Island of Dragons (Unwanteds #7)(70)
They ran without talking for the remaining stretch, and as a squirrelicorn approached with a small bag of spell components hanging from her mouth, all Aaron could think about was winning at all costs, because he and all of Quill were finally free of serving dictators. And while his future was uncertain, Aaron knew that there were only two possible options he wanted to pursue. Living out his quiet, peaceful life on the Island of Shipwrecks . . . or taking control of this island.
He couldn’t decide which he wanted more.
When All Is Lost
Artimé was in chaos. The mansion windows were all broken, tar balls and rubble littered the shore, and hundreds of pirates stormed across the lawn fighting every human, creature, and statue they could find. The ostrich statue lay on its side by a tree, missing its legs. The tiki statue was now three individual heads. The girrinos were battered and bruised, and Jim the winged tortoise could only hobble slowly through Quill as he returned from his post, his wing broken.
Florence stood near the front door of the mansion, picking up pirates whenever they ventured close enough and throwing them as far as she could onto a pile of frozen pirates, trying to knock them out. Her quiver and bow lay on the ground—all the magic arrows long gone by now since she’d had to use one every time Alex was about to get decapitated. She tried to stop the pirates from entering the mansion, but with the windows smashed, they had a dozen ways to get in. Finally she had to give up and focus on keeping people alive. And while most of the ships had stopped the flaming tar ball attacks now that their pirates were on shore and in the line of fire, the lead ship continued shooting them at the mansion. Florence could only guess they were trying to take out Simber and her.
Simber soared and dove, dodging the tar balls, picking up two or three pirates at a time and flinging them into the depths of the sea. But for every three he got rid of, six more arrived in a boat to take their place. Simber began to destroy the smaller boats so they couldn’t be used to transport more pirates, but the task was made infinitely more difficult by the various rescues he had to make whenever an Artiméan nearby was about to die—which was often.
And Artimé’s supply of lethal components had dwindled so low that Alex hadn’t been able to give the squirrelicorns many to deliver to the other teams around the island. In a desperate move, Alex sent Fox to bob in the shallow water along the shore to see if he could find any heart attack components that had bounced off the pirates’ shields, unused.
Thus, the spell casters were stuck using temporary spells like fire step and slam poetry, causing even more chaos and confusion with the pirates running this way and that as a result. One helpful spell was the freeze spell because it stopped a pirate in his tracks, but the spell only worked if it wasn’t blocked by the pirates’ shields, which was less than half the time. Using a permanent version of the spell took a lot more concentration than the temporary version, and after the night they’d had, the Artiméans didn’t have concentration to spare—especially when there was no guarantee the spell would hit its mark. So when it did, the effects wore off quickly.
It soon became abundantly clear: There were so many pirates, so few spell casters, and hardly any deadly spell components left, that the task of stopping the pirates with magic was impossible.
Alex was the first to realize Mr. Appleblossom hadn’t been seen or heard from in quite some time. With the world fighting around him, Alex used a huge pile of rubble to climb to the roof of the mansion so he could check on him. Once he pulled himself up, he looked all around, then crawled up to the tallest peak. He searched the rooftop, and his eyes widened. Mr. Appleblossom was lying on the shingles, unconscious, with a huge bloody gash in his chest that looked like it came from a sword. Had pirates climbed up here to stop Mr. Appleblossom’s aerial attack?
“Mr. Appleblossom!” Alex shouted, crawling over to him. He slapped the man’s face trying to wake him up, but the theater instructor didn’t respond. Alex scooped him up and slung him over his shoulder, then maneuvered sideways to the edge of the roof and looked down.
“Florence!” he called.
Alarmed, Florence bashed her current attacker in the face and turned to see where Alex’s voice was coming from. When she saw him carrying Mr. Appleblossom, she ran over and reached up so Alex could lower the man into her arms.
“Oh, Siggy,” she said, horrified. She vanished inside the mansion with him.
Alex stayed on the roof, fury rising up inside him at seeing Mr. Appleblossom like that. With hot tears blurring his sight, he noticed all the tar balls in the gullies and on the flat parts of the roof that would make excellent weapons. Fueled by anger, he began flinging the heavy balls down on unsuspecting pirates.
Florence returned to find Alex. “The hospital ward is full!” she shouted to him. “I had to put him on the floor.”
Alex, exhausted, could hardly process the horrible statement. On the floor? The hospital ward full? Alex’s face was stained with sweat and dirt and blood. His clothes were ripped, and his body was covered in bruises and cuts. He looked down at the quickly deteriorating mansion, and at the masses of pirates tearing up Artimé and his people, and at all the dead and injured that littered the grounds, and at all the ships that surrounded the island with even more enemies still hiding aboard. He looked around for familiar faces of his friends, his team leaders, and he didn’t see any of them. Not one. Were they dead? All of them? Where was Aaron? What if Ishibashi was wrong about the seaweed? He couldn’t bear to consider it. How could he stand the grief of losing another friend? And then he choked on a ragged sob, and all the hope he’d ever held in his heart drained out in that moment.