We passed quite a few islands. The hermit crab people, the Makers, stopped at none of them. They were ignoring wonders.

A perfect pink castle, like one might find at the bottom of an aquarium, surrounded by a fairy tale forest. Its moat was fed by a clear, delicate waterfall. White sand and pink reefs. A rainbow framed the entire arrangement. Very nice, very suspicious.

A leafy island with a huge, organic membrane stretched over something spherical at its center. The golden skin of the thing was veiny and scaled, held in position because it was stretched over bony pinions. Folded wings, possibly, covering … what? A Godzilla-sized living being? It wasn’t moving. It could have been a disturbingly realistic statue. Probably not. Dangerous, Sean had said. Let’s give Sean a little credit on this one.

A forest of palm trees and bushes, wildly thrashing in an unfelt wind caused by a nonexistent storm. They flickered in the blaze of unseen lightning. The island was under siege by a terrible hurricane I couldn’t see or feel. The sky was clear and blue, but everything past the shore was darkened by nonexistent clouds. A tiny shack rattled and shook among the trees, its door banging open and shut in the wind. Golden light in the window defied the silent storm. Someone was in there, a moving shape, watching me pass. I waved but got no response.

We just kept going, passing island after island. Sometimes I wanted to stop, just to explore. I was an explorer now, right? I owed it to Cassie and Armand. But we never stopped. Not until the Big Ring.

One of my many classes in Mira Costa Community College had been art history, in which I had been awarded one deluxe B Minus. I’m not trying to belittle you or brag here; just pointing out that I'm an expert on this stuff.

It was a huge hovering stone structure, assembled with arches and columns, little alcoves full of ambiguous statues. Classical. Greco-Roman.

Speaking of which, imagine the Colosseum in Rome, right? Like that, a little. But it was topped with vibrant jungle, trees whose gnarled roots gripped the carved stone and twisted down, down, to sip at the salty sea.

And that was a long way, because the whole thing was just hanging in the air. It floated up there, motionless. I don’t know how high up…ten stories, maybe? Too high for me to get up to it. I suppose I could have tried using the roots, if I were brave enough.

I was not. I was feeling pretty small and delicate by now, thank you very much. Seeing what this world had to offer was what I’d wanted, and it was intimidating. I was still an explorer, don't misunderstand; just a very cautious one.

The Makers kept going. We went under the thing, passing through the immense roots and right under the central ring. I could look up and see clouds through it.

And we stopped. My raft kept drifting forward until the chain halted its motion, and I drifted in a slow clockwise turn beneath the floating building.

“Radio,” I said, and swallowed nervously.

“Hi-de ho!” came the announcer’s voice, booming up beneath the raft.

“What’s happening here, please.”

“Owen realized he was in the presence of the Aegis Medelae. He was being confronted by another Power.”

“Doesn’t sound great.” I leaned over and shouted at the Makers. “Hey, start the car!”

But the raft didn’t move. I could see the Makers through the few feet of water separating us. They weren’t moving. The Art Deco one, the guy with the needle on top of his shell, was stuck in a pose. Three of his many legs were mid-stride. Frozen in place.

The others that I could see were in the same state: a Maker with a colorful living reef on its back was stuck. The moray eel that lived there was similarly paused in place, its mouth partially open. The same with the one I’d come to think of as Cannonball, a black metal orb with crab legs poking out from the bottom. Everyone was motionless.

Paralysis again, of a type. “What’s it want?”

“The Aegis Medelae was seeking a steward, one with a soul, but Owen had already been named the Steward of the Observatory.”

I waved at the Makers. “How about one of these guys? They seem cool.”

“The Makers had never been granted a stewardship, as they feel it is beneath them. The Aegis had found a way past the defenses granted the Steward.” Here the Radio sounded a trifle nervous.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Oh swell.” I shouted at the Big Ring above us. “Let us go, please! And leave my friends alone!”

A voice boomed from the thing, the Aegis. It wasn’t a human voice. It was clicks, hoots, gongs. The kind of thing you’d get subtitles for in a Star Wars show. It was familiar; I’d heard it in the cave, in the cage just before I’d met the Radio. It went on for a while.

“Can you translate it?”

“Verily, by divine authority and sacred insight, it hath been revealed that thou art not ordained for this holy office, and thy spirit resonates not with the sacred duties herein entrusted.”

A low drone buzzed from up there, and it rose in pitch, higher and higher. I didn’t like it. “Stop!” I shouted, not knowing exactly why.

One of the Makers burst. I didn’t see which one; it was off to my left, behind the raft. The water filled with red and blue, an instant quick-blooming flower of viscera. Plates of metal and shreds of shell drifted in the current beneath me.

Another dead friend.

Helpless fury flooded my veins, and I shouted at the thing in the sky. “Hey! HEY! You want to fight? We’ll fight!” I stood on my swaying raft, glaring at the Big Ring.

“Translate for me,” I said, and the Radio began speaking alien lingo from the water beneath my feet. “You up there! Owen Walsh, the Steward of the Observatory speaks to you, dumbass! Cease fire or accept eternal WAR with the Observatory!”

The buzz didn’t quiet down, but it did stop rising in pitch. More of the clicks-and-gongs.

“What do they say?”

“Message as follows with idiom added: ‘Speak thou in an official capacity as Steward?’”

“Better believe it, scumbag.” Blood pounded in my ears. “Might get all of us, but if you don’t get ME…”

The buzz went silent. Then the alien speech again.

“Verily, we seek no discord with the most esteemed Observatory.”

“Too late!”

The Radio spoke in its announcer voice. “The Aegis had lost control over the Makers. They were suddenly able to move and function.”

I shouted: “It killed one of us! MESS IT UP!” and pointed at the Big Ring overhead.

Rockets hissed from the water, twisting by the dozens, up and up to the Aegis, where they popped with the same unimpressive detonations that had driven off that big shark eel thing.

But they made holes. Clean, perfect holes with molten edges when they hit stone, burning edges when they struck one of the many trees on the thing. The same holes in the side of Harrigan’s ruined cathedral. Soon the Aegis was peppered with wounds. The alien voice popped and gonged.

“Truce,” The radio translated. “Truce. Truce.”

“Oh you say that now. You always say it at this point, don’t you?” I was shaking, not looking at the floating ring. I was watching the cloud of multicolored blood and guts that were slowly dissipating to the left of my raft. Dead and gone. Again.

I felt crazy in a way I hadn’t for some time. This was overdue, wasn’t it? Time to go a little crazy, like in the bad days right after Mom. Right? Never really a bad time, right?

And let’s take inventory: underground imprisonment. Paralysis. Murdered friends. Mad scientist with a vicious idiot son. Surely my schedule had space for a little indulgence.

What would it accomplish, though?

I remembered Greg, in the dirt on the way to school, screaming that I’d cheated, cheated, as blood framed his eye and dribbled into his sobbing mouth…The horror on the faces of his huge bully friends as they fled, abandoning him...the fear and disgust from Greg's intended victim as she watched me...

Not that again. Cool your jets, Jasper.

Another world. This place wasn’t Earth, obviously. Different rules. Let’s assume that there are different rules here. That for some people, it was okay to blast a stranger to bits.

Let’s make excuses for people, in other words.

But it’ll be the last time.

“Cease fire, please,” I muttered. And they did. Why I don’t know. I jumped in the water and inspected the remains of the Maker who’d been killed. I couldn’t see well beneath the surface, but the location of the corpse was clear. Not a lot left: a heap of metal, some green crab legs just standing there, as if they could start walking on their own.

A soul. Complex, ornate, intricate, a sort of ball, pulsating and reforming. Moving away through the clear water, off to the sunset. It went faster and faster until it was gone.

The last one. This would be the last one who died because of me.

The Makers clustered around their fallen comrade, doing something I later learned was collection of metal.

“Let’s go, guys.” And off we went again. I still had no idea why these people would listen to me.

“The Aegis Medelae was requesting a confirmation of the truce.”

“No.”