“Right as rain,” Mothball replied. “What’s all the fuss? We’ll have our dinner and be on our way, we will.”

Rutger rolled forward until he plopped off the chair and onto his feet. “If anything, you’re safer than ever. They think they killed you, remember? Calm down, and let’s go eat. I’m—”

“Let me guess,” Sato interrupted. “Starving.”

“How’d you know?”

“Come on, funny bunnies,” Mothball said, standing up on her tall legs. “I could use a bite to eat myself.” She reached down and swatted Rutger on the back before moving toward the kitchen, her best friend right on her heels.

Sato stared at their backs until they disappeared out of the room. How weird had his life become? He was standing in a house that made him feel like he was four feet tall, in an entirely different world, about to eat dinner with three giants and a man shaped like a big beach ball, in a place where his twin had been the leader of the entire planet and had been assassinated by insane men dressed like clowns.

Could it get any stranger?

Refusing to answer that question, he walked quickly out of the room and toward the wonderful smells wafting from the kitchen.

Chapter 15

The Twelfth Blade

Frazier Gunn stared down at the twelfth Alterant of Mistress Jane.

She was huge. And she was the last of them.

This one had been living a normal life in a small village in the Fifth Reality, where quirks of evolution, diet, and climactic factors had led to an unusually large race of humans. He guessed the woman sitting in front of him, now safely chained to the twisty black stone of the twelfth Blade component, had to be almost eight feet tall, and skinny— like she’d eaten nothing but lettuce her whole life. Crooked teeth, no makeup, stringy black hair.

And yet, even then, she was beautiful. Despite the tears streaming down her face, despite the constant begging, despite the disgusting way she wrung her hands and wiped snot from her nose with her fingers, she was beautiful to him. Maybe it was just the resemblance to Jane. He hadn’t seen her in days and missed her terribly. Maybe it was his longing for how she’d looked before the terrible Atticus Higginbottom incident. Maybe it was a lot of things.

But he was wasting time. He had to get back to the Thirteenth.

“Please,” the woman whimpered for the thousandth time since being dragged from her garden. With her size and surprising strength, Frazier had been forced to use the Stunning Rod Jane had created for him, jolting the Alterant every so often to remind her to cooperate. It’d been a long and grueling trip. But nothing could dampen his spirits now—it was over. The hardest mission of his life was finally over.

Now the exciting part would begin.

“Please don’t leave me here,” the Alterant said between loud sniffs. “I ’ave children, I do. Me husband’s away. None to take care of the wee ones.”

Frazier leaned over, looking her square in the eyes. “Please be quiet.” He dropped a pack of food and water at her feet then straightened and turned to walk away, moving as quickly as he could so he wouldn’t have to hear her wailing pleas for help. He knew he should’ve told her what a good cause she was participating in, how eventually great things would come from Jane’s plan with the Blade of Shattered Hope. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He was too tired to speak anymore.

He topped a rise and quickly went down the deep slope. The woman’s screeching, painful cries finally faded into the background. Capturing her had been the worst by far, maybe because she was the only one who hadn’t had some kind of criminal or shady background. Of course, the pitiful lady didn’t know this, but she had very good reason to feel such hopeless desperation.

Of the twelve Alterants of Mistress Jane, this one in the Fifth would be the only one to die. Well, this time around, anyway.

Mistress Jane stood at her favorite spot in the entire Lemon Fortress—maybe her favorite spot in all of the Realities. The open window of her room overlooked countless miles of forests, fields of green grass and wildflowers, and the snowcapped mountains in the distance. The beauty of it was overwhelming, even as seen through the eyeholes of her mask.

Normally she’d take it off, but she expected Frazier to report at any minute. And despite several months having passed since her entire body had been scorched and mutilated by Higginbottom, she had yet to let anyone see her true self—only her hands, so they’d know something horrible had happened. But she was still too ashamed, too embarrassed to reveal any other part of her now-hideous body. Especially her face. A face that had once, she thought proudly, been very, very beautiful.

A face that now looked like the scarred surface of a planet too close to a boiling sun.

At least the pain had subsided somewhat. With her increased powers over Chi’karda, she’d spent many days experimenting until she’d finally been able to manipulate her nervous system, a complex network of seemingly infinite human “wires.” In the beginning she could only reduce the pain when she concentrated, focusing in deep meditation. But as the weeks passed, she’d come to learn to do it on instinct, and life had become much sweeter. More conducive to fulfilling her long-awaited plans.

But, unfortunately, she was still a long way from changing her appearance. For now, she had to settle for the robe and the mask to hide herself from the world, even from her closest friends.

Friends, with an “s” at the end? She was being far too generous. Only one person in all the Realities considered her a friend—Frazier.

Speaking of the devil, she heard a knock at the door.

“Come in,” she said, sending out a wave of Chi’karda to dissolve the door, something she’d done a thousand times—much more satisfying than merely pulling it open, and a task that was much easier now with her supercharged abilities over the realm of physics.

She looked over from where she stood next to the window, and after Frazier had stepped through, she imagined the billions of tiny particles that made up the wood of the door coming back together. She pushed a mental surge in that direction, and with a buzzing swoosh, the door appeared as it had seconds before, unblemished and whole.

With another mere thought, she made one of the eyebrows on her red metal mask arch upward. “Is it finished?”

Frazier walked over, obviously trying his hardest not to smile, but it was there anyway, especially in his eyes. “Yes, Mistress. The twelfth one is in place, secured in the Fifth. All of them have nanolocators and monitoring devices injected within their bodies. The observation area is alive and chirping as we speak. All we need now is—”