The Quest of the Prodigy (The Alchemist of Time Book 1) Read online

  “No, I’m not mad. I’m honestly happy to see you.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly and stood up, backing away from her. “Are you trying to freak me out? I know you hate when I’m in your room. I’m sorry Mimi!”

  She laughed. “I know. And, I forgive you.”

  “Like, really, what’s going on?” Albert asked, looking very concerned now.

  Mimi sighed wistfully. She hugged her shoulders, and turned to the place she had reappeared. “I honestly have no idea.”

  “Um,” he said and bent down to pick up his backpack. “I’m just going to leave, then. And, uh...leave you alone. Um, do I need to call Ursula and have her take you to the emergency room? ‘Cuz, you’re like acting totally messed up.”

  “Oh,” said Mimi. “No, no, she’s on a date.” She had promised their nanny she would watch Albert while the college-aged girl attempted to maintain a love life. Guilt sank Mimi’s heart as she realized she had broken her promise to Ursula and her parents by leaving Albert alone to go to the library.

  After such a terrible time at the library, and almost getting killed, getting a new book didn’t seem as important as it had an hour ago.

  “Albert, I’m so sorry I left. I was just getting a book, but the library was closed, and then...” she burst into tears, unable to explain the crazy night she had endured.

  Albert looked worried at her crying, and offered her an awkward hug that was more of a shoulder pat combined with a pull-in than a proper hug. They didn’t always get along, and his kind gesture reminded Mimi that they were still siblings and he still obviously cared for her. It was a nice gesture, but she was still freaking out over what had just happened.

  “There, there,” he said. “I was fine, I just played some of my Once Upon a Time in Singapore game, almost beat it too, I was at a cool pirates versus ninjas scene about to rescue the Ninja Queen when you came in, so I was just fine without you here distracting me.”

  “Thanks, Albert, I’m glad you’re not mad I left.”

  “I thought you went to that party, actually. But why am I not surprised you went to the library instead? You’re such a dork!” he teased her, causing her to actually smile amidst her tears.

  Albert shouted in surprise as a flash of light flooded the room. “Mimi, what’s that?”

  “Oh no,” she cried. Nothing good could come from a bright flash like the one at the library. “Let’s get out of here, Albert. We’ll go to your friend Jason’s house. Is Teagan still at her sleepover?”

  “Yeah, Teagan called all excited like, they were going to go to the mall.”

  “Great. Let’s go.”

  “But why do we need to leave? I just called for pizza!”

  After the light faded, they realized they were no longer alone.

  “THIS IS a funny sort of library,” said the stranger in a posh British accent.

  Seeing a stranger appear out of nowhere nearly gave Mimi a heart attack. How did he get here? The same way I did, probably.

  His outfit looked very much out of place to her. His long cranberry-red wool coat had shiny gold buttons running from top to bottom and five buttons on each sleeve. It reminded her of a pirate’s coat. She wondered how he could look so confident when he looked so weird.

  “Uh, it’s not a library, it’s my room,” she informed him. “Why did you think it’s a library?”

  “My stupid sister meant to ask who the hell you are!” Albert corrected.

  “Ali!” she hissed, using her nickname for him when she was cross.

  The man smiled at Albert and gave a lazy salute. “Sebastian Barkley. Or the Incredible Bas, as some call me. Or, you know, Bas works too.”

  The name sounded familiar to her. The character from the book!

  “You’re Sebastian Barkley?” she asked him skeptically.

  “Call me Bas, no need for formalities.”

  “Is this book yours?”

  “My Diary!” Bas cried happily with a clap of his hands. “I thought it had sent itself to a library. That’s what it usually does when I have to make it disappear.”

  “Well, it did, I found it in the library. Then I was attacked by a pair of creeps, and it sent me home.”

  His carefree spirit was replaced with shock. He stared at the shorter person standing beside her for an explanation, but Albert just shrugged his shoulders.

  “What do you mean you found it?” asked Bas at last.

  “Well...I was in the library, I was the only one there, and the book just fell from the air. I felt...err, drawn to it. Like I didn’t even want to waste any more time looking around in the library. Which is very unusual, because I live for visiting the library. And hang on, why am I telling you all of this? I just met you! And you’re in my room! Get out!”

  Bas chuckled. “That’s the Diary. It likes you.”

  “Great, Mimi’s first crush on her is a book,” said Albert.

  “Shut it Albert! The book doesn’t have a crush on me. As much as I love books, they are still only an inanimate object.”

  “Oh it’s still just an object,” Bas agreed. “I’m just shocked you picked it up! Most people don’t even see it. It’s not the first time I’ve sent it around time on random looking for the Prodigy. I programmed my Diary to find someone special, you see. Someone whose love for literature would do anything to keep a book safe, prove their dedication to reading, and help solve everything. That someone my father likes to call the Prodigy, but I think that sounds rather pretentious, don’t you?”

  “I’m not special.” How could a book think she was anyone special? All I did was pick it up.

  “Actually, she’s right about that,” agreed Albert.

  The night had been too much for Mimi to care. She placed the book in Bas’s hands. “Come on, Albert. We were just on our way out.”

  With that she turned around and headed toward the door. She had almost died once tonight in the library, she didn’t want to be involved in any more trouble. And most importantly, she didn’t want Albert to get hurt. They were both going to go to his friend’s house and hopefully stay the night there, and then they could figure out what to do in the morning.

  If she was thinking straight, she would have called the cops on this Bas person straight away. But her mind still felt in a daze. Her feet still felt funny from teleporting, and her stomach still felt like throwing up. Her mind was spinning as she tried to keep everything happening straight.

  Just as they were about to leave her room, the book suddenly appeared in her hand. “Okay...how did it do that?”

  “It does have a crush on you!” Albert said with a laugh.

  “It’s programmed on you, and it is trying to tell us you are the Prodigy.”

  “What is a Prodigy? Other than loving to read?” Mimi asked, once again ignoring her brother.

  “It’s easy. All the Prodigy has to do is use their love of learning to master alchemy, use alchemy to defeat the evil King, and save the future year of 4218 from a worldwide Civil War. It’ll be easy, because the King won’t suspect alchemy. And it’ll be fun, because you get to learn alchemy. It was my idea to find someone from another time, so they won’t be tempted by the King’s glory. It’s crazy how many perks the King’s best people get.”

  Albert and Mimi stared at him.

  “Look, I think you need some serious mental help. This is the year 2015, not 4218. There’s no such thing as alchemy. And there sure as heck no such thing as time travel!” said Mimi. She shoved the book at him, wanting nothing more to do with it.

  “But!” Bas began to protest, but she was already shoving Bas toward the door.

  “That ends your visit to our apartment, please just leave and I won’t have to call the authorities.”

  Bas wasn’t making it easy to drag him out. He leaned his back toward her, his weight falling on her hands. She struggled not collapse under his weight.

  “What was that noise?” asked Albert suddenly.

  “It’s New York City, Albert. You shou
ld be used to the sounds of the street by now. We moved here when you were a baby.”

  “Duh, Mimi! But this was different. It wasn’t sirens, it was...”

  “A blast,” finished Bas, straightening abruptly.

  The three looked at each other. Bas looked worried.

  “I only have one other spare,” he said regretfully. “Is there another way out?”

  “A spare what?” Asked Albert.

  “No, these windows don’t open. What was that blast, Bas?”

  He smiled at her for using his nickname instead of his full name before pointing at her and then Albert. “Right, we’ll distract them, and, uh, kid…how heavy are you?”

  “What?” Albert backed away.

  “All right then, we’ll wing it. If we’re all too heavy for one Shifter…we could, uh, explode.”

  “And if we stay?” asked Mimi, not liking the chance of exploding.

  “They’ll kill us,” Bas said worriedly.

  AT THAT moment Bellator and Deatherage knocked down the door to her bedroom.

  Mimi screamed as her door fell to the floor and they charged in. She shielded Albert, feeling terrified. I need that Diary’s courage!

  It seemed the more she denied being the Prodigy, the more her attachment to the Diary was fading, along with her courage. Panic was setting in; she wondered what to do, and how to protect Albert. Somehow, that connection she felt with the Diary was affecting her confidence, or rather, lack thereof.

  “See Bas, darling,” Bellator taunted, holding a necklace with an arrow locked on him. Mimi saw something in Bas’s arm blinking an identical green to the arrow. “I told you we’d find you wherever you are. Whenever you are.”

  Mimi guided Albert backward toward the windows, wanting to put as much distance between them and the creeps from the library as possible.

  “Enough, we won’t lose him this time!” yelled Deatherage and looked at Mimi. “You, girl, give us the book!”

  “I don’t have it,” Mimi replied timidly. “Leave us alone! My brother and I want nothing to do with whatever trouble you lot come from!”

  “Wrong answer,” Deatherage snarled at her and pulled out his Photon Laser.

  Mimi screamed as lasers began flying toward them. This guy was willing to hurt two kids over a book?

  Out of nowhere Albert tackled her, and they landed on the soft bed with a bounce. Albert quickly rolled off her and Mimi bounced back to the floor, her heart racing with panic. She and Albert knelt down to use the bed as a buffer, and looked up to see Bas using Mimi’s dresser as a shield.

  “Albert, we’ve got to get out of here!” she told him quietly.

  “I know, but how?”

  “Catch!” yelled Bas to Mimi and tossed her the book.

  Mimi caught the book, wondering why he would put them in danger by giving her item the bad guys desired.

  “Mimi, how did you get home?” Albert asked, like he was trying to be helpful.

  Mimi was too scared to even answer him.

  Meanwhile, Bas was trying to distract the creeps. He ran into Deatherage while the Photon Laser was charging and knocked Deatherage into Bellator. Bellator yelled as she was knocked over, and cursed loudly when the sudden move caused her to drop the Photon Laser. Deatherage lost his balance and fell on top of her. Bas charged again, forcing the Ambassadors of Time into a dog pile.

  “Get him off!” Bellator hissed at Deatherage and reached for the Photon Laser.

  Her fingers stretched even further and finally her index finger was able to grab the handle of the trigger. Albert and Mimi dodged behind her nightstand as she fired. Mimi was in a panic, but Albert was alarmingly calm.

  Albert leapt to his feet and grabbed his sister’s compact mirror off her nightstand. He opened the compact mirror and the laser beam bounced off it, shielding him and Mimi.

  “Albert!” Mimi cried.

  The laser hit the mirror on the dresser across from them and bounced across the room again, right into the center floor-to-ceiling window.

  Bellator wriggled free and fired her Photon Laser again, hitting the same window. There was a chilling sound as the crack in the window grew higher and higher. When the crack finally reached the upper right hand corner, the true chaos began.

  Both Mimi and Albert screamed as glass started to shatter.

  Glass blasted everywhere. Mimi grabbed Albert and shielded him with her body, allowing the glass to hit her back instead. Bas started screaming as shards of glass continued to land everywhere. The breeze from being so high above the Hudson River rushed through her room.

  Pages from her printed Macbeth and Odyssey essays on her desk, due after Christmas break, flew everywhere, like a paper tornado that encompassed her entire room. The papers fell to the ground, but every time they landed, the wind from the window blew them upward again, making the tornado endless.

  Her parents were so going to kill her for such damage, if Deatherage didn’t first.

  The crazy man in red jumped off Deatherage and ran to Mimi and Albert, shoving the three of them inside of the paper tornado. She could no longer see Bellator and Deatherage because of the paper vortex they had stepped in. Mimi looked to Bas in desperation, watching him take the key that hung from his neck and lean toward his wrist. Suddenly the same bright glow filled her room, blinding Mimi.

  Mimi couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t hear the lasers being fired anymore. She couldn’t hear anything at all.

  Gradually she became aware of ground under her feet again. When she opened her eyes, she found she was no longer in her destroyed bedroom. She had no idea where they were now, and the thought of being lost terrified her. What exactly had she gotten herself into when she picked that insane Diary up in the New York City Public Library?

  Only two hundred years old, the castle structure hadn’t been tested much. There’d been little repairs needed, and it withstood even the worst of storms. It had survived a total of thirty siege attempts, and protected five kings against countless assassination attempts, including the current King Noctria, the fourth to have ruled the King’s Court. Made up of over ten thousand bricks, it was the ideal home for a King bent on world domination.

  A total of two hundred servants resided in the castle. With chefs, maids, and weapon forgers, there was nothing that the King needed to do himself. Three hundred active guards also called the castle their home, though no families were allowed in the castle. The only family allowed in the castle was his own, and King Noctria had chosen to estrange himself from them two decades ago.

  He had an ex-wife, who wanted him dead so she could win this worldwide war. The only signs of affection he’d offered his daughter, Princess Odette, was a mechanical pet raven. The raven was intelligent, kind and meant to be a symbol of his protection over her, even when he could not be there.

  But as the King had been absent from her life so long, the symbol was lost on Odette, and instead the raven was utilized as her best friend and personal messenger. He was beautiful, and she called him Knox.

  Four hundred feet in the air, far beyond the reaches of the grassy park which surrounded the structure, a manmade raven stood perched at the corner of the castle where the Ambassador of Time Hall meets the Great Hall. High on the rooftop of the castle, the mechanical raven scanned his flight path. Made of brass, the raven was forged with intelligent ingenuity. A clear breastplate allowed a glimpse of the complicated matrix of gears that gave the bird mechanical life. Brass and copper gears click at rapid speed as the bird tilted his head. A slow grinding noise replaced the beat of a heart. Two feathered wings, darker shades of bronze, angled downward to measure the high wind speeds.

  Behind the raven was a perfectly scenic and depressing view of New York City. Tarnished buildings stood useless. No longer full of people, they were giant reminders of how far civilization had come, and how far it had fallen. Only five skyscrapers of the twentieth century remained, including the Empire State Building. The buildings that had cluttered the city in the pa
st had since fallen to the decay of war and time. The skyscrapers that did survive had lost their luster eons ago.

  The gale of wind that had those inside the Wise Oak Inn worried was even more intense at this height. Knox’s left eye was a compass, like those once used by sailors. As he tilted his head into the draft of wind, the SW icon illuminated red. The bird took off.

  Down and down he fell. The raven stretched its neck downward even further to catch greater speeds. Just before it hit the grass field, he leveled and shot out over the river.

  On his back was a small custom brown leather backpack. Inside was a very important letter, the reason for Knox’s voyage. The pack’s flap was secured by a complicated lock. The lock was in the shape of a heart, made of dark brass. Welded on the heart-shaped lock was a series of two gears as decoration. A gold chain hung from both of the gears. And on both sides of the heart sprouted a pair of metal raven wings. Odette’s pen-pal lover told her in a letter once that the wings represent how her love sent his heart to new heights.

  The backpack was waterproof. Despite technology innovation being forced to a halt by the creed of the first King in the year 3800, paper was still used on a daily basis. It still had a place in humanity’s heart. And there was only one human heart which Knox cared that this piece of paper was delivered to: his mistress, Princess Odette.

  At last Knox spotted what he was looking for. On the edge of the Atlantic Ocean was a dome structure, with silver and brass rivets holding the glass together. Inside was one of the last great existing pieces of technology: the REP, or Raw Earth Pod. It allowed humans to travel from the King’s Castle in New York to the Queen’s Castle in London in only an hour. People rode inside a pod down a long brass monorail that looked like the gas lines of the 20th Century.

  Knox let out another cry; he was halfway home.

  After circling around the REP to gain momentum, his long brass beak pointed downward once more. His metal feathers fluttered as he took a nosedive toward the water. Knox was waterproof, and broke the surface in a small splash. Once in the ocean, gears grinded to increase the thrust to fight against the ocean’s pressure. Knox followed the pipe of the REP, which went all the way down to the Earth’s surface. Tilting his body, he shot like a bullet through the water, making it across the pond in minutes.