The soldiers started whispering furiously to those in front of them. Sato kept his hand on the back of the woman who was crouched before him—she was still almost as tall as he was when he stood up straight—but he took a look behind him to gauge the situation. Void-twisted fangen were flying in fast, and other creatures were splashing through the river and loping across the ground. They had only a few more seconds until they’d have to battle.

“Hurry it up!” Sato screamed, even though he knew it was pointless. He was about to explode with impatience. He remembered their first visit to the Thirteenth Reality, when the Wand they’d stolen from Mistress Jane had refused to work because the witch had taken out the Chi’karda Drive. Those moments waiting for something to happen had been agonizing. Tick had winked them out, showing for the first time what a phenomenon he was. The powers he had.

But Tick wasn’t here. And everything had gone nuts all around them.

The woman in front of him leaned forward to hear the message being passed backward, then snapped her head to face Sato.

“It’s not workin’ rightly,” she said simply, as if talking about a leaky faucet.

Sato hadn’t really needed to be told. “Yeah, figured that,” he mumbled to himself. Then he stood up and sucked in a huge breath, ready to scream orders. The world tilted and shook and bent. “Arm your weapons!”

He turned around to face the horde of creatures coming at them.

Tick wasn’t sure when it ended. Or how much time had passed. But he woke up and looked up at a cloudy, gray sky. He felt a hard, gritty surface beneath him. Jane and Chu stood next to him, peering down impatiently, as if it were his fault he’d been out of it for a while. The ground shook, and his vision bent and twisted. Things were still wrong with the world, but at least he was in a different place. Red rock and dusty land, sprinkled with scrub brush and cacti, stretched away from him.

He sat up, not realizing at first that he hadn’t been able to do that for a while. Hard, silvery bands were still fastened around his arms and legs like bracelets, but other than that, he was free to move. When all this dawned on his still-foggy mind, shock swam through him, and he looked at Chu sharply, expecting some sort of trick.

The man appeared numb to emotion at the moment, giving a quick nod and scrunching his eyes. All scientist. “The bands will still repress your Chi’karda, boy, so I wouldn’t try anything. But I think you’ll work with us regardless, once you take a peek over the edge of this canyon.”

Chu clicked a remote-control device in his hand, and the bands around Tick’s arms and legs sprung loose like coiled wires, popping off him and landing several feet away. On instinct, Tick reached for his Chi’karda, searching for that spark inside of him that was becoming more and more a part of his instincts. As simple as taking a deep breath. He sensed it—could feel it pooling deep inside of him—but barely, as if the pipe between him and the power was clogged.

But he wouldn’t have fought back anyway. Not yet. Not until he knew the best route to fixing all the things that had gone bad in the Realities.

He stood up slowly, fighting the imbalance caused by the never-ending quake that rattled the scorched land to which they’d come. He saw the coffinlike silver box that Chu had called the Bagger off to the side, a small opening on one end creating a window into darkness. He swore to understand what the thing was and how it worked some day. But again, not now. Not yet.

Chu was looking at him, his face hard and pinched. But there was also understanding there, as if he wanted to say that things were worse than any of them had imagined and that they needed to work together or die.

Jane stood next to him, her mask a blank expression.

“Something is blocking the Chi’karda here,” she said, her raw voice sounding full of pain. “The closer we came to this place, the weaker it got. Neither one of us is completely sure what’s going on, but it does remind me of something we’d studied long ago . . .” She nodded to her left, and Tick looked in that direction.

The Grand Canyon. At least, a part of it.

A few hundred feet away, the flat land beneath them ended in the jagged lip of a cliff. Tick only knew this because beyond it was open air and the sight of canyon walls. A sea of stratified rock, layer upon layer, every shade of red and brown and creamy white. Gray clouds churned in the sky, thicker and more erratic over the abyss closest to them. There was a strange blue light reflecting off the bottoms of the boiling vapors of clouds.

“Go and have a look,” Jane said, her tone sad and filled with dread. “We wanted you to know what’s at stake.”

Tick knew he had no choice. Feeling as if someone had draped a hundred pounds of wet cotton across his shoulders, he started walking toward the upper edge of the looming cliff.

Chapter 55

Let’s Move

Sato fought furiously. Wielding a Shurric provided by one of his soldiers, he aimed and fired the thumps of sound energy at creatures as they came close, barely having enough time to see them catapult away before he had to do it again. And again. The monstrous forms from the Void were relentless and numerous, and they seemed to have no concept of death as they charged in. As each one died, they dissolved into a wispy stream of smoke and shot toward the sky. Up there, they joined their dead in a massive, churning pool of clouds. The bright blue streak of the floating river cut through the gray.

The Fifth Army had spread into battle formation, still braced in a rough circle around Master George and the others in order to protect them. Many of the fangen—or creatures that had once been fangen and had been transformed into something worse—leaped into the air and tried to fly toward the middle, as if they knew the precious lives that waited there. The heart of the Realitants, and maybe the last hope in defeating this indescribable new enemy of Voids and mist and thunder and blue light.

Sato’s soldiers kept steadfast, picking off the creatures one by one. But they kept coming.

They kept coming, and there was no end in sight.

Tick looked down into the valley of the canyon and couldn’t believe what his own eyes reported back to his brain. The assault on his senses made him think it couldn’t be real. So many things were going on at once, and none of them made much sense. A thick, pulsing streak of blue light cut through the middle of the air like a floating river, running the length of the canyon just as the real river made of water did. A battle raged down there, and it appeared to involve the Fifth Army, judging from the tall human figures standing their ground in a circular formation. They fought creatures of gray, Voids no doubt. When they died, wisps of smoky mist shot up from the ground like ghosts trailing gray rags until they reached—and joined—the churning storm clouds that hung over everything.

Tick reached for his Chi’karda again, and it was even weaker than before. There, for sure. But mostly blocked. He could pull it out if he wanted to, try to use it, but only a little would come out at a time. It’d be pointless. The strangeness of everything around him was also affecting Chi’karda. A scary thought—he already felt helpless enough.

“The situation is even worse than we thought.”

Jane’s voice made him jump. He turned to see her standing right behind him, the wind whipping at the folds of her hood and robe. Chu was right next to her. Tick had been so engrossed with the haunted vision before him—and the sounds of thunder, so loud—that he hadn’t noticed them creep up.

“What’s going on?” he asked, hoping for answers but knowing they didn’t have them.

“The Realities are being ripped apart,” Jane said. “Things have escalated.”

“Escalated?” Tick repeated. “I’d agree.”

Jane nodded. “This is why you need to work with us. Chu and I can stop this madness. With your help.”

“So you guys keep saying,” Tick said spitefully. “I’ll only promise to help if you promise to quit being so . . . evil.”

A look of hurt flashed across Mistress Jane’s mask, but it vanished quickly. Chu rolled his eyes and chuckled, a sound that was thankfully whipped away by a surge of wind.

“Your word means nothing to me anyway,” Tick said, hearing the defeat in his own voice. “I’ll do whatever I can to help stop this craziness. But I swear I won’t let either one of you hurt more people in the end. I won’t!”

Jane looked at him with hard eyes, glaring through the holes of her mask. “So are you committed then?”

Tick wanted to howl mean words at her, but he simply shouted, “Yes!”

“Reginald?” Jane turned her gaze to the man. “Are you ready?”

“Of course.”

Jane pointed back in the direction from which they’d come. “We need to get a couple miles out at least, I’d guess. We can’t do anything—especially here—until we can find the full strength of Chi’karda. Come on.”

She pulled up the lower edges of her robe and started running, a sight that for some reason made Tick want to laugh. Instead, he shot a dirty look at Chu and sprinted after her, wondering if the old man could keep up.

Chapter 56

The Furious Beat of Wings

We need to make it to the wall!” Sato shouted.

His throat hurt like acid had been poured down his gullet; his voice was raw and scratchy as he continued to encourage and command his Fifth Army. The creatures of the Void kept coming in their onslaught of an attack, threatening to overwhelm Sato and the rest with sheer numbers. But the soldiers kept their composure and maintained their positions, firing Shurrics and throwing Ragers. With every monster killed, another wispy streak of mist shot toward the sky to join the ever-growing mass of storm clouds that boiled above them.

The ground shook beneath them; screams of pain and anger pierced the air; thunder rumbled and lightning flashed; things bent and twisted and bubbled in unnatural ways. And the gray creatures kept coming—fangen through the air and the others loping and leaping across the dusty canyon floor.

Sato aimed his Shurric at a lanky, six-legged beast with a head that was all gaping jaws and teeth. He fired, then watched the thing disintegrate and swirl into smoke and be whisked away, flitting upward out of sight. He aimed at another monster—three legs, three arms, two heads. Fired. Killed it. Another one—a blur of arms and smoky fur and teeth. Shot and obliterated. Another, then another. The beasts of the Void were everywhere.

Sato was taking aim when claws ripped into his shirt, scratching his skin. He looked up at a fangen just as its claws clenched into a fist and gripped the material, yanking him upward. The Shurric slipped out of Sato’s hand. He reached out to grab it, but he was too late. It clattered against the head of one of his soldiers.

The creature flew farther up, keeping a tighter hold on him now with two clawed fists, its membranous wings flapping against the twisty, windy air. Sato flailed with his arms, trying to beat at the beast, to no avail. He changed his focus to the thing’s two-handed grip and tried to loosen the claws. They didn’t budge.

Sato reached up with his hands and gripped the fangen’s forearms. He held on tightly for leverage, then kicked up with his legs, smashing one of his feet into the beast’s face. It wailed a piercing cry and shook his body while it plummeted several yards, almost crashing into the soldiers below. But at the last second, it swooped up again, furiously beating its wings. Sato’s stomach pitched and twisted as badly as the morphing shapes of Reality all around them.