Though I was no longer chained to the wall, I was immobilized by the unyielding sorrow and rage weighing heavy on my chest. It spread through me, numbing every inch of my body. It crawled into my throat and threatened to choke me. I prayed that Mag was now a member of the Butterfly Guild despite failing to extract Vulgra from my dad. And I hoped everything my dad knew of the Abyss was a lie, that Vulgra had fabricated the Abyss as a scare tactic.
Even if the Abyss was real, my dad couldn’t be there. Not after how bravely he had fought against Vulgra. Maybe, instead, his soul was currently on trial with some kind of Jury of the Dead, his fate not yet sealed.
I decided to believe that. I know that sounds ridiculous and was backed by zero evidence, but when you’re in a deep enough state of despair, you’ll hope so strongly that something is true that you actually trick yourself into believing it. I wondered if that was why people tricked themselves into believing their lives had meaning—not because they were idiots but because they had to.
Believing that Mag and my dad were safe kept me sane, but it did not relieve me of my overwhelming sadness. My anguish burst through my heart and sprung forth from me as uncontrollable weeping. I wished I had died along with Mag and my dad. I would much rather never feel anything again than feel this pain for another second.
As I wept, I glanced at my staff. On its end remained a small flame, no larger than could be produced by an ordinary match. If Mag’s flame, however small, continued to burn, then she could still be alive.
I ran to where Mag lay on her side, Sir’s blade still sticking through her. I knelt next to her and placed my fingers on her neck. There was a very faint pulse.
I brushed her hair from her face and used the last few clean patches of my robe to wipe away the blood. I couldn’t believe the person I was staring at was my beloved friend. Her nose was displaced, she had massive gashes above her eyes, and her face was swollen and purple. No, this wasn’t my Mag. I didn’t want to believe it was her, that she could have suffered so much.
As hard as it was to observe her mangled face, I couldn’t look away. She was still the most beautiful person I knew, and this could be my last chance to see her. Each shallow breath she took could be her last, and I didn’t know what would happen to her body if she died. At any instant, she could vanish forever.
As I studied the lumps and bruises and dry blood on Mag’s face, my sorrow was overthrown by the most intense hatred I had ever felt in my life. I hated Vulgra for doing this to her.
Something moved in my peripheral vision—a dark cloud of smoke had emerged from my dad’s crippled suit of armor and drifted toward me. It was wearing the Hero’s Medallion, probably just to mock me.
Even though this piece of Vulgra was only the size of a small melon, one glance at it would have been enough to make Hercules break down in tears. I closed my eyes and turned away, but now that Vulgra was before me in its pure form, I could feel its presence nevertheless. I overflowed with sorrow as Vulgra came closer.
However, Vulgra then placed the Hero’s Medallion around my neck, and the sorrow subsided at once. I opened my eyes and faced the demonic cloud. It now hovered above Mag and, using some invisible force, removed the sword from her body and made it disappear.
Vulgra then spoke to me. Its voice was sweet and soothing and even more tender than Mag’s hero voice. “I assure you Mag is safe. Since she came to this realm as a phantom human, her soul remains intact, even though her life force—or HP, as you have been calling it—has been drained. I could even revive her.”
I glared at the repulsive, loathsome entity before me. “Then you had better do it,” I said, the anger in my voice matching that in my heart. “She doesn’t deserve to be like this.”
“You’re right. She doesn’t deserve this, nor do you deserve the sadness you’re feeling. I apologize deeply for what I have done to Mag, but it was a necessary evil. I don’t have time to explain everything now, for the talismans are repelling me. But, Emerson, I need you to listen to me very carefully. My intentions are as your father told you. I need you to bring the talismans and the Destruction Rod to the top of Misery Peak so we can join forces and put an end to your species. The people of your world are far more dangerous than you realize and must be stopped. However, I fear I cannot stop them in time. Not on my own. I need a phantom human’s help.”
“Why would I ever help you?” I snarled.
“You wouldn’t,” Vulgra said calmly. “Not willingly. That is why I had to drain Mag’s life force. I have to take her with me to Misery Peak to ensure you follow me and bring the Destruction Rod and talismans with you. If you refuse to do my bidding, I will consume her soul, and she will spend her afterlife in the Abyss.”
“Oh, I’ll climb misery peak, all right,” I said. “But it’ll only be to kick your smoky gray ass. I will not do your bidding. I refuse to allow you into my soul. I’m not who I used to be.”
“Is that so?” Vulgra said. “Because the Destruction Rod indicates otherwise.” Vulgra floated to my staff, scooped it up, and returned to me. “I bestowed the Destruction Rod upon you, for I knew the butterflies had made a grave error by bringing such a black-hearted human to my realm. The Destruction Rod reflects the hatred possessed by he who wields it, and just look how dark it is now. Look how much hatred you have in your heart.”
Vulgra held my staff out for me to take, but I slapped it to the ground. “Yeah, hatred for YOU, you idiot! I won’t let you use me to end the world.”
“You misunderstand, Emerson. I do not wish to end your world.”
“Yes you do! You said so yourself.”
“No, I said I needed your help to eradicate the human species. But ending humanity and ending the world are not the same thing. In fact, in the case of your world, they’re opposites, for humans will instinctually harm anything—including the world itself—if it benefits them in the short term. And you know this to be true, don’t you? Serial killers are the real heroes: Does that notion sound familiar?”
It did sound familiar. It was the first dark thought that Vulgra had ever deposited in my mind. At the time, I thought it was true. I thought I was brilliant for figuring that one out. But that was before. Now that I loved Mag and knew Vulgra had tried to make her kill herself, not to mention all the other evil acts it was responsible for, such thoughts sounded moronic.
“Now that I know what you are,” I said, “I’m not sure people are that bad. If you would stop infecting us, maybe we’d be amazing.”
“You are incorrect,” Vulgra responded. “I know I must seem unforgivably evil to you, but I assure you I am not. I am as neutral as a filing cabinet. Despite what the Butterfly Guild believes, I have never forced anyone to do anything they did not already want to do.”
“You’re lying!” I said. “You made my dad murder a child. You made him kill himself. He would never want to do those things.”
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“I understand why you have to believe that, but it’s simply not true. There is unspeakable evil lurking in the crevices of every human heart, though some people are better at hiding it than others.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I wish I could explain more to you now, but I cannot resist the force of the talismans any longer. I must return to Misery Peak.”
Vulgra surrounded Mag’s hand, slowly brought her to her feet, and lifted her off the ground. I wrapped myself around her legs, but Vulgra was strong enough to lift us both. As we rose, the roof of the banquet room disappeared, revealing the night sky. Vulgra violently shook Mag’s body. I slid down her legs but held onto her ankles.
“Stop!” I demanded. “Let her go!”
“I am truly sorry, Emerson. I know this only makes me seem eviler than you already think I am, but I must take Mag with me. I would not be doing this if I wasn’t so desperate for your help. Trust me, the ends justify the means.”
“No! I don’t trust you!” I shouted. “And no ends could possibly justify being this mean! Now let her GO!”
I yanked on Mag’s leg as hard as I could, but I lost my grip and fell, smashing my knees into some broken table pieces below.
“You must meet me at the summit of Misery Peak,” Vulgra demanded as it lifted Mag above the castle wall. “And if you so much as take one step toward Zolptoria, I will devour Mag’s soul and send her to the Abyss!” It then quickly added, “Sorry! That sounded way more threatening than I meant it to. I heard it as soon as I said it. It’s just that it’s very important that you ascend Misery Peak. And don’t forget the Destruction Rod and talismans, okay? I will keep Mag alive in the meantime—the flame that continues to burn on the Destruction Rod will confirm that she still breathes.”
As Mag’s body drifted higher and further away, I knew I had to save her and destroy Vulgra. I would rescue her, even though going to Misery Peak meant playing right into Vulgra’s hand and would probably result in the end of the human race. I didn’t care. It was worth risking everyone else’s life for a chance to save Mag’s soul from the Abyss.
My stomach twisted at that thought. If I was willing to put billions of people in danger to save just one person who was important to me, if I honestly cared that little about the human race, then maybe Vulgra was right about me. Maybe my heart was as black as the Destruction Rod.
But I soon realized that of all the things I’d felt guilty about in the last few days, this was by far the stupidest. After all, it’s human nature to care only about the people closest to you and say to hell with everyone else. I’m pretty sure that’s why people starve. So, if my heart was black for putting one person’s welfare above everyone else’s, then every human’s heart was black. And if that was the case, then I shouldn’t feel guilty for letting Vulgra end us.
My clever rationalizations removed the guilt from my stomach and deposited it behind my ear, where it was no more painful than a mosquito bite. And even that was only if I thought about the countless people who would murder each other because of my decision. So I simply didn’t think about that. Smart.
Besides, people would murder each other only if I failed to defeat Vulgra. Which I almost certainly would. My dad was gone and couldn’t tell me where to find the Butterfly Rod, and I knew of no other way of destroying Vulgra.
I looked to my dad’s empty suit of armor, which, sadly enough, was the closest thing I had to a friend right now. There was something peculiar about the way it was positioned. It was lying on its back, completely flat, except that one arm was raised, pointing directly to the top of the erect ladder.
Maybe it was random, or maybe when my dad touched the medallion, there was a moment between the instant Vulgra was extracted from his soul and the instant he was vanquished by the death spell. Maybe my dad had tried to use this moment to show me something.
I climbed the ladder and looked around at the broken table, the demolished wall, and the shattered vases and chairs. Nothing stood out right away, but I continued my survey, and the cracks in the tiles soon caught my attention. It was odd how many times Sir had missed chopping off Mag’s head during their battle and cracked the floor instead. Even stranger was how perfectly straight the cracks were and how each crack stopped just when it reached the tile’s edge. These cracks were too precise to be accidents. My dad had made them to communicate something to me. But what?
I studied the tiles for a time, looking for a pattern. When nothing jumped out at me, I fell back on my favorite strategy: Maybe it was clocks. I reasoned that each tile represented a letter of the alphabet (A was in the top-left corner when I faced north, and the order of letters went from left to right and top to bottom). Meanwhile, each crack represented the order I was to arrange the letters in (e.g., the crack pointing to one o’clock told me what letter was the first letter).
The A tile had no crack. The tile immediately to its right (the B tile) had a crack that pointed to one o’clock. Therefore, the first letter in my dad’s message was B. I then looked for the crack pointing to two o’clock. That was the twenty-first tile according to my system. That gave me BU.
Now I thought I might actually be onto something. Words can start with BU. If I had gotten JX, if there was a crack on any tile past the Z tile, or if there was more than one crack pointing at any given o’clock, I’d know I was on the wrong track. But this wasn’t the case. I continued counting cracks and ended up with the word BUTTERFLY.
That couldn’t be a coincidence. How crafty my dad was! Vulgra probably didn’t even know my dad was making a puzzle for me. It probably thought my dad was simply trying to stop it from killing Mag. Perhaps my dad didn’t even know he was making a puzzle. Maybe he found himself doing the right thing by following his gut or relying on one of the other butterfly phenomena that Archie had mentioned.
The last three cracks spelled ROD. My dad’s message was BUTTERFLY ROD. I was pleased with myself for solving the puzzle until I realized that this message was of no help to me whatsoever. I already knew I needed the Butterfly Rod to defeat Vulgra. What I needed to know was where to find it. My elation left me in a heartbeat. Vulgra must have interfered with my dad’s message, rendering it useless.
Or was I missing something? I sat atop the ladder, scanning the room for more clues. Maybe there was a pattern in how the vases or chairs had been smashed. My heart soared when I noticed three broken chair legs in the form of an H, but it nosedived when no other furniture formed anything useful. The H had been a coincidence and was now my least favorite letter.
But my dad could have left me another clue, if not in this banquet room, then somewhere else along our journey. Had he said or done anything else that could have been a clue?
I thought back to our first meeting in the forest and worked my way forward from there, recalling everything I could—every insult he had launched at me in the woods, every criticism he had shouted at every ant, everything he had ranted about in the desert. I eventually got to the part of our journey right after the fight with the goblins, when we were trying to figure out how to make my staff go dark. I almost fell off the ladder with excitement.
When I had asked what my staff was, my dad had replied, “Time will tell.” Was this what he meant? That he was going to use clocks (i.e., time) to tell me what the staff was? If so, my question had been answered. My staff was the Butterfly Rod.
But how could that be? Both my dad and Vulgra had said my staff was the Destruction Rod, which made a lot more sense. The Butterfly Rod—a weapon created by beings whose sources of power are friendship, hope, and love—wouldn’t make it feel marvelous to bust up your mom’s face.
But what if Vulgra somehow merged the two? What if it had hidden the Butterfly Rod inside the Destruction Rod? Was that even possible? It certainly sounded diabolical enough to be something Vulgra would do. And it was the perfect hiding place. Plus, it meant no one could use the Butterfly Rod without also wielding the Destruction Rod, which was to Vulgra’s advantage.
I acknowledged that, like most things, my brain would never be able to ravel this mystery. I would have to rely not on logic but on faith. I had to have faith in my dad and believe he was guiding me. I had to believe I possessed the Butterfly Rod. And so that’s what I believed.
I also had to make haste to Misery Peak to rescue Mag, for who knew what kind of torture she might be suffering? I descended from my perch and retrieved the Dream Ring from my dad’s gauntlet.
I was now equipped with two of the three talismans and (I prayed) the Butterfly Rod. Most importantly of all, I was also now equipped with hope. I had hope that my dad was still somehow watching out for me, as were thousands of butterflies, who were rooting for me from another dimension.