The Joining: The Cycle of the Shards Book One

36: All is Revealed

     Critock was alone when he heard Brian's screams echoing through the nearly empty hallways, having just opened his locker door. He hadn't had to use the combination, as the door was already cracked open, and his suspicion that someone had beat him to the locker was confirmed when he found his backpack missing, the Sword of Kon among it's contents. "Shanna" he whispered to himself, and inwardly cursed Tom for failing to get her out of here. If Pt'ron revealed himself and she went after him, the sword would be no more than a small rod to her, utterly useless. He cursed a guttural string, and rubbed his throat when the loud scream began. He was on the wrong side of the school from where the sound was coming from, but sword or not, he had to get to the source of the screams. If Pt'ron had started his war, then maybe there was time to stop him before anyone else got hurt. He took off in a dead sprint down the hallway, and rounded the corner. By now there were a few people milling about, no teachers thankfully, and he paid them no mind as he ran past the office around to the foot of the main stairway, which was where he literally ran straight into Shanna Ewing, both of them almost falling from the unexpected impact.

"CRITOCK!" Tom swooped around him happily, as Shanna beamed at him, once she had recovered from the surprise. "Wait, are you Critock? Kyle? Who..."

Critock sighed. "It's me, Tom. I talked to Kyle's father. It's ok. I'm back. Thank you." He turned, finally meeting Shanna's gaze. "Shanna..."

"Are you okay?" Her face was a look of concern. "I heard they were throwing you out, and I thought..." She quickly grabbed him and held him. "I took your sword."

"I know, it's okay. That was brave. Stupid, but brave. C'mon, we're losing time." He turned and was met with Mr. Phelps, who he had noticed before but now blocked his path from climbing the stairs. "Uhhh..."

"You're really not him." Phelps looked Critock up and down as though he was expecting to see some kind of physical difference between the boy then and now. Critock turned to Shanna with a betrayed look on his face.

Shanna rolled her eyes. "I didn't have any choice! He ambushed me, and you weren't around!"

Critock sighed. "No. I'm not." He turned to move past Phelps, who had a stunned expression on his face. Critock stopped, and looked back at him. "It's all true, Phelps. Life on other planets. Civilizations. It's all real. And we're out of time, he's got the Shards by now and they're about to wake up. If we can't stop him, then it's all going to end." He then started moving up the stairs quickly.

Tom zoomed up the stairs whooping, and Shanna ran past her teacher, stopping to wake him from his stupor. "Come on, Mr. Phelps! You can think about it later! He needs our help now!" She then turned and continued running up the stairs, and after a moment, Phelps turned and followed them.

A few beats later, Jim emerged from the closet on the ground floor, and moved up the stairs behind them as quickly as he could without any of them noticing him.

Critock and Tom quickly reached the hallway expecting to see a horrible scene, and they were not wrong. "By the Five..." Tom muttered as he looked upon the sight of the destroyed window with the still body of a young woman laying outside undisturbed. Back inside, a boy's body lay with a leg and a neck at an angle that appendages should not be at, and close by, was Brian Boyd, barely still alive, a line of red in the shape of a plus sign dripping blood on his entire chest. He was wheezing, and could barely raise his head to look at the new arrivals.

Shanna let out an involuntary scream as she first witnessed the site, and Phelps let out a stretch of curses when he laid his eyes upon it. Critock put up a hand to keep them from approaching, as he kneeled in front of the boy, all sense of bullying and anger having left him, replaced by regret and confusion.