it like a flower that might be poisonous. He read it in silence then passed it to her. Prediction: They will get the best of me, and my guards will be forced to intervene.

While she read it, their pet bone collector spider, which she had forgotten about, suddenly scuttled out of the corner where it had been idling. It circled the room then darted between them, shivering as if it was hiding from something.

Through the door burst an armored humanoid skeleton with a sword. Its eyes glowed with the brown light of map pebbles inside its skull. Behind it followed several identical soldiers. It was hard to tell how many, but the stairwell was packed with them. In the first one’s hand glowed a blue language pebble from which cat-Styxx’s velvety voice now flowed – a liquid purr: “I may be the youngest Master of Rot, but I am still a Master,” said the stone.

Meanwhile, the bone soldiers shuffled into the room, crowding in from all sides. Several of them attended to cat-Styxx’s immobilized body, reuniting him with his clothing. Others hauled Aissaba and Tassadu to their feet and confiscated their pebbles, rather roughly, in fact.

“Now, kindly release my body,” said the language pebble. Aissaba could feel a sword point in the small of her back. Another soldier held her mind pebble in front of her, as if for her convenience. “And may I remind you that your fate here very much depends on the outcomes of moments like these.”

Aissaba considered sarcasm, but it didn’t feel quite as satisfying to do spar verbally with a pebble, nor with the grinning skeletal warriors. Plus, one of them had a sword to Tassadu’s throat. So, with a wave of her hand, she released cat-Styxx from the paralysis protocol.

He rose to his full height before them. “I had hoped not to have to do this…” he said, gravely. His face was dark and unreadable. Aissaba felt like she’d swallowed a red hot map pebble, boiling her from the inside out. Prediction: cat-Styxx finally reveals his rotten side and murders us. “But you’ve given me no choice…”

He held out his hand. A skeleton deposited two blue language stones into it.

“Swallow,” he said.

A sword point dug its way into the small of her back and one of the blue pebbles found its way into her hands. When Tassadu gasped in pain, she gulped it down immediately. He did the same.

“Having failed a recent test of loyalty,” he announced, “you shall henceforth be known in the Fortress of Rot as Ass-aba and Ass-adu. Aside from that, you may come and go as you please. Seek me out when you are ready to proceed with the recruitment.”

With a sweep of his robe, he left the room, bone soldiers clattering after him. When only the whoosh of wind remained, Tassadu breathed, “Okay, what just happened?”

Aissaba had a sick feeling that she knew the answer. “Try to say my name,” she said.

“Ass-aba,” said Tassadu, eyes going wide when he heard what came out of his mouth. When it dawned on him what had happened, his scales went bright red and he spewed a string of expletives, more than she’d ever heard him produce in one breath.

“Ass-adu,” said Aissaba, testing it herself. She felt the tip of her tongue hit the roof of her mouth when forming the letter T, but the sound waves themselves did not comply. Pebble-less and cursed, they stood alone at the top of the tower. The bone spider nuzzled against their legs, but it was little consolation.